UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: The following program was taped in front of an audience of real, live people.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT… DON’T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. I’m the disembodied voice with a disembody that just won’t quit…

(LAUGHTER)

KURTIS: …Bill Kurtis. And here is your host at the Studebaker Theater at the Fine Arts Building in Chicago, Ill., Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, Bill.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Thanks, everybody. Thank you all so much. We really do – you are not going to be disappointed. We have a great show for you today. Later on, we’re going to be joined by Golda Rosheuvel, who plays Queen Charlotte in “Bridgerton” and the new prequel show “Queen Charlotte.” Now, if you’re not familiar with it, “Bridgerton” is the show famous for showing British aristocrats having steamy sex after spending 45 minutes unbuttoning their costumes.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: But it just takes a second to give us a call and play our games. The number is 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That’s 1-888-924-8924. Now let’s welcome our first listener contestant.

Hi. You are on WAIT WAIT… DON’T TELL ME.

JENNY: Hi. My name is Jenny (ph). I’m calling from Rutland, Vt.

SAGAL: Rutland, Vt. I know I always say this, but I’ve been to Rutland, and it’s really nice. What do you do there?

JENNY: Oh, well, thank you. I’m actually – I work in refugee resettlement. I – so we’re in an office in Rutland, and we have an office in Colchester, but our headquarters is in Virginia.

SAGAL: In Virginia. OK. And so you get refugees from…

JENNY: Yeah.

SAGAL: …Around the world, I assume, places that are in trouble, and you resettle them. How do they deal with Vermont winters?

(LAUGHTER)

JENNY: It’s really funny you should say that. One of the requirements that we have when we pick people up at the airport is, please bring winter jackets. And in fact, over the last couple days, we went from 80 one day to 35 last night, and it happened to be the day one of our furnaces kicked off in one of the homes of our families. So I was pretending that I knew how to fix the furnace at 7:30 last night because, you know, middle of May, 30 degrees – that makes sense for Vermont.

SAGAL: Right. And do you ever get a call at times like that where somebody says, I’d like to go back to my war-torn land?

(LAUGHTER)

JENNY: No, but they do say, wow, we probably should have just gone to California.

SAGAL: Yeah, I know.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Jenny, welcome to our show. Let me introduce you to our panel this week. First up, a comedian you can see at McGuire’s in Bohemia, N.Y., on May 26 – it’s Adam Burke.

ADAM BURKE: Hi, Jenny.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Next, the host of the podcast “Fake The Nation,” where you can now get “Succession” recaps – oh, it’s fun. It’s Negin Farsad.

NEGIN FARSAD: Hello.

(APPLAUSE)

JENNY: Hey, Negin.

SAGAL: And the host of the daily podcast “TBTL” and the public radio variety show “Live Wire,” which will be live back at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Ore., on June 8, it’s Luke Burbank.

LUKE BURBANK: Hey, Jenny.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Jenny, welcome to the show. Of course, you know this. You’re going to play Who’s Bill This Time. As always, Bill will start us off with three quotations from the week’s news. Your job – correctly identify or explain just two of them – 2 out of 3. Do that – you win any voice from our show you might choose for your voicemail. Ready to do it?

JENNY: Let’s go.

SAGAL: Let’s go. All right. Here’s your first quote.

KURTIS: “I’m not a hairy person, but I got a complete body wax.”

SAGAL: That was somebody talking about how she got ready to be the cover model for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue out this week. Who was it?

JENNY: She looked good, by the way.

(LAUGHTER)

JENNY: Martha Stewart.

SAGAL: Martha Stewart.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: Yes.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Isn’t it great that there is an 81-year-old woman, Martha Stewart, on the cover of the swimsuit issue?

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Now octogenarian women have an unrealistic body image they have to aspire to.

(LAUGHTER)

FARSAD: I know. Peter, you’re like, isn’t it great? And, like, it’s not great. I was looking forward to letting it all go.

SAGAL: I know.

(LAUGHTER)

FARSAD: I don’t want to do – I don’t want to look hot. I mean, this is – I’m so upset. She literally looks hot.

SAGAL: I have to say, I agree with you. Ms. Stewart looked great with her sly come-hither and help-me-get-up look.

(LAUGHTER)

BURKE: With her come-to-stairlift eyes.

SAGAL: Yes, exactly.

(LAUGHTER)

BURKE: Well, there’s two things. There’s – first of all, clearly, this is – Sports Illustrated have done this because 81-year-olds are the only people who know what a magazine is…

SAGAL: Exactly right.

BURKE: …Anymore.

(LAUGHTER)

FARSAD: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

BURKE: And secondly, everyone started talking – she is a role model. And I think she is a role model for – partially for this but mainly because she’s the CEO of a company who committed malfeasance and actually did her time.

SAGAL: Right.

BURKE: You know what I mean? It’s like…

SAGAL: She’s the first 80-year-old and the first felon…

(APPLAUSE)

BURKE: Yeah.

SAGAL: …To appear.

FARSAD: Well, and that’s why…

SAGAL: Although…

FARSAD: She’s got that prison body. That’s why she’s…

BURKE: Yeah.

FARSAD: …So hot.

(LAUGHTER)

BURKE: Her tats – she’s all tatted up.

FARSAD: Yeah.

SAGAL: I’m just imagining her in the yard, you know, doing the pull-ups on the bars.

BURBANK: I noticed she did have one teardrop.

(LAUGHTER)

FARSAD: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She had to pick sides. Yeah.

SAGAL: Yeah. All right, Jenny. Your next quote is from an office worker who told NPR this week how he’s going to play hooky from his job.

KURTIS: “I just got to play it cool and say I’ve got a stomach ache or something.”

SAGAL: He was one of many, many people who took time off work and other obligations this week just to play what new video game?

JENNY: Oh, Zelda.

SAGAL: Yes, Zelda.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

JENNY: Yeah.

SAGAL: The new video game Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a massive hit. It sold 10 million copies in just three days. That many people haven’t stayed home from work since that game COVID-19 dropped.

(LAUGHTER)

BURKE: It’s one of those games, too – isn’t it? – where, like, there’s, like, lots – there’s loads of side quests.

SAGAL: Yes.

BURKE: You have to – crafting…

SAGAL: Open world.

BURKE: …And – it’s such the perfect game for now because everyone’s got a main task they want to do and 17 side hustles where it’s just like…

SAGAL: Right. Exactly. It’s, like, you’re trying to save the princess, slay the dragon and also drive Uber at night.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: You know, it’s – I don’t know. Maybe people don’t know it, even – it’s very popular. It’s this very popular, 30-year-old by now game franchise where you, the player, are Link, an elf whose mission is to save Princess Zelda. And you have to complete a long series of quests while spending hundreds of hours of time working to acquire resources and skills. It’s very involving. A lot of people like to take relaxing breaks from the game by going back to their actual jobs.

(LAUGHTER)

BURKE: It is…

FARSAD: Is Princess Elf, like, 80 now?

SAGAL: Princess Zelda.

FARSAD: Or Princess Zelda.

BURKE: And she looks amazing.

FARSAD: Is she…

SAGAL: She looks amazing.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Sometimes, people are like, well, you know, video games – what’s the big deal? They’re just, like, video games for nerds. No, it sold 10 million copies in less than a week. For comparison, Prince Harry’s memoir, which is one of the best-selling books of all time, sold 3 million copies in its first week. And he was trying to destroy a kingdom. So…

(LAUGHTER)

BURKE: This one’s called Tears of the Kingdom. The last one was called Breath of the Wild.

SAGAL: Yeah.

BURKE: They’re clearly meant for stoners.

SAGAL: Yes.

BURKE: I mean, if you guys are real quiet, you can hear the wild breathing…

BURBANK: Right.

BURKE: …Man.

BURBANK: Right.

FARSAD: Is it one of those games – ’cause my – I have somewhere in my memory the notion that people get so into them that they just keep jars of urine, like, next to them so they don’t have to go to the bathroom.

BURKE: It’s called Mountain Dew.

FARSAD: OK.

(LAUGHTER)

BURKE: It’s called, you better hope that’s Mountain Dew.

SAGAL: Negin, I don’t know. But I’m guessing that somebody just really didn’t want you to come over while they were playing video games.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Oh, no, Negin. Yeah. You don’t want to be around us. We pee in jars. Really, it’s…

BURKE: Hey.

FARSAD: I know.

BURKE: Hey. What’s that in the jar? Oh, that’s just the tears of the kingdom.

SAGAL: Yeah.

BURKE: That’s what that is.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: All right, Jenny. Here is your last quote.

KURTIS: “People in winter coats were standing next to people in shorts.”

SAGAL: That was from a New York Times style reporter talking about how this year, just like every year at this time, people have no idea how to dress for what?

JENNY: Every single day I wake up.

(LAUGHTER)

JENNY: Spring.

SAGAL: Yes, spring, of course.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: The New York Times, paper of record…

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: …Gray Lady – they finally said out loud what we’re all thinking – spring is just impossible to dress for. This is what we get for trusting a groundhog to tell us what to wear.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: The reporter said that in the streets of New York, he saw people on the same day, same time, wearing anything from shorts to winter coats, some carrying umbrellas while others carried their own broken pieces of furniture to burn for heat.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Is this something that resonates with you guys? Is this a problem you have?

BURKE: I wear what I wear every spring, just a tub full of Benadryl over my head.

SAGAL: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Why do people worry about this? I mean, it’s not like spring will hurt you. Nobody dies of mild bite. Nobody passes out from breeze stroke.

FARSAD: All right.

SAGAL: All right.

(LAUGHTER)

BURBANK: There had to be a third one.

BURKE: Yeah. Yeah. The – I will say one of my favorite phrases about the weather is – like, is an Irish phrase – you know the Irish phrase. We’ll talk about it being fierce mild.

SAGAL: No, is that a thing?

BURKE: Yeah, like, how is it out there? Oh, it’s fierce mild.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I – you could look me in the eye and tell me anything about, like…

BURKE: (Laughter).

SAGAL: The Irish or their sayings…

FARSAD: Yeah.

SAGAL: …And I would believe it.

BURKE: Yeah.

SAGAL: You know – oh yeah, you know what they say in Ireland – a day like this, the flying bananas are out.

BURBANK: Right.

BURKE: Hey…

FARSAD: What…

BURKE: …You leave the flying bananas out of this.

BURBANK: Speaking of flying bananas, fierce mild is how my lovemaking has been described.

(LAUGHTER)

BURKE: That’s a – it’s a great name for a cologne, isn’t it?

SAGAL: Bill, how did Jenny do on our quiz?

KURTIS: Jenny, you can warm up with a perfect score.

SAGAL: Congratulations, Jenny.

FARSAD: Yeah.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: And thank you for the good work that you do.

JENNY: Thank you.

SAGAL: Take care. Bye-bye.

JENNY: Bye.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SAGAL: Right now, panel, it is time, of course, for you to answer some questions about this week’s news. Adam, according to a story in The Guardian, members of Gen Z are now relieving their daily stress simply by doing what?

BURKE: Gen Z has daily stress?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And by the way, I should – I know.

FARSAD: They don’t know what to wear. It’s spring.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Yeah. I should specify, by the way, these are American members of Gen Z.

BURKE: Can I get a clue?

SAGAL: Yeah. Oh, just going to pop round the chip shop, guv’nor.

BURBANK: Father?

(LAUGHTER)

BURKE: Don’t make me homesick. Do they put on accents?

SAGAL: Yes. They put on a fake British accent…

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: …To feel better.

BURKE: Really?

SAGAL: Yeah. This started as a TikTok trend, became a big deal – all these young Americans demonstrating how they use fake British accents in moments of stress.

FARSAD: What?

