Popular Foods
This cured Italian pork cheek is distinct from pancetta and is the traditionally correct ingredient in an authentic carbonara.
What is guanciale?
This 18th-century economist wrote "The Wealth of Nations" and introduced the concept of the invisible hand.
Who is Adam Smith?
This city, not the country's largest, serves as the capital of Australia — a compromise chosen because Sydney and Melbourne couldn't agree.
What is Canberra?
This American adventurer and author wrote "Into the Wild," based on Chris McCandless's fatal Alaskan journey.
Who is Jon Krakauer?
This 1994 film follows an unlikely friendship between a man with a low IQ and a woman named Jenny, spanning several decades of American history.
What is Forrest Gump?
This French mother sauce, made from butter and flour cooked together with milk, serves as the base for dishes like mac and cheese and croque monsieur.
What is béchamel?
This concept describes a situation where no participant can benefit by changing their strategy while others keep theirs unchanged, named after a Princeton mathematician.
What is a Nash Equilibrium?
This landlocked capital sits at over 11,800 feet above sea level, making it one of the highest capitals in the world, and shares its country with the Amazon basin.
What is Quito (Ecuador)?
This woman became the first to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1932.
Who is Amelia Earhart?
This 1993 Bill Murray comedy has him reliving the same day over and over again in a small Pennsylvania town.
What is Groundhog Day?
This spice, derived from the dried stigmas of a flower, requires roughly 75,000 flowers to produce a single pound, making it the world's most expensive spice by weight.
What is saffron?
This term describes the hidden cost of the next-best alternative foregone when making a decision — a concept central to economic reasoning but often ignored in everyday thinking.
What is opportunity cost?
This African capital, home to over 4 million people, is the capital of Ethiopia and also hosts the headquarters of the African Union.
What is Addis Ababa?
This treacherous sea route around the southern tip of South America was a major maritime challenge before the Panama Canal.
What is Cape Horn?
This James Cameron film held the title of highest-grossing film of all time for over a decade before being dethroned by Avengers: Endgame.
What is Avatar?
This cooking technique involves sealing food in an airtight bag and submerging it in a precisely temperature-controlled water bath, resulting in edge-to-edge even cooking.
What is sous vide?
This paradox, named after an Italian economist, describes a situation where a good's demand increases as its price rises, violating the standard law of demand.
What is a Giffen good?
This Central American capital shares its name with its country and sits on the shore of a lake of the same name.
What is Guatemala City?
This explorer's 1519–1522 expedition was the first to circumnavigate the globe, though he died before completing it.
Who is Ferdinand Magellan?
These three films hold the record for most Oscar wins ever, tied at 11. Name 2 of 3.
What are Ben-Hur, Titanic, and Return of the King?
This French cheese, made from unpasteurized sheep's milk and aged in the caves of Combalou, is one of the oldest cheeses in the world and gets its distinctive blue veins from a specific mold called Penicillium roqueforti.
What is Roquefort?
Freakonomics author Steven Levitt argued that the legalization of this 1973 Supreme Court ruling contributed to a drop in crime rates in the 1990s.
What is Roe v. Wade?
This capital of Kazakhstan was renamed Nur-Sultan in 2019 before reverting back to its previous name, Astana, in 2022.
What is Astana?
Ernest Shackleton's 1914 expedition to Antarctica was named after this ship, which became trapped in pack ice.
What is the Endurance?
This 1939 film, adjusted for inflation, remains the highest-grossing film in history by a wide margin.
What is Gone with the Wind?