PETER SAGAL, Host:
We want to remind everybody, they can join us here most weeks at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago. For tickets and more information, you can go to wbez.org or you can find a link at our website, waitwait.npr.org. Right now, panel, time for you to answer some questions about the week's news. Tom, 2010 was a great year for the Transocean Oil Company. We know this because they gave out big bonuses to their executives as a reward for their, quote, "best year ever in safety performance." Best year ever for them, despite one little glitch. What?
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TOM BODETT: That little ink in the drink business in the Gulf of Mexico.
SAGAL: Yeah. It's basically the gulf oil spill. That was theirs.
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SAGAL: Sure, eleven people were killed when their oil rig in the gulf exploded. All right, that is bad. But how many employees did Transocean management allow to live last year?
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SAGAL: Thousands.
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SAGAL: Strangely, and this is true, Transocean executives got no safety bonus in 2009 because their record was so bad that year. What could they possibly have done that was worse than this year? Did they force employees to face each other in gladiatorial combat? What?
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BODETT: 2009 was the running with scissors year.
SAGAL: Yeah.
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SAGAL: This speaks to such a sunny optimism on behalf of that company. You know, they're like, some say the gulf is half full of oil, we say it's half empty.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