SAGAL: One person told The Guardian that she had to ask her boss for help with dealing with stress on the job by saying to him – and I quote her, “It’s affecting me mental health, innit.”

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And then she said…

BURBANK: In fairness, she was working as a chimney sweep.

SAGAL: There you are.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And then she said, quote, “The tougher the conversation, the more Cockney I become,” unquote.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Which, by the way, happens to be a great way to guarantee you will get help for your mental health.

(LAUGHTER)

BURKE: Is this why Dick Van Dyke is consistently the most relaxed man on the planet?

SAGAL: Exactly.

FARSAD: (Laughter).

SAGAL: It does make perfect sense because the one thing you know about the people with real British accents – they’re one laid-back group of people, right?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Adam, you’re Irish. I’m sure you’re soothed by the sound of a British accent.

BURKE: (Laughter) Yeah, I use it to go to sleep. It’s the whitest noise.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “CHIM CHIM CHER-EE”)

DICK VAN DYKE: (As Bert, singing) Chim chiminey, chim chiminey, chim chim cher-ee.

SAGAL: Coming up, your next binge watch may surprise you. It’s our Bluff the Listener game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play. We’ll be back in a minute with more of WAIT WAIT… DON’T TELL ME from NPR.

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 Negin Farsad, Luke Burbank and Adam Burke. And here again is your host at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago, Ill., Peter Sagal.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Thank you so much, Bill. Right now, it is time for the WAIT WAIT… DON’T TELL ME Bluff the Listener game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play our game on the air. Hi. You are on WAIT WAIT… DON’T TELL ME.

JACK WALSH: Hello. This is Jack Walsh (ph) from Farmingdale, N.J.

SAGAL: Hey, how are things in my home state of New Jersey?

WALSH: Um, you know…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Now, hold on. That is the official answer.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: In fact, that is the state motto of New Jersey.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Ready? Here it goes. New Jersey – um.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Jack, welcome to the show. You’re going to play the game in which you have to tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Jack’s topic?

KURTIS: Must-see TV.

SAGAL: With the strike of television writers going on without an end, it’s quite possible that soon, all your favorite TV shows will just be very attractive people grunting at each other. So we were excited this week when we found out about a really amazing hit TV show coming from an unexpected place. Each of our panelists are going to tell you about that show. Only one of them is telling the truth. Your job – figure that out. Ready to go?

WALSH: All righty. Let’s get moving.

SAGAL: All right. First, let’s hear from Adam Burke.

BURKE: Britain’s Open University has offered free televised college lectures on the BBC since 1969. They basically walked so that Phoenix Online could run. And these old educational shows were a fixture of U.K. daytime TV for decades. However, these dusty courses from the ’70s are experiencing a brand-new lease of life thanks to a fervent Gen Z fandom in South Korea, where some of these teachers are becoming fashion icons, cult figures and, in some cases, sex symbols. I first heard about this from my granddaughter, said Malcolm Branforth (ph), a retired physics lecturer from Barnsley. She said, Grandad, you’re blowing up on TikTok. Well, once I had deciphered most of the words in that sentence, I was quite surprised to see what a big deal we all were. The hushed, measured tones of the programs combined with the far-out threads of the era seems to have made the videos a hit for different reasons. My friends like to use Introduction to Trigonometry: Level 4 as ASMR, explained Suh Young Boon (ph) a 20-year-old from Daegu. But I just find professor Brian Pilkington (ph) to be dreamy. And those sideburns.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Old BBC college lectures from the ’70s becoming a cult hit in Korea. Your next story of television with vision comes from Negin Farsad.

FARSAD: Marley Trenton (ph) was a happily married homemaker in Wilmette, Ill., a suburb of Skokie, a town that does not require a suburb.

(LAUGHTER)

FARSAD: Marley had a side hustle as a seamstress who loved and collected buttons. In fact, she had a YouTube show all about buttons – two-hole, four-hole, shank, toggle and even the occasional snap. Her tens of viewers could only be described…

(LAUGHTER)

FARSAD: …As retired home ec teachers from the 1960s and sociopaths that YouTube’s algorithm can’t figure out.

(LAUGHTER)

FARSAD: Nevertheless, she continued her deeply unpopular show until one day, she announced that she was getting a divorce because, yes, Harry had cheated with the pediatric dentist they used to take the kids to in Skokie, a town that barely merits a pediatric dentist.

(LAUGHTER)

FARSAD: What ensued was a YouTube series in which she talked revenge, set up a Hinge dating profile and let viewers choose who she would date. Viewers were addicted to the voting power. She was changed by it all, too. You would find her saying things like, I’d like him to put a needle through my button hole.

(LAUGHTER)

FARSAD: And oh, yeah, no matter how saucy her dating life gets, she still talks about buttons. Needless to say, this is the No. 1 button-based divorcee audience-voted dating show on YouTube.

(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: A seamstress becomes a romantic heroine on YouTube. And your last story of something new to watch comes from Luke Burbank.

BURBANK: Move over, “Succession.” There’s a new hit show that’s become mandatory viewing for its fans. And we mean that literally because it’s actually mandatory viewing if you’re one of the 220,000 people who work for Microsoft. We’re talking, of course, of the employee training video series “Trust Code.” As the Wall Street Journal recently explained, the series follows a character named Nelson, played by Devin Badoo, who gets up to all kinds of non-Microsoft-approved hijinks, such as feeding customer data into AI and stealing intellectual property. There are watch parties and T-shirts with Nelson’s face on them. Here is a real tweet featured in the Wall Street Journal article. Current status – #sobbing while watching #MicrosoftStandardsOfBusinessConduct.”

(LAUGHTER)

BURBANK: Badoo says he gets one of two reactions when he sets foot on Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., campus – employees either freaking out upon meeting their version of Brad Pitt or people saying, hi, Nelson; what building do you work in? – showing their deep misunderstanding of how acting works…

(LAUGHTER)

BURBANK: …And indicating they should really go back and retake the training videos.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: All right.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: So one of these surprise hits created their own little mini golden age of television. Was it from Adam Burke, old BBC college lectures becoming a cult hit in South Korea; from Negin, a seamstress from the lovely town of Skokie becomes a romantic heroine as viewers enjoy her dating life; or from Luke, a Microsoft training video series becomes a huge hit with Microsoft employees? Which of these is the real story of a television hit?

WALSH: You know, my choice is the wonderful story that came out of Microsoft’s training videos.

SAGAL: All right. You’re going to choose Luke’s story.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: We – to bring you the correct answer, we spoke to the reporter who broke this story, at least for us.

DYLAN TOKAR: Microsoft wanted to sort of revamp their compliance training and make it more entertaining, and it turned into such a huge thing that they’re now going into their seventh season.

SAGAL: That’s true. That was Dylan Tokar, the reporter for The Wall Street Journal who brought us this story of Microsoft’s “Trust Code,” which, I guess if they don’t resolve the strike, you’ll be able to see on HBO next year?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Congratulations, Jack. You got it right. Well done.

(APPLAUSE)

WALSH: Thank you. Take care.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “57 CHANNELS (AND NOTHIN’ ON)”)

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: (Singing) Well, now, home entertainment was my baby’s wish, so I hopped into town for a satellite dish.

SAGAL: And now the game where we ask accomplished people to accomplish one more little thing. It’s called Not My Job. The Netflix show “Bridgerton” debuted in 2020 and became an immediate sensation, depicting a version of Regency England populated by incredibly attractive and often naked people of all races and backgrounds. The most beloved character on that show quickly became Queen Charlotte, played by the veteran theater actress Golda Rosheuvel – so much so that that character now has her own spinoff, “Queen Charlotte,” the name of the show. Golda Rosheuvel, welcome to WAIT WAIT… DON’T TELL ME.

(APPLAUSE)

GOLDA ROSHEUVEL: Thank you. Thank you.

SAGAL: We’re so delighted to talk to you. And I’ve been watching your shows all week. Now, out of all the characters in “Bridgerton” – and there are a lot of wonderful characters, why do you think that it was your character, played by you the whole three seasons, who got the spinoff show?

ROSHEUVEL: I have no idea. It’s a puzzlement. But the fans have really loved this character and have really kind of connected with her, which is fabulous. And it’s really great that Shonda and Netflix kind of wanted to do a deeper dive and find out a little bit more about her.

SAGAL: She is an amazing character, but I think we all need to say that one of the reasons the people love you are the wigs, which are…

ROSHEUVEL: Yes, the wigs and the costumes. They’re iconic, aren’t they?

SAGAL: Oh, they’re amazing. And for those who haven’t seen it, your first entrance in Episode 1 is not, in fact, an entrance – your first appearance – and you’re there in this magnificent gown and a hairpiece, a wig that must be two feet wide by three feet high. This is an astonishing thing.

ROSHEUVEL: (Laughter) Yes.

SAGAL: And I’m like, of course, people are coming to her because she is the regal queen. And also…

ROSHEUVEL: And she cannot move.

SAGAL: …She cannot move. Right.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Is that true? I imagine that a lot of times, you’re sort of staged, certainly in “Bridgerton,” in that regal way because you literally can’t move wearing that getup. Is that true?

ROSHEUVEL: It is difficult on occasions, yeah, the kind of balance. Balancing and walking and talking and sitting can be quite difficult. But it’s real fun. I love it. I love it. I love the challenge.

SAGAL: The first time they showed you one of those wigs, were you like, am I supposed to wear that on my head or climb inside it?

ROSHEUVEL: (Laughter) Yeah, exactly. Is there a little house in there for me to reside in?

(LAUGHTER)

ROSHEUVEL: Yeah.

SAGAL: Do the other actors who are also dressed, but they don’t have those amazing wigs – do they all, like, make fun of you, like, between takes? Like, oh, we’re going to walk around and go to the bathroom with no problem. You’re just going to have to sit there.

ROSHEUVEL: Yeah, exactly. I – yes, I have a helper that takes me to the bathroom.

SAGAL: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I imagine, like, you have to have a retinue like the real Queen Charlotte just to hold your head up.

ROSHEUVEL: Yeah, well, the lovely, lovely crew members made me a brace – a neck brace.

SAGAL: Oh, wow. Really?

FARSAD: Oh, my God.

SAGAL: So you can hold up your head.

ROSHEUVEL: Yeah. True story. True story. So I can, yeah, hold my head and balance my chin on the neck brace to kind of keep the weight off the back of my neck.

SAGAL: Yeah.

BURKE: Can I ask, do the wigs get larger as the character ages? Like, does it start off with a small wig? And are the neck braces…

ROSHEUVEL: Yeah, I don’t know whether it’s aging, but they did certainly age me, Golda.

(LAUGHTER)

ROSHEUVEL: But they do get bigger and bigger. Yeah. I think in “Queen Charlotte,” there’s a record-breaking wig, so – I’m ashamed to say I never weighed it.

SAGAL: I imagine, though – I haven’t gotten it to yet, but I imagine in “Queen Charlotte” when she gets her first enormous wig, it’s like Luke getting his lightsaber. Everybody’s like, oh.

ROSHEUVEL: Yeah (laughter).

SAGAL: He comes into his own. We were wondering – people talk about the Shondaverse, which is the world of all her TV shows. Is “Bridgerton” part of it? Like, is it possible that one of the Featherington girls might marry McSteamy?

(LAUGHTER)

ROSHEUVEL: Ooh, I’m sure one of the Feathering girls would love that. That would be a cool crossover.

SAGAL: It would be.

ROSHEUVEL: We should do that. We should pitch that, Peter.

SAGAL: Yeah.

ROSHEUVEL: We should pitch that to Shonda.

SAGAL: Let’s do it.

ROSHEUVEL: I think she’d be up for that, mate.

SAGAL: Yeah. Suck on that, “Infinity War.” The greatest crossover event of all time.

