PETER SAGAL, HOST:
All right, panel, time for you to answer some more questions about this week's news. Kyrie, what do Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lincoln, Margaret Thatcher, Ho Chi Min, Charles De Gaulle, Charlie Rose, the dead guy from the "Sixth Sense," Moses, Braveheart and Knut the Polar Bear have in common?
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KYRIE O'CONNOR: I think I'm going to need a hint.
SAGAL: Let me give you a hint. For example, Braveheart's wife also named Callista.
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O'CONNOR: Well they can't all be related to Newt Gingrich.
SAGAL: Well they are in a particular way. Newt Gingrich has something in common with all of them.
O'CONNOR: Well, he sort of looks like a polar bear.
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SAGAL: Actually, I just sort of gave you the answer, so I'll give it to you. Newt Gingrich says he has something in common with all of them.
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SAGAL: Those are all people...
O'CONNOR: Greatness?
SAGAL: ...that Newt Gingrich has compared himself to over the years.
PAULA POUNDSTONE: Oh, wow.
O'CONNOR: Wow.
BRIAN BABYLON: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, do that list one more time.
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POUNDSTONE: Yeah, yeah, let me hear...
SAGAL: I'll go through it. I'll go through it. You got your obvious ones. He's comparing himself to great leaders.
BABYLON: A polar bear.
SAGAL: Like Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lincoln, Margaret Thatcher, Charles De Gaulle, okay, Moses, Braveheart, that's standard. You can see that.
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POUNDSTONE: Yeah.
SAGAL: You don't need that explained. All right, Ho Chi Min, a little weird.
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SAGAL: He says I'm like him, not in ideology, of course the communist North Vietnamese leader, but in persistence he's just like Ho Chi Min.
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SAGAL: Charlie Rose, because he's an idea person. The most interesting one, of course, is the Bruce Willis character from "The Sixth Sense."
O'CONNOR: Because he's really dead?
SAGAL: Well, he said...
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SAGAL: I'm just like the Bruce Willis character in "The Sixth Sense," because everybody knew that I was dead but me.
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SAGAL: That was his logic.
O'CONNOR: What about the polar bear?
SAGAL: The polar bear, well, he's soft, warm...
BABYLON: Cuddly.
SAGAL: ...furry and cuddly.
BABYLON: White hair.
SAGAL: Actually, he actually compared himself to the polar bear because they both have similar names, Newt and Knut.
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SAGAL: Now, those, that's just a fraction, by the way, of the whole list of the people that Newt has compared himself to. We were curious what other people compare him to. So, if you Google - we did this - if you Google Newt Gingrich is like, here's what you get on the first page of results, and these are completely real.
Newt Gingrich is like Freddie Krueger.
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SAGAL: He's like a drunk who thinks he can control his drunkness.
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SAGAL: And Newt Gingrich is like the Hamburglar.
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SAGAL: Kyrie, you may remember a woman named Oprah Winfrey.
O'CONNOR: Kind of, a little bit.
SAGAL: She was once on TV.
O'CONNOR: Yeah.
SAGAL: Well, she's out there, trying to make you a better person. And she says that...
O'CONNOR: She failed.
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SAGAL: Yeah, well, not for lack of trying. She says that to save a failing marriage, the couple in question should pretend what?
O'CONNOR: That they are little fuzzy cute bunnies.
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SAGAL: It's sort of like you're having a fight and then it's like, "oh quiet, dear, Lord Grantham's in the next room."
O'CONNOR: Oh, you have to pretend you're an aristocrat.
SAGAL: Not quite.
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SAGAL: You have to pretend that the...
O'CONNOR: That the aristocrat's in the next room.
SAGAL: Not just an aristocrat, but a British aristocrat.
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SAGAL: Her advice, Oprah's advice...
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SAGAL: ...to all of you out there...
POUNDSTONE: Did I just hear a ding?
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SAGAL: You did. That's right because Oprah's advice to all of you married people is when you're behaving, when you're interacting with each other, pretend there's a British person in the next room. This is her theory. If you imagine a very proper, polite British person, that's how we imagine British people to be, listening in the next room, both of you will behave better.
BABYLON: I don't know any British people that are like these fancy, famously British people. The ones I know drink mad pints and...
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BABYLON: ...are soccer hooligans and are nuts.
SAGAL: Yeah. Well then, of course, you...
BABYLON: I don't know any cucumber sandwich British people.
SAGAL: Yeah.
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O'CONNOR: I don't know any married people who would let a British person slow them down.
SAGAL: That's also true.
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(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.