WWDTM: Jeff Gordon

0:04From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. You may know me as the voice of Bill Curtis. I am Bill Curtis, and here is your host at the Studebaker Theater at the Fine Arts Building in Chicago, Illinois, Peter Sagal. Thank you, Bill.

0:28I'm sure you're excited. We have a great show for you today. Later on, we are going to be joined live on stage by NASCAR legend Jeff Gordon. It's very exciting. It's a little, you know, this sort of thing. not what he's used to. So to make him feel more at home, halfway through our conversation, a crew will come out and change all four of his tires. But first, it's your turn to do a lap with us. Give us a call to play our games. The number is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. Let's welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you are on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Hi, this is Lauren Ring calling from Seattle, Washington.

1:02Oh, Seattle, one of my favorite places. What do you do there in that beautiful place? I'm a nephrologist or a kidney doctor. A kidney doctor. I've always wondered about anybody like yourself who specializes in just one organ, right? Do you ever get bored and say, man, I wish I could work on something else just once, another organ? Well, I would rather just be a left kidney versus a right kidney, so even more special. Oh, really? Yeah. Has it gotten to this point? No, no, no, wrong side, lady. You have to go see someone else. Well, welcome to our show, Lauren. Let me introduce you to our panel this week.

1:40First up, it's a comedian you can see at Hey Nani in Arlington Heights, Illinois on August 1st. It's Adam Burke. Hi, Lauren.

1:50Next up, a comedian and host of the podcast Fake the Nation, a news and culture show that the federal government would also defund if they could. It's Nagin Farsad. Hey. Hi, Nagin. And making his debut on our panel, a comedian whose debut comedy special, Surprise Me, is now out on YouTube. Vulture just called it a comedy special you should watch. It's Zach Zimmerman. Hi, Lauren. I have some questions for you after if you get off. Well, welcome to the show, Lauren. You're going to play Who's Bill this time. Bill Curtis is going to read you three quotations from this week's news. If you can correctly identify or explain just two of them, you will win our prize.

2:30Any voice from our show you might choose on your voicemail. Are you ready to go? I'm ready. All right. Now, your first quote is actually two quotes. They're from both sides of a partnership that suddenly ended this week. Here's the first quote. This is from President Trump. We had a great relationship. I don't know if we will anymore. And here is his devastated ex. Donald Trump is in the Epstein files.

3:00So, who is no longer President Trump's BFF? Well, it's not Melania, so I think I'd say Elon Musk. Right! Right. Thank you. Trump gave Elon Musk, his partner, a nice send-off in the White House last week, but then things suddenly got real dark. Musk called Trump's big budget bill, quote, an abomination. Trump then called Musk a big disappointment. Musk said Trump couldn't have won the election without him. And then as you heard, Musk escalated things. Poor Elon, we're about to find out how much ketamine it takes to fix a broken heart. Like, I know we're supposed to do other questions or whatever, but this is all I want to talk about.

3:47I know. From this very special edition. Wait, wait, don't tell me. First off, Merry Christmas. Secondly, while we're renaming like gulfs and stuff, can we just change just for today the American flag to that gif of Michael Jackson eating popcorn today? Like here's the thing about this show. Like I've been in this show 10 years and the production team here, I know you think it's all going to be like polysyllabic fart jokes and like gags about some weird study about Swedish cats. But the one thing we really love in this show is a pair of messy bitches just going at it in the employee parking lot.

4:26It's just like... And you know, I mean, they had this terrible breakup, but it gets worse. I'm sorry. I mean, it gets better. Happy Pride. Trump, yes. Trump said he would cancel Elon's government contracts. Elon said Trump should be impeached. And then, oh, the hardest blow of all, While Elon cancelled his ex account. That's a low blow. But we've all been there. We've all had these experiences. You know, the whole time, Elon was still wearing Trump's old hoodie because it smells like him. And we're still... The thing is, I mean, we're going to enjoy it while it lasts because obviously Trump is going to back down in five days or tackle Tuesday as it's now known.

5:10But I don't know. I love that Elon was like, oh, he's in the Epstein files and I should know. So am I. We're right next to each other. But then you're also like now comes the phase where you're always worried that you're going to run into your ex. And so you try and look hot while you're out, you know, in public. Right. At least that's what I do. And so now I'm just like, is Trump going to wear an extra long tie? Like, what are we going to see? The revenge bodies are about to drop. All right. Your next quote is advice from the Atlantic magazine this week. Lying whole heads might keep you from barfing up your Caesar salad.