(LAUGHTER)

ROSHEUVEL: Yeah.

SAGAL: I have to ask this one last question before we move on to the game, which is – “Bridgerton” is famous for a lot of things and beloved for a lot of things, but it is also known for its sex scenes, which happen quite a bit. When you least expect it…

ROSHEUVEL: Yes.

SAGAL: …You’re thinking, oh, it’s a Jane Austen novel, and the next thing you know, the corsets are flying, and…

ROSHEUVEL: Yes.

SAGAL: …Everybody’s naked. Are – how relieved are you that you haven’t had to do one of those?

ROSHEUVEL: Listen.

(LAUGHTER)

ROSHEUVEL: Listen. So…

(LAUGHTER)

ROSHEUVEL: So there is a world where I’m slightly jealous. You know, you kind of think, why not me?

SAGAL: Right.

(LAUGHTER)

ROSHEUVEL: And…

SAGAL: When it comes to – speaking of…

ROSHEUVEL: …Then you kind of – then you actually see the show, and you go, oh, that’s why not me.

(LAUGHTER)

FARSAD: Wait. Can I say, Golda, that I watched Season 1 of “Bridgerton” with my parents…

ROSHEUVEL: Ooh.

FARSAD: …Not knowing?

SAGAL: Yeah, you were like, oh, it’s a costume drama. How lovely. What’s the worst they can do?

FARSAD: Literally just thought they were going to have corsets on the whole time.

ROSHEUVEL: Yeah.

FARSAD: Is…

ROSHEUVEL: Were you making lots of coffee or lots of tea – going out to make lots of – yeah.

FARSAD: Oh, I constantly had to go pee.

ROSHEUVEL: (Laughter).

FARSAD: It was a nightmare. They seemed completely fine and super into it. And I was like…

(LAUGHTER)

FARSAD: …I want to kill myself. But…

SAGAL: That makes it worse, of course.

FARSAD: I haven’t dipped into “Queen Charlotte” yet. I’m assuming this is an also no-parent-in-the-room show.

SAGAL: Yes.

FARSAD: Yes, OK.

SAGAL: That would be true.

ROSHEUVEL: Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

FARSAD: Just checking.

ROSHEUVEL: Yes.

SAGAL: That would be true.

ROSHEUVEL: Yeah. Well, Golda Rosheuvel, it’s a joy to watch you on TV, but it’s also a pleasure to have you here. And we have invited you here to play a game that we’re calling…

KURTIS: Queen Charlotte, meet Dairy Queen.

SAGAL: You play…

ROSHEUVEL: Oh.

SAGAL: …The English monarch, the English queen.

ROSHEUVEL: Yes.

SAGAL: So we thought we’d ask you about Dairy Queen. That is a chain…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: …Of restaurants here in America and else…

ROSHEUVEL: Yes.

SAGAL: …And other places around the world that specialize in soft serve ice cream. Answer two out of 3 questions and you will win our prize for one of our contestants, the voice of anyone they might choose. Bill, who is Golda playing for?

KURTIS: Kyle Evans (ph) of Cleveland, Ohio.

SAGAL: All right.

ROSHEUVEL: OK, Kyle. Let’s do it, bro.

SAGAL: There you go, man.

ROSHEUVEL: I’m going to do it. Come on, Kyle. I’m doing it for Kyle.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: First question – people love Dairy Queen. They do. But you can, in fact, love it too much as when a man in Canada did what in 2021? A, he remodeled his home into an exact replica of a Dairy Queen franchise, forcing him to move out to avoid all the frustrated customers, B, he landed a helicopter in a Dairy Queen parking lot just to pick up an ice cream cake, or C, blew up his house trying to recreate the secret DQ recipe in his basement?

ROSHEUVEL: Let’s say B, helicopter.

SAGAL: That’s right, Golda.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: That’s what he did.

(APPLAUSE)

ROSHEUVEL: We’re getting it, Kyle. We’re doing it, Kyle.

SAGAL: He got one charge of illegal operation of an aircraft and, of course, one ice cream cake. All right. Next question. Dairy Queen tells its employees to show off how thick their blizzard milkshakes are by flipping the cup upside down before handing it to the customer. That practice, as charming as it is, has caused some problems like what? Is it A, Some customers think they have to eat it while holding it upside down…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: …Resulting in neck strain, B, every 1,000th or so time it’s done, the ice cream does drop out and break someone’s toe, or C, one employee couldn’t shake that habit when they moved on to another fast food job and kept dumping things onto the floor.

(LAUGHTER)

ROSHEUVEL: (Laughter) Oh, I want it to be C, please.

SAGAL: It is C. This was…

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

ROSHEUVEL: Yeah.

SAGAL: …Of course…

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: …Captured on social media like everything is these days. The employee in question handed a soda to a customer in her new job. But of course, before, as she had always done at Dairy Queen, turned it over and dumped the entire thing.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: All right. If you get this, you will be as perfect in real life as you are on your television shows. Last question – there was a Dairy Queen in Atlanta with a celebrated regular customer. Who was it? A, the actor, director and producer Tyler Perry, who paid Dairy Queen the equivalent of a day’s worth of sales every day just so that he could be the only customer and not wait in line, B, an orangutan who loved their food and knew how to get there from the zoo, or C, a bank robber who came by every day, finally got arrested, and then broke out of prison to come by one more time.

ROSHEUVEL: Ah, Tyler Perry.

SAGAL: You’re going to go with Tyler Perry. I believe Tyler Perry would do that. But to my knowledge, he hasn’t. It was the orangutan.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: His name was Chantek the orangutan. He lived at the Atlanta Zoo for many years, and he loved outings. He loved Dairy Queen, and he knew how to get there. You could get in the car with him, and he’d point that way. Dairy Queen.

ROSHEUVEL: Wow. Cool. Good. Good boy.

SAGAL: Yeah.

ROSHEUVEL: I like it.

SAGAL: Good…

BURKE: What?

SAGAL: It’s true.

BURKE: What do you mean you could get in the car with him?

SAGAL: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

BURKE: What? You just breezed by that…

SAGAL: Yeah.

BURKE: …Like we all know about orangutan field trips from the zoo.

SAGAL: Exactly. Well, how do you think they get to…

ROSHEUVEL: Was he driving?

BURKE: (Laughter).

SAGAL: How do you think – Adam, how do you think they get to the zoo from home?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Bill, how did Golda do on our quiz?

KURTIS: My Queen…

(LAUGHTER)

KURTIS: …You won two out of three, which is a win. That means you can still have the jewels.

(APPLAUSE)

ROSHEUVEL: Thank you. Thank you. Tipping my bowler. Thank you.

SAGAL: Oh, no, ma’am. We do that for you. Golda Rosheuvel is the titular queen in Netflix’s “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.” It’s streaming now. Golda Rosheuvel, what a joy to talk to you in real life.

ROSHEUVEL: Mwah.

SAGAL: Thank you so much for joining us…

(APPLAUSE)

ROSHEUVEL: Thank you.

SAGAL: …On WAIT WAIT… DON’T TELL ME. Take care.

ROSHEUVEL: Much love. Bye.

SAGAL: Bye-bye.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SAGAL: In just a minute, why you just can’t seem to burp. It’s our Listener Limerick challenge. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to join us on the air. We’ll be back in a minute with more of WAIT WAIT… DON’T TELL ME from NPR.

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 Negin Farsad, Luke Burbank and Adam Burke.

(APPLAUSE)

KURTIS: And here again is your host at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago, Ill., Peter Sagal.

SAGAL: Thank you so much, Bill.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: In just a minute, Bill asks, have you rhymed with us before? Well, we do things a little bit differently here. If you’d like to play, give us a call at 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That’s 1-888-924-8924. Right now, panel, time for some more questions for you from the week’s news. Luke, a self-styled anti-capitalist cafe in Toronto that let customers pay what they can for their coffee has closed. Why?

(LAUGHTER)

BURBANK: I mean, a few theories come to mind.

SAGAL: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

BURBANK: I’m guessing it was not profitable enough to continue.

SAGAL: Yes. They didn’t make enough money.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: It was called the Anarchist Coffee Shop. They described itself as, quote, “an anti-capitalist, anti-colonial cafe shop and radical community space on stolen land.” I guess there wasn’t enough space on the sign for polyamorous, but you know they tried.

(LAUGHTER)

BURBANK: If I ever ran for president, it would be on this platform. If there’s more than four people in line at the coffee shop, your new order is black coffee, right?

SAGAL: Right.

BURBANK: Like, I just feel there should be a separate line – I would have gone to this cafe if they would have let you pay – like, you know those tolls where it’s just, like, electronic? – if you could just skip to the front of the line and get your black coffee, ’cause that’s all I drink.

SAGAL: Yeah.

BURKE: Well, surely you should be allowed to jump to the head of the line ’cause it’s an anarchist…

SAGAL: Yeah, exactly.

BURKE: …Coffee shop.

SAGAL: There’s no order.

FARSAD: Yeah, there’s no…

SAGAL: It’s self-organizing.

BURKE: Maybe it’s so anarchic that what’s in the cup isn’t coffee. Like, I just open up, and it’s bees. And it’s like, well…

(LAUGHTER)

BURKE: …Read the sign.

SAGAL: Negin, question for you – Taco Bell and the less well-known chain Taco John’s are in a heated legal dispute right now over who gets to use what phrase?

FARSAD: Something at the border. What is – what was it?

(LAUGHTER)

FARSAD: First of all, never heard of Taco John’s. I need a hint.

SAGAL: Right. Well, it’s something you’d expect Taco Bell to want to say once a week.

FARSAD: Once a week…

SAGAL: For example, on Tuesdays.

(LAUGHTER)

FARSAD: Right. Like, OK, Taco Bell, because it’s Taco Tuesdays.

SAGAL: Yes. Taco Tuesday is the phrase.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: It turns out that the restaurant Taco John’s trademarked the phrase Taco Tuesday back in 1989. But Taco Bell has filed to get that trademark lifted so they can use it, too, right? Taco Tuesday – it’s a natural. They’re just mad because all of their trademark days never caught on. What were they thinking with Taco Holocaust Remembrance Day?

(LAUGHTER)

BURKE: I got to say, if I’m going to put a man’s name after the word taco to let people know I make really good tacos, I’m not going with John.

SAGAL: Yeah, I – like you…

BURKE: Was Taco Clarence taken?

(LAUGHTER)

BURBANK: Where’d you get food from? Taco Eugene’s.

SAGAL: No, Taco John’s – I have never heard of it either. It doesn’t sound like a different restaurant than Taco Bell. It sounds like something you say as you are leaving Taco Bell. Hey, guys, be right with you. I got to hit the taco john.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Adam, this week CNBC reported on the travel agency Discover Africa – do a lot of African trips and safaris. They repeatedly have to tell clients that no, they cannot do what while they’re on safari?

BURKE: Take an orangutan to Dairy Queen.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Even if the orangutan wants to go, you can’t do it.

BURKE: You can’t recreate the opening to “The Lion King.” You can’t hold a cub over the thing…

(LAUGHTER)

BURKE: …While a bunch of people sing. I was so – I was actually kind of sure that was going to be the right answer.

FARSAD: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds right.

BURKE: Can I get a clue?

SAGAL: It does involve a lion. They’re like, do you see any saddles?

BURKE: Oh, you can’t – oh, yeah. You can’t ride a lion.

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: They have to tell people you cannot ride a lion while on safari. This week, Discover Africa revealed some of the most ridiculous questions they get asked by clients, with the No. 1 being, hey, can my kid go ride a lion?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: The answer is obviously no, which is a shame, because the No. 1 question the lions have been asking is, hey, can we go eat that kid?

