Podcast Script

Welcome back to the LL Study Guide review podcast for another match day rundown. I’m glad you’re here.

Today we’re traveling from medieval Scotland to New Orleans streetcars, Victorian sci fi, Mediterranean islands, New York City politics, and all the way out to the physics of giant ocean waves. As always, if you want the fuller write up, maps, film lists, and article links, you can check the study notes on our website at L L Study Guide dot com.

Let’s dive into Question One.

Question One asked: What legend of history and drama, mormaer of Moray, became king after slaying Duncan I in battle near Elgin in 1040, before his defeat and death at the hands of Duncan’s son in 1057?

The answer is: Macbeth.

So this is not just Shakespeare’s tortured antihero. There really was a historical King Macbeth of Scotland. He started out as mormaer of Moray, basically a powerful regional earl in northern Scotland. In ten forty, he killed King Duncan the First in battle near Elgin and then ruled as king until he himself was killed in ten fifty seven by Duncan’s son, the future Malcolm the Third.

Shakespeare took that skeleton of history and turned it into the play you probably read in school. In the real story Duncan dies in battle; on stage he’s murdered in his sleep. The real Macbeth seems to have been a more stable ruler than the paranoid tyrant we see in the play. But the drama gives us witches, prophecies, guilt, and one of the great tragic downfalls in literature.

A quick vocab hook here: “mormaer” is a Celtic noble title, roughly like an earl. If you see “mormaer of Moray,” that’s a big clue you’re in medieval Scotland, and Macbeth should jump to mind.

This question also taps into theatre superstition. A lot of actors won’t say “Macbeth” inside a theatre. They call it “the Scottish play” instead, because the show is supposed to be cursed. If someone slips and says the name, there are elaborate rituals to undo the bad luck, like leaving the building, spinning, and spitting before you come back in.

And Macbeth keeps showing up on screen. Orson Welles did a stark black and white version in nineteen forty eight. There’s the twenty fifteen film with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. More recently Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, gave it this very stylized, almost expressionist look. Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood moves the whole story to samurai era Japan and is often ranked as one of the best Shakespeare adaptations ever.

If you want to brush up on which parts are historical and which parts are pure theatre, or you want a quick list of film versions to watch, check the study notes on our website.

All right, from cursed plays to comfort food, let’s go to Question Two.

Question Two asked: A popular sandwich was reportedly invented in New Orleans in 1929 by restaurant owners and former streetcar workers Bennie and Clovis Martin, who served it free of charge to striking streetcar workers who were low on funds. What name is used for this sandwich (influenced by the strikers themselves)?

The answer is: po’ boy.

The po’ boy is the classic New Orleans sandwich. It’s served on a long loaf of local French bread that’s crisp on the outside and soft inside. The fillings are usually roast beef with gravy, or fried seafood like shrimp, oysters, or catfish. “Dressed” usually means lettuce, tomato, pickles, and some kind of sauce or mayo.

According to New Orleans lore, the name comes from a nineteen twenty nine streetcar strike. Bennie and Clovis Martin had been streetcar conductors before they opened a restaurant. When the strike hit and the workers had no money coming in, the Martins fed them free, handing out these big, cheap sandwiches. Supposedly when they saw another striker coming through the door, they’d say, “Here comes another poor boy,” and that phrase stuck to the sandwich. Over time, “poor boy” slurred into “po’ boy.”

There’s even a specific baker, John Gendusa, credited with creating the long, narrow loaf that became the standard po’ boy bread. So you have this neat mix of labor history, local bakers, and street food all wrapped up in one sandwich.

Today the po’ boy is right up there with gumbo as a symbol of the city. There are legendary spots like Domilise’s, Parkway, Guy’s, and a long list of others. Food shows love them. Guy Fieri has done multiple episodes of Diners, Drive Ins and Dives featuring New Orleans po’ boys. There’s even an Oak Street Po Boy Festival that draws big crowds to sample every possible variation.

The sandwich even pops up in pop culture. The show Treme uses po’ boy joints to anchor scenes about post Katrina New Orleans life. And if you follow football and the Manning family, you might’ve seen stories about their tradition of shrimp po’ boys from specific spots in town.

