Podcast Script

Welcome back to the LL Study Guide podcast for your daily trivia review. I’m glad you’re here.

We’re walking through six questions from today’s match, keeping it short, friendly, and focused on the stories that help the facts stick. If you want the full write‑up, extra examples, and links, you can always check the study notes on our website at L L Study Guide dot com.

Let’s jump in with Question one.

Question one: “Help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered.” For decades, these sentences have been the sign-off that concludes episodes of what game show?

The answer is: The Price Is Right.

This line is one of the most famous sign‑offs in television history. It came from longtime host Bob Barker. Starting in nineteen eighty‑two, he ended each episode of The Price Is Right with that reminder about spaying and neutering pets. It wasn’t just a catchy phrase either; it was tied to his animal‑rights activism and his own choice to go vegetarian.

When Drew Carey took over as host in two thousand seven, he kept the exact same sign‑off. So if you watch the show now, you still hear that line closing out the episode. It’s a nice example of a hosting tradition that outlived the original host.

You’ll still see local shelters and animal‑welfare campaigns use that wording directly and credit Barker for it. His influence really helped normalize spay and neuter clinics in the U.S.

Culturally, Barker is bigger than just the show. Think of his over‑the‑top fight scene with Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore, or his appearance on How I Met Your Mother, where Barney goes on The Price Is Right convinced that Barker is his real dad. Those references only work because the show, and Barker, were so iconic.

And The Price Is Right isn’t just confined to TV. There’s also The Price Is Right Live, a touring stage show where people in theaters actually play games like Plinko and spin the Big Wheel for real prizes. So if you’re ever at a venue and see that show advertised, that’s exactly what it is: a live version of the TV format.

If you want more background on Barker’s activism, the show’s history, or that live stage version, check the study notes on the website.

All right, let’s move to Question two.

Question two: In July 2021, what sun-drenched city was awarded hosting rights for the 2032 Summer Olympics, becoming the third city in its country to host the Summer Games?

The answer is: Brisbane.

Brisbane, in Australia, was officially awarded the twenty thirty‑two Summer Olympics in July twenty twenty‑one. That makes it the third Australian city to host the Summer Games, after Melbourne in nineteen fifty‑six and Sydney in two thousand.

The Brisbane Games are planned as a kind of regional Olympics. Events will be spread across Brisbane itself, the Gold Coast, and the Sunshine Coast in southeast Queensland. There’s a lot of talk about new stadiums and upgraded venues, though the exact plans have been revised more than once as costs and politics shift.

One detail that’s helpful to remember for quiz purposes: Australia’s Olympic story comes in three clear time markers. First, you get post‑war Melbourne in nineteen fifty‑six. Then the widely praised Sydney two thousand Games, with that famous moment where Cathy Freeman lights the cauldron and then wins gold in the four hundred meters. And now Brisbane in twenty thirty‑two, built around this newer model of spreading events across a region instead of focusing everything on one compact city.

Another angle that can help this stick in your memory is Olympic movies. When the Games come around, people go back to films like Chariots of Fire, about runners at the nineteen twenty‑four Paris Olympics, or Cool Runnings, about Jamaica’s bobsled team at the nineteen eighty‑eight Winter Games. They’re good reminders of how the Olympics aren’t just sports, but also big storytelling machines for national identity.

For more on how Brisbane got picked under the International Olympic Committee’s new Future Host Commission process, and what other cities were in the running, you can check the show notes on L L Study Guide dot com.

On to Question three.

Question three: The name of the band that bluegrass impresario Alison Krauss joined in 1987 at age 16 is shared by transportation facilities in Chicago, Toronto, Washington, Los Angeles, and many other cities. What is that name?

The answer is: Union Station.

Alison Krauss joined the bluegrass band Union Station when she was just sixteen, and they quickly became known as Alison Krauss and Union Station. Together they’ve released a series of important bluegrass and roots albums, like Two Highways and Paper Airplane, and they’ve picked up a lot of Grammys along the way.