(LAUGHTER)

BURKE: To be clear, riding a lion should only ever be used as a euphemism for snorting Adderall.

SAGAL: Exactly.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: They say they get a lot of ridiculous requests from clients, which they blame partially on social media influencers who make everything on their trips seem perfect, and also on the fact that people are terrible.

BURKE: (Laughter).

SAGAL: This is true. One person who goes on an African safari demanded that on their bed – on his bed, that he has a foam pillow on the left side and a feather pillow on the right. And one night in the middle of the night, he called the company and said, the pillows are on the wrong sides.

BURBANK: Sir, can we offer you a free lion ride?

SAGAL: Exactly.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT”)

THE TOKENS: (Vocalizing).

SAGAL: Coming up, it’s Lightning Fill in the Blank. But first, it’s the game where you have to listen for the rhyme. If you’d like to play on air, call or leave a message at 1-888-WAIT-WAIT. That’s 1-888-924-8924. Or you can catch us live here most weeks at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago. And we will be in New Orleans with special guest John Goodman next week on May 25. We’ll be in Portland, Ore., on July 20 and in Ann Arbor, Mich., on August 31. Hi. You’re on WAIT WAIT… DON’T TELL ME.

LYNN: Hi, my name is Lynn (ph). And I’m calling from Bellingham, Wash.

SAGAL: Bellingham, Wash. That’s great. Right near Seattle, right?

LYNN: It’s about an hour and a half up the 5, but yeah, close enough.

SAGAL: Close enough.

(LAUGHTER)

BURBANK: Lynn, I used to live in Bellingham.

LYNN: Yeah, I believe I’ve heard that before.

BURBANK: OK, sorry. I’ll get a new story.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Well, Lynn, welcome to the show. Bill Kurtis is going to read you three news-related limericks with the last word or phrase missing from each. If you can fill in that last word or phrase correctly in two of the limericks, you’ll be a winner. You ready to play?

LYNN: Absolutely.

SAGAL: Here is your first limerick.

KURTIS: When I drink fizzy drinks or I slurp, my gut is an unhelpful twerp. The gases increase, but I get no release because I’m simply unable to…

LYNN: Burp?

SAGAL: Yes. Very good.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL, APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: A Reddit forum is bringing together sufferers of so-called no burp syndrome, the complete inability to burp. It is a real medical condition known as retrograde cricopharyngeus dysfunction, or RCPD. Basically, if you think it’s embarrassing to burp in public, try an awkward silence that lasts your whole life.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And here’s the thing. There’s now a cure. Doctors inject Botox into a muscle in your throat that allows the muscle to relax and work properly. Plus, your esophagus looks years younger.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: All right. Here is your next limerick.

KURTIS: The open front sweater’s a star again. The love for this look is bipartisan. Brad Pitt knows it’s better. Wear Fred Rogers’ sweater. Yes, everyone’s loving a…

LYNN: Cardigan?

SAGAL: Cardigan. Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: You are good at this.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: The cardigan sweater, originally, you know, known from Mr. Rogers and your grandma in case it gets chilly, is now a cozy status symbol for the rich and famous. According to The Guardian, cardigan sales have skyrocketed after main characters in TV shows like “Beef” and “Succession” have worn them. Some think that these cardigans make these people look, quote, “unthreatening” and, quote, “relatable” because there’s nothing like seeing somebody in a $400 cashmere cardigan that makes you say, huh. All of a sudden, I want Rupert Murdoch to read me a bedtime story.

(LAUGHTER)

BURKE: Do you think this is Putin’s next move? Just, like…

(LAUGHTER)

BURKE: …Bare-chested with a little…

SAGAL: Cardigan. Everybody likes him again.

BURBANK: Riding a lion.

SAGAL: No, it’s all part…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Also wearing a cardigan. Here is your last limerick, Lynn.

KURTIS: The crab walks and bear crawls look funny. They pack quite a punch for my money. Animal flow is the new way to go. To get fit, I will hop like a…

LYNN: Bunny?

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: The latest look in fitness circles is jacked bunny rabbit. Gyms and teachers around the country are now offering, quote, “animal flow” workouts based on the movements of animals, like bunny hopping, crab crawling, clam digging and being eaten by a fox.

(LAUGHTER)

FARSAD: This is the demise of empire that we are witnessing.

SAGAL: It really is.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I mean, at this point, we’re so into our latter days. Why can’t it just end? It’s true.

BURBANK: I’m moving like a 14-year-old dachshund.

(LAUGHTER)

BURBANK: That’s the animal flow that I choose…

SAGAL: Yeah.

BURBANK: …To follow for my personal path. Put a cardigan on, lay down and stare at my belly.

FARSAD: And take a nap.

SAGAL: If all of those animal workouts sound too taxing, you can start with the opossum, where you fall over and pretend to be dead until they carry you out of the gym.

BURKE: Wait. Did they say one of the – you’re supposed to look like a jacked bunny? Is that what they say?

SAGAL: Yeah. Well, the idea is you’re supposed – the…

BURKE: But jacked rabbit is right there.

SAGAL: Dang.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Bill, how did Lynn do on our quiz?

KURTIS: Lynn did us proud. She got every one right.

SAGAL: Congratulations, Lynn.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Lynn, thank you so much for playing. Take care.

LYNN: Bye.

SAGAL: Bye-bye.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “TITI ME PREGUNTO”)

BAD BUNNY: (Singing in Spanish).

SAGAL: It’s now time for our final game, Lightning Fill in the Blank. Each of our players will have 60 seconds in which to answer as many fill-in-the-blank questions as they can – each correct answer now worth two points. Bill, can you give us the score?

KURTIS: We have a three-way tie.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Three-way tie. All right. We’re just going to go down the table. I’m going to pick Adam to go first. The clock will start when I begin your first question. Fill in the blank, Adam. On Wednesday, President Biden said that a deal on the blank could happen as early as next week.

BURKE: Debt ceiling.

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: On Wednesday, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle said they had gotten in a near-catastrophic car chase with blank.

BURKE: Paparazzi.

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: As the G-7 summit begins, the U.S. announced plans to expand sanctions on blank.

BURKE: Russia?

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: On Tuesday, Colorado Congressperson Blank filed for divorce from her husband.

BURKE: Is that Marjorie Taylor Greene?

SAGAL: No, she’s from Georgia. This is Lauren Boebert. Although I understand why you confused them.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: On Wednesday, clinical trials of a universal blank vaccine began.

BURKE: COVID?

SAGAL: Flu, actually. This week, a man in Colorado who was pulled over for reckless driving…

(SOUNDBITE OF GONG)

SAGAL: …Attempted to avoid arrest by blanking.

BURKE: Would it be, by any chance, Peter…

SAGAL: Yes, Adam.

BURKE: …Did he try to switch places with his dog and make it look like the dog was driving the car?

SAGAL: Why, Adam, it was that.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: That’s what happened.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Police said they could clearly see the man put his dog in the driver’s seat and jump over to the passenger seat…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: …As they approached the car.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Would’ve worked, though, except the dog was also totally smashed.

BURKE: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

FARSAD: Oh, I love that story.

SAGAL: Bill, how did Adam do in our quiz?

KURTIS: Four right. Eight more points, 11, and he enjoys the lead.

SAGAL: There you are. All right. Next up is Negin. Negin, please fill in the blank. On Wednesday, the governor of Montana signed a law banning social media site blank.

FARSAD: TikTok.

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: On Thursday, Russia launched its ninth wave of missile attacks against blank.

FARSAD: Ukraine?

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: This week, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay over $75 million to the victims of blank.

FARSAD: Donald Trump.

SAGAL: Ah, no.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Jeffrey Epstein. According to new data, blank prices have dropped to their lowest point in 11 years.

FARSAD: Gas?

SAGAL: Home prices. Proving that people can change their ways, a Chicago man on probation for selling fake White Sox tickets blanked this week.

FARSAD: Sold more fake White Sox tickets.

SAGAL: No. He got busted for selling fake Cubs hats.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: On Tuesday, two poultry workers in England tested positive for the new strain of blank flu.

FARSAD: Bird flu?

SAGAL: Yes. On Thursday…

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: YouTube announced plans to add 30-second unskippable blank to its app.

FARSAD: Unskippable ads.

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: This week, sports legend Bo Jackson revealed…

(SOUNDBITE OF GONG)

SAGAL: …He’d recently tried to get rid of his chronic hiccups by blanking.

FARSAD: Farting.

SAGAL: No, by smelling a porcupine’s butt.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Bo Jackson, who was famously an all-star in football, baseball and porcupine intimacy, has been suffering…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: …From hiccups for over a year and has tried everything to cure them, and we mean everything. While sniffing a porcupine’s butt did not stop his hiccups, it did lead to the Lincoln Park Zoo getting the weirdest five-star review of all time.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Bill, how did Negin do on our quiz?

KURTIS: Pretty good. Four right, eight more points, and her 11 ties her right now with Adam. Very close.

SAGAL: Wow. So that means that Luke needs how many to win?

KURTIS: Five to win.

SAGAL: All right, Luke, this is for the game. Fill in the blank. On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that blank was not liable for terror-related content on the site.

BURBANK: Social media sites?

SAGAL: I’ll give it to you. It’s Twitter.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: According to a whistleblower report, the blank church has a secret $100 billion hedge fund.

BURBANK: The Mormon church.

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: This week, a key defense attorney stepped down from blank’s classified documents case.

BURBANK: Trump’s.

SAGAL: Yes. On Thursday…

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: …It was reported that Senator Blank suffered from additional complications following her shingles diagnosis.

BURBANK: Feinstein.

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: This week, a man in Chicago attempting to rob a subway left empty-handed after he demanded the cashier give him blank.

BURBANK: Soft power.

SAGAL: No. Give him…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: …Quote, “all the bread.”

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: So they did. On Wednesday, a judge ruled that Theranos founder blank must report to prison on May 30.

BURBANK: Elizabeth Holmes.

SAGAL: Right.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: According to a new study, before their extinction, 1.7 billion blanks walked the earth.

BURBANK: Platypus.

SAGAL: T. rexes. Platypuses are still here.

BURBANK: Oh.

(LAUGHTER)

BURBANK: You learn something new every week on the show.

SAGAL: This week, two people in Texas who hid from police…

(SOUNDBITE OF GONG)

SAGAL: …In the attic of a restaurant were caught when one of them blanked.

BURBANK: Fell through the ceiling.

SAGAL: Exactly right, into the men’s bathroom.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: The couple were fleeing the scene of an accident. They looked for a place to hide from police and also a place to be caught in the most embarrassing way possible. Sure, falling through a floor into a toilet stall was tough on the fugitives. But can you imagine being in line at the restaurant to get your food and then hearing that noise from the bathroom?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: They’re all like, yeah, you know, maybe we’ll just go to Sweetgreen.

BURBANK: This isn’t Taco John’s.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Bill, did Luke do well enough to win?

KURTIS: They’re not going to boo him anymore – six right, 12 more points. Fifteen is the winner.

SAGAL: Well, congratulations, Luuuke.

BURBANK: Thank you. Go ride a lion.

SAGAL: Now, panel, who will grace the cover of a major magazine next? Adam Burke.

BURKE: You will be on the cover of Narcissists Monthly, as next issue will be, as every issue is, just a mirror on the front cover.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Negin Farsad.

FARSAD: Steve Buscemi is going to go all stars in pickleball, and he’s going to appear wearing hot shorts.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And Luke Burbank.

BURBANK: Kyrie Irving on the cover of Round Earth Believers Monthly.

(LAUGHTER)

KURTIS: Well, if any of that happens, we’re going to ask you about it on WAIT WAIT… DON’T TELL ME.

