Inside NBC’s 2025 Year-in-Review News Quiz

A New Pope, Political Shake-Ups and Celebs in Space: Inside NBC’s 2025 Year-in-Review News Quiz

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

• NBC News created a 2025 year-in-review quiz highlighting major stories like a new pope, U.S. political upheavals, and high-profile space travel.
• The quiz focuses on pranks, pardons, pills, and the rise of artificial intelligence as defining themes of 2025.
• It’s produced by a multi-disciplinary editorial and data team, signaling how newsrooms now blend data visualization, social media, and interactive storytelling.
• Readers can use the quiz as a fun way to test their news literacy and recall of major global and domestic events.
• The project reflects a broader shift toward interactive, personalized news experiences instead of static year-end recaps.

What Is the 2025 News Quiz?

NBC News’ 2025-in-review news quiz is an interactive way to look back at a year filled with consequential events. Rather than a traditional written recap, the quiz format invites you to test how much you remember about the biggest headlines and surprising moments of the year.

The quiz centers on stories involving:

• The selection of a new pope, marking a major transition for the Catholic Church.
• Political shake-ups in the United States and around the world.
• Celebrity trips to space, reflecting the ongoing commercialization of space travel.
• Unforgettable pranks, pardons, and pills that grabbed public attention.
• The rapid and growing impact of artificial intelligence on daily life and policy debates.

The quiz also links back to a recent earlier quiz, encouraging readers who enjoy interactive content to keep exploring related challenges.

Big Themes of 2025 Highlighted in the Quiz

While the article itself is brief, it hints at several key themes that dominated 2025 coverage:

• Religion & global leadership: The choice of a new pope impacts hundreds of millions of people worldwide and often reshapes global conversations on morality, migration, poverty, and climate.
• Politics & power shifts: From elections to resignations and policy reversals, 2025 was framed as a year of intense political turbulence.
• Space as a celebrity frontier: High-profile figures heading to space highlight how commercial spaceflight is becoming a status symbol and a media event, not just a scientific mission.
• AI everywhere: Artificial intelligence moved from niche tech topic to everyday reality, influencing work, creativity, and regulation.

For readers, this means the quiz is not only entertainment; it’s a compact way to revisit the defining narratives of the year.

Who Created the Quiz?

The project is credited to a collaborative NBC News team:

• Josh Feldman – weekend platforms and social editor, responsible for how content travels across social channels and reaches audiences where they are.
• Joe Murphy – data editor, specializing in using data to tell clearer, more insightful stories.
• Nigel Chiwaya – Senior Editor for Data Visualization, leading the transformation of raw data into compelling visual and interactive experiences.

Additional contributors include editors, designers, and producers such as Amina Kilpatrick, Lara Horwitz, Cela Migan, Anahita Pardiwalla, Kayla Hayempour, Jeremy Mikula, Jana Kasperkovic, David Hickey, and Leila Register. This reflects how modern news projects are team efforts, blending editorial judgment, design, audience strategy, and data skills.

Why This Quiz Matters for News Consumers

Interactive news quizzes like this one play a growing role in news literacy and engagement. Instead of passively scrolling, you are invited to:

• Recall what you learned throughout the year.
• Spot gaps in your understanding of major events.
• Share and compare your score with friends, sparking conversation about what mattered in 2025.

For busy readers, a year-end quiz is a low-pressure way to reconnect with complex stories they might have only half-followed when they first broke.

From a data perspective, interactive features also help publishers understand which topics resonate most, enabling them to better tailor future coverage to audience interests.

How to Get More From the Quiz

To turn a simple game into a learning tool, consider this approach:

• Take the quiz once without looking anything up to get a realistic sense of what you remember.
• For each question you miss, open a new tab and read one in-depth article on that topic.
• If you’re with friends or family, play together and pause after each answer to discuss what you recall about the event.
• Use the themes (politics, religion, technology, space, culture) as a personal reading list for early 2026.

To go deeper, explore related interactive content on the NBC News site, such as previous quizzes, explainers, and data visualizations about elections, global conflicts, or technology trends.

FAQ: 2025 News Quiz & Interactive News

How is a year-in-review quiz different from a traditional recap?

A traditional recap summarizes events, while a quiz tests recall and invites participation. This often makes the information more memorable.

Is this quiz only about U.S. news?

No. While U.S. politics is a major focus, the quiz also touches on global stories like the selection of a new pope and developments in space and technology.

Can quizzes improve my news literacy?

Used intentionally, yes. By showing you what you know and what you missed, quizzes can encourage more curious, active news consumption.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/news-quiz/pope-politics-celebs-2025-year-review-news-quiz-rcna251018