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It's All Squeak To Me

OPHIRA EISENBERG, HOST:

Let's welcome our next two contestants, in front of me right now, Tina Kendall and Stephen Kendall. Wait a second.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: So you both have the same last name, huh?

TINA KENDALL: Yes.

STEPHEN KENDALL: Yeah, coincidence.

EISENBERG: How do you know each other?

KENDALL: Oh, I found him in a hospital many years ago.

(LAUGHTER)

EISENBERG: This is a mother/son competition.

KENDALL: Yeah.

KENDALL: Yes.

EISENBERG: Are you guys competitive with each other?

KENDALL: Yes.

KENDALL: A little bit.

(LAUGHTER)

EISENBERG: And is trivia the way you usually compete?

KENDALL: One of many ways.

EISENBERG: One of many. Oh, excellent. Well, this is very exciting, and I guess on ASK ME ANOTHER, we're going to settle the score. All right, perfect. Jonathan, what do we have in store for these two?

JONATHAN COULTON: Well, this game is called It's All Squeak To Me, and it's about animal sounds. So, while in English we say the sound that dogs make is bow-wow, in Danish they say that a dog makes a sound more like "vov-vov."

(LAUGHTER)

COULTON: And in French, it would be more like "ouah-ouah." So we're going to give you...

(LAUGHTER)

COULTON: Just for the record, it's the English ones that are correct, the rest of the world is wrong.

(LAUGHTER)

COULTON: So we're going to give you some sounds that common animals supposedly make in other languages, and all you have to do is name the animal. After you name the animal, we will follow-up with a bonus question that either person may answer. Are you ready?

KENDALL: Yes.

KENDALL: Sure.

(LAUGHTER)

COULTON: In Japanese, this animal goes "boon-boon." In German, it goes "summ-summ." And in Russian, it goes "zh-zh."

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

COULTON: Stephen?

KENDALL: Pig, possibly.

COULTON: No, it's not a pig. Tina...

(LAUGHTER)

COULTON: What if I said the last one again? "zh-zh."

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

KENDALL: Bee.

COULTON: Bee is correct, Tina.

(APPLAUSE)

COULTON: Here is your bonus question. Either one of you may buzz in for this. The result of breeding European honeybees with their more aggressive southern neighbors, Africanized bees are commonly known by what fearsome term?

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

COULTON: Stephen?

KENDALL: Killer bees.

COULTON: That's correct.

(APPLAUSE)

COULTON: In Italian, this animal goes "chicchirichi." In Swedish, it goes "kuckeliku." And in Greek, it goes "kikiriku."

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

COULTON: Tina?

KENDALL: Chicken.

COULTON: No, I'm sorry, it's not a chicken.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

KENDALL: Rooster.

COULTON: That is correct, rooster.

(APPLAUSE)

COULTON: What is the name of that hanging flap of skin under a rooster's beak?

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

COULTON: Tina?

KENDALL: Waddle.

COULTON: Waddle is correct.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: You had no faith that was the right answer.

KENDALL: I knew it was a turkey waddle, but I wasn't sure about a rooster.

KENDALL: She's just faking it.

(LAUGHTER)

KENDALL: She wants your sympathy.

COULTON: Right. She was trying to give you a false sense of security.

KENDALL: Yeah.

COULTON: Yeah. In Spanish, this animal goes "goro-goro." In Turkish, it goes "gloo-gloo." And in Russian, it goes "guli-guli."

(LAUGHTER)

COULTON: Or probably more like "guli-guli-guli-guli-guli."

(LAUGHTER)

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

KENDALL: Turkey.

COULTON: Turkey is right.

(APPLAUSE)

COULTON: So in Turkey, they don't call turkeys turkey. They actually call them Hindi, meaning from India. But in India, the bird is actually named for yet another country. What is a turkey called in India?

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

KENDALL: America.

(LAUGHTER)

COULTON: I wish that were true. The symmetry of that is quite beautiful.

EISENBERG: Right.

COULTON: But that is not right. Tina, do you know what it is?

KENDALL: No guess on that one.

COULTON: There is no reason you should know this.

EISENBERG: It's a tough one.

COULTON: It's a tough one.

EISENBERG: Yeah.

COULTON: Peru is the answer.

(LAUGHTER)

COULTON: In Danish, this animal goes "rap-rap." In French, it goes "qua-qua." In Greek, it goes "pi-pi-pi-pi-pi-pi."

(LAUGHTER)

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

COULTON: Stephen?

KENDALL: Duck.

COULTON: Yes, it is a duck.

(APPLAUSE)

COULTON: I got to say, it seems like the Greeks got it wrong in this case.

EISENBERG: Yeah, the pi-pi-pi-pi.

COULTON: Before he lost it all to Flintheart Glomgold in 2012, what duck did Forbes magazine rank as the world's richest fictional character?

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

COULTON: Stephen?

KENDALL: Scrooge McDuck.

COULTON: That's right. And that makes Stephen our winner.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: Congratulations, Stephen.

KENDALL: Thank you.

EISENBERG: The rivalry is settled for now. I understand, just for now, Tina.

KENDALL: Only for now, only for now.

EISENBERG: You'll be moving on to our Ask Me One More final round at the end of the show, so stick around. Thank you so much, mother and son team.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: Settling the score. All right, Jonathan, do you want to play us a little something?

COULTON: I will. I have something thematically appropriate. This is a song by They Might Be Giants, called "Mammal."

(SOUNDBITE OF SINGING)

COULTON: Glass of milk. Standing in between extinction in the cold and explosive radiating growth. So the warm blood flows through the large four-chambered heart, maintaining the very high metabolism rate they have.

Mammal, mammal, their names are called. They raise a paw, the bat, the cat, dolphin and dog, koala bear and hog. Placental the sister of her brother marsupial. Their cousin called monotreme, dead uncle allotheria.

Mammal, mammal, their names are called. They raise a paw, the bat, the cat, dolphin and dog, koala bear and hog, the fox, the ox, giraffe and shrew, echidna, caribou.

EISENBERG: Jonathan Coulton, everybody.

(APPLAUSE)

COULTON: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.