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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're playing this week with Tracy Clayton, Tom Bodett and Joel Kim Booster. And here again is your host - a man whose hair must be down to his shoulders after five months of quarantine, right? - Peter Sagal.
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PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. In just a minute, Bill goes berserk and goes on a rhyme-page (ph) in our Listener Limerick Challenge. If you'd like to play, give us a call at 1-888-WAIT-WAIT - that's 1-888-924-8924.
Right now, panel, some more questions for you from this week's news. Tracy, Kraft has announced their brand-new breakfast food offering. What is it?
TRACY CLAYTON: Is it cheese?
SAGAL: It's cheese and...
CLAYTON: Oh, macaroni.
SAGAL: Yes.
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SAGAL: Mac and cheese...
CLAYTON: Oh.
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SAGAL: ...Is now a breakfast food thanks to Kraft. They're releasing a new breakfast version of their famous macaroni and cheese dinner. It's exactly the same, except on the box, they write the word breakfast. That's exactly how we got smoothies - someone wrote breakfast on a milkshake.
JOEL KIM BOOSTER: I was going to say, this has been around for years. It's called being poor in college...
CLAYTON: (Laughter) Right.
BOOSTER: ...And just eating mac and cheese before noon. That's all it is.
TOM BODETT: It's, like, mac and cheese - not just for lunch and afternoon snack and dinner and bedtime anymore.
SAGAL: (Laughter).
CLAYTON: This makes me so sad.
SAGAL: Why?
CLAYTON: I - because - OK, so firstly, I don't know if it's, like, a cultural thing or what, but I did not know that white people really ate mac and cheese as, like, a dinner, like, as a dish. It's supposed to be a side dish.
SAGAL: They have a new slogan for the product. Macaroni and cheese for breakfast? Sure. I'm so tired.
CLAYTON: (Laughter) I have given up.
SAGAL: Yeah. And I've you're having a hard time getting on board with neon noodles for breakfast, don't worry - it's lunchtime. You woke up at noon.
CLAYTON: (Laughter).
BODETT: Make a two-boxer in the morning, and then you just leave it on the stove, and you eat it all day.
BOOSTER: Oh, no. You don't want to try and leave Kraft Macaroni and Cheese out...
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BOOSTER: ...Because if you thought it wasn't food before, just give it some time in the air, you know? It's...
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CLAYTON: It returns to its plastic form.
SAGAL: Joel, breaking up with someone is hard. But this week, the BBC profiled an industry in Japan that offers a new way to end your relationship to avoid all the complications. It's a person you hire to do what?
BOOSTER: To break up with your partner for you.
SAGAL: Yes, but how do they do it?
BOOSTER: Oh, they trick them into cheating on the partner with them.
SAGAL: Exactly right.
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SAGAL: This is how it works. You spend about $4,000 - this is what it costs - and an agent of this company will learn all about your significant other from their social media. Then they engineer a chance meeting with him. Then they continue to meet and make your partner fall in love with them so that your partner will then ruefully, maybe sadly, break up with you.
BOOSTER: That is - as a born and bred Midwesterner who knows passive aggression, that is next-level.
SAGAL: That is amazing.
BOOSTER: And I applaud it on every level.
CLAYTON: Same.
SAGAL: It's so much easier than sending a text with the added benefits of being extremely expensive, taking much longer and being really weird. And then - and this is true - apparently, part of the service, part of what you're paying for is, OK. It's worked. It's done. But then the person will continue to date your now-ex just for a little while until it breaks up naturally, so they never are suspicious.
BOOSTER: Well, and that's not my problem anymore.
BODETT: Where do they find the [expletive] who work for this company?
CLAYTON: Because I need to know if they're hiring.
BODETT: Yeah.
CLAYTON: And where can I get an application?
SAGAL: (Laughter) Wait a minute - you want to work for this company? You want to...
CLAYTON: Hell, yeah - $4,000.
SAGAL: You'd do this?
CLAYTON: Yeah.
SAGAL: You'd, like - you'd be, like, my name is Clayton - Tracy Clayton.
CLAYTON: I'm Stacy (ph).
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BOOSTER: You get to stare at someone's social media for a while.
CLAYTON: Which I do anyway.
BOOSTER: You get $4,000, and there's no commitment. So it sounds great.
CLAYTON: Yeah. During a pandemic...
BODETT: Well, you put it that way...
CLAYTON: Yeah. Sign me up.
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CARRIE UNDERWOOD: (Singing) I might have saved a little trouble for the next girl 'cause the next time that he cheats, oh, you know it won't be on me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.