The Saturday Quiz

Catherine McClements and Shiv Palekar can currently both be seen in the Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of The Sound Inside. It’s a play about a literature academic and her student. Both characters come across as particularly intelligent and some of that intelligence has perhaps rubbed off onto the actors because Shiv and Cath barely put a foot wrong in this episode of the quiz. The answers...

Christie Whelan Browne and Emily Taheny are both cast members of my favourite satirical news programme "Shaun Micallef's Mad as Hell" Between them they tend to play the majority of the female characters on the show and given the results of last week's federal election and the rise of the Teal independents (who pretty much all seem to be women) they’ll probably have quite a few more characters to c...

Joining John for this special election day episode are two of Australia's foremost political experts. Amy Remeikis is the political reporter for The Guardian Australia and Sean Kelly was a Labor advisor for Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. But what is their general knowledge like? Do they know how many Catherines Henry VIII married? What about the name of the body of water into which the Nile empties...

It's duelling soap villains on this episode as Luke Arnold (who played Dr. Lewis Hayes on Home and Away) takes on Laurence Boxhall (currently starring as Corey Smythe-Jones on Neighbours) at the quiz. The answers don't exactly come thick and fast, but there are plenty of laughs to go around. This podcast is made on the land belonging to the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our respect...

Gen and Cath have been friends for a very long time. And in recent years they have collaborated on two plays in which they play two women who start a job agency - the catch being that it is those two women who go and perform all the jobs themselves - even if they're not very good at them. They are very good at the quiz though. Even if they think they're entirely unqualified to do it. https://www.e...

New York based siblings Wendy and Ashley Zukerman return to the quiz for a second go. Do they do better than they did the first time? Not really. But that's not the point. Find Wendy's award winning podcast Science Vs. wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is made on the land belonging to the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and ackn...

These two comedians have their own science based radio show, so the answer to the first question in this week's quiz comes straight out with no hesitation. And in fact, there's barely an answer that they don't come up with. Even the sport question! https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2022/shows/my-client-is-innocent https://play.acast.com/s/two-in-the-think-tank This podcast is made on the land belo...

Rosie and Nicola Dempsey are sisters. They are also very clever comedians. Together, they are known as Flo and Joan. For a pair of Brits, they do very well at a quiz with more than a few questions about particularly Australian things - like the name of the new premier of Tasmania, the Australian cricketer who was player of the tournament at the 2022 ICC Women's World Cup, and which NSW town has an...

They're back again! Julia and Brian are the very well quiz credentialed stars of The Really, Really Good Friday Rockwiz Special, on at Hamer Hall in Melbourne on Good Friday. This is their third appearance on The Saturday Quiz and they really, really couldn't have done better. With questions ranging from music to mathematics to the countries bordering Thailand, they come through with all the answe...

Given that the Melbourne International Comedy Festival has just opened, it seemed appropriate to have two international comedians take on the quiz this week. Cal Wilson has been in Melbourne for several years, but at the time of recording, Mark Watson had only been in the country for twelve hours. This presents a challenge, as there are quite a few questions about Australia in this quiz. https://w...

Floyd and Cameron are both comedians with shows coming up at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. On this episode, they come up against quite a few very tricky questions. But both of them manage to shine with some individual brilliance. Floyd draws on her high school French and Cameron knows more than a thing or two about the films of Will Smith. Catch their shows here: https://www.comedyf...

Tripod return to the quiz to put their collaborative efforts to the test. Scod is in danger of having his "nerd" credentials revoked. Yon knows the colour of a literary dog. And Gatesy isn't so sure that his contribution can be counted as a whole person. https://3pod.com.au This podcast is made on the land belonging to the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our respect to their elders p...

in this episode, award winning comedians Hannah Camilleri and Nat Harris answer questions in categories it seems they didn't even know existed. Ancient empires is easily their toughest subject, and for someone who claims not to have studied maths in her final years of high school, Nat does pretty well with a question about the square root of 169. See their show at the Melbourne International Comed...

