WWDTM: Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone

0:04From NPR and WBEC Chicago, this is, wait, wait, don't tell me, the NPR News Quiz. Forget your silver bells, I'm your silver fox.

0:20Bill Curtis. And here's your host at the Studebaker Theatre at the Fine Arts Building in Chicago, Illinois, Peter Sagal. Thank you, Bill. Thanks, everybody. Great to see you. We do have a great show for you today. Later on, we're going to be talking to Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone, part of a pantheon of Hollywood power couples like Bogie and Bacall, Ben and J-Lo, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a series of women who cannot legally rent a car. You can play our games alone or as part of a power couple. We don't care. The number to call is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. Let's welcome our first listener contestant.

1:03Hi, you are on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Hi, this is Melanie Morgan from McKinney, Texas. McKinney, Texas. I don't know where that is. Can you tell me? It's a little north of Dallas. A little north of Dallas. And what do you do there? I am a legal aid attorney and an adjunct professor at a community college. All right. What do you teach there? What do you teach there? Yeah, I say I have the two lowest paying jobs in the legal profession. Congratulations. I teach family law and mediation. Wow. Well, welcome to the show, Melanie. It's a pleasure to have you. Let me introduce you to our panel this week.

1:37First up, a comedian and correspondent for The Daily Show who will be performing stand-up at the Philadelphia Punchline on December 27th and 28th. It's Dulce Sloan. Hello! Hi, Dulce. Nice to meet you. And he's a comedian whose newest special, Vacation Baby, is available on Hulu and YouTube. It's Hari Kandabolu. Hello. Hi, Hari. And he's a writer and humorist whose delightful substack is Take Another Little Piece of My Heart Now. It's Roy Blunt, Jr. Hey, how you doing? Welcome. So, Melanie, welcome to our show. You're going to play Who's Bill this time. Bill Curtis is going to read you three quotations from this week's news.

2:16If you can correctly identify or explain just two of them, you'll win our prize. Any voice from our show you might choose on your voicemail. Are you ready to play? I hope so. I've been avoiding the news since the election. Really? Interesting way to break your fast. Call into a news quest. It's broadcast nationally. All right. Now, your first quote comes from Senator Chuck Schumer. What the heck is going on? Senator Schumer was one of many people asking that question about what mysterious things in the sky over New Jersey. Oh, the drones. The drones for weeks now. People in New Jersey have been seeing what they say are car-sized drones, sometimes by the dozens floating in the sky and people want answers.

3:01And after many, many demands, finally President Biden said, quote, there's nothing nefarious, apparently. Hey, quick thought, if you're trying to calm people down, don't use the word apparently. As a New Yorker, I find it hilarious and very cute that New Jersey thinks that aliens and the government are interested in its matters. Right. Like the idea that they think they're that worthy of attention from outer space. Major League Baseball is not interested in New Jersey. The NBA is not interested in New Jersey. The Jets and Giants play in New Jersey, but they don't even want to be associated with them.

3:38And you're telling me aliens and the government are putting drugs out there. Maybe the aliens have a particular interest in New Jersey. Maybe for respiration instead of oxygen, they breathe hair gel. I believe that there is a tour that you can take to all the houses and sites of the Sopranos. Yes, you can. There was that. If I were an alien being, I would want to check that out first. Are these aliens? Do aliens have drones? I thought they had spaceships. Well, you never know. I mean, maybe they have drones. Maybe they disguise the spaceships as drones. Maybe we think they're drones, but they're really spaceships.

4:15Who knows? This is too long for us to not know. Yeah, well, that's the thing. Well, but no, because we should have shot these down by now. I don't, as an American, I know we shoot first, ask questions, never.

4:29Now, what happens is, is like people saying, well, there are all these drones. And the government says, no, there aren't. We've looked. They're all perfectly reasonable explanations for all of it. And the whole thing might be this kind of mass hysteria. This is all true. A Pennsylvania state senator tweeted a photo of what he said was a drone that had been shot down. See? It was a Thai fighter from Star Wars. And the former governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, posted a footage of drones that he said were floating above his house for hours. And again, true, it was the Constellation Orion. Okay, fine.

5:09Well, I flew here on one, but maybe that was just a plane. Yeah, I know, you never know, yeah. All right, Melanie, here is your next quote. Let's look back at some delicious memories. That was a message that appeared on people's Starbucks app. Starbucks is one of many companies copying Spotify wrapped this month and offering users what? Like a summary of everything they've done all year? Exactly right. A year in review, right? Everybody's doing their own version of Spotify wrapped. So, for example, we mentioned Starbucks tells you what you bought, what your favorite drinks were. The Washington Post has a summary of all the articles you read that year.