SAGAL: Thank you, Bill Kurtis. Thanks also to Adam Burke, Negin Farsad, Luke Burbank.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Thanks to our fabulous audience here at the Studebaker. And thanks to all of you for listening. I am Peter Sagal. We’ll see you next week.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SAGAL: This is NPR.

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1313 L St. in Washington, D.C., was formerly an office building. By the end of this year, it will be home to newly finished apartments.

Richard Morrison, Erin Kenney/NPR

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Richard Morrison, Erin Kenney/NPR

1313 L St. in Washington, D.C., was formerly an office building. By the end of this year, it will be home to newly finished apartments.

Richard Morrison, Erin Kenney/NPR

If you walked past 1313 L St. in Washington, D.C., a few years ago, you would’ve seen a 1980s-style office building. The headquarters for the National Association for the Education of Young Children was red brick, with big windows and the organization’s logo plastered across the side.

But if you walk by the same spot this time next year, you could be looking at a newly finished apartment building with sleek gray siding and a rooftop patio.

The project is one example of a growing real estate trend — converting old, unused office space into apartments. These conversions seem like a win-win: turning a plethora of barely used office space into desperately needed urban housing.

But converting offices into apartments is easier said than done. And while it’s easy to imagine the process behind conversions, like adding in walls and plumbing, it gets complicated.

Out-of-the-way and older office buildings are targets for conversions to apartments

City centers are struggling to fill the gap left by commuters who now come into the office a few days a week, if at all. These workers were patrons of downtown businesses, from restaurants to dry cleaners. Without them, offices are desolate and businesses are shuttering.

To save these downtowns, cities are trying to turn unused office space into housing. San Francisco officials are making efforts to adjust current building codes and get rid of extra fees for office-to-residential projects. In Washington, D.C., the mayor wants to put more money into a tax relief program for office conversions.

Even cities like New York, where many companies have offices, vacancy is becoming a problem. Office vacancy in Manhattan was 15% in May, according to real estate investment firm CBRE.

“The commute has crushed a lot of people’s willingness to trudge into the office every day,” said Jason Alderman, the head of real estate giant Hines’ New York office. He said Hines’ buildings within a half-mile of the major transit hubs Grand Central and Penn Station have higher occupancy rates than others.

But, he added, “buildings that are catering to people — making it exciting to come back to the office or easy to come back to the office — are winning.”

As demand for other office buildings decreases, Hines is considering office-to-apartment conversion projects. Alderman said the company is actively bidding on properties.

Too many rules, not enough incentives

Converting an office building into a residential space can be difficult, and that’s when the building already has the right structure to work with. A lot of buildings don’t — they’re too wide, or have the wrong kind of windows, which makes conversion more expensive. But politics may be a greater factor in a project’s success.

Even as cities try to entice developers to turn office buildings into apartments, they’ve also put up obstacles. In New York, strict zoning rules already impact which buildings — and in some cases, how many floors — can be converted into housing. Rezoning a property for residential use can be timely and costly. Alderman said approval also requires support from politicians, who often add requirements for affordable housing a developer may be unable to afford.

Right now, many developers in New York are adjusting after the expiration of a state tax exemption for builders who include affordable housing in their projects. The exemption played a large role in multifamily housing construction in the city. According to a study from NYU’s Furman Center, 70% of multifamily properties built from 2010-2020 took advantage of the tax exemption.

Alderman said, while he hopes it is reinstated, “That would be both [the city and the state] cooperating together and waving a magic wand. And I’m not holding my breath that that’s going to happen anytime soon.”

The 1313 L St. building, pictured here in December 2021, is being converted into apartments by architecture firm Hickok Cole.

Richard Morrison

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Richard Morrison

The 1313 L St. building, pictured here in December 2021, is being converted into apartments by architecture firm Hickok Cole.

Richard Morrison

In Washington, D.C., the government has exempted downtown projects from affordable housing requirements to encourage developments like the 1313 L St. building, which is being converted by architecture firm Hickok Cole.

“The economics of these projects, they’re not slam dunks,” said Guilherme Almeida, the firm’s director of high performance design. “They actually are pretty complex and expensive projects to execute, so [an affordable-housing requirement] would have disincentivized the creation of more housing downtown.”

Turning offices into homes would be better for the environment than starting from scratch

Building construction produces 11% of global carbon emissions, according to the World Green Building Council. It can take up to 80 years for a new, energy-efficient building to offset its own carbon emissions, according to a study by the National Historic Preservation Fund’s Preservation Green Lab. The fund’s former sustainability director, Patrice Frey, said reusing an existing building can reduce emissions dramatically.

“I don’t think we can think of our resources as so expendable that we can just continue to build and abandon or build and demolish,” Frey said. “We’ve really got to think more sustainably about using what we’ve got.”

She said one reason behind the commercial real estate and housing crises is that over the last few decades, developers built with one use in mind, whether it be office space or residential. She’s hopeful that in time, the industry will shift to designing buildings that are more adaptable to changing needs.

“That mentality, that thinking about flexible, adaptable space has to be integrated into everything we construct into the future,” Frey said. “Because we’ve got to be designing for centuries, not for decades.”

The post Turning workplaces into residences might assist save downtowns, but it surely’s sophisticated : NPR appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

RICHARD MANNING: Eight times in my life, I’ve run into grizzlies.

RAMTIN ARABLOUEI, HOST:

This is Richard Manning, talking to us from Montana. He’s a journalist. He’s also the author of “Against The Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization.” And back in 1996, he was working on a book about the business of agriculture. In the process of reporting that book, he decided he needed to go to the mecca of America’s corn industry to meet its king.

MANNING: So I got on the train in Montana and rode the Empire Builder.

ARABLOUEI: A train that took him east, all the way through North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and eventually to a little town called Decatur.

MANNING: Decatur.

ARABLOUEI: Decatur, Ill.

MANNING: Which was ground zero – ADM’s headquarters.

ARABLOUEI: ADM stands for Archer-Daniels-Midland. They were one of the biggest farming businesses in the U.S. at that time. And Richard was hunting for an interview with their CEO. So he gets off the train.

MANNING: Check in a motel and put in a call – and I said, hey, I want to talk to Dwayne Andreas. And I got his secretary.

RUND ABDELFATAH, HOST:

You may have never heard of him, but in the 1970s, Dwayne Andreas was one of the biggest names in the U.S. He was a politically connected CEO of one of the country’s biggest companies. He was friends with American presidents and world leaders, and he rarely did interviews. He was mysterious and probably wanted to keep it that way.

MANNING: You know, he didn’t have to talk. He had a PR department. They were doing those wonderful ads, and that’s all he wanted people to see. He didn’t want the curtain pulled aside. There was no reason he’d talk to me. None.

ABDELFATAH: So Richard goes out to get some dinner and, honestly, at this point, he thinks he has zero chance of getting a call back.

MANNING: I had almost no hope of meeting Dwayne Andreas.

(SOUNDBITE OF ANSWERING MACHINE BEEPING)

MANNING: Go back to my motel room, and there’s a phone message.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) This is a message for Richard Manning. Please call back to Archer-Daniel-Midland (ph) at 217…

(SOUNDBITE OF DIAL TONE)

ABDELFATAH: There’s no recording, but here’s how he remembers it.

(SOUNDBITE OF TOUCH TONES)

MANNING: I call back the number…

(SOUNDBITE OF RINGBACK TONE)

MANNING: And I said, this is Richard Manning returning this, you know, call. And I got a secretary, of course. And they said, just a moment.

(SOUNDBITE OF ELEVATOR HOLD MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: Richard thought he was just going to get a spokesperson. And if he was lucky, maybe he would get Martin Andreas, the brother of Dwayne Andreas, who would then offer no comment, and then Richard would hang up and do another night or two in Illinois before heading back to Montana. But then…

(SOUNDBITE OF THROAT BEING CLEARED)

MANNING: A few seconds later, a voice comes on the line…

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As Dwayne Andreas) Hello?

MANNING: …This kind of gruff voice. And he says…

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As Dwayne Andreas) Manning – this is Andreas.

MANNING: I said, oh, Martin Andreas. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As Dwayne Andreas) No, this is Dwayne Andreas.

ARABLOUEI: Wow. You probably had no expectation of that being the voice on the other side of the phone, given how elusive he was.

MANNING: I was floored. I was absolutely floored.

ARABLOUEI: Richard had just gotten an invite from Dwayne Andreas himself to come visit the ADM offices. So he gets in his car and drives there and sees a regular old office building.

MANNING: It looked kind of like 1950s Soviet bloc architecture.

ARABLOUEI: When he walks in, it doesn’t get any flashier. But right away, he notices something.

MANNING: There was, at the front door, I think – it was a statue of Ronald Reagan.

ARABLOUEI: The company was also fond of quoting John F. Kennedy in its public materials – you know, ask not what your country can do for you. Andreas worked with politicians from both sides of the aisle as long as it benefited ADM. And then, there was his appearance.

MANNING: Nothing spectacular – he was ordinarily dressed, like a Lutheran minister, with a – I think a blazer or something on.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MANNING: He reminded me of an Irish bartender in some ways.

ARABLOUEI: But when Andreas started talking, Richard saw the businessman come out.

MANNING: Very blunt, very direct and kind of pugnacious – right out front. And right away, it’s – this is the kind of source I like – you know? – because I don’t care if I disagree with anything he says. It’s not the point. The point is, he’s going to be blunt with me. It wasn’t like frisking a seal.

ARABLOUEI: Frisking a seal.

MANNING: He didn’t beat around the bush in the slightest in the interview.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: Richard couldn’t believe that he was sitting there, jotting down notes, while Dwayne Andreas spoke openly and bluntly about the business of agriculture and politics. Because, as Richard told us, Andreas was the…

MANNING: One guy – he was at the very pinnacle. He was the top person – one person at the top of the pyramid of industrial agriculture. So I could look at this whole system that was on the ground through the entire midsection of the country. And if you trace it up through, you know, the farmer to the guy the farmer sells to, who mills, who goes on up, level on level, you get Dwayne Andreas.

ABDELFATAH: Richard spent hours there with Dwayne, just chatting it up.

MANNING: We would talk about the free market. And he says, well, that’s nonsense. There’s no such thing as free market in agriculture.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: No free market in agriculture. Dwayne Andreas used that philosophy to make ADM a multibillion-dollar corporation. And this didn’t just come through selling corn to make popcorn or corn on the cob. He helped devise a scheme to make corn into sugar – a plan that would earn ADM billions and change the way everyone eats around the world.

ARABLOUEI: But Dwayne Andreas wasn’t reinventing the wheel. He was the next step in a 400-year process that took sugar from a rare delicacy for the wealthy to a part of our everyday lives, our culture and our bodies – a process that began on the brutal sugar plantations of Haiti and was eventually marketed to everyone, confronting us all with an impossible moral dilemma.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: In this episode of THROUGHLINE from NPR, we’re going to jump through time and space to visit the people who schemed and those who suffered to bring us sweetness.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

IRENE: Hi, this is Irene calling from Everett, Wash. I just spent the last couple of months listening to every episode of this podcast. And honestly, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all of the time that I have, and I’m really sad about it. You’re listening to THROUGHLINE from NPR.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Part one – the circular trade.

ANYA STEINBERG, BYLINE: OK. OK.

(SOUNDBITE OF CAR DOOR SLAMMING SHUT)

STEINBERG: OK.

SIERRA: Let’s do this.

STEINBERG: Let’s do this. OK, so I am in the parking lot of WinCo Foods in Shoreline, Wash., which is just a little bit north of where I live.

ARABLOUEI: This is Anya Steinberg. She’s a producer here at THROUGHLINE. And we recently sent her on a mission to the grocery store.

