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Bluff The Listener

CARL KASELL: From NPR and WBEZ-Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Carl Kasell. We're playing this week with Luke Burbank, Roxanne Roberts and Alonzo Bodden. And here again is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, Carl.

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SAGAL: 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 games on the air. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!

CRAIG KANNER: This is Craig Kanner. I'm calling from Brewster, New York.

SAGAL: Brewster, New York. Brewster is, like, in Westchester, yes?

KANNER: No, it's in Putnam County, right along the - near the Connecticut border.

SAGAL: What do you do there in Brewster?

KANNER: I'm a manager at a quick lube/car wash facility in Brewster.

SAGAL: Oh that's great. Is that interesting work?

KANNER: It can be.

LUKE BURBANK: Well, let's be honest, we don't need the windshield wipers replaced really, though, right?

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BURBANK: Is that just a thing you guys say?

KANNER: Yeah, that's just kind of our...

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SAGAL: Well, welcome to the show, Craig. You're going to play the game in which you must tell truth from fiction. Carl, what is Craig's topic?

KASELL: My eye shadow is made from recycled Macbooks.

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SAGAL: Standards of beauty change over time. It wasn't that long ago that women were wearing girdles and high heels and men were wearing girdles and high heels, and terrified anyone would find out.

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SAGAL: Well, this week we read about the latest trend in modern fashion and new look for the new world. Each of our panelists are going to tell you about modern advancements in beauty. Only one is real. Guess that true story, you'll win Carl's voice on your home answering machine or voicemail. Ready to play?

KANNER: Yes, I am.

SAGAL: First, let's hear from Alonzo Bodden.

ALONZO BODDEN: MVP, the most valuable pill. So we've had Viagra for years, but there's a drawback that no one talks about. Sure, you can perform like a 25-year-old, but you still look like a 65-year-old.

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BODDEN: Which you are.

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BODDEN: So enter the latest pharmaceutical innovation, the MVP, or most valuable pill. It's a dose of Viagra, plus a form of ingestible Botox, guaranteed to at least temporarily smooth out those wrinkles, plus eight cups of coffee's worth of caffeine. Because, it's inventor says, "wide staring eyes can make you look a decade younger and remove that creepy factor."

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BODDEN: The pill was invented by urologist Dr. Martin Horton of Salt Lake City, who said that many of his Viagra-taking patients came back to him to complain that first, even though they were ready to play, it was too hard to find playmates. And second, when they did, the girls wanted to stay up so late partying that when the time came, it wasn't a question of able, it was a question of willing.

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BODDEN: As with all ED drugs, the MVP comes with warnings: if after four hours, your skin is still drumhead tight and you can't stop grinding your teeth, please see a doctor.

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BODDEN: Preferably, another doctor.

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SAGAL: From Alonzo, MVP, the pill that doesn't just make you perform as if you have Viagra, but make you look as if you could. Your next story of the latest in prettification comes from Roxanne Roberts.

ROXANNE ROBERTS: Is there anything more depressing than discovering a new way to feel bad about yourself? No, but here we go, thanks to your iPhone and plastic surgeon Robert Siegel. The Northern Virginia doctor invented what he calls the "Facetime Facelift" for aging boomers who suddenly discover their neck flab while using the smart phone video chat.

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ROBERTS: He got the idea after his wife bought an iPhone 4 last year and "didn't like the way she looked." The phone's camera angle captures, "heaviness, fullness and sagging," but Siegel developed a custom nick and tuck that hides the neck scars. The Huffington Post reports the Facetime users could skip the knife by holding the phone straight on, an old camera trick of CNN's Larry King.

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ROBERTS: Or here's an even older trick, just talk on the phone, no camera, no flab.

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SAGAL: The Facetime Facelift, special surgery just to make you look good when you're staring into your iPhone and talking to somebody you see there. And lastly, let's hear a story about modern beauty from Luke Burbank.

BURBANK: How do they do it, those skinny beautiful people we see in the magazines? Where do they get the willpower to say "oh, no pizza for me, I caught three snowflakes on my tongue on the way over."

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BURBANK: "I'm positively stuffed." Well, according to the Nissan Corporation, we can all have that discipline with the Jiminy. Yes, named for the cricket. A small electric device that shocks you anytime you get near a fast food drive-thru.

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BURBANK: The initial idea came quite by accident, during Nissan's development of its new electric car, when engineer Takashi Aoki realized the electro charge heat built up working the line, shocked him every time he tried to use the vending machine. He lost over 60 pounds in one year.

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BURBANK: The Jiminy utilizes cell phone GPS technology and Google Maps to keep you on your diet and looking beautiful. The reminder center, from which the shock is delivered, comes shaped like a stylish bracelet, or for those Hollywood starlets, already well used it, an alcohol monitoring anklet.

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SAGAL: All right, so here are your choices. One of these things is available to you to solve a relatively modern problem in a modern way.

From Alonzo Bodden, the MVP, the bill that combines Viagra with Botox to make you look the way you feel. From Roxanne Roberts, the Facetime Facelift, plastic surgery specifically designed to improve the way you look while talking on video chat with your iPhone or iPad. And lastly, from Luke Burbank, a device that shocks you whenever you go near fast food, to keep you looking svelte. Which of these is a modern beauty advance?

KANNER: I'm going to go with number two, with Roxanne.

SAGAL: You're going to go with Roxanne's story of the Facetime Facelift?

KANNER: Yes.

SAGAL: Well, we spoke to the progenitor of this new technique.

DOCTOR ROBERT SIEGEL: People don't come in asking for a Facetime Facelift, per se. I mean, what they'll say is that I don't like the way I look when I'm video chatting.

SAGAL: That was Dr. Robert Siegel. I'm please to say not that Robert Siegel, a different Robert Siegel.

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SAGAL: Who is providing the Facetime Facelift to willing customers in Virginia. Congratulations, Craig, you got it right. Well done.

KANNER: Thank you.

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(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.