The name Union Station isn’t random. In North America, a “Union Station” is usually a big passenger rail hub shared by multiple railroads. Famous examples include Chicago Union Station, Toronto’s Union Station, Washington’s Union Station, and Los Angeles Union Station.

So if you picture a grand, Beaux‑Arts or Art Deco train terminal, big arched windows, and crowds under a high ceiling, that’s the vibe the band’s name calls up.

There’s another pop culture tie‑in that’s handy: Alison Krauss was a key voice on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. She sings Down to the River to Pray, which helped spark a big early two thousands roots‑music boom. At the same time, a lot of those real‑world Union Stations became movie icons. Chicago Union Station shows up in films like The Untouchables and The Sting. Los Angeles Union Station appears in everything from a nineteen fifty noir literally titled Union Station to Blade Runner, where it doubles as the police station.

So the name Union Station is doing double duty: it sounds old‑timey and Americana, which fits bluegrass, and it evokes these cinematic railway landmarks across the continent.

If you want a quick memory hook, think: Alison Krauss, trains, and that O Brother roots revival. For more details on specific stations and film appearances, check the study notes on our website.

Let’s keep going with Question four.

Question four: The Walt Disney Company made two especially notable acquisitions in the 2010s: the 2012 purchase of Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion, and the 2019 completion of a $71.3 billion transaction involving key assets from another media and entertainment giant, which itself had spun off from News Corporation in 2013. Give the precise name of this latter acquisition target (as the name appeared in its logo) at the time of the deal.

The answer is: Twenty‑First Century Fox.

Written in digits, that’s “two one S T Century Fox,” but for quiz purposes, think of it as the logo name: Twenty‑First Century Fox.

Disney first bought Lucasfilm in twenty twelve for just over four billion dollars, picking up Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Then in twenty nineteen, it completed a much larger deal, about seventy‑one point three billion dollars, to buy major assets from Twenty‑First Century Fox.

That company itself had come out of a split. In twenty thirteen, Rupert Murdoch’s original News Corporation separated its publishing businesses into a new company, and the remaining entertainment assets were rebranded with that new logo name, Twenty‑First Century Fox.

What did Disney actually get in this Fox deal? A lot. The film studio that had been known as Twentieth Century Fox, the FX cable networks, National Geographic, the Star India network, and a big stake in Hulu. That reshaped Disney’s position in streaming and cable almost overnight.

After the deal closed, Disney dropped the word “Fox” from the studio names to avoid confusion with the separate Fox Corporation that still runs Fox News and the Fox broadcast network. So Twentieth Century Fox became Twentieth Century Studios, and Fox Searchlight became Searchlight Pictures.

There’s also a fun music angle here. The classic Twentieth Century Fox fanfare, written by Alfred Newman, became tightly tied to Star Wars. George Lucas insisted on keeping that fanfare in front of the original films, and John Williams wrote the Star Wars main theme in the same key so it would flow right out of it. Once Disney owned both Lucasfilm and the old Fox studio catalog, it kind of brought that partnership full circle, at least on paper.

And from a superhero perspective, the Fox deal finally brought film rights to the X‑Men and Fantastic Four back under the same umbrella as Marvel Studios. That’s what makes recent crossover projects, like Deadpool and Wolverine and future Avengers films involving mutants, legally possible.

If you want to dig into which specific channels and franchises switched hands, check the show notes at L L Study Guide dot com. The asset lists are long, but very quiz‑friendly.

Now for Question five.

Question five: Japanese Bunraku, French Guignol, Russian Petrushka, Indonesian Wayang, and Turkish Karagöz are all theatre traditions that are distinctive for their use of what props?

The answer is: puppets.

All of these are different regional traditions of puppet theatre.

In Japan, Bunraku uses large, highly articulated puppets, often about half to two‑thirds the size of a human. Each puppet is operated by three puppeteers working together, while a narrator and a shamisen player provide the voice and music. It’s very formal and stylized.

In France, Guignol is a hand‑puppet character from Lyon, created in the early nineteen hundreds. He’s usually a worker or craftsman figure who satirizes landlords, the police, and politicians. You can think of him as France’s answer to Punch from Punch and Judy shows.