5:53Due to increasing cuts to the FDA, among many other things, people are being advised to stay safe by avoiding what? Is it cucumbers? It's not cucumbers. It is something that goes into your salad. the advice was to buy whole heads of something rather than the way we all usually buy it. Oh, lettuce. Yes, bagged lettuce is what we all need to avoid. Let's give it up for bagged lettuce, the greatest convenience ever. Experts are saying bagged lettuce could be the most dangerous thing in your house now, thanks to all the inspectors who've been fired from the FDA. So, you know, forget about worrying about measles.

6:30Now you can die by food poisoning. Luckily, bagged lettuce, though, has its own built-in safety feature. it turns into a brown goo before you can eat it. This is such great vindication for jerks like me who have pretty much just red meat diet. Turns out I've been the healthiest one all along. Oh, they're not inspecting the meat plants either, Adam. They'll get you. Don't worry about it. As a vegetarian, this hits close to home. It does. It really does. It's bad. Bagged lettuce is disgusting. Maybe it's just the produce near my home. So you're one of those fancy people who buys heads of lettuce and cuts it up yourself, are you?

7:05Well, the quiet contemplation of chopping a vegetable is a little too much for me actually Really? I don't know. I don't cook So you just eat them whole or you just chew on huge Do you put them in like a shredder? A letter shredder? I'm using an innovation called Uber Eats in order to consume most of my daily calories Yeah, I'm so glad how you people, you vegetarians are getting back to the land You people That's what I meant, talking about vegetarians It's hard to be on the right side of history It really is All right, your last quote is from a New York Times commenter bragging about a recent accomplishment.

7:40I wanted to read 52 of them in 2024, but I actually read 54. That person no doubt will be competing in the hot new contest this summer. People all over the country vying to see who can do what the most. I would say books. Yes, read books. Forget your softball leagues. Hanging by the pool. the cool new way to avoid your children this summer is reading. Summer reading programs, like when you log your books you've read and you count them up, and if you win, you get prizes. They were once just for kids, but now bookstores across the country are launching them for lonely adults as well. Now, don't be intimidated by the challenge of reading as many as 50 books in the summer.

8:20Getting through a lot of books is easy. Just keep a book nearby you at all times and read it while you're waiting until you can skip the ad on your YouTube video. How big is summer reading getting? No, it is apparently quite popular. I've seen everywhere summer reading lists, people putting out, this is what you read. Some of them were even written by humans, which is nice. It's gotten so crazy. Here in Chicago, you'll see guys on the sidewalk with like long coats and they'll open it up and they'll just have paperbacks. Can I interest you in a Maeve Benchy? By the way, if you don't want to read anything this summer, but you want to pretend you did, just say all you read this summer was Romanticy.

9:01And if somebody asked you what the book was about, just say it was Elf Sex. You'll be close enough. The ears are involved.

9:11I'll leave it to Adam. I'm sorry. Is that a title? Right. And on that note, Bill, how did Lauren do in our quiz? Her score was so perfect, she can now move over to the left kidney. There you go. Well done. Thank you so much for calling and playing. Thank you so much. Take care. Right now, panel, it's time for you to answer some questions about this week's news. Zach, this week a woman went viral when she found her husband's diary and made an amazingly surprising discovery. What was it? He was cheating on her. No. He was loyal his whole life. That may or may not be true, but that's not what she was amazed and put on the internet.

9:53He couldn't write. No, he could, but he wrote... A novel. She had the first thing she did was she had to go and get her magnifying glass. Oh, he wrote very tiny. Yes, he had the tiniest, tiniest handwriting. And she put this on the internet, and everybody goes nuts for it. After hesitating for as much as three seconds, the woman opened up her husband's diary to learn his secrets. But the real shock wasn't like a mistress or a secret family. but her husband's, quote, ant-sized font handwriting. Maybe she should have suspected something considering his diary was written on one grain of rice. Wait, and then also she just, like, put that page online?

10:35Yeah, well, she just put it online, and you can't read it, and maybe she should have tried to read it more carefully before she put it online, because what if, like, he wrote in his tiny handwriting was, You know, I don't know if I can keep myself from killing again I want to see his murder weapons though

10:58What does he said about this like what does what he defended himself Apparently he's quite proud of his tiny little handwriting wasn't he dead? No, no, no. He's still alive. Oh, why is she reading his diary? That is a very good question. I I mean, in all the excitement, this incredible violation of trust has not been discussed. That's terrible. Yeah, I'd love to. She gets like three magnifying glasses out and finally says, it's called privacy, you jerk. The divorce papers are going to be on a Post-it note. Coming up, hundreds of millions of dollars could be yours if you simply follow the instructions in our Bluff to Listener game.

