Capital Region residents have a chance to be part of the audience of the Peabody Award-winning National Public Radio news quiz show, “Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!,” which will be recorded at Proctors at 8 p.m. Thursday and broadcast on WAMC/Northeast Public Radio at 11 a.m. Saturday.

“Wait Wait,” which debuted in January 1998, uses current news stories, from the mainstream to the obscure, the serious to the ridiculous, for questions, games and comedy. Peter Sagal hosts the show, which also features NPR newscaster Carl Kasell as the show’s official judge and scorekeeper. Kasell also provides the prizes for participants, who call in on the phone to try to win the ever-so-coveted prize, a custom-recorded greeting from Kasell for their telephone answering machines.

If you equate NPR with the word serious, you haven’t experienced this wacky side of this news organization. Sagal characterizes NPR listeners as “serious and intelligent,” who listen to the news with a sense of responsibility. “Wait Wait,” however, offers those diligent listeners a break from the serious, while still listening to much-respected NPR.

Break from routine

Sagal likens the show to the Medieval festival days where everything was turned upside down. “It’s the festival hour, where it’s still public radio, but it’s goofy, and weird and dumb,” Sagal said. When the hour is finished, the serious listeners can brush themselves off and go back to something serious, he said.

The show features three panelists each week who interact with callers in games such as “Bluff the Listener,” where contestants have to choose between three unlikely news stories read by panelists and choose the true one. The panelists who will be part of the Schenectady show are Amy Dickinson, who writes the syndicated advice column “Ask Amy” for The Chicago Tribune; Charles Pierce, a writer for The Boston Globe and author of “Sports Guy”; and Mo Rocca, who appears on “CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood and “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno.

Witty banter between Sagal and the panelists is interspersed with games such as the “Listener Limerick Challenge, where listeners try to fill in the last line of a news-based limerick, “Carl Kasell’s Countdown,” in which Kasell plays songs and listeners have to guess which story from the week is represented by a piece of music, and “Who’s Carl This Time?” where Kasell quotes from the week’s news as callers guess who he’s impersonating.

To illustrate the goofy and sometimes vulgar nature of the exchanges, Sagal mentioned a segment last month where he ended up in a conversation with Drew Carey about fake bull testicles that people were putting on their trailer hitches. “It’s the funniest people you know talking about funny things,” Sagal said.

Notable guests

The show also includes a celebrity guest each week. Past guests have included Tom Hanks, Linda Ronstadt, Brian Williams, Janeane Garofalo, Bill Nye, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Patrick Stewart, Madeleine Albright and Jane Curtin. Celebrities take part in a game titled “Not My Job,” where they have to answer questions on topics that are completely outside their areas of expertise.

Sagal said that show staff was very pleased to have a special guest set up already last fall for the Schenectady show, but that guest fell through. It was former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, whose staffers had approached “Wait Wait” producers to offer him as a guest when they found out the show was taking place in New York state. Three governors have been guests on the show: Jodi Rell of Connecticut, Janet Napolitano of Arizona and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. “We thought, ‘This is great, we’re doing the governors’ tour,’ ” Sagal said, noting that he doubted Spitzer would be game now.

A couple of notable celebrity guests that stand out in Sagal’s mind are U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who answered questions about the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. Another is a show last summer recorded outside in Millennium Park in Chicago in front of a crowd of 10,000. The guest was U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who was famous for prosecuting Scooter Libby. He answered three questions about other scooters other than the former White House staffer.

The show doesn’t have an agenda, other than to have fun. “The more fun we have, the more fun our audience has. We’re not really out trying to do anything,” Sagal said.

Sagal does a great deal of the research and writing for the show, along with the producers. The specific games played on the show each week are determined largely by the news of the week that might lend itself to a particular game, Sagal said.

Drawing a crowd

“Wait Wait” shows did not used to be taped in front of an audience, but now, most shows are recorded at Chase Auditorium in Chicago, which seats 500 people, a mix of repeat visitors and tourists. The difference with taking the show on the road, which NPR does about 10 times a year, is the crowds, Sagal said. “There are really big, raucous crowds,” he said. The venues are often larger, too, with 1,000 to 2,000 people.

Audiences get more than the 60 minutes that is broadcast on the radio. Tapings last from 90 minutes to two hours, which is then edited for broadcast.

“Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!” airs on 450 NPR member stations, including WAMC/Northeast Public Radio on Saturdays at 11 a.m. The show boasts a nationwide listening audience of 2.6 million weekly. Podcasts of the show are also available on the show’s Web site, www.waitwait.npr.org.