5:48Strava, of course, gives you a summary of all the exercise you did. And I personally loved Boeing's Flights You Survived 2024. No one asked for this. Like, there's an expression Like, you know, if you feel like you're about to die You're like, I saw my life flash before my eyes When did that become a good thing? Right Nobody wants this information Also, it's just like, Target shouldn't do this Like the Target store No, because then you can look at all the times You went to Target and was like, I just need toilet paper And then you spent$200 Right You know who actually did this? Tinder Tinder Oh, that's awesome.

6:30Offered their users an end-of-the-year swipe report because what everybody wants as a Christmas present is a statistical breakdown of all the people who rejected you. So your top genre was unavailable guys with glasses. That's why I got rid of date naps because every time I would open it, I'd be like, man, a whole city doesn't want to sleep with me. Let me put my phone in. See, the whole point of these summaries is they give you the illusion of having accomplished something with your time. Right? You're still just like, you know, in the same old drudge you were January 1st. But look at all the songs you listen to.

7:05I know I listen to Megan Thee Stallion the whole time. I don't need nobody to tell me that. There you are. Melanie, your last quote today is actually a punchline to a joke that was written out in a New York Times op-ed this week. All I can tell you is that it's the Pope who is driving him. Who told this joke, among a few others, about the Pope? Oh, the Pope. Yes, the Pope. What? Of course it was the Pope, or as he would say, is the me Catholic? Pope Francis wrote an op-ed in Tuesday's New York Times entitled, There is Faith in Humor, in which he went on to basically tell a bunch of jokes. Great.

7:45Another old white guy in comedy. How many popes does it take to do something? There you go. Now, he says that what this is about is like how humor is important in coping with life's travails. It's a part of faith that we should embrace humor, right? But what's going on is that pretty late in life, the Pope obviously wants to start doing stand-up. Which is fine. But it will be shocking when he starts his sets with, so I've been dating again. And he'll do crowd work. Like, oh, what do you do for a living? Yes, and what are your sins? I mean, it's hard when Betty White has raised the bar so high for elderly people in comedy.

8:30That's true. And then you got... Like, it's honestly, if it wasn't the Pope, would they let him write a thing about comedy? It was good. That was the major point of the article. It's nice to laugh, which I think in the 1400s would have been groundbreaking. Right, exactly. Well, he's really interested in comedy. as you may have heard Jim Gaffigan talking about on our show a few weeks ago, he invited a whole bunch of comedians and humorists to the Vatican to meet them. Not me! Well... Are you Catholic? No. Oh, you had to be Catholic. Apparently. Well, most of these comics are heathens. That's true.

9:08Is the Pope Catholic? Shut up!

9:16Bill, how did Melanie do in our quiz? She deserves a win. So we're going to call her a winner. Good job. Thank you. Congratulations, Melanie. Bye-bye.

9:31Right now, panel, it is time for you to answer some questions about the week's news. Dulce, question for you. Dulce, there's been another breakthrough in pickles. Now the hot new online trend in pickles is to cover pickles with what? Let's see. Okay, so you could take that one they're doing is a fruit roll-up, rolled in tahini. Then you could do it with chamoy, or you could put a little glitter in it. Glitter, you got it. Yes, you knew all of them, but you wanted glitter. TikTok has come up with yet another way to torture a pickle so far, as you, I think we're trying to tell us. I love torturing a pickle.

10:07Go ahead. You did, yeah. So far, TikTokers have wrapped pickles and fried cheese. They've stuffed them with taki chips, and now they're dumping edible glitter into pickle jars to make a treat called a glickle. Is it glitter edible? Yeah, they make edible glitter. They make edible glitter. Yeah. Where have you been?

10:30Now, does glitter pickle sound like the name of an all-male strip club in Reno? Yes, of course it does, but that's beside the point. And Glickles apparently are perfect for people who like sparkly things and literally have nothing else to eat. See, I feel like you're judging, Peter. I am. For why? Glitter pickles? That ain't none of your business. I guess you're right. If people want to eat their pickles with glitter, it's a free country. It's a vegetable. Right. Have you eaten glitter pickles or glitter? No, I'm a grown-up.

11:09Coming up, our panelists go adventuring in our bluff, the listener game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT-TIL-PLAY. We'll be back in a minute with more of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me from NPR. Hey, it's Peter Sagal. The year is almost over, and now is the time when NPR and I come to you hat in hand and ask for your support. Now, interestingly, the idiom hat in hand does not refer to, say, a street performer walking around holding out his hat for people to put in money. I always thought it was. No, it is actually referring to an old tradition when knights would remove their helmets and show humility. So it's really more about my attitude of supplication than it is about asking for money, even though, of course, I'm going to be asking for money.

