Wife and I went to a taping of the NPR news quiz show “Wait wait. . . don’t tell me.”
It will air this Saturday. It’s not actually a live show, though they kind of have you believe that.
I’ve never been to a live taping of something. It was pretty fun. When the show is all done they ask you all to stay while the engineers figure out what they want to retape (as Peter Sagal explained, “we want you to stay because, frankly, your bodies absorb sound.”)
So that part was pretty funny. They all just sit there on the stage listening to the headphones and then one will go, “tomato wedges” or whatever it is they screwed up.
This week the panel was Charlier Pierce, Roxanne Robert and Adam Felber with the guest Baltimore mystery writer Laura Lippman.
Of course the host and moderator were Peter Sagal and Carl Kasell.
I think it was a solid show. Lots of Red Sox talk, election talk, talk about the explosives removed from Iraq.
They said that normally they are in a studio where they can’t see each other and can’t see the audience. But they (by “they” I mean Peter Sagal) made it sound like the audience is taped live with the recording. I pictured big “applause” signs and audience mics and whatnot.
It’s not totally out of the ordinary for them to be on a stage, but it’s not the norm either. I think they said next week they’re going to be in Fort Lauderdale.
It was a lot of fun – just something different to do.
They did some introductions and then they put on headphones and the “radio portion” started. The radio portion was definitely over an hour, so they’ll do some editing, naturally. Then, they had a Q&A session while the engineers figured out what had to be retaped. Then they did the retapings.
But, maybe surprisingly, what you hear on the weekends is close to a live show. If they wanted to get just a little bit tighter, they could probably do it live.
Excellent. Tell me some of the really obscure questions that were asked and what the answers were so that I can look really smart in front of my gf when we listen this Sat.
On the bit about “guess the true story”, the real one is that they found a toilet that Martin Luther sat on.
Adam Felber made a pun about “theses” and “feces”.
Charlie made a joke about giving Martin Luther a swirly, but that might have been later in the show. We’ll see if those jokes make it in. They’re a little juvenile (which is probably why they’re the only jokes I remember). Charlie LOST IT at the “feces” joke.
There was a bit about telling kids in Churchill, Canada not to dress up like seals for Halloween because of the polar bears. Charlie told a long story that went nowhere about being in Churchill once. I bet they cut it. It was dull.
Also, one of the callers made a reference to “enjoying the evening”. In the guise of trying to make the show sound “live” I wonder if they’ll have the caller do a re-take on his call.
If the guy from Florida doesn’t say “evening” we’ll know if they had him do a retake.
