PODCAST

Five Minute Trivia

RM Zubairi

Bite-sized bursts of knowledge to make you smarter. Five minutes at a time.

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All Episodes

6:34

The Map that Changed the World

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/12/09

Gerardus Mercator had a dream. He wanted to make a map of the world that people could actually use to get from one place to another. He was so successful that we're still using it 500 years later. It's even on our smartphones. But his projection was not without controversy. While it may have made the world easier to navigate, it came at the cost of making the world look ridiculous. Have a listen. And also visit the show notes at www.5minutetrivia.com to see exactly what we're talking about. W...

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7:24

The Ugly Car That Couldn't: The Ford Edsel

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/12/01

Edsel Ford was the only son of Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company. He became president of Ford but sadly died of cancer in 1943. To honor his memory, Ford Motor Company launched a new car division 17 years after his death and unveiled it in a live Sunday night event featuring Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, and others. Did the Ford Edsel do justice to Edsel Ford's memory? Listener, it did not. Hear all about it on this week's show. WWW.5MINUTETRIVIA.COM

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4:45

Why Do the Cowboys and Lions Play on Thanksgiving?

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/11/24

It's Thanksgiving week! That means food, family, and...FOOTBALL!! If you're a fan of the Dallas Cowboys and the Detroit Lions, you'll always get to watch your team on Thanksgiving, because they always play on Thanksgiving Day. How and why did that come to be a tradition? Tune in this week to find out. WWW.5MINUTETRIVIA.COM

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6:59

Broadway in Five Minutes: Cats!

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/11/17

The modernist poet TS Eliot won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. But before he got famous for The Waste Land and The Hollow Men, he wrote a bunch of silly poems for his godchildren and compiled them in a book called Old Possum's Guide to Practical Cats. An aspiring composer named Andrew Lloyd Webber got a hold of them and decided to turn TS Eliot's musings about Growltiger, Skimbleshanks, and Mr. Mistoffelees into one of the biggest megamusicals ever made. And we're talking all about i...

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6:44

All About Blood

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/11/10

This week, we're taking on the human body with a show about what blood is, what it's made of, and why it's so important. We also have a special cohost who calls himself Hemo the Magnificent. Hemo premiered in a 1957 educational film produced by Frank Capra (It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) but never found work again. We're pleased to welcome him back to the world of showbiz and we assure you that he's ready for his closeup. WWW.5MINUTETRIVIA.COM

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6:52

Five Minute Lit: The Old Man and the Sea

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/11/03

Ernest Hemingway was a soldier, romantic, adventurer, and...oh yeah, something of a writer. His prose was spare and direct and spoke volumes without saying much at all. The Old Man and the Sea is perhaps the best example of that. In this novella, Hemingway talks about courage, perseverance, and struggle through the story of a fisherman's struggle with the catch of a lifetime. This week, we're talking all about it. WWW.5MINUTETRIVIA.COM

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6:58

Weird Borders--Condominiums and Enclaves and Exclaves

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/10/27

Countries inside countries, cities inside cities, dogs and cats working together...what is this madness? This week, we're tackling a world shaped in odd ways by war, medieval treaties, and drunk cartographers. Special thanks to Aceinet for the musical contribution. WWW.5MINUTETRIVIA.COM

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6:26

Secret Service Code Names

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/10/20

President Abraham Lincoln commissioned the United States Secret Service to safeguard the country's financial infrastructure from the scourge of counterfeit currency. They've been protecting presidents since Theodore Roosevelt and, since Truman's time, assigning them weird nicknames like Rawhide and Searchlight. Their code name for Jimmy Carter's budget director was Dumbo. They also have aliases for buildings, aircraft, cars, actors, and even a hotel. On this week's show, we're getting to the ...

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7:18

World War 1, Part 3: The Christmas Truce of 1914

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/10/13

In the concluding episode of our mini-series on WW1, we're talking about one of those rare times in history when goodwill and humanity triumphed in a place where you'd least expect to find it. In this case, the brutal trenches of the western front. On that first Christmas, men on both sides spontaneously gave up the fighting for one day. Thanks to Gregor Quendel for the string arrangement of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and Casonika for the piano carols. WWW.5MINUTETRIVIA.COM

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6:20

World War I, Part Two: Hitching a Ride to Battle...in...

