BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis. We are playing this week with P.J. O'Rourke, Tom Bodett and Helen Hong. And here, again, is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: In just a minute, Bill does his best DJ Khaled and sings Rhyme The One.
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SAGAL: 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. OK, panel, some more questions for you from the week's news. Helen, millennials, like yourself, have been blamed for killing off any number of things - Applebee's, bar soap, napkins, Jimmy Hoffa.
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SAGAL: Now this week, we read millennials are on their way to killing what?
HELEN HONG: Monogamy (laughter).
SAGAL: No.
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P J O'ROURKE: No, no, no. That was my generation.
(LAUGHTER)
O'ROURKE: We got that.
SAGAL: Yeah.
HONG: What have we killed? Banking. I don't know.
O'ROURKE: (Laughter) Banking.
SAGAL: No. Well, it's very hard to go ding dong ditch while - if you don't use one of these.
HONG: Ding dong ditch? Is this an old person phrase that you just used?
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HONG: Ding dong ditch? I don't even know what you're talking about.
O'ROURKE: She's a millennial.
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SAGAL: I know. It's traditionally - prior to your - you people coming along and wrecking it...
HONG: Uh-huh. Wait, you people?
SAGAL: Wait a minute...
HONG: Oh.
SAGAL: You young people...
HONG: Oh, OK.
SAGAL: ...It's how you let people know that you have arrived at their home.
HONG: Oh, instead of ringing the doorbell, we text.
SAGAL: Right. Exactly. You have killed the doorbell.
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HONG: Oh. We're just a - such jerks.
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SAGAL: Yes. Real - according to the Wall Street Journal, real millennials think the doorbell ringing is quote, "panic-inducing, terrifying and hideously awkward."
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SAGAL: Those were the ones we were able to translate from their native emoji language.
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HONG: I agree. I can't remember the last time I actually rang a doorbell. It's so...
SAGAL: So what do you do?
HONG: ...It's so primitive.
SAGAL: So you go to somebody's house...
HONG: You're on your - you're in the Lyft.
SAGAL: Yeah.
HONG: And you're, like, two blocks away. And you text like, hey, I'm rolling up right now. And then you get out of the Lyft. And they look out the window. And they see you. You've just come out of your Lyft. And they come down or you go up or whatever.
SAGAL: Right. So you don't actually - you don't have to...
HONG: No.
SAGAL: ...Ring the doorbell.
HONG: No, it's just - ew. Why would I...
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TOM BODETT: Well, you think, you know, for a lot of...
HONG: Gross.
BODETT: ...People, that's the only exercise their dogs get.
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SAGAL: Yeah.
BODETT: Going berserk.
SAGAL: This phobia had made things difficult for people who have to do deliveries. Pizza deliveries have to call ahead now. Packages go unnoticed on the front step. And abandoned babies just crawl to the next house...
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SAGAL: ...Hoping to find, you know, an old person.
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HONG: My apartment - it's funny that you say this because my apartment buzzer has been broken for, like, two years. And it's just - that's it. It's just broken.
BODETT: So if the doorbell rings, you know it's not somebody you want to see.
O'ROURKE: It's the police.
BODETT: Right.
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HONG: It's like getting a phone call.
BODETT: I know. That's the...
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BODETT: Isn't that...
HONG: Oh, my goodness, what?
BODETT: It's the worst thing you can do to somebody.
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SAGAL: Helen, an airline experience, we all know, is a miserable experience. It's expensive. It's overcrowded. The writing in the in-flight magazines is often reductive and lacks ambition.
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SAGAL: But a California company wants to help out. They're going to improve what?
HONG: The writing in the magazines? (Laughter).
SAGAL: No.
HONG: Improve the smell of people's feet when they take their socks off.
SAGAL: Actually - I'm going to give it to you.
They're going to generally improve the smell of the airplane.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
HONG: Oh, wow.
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HONG: That's...
SAGAL: The Pacific Precision products. They make onboard odor diffusers that fill plane cabins with subtle scents to mask an airplane's typical someone-is-eating-McDonald's odor.
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SAGAL: Scents such as fresh-baked bread and white tea and lemon grass. Promised to relax passengers or at least provide a brief staycation. So the next time United drags someone off a flight, instead of fearing for your life, you'll be thinking, hey, is someone baking bread?
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HONG: Wait, but this neutralizes my tactic of farting when I pass first-class. So...
(LAUGHTER)
HONG: I don't like this at all.
SAGAL: Maybe that's why. Maybe this is an anti-Helen tactic.
HONG: This is what I do when I - because I never get to sit in first-class. And so I make sure I fart when I go through and...
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O'ROURKE: Oh, that was...
SAGAL: You behave like that, young lady, and you'll never sit in first-class.
O'ROURKE: Oh, that was you?
HONG: I wait till I get someone who looks like P.J., and I just let one rip.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: That guy looks like he uses a doorbell. Let's get him.
(LAUGHTER) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.