For a quick mental hook on quiz day: New Orleans, nineteen twenty nine streetcar strike, “poor boys” getting free food from the Martin brothers—your answer is po’ boy.

If you want recommendations on classic shops, or a bit more on the strike itself, those details are in the show notes on the site.

Let’s jump from sandwiches to science fiction with Question Three.

Question Three asked: An 1895 novel by H.G. Wells introduced (and in fact used in its title) a term that later became commonplace in science fiction and fantasy. Identify this two-word term.

The answer is: time machine.

We’re talking about H. G. Wells’s novella The Time Machine, published in eighteen ninety five. In that story, a Victorian inventor builds a mechanical device that lets him travel thousands and thousands of years into the future. Wells actually coins the phrase “time machine” right there in the title and in the text, and that term has stuck ever since.

Before Wells, you do see stories about moving through time—things like dreams, prophecies, or magical sleep—but he reframes it as a kind of technology. Time travel becomes something you do with an engineered device, not a spell. That’s a big shift, and it sets up basically every later story where a gadget or vehicle does the work.

The book itself sends the Time Traveller far ahead to a world of the gentle Eloi on the surface and the predatory Morlocks underground. It’s also a social commentary, turning class divisions of industrial England into a literal split between two future species.

On screen, The Time Machine has had a couple of big adaptations. There’s the nineteen sixty film directed by George Pal, with those famous stop motion scenes of time speeding up outside the window. Then a two thousand two version directed by Wells’s great grandson, Simon Wells, that updates some of the plotting but keeps the core idea.

And the language Wells gave us spreads everywhere. In Back to the Future, Doc Brown’s DeLorean is explicitly called a time machine, powered by the “flux capacitor.” In Doctor Who, the TARDIS is a time machine and spaceship disguised as a blue police box. Bill and Ted have their phone booth time machine. You see the same basic idea repackaged over and over, but the phrase itself comes straight from Wells.

If you want to go a bit deeper, Wells actually experimented with mechanical time travel earlier in a story called The Chronic Argonauts, which you can read about in the study notes. But for LearnedLeague style questions, just remember: eighteen ninety five, H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, and the term “time machine” as the now universal phrase.

Now we’ll move from Victorian London to the Mediterranean with Question Four.

Question Four asked: What is the fitting name of the largest island in the archipelago known as the Balearic Islands?

The answer is: Mallorca, also spelled Majorca.

The Balearic Islands are an autonomous community of Spain in the western Mediterranean. The main islands are Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera. Of those, Mallorca is the largest—so “fitting name” points you toward “major,” as in “major island,” which is how the English spelling Majorca can help you remember it.

Its capital city is Palma de Mallorca, which is also the capital of the Balearic Islands as a whole. So Mallorca is both the biggest landmass and the political center of the group.

Mallorca is all over modern culture as a setting. There’s a BBC crime series called The Mallorca Files, about a British and a German detective solving cases on the island. It’s filmed on location, so it doubles as a travel ad: sunny coastlines, mountain roads, resort hotels.

The John le Carré adaptation The Night Manager used lavish Majorcan estates and coastal spots as the home base of Hugh Laurie’s arms dealer character. That show leans into the island’s image as a place of Mediterranean luxury and intrigue.

Writers and artists have also made it home. The English poet and novelist Robert Graves settled in the village of Deià, where he wrote works like I, Claudius and The Greek Myths. His house there is now a museum, and the village became a bit of an artistic enclave.

The painter Joan Miró moved to Mallorca in the nineteen fifties, built a purpose designed studio in Palma, and worked there for the rest of his life. Today the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró in Mallorca preserves his studios and a huge collection of his work. The island has even organized major exhibitions honoring his legacy.

You’ll also see Mallorca in recent Spanish films, like Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake, which centers on sisters opening a bakery in a Mallorcan town.

For quiz purposes though, the core facts are simple: Balearic Islands, largest island, capital Palma, that’s Mallorca or Majorca. If you want maps, TV and film recommendations, or a little more on the wordplay around “major,” take a look at the study notes on our website.

From Mediterranean coasts, let’s head to New York and global politics with Question Five.

Question Five asked: The Ugandan academic and commentator who is currently a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University in New York, and is known for his influential post-9/11 book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, has the first name of Mahmood. What is his last name—a name which has emerged from relative obscurity in the past year?

