We admire dimes and Aasif Mandvi gives breakup advice

March 21, 2026·48 min·4 clips

A comedian reveals the bizarre gig that involved staging fake murders at Orthodox Jewish dating events.

Bill Curtis opens with heat. Peter Sagal steps onto the Studebaker Theater at the Fine Arts Building stage in Chicago, Illinois and snaps the room into live-news-quiz mode. Grace calls from Peacham, Vermont, which Sagal treats like a town invented for a cozy novel, because even contestant geography gets a punchline. The former Daily Show correspondent arrives with sharp timing. Sagal frames him as someone who left that show in 2017 for TV shows, movies, and plays, but the interview really starts in the wings. He traces a performer path from a Disney theme park to New York jobs that were less glamorous and a lot funnier. Then comes the murder mystery work: actors sneaking into parties, waiting for the staged killing, and trying to keep the night from falling apart. One gig is doomed on arrival. An Orthodox Jewish singles meet-up somehow becomes the setting for a fake homicide, a choice Sagal stops to admire as planning. Connie Britton enters the story, chatting with a man in a yellow suit who thinks luck has finally found him. Then her character gets killed about 20 minutes later, leaving him with a meet-cute, a corpse gag, and nowhere graceful to go. Sagal knows exactly how bad that room feels. His dry aside turns it into dating comedy without overexplaining the laugh. Broadway gets a quick turn too, with a Noel Coward revival with Rose Byrne and a Peacock comedy called The Miniature Wife, whose literal premise catches Sagal off guard.

As heard by us

A lively news quiz that opens into a loose, entertaining conversation with Asif Manvi.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! opens from the Studebaker Theater in Chicago as the NPR News Quiz, then drifts into a conversation with former Daily Show correspondent Asif Manvi, who says he left in 2017 to work in TV, movies, and plays.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want panel chaos that turns a guest's career into a better story.

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