11:51Now, if you heard that and you said to yourself, wow, that's fascinating, I was also under that misapprehension as to the idiom's meaning, then you, my friend, are one of us. That means you enjoy our show where we do trivia and jokes for smart people. Dumb jokes for smart people, to be sure, where we give you a break from the week's news, where we make your breakfast on the weekend with your family, or your walk with your dog, or other interminable tasks bearable with our goofy, dumb, but we always think, smart humor. Now, if you heard me say that, and you said to yourself, well, I know that, everybody knows that, then you are our ideal listener and you should donate even more.

12:37You know what you should do? If you're enjoying this little riff on idioms you should join NPR Plus. A small recurring donation gets you special perks for more than 25 NPR podcasts like sponsor-free listening and bonus episodes even discounted items from the NPR shop. It only takes a few minutes to sign up And you can do it right now at plus.npr.org. And if you've already donated to your local station or joined NPR +, that and I, thank you. We will be waiting for your donation with baited breath. And that's baited, B-A-T-E-D, short for like a-baited, i.e. we're holding our breath. But come on, you knew that.

13:25From 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 Hari Kondabolu, Dulce Sloan, and Roy Blunt, Jr. And here again is your host at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago, Illinois, Peter Sego. Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much. Right now it is time for the Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me Bluff, the listener game called 1-888-Wait-Wait to play our game on the air. You can always check out the pinned post on our Instagram page, at Wait, Wait NPR. The information you need is there. Hi, you're on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Hi, this is Kelly Cullen from Pittsburgh.

14:06Hey, I love Pittsburgh, one of my favorite places. What do you do there? Well, for the next two weeks, I'm going to spend as much time as I can with my family, including my son, who's home from college in London. That's great. I have to ask, only because it's so typical, did he come back from college in London with a pretentious British accent? Yes, he won't stop telling me how brilliant I am, and I will take it every day of the week. Yeah, that's great. Well, welcome to our show, Kelly. You're going to play the game in which you have to tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Kelly's topic? Yep, me to REI.

14:43There's so much you can do in the great outdoors. You can kayak, rock climb, get malaria. our panel is going to tell you about a whole new kind of outdoor activity that's becoming popular pick the one who's telling the truth and you'll win the wait waiter of your choice in your voicemail you ready to go i am ready well let's do it then let's hear first from dulce sloan in today's installment of hey get off my lawn the growing phenomenon of urban wandering based on the british tradition of wandering through fields in the countryside called rambling americans have started taking back their environment by walking aimlessly through businesses and people's yards.

15:21Rambling in the UK is protected by the right to roam law, allowing enthusiasts to access publicly and privately owned land because of centuries-old footpaths that predate modern property lines. Urban wandering, on the other hand, is a bunch of white people trusted passing through a neighborhood they don't live in by jumping fences, walking through rose bushes, and then descending upon a Starbucks. The leader of the Wandering Society of Eagle, Colorado stated, it's all right to enjoy the world we live in. Property lines are fictional. Nature is real. And so was the trespassing citation her group received after trudging through a gated community.

16:01Urban wandering in which people just barge their way through whatever they want because I guess they can. And your next word from the wild comes from Roy Blunt Jr. Adventure catting, it's called. And it's a full-blown trend, complete with special cat harnesses and social media feeds. People are taking their cats hiking, paddleboarding, and mountain climbing, as if they were dogs or people, anything but cats. One adventure catter told NPR, quote, Quote, taking them on adventures is such a good bonding activity. I wouldn't want to leave them at home. The cat had no comment. It breaks the stereotype of cats, we are told.

16:51Well, I guess it does. Our cat, Jimmy, is adventurous, all right, when it comes to climbing way up behind a motel room sink or yowling with wildlife at 2 a.m. But can I see him swinging along a sylvan hiking trail with us? Much less paddle boarding and all the other distinctly non-feline sports that adventure cats, we are told, get up to. What I can see is Jimmy taking one look at the little Nike snowshoes somebody got him and laughing his little ass off. Adventure catting The new trend of taking your cat with you When you go out into the great outdoors Your last inside scoop from the outside Comes from Harikandabolu Golf, some would call it a pastime Others a lifestyle And if you're under 30, boring Very, very boring In response to golf's declining popularity With young people Some country clubs have introduced A new variation of the game Called combat golf A golfer tees off and then has a two-minute head start before the other members of the foursome give chase.

18:02The three attackers are allowed to do anything they like to hinder the golfer outside of injury, at least intentionally. Wink, wink. The inventor of combat golf goes by the name of Payne Stewart. Payne spelled P-A-I-N. He says, quote, My daddy loved golf more than he loved me. When it was his weekend to have me, he made me caddy for him. Oh, the destruction I imagined causing with his golf clubs. Who knew my revenge fantasy would turn into a legitimate team sport? All right, so here are your choices. One of these things is going on somewhere outside. Is it from Dulce Sloan Urban Wandering, where people just sort of wander through people's property and yards just because, you know, it's there?

