This weekend, Ben Folds Five becomes part of one of public radio’s most popular shows as Ben joins Peter Sagal, fellow North Carolinian Carl Kasell and the panel on Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me.
Wait Wait is a weekly light-hearted news quiz program in which a panel of columnists, satirists and commentators discuss the week’s serious and strange events in a nutty way that will have you laughing. It’s recorded each week in front of a live audience, usually at the Chase Auditorium in Chicago, though they go on tour a couple times a year. Listeners call in (1-888-WAIT-WAIT) to play games like the Listener Limerick Challenge, where they have to complete a series of limericks about the news, or Bluff the Listener, where the caller has to figure out which of three offbeat news stories is the real one.
The most popular segment, though, is called Not My Job, where a celebrity guest has to answer three multiple-choice questions about something that the guest is supposedly completely unfamiliar with. (Recent guests included the head of the Center for Disease Control answering questions about viral advertising campaigns, and the author of Game of Thrones about things that rhyme with Thrones.) After an interview about what they’re up to (which I’ll guess will include the perennial question “why five?”), Ben’s expected to answer questions about something totally unrelated to their music. As of this time the show is still being written, but some good guesses might be about other things that fold or that there aren’t really five of either.
Sagal is a fan of Ben’s and has wanted to get him on the program for quite some time, so when he asked us, we put him in touch with Ben’s publicist over the summer. The show can be heard on many NPR stations, usually Saturday morning (check your local station for show times), and can also be listened to online or via podcast.
