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Panel Round Two

BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT, WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR news quiz. I'm legendary anchorman Bill Kurtis, filling in for Carl Kasell. We're playing this week with Tom Bodett, Kyrie O'Connor and Bobcat Goldthwait. And here again is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL HOST: Thank you, Bill.

(APPLAUSE)

HOST: In just a minute, Bill violates Starfleet's Rhyme Directive 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. Right now, panel, some more questions for you from the week's news. Kyrie, as you know, the people of Gaza are blocked off from the outside world. The New York Times this week exposed an operation which uses a system of courier, secret tunnels and clandestine meetings to smuggle in what to Gaza?

KYRIE O'CONNOR: Oh, I think I know this one. I think it's Kentucky Fried Chicken.

HOST: It is. It's KFC.

(APPLAUSE)

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

HOST: Finger-smuggling good. All right. You got the people - like almost 2 million people living in Gaza. You got the nearest KFC outlet, it happens to be in Egypt, between them a guarded and closed border. But that's nothing to fried chicken fans. An entrepreneur known as the Chicken Man collects KFC orders. Once he has enough he crawls over the border and smuggles in the bags through tunnels operated by the terror group Hamas. And, yes, the chicken couriers have to grease some palms on the way.

(LAUGHTER)

BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT: But when he gets there is there a guy that goes, you know I ordered white meat.

HOST: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

HOST: No, people love it. And keep in mind, it takes four hours to get there from when they order it. So it tastes terrible so people know it's authentic.

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDTHWAIT: If that's not a commercial for KFC, you know.

HOST: Yeah, what people are willing to go through.

GOLDTHWAIT: It's like, yeah, it's the new Klondike Bar, you know. What would you do for Kentucky Fried Chicken?

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDTHWAIT: But, you know, it's always had a military vibe, you know. It had the Colonel.

(LAUGHTER)

HOST: Yeah, that's true. Bobcat, you probably know that in the average purse - the average female purse there's a lipstick, wallet, keys. Well, we learned this week there's also what?

GOLDTHWAIT: Mase.

HOST: No.

TOM BODETT: You learned that this week.

GOLDTHWAIT: Yeah, I learned that this week.

(LAUGHTER)

HOST: Yeah.

GOLDTHWAIT: I - you're not far off, Tom. I was insulted. I was walking behind this woman and I saw her take her keys out and put it between her fingers.

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDTHWAIT: She was getting ready to gouge me. Do I look that scary? She says, quick, there's an old fat cabby behind me.

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDTHWAIT: OK. So what else is in a woman's purse? We got lipstick, we got keys, we got a human head?

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDTHWAIT: Oh, man, why do you give these to me, seriously?

(LAUGHTER)

HOST: Because I...

GOLDTHWAIT: I've got five things, none of them I can say on your show.

(LAUGHTER)

HOST: Anybody else have a cleaner answer?

O'CONNOR: E. coli?

HOST: Yeah, basically germs.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

HOST: It turns out that your average woman's purse is dirtier than a toilet.

(LAUGHTER)

HOST: Purses carry five times more bacteria...

GOLDTHWAIT: Well, you just got to ask them to not do that.

HOST: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDTHWAIT: I'm sorry. I was in a hurry.

HOST: The problem is that, you know, with toilet seats, you clean them. Purses you just throw stuff in there and you never clean them, so they become basically lady museums full of lotion bottles, old lipsticks and pounds of little, you know, germs, is what I'm trying to say. Somebody steals your purse, don't bother chasing them, just wait for the flesh-eating bacteria to get them.

(LAUGHTER)

HOST: Bobcat, we all have this idyllic image of members of the fire department rescuing a cat from a tree. But the New York Fire Department had slightly more on their plates when they also had to rescue what?

GOLDTHWAIT: A capybara.

HOST: A what?

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDTHWAIT: A cappy bear or capybara.

HOST: Oh, a capybara.

GOLDTHWAIT: Yeah, well, you say it that way, I say it the correct way. But...

(LAUGHTER)

HOST: We're talking - that's the large rodent of the South American jungles.

GOLDTHWAIT: It's the - no, it's the largest rodent.

(LAUGHTER)

HOST: Excuse me.

GOLDTHWAIT: That's what I was going to go with for a food source earlier.

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDTHWAIT: It was an animal that was someone's pet?

HOST: Well, the whole thing start - I mean, they didn't just have to rescue the cat in the tree. What else did they have to do?

GOLDTHWAIT: Get it's litter box down?

(LAUGHTER)

HOST: It grabbed all the possessions because it was running away.

BODETT: Took his furniture.

GOLDTHWAIT: A dog?

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDTHWAIT: No, wait, I know this one.

HOST: You know? I'm sure you do, go for it.

GOLDTHWAIT: A squid.

(LAUGHTER)

BODETT: That was a good guess.

HOST: I love that.

BODETT: I once guessed a 12-foot snake randomly on this show and it was correct.

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDTHWAIT: I was - a 12-foot snake?

HOST: No, it wasn't a 12-foot snake. Does anybody know? In addition to having to rescue the cat that was up in the tree, they had to rescue the New York police officer who had gone up in the tree to rescue the cat.

(LAUGHTER)

HOST: It all started when a police officer in Queens was asked by several neighborhood kids to go get a cat out of the tree. There's a cat in the tree, officer, there's a cat in the tree. He tried and got stuck out there himself. The FDNY rushed to the scene and after spending several minutes collapsed in a pile laughing...

(LAUGHTER)

HOST: ...they rescued both the cop and the cat and gave them both a saucer of warm milk.

(LAUGHTER)

HOST: Following the incident the NYPD released this statement. We have no idea how he got in there. Typically, he's just an indoor officer.

(LAUGHTER)

HOST: Somebody must've left the front door open and he bolted through.

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDTHWAIT: They'd been trying to get him out of the tree with donuts, everything.

(LAUGHTER)

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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