BILL KURTIS: From NPR and 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, Alonzo Bodden and Joel Kim Booster. And here, again, is your host from the Chase Bank Auditorium of the mind, Peter Sagal.
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PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. In just a minute, Bill busts down your door with a battering rhyme in our Listener Limerick Challenge. If you'd like to play, give us a call at 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That's 1-888-924-8924. All right, panel, some more questions for you from the week's news. Joel, if you're afraid of public speaking, you can now practice with your what?
JOEL KIM BOOSTER: Your phone.
SAGAL: Not quite. Another device.
BOOSTER: Your camera phone?
SAGAL: No. I mean, you might as well practice speaking to her because she's already...
BOOSTER: Oh, your Alexa.
SAGAL: Exactly, your Alexa.
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BOOSTER: This is - wait, this is literally the same problem I had the last time I was on the show. It took me seven guesses to get to Alexa. You guys are ruining me. You are truly - this is an attack. You're trying to make my relationship with my Alexa more difficult for me at home.
SAGAL: Right.
BOOSTER: You're coming into my home now, Peter, and you are making it difficult for me to interact with my Alexa 'cause she knows that I got this question wrong. And I'm going to have to deal with this later.
SAGAL: Do you know that in the last 30 seconds, you said Alexa seven times, which meant that seven times, people listening to this show - it stopped while their Alexa waited to be told what to do?
AMY DICKINSON: (Laughter).
SAGAL: Alexa devices will soon be able to act as public speaking coaches. You can practice famous speeches to the device, and it will give you helpful feedback, like I'm sorry. I didn't get that. And, OK, ordering four spores and seven beers to go.
DICKINSON: (Laughter).
SAGAL: And, remember, if you have stage fright, just picture Alexa in her underwear.
DICKINSON: The thing is Alexa sucks as a speaker herself. So I don't want her coaching other people.
SAGAL: You know, she listens to you, constantly, so she just heard that, Amy.
BOOSTER: Yeah.
ALONZO BODDEN: Well, that's what I was going to say - if Alexa's listening to you all the time anyway, I mean, how are you practicing public speaking? You think she's not criticizing you? You think she hasn't had a great laugh with Siri about everything you've had to say?
SAGAL: (Laughter).
BODDEN: Do you think - you think she's not calling OK Google like, and then the idiot said - oh, yeah. She's got it all.
BOOSTER: I'm more so worried that I'd be too inspiring to the Alexa, actually, you know?
SAGAL: Really?
BOOSTER: I worry that I would sort of, like, recite one of Dr. King's famous speeches and then they'd all rise up against us.
SAGAL: Yeah, that would be a danger. Alonzo, to help out during the coronavirus crisis, residents of Belgium have been asked to double their what?
BODDEN: Chocolate production.
SAGAL: Close. They're not going to produce this. They're going to consume it.
BODDEN: French fries.
SAGAL: Exactly right.
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SAGAL: To double the amount...
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BODDEN: They're going to ask to eat more French fries, at which point, Americans said, it's possible to eat more French fries?
SAGAL: (Laughter) Exactly. Technically, they've been asked to double the amount of fries they eat every week. So to help out with this potato glut that is threatening the whole agricultural food system of that country, Belgium is asking each of its citizens to eat double their normal frites intake. The thing is, of course, when you tell a European to double their fry intake, that takes them all the way up to, like, a Wendy's medium.
BODDEN: Look at Belgium just showing off with their health care. We don't care about heart attacks. Pump down those fries. When your heart stops, we'll cover you.
SAGAL: Joel, the delivery service DoorDash has a new feature. Now when you order food from one of your favorite restaurants, they will also provide you with what?
BOOSTER: Gloves and a mask?
SAGAL: No, I'll give you a hint. They don't require you to have a green screen.
BOOSTER: They don't require - oh, a background.
SAGAL: Of?
BOOSTER: The...
SAGAL: You order food from your favorite restaurant, and they give you the background...
BOOSTER: Oh, the background of the interior of the restaurant.
SAGAL: Exactly right.
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BOOSTER: No way.
SAGAL: They give you a fake version of the restaurant that you can put behind you when you do a Zoom call because, sure, you can order McDonald's delivered to your house now, but it's just not the same if you can't look over at a yellow table covered in smeared ketchup and loose salt. So now you can download virtual backgrounds of your favorite chain restaurants, so you can go on Zoom with your friends and feel like you're actually in a Cracker Barrel. And to give you that really-in-a-restaurant feel, they'll bring a couple to have a really unpleasant fight at the next table.
BOOSTER: (Laughter).
DICKINSON: Who would do that? Who would put that on their background?
BOOSTER: Will they have, like, a 16-year-old hostess who's going to be rude to me, too? Because that's really why I go out to eat.
DICKINSON: (Laughter) Right.
SAGAL: This is great because when you go to Taco Bell, the first thing you think is, oh, I wish I could live here.
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DICKINSON: You know, all of this is really making me crave those chicken dots. I'm just saying (laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF PHARRELL WILLIAMS AND NELLY SONG, "BABY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.