CARL KASELL, HOST:
From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Carl Kasell. We're playing this week with Nick Hancock, Alonzo Bodden and Paula Poundstone. And here again is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
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PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Carl. Thank you everybody. In just a minute, Carl celebrates the end of 2011 by singing "Auld Lang Rhyme" in our Listener Limerick challenge. But right now, panel, some more questions for you from the year's big stories.
Nick, as you know, the government tests cars for safety here in America. And to do this, they use crash test dummies. Well, some experts are now saying that in this day and age, the dummies need to be more what?
NICK HANCOCK: Rigid.
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HANCOCK: It's a word, like any other.
KASELL: I know.
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HANCOCK: It's just...
SAGAL: It's just not a characteristic I apply to Americans usually.
HANCOCK: Oh, no, it was the dummy I was applying it to.
SAGAL: Well, if you wanted to make a dummy seem more like a modern American...
HANCOCK: Oh, I know.
SAGAL: What?
HANCOCK: Bigger.
SAGAL: Fatter.
HANCOCK: Fatter.
SAGAL: Yes, very good.
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HANCOCK: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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SAGAL: The researchers at the University of Buffalo say that if we want to better represent our growing population of growing people, it is time for obese crash test dummies.
PAULA POUNDSTONE: I feared that you were going to say that they needed to be dumber.
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SAGAL: Because no matter how brainless a dummy is, you can't make it text and drive.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
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SAGAL: Even a dummy with Styrofoam's like "I'm not going to do that."
POUNDSTONE: Yeah.
SAGAL: It's like no way.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah, the crash test dummies, they're just too bright to replicate Americans.
SAGAL: No, actually, when you think about it, the dummy's already about as dumb as Americans because you just cannot convince them to walk more, even though they know every time they get in a car, it crashes into a wall.
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SAGAL: You think the dummy will say maybe I'll walk to the wall. Nah, it's too far. Let's go.
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SAGAL: Nick, among the hottest new toys of this holiday season is a play set that lets kids pretend to be what?
HANCOCK: There's a dog poo play-set type thing. Is it something like that? Is it...
SAGAL: You know, how kids like to play roles?
HANCOCK: I want to say something like...
SAGAL: They like to be firemen, they like to be postmen, they like to be astronauts.
HANCOCK: Okay, okay.
POUNDSTONE: There's one now where they let them pretend to be unemployed.
HANCOCK: Yeah.
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POUNDSTONE: Oh, they love it.
HANCOCK: Okay. Air hostess?
SAGAL: You're close. It has to do with airlines.
HANCOCK: Is it?
SAGAL: Yes. It involves...
HANCOCK: Oh, what about immigration officers...
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HANCOCK: People who search you, that sort of thing.
SAGAL: Oh, isn't that fun. Little Jimmy is deporting little Taylor.
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SAGAL: You're right about searching. It's actually, you're right, it's a TSA airport security agent.
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POUNDSTONE: Oh my heavens.
SAGAL: TSA airport play set for your children. You get a detector wand. It flashes and beeps when it detects metal and just like the real thing, it really creeps people out when you wave it at them. If this trend catches of kids, like, wanting to play at these really aggravating, depressing adult experiences, we'll look for more toys like that, like the running into your ex-wife with her new husband Elmo.
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SAGAL: You pull on Elmo's string, he goes, "Oh you look good."
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SAGAL: "No, I'm fine." "Oh, you know, not ready to date yet myself."
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POUNDSTONE: Hope you're happy.
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SAGAL: Alonzo, one of the curses of being a vegetarian is gelatin. It's an animal product but it still shows up mysteriously hidden in all kinds of foods, from marshmallows to gummy worms. But Chinese scientists have discovered a way to make gelatin acceptable to vegetarians, by making it from what?
ALONZO BODDEN: Making gelatin out of - can you make it out of fish?
SAGAL: No.
BODDEN: That's still against the rules.
SAGAL: Well, technically they're still making it out of an animal but it's an animal with a say in the matter.
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BODDEN: Humans.
SAGAL: Yes.
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BODDEN: They've got a lot of them over there.
SAGAL: They do. Here's how you do it, you inject human genes into a strain of yeast, and these modified yeast cells then produce collagen which you can make gelatin from. So nowadays...
POUNDSTONE: Hold on, I got to write this recipe down.
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SAGAL: Human DNA.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah, human DNA.
SAGAL: Yeast.
POUNDSTONE: How do you spell DNA?
SAGAL: Pineapple chunks.
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SAGAL: I mean, this is going to be great because nowadays when you eat Jello, it reminds you of mom because when you were a kid, mom used to serve you Jello.
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HANCOCK: No, no.
SAGAL: This works. When you eat Jello, it'll remind you of mom because it's mom.
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BODDEN: Now, do vegetarians actually approve of this? In other words, are they more comfortable saying, okay, we're going to eat some human DNA with yeast rather than, you know, a cow? I mean is that okay?
SAGAL: I don't know, actually.
POUNDSTONE: I think you have to go vegetarian to vegetarian. I don't think there's going to be a group answer for that.
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BODDEN: Now, the humans...
POUNDSTONE: They don't vote as a group, because if they did Mitt Romney would be a vegetarian.
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