BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm the only man to make Janet Yellen raise her interest rate, Bill Kurtis. And here's your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill.
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SAGAL: Thank you, everybody. Great to see you. Great to be here with you. We are proud of the show we have prepared for you today. Of course, we're going to be talking about Wednesday's Republican presidential debate, which, fortunately for us, just ended minutes ago.
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SAGAL: But later on, we'll be talking to Mr. Tom Ricketts. He is the owner and the CEO of the Chicago Cubs. We're going to talk to him about how, in just a few years, he took a team of lovable losers and transformed them into a group of lovable people who don't lose quite so much.
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SAGAL: We, here, have a championship to celebrate every week. So why not give it a try? The number is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. It's time to welcome our first listener contestant. Hi, you're on WAIT, WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME.
STEVE BARRIOS: Hi, I'm Steve Barrios from Baton Rouge Louisiana.
SAGAL: Hey, Steve. How are you?
BARRIOS: Doing well, sir. Doing well.
SAGAL: And what do you do there in Baton Rouge?
BARRIOS: I am a world history teacher at an all-girls private school here in Baton Rouge.
SAGAL: Yes. And you never thought you'd be calling and writing to us, but the most amazing thing - I'm sorry...
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SAGAL: And how do you find out that work?
BARRIOS: Oh, I love. It's a great job. I've been there for about eight years now. I mean, I get to talk history and play with technology all day. It's a fantastic job.
SAGAL: Well, Steve, welcome to the show. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, it's a writer and performer. It's Mr. Peter Grosz.
PETER GROSZ: Hello.
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BARRIOS: How are you?
SAGAL: Next, it's the woman who writes the syndicated advice column Ask Amy, appearing in the Chicago Tribune. It's Amy Dickinson.
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AMY DICKINSON: Hey. Hey, Steve.
SAGAL: And making his debut on our panel, we're pleased to welcome a comedian who will be performing at the Funny Bone in Toledo, Ohio, on September 24 through the 27. It's Mr. Adam Burke.
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SAGAL: So you, of course, are going to start us off, Steve, with Who's Bill This Time? Bill Kurtis is going to read you three quotations from the week's news Your job, of course - identify or explain just two of them. We give you a mulligan on one of them.
BARRIOS: Okay.
SAGAL: Do that and you will win our prize - Carl Kasell's voice on your voice mail. Are you ready to do this?
BARRIOS: Absolutely.
SAGAL: Here, Steve, is your first quote.
KURTIS: If I were sitting at home and watching this, I would be inclined to turn it off.
SAGAL: That was a quote from one of the participants in what big television event on Wednesday night?
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BARRIOS: Oh, got to be the Republican debate.
SAGAL: It was.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: That was John Kasich who was on stage expressing his opinion. The second to GOP primary debate was held in the Ronald Reagan Library, right next to Reagan's old Air Force One. That is why CNN had record ratings for the debate. People tuned in so excited, 'cause they thought that after months and months of promotion, CNN had finally found that missing plane.
DICKINSON: And wasn't, like, Bernie Sanders live tweeting it? And he finally just gave up. He's, like, whatever.
SAGAL: Bernie Sanders tried to live tweet it and then just fell asleep with his cup of milk.
ADAM BURKE: Don't you think with the airplane in the background - didn't that make it look like some sort of giant game show, like that was the prize at the back?
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GROSZ: If that was it, then nobody would have left the stage. If the prize was you can win Reagan's plane, they would have all...
SAGAL: Right, right. Now everybody tuned in - I think, anyway - to see Donald Trump. And the first thing Trump said -when given the chance - the question was whether or not he could be trusted with the nuclear codes. He said, quote, "Well, first of all, Rand Paul shouldn't even be on this stage."
DICKINSON: I know. I love that.
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SAGAL: That was the first thing out of his mouth. He's not running for president. He's running for Don Rickles.
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DICKINSON: Now, he was - and actually, I stayed up and stayed through all three hours, because I was enjoying that beautiful chemistry, really, between Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina. I was, like, get a room, you two.
GROSZ: Get a room already.
DICKINSON: Get a room.
GROSZ: It's like a Sam and Diane of Republican politics.
BURKE: Yeah, that's what I was going to say (laughter).
DICKINSON: I know, really.
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SAGAL: We will agree with the other Republicans that it is a concern, about Donald Trump getting his hands on nuclear weapons. On the other hand, in the case of a Trump presidency, a nuclear holocaust is really our best option.
