Science

Today’s LL Study Guide ranges from Pablo Picasso’s tongue-twisting baptismal name and his unprecedented 90th‑birthday honor at the Louvre, to the tiny club of G‑rated Best Picture nominees standing in contrast to the X‑rated winner Midnight Cowboy. We also visit Leverkusen on the Rhine, where works team Bayer 04 Leverkusen finally shed their “Neverkusen” curse under Xabi Alonso while backed by pharmaceutical giant Bayer, and dig into the rise of fast‑fashion juggernaut Shein from its ZZKKO and SheInside days. Rounding things out: the conservation rescue of Texas Longhorn cattle by the U.S. Forest Service, the University of Texas mascot Bevo, and how Frank Sinatra’s “doo-be-doo-be-doo” scat on “Strangers in the Night” gave Scooby‑Doo his name and a half‑century of pop‑culture life. ...

Today’s LL Study Guide ranges from the real Scottish king Macbeth, who killed Duncan I near Elgin in 1040 and ruled until his own death in 1057, to the New Orleans po’ boy born in a 1929 streetcar strike, H.G. Wells’s 1895 coinage of the term “time machine,” and Spain’s largest Balearic island, Mallorca. You’ll also meet Ugandan-born Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani, whose post‑9/11 book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim dissects how the Cold War and U.S. foreign policy shaped modern terrorism debates, and learn how the Japanese word tsunami (“harbour wave”) and the shoreline “withdrawal” that can precede it have become crucial parts of global hazard awareness. ...

Podcast Script Welcome back to the LL Study Guide daily review. I’m glad you’re here. We’re walking through another six-pack of questions, and today’s set really hops around: modern art, movie ratings, German soccer, fast fashion, Texas cattle, and a cartoon Great Dane named by Frank Sinatra. So if you felt a little whiplash playing this match day, that’s totally fair. As always, if you want the full write-up, extra examples, and links, you can check the study notes on our website at L L Study Guide dot com. I’ll just hit the key stories and connections here so you can listen on the go. ...

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. ...

This match day moves quickly between big science, big media, and big money, anchored by six very “global” answers. At one end you have CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, a 27‑km ring under the French–Swiss border that is the world’s largest and highest‑energy particle accelerator and the site of the 2012 Higgs boson discovery; its superconducting magnets are cooled to an ultra‑cold 1.9 K, even colder than the 2.7 K cosmic microwave background of deep space. At the other end you have the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage between Iran and Oman that connects the Gulf of Oman to the Persian Gulf and carries roughly 20% of global oil flows, making it one of the most strategically sensitive waterways on Earth. ...

This match day moves quickly across domains: from cutting-edge nanomaterials (Vantablack) and the shifting brand names of HBO’s streaming services, to YA vampire fiction, the global art market, culinary spices, and a classic English word-oddity. Vantablack, developed by Surrey NanoSystems as a forest of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes that absorbs about 99.965% of visible light, sits at one scientific extreme. At the other end are humanistic and cultural topics: Stephenie Meyer’s four-book Twilight Saga (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn), a 280‑year‑old auction house, and a 19th‑century opera aria. ...

Podcast Script Welcome back to the LL Study Guide review podcast for another match day. I’m glad you’re here. We’re going to walk through all six questions from this day, hit the correct answers, and give you just enough background so the facts actually stick the next time you see something similar. If you want the full write‑ups, extra links, and source notes, those are all waiting for you in the study notes on our website at L L study guide dot com. Here in the audio, we’ll keep things tight and conversational so you can listen on the go. ...

Overview This match day leans heavily into the long 19th century, when science, literature, and symbolism were all exploding at once. Three questions sit squarely in that period: Lewis Carroll’s 1865 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland introduces the Queen of Hearts as a living playing card; Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo pilots the submarine Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1869–70); and, in 1868, Janssen and Lockyer detect an unknown element in the Sun’s spectrum, later named helium and only isolated on Earth in 1895. ...

Podcast Script Welcome back to the LL Study Guide podcast for Match Day twenty. I’m glad you’re here. We’re going to walk through all six questions from today, talk about the right answers, and, more importantly, what you can learn from them for future matches. Remember, if you want the full write‑ups, extra examples, and links, you can always check the study notes on our website at llstudyguide dot com. I’ll just call them the study notes or the show notes as we go. ...

Podcast Script Welcome back to the LL Study Guide daily review. I’m glad you’re here. This episode is all about Match Day 19 from season 107, and it’s a really fun mix: classic literature, nuclear history, deep‑cut linguistics, and even the most remote spot in the ocean. As always, if you want links, visuals, and deeper dives on anything we talk about, you can check the full study notes on our website at llstudyguide.com. ...