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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 Maeve Higgins, Joel Kim Booster and Amy Dickinson. And here again is your host, a man who calls working from home being removed from office - Peter Sagal.
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PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, 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're on WAIT, WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.
ERIC: Hi. This is Eric. I'm calling from La Center, Wash.
SAGAL: Oh, what do you do there in La Center, Wash.?
ERIC: I am currently a stay-at-home dad.
SAGAL: Oh, wow. How excellent. How old are your - is your child or children?
ERIC: He is 10 years old.
SAGAL: Oh, wow. I, as some people know, just had a baby boy. I've never had a son before. And I was wondering if you have any tips.
ERIC: Drink it all in while you can because it'll go by faster than you know.
SAGAL: Oh, OK.
JOEL KIM BOOSTER: That was not where I thought the advice was going when you started with drink it all.
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SAGAL: Drink. Drink heavily.
AMY DICKINSON: Drink it all.
ERIC: You'll have a couple of those nights, too, I promise you.
SAGAL: Yeah. He's a newborn. We've had those nights. Eric, welcome to the show. You're going to play the game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Eric's topic?
KURTIS: I Call Dibs.
SAGAL: We all know calling dibs is the legal process of claiming something before someone else does, and that requires both House and Senate approval. Our panelists are going to tell you about a feud over two people who called dibs on the same thing. Pick the one who's telling the truth - you'll win our prize - the WAIT WAITer of your choice on your voice mail. Are you ready to play?
ERIC: Yes.
SAGAL: Let's do it then. First, let's hear from Joel Kim Booster.
KIM BOOSTER: Schools may be closed across the country due to the pandemic, but that didn't stop one teen from getting into some mischief on school grounds. Or was it two teens? The tag King Steez (ph) was graffitied onto the entrance to Mahoning County High School in Youngstown, Ohio. The mystery of who did it was quickly solved as a TikTok video of 17-year-old Nathaniel Rogers (ph) spraying the words on the wall went viral. But then a second TikTok video of a different 17-year-old by the name of Cole Yang (ph) also spray painting the exact same words on the blank door also went viral. Obviously, I'm King Steez, Rogers stated in a follow up video, calling Yang a loser and a poser. Yang responded with a video in which he says he is the rightful King Steez and is willing to take Rogers to court to prove it if, quote, "that's even a thing." Police solved the crime by seizing the students' phones and examining the videos they found there. In one, Rogers spray paints the words on the door. In another, Yang gives the door a fresh, clean coat of paint and then spray paints the same words himself. In a third, Rogers paints over Cole's work and then paints the same words for the third time. At this point, the police gave up looking at the video, saying it was like watching paint dry. For now, both students have been charged with cleaning up the vandalism that they each have already cleaned up at least once in what officials are calling a reverse King Solomon kind of deal.
DICKINSON: (Laughter).
SAGAL: Two taggers, as they say, claiming the same tag in a graffitied school - your next story of a dibs dilemma comes from Amy Dickinson.
DICKINSON: In the 1930s and '40s, authors J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were members of a literary society called The Inklings. The two fantasy writers were friends and rivals. This week, we find out just how petty their rivalry really was. Scholars at the British Museum have released correspondence between the two men fighting not over a woman or a cricket score but a pixie named Tinkle (ph). Tinkle was pink with a rosebud mouth, gossamer wings and a puckish air. And both men claimed her as a character in their novels. She is my Tinkle, my pickled, tinky (ph) wink, Lewis fumed in a letter. Tolkien replied, I conjured her. I brought her forth from the midst of my own fertile brain grapes, you moss-covered carbuncle. And lo, it came to pass. Neither author wrote of Tinkle the Pixie. However, the letters have solved an enduring mystery. The origins of an early draft of the Lewis novel titled "The Lion, the Witch and the Foul-Mouthed Jackass."
SAGAL: All right. A feud between the famous authors of fantasy J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis over Tinkle the Pixie - your last story of people staking the same claim comes from Maeve Higgins.
MAEVE HIGGINS: (Singing) Oh, baby, I love it - name every day. Yeah, yeah. I want to tell you I love (speaking) a lovely name for a lovely new person - Baby. Two different Instagram influencers have named their child Baby, and it has torn their influenceship (ph) apart. Sasha Benz and Jessica Hart both claimed the name Baby for their baby. Hart says she chose the name because of "Dirty Dancing" and plans to raise Baby exclusively in round rooms, so nobody can put Baby in a corner. Benz named her baby Baybi years ago, though she spells it B-A-Y-B-I. It is pronounced baby. Benz is reportedly outraged that Hart copied her baby Baybi's name for her baby Baby. As an influencer, the last thing she would ever want to do is to influence somebody. It is not yet clear if either mother will change Baby's name as Baby grows to a more mature name - for example, Old Baby. We'll see.
KIM BOOSTER: (Laughter).
SAGAL: So here are your stories, each of which involve two people fighting over one thing. Was it from Joel Kim Booster, two graffiti artists arguing that they were the ones who tagged their school King Steez? Was it from Amy Dickinson, the two great authors J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis arguing over which of them could use the character Tinkle the Pixie? Or from Maeve Higgins, two well-known influencers who each claim the idea to name their baby Baby? Which of these is the real story of a rivalry we found in the week's news?
ERIC: I'm going to have to go with the graffiti story.
SAGAL: You're really - you're going to go with Joel's story of the graffiti of the one kid painting King Steez, the other kid coming over, painting it over, making it all clean and then doing King Steez, and then the first kid coming back and saying, I'm not going to have that, painting it over again and tagging it King Steez. That's your choice?
ERIC: Yeah, my wife's probably going to kill me.
SAGAL: All right. Even though your wife is going to kill you, I understand that your choice is Joel's story. Well, we spoke to someone who is familiar with the real story.
LINDSEY WEBER: So there are two Australian influencers, and they're in a feud after both of them named their babies Baby.
SAGAL: So that was Lindsey Weber from the podcast Who? Weekly. Unfortunately, as you heard, you did not get the question right. Disappointing your wife, no doubt. But you did win a point for Joel for his convincing lie.
ERIC: It's all right. I just couldn't imagine that somebody was going to name their baby Baby, but...
SAGAL: Totally understand.
ERIC: All right, well, thanks for letting me play.
SAGAL: Thank you for playing. Take care.
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JUSTIN BIEBER: (Singing) Like, baby, baby, baby, oh. Like, baby, baby, baby, no. Like, baby, baby... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.