50 free Podcast trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Podcasts went from a 2004 Guardian column to a medium that reaches more than a fifth of Americans every week, and this podcast trivia quiz covers how it happened. It starts with Ben Hammersley coining the word, Adam Curry and Dave Winer wiring audio into RSS, iTunes 4.9 and the Ricky Gervais Show's Guinness record, then moves through the breakout years of Serial, S-Town, Welcome to Night Vale and Marc Maron interviewing a president in his garage. The modern era gets its due too: Joe Rogan's Spotify deal, Gimlet and The Ringer being bought, Call Her Daddy and SmartLess changing hands for nine figures, The Daily, Crime Junkie, My Favorite Murder, The Rest Is History, The Diary of a CEO and the first Golden Globe for a podcast. Whether you listen on your commute or make a show yourself, there are easy questions about hosts and hard ones about launch dates and download records. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia and the shows' own records, and each question reveals its source once you answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Journalist Ben Hammersley coined the word 'podcast' in February 2004 while writing for which newspaper?
The Guardian
It is a portmanteau of iPod and broadcast, and Hammersley tossed it off almost as an aside among other suggested names.
Q 02The word 'podcast' is a blend of 'broadcast' and the name of which device?
The iPod
Ironically most podcast listening now happens on phones, and Apple discontinued the iPod in 2022.
Q 03Which former MTV VJ, nicknamed the 'Podfather', launched the early show Daily Source Code in 2004?
Adam Curry
He went on to co-host No Agenda with John C. Dvorak from 2007 and launched the open Podcast Index in 2020.
Q 04Which software developer implemented attaching audio files to RSS feeds, the technical basis of podcasting?
Dave Winer
Winer's RSS 'enclosures' let a feed carry an MP3, and Adam Curry built the first popular podcatcher on top of them.
Q 05Apple mainstreamed the medium in June 2005 by building podcast support into which of its programs?
iTunes
It arrived in iTunes 4.9; suddenly no separate download app was needed, and podcast directories exploded overnight.
Q 06Which comedy podcast with Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington earned a Guinness record as most downloaded in 2006?
The Ricky Gervais Show
Launched through the Guardian in December 2005, it passed 300 million downloads by 2011 and became an HBO cartoon.
Q 07Who hosts Serial, the 2014 true-crime podcast spun off from This American Life?
Sarah Koenig
Koenig's first season had been downloaded 68 million times by February 2015 and won a Peabody.
Q 08Serial's first season re-examined Adnan Syed's conviction for a 1999 killing in which city's suburbs?
Baltimore
Hae Min Lee was 18; Syed's conviction was vacated in 2022, then reinstated in 2025 with a reduced sentence.
Q 09Which newspaper bought Serial Productions in 2020 for a reported $25 million?
The New York Times
Later seasons covered Bowe Bergdahl, Cleveland's courts and Guantanamo Bay.
Q 10Who has hosted This American Life since it began on Chicago's WBEZ in 1995?
Ira Glass
In 2020 it became the first news programme to win the Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting, for the episode 'The Out Crowd'.
Q 11The Joe Rogan Experience debuted on Christmas Eve of which year?
2009
Brian Redban was co-host and sole producer until 2012, when Jamie Vernon, of 'pull that up, Jamie' fame, joined.
Q 12Which streaming service signed Joe Rogan to an exclusive deal in 2020 worth about $200 million?
Spotify
Exclusivity ended in 2024 under a new $250 million contract that put the show back on YouTube and Apple.
Q 13Which guest's on-air cannabis use on Joe Rogan's show in September 2018 preceded a 9% fall in his company's stock?
Elon Musk
It was episode 1,169; Tesla shares dropped the next day.
Q 21Welcome to Night Vale, launched in 2012, is presented in the format of what?
A community radio show
Cecil Baldwin voices the host of the fictional desert town; in July 2013 it overtook This American Life at the top of the iTunes chart.
Q 22Which series of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History covered the First World War?
Blueprint for Armageddon
Carlin, who calls his style 'theater of the mind', releases only every four to seven months.
Q 23Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant have hosted Stuff You Should Know since 2008 for which brand?
HowStuffWorks
Q 14Marc Maron recorded most episodes of WTF in his Los Angeles garage. What was the garage nicknamed?
The Cat Ranch
The show ran from September 2009 to October 2025, 1,686 episodes in all.
Q 15Which sitting US president travelled to Marc Maron's garage in June 2015 to record an episode of WTF?
Barack Obama
He came back for the podcast's final episode in 2025, this time recorded in Washington.
Q 16Marc Maron's 2010 WTF episode with which guest joined the National Recording Registry?
Robin Williams
Maron's long, raw interviews made comedians open up in ways they never did on television.
Q 17S-Town (2017) followed clock restorer John B. McLemore in a small town in which state?
Alabama
Woodstock, Alabama; the title is McLemore's own rude nickname for the place. It hit 10 million downloads in four days.
Q 18Which newspaper launched The Daily, hosted by Michael Barbaro, on February 1, 2017?
The New York Times
It reached 3.8 million listeners within seven months and spawned the FX series The Weekly.
Q 19How do Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark sign off every episode of My Favorite Murder?
'Stay sexy and don't get murdered'
Fans call themselves Murderinos, and the hosts founded the Exactly Right network in 2018.
Q 20Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy started in 2018 under which media company?
Barstool Sports
She left for a $60 million Spotify deal in 2021, then a $125 million SiriusXM deal in 2024, and interviewed Kamala Harris that October.
Now distributed by iHeartRadio, it is downloaded more than a million times a week and even got its own Trivial Pursuit edition.
Q 24Which producer, later a MacArthur fellow, created Radiolab at WNYC in 2002?
Jad Abumrad
He co-hosted with Robert Krulwich for years; Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser took over after his 2022 retirement.
Q 25Roman Mars's 99% Invisible is a podcast about what?
Design and architecture
The name comes from a Buckminster Fuller line about the unseen parts of who we are; SiriusXM bought it in 2021.
Q 26Which podcast company, founded in 2014 by Alex Blumberg, documented its own launch in the show StartUp?
Gimlet Media
Spotify bought it for about $230 million in 2019; its shows included Reply All and Homecoming.
Q 27Gimlet's thriller Homecoming was adapted for Amazon starring which Oscar-winning actress?
Julia Roberts
Sam Esmail of Mr. Robot directed the 2018 series, one of the first big podcast-to-TV adaptations.
Q 28Which three actors host SmartLess, where one surprises the others with a mystery guest?
Bateman, Hayes and Arnett
Amazon paid about $80 million for it in 2021 and SiriusXM about $100 million in 2024.
Q 29In 2022 SiriusXM paid $150 million for Team Coco, the company behind which host's 'Needs a Friend' podcast?
Conan O'Brien
Sona Movsesian and Matt Gourley co-host; Michelle Obama was an early guest in March 2019.
Q 30How many recordings does the BBC's Desert Island Discs ask guests to choose?
Eight
Castaways also pick a book and a luxury; the Bible and Shakespeare come free. Roy Plomley devised it.