Answering the questions on this episode are two festival directors from Adelaide. Rachel Healy has been the joint artistic director of the Adelaide Festival since 2017 and the Jo Dyer is the director of Adelaide Writers’ Week. They've both had long and distinguished careers in the theatre in Australia, but how well do they know their chemistry, geography and sport? You might be surprised. Follow J...

John has to get his mouth around a whole lot of tricky surnames on this episode - and unfortunately he falls at the first hurdle. But that's ok, because his guests are very forgiving. Comedians Ivan Aristeguieta and Kirsty Webeck manage to come up with most of the correct answers to this week's quiz. They know the difference between gold and iron, they know which team just won the Superbowl. But d...

It's odd that Chris Ryan and Luke Heggie are making their second appearances on the show, given how much disdain they both seem to have for trivia and quizzes. Thay happen to do quite well this time around, with questions on seasons, horns and a tricky one about the transference of the sovereignty of Christmas Island. See them both at comedy festivals around the country: https://www.lukeheggie.com...

Geraldine Hickey returns to do the quiz again. This time she's brought along her friend Vidya Rajan. The two of them talk polar bears, Mark Twain, and everybody's favourite spread: Nutella. This podcast is made on the land belonging to the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and acknowledge their traditions of sharing knowledge and stories for...

The Saturday Quiz returns for a third season! To start things off, John is joined by two of Australia's leading political satirists. Mark Humphries can be seen ding funny things on the otherwise very serious 730 programme on the ABC. And Dan Ilic is the host of the multi award winning podcast A Rational Fear. Follow them both on twitter: @markhumphries @danilic This podcast is made on the land bel...

It's a rematch of last year's finale episode! Zoë Coombs Marr and Kate Jinx go head-to-head with Sarah Snook and Dave Lawson. So many questions to get through there's barely time for an anecdote. Thank you to all the guests and all the listeners this year. Hope you all come back again next year. This podcast is made on the land belonging to the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our res...

Best friends since childhood, Em Rusciano and Michael Lucas both have careers in the entertainment industry. She is a comedian, writer, singer and radio & television presenter who earlier this year, was the runner-up on The Masked Singer. While the tv drama Michael created and wrote, The Newsreader, just won Best Drama at this year's AACTA awards. Together, their knowledge of pop-culture is al...

This episode marks the third appearance on this podcast by Virginia Gay. Is she getting better at quizzes? Not really. But she is having a great time. She has brought along one of her co-stars from The Boomkak Panto - which is a play that she also wrote and co-directed. Rob Johnson shows off his general knowledge and reveals a few hidden talents too. There's a little bit of swearing on this episod...

This week, to celebrate the return of live theatre to the stages of Melbourne, the guests come from the cast of As You Like It which has just opened at the Melbourne Theatre Company. By her own admission, Christie Whelan Brown does not have much confidence in her general knowledge, but she is anything but dead weight on this episode. James Mackay is keen to give anything a go and has some excellen...

Another couple of returning guests, Julia Zemiro and Brian Nankervis share a similar love of quizzes with the host John Leary. Politics is no obstacle for them. Geography is a breeze. And even though literature is one of the categories they both declare an interest in, it's the literature question which proves the trickiest for them in this week's quiz. This podcast is made on the land belonging t...

They've been on the show before almost exactly one year ago, but that doesn't mean Nakkiah Lui and Gabe Dowrick exactly know what they're doing. But they do each have a chance to shine on this episode of The Saturday Quiz. Gabe draws on his deep knowledge of cinema to pull out the answer to a geography question and Nakkiah uses her recent personal experience to nail the one about fashion. After yo...

The questions in this episode could've been hand-picked for the guests. Paul Bongiorno has been a member of the Canberra press gallery for thirty years and Sean Kelly was an advisor to two Labor prime ministers. There are politics questions, Italian cuisine questions and questions about a media personality (who just happens to work at the same television network as Paul), so they were always going...