Show Notes
Did you know the Mona Lisa wasn't famous until someone stole it? That stop signs used to be yellow? That the word "podcast" was invented by accident?
Welcome to Trivia. Sort Of. – a weekly show about the surprising true stories hiding behind things you already know. One story. A few minutes. No homework required.
Each week: one fact, one twist, one "wait, really?" moment – sourced, fact-checked (mostly), and built for the few minutes you have between everything else.
Coming soon wherever you listen to podcasts.
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More from Trivia. Sort of.
In 2001, a single piece of paper sold at a famous auction house – not a painting, not a manuscript, just a rejection letter. The person being rejected in it went on to sell over ten million records with the very songs that letter said were missing. This week: the executive, the letter, and the auction.
A journalist trying to hit a word count in 2004 threw out three made-up terms to describe something that didn't have a name yet. One of them is now used by over a billion people every month, including you, right now.
In 1974, a 25-foot mechanical shark kept sinking to the bottom of the ocean, and the crew started calling it "Flaws" instead of its actual name. What happened next accidentally changed how movies build suspense forever. This week: the shark that barely worked, and the director who turned that into an advantage.
Before 1911, the Mona Lisa wasn't even considered Leonardo's best work. Then a man in a museum staff smock walked out the front door with it, and the world hasn't stopped looking at it since. This week: the missing painting, the two-year hiding spot, and the unlikely suspect list that included Picasso.
For decades, a company collected an estimated two million dollars a year in royalties from a song sung at nearly every birthday party on the planet. Then one filmmaker got a $1,500 invoice and decided to find out if that company actually owned it. This week: what she found.