18:50from Roy Blunt Jr. Adventure Catting, where people are doing the typical outdoor things, hiking, paddleboarding, but bringing their cats, or from Hari Kondabolu Combat Golf, a new variation on the ancient Scottish game in which you can try to keep your opponent from hitting the ball by hitting him first. Which of these is the real story of a new outdoor activity? Well, although I love the UK tie-in, and I am a dog person, I'm going to go with Roy's story about adventure catting. Adventure catting, all right, that is your choice. You believe Roy's telling the truth. Well, here is someone who has first-hand experience with this particular activity.

19:30I think we were doing adventure catting before adventure catting was a thing. That was Nicole Alcane talking to Oregon Public Broadcasting about her experience adventure catting. Funny, they never get the cats on tape talking about it. Congratulations, Kelly, you got it right. You earned a point for Roy. You have won our prize, the voice of your choice in your voicemail. Thank you so much for playing, and enjoy the holidays with your son home from England. Take care. Thanks. Bye-bye.

20:00And now the game we call Not My Job. Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone have been married for 19 years, and in that time they have written, produced, directed, and or starred in six films together, including The Boss and Thunder Force, and that is apart from the other movies Melissa has starred in, like Bridesmaids and Can You Ever Forgive Me? And yes, also they produced two children. Their latest project is a podcast called Hildy the Barback and the Lake of Fire. Melissa and Ben, welcome to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Thank you. Thank you. So let me start here. I always wonder this. You guys have been at the height of Hollywood fame and power.

20:39You have your own production company. Melissa, you've been nominated for two different Oscars. Why throw that all away to do a podcast?

20:50well it was ben ben's idea i mean ben ben as a child when i was like god knows what i was doing would just constantly read all of the lord of the rings so this is very much in his dna it's kind of a middle earth comedy and then uh well you you explain it yeah well while other people like melissa were probably dating i was uh and uh you know reading these books and so a friend of ours steve mallory who co-created the podcast with us um came to me with this idea of just doing uh you know uh sort of you know that style fantasy style of a podcast because one thing about these worlds is that women are very rarely featured so we wanted to do a uh a show where men mess everything up and uh funny women have to come to the rescue yes of course we read this that when you perform this thing this fantasy thing you're wearing costumes even though no one can see you is that true uh i i i would wear a costume to brush my teeth so if you put me in the middle ages i'm gonna have some kind of armor and helmet on uh no matter what because you so there that means i'm definitely not a nerd that's true definitely do you we read that you have a remarkable collection of costumes and wigs in your home.

22:12Is that the case? Yeah, I thought everybody had that. I do! Thank you, thank you. I was like, our Christmas parties are costume parties that have nothing to do with Christmas. So do the costume parties have like a theme that's a non-Christmas theme? Yes. I mean, it comes, like we did a, what was the Christmas? A Christmas flock of seagulls. So it was 80s hair bands, but with a kiss of Christmas. And then we did Hollywood Bears and what was that one called? Hollywood Bears and Other Woodland Creatures. Woodland Creatures. So you could come as a Hollywood Bear which is a super cute gay hunky guy from West Hollywood or a squirrel.

22:55Right.

22:59I read, by the way, and by the way, I read a lot of this in an incredibly elaborate People magazine chronology of your entire relationship which I guess is a cool thing to have out there in the world. Does that exist? It does. It does. It starts when you were both teenagers in Illinois and it extends to the present day. And one of the things it mentions is that you, both of you once went to an Oscar after party wearing velour track suits and people got mad. Yeah, I think I've flipped off a lot because everybody, so many people change and they're in yet another kind of beautiful but maybe not the most comfortable thing or someone's in like another pair of high heels and then ben and i came in in track suits and like you know shall toe adidas shoes and people were can i can i i don't know if i can throw fingers i'll keep it clean but literally you just see people that you hadn't met yet but i was like oh i can't wait to meet that person and they were just like really but i do it again now i'm oh i felt like i cracked the code.

24:02Sure. Speaking of that timeline of your relationship, you guys met as teenagers here in Illinois, right? You both grew up here. Yeah. So I'm from Carbondale, Illinois, where SIU is. Yes. Hey, all right. And I remember I was sort of like, you know, so this is the 80s and I had like the swooped haircut and the earring and a clockwork orange t-shirt and, you know, that vibe and a lot of my friends all had that sort of similar vibe and we saw these people walk across the strip we call it down there and um they looked uh you know very goth and very cool and I remember one of my friends going I wish my mom would let me dress like that and uh it was Melissa it was Melissa and it was probably I probably had a full-length cape on and god knows what else and it was probably like in southern Illinois like 98 degrees pure humidity and I'm sure it was like a real clam bait going on.

25:03Right.