'Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me!' quiz show coming to Hawai'i

• Program featured nationwide on NPR

By Wanda A. Adams
Assistant Features Editor

•	'Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!' Live in Honolulu 7:30 p.m. Nov. 21, Hawaii Theatre Tickets: $50, $40, $30, $15; $5 discount for Hawaii Public Radio and Hawaii Theatre members, except for $15 seats Panelists: Adam Felber, Sue Ellicott, Paula Poundstone Hawaii Theatre Box Office: 528-0506 Program airs at 11 a.m. Saturdays on KIPO 89.3 FM, Hawaii Public Radio

They get paid to write limericks and fill-in-the-blank games, to noodle around all day on the Internet and then make long, yuk-filled conference calls where they try to stump each other or make each other feel stupid, whichever.

It's all Doug Berman's fault. Berman is the creator of "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!" — an "oddly informative" news quiz show that airs on 250 National Public Radio stations around the country, including KIPO 89.3 FM, in Hawai'i.

This extremely quirky show, which features a glib and intimidatingly intelligent panel of guessers, host Peter Sagal and judge/scorekeeper Carl Kasell, is the fastest-growing program on NPR.

And it's coming to Honolulu later this month for a taping with comedian Paula Poundstone, writer/comedian/blogger Adam Felber and reporter/satirist Sue Ellicott on the panel (which rotates among a half-dozen individuals from a mind-boggling array of backgrounds).

Writer Paul Theroux, a part-time O'ahu resident, will be the guest for a segment called "Not My Job," in which the panel will plumb the depths of his knowledge in an area in which he's assumed not to have any. (In Theroux's case, however, this is a risky assumption to make.)

Sagal said this game is a particularly amusing one because the guests are generally very polished and erudite people who, after they have been put through the "Wait Wait" ringer, tend to revert to playground-age behavior, especially if they manage to sneak one in over the panel.

Tony Award-winning director Mary Zimmerman, for example, was a bit of a stick all through Sagal's attempts at humor — until she beat the panel and went skipping around the studio singing, "I won, I won, I won!"

Childish delight is the order of the day here, even if the subject matter — an assortment of different games based on current news events — is rather highbrow. Sagal said he sees adolescent one-upmanship at work whenever they do a live show (about six times a year).

"One of the things our audience likes more than anything is feeling smug — not only knowing the answer, but knowing that the other person doesn't," he said. "When somebody isn't getting it, you can just look out in the audience, and all the guys have their arms crossed, and then they lean over to their dates and whisper something, and it's like in stereo, all the women together are rolling their eyes like, 'Yeah, yeah, so you know the answer, who cares?' "

Interviewing Sagal, an actor turned radio personality ("I went from a 16th-century form of entertainment to an early 20th-century form of entertainment, so I'm catching up"), is like trying to get your little brother to stop teasing you: He just will not be serious.

He claimed that in bringing the live show to Hawai'i, he is finally approaching the level of his model, "Wheel of Fortune."

"We're not going to be on the beach, but we will have the shirts," he said.

Sagal said he is the only human being on the planet with his job description: When he goes to conventions, he has to hang out with himself in the bar and try to decide if he's going to have an affair with himself this year or not.

He joked that his ambition is to ignite some sort of furious quiz-show scandal that would result in a congressional hearing.

"We think that would be great publicity. We've tried bribing someone and then leaking it to the press, but it's radio, so nobody cares. Still, I've been practicing covering up the microphone to talk to my lawyer."

This is the kind of humor that Berman has to parry every day during the conference call that links his office in Boston with the WBEZ studio in Chicago where "Wait Wait" originates. But he's used to it. Berman also is responsible for packaging "Car Talk," the wacky automotive repair show, and the humor on that Saturday morning favorite is as out of control as a Buick on high octane.

Berman tells a great Hawai'i story about "Car Talk."

A listener once wrote in to say that while visiting a park atop a high mountain (probably Haleakala on Maui, or Mauna Kea on the Big Island) a group of folks, well bundled up, were spotted all grouped around a couple of cars with the doors open and the radio blasting. When the visitor checked it out, he found that it was a group of friends who drove up there every Saturday morning to listen to "Car Talk," because it was the only place on the island where they could receive the show. (Hawaii Public Radio's transmitters have since been strengthened considerably.)

Berman said he's on a mission to lighten up National Public Radio.

"Don't get me wrong: I love public radio. But I tried working in news, and I tended to screw around a little too much ... so I found my way into entertainment, but it's a form of entertainment that I think people who listen to public radio will appreciate. You can enjoy yourself and learn something, if only accidentally," he said.

He had to fight a little to convince NPR to approve the longish name, which was suggested by a failed panelist tryout.

"I think they wanted something like 'The NPR News Quiz,' " he said, deadpan.

Sagal quipped that it used to be even longer: "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me Of Course I Know This I'm Sure Of It Just Give Me Another Second..."

Program featured nationwide on NPR

Never listened to "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!"?

It's a quiz show based on current events, featuring a panel of stumpees, head stumper/host Peter Sagal and judge/scorekeeper Carl Kasell. They play an ever-changing round of games, some involving listeners and guests, including "Who's Carl This Time," in which Kasell portrays a news figure and the panel has to guess who; "Listener Limerick," in which callers have to fill in the blanks of a news-linked limerick; "Fake News Stories," in which panelists have to guess which of three news stories actually happened and "Panelist Predictions," in which the panel tries to forecast the news.

The show's games and questions are devised by the staff and executive producer Doug Berman, who scan the Internet for likely stories all week long, finalizing the show the day before it's played. Panelists are not told the subject matter in advance.

The pace is lightning fast and, except when they're on the road, the panelists broadcast from studios wherever they happen to live and can't even see each other.