Karen Chu - Good Job, Brain!: Trivia, Quizzes and More Fun From the Popular Pub Quiz Podcast

Text copyright 2016 Karen Chu, Colin Felton, Dana Nelson, Chris Kohler. Design and concept copyright 2016 Ulysses Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. Any unauthorized duplication in whole or in part or dissemination of this edition by any means (including but not limited to photocopying, electronic devices, digital versions, and the Internet) will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

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ISBN: 978-1-61243-625-8

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Table of Contents

Contents

BY KAREN

Weve been playing pub trivia since 2008. Every single week.

Despite our collective life events of changing jobs, moving to new digs, getting married, having babies, traveling for work, dealing with emergencies, and basically tackling whatever life throws at us, we still manage to carve time for pub trivia.

Every. Single. Week.

What is so alluring about pub trivia that it keeps us coming back for more? Well, we have a theory. As adults, its rare to find activities that allow you and your friends to work together outside of professional and school environments. When was the last time you and your friends cooperated and accomplished something for fun? We think this may be the reason people play pickup basketball, team together for a game of League of Legends, or meet up at a bar and answer quiz questions for three hours.

Theres an element of joy in trivia. And that joy doesnt necessarily come from being right, or being a poindexter know-it-all. I believe the real joy in trivia comes from learning something cool and getting to the point where you basically cannot wait to share it with others. The four of us are just so fortunate to have found each other. And we knew there were other people out there who were as obsessively curious as we are, who find joy in learning that you can use Cheez Whiz as shaving cream, that Captain Crunchs full name is Horatio Magellan Crunch, and that Youppi! (whose face looks like an upside-down uterus) is the first mascot to transfer from one major sports franchise to another.

This is why we started the Good Job, Brain! podcast. We wanted to invite the whole world to join our pub trivia table, and to revel in all the weird facts around us. And this book youre holdingthis is us, too, sharing our joy with you. So what are you waiting for? Flip the page and lets be curious together.

BY CHRIS

One Thursday in 2008, Karen and I stopped at a local chain pub, Elephant & Castle, to grab dinner. We sat down at our table to find that we had walked into the middle of a night of pub trivia, and the host was reading out the answers to the previous round in a charming British accent.

Chris, Karen said, I know you really want to eat here, but if we cant play along with this trivia, we have to leave. Karen couldnt sit there and listen to trivia questions without being able to play along. Fortunately, they gave us an answer booklet and let us join in while the quiz was in progress. (Good thing, because I was hungry.) We wrote down Baby Dog Time as our team name, after what we called it when we picked up Karens giant pit bull Otis and cradled him like a baby. We lost that round of trivia, of course, and we lost the next week, and the week after that. And we lost a lot thereafter. But soon something crazy started happening. We kept losing, but by less of a margin each time.

Eventually we started winning, and a few years later Karen had the bright idea of turning our weekly trivia nights into a podcast, only this time wed call it something a little less esoteric than Baby Dog Time. What youre about to read are some of our favorite segments, quizzes, and puzzles from four years of the Good Job, Brain! podcast, plus some new stuff we came up with just for you. If youre a longtime GJB listener, thanks for all your support over the yearsit has helped us put this book together! If youre just joining the GJB family for the first time, we hope you enjoy this journey into our weird obsessions.

BY COLIN

While other book-minded kids were getting lost in the pages of The Hobbit or A Wrinkle in Time, I was busy with The Big Book of Amazing Facts, a massive (to my young eyes) collection of trivia and campy illustrations. I got it as a present for Christmas when I was eight, and I dont think I put it down until sometime the following spring. My love affair with trivia books had begun.

The only downside to my obsession with trivia collections was that unless something happened to show up on a test at school, the payoff was rather slim. So you can imagine my sheer and utter delight when I discovered the board game Trivial Pursuit a few years later. Not only could I put my heretofore-useless knowledge to use, but I could also use it in a team sport. By the time I got to college and discovered the magic of the pub quizBeer! Trivia! Together!I decided Id found my calling in life: shouting out answers and hoping to be right.

Im so lucky to have met Karen, Dana, and Chris. Weve been playing pub quizzes together longer than any job Ive had, and creating the Good Job, Brain! podcast with them has been one of the most rewarding things Ive ever done. Its such a joy for us to get together each week and quiz it up with other teams at the pub, or to crowd around our table gabbing into our microphones as we record our show. And now its come full circle for me. If this book full of facts, quizzes, and outright weirdness can convey even a small fraction of the love we have for trivia, then weve done our jobs. Enjoy!

BY DANA

This book is a great reflection of what we find interesting in trivia, both as a pub team and as a podcast. Theres an entire chapter on food, for example. We almost named the science chapter Gross Stuff, but decided that not all the stories are gross (just most of them).

Youll find Good Job, Brain! podcast favorites such as William Shakespeare Goes to a House Party, Brad Pitt or Lasers, and Belgium or Not Belgium. Weve also included plenty of new stuff, like a Keanu Reevesthemed connect-the-dots puzzle, TV-show rebuses, and a really cool story about a fish with a runny nose.