Not Your Usual Trivia Team
The Last Call Trivia Podcast is celebrating our two hundredth episode, our “Bi-cent-pod-ual”, if you will. The truth is this project didn’t start out smoothly. Looking back, the first dozen episodes were uncomfortable to record and made for cringe-worthy listening. This isn’t a story about product refinement. This is how we, the voices you hear each week, began as complete strangers and became unlikely friends.
In 2020, at the height of the Pandemic, I answered an ad for a podcast contributor role with a Trivia company based in Cincinnati, OH. I remember thinking it was a bit unusual for someone to be casting a podcast; often people just grab their best friends and go from there. The bar to entry into the podcast market is exceedingly low, perhaps too low. This fact, that anyone with a microphone and a laptop can start a podcast, is a large part of the reason that the vast majority of podcasts never make it past six episodes.
This chance ad was to be my gateway into a career in the world of Trivia, something I had not previously been aware existed. I was also blissfully ignorant that what seemed at times to be the height of social and political division within America was, in fact, only a taste of more extreme and vocal divisions to come.
From Cringe To Connection
The Last Call Trivia Podcast began with one goal in mind. In form and function, the podcast is designed to give listeners a window into Last Call’s weekly games at bars and restaurants across the country, to replicate the camaraderie and bon esprit of being part of a regular trivia team. To this end, a cadre of four voices was assembled from the four corners of this country.
DJ, with his photographic memory, plays from the state of Washington. Kelly, a horror movie actress who has traveled the US extensively, lives in L.A. James, our host with a background in radio and a voice to match, guides us from the great state of New Jersey, and I, with a career in theatre and a taste for etymology, reside in sunny Florida.
The objective for Kelly, DJ, James, and myself, was not necessarily to find the right answers to trivia questions, but rather to illuminate the shared mental journey a team takes while searching for an answer. Being strangers, our first recorded interactions felt forced, dry, and staged. Our laughter had a performative edge to it as we desperately tried to sound like a team of good friends. Fortunately for our audience, we all have performance experience and are, as Kelly might say, “consummate professionals”.
In the process of getting to know each other over the first few dozen episodes, we realized that we came from very different social, political, and philosophical backgrounds. In the face of societal tensions, it seemed unlikely we could ever be real friends. At one point I even questioned whether or not I could “in good conscience” continue working with individuals with whom I so vehemently disagree.
Then, a rather extraordinary process unfolded. Somewhere between our preshow chats and the recording sessions, between sharing personal heartbreaks and victories, and between stories of lost tortoises and newfound passions, we four became very fond of each other.
The Real Prize of Trivia
What began as a simulated performance of the social side of a weekly trivia game actually became a weekly social trivia game. The weekly exercise of tackling questions and working to expand common ground on what we know and what we agree on has steadily diminished what once seemed like looming differences. Of course, we still disagree on politics, religion, and whether or not Belize and Brazil share a land border, but what we agree on is much bigger and less abstract.
Getting a Trivia answer correct is not often the result of simply knowing a fact. I don’t just happen to know that the Louvre is on the Rive Droite of Paris, I have a memory of bicycling across the Seine, running late on my way to school and seeing the Louvre across the river as I crossed from my neighborhood to the south. Each question triggers dozens of memories, dozens of stories. These stories, these experiences, connect us and make us who we are. The act of sharing these personal narratives with each other allows us to see each other as human beings, rather than abstractions of political or social positions.
We look forward to seeing each other every week, to celebrating each other’s victories, and to laughing about getting geography questions horribly wrong.
What have we learned from two hundred podcast episodes? We’ve learned that being confident does not always correspond with being correct. We’ve learned to always trust Kelly when it comes to final answers. We’ve learned that our grasp on geography is more tenuous than we had once thought. And we have witnessed a beautiful proof of what Last Call has always known: Trivia brings people together, in every sense of the phrase.
We are experiencing an age when we seem to be increasingly separated from our countrymen, our neighbors, and our fellow human beings. The simple weekly ritual of answering questions together acts as a bond-making, consensus-building antidote for the artificial fragmentation and siloing of our society. If we want to strengthen our national identity, perhaps we should take some time away from detailing our perceived differences and dedicate an hour or two every week to discovering what we agree on.
As cliche as it might sound, the real Trivia prize is the friends we made along the way. Here’s to the next two hundred episodes of the Last Call Trivia Podcast. I hope you’ll join us.
O.T.S.