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Panel Round Two

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

All right, panel, time for you to answer some more questions about this week's news. Kyrie, what do Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lincoln, Margaret Thatcher, Ho Chi Min, Charles De Gaulle, Charlie Rose, the dead guy from the "Sixth Sense," Moses, Braveheart and Knut the Polar Bear have in common?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

KYRIE O'CONNOR: I think I'm going to need a hint.

SAGAL: Let me give you a hint. For example, Braveheart's wife also named Callista.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

O'CONNOR: Well they can't all be related to Newt Gingrich.

SAGAL: Well they are in a particular way. Newt Gingrich has something in common with all of them.

O'CONNOR: Well, he sort of looks like a polar bear.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Actually, I just sort of gave you the answer, so I'll give it to you. Newt Gingrich says he has something in common with all of them.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: Those are all people...

O'CONNOR: Greatness?

SAGAL: ...that Newt Gingrich has compared himself to over the years.

PAULA POUNDSTONE: Oh, wow.

O'CONNOR: Wow.

BRIAN BABYLON: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, do that list one more time.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

POUNDSTONE: Yeah, yeah, let me hear...

SAGAL: I'll go through it. I'll go through it. You got your obvious ones. He's comparing himself to great leaders.

BABYLON: A polar bear.

SAGAL: Like Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lincoln, Margaret Thatcher, Charles De Gaulle, okay, Moses, Braveheart, that's standard. You can see that.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

POUNDSTONE: Yeah.

SAGAL: You don't need that explained. All right, Ho Chi Min, a little weird.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: He says I'm like him, not in ideology, of course the communist North Vietnamese leader, but in persistence he's just like Ho Chi Min.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Charlie Rose, because he's an idea person. The most interesting one, of course, is the Bruce Willis character from "The Sixth Sense."

O'CONNOR: Because he's really dead?

SAGAL: Well, he said...

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I'm just like the Bruce Willis character in "The Sixth Sense," because everybody knew that I was dead but me.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: That was his logic.

O'CONNOR: What about the polar bear?

SAGAL: The polar bear, well, he's soft, warm...

BABYLON: Cuddly.

SAGAL: ...furry and cuddly.

BABYLON: White hair.

SAGAL: Actually, he actually compared himself to the polar bear because they both have similar names, Newt and Knut.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Now, those, that's just a fraction, by the way, of the whole list of the people that Newt has compared himself to. We were curious what other people compare him to. So, if you Google - we did this - if you Google Newt Gingrich is like, here's what you get on the first page of results, and these are completely real.

Newt Gingrich is like Freddie Krueger.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: He's like a drunk who thinks he can control his drunkness.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And Newt Gingrich is like the Hamburglar.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Kyrie, you may remember a woman named Oprah Winfrey.

O'CONNOR: Kind of, a little bit.

SAGAL: She was once on TV.

O'CONNOR: Yeah.

SAGAL: Well, she's out there, trying to make you a better person. And she says that...

O'CONNOR: She failed.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Yeah, well, not for lack of trying. She says that to save a failing marriage, the couple in question should pretend what?

O'CONNOR: That they are little fuzzy cute bunnies.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: It's sort of like you're having a fight and then it's like, "oh quiet, dear, Lord Grantham's in the next room."

O'CONNOR: Oh, you have to pretend you're an aristocrat.

SAGAL: Not quite.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: You have to pretend that the...

O'CONNOR: That the aristocrat's in the next room.

SAGAL: Not just an aristocrat, but a British aristocrat.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: Her advice, Oprah's advice...

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: ...to all of you out there...

POUNDSTONE: Did I just hear a ding?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: You did. That's right because Oprah's advice to all of you married people is when you're behaving, when you're interacting with each other, pretend there's a British person in the next room. This is her theory. If you imagine a very proper, polite British person, that's how we imagine British people to be, listening in the next room, both of you will behave better.

BABYLON: I don't know any British people that are like these fancy, famously British people. The ones I know drink mad pints and...

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

BABYLON: ...are soccer hooligans and are nuts.

SAGAL: Yeah. Well then, of course, you...

BABYLON: I don't know any cucumber sandwich British people.

SAGAL: Yeah.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

O'CONNOR: I don't know any married people who would let a British person slow them down.

SAGAL: That's also true.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.