Lots of small talk revolves around having a very surface-level grasp of many different conversational areas. Depending on the occasion, this might mean sports, news, wine, music (classical or popular), or film. However, actually understanding this stuff requires a bit of time and energy, and lots of people (especially those in intense career paths or higher education) don’t have the time to pick up everything by osmosis.
It struck me that there’s an opportunity here to write up a series of short guides to all these areas, except for news for which there are many digests already available. Because small-talk conversation tends to be superficial, it’s not that much material to cover, and there’s usually no shame in admitting that your knowledge of Liszt or the '78 World Series isn’t encyclopedic. Anyone know if something like this has already been done?