Petrushka in Russia is both a folk puppet trickster and the central figure of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet of the same name. On the street theatre side, he’s a mischievous hand‑puppet character; in the ballet, he becomes this tragic, slightly eerie puppet who comes to life.

In Indonesia, wayang performances are some of the most famous puppet traditions in the world. Wayang kulit uses flat leather shadow puppets held up against a lit screen, while wayang golek uses three‑dimensional wooden rod puppets. The stories usually draw from the Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, mixed with local legends, all accompanied by a gamelan orchestra.

And in Turkey, Karagöz is the lead character in Ottoman shadow plays, paired with his straight‑man partner Hacivat. The puppets are made of colored, translucent leather and projected on a backlit screen. These shows are still closely associated with Ramadan evenings. There’s even a modern film, Killing the Shadows, that plays with the supposed origins of Karagöz and Hacivat.

So the common thread here is simple: puppets. But the forms range from small satirical hand puppets to intricate shadow figures and nearly life‑size articulated dolls. It’s a good reminder that theatre traditions are not just about actors on stage; they can be about objects brought to life.

If you’d like images of each style or links to performances, check the study notes on our website. Seeing photos really helps lock in which name goes with which country and puppet style.

And finally, Question six.

Question six: The Manhattan skyscraper that stood as the world’s tallest from 1913, when it surpassed the Met Life Tower, until 1930, when it was overtaken by 40 Wall Street, was built as the 60-story headquarters of what retail store chain?

The answer is: the F. W. Woolworth Company.

The building in question is the Woolworth Building in New York City. It was conceived by five‑and‑dime store magnate Frank W. Woolworth as the headquarters for his chain, the F. W. Woolworth Company.

The Woolworth Building was completed in nineteen thirteen. At roughly sixty stories and just under eight hundred feet tall, it became the tallest skyscraper in the world, beating out the Met Life Tower. It held that title until nineteen thirty, when it was surpassed by Forty Wall Street, and then shortly afterward by other towers in the race to the sky.

Architecturally, the Woolworth Building is a classic neo‑Gothic skyscraper. Think pointed arches, elaborate terracotta ornament, and a richly decorated lobby. It picked up the nickname “the Cathedral of Commerce” because it looked like a Gothic cathedral turned into an office tower.

On the business side, the Woolworth Company pioneered the fixed‑price “five and ten” cent store. Instead of haggling, everything had a set, low price. Over time the chain grew into hundreds of stores and played a big role in the development of modern self‑service retail. Eventually, through corporate changes and rebrandings, the old Woolworth company evolved into today’s Foot Locker.

There’s also a fun fantasy‑film connection. In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the Woolworth Building secretly houses the Magical Congress of the United States of America, basically the American Ministry of Magic. The movie’s sets were inspired by the real lobby, so if you visit the building or see photos, you can spot the resemblance.

So you can tie this together as: tallest building in the world in nineteen thirteen, Gothic skyscraper, and the corporate headquarters for a chain of five‑and‑dime stores that eventually became Foot Locker. That’s F. W. Woolworth.

Again, if you want more of the architectural details or the full history of how a five‑cent store chain ended up with this monumental tower, the show notes on L L Study Guide dot com have you covered.

All right, that wraps up our six questions for this match day.

Quick recap of the answers: The Price Is Right for the pet‑population sign‑off. Brisbane for the twenty thirty‑two Summer Olympics. Union Station for Alison Krauss’s band name and all those rail hubs. Twenty‑First Century Fox as Disney’s massive twenty nineteen acquisition target. Puppets as the shared prop across those five global theatre traditions. And the F. W. Woolworth Company as the five‑and‑dime chain behind the Woolworth Building.

If any of these felt shaky, or you want to go deeper with videos, photos, or longer write‑ups, head over to L L Study Guide dot com and check the study notes for this match. They’re designed to make it easy to do a quick targeted review before your next day of questions.

Thanks for listening, and keep up the good work with your daily practice. Come back next time for another fast walkthrough of six more answers, and in the meantime, happy studying.