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/10/06

The writer Jean Dutourd called it "the greatest event of the twentieth century." Was he talking about the moon landing? The moonwalk? Nope. In 1914, the French army urgently needed to get troops to the Marne river valley, just 30 miles away from Paris, to stop the rapidly advancing Germans from besieging the city. In desperation, they turned to the city's taxis. What followed is now known as the Miracle of the Marne. And this week, we're talking about it. WWW.5MINUTETRIVIA.COM

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7:12

World War I, Part One: How It Started

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/09/29

It was called the war to end all wars, which is perhaps the dumbest thing said by anyone about anything. But then, pretty much everything about the first World War is kind of dumb. The dumb network of alliances that made it inevitable. The dumb royal who took a vacation in the one city on Earth that hated his guts. His dumb driver who took a wrong turn. The dumb anarchist who shot the dumb royal. Really, the only smart thing about World War I is this podcast that talks all about it. This is t...

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6:48

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/09/22

Da-da-da-dum...it's probably the most famous musical opening in history. But...why? How did Beethoven's Fifth Symphony become so much more well known than the Fourth or the Sixth? On this week's show, learn about the piece of music that helped end World War 2, was covered by Chuck Berry, and is currently floating through interstellar space. Thanks to Gregor Quendel for the piano arrangement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in C Minor featured in this episode. WWW.5MINUTETRIVIA.COM

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7:18

Taxonomic Nomenclature: Making Sense Out of Life

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/09/14

Aristotle classified living things by how much air, water, earth, or fire they possessed. The Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance brought us animals, vegetables, and minerals. It took a former cobbler's apprentice named Carl Linnaeus to give us the current system that organizes every living thing on earth. This week's show talks about how that's done--and gives us a pretty cool mnemonic to remember it by. WWW.5MINUTETRIVIA.COM

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7:49

Five Minute Lit: War and Peace

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/09/08

Leo Tolstoy didn't consider War and Peace a novel. Sure, there's a story in there about a bunch of families told through the backdrop of a (spoiler!) war, but there's so much more in those 587,000 words that we might have to spend a little more than five minutes talking about all of it. WWW.5MINUTETRIVIA.COM

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5:51

Labor Day

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/09/01

Happy Labor Day! As you (hopefully) get to enjoy some time off, take in a football game, and put away your white clothes, stop in and learn how two unrelated guys with the same name, a couple of riots, and President Grover Cleveland gave us a day to celebrate our hard work. WWW.5MINUTETRIVIA.COM

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7:17

Broadway: From the Wickquasgeck Trail to the Great...

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/08/25

Broadway began as a Native American trail carved into the swampland of Manhattan island and today runs almost thirty miles from lower Manhattan to Westchester County. But Broadway is so much more than a street. In this episode, we cover the 400 years it took for Broadway to become America's theater capital...in about 5 minutes. WWW.5MINUTETRIVIA.COM

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5:55

A World of Guineas

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/08/18

There are four countries, one body of water, and a pet rodent named after Guinea. Three of the countries are in Africa, one is near Australia, and guinea pigs are from South America. How did this name take over the world? Tune in and find out! WWW.5MINUTETRIVIA.COM

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7:56

Esperanto: The World's Most Successful Invented Language

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/08/11

In the late 19th century, a Russian eye doctor had a vision for bringing peace and understanding to the world. He created a new language that would unite everyone under a common tongue. He called it Esperanto, and it would eventually become the official language of the post-WW1 League of Nations. Learn all about it in this week's show. Thank you to Kevin Luce and Freesound for the recording of Le Marsellaise featured in this episode. WWW.5MINUTETRIVIA.COM

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5:29

Gaggles and Mobs and Parliaments: All About Animal...

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/08/04

A colony of ants. A parliament of owls. A bed of oysters. Where did all this come from? In this episode, we explore how a boss nun and a lot of wealthy people with too much time on their hands came up with all these names for animal groups. WWW.5MINUTETRIVIA.COM

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7:08

All About Literary Pen Names

Five Minute Trivia ·

2025/07/28

Who writes a book and then puts someone else's name on it? Well, the writers of 1984, Jane Eyre, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Confessions of a Shopaholic. And that's just a small handful. Join us on the show to learn about where some of these pen names came from and why anyone would even use one. WWW.5MINUTETRIVIA.COM

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