Oops. Guess I hit a couple of [del]nerds[/del] nerves. Sorry.
They really do have a point.
+2 (and +3 for Poundstone). WWDTM is a must for me. And yes, the best funny stuff happens unscripted, and Sagal comes up with great responses off the cuff. I suppose it helps that I’m a news junkie, since this is a “news quiz” show.
(Ask Me Another is painfully, unbelievably awful though)
I think Hanks might have been good if he’d been lower-key, but he was Manic! Loud! Hanks on the show, and it was grating.
I think the more smart people you know, the easier that is to believe.
Probably before, given that Frick and Frack were skaters who came to the US in the late 1930s to join the Ice Follies, and their stage names got used by any matched set, like how some pairs came to be called “Mutt and Jeff” after a comic strip from the 1900s.
Sometimes there will be a question on WWDTM which I only know the answer to because I saw a SDMB thread about it earlier in the week! 
I kept listening after I heard Paul Poundstone. She is funny as hell.
“If it’s anonymous, why did they tell everyone that I was going?”
Well, there is a certain level of vocal skill to being a radio presenter, that comes with experience. Hanks is a newbie at it, after all.
Thank you for this background, I had just assumed my ‘ancestors’ were given the almost identical nicknames due to their similarities to Tom and Ray. The brother from San Francisco was the first person I ever heard listen to NPR (that was during my teen aged years). His radio use was limited to Giants games and car talk on the weekends; otherwise the radio was classical music, or silent.
You folks have sure covered all angles of this, but I thought I would stick in my view as well. Thanks to all of you for giving me things to think about.
Once I started listening to NPR during the week, Wait, Wait sort of reminded me of a fun review at the end of the Thursday school day for the test on Friday. One never needed any outside source to ace the quiz, especially the rapid fire portion at the end designed (it is obvious to me) to allow each contestant to be in the lead at one point during the show. In that sense WW was quite loyal to the parent corporation. I will contend that the reason for that was that NPR had the best, deepest and most complete news coverage back in the day.
The humor is separate from the content, but it does spring from the content. I know many people who are not well enough informed to get the humor. They would like to be smug, condescending know-it-alls—or be slapped down by a smug know-it-all, but alas they are just not informed about government policy, or personal, or when elections are held, or what specific things are on the ballots, etc., etc., etc. Now when they discuss NASCAR, now they can be smug, condescending, and well informed. So my view is that one need not know all the latest stories for the week, but one does need to have an interest in that arena to enjoy the humor (even if it is exactly the style of humor of the individual). Aside from Trump and ‘Hillary’, these adults (and not young adults- that group seems better informed to me) do not recognize any names from government service. If you mention Nancy Pelosi, or Paul Ryan- it means nothing to them. If I tell you that Dave the roofer was on lot 286 and dropped his tape, but before he could climb down to retrieve it Mike the plumber threw it back to him. Dave missed the catch and it fell back to the ground and smashed into pieces and Dave said to Mike: “Hey! You Sterling Marlined my tape!
Or more obviously: …. smashed to pieces—they then both placed their hats over their hearts and said: “Rest in peace #3”. Is that particularly funny to anyone in this thread?
You certainly have the relevant facts to get that (admittedly bad example of a) joke. Actually you don’t need to know about Dave or Mike to get the joke- but if you did know them you would know they are both fans of the late Dale Earnhardt who drove the number three car and died when he collided with Sterling Marlin and was forced into the wall during a race years ago. That when they saw something busting to pieces they both had the same thought — and it was of something that happened more than a decade ago is high irony in some places. There are certainly circles where that story would earn a snort of laughter (I don’t expect this to be one of those places).
When Peter Sagal says: “This week Nancy Pelosi introduced legislation to ___________”, so Paul Ryan replied: “_____________”, then Bernie Sanders added his two cents by calling for _________; that means nothing, absolutely nothing to some people, even if those people do like the style of humor the show employs. You might as well be talking about your aunt’s hairdresser as our national leaders.
Insert standard apology for not being able to convey my point in a more concise, shorter post. (Trust me, you don’t want to read the whole thing; it would make this post even longer and more pedantic.)