11:36Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT-TO-PLAY. We'll be back in a minute with more of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me from NPR.

11:45From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR News Quiz. I'm Bill Curtis. We are playing this week with Zach Zimmerman, Red Hot, Adam Burke, and Nagin Farsad. And here again is your host at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago, Illinois, Peter Sago. Thank you, Bill. Right now it's time for the Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me Bluff the Listener Game. Call 1-888-Wait-Wait to play our games on the air or check out the pinned post on our Instagram page at Wait, Wait NPR. Hi, you're on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Hi, Peter. This is Craig Ventura calling from the pizza capital of America in New Haven, Connecticut.

12:27Oh, you know you're so dumb. All right. Now listen, I know you think you're throwing down on us here in Chicago, but I've got a little surprise for you, my friend. And I agree with you. Craig, it's great to have you with us. You're going to play our game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Craig's topic? How I made millions. Somebody recently made millions and millions of dollars. And I'll give you a hint. They do not work in public broadcasting. Our panelists are going to tell you how they made all that cash. Pick the one who's telling the truth. You'll win the wait waiter of your choice in your voicemail.

13:02Are you ready to play? Let's do it. Let us do it. First, let's hear from Adam Burke. Uno Khan seemed poised to realize his lifelong dream of becoming a big-time movie producer earlier this year after raising an impressive$150 million from investors in his native Estonia. Those same backers, however, say Khan deliberately misled them about the talent he had arrayed for his supposedly star-studded blockbuster. Obviously, when he texted me that Brad Pitt was set to star, I assumed the H was a typo. says now disgruntled investor Arno Anson. But Khan had indeed secured the services of one Brad Pith, a little-known Scottish actor he had seen performing on a cruise ship production of Grease.

13:48A lawsuit filed earlier this year says Khan knew exactly what he was doing when he hired the Tino brothers as writers just so they'd make the wrong assumption when he said the script was by Clinton Darentino. Steven Spielberg is definitely lined up to direct, though, insists Khan, neglecting to mention that the Steven Spielberg in question is a retired piano tuner from Berlin.

14:15A man raised a lot of money to make a movie by using talent who sounds a lot like famous people. Your next story of fast fundraising comes from Nagin Farsad. When AI like ChatGPT, Claude, and the little thing that appears on the top of Google now started popping up, the tech sector couldn't get enough. That's when Building.ai entered the scene promising that their AI could build software and that it was, quote, as easy as ordering a pizza. By the way, in another one of its disruptions, the tech world replaced easy as apple pie with easy as ordering pizza. So, building.ai promised an AI future for coding and managed to raise $450 million from people like SoftBank and Microsoft because corporations are people.

15:08But then the house of cards, or pizzas, all came falling. An early whistleblower noted that the whole operation was, quote, just a group of Indian developers pretending to write code as AI, which I'm assuming means like any good AI, these 700 coders tried their best to subjugate humanity while also destroying the environment. The company has since filed for bankruptcy, leaving tens of millions in unpaid bills. It turns out defrauding people when there's no real oversight is actually as easy as ordering a pizza. An AI company raises hundreds of millions in investment for their technology that turns out to be just 700 people.

15:51Your last story of somebody bagging serious cash comes from Zach Zimmerman. If you've ever tossed a coin in a fountain and made a wish, odds are it didn't come true, but it is making one woman very rich. Deborah Pearson is the founder and CEO of a commercial wishing well company called Wishing Well, Well, Well. That's reporting record profits. Now, it's illegal in most states to take coins from the bottom of water features, not to mention unethical to manhandle someone's hope for a boyfriend by summer wedding season. But laws famously only govern human behavior. Deborah has adopted 400 raccoons, which have been trained, shaved, and pumped full of beta blockers to go deep-sea fishing for state quarters, half dollars, whole dollars, and the occasional token from Chuck E.

16:38Cheese. Animal rights activists called the company bad, like very, very bad. But Pearson maintains her nursery of raccoons enjoy the late night skinny dips The company is rapidly expanding into other verticals training anteaters to dig in couch cushions Woodpeckers to check vending machines and just hatch chicks to straight-up just pickpocket people All right

17:08Somebody figured out A kind of sneaky way to make a lot of cash Was it from Adam Burke, a movie producer who got a lot of money raised for his film by staffing it with people who sounded a lot like but weren't big Hollywood stars? From Nagin, an AI company that raised hundreds of millions for their technology that turned out just to be 700 people pretending to be an AI. Or from Zack, a woman who figured out that she can break in, literally, the money from wishing wells simply by dispatching raccoons to get it. which of these is a real story of a money-making scheme? Okay, these all sound pretty wild.