STEINBERG: OK, so what we’re doing right now is I’m going to take you guys grocery shopping with me – and basically just a normal grocery trip, but I’m going to see, like, how much sugar I would buy in a week’s worth of groceries.

ARABLOUEI: Yeah, that’s right. Anya is going on some Willy-Wonka-type journey into the deep abyss of American sugar shopping.

STEINBERG: And the best part of this will be that I look like an idiot walking around the store talking to myself.

(LAUGHTER)

ARABLOUEI: Well, not totally to herself – she’s got a few of her roommates, Nelly and Sierra, who you’ll hear in the background, with her. OK, so here’s the mission exactly. They have to check the nutritional label of everything they throw in their cart, and then, at the end, basically tally up the total grams of sugar in the food they bought – simple. So they started with the produce.

STEINBERG: Bananas. They’re for smoothies.

Do you want a lemon?

SIERRA: Yeah.

STEINBERG: OK, grab one. I don’t know. You can have even more than one (laughter) – daughter.

SIERRA: I don’t know.

ARABLOUEI: But then they went to the other aisles of the store – the place where all the processed foods are – the breads, sweets, cereals, drinks. And this is where it got interesting.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

STEINBERG: We’re going crazy. Grab some Arizona iced tea. Yes.

SIERRA: Is that too much?

STEINBERG: No.

I’m not seeing any of the salsas that I like, and now I’m sad.

I used to have a Reese’s Puffs addiction.

I’m going to get some bread.

That’s a lot.

This one has five.

Oh, my God.

NELLY: Five grams?

STEINBERG: Five grams.

That’s a lot.

SIERRA: I got some stuff.

STEINBERG: Yes.

NELLY: Yeah.

STEINBERG: Wasabi peas.

Sugar.

In the bulk section…

Honey mustard?

Barbecue chips.

NELLY: Sugar.

STEINBERG: OK, this ice cream has about as much sugar in one serving as the yogurt does.

NELLY: No way.

STEINBERG: And this is…

NELLY: Holy sh**. That’s crazy.

STEINBERG: Who knew?

NELLY: Who knew?

STEINBERG: I might as well just eat ice cream with granola instead of the (laughter)…

NELLY: That’s what I’m saying.

STEINBERG: Why do I even try to be healthy?

ARABLOUEI: And when they were done, they went to the checkout. They added up all the sugar…

STEINBERG: Mac and cheese – four grams of sugar.

Hot dog buns – three grams of sugar.

Tomato ketchup – four grams of sugar in a tablespoon.

Nature Valley granola bars – 11 grams of sugar.

Honey Nut Cheerios – 12 grams of sugar.

ARABLOUEI: …And this was the result.

STEINBERG: We bought 1,434 grams of sugar total, and that’s a week’s worth of groceries.

ARABLOUEI: For Anya and her roommates, this works out to about 71 grams of sugar per person per day. That’s about the average for most Americans, but it’s also nearly triple the number the American Heart Association recommends.

(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS CALLING)

ARABLOUEI: Sugar hasn’t always been in everything. In fact, for most of human history, most people only really had a few options to sweeten food – things like honey or dates. But once sugar started spreading, it went fast.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ARABLOUEI: Sugar cane was first cultivated in New Guinea and Southeast Asia thousands of years ago. Then, it made it to South Asia and the Middle East. And by the Middle Ages, in Baghdad, one of the biggest, wealthiest cities in the world, there was a legit cookbook containing recipes that use sugar. There’s a saffron rice cream, actually, that sounds incredible. Eventually, sugar reached Europe and West Africa, but this was not for the average person. Sugar was for the rich.

ELIZABETH ABBOTT: A status symbol – very, very wealthy people stuff.

ABDELFATAH: This is Elizabeth Abbott.

ABBOTT: I’m a writer and an historian.

ABDELFATAH: And she wrote a book called…

ABBOTT: “Sugar: A Bittersweet History.”

ABDELFATAH: Elizabeth says that sugar was used by rich people to flex – to show off their wealth.

ABBOTT: For example, you might have a feast, and all the cutlery and all the dishes would be made out of sugar.

ARABLOUEI: Wow.

ABBOTT: And then, when you were finished with the food, you would eat the plate and eat the cutlery. You might have a life-sized statue of an elephant or a forest or a castle made of sugar.

ABDELFATAH: People were willing to pay anything for it, especially in Europe.

ABBOTT: They craved it, and there was a demand for it. And that demand, of course, was welcomed and exploited by producers of sugar cane or would-be producers of sugar cane.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: Sugar cane grows best in warm, tropical climates, so European traders needed to go to Africa or Asia to get it. In the 14- and 1500s, Portuguese traders tried to establish their own sugar plantations on islands off the coast of West Africa. And when the Europeans began to colonize the Americas, they brought their sugar plantations with them, and this triggered one of the darkest chapters in human history.

(SOUNDBITE OF THUNDER CRACKING)

ARABLOUEI: It was the sugar plantations of Brazil and the Caribbean that really kickstarted the transatlantic slave trade. Hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans were brought to produce the sugar that would be sold to Europeans.

ABBOTT: And then it started filtering down. And the idea was, if we can get poor people to eat it, we’ll sell way more. So instead of selling it to rich people at a very high price, we’ll sell it to way more people, but we have to have a lower price. They can’t afford it otherwise.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ARABLOUEI: It was that desire to sell more sugar faster in the European market that started the process which leads to our worldwide cultural addiction to sweetness. Because it’s in the 1700s, in the Americas, where sugar became an internationally traded commodity – more and more available to more and more people. In fact, at one point, in the early 1700s, nearly half of the world’s sugar was produced by enslaved Africans on one island in the Caribbean.

NATHALIE FREDERIC PIERRE: Planters in Saint-Domingue, which is colonial Haiti – they are able to develop algorithmic formula that says that it is cheaper to work an enslaved African to death within seven years than to invest in purchasing a fresh saltwater African from Africa.

ARABLOUEI: This is…

PIERRE: Nathalie Frederic Pierre. I am an assistant professor of African diaspora history at Howard University.

ABDELFATAH: Nathalie’s specialty is Haiti in the 1700s. She says that sugar plantations on the island are where early forms of modern industrial agriculture were born. Sugar cane was planted, harvested and processed on these massive plantations, where life for the enslaved was brutal.

PIERRE: Part of the reason their life spans were so short was because of the hectic and frenetic pace of processing sugar cane into sugar.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABBOTT: Sugar is a very difficult crop. It’s known as the thirsty crop, and it’s very demanding.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: In Haiti, on the western half of Hispaniola, it began with clearing the land.

PIERRE: It’s one of the largest Caribbean islands, but it’s also very mountainous. So we just need to imagine the labor it took for enslaved African people to clear mountainous land to create pathways for these mega plantations to be created.

ABBOTT: It was all on the backs of slaves. They had to work until they literally couldn’t anymore.

PIERRE: Enslaved people are waking up before dawn – so this is anywhere between 3:30 a.m., the latest 6 a.m. You’re up. You’re on the fields.

ABBOTT: They had to work from, you know, before sunup to after sundown.

(SOUNDBITE OF FIRE CRACKLING)

ABDELFATAH: Half a million people were enslaved in Haiti. Generation after generation would endure these unimaginable conditions to make sure the world got its sugar.

(SOUNDBITE OF FIRE CRACKLING)

ABBOTT: It was hot. It wasn’t just the weather. There was so much burning. Imagine, on top of the heat, you have to be burning cane and burning fields and so on. And you’re fleeing rats and snakes. You know, it was awful.

ABDELFATAH: Then, it was time to plant.

ABBOTT: Everything was very, very, almost industrially done. Everything was in a straight line, must be this far apart. White supervisors would go through the land, and they’d mark it off with sort of knotted strings. And you had to do it there. And you had to do it really fast, and you had to do it really well. It had to be a certain depth and a certain width. It had to be really well done, or you’d get, you know, in serious trouble and whipped if you did it wrong.

The next step was readying the soil for planting cane tops. They would have to – it wasn’t just to put the cane top in there. They had to put it in with manure, seaweed or sludge – something that would fertilize it – before they covered it with earth.

ABDELFATAH: After a year, the sugar cane was ready to harvest, which began another brutal phase.

PIERRE: These sugar cane stalks are, on average, between 5 feet to 12 feet long. These are massive stalks of cane.

ARABLOUEI: And how were they cutting them down?

PIERRE: They were cutting them with machetes.

ABBOTT: Every inch of what you did every second of your day, pretty much – programmed and timed and counted. It was all quantified.

PIERRE: This was causing a lot of enslaved laborers’ limbs to be cut off accidentally because of the pace of the labor.

ABDELFATAH: Once the sugar cane stalks are harvested, then they’re processed into sugar on site, at the plantation, in facilities that contain dangerous cauldrons with boiling water.

ABBOTT: So they had to boil it. And this was where the head boiler – if he made a mistake, he could ruin an entire field of sugar.

PIERRE: These mills were very, very dangerous. You have to stay alert in order to not lose a limb or to not fall into it because, in order – like, I want to give you the image of the English chimney sweep. Like, you need to really get in there. And if the other person who is attending to part of that milling machine is – lapses for 30 seconds, you’re in there, and you’re being mauled.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

PIERRE: So in many of the images we have from the 18th and 19th centuries, you see all of these enslaved laborers who are disabled as a result of processing sugar.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABBOTT: On large plantations, the cutting, milling, boiling, distilling cycle went on day and night for five months. So if you had different fields being planted at different times, it never stopped. It was said by sugar scholar Sidney Mintz to be probably the first, you know, assembly line in history.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: And the proto assembly lines of Caribbean sugar plantations helped fuel the burgeoning economies of Europe.

PIERRE: Slavery in the Americas is one of the engines that birthed modern capitalism, in that the cash crop production of coffee, indigo, tobacco, sugar generate massive amounts of wealth for European countries. Sugar is a calorie-dense product that European monarchs and then governments quickly come to learn function as stimulants to keep their workers alert.

ABBOTT: The Industrial Revolution meant that people were – they were working 12, 14, 16 hours away from home. They couldn’t – they physically couldn’t do it if they didn’t have, you know, sustaining food.

PIERRE: The calorie denseness of sugar surpasses something like cabbage, which was a staple of the European diet before this cash crop emerges. Some historians have argued that sugar enables the Industrial Revolution in Europe. And it’s this circular trade. It’s all linked to each other, and it’s generating massive profits.

ARABLOUEI: Now it’s the 1970s. We’re in farm country in the U.S., and here, the farming has turned into a kind of factory driven by machines, fertilizers and pesticides. Here, sugar doesn’t fuel the profits. Instead, it’s crops like wheat, soy and corn. Producers are thriving, but, of course, there’s also a cost.

MANNING: And it’s done by factory farming, which means that you strip the ground down to zero. You put a very highly engineered seed on top of a specific amount of water and a specific amount of fertilizer, and you take off those crops at the end. It’s all about high yield of corn.

ARABLOUEI: Since World War II, farmers had increasingly relied on big corporations to sell at the scale they needed to, companies like Archer Daniels Midland, aka ADM, run by Dwayne Andreas.

MANNING: It was also beginning to be the era of contract farming, where people like ADM would go to farmers and say, here’s a contract. Here’s exactly how you will grow the wheat. Here’s how much fertilizer you will apply to it. Here’s the price we will pay you in the fall when you produce. So they are essentially robots. And that area of industrial agriculture was the habitat for ADM, that they could then exploit that because they had control. They had regularity. They had predictability. And they had uniformity.

ARABLOUEI: And they had corn.

MANNING: It was corn that you can keep forever in a bin and grind up and sell as a bunch of different products and processed food.

ARABLOUEI: Dwayne Andreas was basically a corn dealer.

