BILL 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 Paula Poundstone, Faith Salie and Peter Grosz. And here again is your host at the State Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio, Peter Sagal.
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PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you so much, Bill. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Cleveland. Right now, it's 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.
GREG KOVICH: Hello. This is Greg Kovich from Schererville, Ind.
KURTIS: Schererville, Ind. I know where that is, not far from Chicago. What do you do there?
KOVICH: I am a salesman for Arista Networks.
SAGAL: OK, is that one of those complicated technical things that I don't have a hope of understanding?
KOVICH: (Laughter) Arista Networks actually impacts your life every day.
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PAULA POUNDSTONE: Wow, you must be a good salesman.
FAITH SALIE: We are on point.
PETER GROSZ: I'll buy two.
SAGAL: That's intriguing and vaguely creepy.
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SAGAL: Welcome to the show, Greg. You're going to play our game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Greg's topic?
KURTIS: You say potato, I say you're under arrest.
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SAGAL: This week, somebody called the five-oh about a potato. Our panelists are going to tell you a story about a potato-related police report. Pick the real story of the perpe-tater (ph), do that and you win our prize - Carl Kasell's voice on your voicemail. First up, it is Faith Salie.
SALIE: The number one children's TV show in North Korea features a Mr. Potato Head-like hero called Yong Gom Han Gom Jah (ph), which roughly translates to fearless spud. This puppet series has turned North Korean kiddies into couch potatoes. But now their beloved Gom Jah has been put on hiatus. And his creator has been put in jail. You see, when the sassy tuber first appeared, he bore a benign resemblance to Kim Jong-un with his bulbous lumpy shape, boyish smile and middle-parted Fred Flintstone haircut.
Gom Jah was the supreme leader of his garden and also an awesome basketball player. But the potato got into hot water about a year ago. That's when Kim Jong-un got an epic haircut he called the ambition and ordered his countrymen to copy it. Immediately, Gom Jah mimicked Kim Jong-un's resplendent coiffure and ordered the other vegetables to follow suit. When his sweet potato girlfriend refused, he sent her to a firing squad.
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SALIE: Drunk with power, the fearless spud started consuming massive amounts of imported Swiss cheese and hanging out with a much taller potato with a nose ring who looks a lot like Dennis Rodman.
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SALIE: Kim Jong-un has ordered the indefinite imprisonment of Park Huang-sin (ph), the show's creator, on grounds of, quote, "terrorizing the youth of the republic." Park insists Gom Jah is not a dictator, just a potatoer (ph).
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SAGAL: A potato puppet show in North Korea gets its creator in trouble.
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SAGAL: Your next story of a potato on the wrong side of the law comes from Paula Poundstone.
POUNDSTONE: The Torbert (ph) trio, an unusual gang of bank robbers who have become a staple of news infotainment in Ireland, have been caught by Dublin police. County Wexford natives and longtime employees of potato grower Stanley Farms (ph) - Connor Murphy (ph), Sean Kelly (ph) and Jack O'Sullivan (ph) have made their brief inglorious bank robbery fortunes by robbing banks armed with potatoes.
We're tired of potatoes getting no respect, claims Sean Kelly. They've certainly added to the array of ways one might be asked to have their potatoes - baked, fried, whipped, mashed or pointed at you.
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POUNDSTONE: I started laughing at first, naturally. This fella comes to me with a potato gun and his partner with a slingshot loaded with a big huge potato. They both had big red noses strapped to their faces and little hats like Mr. Potato Head as well. I couldn't take their (unintelligible) give us all the money in your drawer or we'll let the spuds fly seriously, says visibly bruised Ulster Bank teller Chloe Walsh (ph).
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POUNDSTONE: I hesitated just a moment and this feller hit me right square in the face with a potato that could have fed a family of four.
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POUNDSTONE: They would've gotten away with it, too, says Walsh, if their getaway driver hadn't been late on account of using a potato clock. Those things never work.
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SAGAL: The Tobert trio robbing banks...
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SAGAL: ...In Ireland with potato guns. Your last story of a criminal spud comes from Peter Grosz.
GROSZ: It was just another normal day in the bustling capital city of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. People were going to work, taking their kids to school, trying to figure out how to spell Kyrgystan. Then, someone noticed something strange over by the eternal flame at the city's World War II memorial. Right there, in broad daylight, two men in their mid-20s were using said flame to roast potatoes on a stick. After a couple of minutes, the men got scared and ran off but not before the incident was captured on video, went viral and sparked national outrage at the men whose faces can't be seen in the video and remain unidentified.
Bishkek Mayor Albek Ibraimov issued a statement on Tuesday appealing to residents to come forward with any information on the, quote, "vandals." It's not clear what charges the men might face if caught since there is no law on the books explicitly forbidding the roasting of root vegetables over a memorial flame. But it does seem more than a little tacky. Rumors and speculation are running wild with almost every Bishkekian (ph) speculating on the identity of the two mystery men.
Some suggested they are performance artists making some sort of bizarre statement about war, memory and, one supposes, potatoes. Others throw out the possibility that the duo might be scientists from Bishkek University who were in the middle of a vitally important potato research when their lab's only bunsen burner broke forcing them to find another heat source. A few have even posited that the pair might be part of the hip, up and coming Bishkek foodie scene. And they were just trying to start a new pop-up baked potato bar.
Police are promising not to disclose the identity of anyone helping track down these potato perps. But no one has come forward nonetheless. And it makes sense. If these hooligans would brazenly cook their food out in public in a sacred place, who knows what kind of retribution they are likely to meat out on a snitch. No one wants to be the next item roasted over the memorial flame.
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SAGAL: All right, so here are your choices. Somebody got in legal trouble via a potato this week - was it from Faith Salie, a puppeteer in North Korea with his potato-based character; from Paula Poundstone, a trio of bank robbers in Ireland who rob banks with their potato guns and delight them with their colorful accents; or from Peter Grosz, two guys who managed to roast a potato on the sacred flame of Kyrgystan - which of these is the real story of a potato crime in the week's news?
KOVICH: (Laughter) Oh, Peter.
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KOVICH: I'm going to take Peter Grosz.
SAGAL: You're going to take Peter Grosz's story of the roasting of the potato at the sacred flame of Bishkek. Well, we spoke to someone who knows a lot about potatoes. Her name is Stephanie Ashcraft. She's the author of "101 Things To Do With A Potato." And we asked her about the real story.
STEPHANIE ASHCRAFT: Putting on a potato on a stick like a hot dog will never work and because it was a memorial that they are trying to do it over, now they've got the law after them.
SAGAL: So that was Stephanie Ashcraft talking about the two guys who tried, she says, unsuccessfully to prepare their dinner at the memorial flame. You were right. It was Peter's story that was the truth. You have won our prize. You've won a point for Peter. And you will get Carl Kasell's voice...
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SAGAL: ...on your voicemail. Congratulations.
KOVICH: Thank you.
(SOUNBITE OF SLIM GAILLARD SONG, "POTATO CHIPS")
SLIM GAILLARD: (Singing) Potato chips, how my mouth just drips. Potato chips, how my mouth just drips. Crunch, crunch, I don't want no lunch. All I want is potato chips... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.