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SAGAL: Here, Steve, we'll move on to more important things. Here is your next quote.
KURTIS: Not every moment is a good moment.
SAGAL: That was Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO, talking about why his company Facebook is going to debut, what?
BARRIOS: Dislike.
SAGAL: Yes, the dislike button.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: With a dislike button to go with the famous like button, finally Facebook will allow us to express all two emotions human beings have.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: It's a little late for this. I mean, YouTube, has a dislike option in the comments. Tinder has swipe. Etsy just has the sad reminder that you're spending your time on Etsy.
GROSZ: Etsy has, like, cat sweaters or something.
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SAGAL: Yes, I know.
This is really big news, because up until now, you really have no way of expressing distaste on Facebook other than punching the screen, which is expensive in both medical costs and new computers. But now - soon, you'll be able to press dislike, so Facebook will instantly become a mess of undifferentiated rage.
GROSZ: There's already so much rage on there.
BURKE: I don't know if we're ready to lose the untrammeled wave of positivity that is Facebook.
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GROSZ: Exactly.
DICKINSON: How do you know what it's really?
GROSZ: It's like the green river of slime under the city in Ghostbusters.
SAGAL: (Laughter) Right. Right.
GROSZ: You know, where they're like, that's all the anger and stuff, like it's all just on Facebook now.
SAGAL: You know what's interesting is that they say that they're going to do this. Facebook has been around for a decade, but they're going to do this finally. But they're still not ready. It's going to take some months because Facebook engineers haven't quite figured out how to turn the thumb up 180 degrees. All right, Steve, here is your last quote.
KURTIS: I thought they'd be impressed by it.
SAGAL: That was a 14-year-old boy named Ahmed Mohamed, who sadly was quite wrong about the reaction when he brought what to school?
BARRIOS: A homemade clock.
SAGAL: Yes, indeed.
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SAGAL: Like all 14-year-old boys, Ahmed likes to sit around by himself in dark rooms and tinker. So as a way of making an impression in the first few weeks of high school, he made a homemade digital clock and brought it to school. And his plan worked. Now, everybody knows who he is.
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SAGAL: Ahmed was questioned by police, handcuffed and suspended for three days. Why? Because they kept asking him what it was, and he kept saying it's a clock and couldn't offer, in the words of the police, a quote, "broader explanation." Something like, you know, it's a clock, you morons.
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SAGAL: So, in Texas...
GROSZ: It's a clock for telling time with.
SAGAL: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
BURKE: So OK, so time is linear and it starts...
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SAGAL: It's be great if he sat there...
GROSZ: Every time this number goes up, another minute has passed and we're closer to death.
SAGAL: They're arresting, in Texas, a 14-year-old boy essentially 'cause he would not speak in detail at length. We do not have enough prisons in this country to hold all the teenagers who will not talk to us.
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SAGAL: You know - and I'm sure Ahmed is a very nice kid, but you know he got home from what must have been the worst day of school that anybody has ever had, and his parents said - so, how was school? And he was like, eh.
DICKINSON: Eh, OK.
But you know what, it's also like the cops have only seen, like, "James Bond" movies from the '80s...
SAGAL: Right.
GROSZ: Or, like, "Rocky and Bullwinkle" cartoons also.
DICKINSON: Right. 'Cause they think that this is a bomb-like thing.
SAGAL: Well, I am going to be - I don't know where this puts me - but I will tell you that I saw, you know, this thing exploded on social media...
GROSZ: Wrong word.
BURKE: Yep.
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DICKINSON: Too soon.
BURKE: Yep, absolutely.
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SAGAL: And I'm like - this is terrible. This 14-year-old kid brings a clock to school and they think he's like a bomber. And then they tweeted a picture of his clock which was in a case with lots of wires leading hither, and I'm like, that kind of looks like a bomb.
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SAGAL: And it really didn't help that the way Ahmed designed is, like, when the alarm goes off, you stop it by snipping the green wire.
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BURKE: I like that the foreign press is referring to him as Clock Boy. It just sounds like an incredibly punctual superhero.
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SAGAL: Like, when will Clock Boy - oh, he's here. That's right.
Bill, how did Steve do on our quiz?
KURTIS: Perfect score.
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SAGAL: That's great. Congratulations. Well done, Steve
BARRIOS: Thank you very much, sir.
SAGAL: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.