BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: From NPR in WBEZ Chicago this is WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis. We're playing this week with Amy Dickinson, Paula Poundstone and Roy Blount Jr. And here again is your host at the Saenger Theater in New Orleans, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you Bill. Thanks everybody.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: In just one minute, more or less, Bill rips the head off a craw-limerick and sucks out the rhyme-meats. It's the Listener Limerick Challenge. If you'd like to play, give us a call at 1-888-WAIT-WAIT, that's 1-888-924-8924.
But right now panel, some more questions for you from the week's news. Amy, thanks to a ruling from Ireland's Court of Appeals, for just one day this week, Ireland unintentionally legalized what?
AMY DICKINSON: It has to involve either drinking or sex.
SAGAL: Actually technically it involves neither.
DICKINSON: Oh, 'cause those are both fine. Oh, they could drive on the other side of the road?
SAGAL: That would be great but no. It's like, oh Danny boy, meth pipes are calling.
DICKINSON: No, drugs?
SAGAL: They could do drugs for one day. On Wednesday of this week, drugs are legal.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
DICKINSON: Is it this Wednesday or last Wednesday?
SAGAL: Sadly it was last Wednesday. You missed it.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Due to some incredibly complex legal stuff involving laws and appeals and lawsuits and so on and so forth, for 24 hours Wednesday, shrooms, ecstasy and crystal meth were 100 percent legal in Ireland.
PAULA POUNDSTONE: Wait a minute, will kind of laws could lapse that would - that doesn't make any sense.
SAGAL: What happened, if I understand correctly....
POUNDSTONE: Who told you this?
SAGAL: ...Is that...
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: A really high Irish guy.
DICKINSON: Leprechauns. That's intense.
POUNDSTONE: It doesn't sound well-planned.
SAGAL: No, it wasn't. Roy, according to a new study, after shaking hands with a stranger, most people do what?
ROY BLOUNT JR.: Look at their hand.
SAGAL: Not look at their hands.
BLOUNT: Lick them.
SAGAL: You're getting there.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Sort of between looking at them and licking them might be something.
BLOUNT: Smell their hands.
SAGAL: Yes.
BLOUNT: Smell their hands.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: They smell their hands.
BLOUNT: I don't do that.
SAGAL: Now you think you don't do this.
DICKINSON: You always do it.
BLOUNT: Oh.
SAGAL: Here's the thing. This is how they found out. Researchers in Israel invited a bunch of people into a lab for an experiment that they made up, right. And the scientist came in and said hello, and shook everybody's hand and said we'll be back in a minute with the experiment. But they were secretly watching them. And what they saw was that most of the people after they shook the hands of the scientist, within a couple of minutes put their hands up by their face and inhaled.
DICKINSON: Maybe it was just that one guy.
BLOUNT: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Maybe he had a smelly hand.
DICKINSON: Maybe he should - yeah.
POUNDSTONE: I don't think people smell their hands.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: I don't think that there's a day that you could do drugs in Ireland.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: And I don't think people smell their hands after they touch a stranger. This is absurd.
SAGAL: But why do you think that this is impossible? What they say is that this is a vestige of primitive behavior. You're trying to check out other people's smell that we have - we've evolved.
BLOUNT: Dogs do it differently.
SAGAL: Well, dogs do it...
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: One could say that we're doing the same thing as what dogs do but dogs are just more open about it.
BLOUNT: Right.
SAGAL: And maybe instead of fighting it, we should embrace it and do it like dogs do. So it'll be like - at business meetings like hello, I'll be working with you on this project. Now everybody turn around.
(LAUGHTER)
DICKINSON: No.
POUNDSTONE: You know, I don't think ever on NPR before has someone in a position of authority said we should do it like dogs do it. I just don't think that that's the kind of talk that is tolerated from radio stations that take donors.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Paula, I have a question here for you.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah, I got an answer for you.
SAGAL: Paula, according to a report in New York Magazine this week, cats alone among all animals do not do what?
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: Cats alone among all animals.
BLOUNT: How could you be alone if you're among all animals?
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: Alone- cats alone among all animals do not taste good with vegetables.
SAGAL: I'll give you a hint. To heir is human but the cat is going to hold a grudge.
POUNDSTONE: Cats don't forgive.
SAGAL: Cats do not forgive.
POUNDSTONE: Oh please.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
POUNDSTONE: Oh please with the cats don't forgive. As opposed to other animals? That's ridiculous.
SAGAL: Yes. Yes.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah. You know what? I have this alligator and I screwed up a couple of times and he welcomed me back. Who has checked? That's...
DICKINSON: She's got a point.
POUNDSTONE: I hate to say it on public radio but that's just stupid.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: I hope this is not a fund-raising week because...
(APPLAUSE)
POUNDSTONE: People are not going to give with that kind of information. And cats do forgive. That's not true at all.
SAGAL: Well, let me...
POUNDSTONE: No, because I got - let me tell you something.
SAGAL: All right.
POUNDSTONE: No. I have a 19 pound cat named Matilda and I recently got a treadmill. And I hold her up on it sometimes. And she'll - she doesn't like it. But she'll move her little paws as fast as she can go for a few minutes.
SAGAL: Hold on. Wait a minute.
POUNDSTONE: And then she puts her head down and lets it roll her all the way over.
SAGAL: Wait a minute. Are you telling me...
POUNDSTONE: And then afterwards I cuddle her and she purrs. And if that's not forgiveness, I don't know what it is.
(APPLAUSE) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.