MANNING: He had intimately come to know it for 20 or 30 years and learned how to play that game perfectly.

ABDELFATAH: Coming up, Dwayne Andreas plays the game and wins.

PATRICK: This is Patrick from Frankfort, Ill., and you’re listening to THROUGHLINE from NPR. So I work in a warehouse, and unloading shipping containers and loading boxes around all day can be pretty taxing work, but it’s a lot more palatable when I know that I can sit down and watch and listen to some really compelling history. You know the story.

OLIVIA CHILKOTI, BYLINE: Part 2 – the medium is delicious.

ARABLOUEI: In the 1700s and 1800s, as Haiti was producing massive amounts of sugar, the price of the commodity dropped. For working-class people, it became first accessible, then essential. Many factory families lived almost completely on sugared tea, bread and jam. But here’s the thing. Even though all of this sugar was being consumed in Europe, it still wasn’t enough to take up all the supply being produced on sugar plantations. So companies in the sugar trade were going to need to figure out new ways to package and sell their product, and that is where the marketing comes in.

ABBOTT: It – really, the history of sugar is in many ways the history of fantastic marketing, of people who had an interest in selling more of this product figuring out ways to get people to consume more sugar.

DEVIN KATAYAMA, BYLINE: (Reading) Lowney’s Chocolate Bonbons is the gateway to the good graces of those who love the good things in life. Lowney’s Chocolate Bonbons contains only the choicest chocolate and purest cane sugar.

ABBOTT: For example, in the 1840s, before you started having mass sugar everywhere, hard candy was one way of getting into people.

CHILKOTI: (Reading) Mothers, give children Klein’s. Let them have it every day for their recess lunch. Teach them to enjoy it.

ABBOTT: It’s delicious. It lasts quite long. You can sell it in individually really tiny quantities. You could get people addicted to it. You could start with children. And there was now the concept of marketing to children. This is very, very new.

CHILKOTI: (Reading) Aside from being the most deliciously tasteful chocolate candy, Klein’s has real nutritive value. Every bar the children eat is equivalent to drinking a tumblerful of sweet, creamy milk.

ARABLOUEI: All the marketing they were doing in magazines and newspapers was having an impact. They were changing the way we speak. Sugary products were being connected to the idea of happiness or love, a sentimental value that matches the physical feeling you get when you eat sugar.

ABBOTT: Before, you didn’t court someone with candy. You courted them with brushing your teeth, maybe, and washing your hands and being nice and maybe memorizing some poetry. Now you would bring them something, some chocolates, and in a box – I mean, my God, you were absolutely irresistible.

KATAYAMA: (Reading) Tell her now. Tell her often. Love does not live by calendars alone. Give Whitman’s chocolates. It’s the thoughtful thing to do.

ABBOTT: Look what you call people, sweetheart, sugar, honey. We call people that because that means we like them, right? You don’t say, I wonder what he means by sweetheart. You know? He doesn’t mean you piece of s***, right? He means something wonderful.

ABDELFATAH: These advertisements were among the first of their kind, right there at the birth of modern marketing. And one of the first innovators was a company called Cadbury. Yeah, that Cadbury, Cadbury eggs. It was first established in 1824 by John Cadbury in Birmingham, England. He began by selling tea, coffee and hot chocolate from a small store. But over time, Cadbury grew into a multinational corporation that sold all kinds of sugar-filled products, from Easter eggs to milk chocolate bars. And almost from the beginning, Cadbury understood that the way a product was presented and marketed was essential.

ABBOTT: How about the box of chocolates? How about it being beautiful? How about it being meaningful? How about it being gorgeous? How about it being expensive, tied with a ribbon?

ABDELFATAH: In 1861, Cadbury created fancy boxes, a decorated box of chocolates. And in 1868, they were sold in boxes in the shape of a heart for Valentine’s Day. These quickly became an iconic symbol of love.

ABBOTT: This is a very clever thought that marketers today would probably be very, very envious of if they sat and parsed exactly how it was done.

ABDELFATAH: Over the course of the 19th century, Cadbury became known for clever advertising and beautiful packaging. Its chocolates were sold around the world. But there was another thing about John Cadbury and his family. They were Quakers, and they were abolitionists.

ARABLOUEI: Abolitionists were at the top of a business dominated by slave trade sugar. Now, there’s no direct evidence that the Cadburys bought slave sugar, but they did buy cocoa from a Portuguese colony that used indentured servants after slavery was outlawed, and eventually, under public pressure, they stopped. But the Cadbury moral dilemma points to something we must all contend with. What level of brutality and exploitation will we accept as a society in order to get the things we want but do not need? – a question that haunts every part of this story.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: The nation’s meat market and bread basket. Five of the plains states are part of the corn belt.

UNIDENTIFIED FARMER: Farming has gotten a lot more complicated since I was a boy. We’re sure more mechanized now.

ABDELFATAH: This is from an educational video made by Coronet Films in the 1970s that was shown to kids in some schools around the country.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED FARMER: And those decisions we used to make by experience or the Almanac or just feelings in our bones – well, now we make some of them with the help of college professors and computers.

ABDELFATAH: By the late 1970s, the farming industry in the U.S. had become a huge, complex system, and the federal government was underwriting most of it by providing subsidies. Subsidies are basically sums of money granted by the government to industries. And this encouraged farmers to produce more and more every year.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Because so much of the food you buy has been freeze dried, homogenized, sterilized, emulsified, stabilized, pressurized and advertised.

ABDELFATAH: Subsidies tend to favor large-scale operations that grow only one thing. And in the corn belt, it was, well, corn. Billions of dollars in subsidies meant American farmers could pump out billions of bushels of corn a year. This transition from local to massive industrial agriculture was one that ADM CEO Dwayne Andreas knew all too well. He grew up in it.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MANNING: He was rags to riches. He was just an ordinary Iowa guy who got involved in early kind of embryonic forms of agribusiness.

ARABLOUEI: Dwayne Andreas was born in 1918, the fifth of six children in a Mennonite family. He grew up on his family’s farm in Iowa. Farming was in the water, and business was in his blood. Dwayne never finished college. Instead, he dropped out to work at a family business that they would eventually sell to the agricultural giant Cargill. And that launched his journey into the industry of agriculture.

MANNING: And then he worked his way up in the business at a couple of different companies before he actually bought into ADM and then ran that up into what it became.

TOM PHILPOTT: You know, this guy is, like, a high roller who explicitly figures out how to make money from government programs.

ARABLOUEI: This is Tom Philpott.

PHILPOTT: I was, for many years, the food and agriculture coordinator for Mother Jones magazine, and I’m now a researcher at the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University.

ARABLOUEI: Tom says Dwayne Andreas understood the game. He figured out how to leverage tax breaks and government subsidies to reap profits for ADM.

PHILPOTT: His political connections are just, I mean, absolute legend. At least starting in the ’80s, he was hearing this critique that, you know, your company is based on corporate welfare. You are a creature of the government. He did not give a damn. He would almost embrace that.

ARABLOUEI: He was like the Forrest Gump of 1970s politics. He was everywhere. He even had an indirect role in the Nixon Watergate scandal. Andreas was close to Nixon, and a $25,000 check he’d written to a Nixon fundraiser ended up in a bank account used by the Watergate burglars.

PHILPOTT: There wasn’t, like, a memo on the bottom of the checks that said, use this to break into the Watergate to – you know, but he wrote that check.

ARABLOUEI: And he did all of this strategically.

PHILPOTT: This is, like, a very smart investment for him. Like, you invest a dollar in politicians; you probably get $20 back in profits. ADM was unusual in Washington because they hired no lobbyists in Washington. And that was because they didn’t need to. Dwayne Andreas was essentially their walking, talking lobbyist.

ABDELFATAH: And when crisis struck, Andreas was ready.

Coming up, Dwayne Andreas gets a gift from the agricultural gods, uses his political chops to turn corn into sugar and fills our bodies with a new kind of sweetness.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

THOMAS HOWE: Hi, I’m Thomas Howe (ph), and I’m calling from my taxonomy lab in Ester, Alaska. And you’re listening to THROUGHLINE from NPR.

ABDELFATAH: Part three – the fifth century.

ARABLOUEI: In the 1970s, the U.S. was shaken by a crisis.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED NEWSCASTER #1: Oil prices have been more than doubled by the oil producing nations of the Middle East.

ARABLOUEI: Some countries in the Middle East imposed a strict oil embargo, drastically limiting the amount of oil they exported to the U.S. Gas prices shot through the roof. And as we all know, when gas prices rise, American voters get pissed.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: I have said to myself and to others that this is a Pearl Harbor again as far as the United States is concerned because of the fact that it envisions a whole change in our lifestyle, a whole change in the way this country has been built.

ARABLOUEI: Americans were demanding that the U.S. become less reliant on Middle Eastern oil.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED NEWSCASTER #2: Many energy planners fear that this reliance could have grave foreign policy and economic problems for us in the years ahead.

ARABLOUEI: And that meant the American president, Jimmy Carter, had a problem he needed solved quickly.

ABDELFATAH: Luckily for President Carter, where much of America saw crisis, one man saw an opportunity.

PHILPOTT: And so Dwayne Andreas sells Jimmy Carter on this idea of subsidize me to make ethanol.

ABDELFATAH: Dwayne Andreas was close with Carter, and he proposed solving the energy crisis with ethanol, a super-pure form of alcohol made from corn. Ethanol could be mixed with gasoline and used as fuel, which could help stretch the U.S.’s oil supply further.

PHILPOTT: Give me tax breaks for every gallon of ethanol I make and I’ll improve energy independence.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BOB HOPE: What’s Texaco doing in a field of corn? Not growing it. Texaco is making gasohol. It’s a mixture of 90% Texaco unleaded gasoline and 10% ethanol made from renewable crops like corn. Gasohol can’t replace gasoline…

ABDELFATAH: President Carter supported the idea, and for Dwayne Andreas, it was perfect. ADM had a new stream of tax-exempt business for another corn product and Carter could take credit for addressing gas prices. Crisis was an opportunity for Andreas. But at some point, every crisis comes to an end.

PHILPOTT: Gas prices go from the stratosphere down to really cheap again. Ethanol no longer makes very much sense when the country is awash in gas. He’s got this problem where he’s invested in these ethanol factories, but there’s not enough demand to really keep them humming.

ABDELFATAH: And then Dwayne Andreas comes up with a second sweeter idea.

PHILPOTT: I can use these same factories that I produce ethanol with to create high fructose corn syrup.

ARABLOUEI: High fructose corn syrup. It was originally invented in the 1950s as a sweetener alternative, but it never really got big. By the time Dwayne Andreas stumbled across it…

PHILPOTT: It was a product in search of a use.

ARABLOUEI: …He just had to figure out how to sell it.

PHILPOTT: So he’s got this product and it’s a sweetener, and it’s really, really sweet. But the problem is that it’s too expensive.

ARABLOUEI: He can’t sell it at a price that’s competitive with regular old cane sugar. So ADM has to come up with another scheme and pull on more political levers to find a way to make high fructose corn syrup a viable business.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

RONALD REAGAN: I’m the president of the United States.

ABDELFATAH: President Ronald Reagan steps up to a podium. It’s a crisp fall day, and he’s wearing a long tan coat over his usual suit and tie. At the podium, he’s dwarfed by an enormous metal bin behind him, a bin filled to the brim with corn.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

REAGAN: This is quite a show you’re putting on here. And what a pleasure it is for me to be back home in Illinois.

ABDELFATAH: He’s speaking to a crowd gathered at a family-run farm in the heart of America’s Corn Belt.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

REAGAN: Year after year here in the Midwest, you produce from your rich black earth about a full harvest called the American equivalent of the oil riches in the Persian Gulf.