17:49I'm going to go with the AI, fake AI. You're going to go with McGee's story about the AI. Okay, that's your choice. The audience seems excited about it. Well, to bring you the correct answer, we spoke to a reporter covering the real story. The reason why some companies can get away with doing this kind of thing is that nobody really knows how AI even works. They just see it as this magic black box. That was Parmi Olsen from Bloomberg, who originally reported on the story of these 700 engineers pretending to be an AI. Congratulations, Craig. You got it right. You earned a point for Nagin, and you have won our prize.

18:26Thank you, Craig. The voice of your choice for your voicemail. Well done, sir. Thank you, Dave. Have a great one. Take care.

18:39And now the game where we ask people who've accomplished everything they ever set out to do to do one more thing. We call it Not My Job. Jeff Gordon is a living legend of American auto racing. He set modern NASCAR records for career wins, most wins in a season, among many other honors, before he retired ten years ago. These days, he spends his time with various businesses as well as co-owning racing teams. And so far, we believe he has resisted the urge to kick the driver out of the car and say, here, let me do it. Jeff Gordon, welcome to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Thank you. It's such a thrill to talk to you.

19:16You really didn't have to say all those things, but please go on. I have more. Do you want me to just list your wins by season? I have it here. We learned so many amazing things about you this week, but one of the most amazing things, to me at least, was that you won your first auto race when you were five years old. Yeah, I mean, I guess I just think all professional race car drivers started racing when they were five or six years old. I mean, that was pretty common for me. I grew up in California, and the kids I was racing with were basically the same age. So did everybody know, did you know that this was something you were going to be very good at?

19:55No idea. No, I had no clue. I'd actually, my first racing experience was previous to that. I raced BMX bikes when I was like four and a half years old. Four and a half. Yeah. What does a four and a half year old get if they win a race? They get to skip their nap? What is the prize? Well, I didn't win a race, so I wouldn't know. Because I realized then that I did not have the physicality to pedal a bicycle as fast as others. And when I got in the car, I'm like, I don't need that. I've got an engine. Oh, yeah. So, you know, it did come, you know, pretty quick. And I realized, gained confidence and said, Oh, I can do this.

20:41Right. This is actually another thing I'm very curious about. I know, for example, that on the track, you drivers are in radio contact at all times with your pit. What are you talking about? It's like, Oh, did you see what the president just tweeted? I will say there were a few times in my career where I was fortunate enough to have a pretty big lead. Just a few times. And your mind starts to wonder. And I think there were a few times I noticed some fans or something happening up in the grandstands. And I radioed to the team and said, hey, did you see that? They're like, seriously, Jeff, you're noticing things up in the grandstands?

21:21Really? We're trying to win this race. Get back to the race. I'm going to win, but what are we going to have for dinner later? I'm getting a little peckish out here. I noticed... The other thing you have to remember is that, you know, these radios are being broadcast to everyone. Really? So you have to be careful of things that you say. I didn't always do that well, but you try. Really? So like, let's say, and I'm sure this happened to you more than a couple of times, let's say things go poorly, you spin out, maybe something catches fire. You have to be careful to say, oh goodness, I am truly and well fudged.

21:59Yeah. That as well as if somebody else caused it. Oh yes. Then the choice things that you are thinking about saying. Really? I find that, I mean, that is. Here's the part you guys are going to love. Okay. Because you guys are comedians and I'm not, but in order for that to be broadcast, there's a button on the steering wheel. So, in order for the driver to talk back to the team, you have to push the button. And these things are being broadcast. So, you don't have to push the button. You could just say them. And in my case, 100 % of the time, I wanted to make sure I pushed the button so everybody really here.

22:39Now, you've retired. And as I said, one of the many things you do in addition to your businesses and philanthropy is you co-on some racing teams, right? Yes. And how hard is it for you to like just look at the driver or watch them and just think, just let me do it. I mean, I realized things have evolved, technologies have evolved, the cars drive different today. But what does happen to me, and I think of my wife every time, because when I was racing, I would get out of the car that day, let's say, you know, we didn't win. And she would go, I don't understand why you didn't just pass that car. This is your wife.

23:18Yeah. She's like, couldn't you just push the pedal down further and just go by? I'm like, honey, it's already all the way there. That was as fast as I could go. So I then, while I'm watching the drivers, I'm going, just pass. Why can't you just pass them? Right. And I just, in credit to your wife, just comparing to myself, at least you knew you had a pedal. That was loose to me. Really, you're like, come on, just do it, just do it, just do it. I know everybody asks you guys after you've, you know, all the racers, current and retired, if you speed when you're driving your car. I'm not going to ask you that.