Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! is NPR's weekly hour-long quiz program. Each week on the radio you can test your knowledge against some of the best and brightest in the news and entertainment world while figuring out what's real news and what's made up. On the Web, you can play along too.
It takes more than a couple brain cells to make this show what it is... so let's give credit where credit's due.
Peter Sagal — Host
Prior to becoming host of Wait Wait in 1998, Peter had a varied career including stints as a playwright, screenwriter, stage director, actor, extra in a Michael Jackson video, travel writer, essayist, ghostwriter and staff writer for a motorcycle magazine. In October 2007, Harper Collins published Peter's first book, The Book of Vice: Naughty Things and How to Do Them, a series of essays about bad behavior, which was released in paperback in 2008. He lives in the Chicago area with his family. Since he now has his own Web site, he is finally a real boy.
Carl Kasell — Official Judge and Scorekeeper
Carl Kasell is the official judge and scorekeeper for Wait Wait and is an all-around genius and great guy. A veteran broadcaster, Carl launched his radio career more than 50 years ago. He was a newscaster for NPR's daily newsmagazine Morning Edition from the show’s beginning in 1979 until December 2009. Carl now enjoys sleeping past 1:05 am, and he sometimes moonlights as a magician.
Doug Berman — Executive Producer
Doug Berman is the Peabody Award-winning producer of NPR's Car Talk and Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! For the last 15 years, he's been on a one-man crusade to get NPR to lighten up. He was a news director at NPR member stations WFCR in Amherst, Mass., and WBUR in Boston before giving up his legitimate career for this stuff.
Mike Danforth — Senior Producer
Mike Danforth joined Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! in November of 2000, after a distinguished tenure at Prairie Home Companion in his home state of Minnesota. His first week was spent weeding through numerous hanging chad jokes to find the best ones. He also tutors the staff in Foley-like vocal sound effects. And does not look like Andy Dick. At all.
Emily Ecton — Associate Producer
We can only assume, when Emily was standing on the White House lawn, dressed in a 6-foot high Arthur (the PBS Aardvark) costume helping Lynne Cheney preside over the Easter Egg roll, she must have said to herself — "Life can get no better than this." But she was wrong! Soon after, she left the exciting world of PBS Media Relations and moved herself, her strangely squished-looking car, and her dog, Binky, out to Chicago to join Wait Wait, where she serves as the Official Reality Television Expert. She is also the author of three books for kids, the most recent of which is Night of the Living Lawn Ornaments.
Ian Chillag — Producer
Ian comes to Wait, Wait from the Internet, where he was the voice of a tiny blue cartoon news anchor. Before that, he worked on NPR's Fresh Air and The Bryant Park Project. His reporting has been heard on Marketplace, Studio 360 and other public radio programs. He plans to eat his weight in bratwurst his first year in Chicago.
Eva Wolchover — Editorial Assistant
After putting in more than a year as Car Talk's official call screener, Eva still doesn't know a dipstick from a fuel gauge, so she recently left Boston for the "fair city" of Chicago. When not at Car Talk, Eva was a writer for the Boston Herald. Her background in the seedy tabloid trenches prepared her well for the bizarre, the eccentric and the unabashedly off-color ... a path that led her directly to Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!
Lorna White — Technical Director
Lorna White began working at NPR in 1984. She engineered most of the NPR network programs, including All Things Considered, Performance Today and Morning Edition, where she became the first technical director to yell at Rod Abid. Being hopelessly Midwestern, she moved from Washington to NPR's bureau in Chicago in 1996. A year later, a guy named David Greene knocked on the door and in a matter of weeks, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! was on the air. Two years later, David left to work on a public radio show about cars. Thankfully, Rod was willing to work with her, and she hasn't yelled at him since. When not working on Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, Lorna's day job includes managing audio production at the NPR bureau.
Robert Neuhaus — Technical Director
After many years spent as an award-winning theatrical sound designer and audio theater producer, Robert Neuhaus went in search of even larger egos than the theater can contain and found them at Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! Robert has served as a recording engineer based in NPR's Chicago Bureau since 1988, but he still moonlights from time to time creating storms and battles for Chicago Shakespeare Theater.