ARABLOUEI: Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in 1980 and became president in 1981. His presidential campaign was full of patriotism. It was aimed at the hearts of farmers in America’s heartland, all across the Midwest. On the campaign trail, he promised to put profit back in farming and put farmers’ interests above the world market. In other words, he promised to make America great again. And for Dwayne Andreas, this rhetoric presented another opportunity.

PHILPOTT: Jimmy Carter leaves office in 1980. Ronald Reagan takes over. You know, for most people, that’s a big contrast. To Dwayne Andreas, he’s just a political power player. He’s just as tight with Ronald Reagan. And so he goes to work with his lobbying to create a quota on sugar.

ABDELFATAH: A quota on sugar.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: Basically, Dwayne Andreas’ plan was to promote the idea of putting limits on foreign sugar to protect domestic sugar companies.

PHILPOTT: There’s this history of colonialism and slavery in the Caribbean. And with decolonization in the 20th century, there’s still these awful sugar plantations that are able to produce sugar really cheap. And this sugar is coming in and sort of overwhelming the American market.

ABDELFATAH: Sugar producers in states like Florida are organizing. Like…

PHILPOTT: How can we stop this? And they get a key ally in Dwayne Andreas.

ARABLOUEI: He throws his support behind them like, yeah, absolutely. We got to put Florida’s sugar farmers first. We got to slow down the importing of foreign sugar.

PHILPOTT: And so what the sugar quota does is, it says only a certain amount of – and a rather small amount – of foreign sugar can come into the United States. And once you’ve hit that quota, imports of sugar are banned. And so that is protecting the domestic sugar industry.

ABDELFATAH: But you might be asking…

PHILPOTT: Why would Dwayne Andreas do that?

ARABLOUEI: Yeah, why would he help the competition in the sweetener market? It’s because he’s thinking bigger.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

PHILPOTT: It turns out that because there’s this quota in place, it raises the price of sugar because American producers are no longer competing with producers in the Caribbean.

MANNING: And so all they did was make high-fructose corn syrup all that more competitive.

PHILPOTT: So the price of sugar rises fairly steeply. And now, suddenly, high-fructose corn syrup is cheaper than conventional sugar. And it’s also a liquid.

ABDELFATAH: A liquid that could go into pretty much any processed food.

PHILPOTT: And he immediately starts making deals with Coca-Cola and other soft drink manufacturers. You’ve got to try this stuff. It’s cheaper. It’s blindingly sweet, you know? You only have to use so much of it.

MANNING: If you were Coca-Cola, you didn’t care if it was cane sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. You didn’t care as long as you sold a can of Coke to somebody. So it just became cheaper.

PHILPOTT: And then, slowly, other industries start to find uses for it. It goes into baked goods, TV dinner makers. It just, you know, takes this market by storm.

ABDELFATAH: And what about the sugar industry? Did they realize they were being duped?

PHILPOTT: I think the sugar industry was none too pleased with this development. But they – you know, they made their deal with the devil. And they lived with it.

ABDELFATAH: The strategy works. Within a few years, high-fructose corn syrup captures the sweetener market. It doubled in use by 1985. The American diet was transformed. And sweetness would never be the same.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ARABLOUEI: High-fructose corn syrup isn’t used as much today as it was in the late 1980s. But high-fructose corn syrup and other corn-based sweeteners still make up a big portion of the sweetener market. And per capita, Americans are among the biggest consumers of sweeteners in the world. And excessive consumption of these sweeteners is associated with all kinds of health problems, like obesity, diabetes and high cholesterol. You could argue that they’ve changed our bodies, our sense of taste and even the way our societies function.

ABDELFATAH: And it all happened behind the scenes. Industrial agriculture allowed for the mass production and distribution of corn-based sweeteners. The results of that process are delicious, enticing even seductive. Yet, we rarely get to truly understand its costs. And this was the case even back in the 1700s, when the world began its love affair with sugar. While Europeans were chugging their sugar-filled coffee and tea, people on the other side of the world in Haiti were suffering and dying to produce it.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

PIERRE: The productivity of sugar in colonial Haiti was a direct result of the violence meted out on the people, who become Haitian.

ABDELFATAH: But the bill for these sins would eventually have to be paid. In 1791, after generations of death and misery, the Haitian people rose up and revolted.

(SHOUTING)

PIERRE: I think there’s a direct correlation between that type of violence and the success of the Haitian Revolution. The lived memory of that type of experience…

ABDELFATAH: It created one choice.

PIERRE: Liberty or death.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: The Haitian Revolution was, in many ways, a sugar revolution carried out for liberation from the oppressive, violent life that Europe’s insatiable demands for sugar and profit had created.

PIERRE: What’s ironic about that, in a sardonic sense, is that the same machetes that were used to cut down sugar cane are, during the Haitian Revolution, one of the primary weapons that these formerly enslaved laborers have to fight against the British, Spanish and French militaries.

(SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSIONS)

ARABLOUEI: The Haitian Revolution was the first of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. It shocked the Western world. This thing, sugar, that provided easy calories and enjoyment was the source of such human misery. It was a moral contradiction that people had to grapple with.

PIERRE: This grappling is one of the most fascinating part of Enlightenment text.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Reading) Alas, said Candide, it is the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong.

ARABLOUEI: The 18th century French philosopher Voltaire wrote a book called “Candide” in which there’s an episode where the main character witnesses the horror of a sugar plantation in the Caribbean when he meets a disfigured enslaved man on the road.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Reading) When we work at the sugar canes and the mills snatched hold of a finger, they cut off the hand. And when we attempt to run away, they cut off the leg. Both cases have happened to me. This is the price at which you eat sugar in Europe.

PIERRE: They’re debating these things ’cause though they can intellectually philosophize about the relationship between the coffee and the sugar that is at their desk, are you going to give up that? Are you going to – are you really going to give that up?

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: After the Haitian Revolution, the answer was no. The world did not give up sugar. The machine didn’t stop churning.

PIERRE: The technology that sugar planters learned in Haiti, they simply leave colonial Haiti and come to the U.S. They come to Cuba. They just migrate with the technology and, unfortunately, their enslaved people. So there are massive swaths of people who fought in the Haitian Revolution who end up dying in what becomes the Louisiana Territories or in Cuba because capitalism is going to capitalism, and sugar by this point is such a necessary part of the Atlantic diet.

PHILPOTT: The genius of the system is that you don’t think about any of that when you’re enjoying it. We have this system that is in place that we are all part of. You know, we were born into this system where we have all these really unhealthy foods at our disposal for very cheap. So there’s a strong systematic part of it, but systems don’t arise out of nowhere. They’re made by people. And I think it’s really important for us to, as we look at these systems and we examine them – well, who are the people that were behind them? Who are the architects of these systems?

PIERRE: How do you condense five centuries of a product’s evolution and then tell the low-income descendants of the initial producers the same product that caused the enslavement of your ancestors is one of the leading causes to the illnesses that predominate? Because there are individual choices, but there are also structures that make those choices feasible.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ARABLOUEI: That’s it for this week’s show. I’m Ramtin Arablouei.

ABDELFATAH: I’m Rund Abdelfatah, and you’ve been listening to THROUGHLINE from NPR.

ARABLOUEI: This episode was produced by me.

ABDELFATAH: And me and…

LAWRENCE WU, BYLINE: Lawrence Wu.

JULIE CAINE, BYLINE: Julie Caine.

STEINBERG: Anya Steinberg.

YOLANDA SANGWENI, BYLINE: Yolanda Sangweni.

CASEY MINER, BYLINE: Casey Miner.

CRISTINA KIM, BYLINE: Cristina Kim.

KATAYAMA: Devin Katayama.

SANJUKTA PODDAR, BYLINE: Sanjukta Poddar.

CHILKOTI: Olivia Chilkoti.

ABDELFATAH: Thank you to Thames TV for archival tape and to Tamar Charney, Micah Ratner, Sierra Takushi, Nellie Joselyn, Laine Kaplan-Levenson and Anya Grundmann.

ARABLOUEI: And special thanks to our voice actors – Steve Moore, Bergen Hoff, Olivia Chilkoti and Devin Katayama. This episode was mixed by Alex Drewenskus.

ABDELFATAH: Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which includes…

ANYA MIZANI: Anya Mizani.

NAVID MARVI: Navid Marvi.

SHO FUJIWARA: Sho Fujiwara.

ARABLOUEI: And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write us at throughline@npr.org, or hit us up on Twitter at @throughlinenpr.

ABDELFATAH: Thanks for listening.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Brooke Shields is the subject of a new documentary on Hulu called “Pretty Baby” that has already become part of the larger conversation about the sexualization of children and young women. Her career started as a baby in soap commercials and print ads. She went on to become an actress, famous in part for her beauty. One of her most notable and controversial roles was in the 1978 movie “Pretty Baby,” in which, at the age of 12, she played a child prostitute. Brooke Shields talked about her life and career with our guest interviewer, Tonya Mosley, the host of the podcast Truth Be Told.

TONYA MOSLEY, BYLINE: There was a time when Brooke Shields was a household name, a cultural phenomenon. Even today, depending on how old you are, Shields doesn’t need much of an introduction. Most often, her starring role in the 1980s film “Blue Lagoon” or her Calvin Klein ads are enough.

(SOUNDBITE OF AD)

BROOKE SHIELDS: You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.

MOSLEY: But as the new documentary “Pretty Baby” explores, Shields’ early career was defined by a sexuality that both she and the world are still trying to understand. In this two-part series now on Hulu, director Lana Wilson peels back the layers of Shields’ story, examining the toxic culture and power structure that perpetuates misogyny and objectifies young girls. Brooke Shields has had a long career as a model, a Broadway, film and television actor. She’s authored several books and is the host of the podcast “Now What?”

Brooke Shields, welcome again to FRESH AIR.

SHIELDS: Oh, thank you very much for having me.

MOSLEY: Brooke, you started working at 11 months old. And, really, by the time you were a teenager, you were one of the most recognized children on the planet. How much awareness did you have about your fame?

SHIELDS: Because I never really knew life without it, it was just a part of my life being recognized. It started at such a young age that you just sort of – you never get really used to the feeling, but you get used to surveying an area, knowing when someone’s going to approach. You sort of get this – this other sense becomes very incited. And so it wasn’t about fame as much as it was just about recognition. And the minute you leave your apartment, you are in the world differently than many people are.

MOSLEY: In “Pretty Baby,” you were portrayed as a child prostitute, but you describe it as truly the only artistic film you think you’ve ever been in, even to this day.

SHIELDS: Yeah, I really – I value it so much more. I mean, every single detail in that movie was – in “Pretty Baby” was purely thought out and of the actual time. The research that went into all the wardrobe and the – we had one of the best cinematographers in the world and – you know, so the caliber of talent on that set and really putting the film together was just unlike anything that I’ve ever experienced again.

MOSLEY: Of course, because of the depiction of a child prostitute and you being the age that you were, that’s what made it so controversial for – at the time, in 1978. And it also was a time where you had your first onscreen kiss in the film. And I heard you say that it must have been harder, actually, for the adult male actor, Keith Carradine, than it was for you at the time. Did you even understand the weight of that kiss in the moment?

SHIELDS: No, I just was embarrassed that I didn’t know how to do it. You know, I had never kissed a boy before, you know? So it was one of those things where, I mean, I’d had a crush on a little model that I had worked with, and that was it. I mean, at 11, I didn’t know what I was doing. And so, you know, I kept scrunching up my face and I kept, like – you just don’t know what to do. And it’s funny because it’s such a non-kiss, you know? And it was funny because Louis made us stay together sort of and not move.

MOSLEY: Louis Malle, the director, yes.

SHIELDS: Louis Malle, yes. Made us just stay together and he kept