My name is Travis Larchuk and I am the head writer of NPR’s Ask Me Another, which is a public radio quiz show. It’s an hour long show, it airs on the weekends in most places, and it’s hosted by a comedian Ophira Eisenberg. We have a musician whose famous from the internet, Jonathan Coulton. It’s a very nerdy show. At the end there’s a winner. They win a Rubix cube that cost us nine dollars. It’s very low stakes.
Writing trivia is hard, there’s a lot of fact-checking involved. You have to make sure that there is only one answer to the question, which is harder than you might think. For example, who’s the spy with the initials J.B. who was the star of a blockbuster movie franchise? It could be James Bond but it could also be Jason Bourne. Or if you go into TV it could be Jack Bauer. It could be Jack Bristow from Alias. There are a ton of spies with the initials J.B.!
The last thing that you want is for somebody to give an answer and then you have to stop down everything while get on to Google to see if they are actually correct and that they have just slipped into a hole that you didn’t even realize was there.
We had on our show a big controversy because the answer to a clue about a food that smelled bad but tasted great was. We said it was jackfruit and a lot of people wrote in and said it was durian. There was a huge controversy about it. I don’t want your letters! I do not want your letters about this. I’ve read enough of them. Public radio listeners love to let you know when you’re wrong. And they’re great! And please continue to donate to your local public radio station.
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