CARL KASELL, HOST:
From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Carl Kasell. We're playing this week with Jessi Klein, Paula Poundstone and Maz Jobrani. And here again is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you. Thank you so much.
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SAGAL: In just a minute, Carl's got rhyme-nuts roasting on an open fire in the Listener Limerick Challenge.
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SAGAL: If you'd like to play, give us a call at 1-888-Wait-Wait, that's 1-888-924-8924. Right now, panel, though, some more questions for you from the week's news. Paula, biologists studying in Vietnam announced this week they've discovered a new species of lizard. That's exciting. They found it where?
PAULA POUNDSTONE: Probably, given what show we're on, in the pants of a smuggler at the airport.
SAGAL: No, that's a good guess though.
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SAGAL: I'll give you a hint. They found it hiding under appetizer.
POUNDSTONE: On a menu.
SAGAL: Yes, they found it on a restaurant menu is where they found this undiscovered species.
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POUNDSTONE: Oh, like to eat it.
SAGAL: Yeah, they found it in a restaurant.
POUNDSTONE: Huh.
SAGAL: They were being served it, this undiscovered species. I mean we have all ordered our entrees rare, but not this rare.
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SAGAL: A team of biologists went into a restaurant near the Mekong River Delta. They noticed an unusual lizard that was floating in a display tank in the restaurant that the Asian restaurants have to display their foods. They determined it was a previously undiscovered race of female lizards with an odd ability to self-replicate. It's sort of an amphibious Kardashian.
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SAGAL: The lizard...
POUNDSTONE: Except for its relationships last longer.
SAGAL: Apparently.
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SAGAL: The lizard has been dubbed Leiolepis Ngovantri, and according to the research team, despite it being a remarkably unusual species, it still, in fact, tastes like chicken.
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JESSI KLEIN: It's not technically on the menu, but I feel fairly certain that I've eaten something similar at the Chili's at LAX.
SAGAL: Really?
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KLEIN: Just similar.
SAGAL: This is unknown to science whatever this is. You had a bad experience there.
KLEIN: I had a bad - I mean, they made me a very strong drink. You just shouldn't be there in the morning. Anyway...
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SAGAL: What were you doing drinking at the Chili's at LAX in the morning?
KLEIN: I don't think that's anybody's business.
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SAGAL: I hope to god you at least had a flight.
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SAGAL: Maz, there's a crisis in Europe. Norway is facing a critical shortage of what?
MAZ JOBRANI: It wasn't cheese.
SAGAL: It wasn't cheese. You're close though. It involves dairy.
JOBRANI: Butter.
SAGAL: Yes.
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JOBRANI: Yes, it is. Yes, that's what it is.
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SAGAL: Thanks to - they had a bad summer for dairy farming and an Atkins-like diet swept the country in Norway. It's called the Eat Nothing But Whole Sticks of Butter Diet.
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SAGAL: Norwegians have eaten up their entire national butter stockpile.
POUNDSTONE: Oh my heavens.
SAGAL: Some are selling - this is true - some are selling the remaining hoarded butter at astronomical markups. One particularly troubling ad promised butter that was, quote, "almost unused."
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POUNDSTONE: Wow.
SAGAL: You scrape it back off the - you know, back off the English muffin, it's good to go.
KLEIN: That's rough when you're buying butter off of Craigslist.
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SAGAL: Oh man.
POUNDSTONE: I love butter.
SAGAL: Really?
POUNDSTONE: I mean I love butter. When I was a kid, my parents, in fact, bought me a pound of butter. I believe it was for my fifth birthday.
SAGAL: Really?
POUNDSTONE: And I did eat it like a candy bar. Yes.
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SAGAL: That's terrifying.
POUNDSTONE: I love butter. And California went through this little phase where they had unsalted butter, which just was so annoying, because there's just no point to that.
SAGAL: No.
POUNDSTONE: So I would salt it.
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SAGAL: Sure.
POUNDSTONE: You know? Oh my gosh, the thought of a whole country without butter is just...
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POUNDSTONE: So upsetting to me.
SAGAL: You'd be out doing whatever you're doing and it's time for a snack, so you'd reach in your pocket, pull out a big stick of butter, peel it like a candy bar, put some salt on it and enjoy yourself.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah. I mean I learned to make a butter sugar sandwich for myself very young.
SAGAL: Oh sure.
JOBRANI: Wow.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah.
SAGAL: This might explain...
POUNDSTONE: I am a health food expert.
SAGAL: Yes.
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SAGAL: Now you think, well why don't we just sell them butter? They have all these high import tariffs, so they can't afford out butter. It's a shame, we could help them, America has a year's supply of butter stockpiled inside every American.
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POUNDSTONE: Probably a couple years in me. And, you know, what about the butter sculptures? Couldn't they import a butter sculpture?
SAGAL: And then eat it.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah.
SAGAL: Yeah, import it as art.
POUNDSTONE: That's a tragic waste of butter.
SAGAL: I think so.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.