The answer is: Mamdani.

So this is Mahmood Mamdani. He’s a Ugandan born scholar who teaches at Columbia University, holding a named chair in government and a position in anthropology, with other cross appointments. His work focuses on African history, colonialism, political violence, and how states and identities are constructed.

His best known book for a broader audience is Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, from two thousand four. In that book he pushes back against the idea that terrorism is the product of some timeless “Muslim culture.” Instead he argues that modern political Islam and many of the militant groups we think about today grew out of Cold War policies, especially U.S. and Soviet support for Islamist fighters in various proxy wars. So he’s linking the so called War on Terror to earlier geopolitical choices.

The question also hints that his surname has suddenly become more visible. That’s because his son, Zohran Mamdani, has been in the news. Zohran is a democratic socialist politician in New York who moved from the state assembly to winning the New York City mayoral race. A lot of coverage mentions that he’s the son of Mahmood Mamdani and the filmmaker Mira Nair, which means “Mamdani” is now a name you might see in both political and entertainment media.

Mira Nair’s films connect back to his work in interesting ways. Movies like Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake, and The Reluctant Fundamentalist all deal with themes of migration, race, colonial legacies, and the post nine eleven experience—very much overlapping with the issues Mahmood Mamdani writes about.

Mamdani was already well known in academic and policy circles; he’s been listed among leading global public intellectuals in magazine polls. But if you’ve been following U.S. news over the past year, the political rise of his son makes the surname much more front of mind for current events questions.

For remembering this under pressure: Mahmood, Good Muslim Bad Muslim, Ugandan academic at Columbia, and the last name you want is Mamdani. If you’d like a quick summary of his major books or a bit more about how his ideas show up in Nair’s films, those are in the show notes.

Finally, let’s head to the coast for Question Six.

Question Six asked: The Japanese characters 津波 refer to what natural phenomenon, which is often preceded by an event known as a “withdrawal” or “drawdown”?

The answer is: tsunami.

The word “tsunami” is Japanese. The characters 津波 literally mean “harbour wave.” “Tsu” is harbour; “nami” is wave. In English, we use tsunami for a series of very long waves in the ocean caused by things like undersea earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or landslides.

The question points to “withdrawal” or “drawdown.” That’s an important natural warning sign. In some tsunamis, before the big wave hits, the sea level at the shore drops suddenly and dramatically. The water pulls back, exposing seafloor that’s usually underwater, sometimes hundreds of meters out. That’s called drawdown, drawback, or withdrawal.

Unfortunately, people who don’t recognize the sign may walk out to look at the suddenly exposed seabed, which is exactly the wrong thing to do. When the wave comes back in, it can be deadly. Modern tsunami education really drills home the message: if you feel strong shaking near the shore, or you see the ocean suddenly recede or suddenly surge, head to high ground immediately. Those are nature’s own tsunami alerts, even before sirens or official warnings.

The devastating two thousand four Indian Ocean tsunami and the twenty eleven Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan both made this terminology widely known. You see documentaries like The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom about survivors in Japan, and dramatic films like The Impossible about a family caught in the two thousand four event. They help people visualize what’s going on physically, and also how fast everything happens.

Linguistically, “tsunami” has mostly replaced the older English term “tidal wave,” which is misleading, because these waves have nothing to do with tides. Using “tsunami” reflects a more accurate scientific understanding of what’s causing the water to move.

So your key takeaways: the characters 津波 are read “tsunami,” meaning “harbour wave,” and that withdrawal or drawdown is the dangerous drop in sea level that can happen just before the first big wave arrives.

If you want more on the physics, or you’d like links to hazard education resources you can skim in a few minutes, check the study notes on our website.

That brings us to the end of this match day review. We covered a real Scottish king behind a legendary tragedy, a sandwich born in a streetcar strike, the birth of the phrase “time machine,” Spain’s biggest Balearic island, a Ugandan public intellectual whose surname is suddenly everywhere, and a Japanese word that literally means “harbour wave.”

If any of these topics felt shaky, or you just want to follow up with films, articles, and maps, you can find the full study notes with links and resources at L L Study Guide dot com. They’re designed so you can skim them quickly between match days.

Thanks for listening, good luck in your next match, and I’ll see you back here for the next set of questions.