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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 Alonzo Bodden, Faith Salie and Helen Hong. 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. In just a minute, Bill becomes TED Radio Hour host Guy Rhymz (ph)...
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SAGAL: ...In our Listener Limerick Challenge. If you'd like to play, give us a call at 1-888-WAITWAIT - that's 1-888-924-8924. Right now, panel, some more questions for you from the week's news. Faith, Ford Motor Company is using a new piece of technology to test the seats in their new vehicles. It's a robotic what?
FAITH SALIE: It's a robotic thing...
SAGAL: Yes.
SALIE: ...That gets in the seat and makes it go up and down and back and forth and such?
SAGAL: So technically, it would be a robotic what?
SALIE: So...
SAGAL: Why are you dragging this out, Faith? It's supposed...
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SAGAL: ...To be the part of a person.
SALIE: Oh, a robotic butt?
SAGAL: It is, in fact, a robotic butt.
SALIE: Ah.
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SAGAL: Ford needs to make seats that last, so they've designed a robotic butt. They call it the Robutt.
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SAGAL: Why not Seat-3PO? Anyway...
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SAGAL: ...The Robutt simulates 10 years of use, getting up and down from the seat 25,000 times in three days. Ford then measures the wear and tear in their seat, determining if they think it is, in fact, ready for this jelly.
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SALIE: Wait, 10 years? It's so funny to apply the phrase 10 years of use to a butt.
SAGAL: Yes. Sure.
SALIE: (Laughter) How long's that butt been in action? About 10 years.
HELEN HONG: What ethnicity is the butt?
SAGAL: That's a good question. Well, actually, I...
HONG: What gender?
SAGAL: It is male. It is apparently - it's based on a large American male because...
HONG: Oh, that's very large.
SAGAL: That's pretty large, yeah.
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SAGAL: It's so weird because we're supposed to use the robots for the jobs that we don't want to do, but if there's one thing we want to do, it's sit on our butts.
HONG: Yeah.
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ALONZO BODDEN: On the engineering scale, when you get hired by Ford...
HONG: Out of MIT? Yeah.
BODDEN: ...To design cars, and you think, wow, I'm going to make the new Mustang...
SAGAL: Yeah.
BODDEN: ...Or the new this or that...
SAGAL: I'm going to be carving cool cars out of clay.
BODDEN: We're going to put you on butt cheeks.
SAGAL: Butt cheeks. Yeah.
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SAGAL: Helen, Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle website Goop is often criticized for offering sketchy medical advice. This week, they're at it again, giving advice about thyroid cancer they credit to what medical authority?
HONG: Thyroid cancer? Can I have a hint?
SAGAL: Sure. (Imitating ghost) Eat whole grains.
HONG: Ghosts?
SAGAL: Yes, a ghost.
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HONG: A vegan ghost?
SAGAL: Well, we don't know.
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SAGAL: Apparently, when you need to hear about living longer, go to someone who didn't.
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SAGAL: Gwyneth Paltrow is offering us advice she gets - he gets from some guy who calls himself the medical medium, and he channels a ghostly being he calls the Spirit because, while he can make up nonsense about cancer, he can't come up with a cool name.
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SAGAL: The medical medium - real person - says he was first visited by the Spirit when he was four. He says the Spirit told him his grandmother had cancer, that cancer is a modern invention and that if he just waited long enough and grew up big and strong, he'd find someone gullible enough to believe him.
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HONG: Cancer's a modern invention.
SAGAL: Yes. One of the - among the many things that the medical medium says is that cancer only came around in the last 50 years or so, and it's because of pesticides and plastics. And that's why we have cancer.
HONG: Wow.
BODDEN: I'm just curious - when did the medical medium graduate from Trump University?
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HONG: Who is going to Goop for medical information, anyway? Don't they...
SAGAL: Well, whoever it is, they'll be dead soon.
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SAGAL: Faith, we tend to treat our pets like people, and one animal lover has invented a product to help your dog enjoy its morning routine even more. What is this product?
SALIE: Are we talking about the morning routine in which it poops?
SAGAL: No, not that one.
SALIE: Oh.
SAGAL: Although in people, at least, that's supposed to facilitate that process - this product.
SALIE: Something about coffee?
SAGAL: Yes, coffee...
SALIE: For your dog?
SAGAL: Coffee for your dog.
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HONG: What?
SALIE: What?
SAGAL: Dog coffee. The product is called - and this is true - Rooffee.
SALIE: Oh, my gosh.
HONG: Oh, no.
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SAGAL: The inventor says - this is a real quote - "I didn't Google well."
SALIE: Oh, my gosh.
HONG: No.
SAGAL: It's called Rooffee - coffee for dogs. It's going to be so fun to see Starbucks baristas misspell dogs' names. Latte for Filo? Is there a Filo here? It's...
SALIE: Is it decaf?
SAGAL: Well, yes. Well, what it is is it's this strange herbal concoction with dandelion, hawthorn, chicory, carrots, burdock and fulvic acid - whatever that is. And, basically, the inventor was drinking it herself, and her dog liked it. And this is what she says - and I swear this is true. She says, "Well, one morning, I was drinking my special coffee - Rooffee with MCT oil and coconut butter. I practice biohacking - and writing my morning affirmations..."
SALIE: I hate this person.
HONG: Yeah.
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SAGAL: Well, we're not done yet. "While I noticed that my dog Crete was licking my coffee," unquote.
SALIE: Uh-huh?
SAGAL: She says, oh, I will now market this to dogs because the dog obviously likes it. It must be special. She did not remember as she marketed this product that dogs will eat their own poop.
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SALIE: Yes, and vomit. What is wrong with this woman?
HONG: She's despicable. She needs to start being a contributor to Goop.
SAGAL: I know.
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FRANK SINATRA: (Singing) Way down among Brazilians, coffee beans grow by the billions, so they've got to find those extra cups to fill. They've got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.