Special MBD Trivia Show w/ Morning Brew Crew

December 25, 2025

38 min episode · 2 min read

Jack Stebbins,Annie Bennett,Macy Gilliam

Episode

38 min

Read time

2 min

AI-Generated Summary

Published Dec 26, 2025

Key Takeaways

✓News retention testing: Trivia format reveals how poorly even media professionals retain specific details like Pope Leo's birth name (Robert Prevost), 2025's Chinese zodiac year (snake), and Trump's tariff targets (Heard and McDonald Islands), despite covering these stories.
✓Social media engagement metrics: Taylor Swift's engagement post received 37 million Instagram likes, significantly below Messi's World Cup record of 90 million, showing even mega-celebrities have engagement ceilings. Trump posted 158 times on Truth Social in one 24-hour period on December 1, 2025.
✓Box office performance data: Minecraft movie topped 2025 US box office, followed by Lilo and Stitch live-action and Superman. The top 30 grossing films included unexpected entries like Dogman (19th place), a family film about a half-man, half-dog character.
✓Trend forecasting exercise: Contestants predicted 2026 trends including celebrities dating former heads of state (Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau pattern), company towns modeled after SpaceX's Starbase, and necessity-driven crafting as economic pressures increase consumer DIY behavior.

What It Covers

Morning Brew Daily hosts a year-end trivia game show with three Morning Brew colleagues competing for $100, testing knowledge of 2025 news events, celebrity quotes, box office numbers, and cultural trends through five rounds.

Key Questions Answered

•News retention testing: Trivia format reveals how poorly even media professionals retain specific details like Pope Leo's birth name (Robert Prevost), 2025's Chinese zodiac year (snake), and Trump's tariff targets (Heard and McDonald Islands), despite covering these stories.
•Social media engagement metrics: Taylor Swift's engagement post received 37 million Instagram likes, significantly below Messi's World Cup record of 90 million, showing even mega-celebrities have engagement ceilings. Trump posted 158 times on Truth Social in one 24-hour period on December 1, 2025.
•Box office performance data: Minecraft movie topped 2025 US box office, followed by Lilo and Stitch live-action and Superman. The top 30 grossing films included unexpected entries like Dogman (19th place), a family film about a half-man, half-dog character.
•Trend forecasting exercise: Contestants predicted 2026 trends including celebrities dating former heads of state (Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau pattern), company towns modeled after SpaceX's Starbase, and necessity-driven crafting as economic pressures increase consumer DIY behavior.

Notable Moment

One contestant correctly identified that 250 billion pennies remain in US circulation despite the penny's demise, a number 400 times higher than initial guesses, revealing how dramatically people underestimate physical currency volume still circulating in the economy.

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