Saturday Matinee: History This Week

Summary

History Daily Episode Summary: "Saturday Matinee: History This Week"

Release Date: December 7, 2024
Host: Lindsay Graham
Guest: Ken Jennings, Author and Jeopardy Legend
Podcast: History Daily
Episode Duration: Approximately 37 minutes

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1. Introduction and Episode Overview

In this engaging episode of History Daily, host Lindsay Graham sets the stage for a special feature from the podcast History This Week. Recognizing the burgeoning popularity of history-themed podcasts, Graham introduces the idea of expanding to a weekly deeper dive format. This leads to the collaboration with History This Week, bringing listeners a compelling episode centered on the fascinating world of trivia, featuring the esteemed Ken Jennings—renowned for his record-breaking 74-game winning streak on Jeopardy!.

2. The Genesis of Trivial Pursuit

The episode begins with Sally Helm narrating the story of Chris Haney and Scott Abbott, who, while enjoying a casual game of Scrabble in Montreal on December 15, 1979, stumbled upon the idea of creating a new board game. Despite repeatedly purchasing Scrabble boards, they realized there was untapped potential in the trivia game space. This serendipitous moment led to the creation of Trivial Pursuit, a game that would captivate millions of households by the end of the 1984 trivia boom. As Helm recounts, an estimated one in five American households owned a copy of Trivial Pursuit by 1984 (03:02).

3. Ken Jennings’ Jeopardy Journey

Ken Jennings, affectionately known as the "Trivia Master," shares his profound experiences preparing for and competing on Jeopardy!. He describes the intense preparation required, likening it to a hot dog eating contest where the goal isn't pleasure but sheer volume of knowledge acquisition (06:30). Jennings discusses the psychological toll of competing, the sterile atmosphere of the Jeopardy! set, and the surreal sensation of the game passing in what feels like moments (07:08).

4. The Evolution and Significance of Trivia

Delving into the history of trivia, Jennings and Helm explore how trivia has evolved from 11th-century Japanese perfume guessing competitions to Renaissance literary quizzes. The discussion highlights the Athenian Mercury newsletter of the late 17th century London, where trivia questions were a form of intellectual competition among the city's brightest minds (10:11). Jennings emphasizes the dual nature of trivia as both the obscure facts themselves and the structured games that utilize them (08:11).

5. Trivia’s Cultural Impact and Game Design

The conversation transitions to the mechanics of trivia game design, with Jennings categorizing trivia questions into types such as plain vanilla recall, hot fudge, puzzlers, and elusive everyday details. For instance, a plain question might ask for the capital of a state, while a "hot fudge" question adds irrelevant details to make it more engaging without altering the answer (08:23). This nuanced approach keeps trivia games fresh and challenging.

6. The Rise and Fall of Radio and TV Quiz Shows

The podcast traces the surge of quiz shows in the early 20th century, from radio to television. The 1920s saw the publication of trivia books like Ask Me Another, which became a social fad, while the 1940s and 50s witnessed an explosion of radio quiz shows and their transition to TV. Jennings discusses the peak popularity of shows like "The $64,000 Question", which captivated 85% of American TV households by September 1955 (20:29).

7. Quiz Show Scandals of the 1950s

A pivotal moment in trivia and quiz show history was the exposure of widespread cheating in the 1950s. Charles Van Doren, a beloved contestant on the show "Twenty-One", confessed to receiving assistance and fabricated answers. This revelation led to a Congressional investigation and a profound loss of trust among the American public (23:02). Jennings reflects on how this scandal shifted the perception of quiz shows, damaging their integrity and popularity for the next two decades.

8. The Birth of Jeopardy! as a Response

In response to the tarnished quiz show landscape, Merv Griffin conceived a new format: Jeopardy!, where contestants are provided with answers and must formulate the corresponding questions. This innovative twist revitalized the genre, premiering as a daytime show in 1964. Jennings credits this format with providing a reassuring and structured form of competition, where every question has a definitive answer, restoring faith in quiz-based entertainment (24:43).

9. Trivia's Persistent Appeal and Modern Relevance

The episode underscores how trivia has maintained its allure over the decades, from board games like Trivial Pursuit to the enduring success of Jeopardy!. Ken Jennings argues that trivia serves as a press agent for knowledge, making learning fun and rewarding. He acknowledges the competitive nature of trivia games but advocates for their role in encouraging the retention and appreciation of factual information (32:55).

10. Interactive Trivia Segment

To engage listeners, the episode culminates with a trivia quiz, featuring a series of questions that listeners can attempt to answer. These range from historical facts to more playful puzzles, testing the knowledge discussed throughout the episode. For example:

1. Puzzler: "A Montgolfier is a Louis XVI chair with a back often shaped like one of these."
   Answer: Balloon (36:13)

2. Recall Question: "This Braves slugger hit 375 of his 755 career home runs in the 1960s."
   Answer: Hank Aaron (36:28)

Listeners are encouraged to engage and test their trivia prowess, reflecting the episode's central theme of the enduring fascination with trivia.

11. Conclusion and Acknowledgments

Host Lindsay Graham wraps up the episode by thanking Ken Jennings, Professor Peter Burke of Cambridge University, and contributors from NYC Trivialague and Slantsha. The production team, including producer Ben Dickstein and executive producers Jesse Katz and Ted Butler, are also acknowledged for their efforts in creating the episode. Listeners are invited to interact with the show via email or voicemail, fostering a community of trivia enthusiasts (34:30).

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Ken Jennings (06:30):
  "The joy of trivia is just that it's unexpected... it's like a Nathan's hot dog eating contest where you're no longer eating for pleasure. You really just have to get as many presidential birth dates and state birds in your brain as you can."

• Ken Jennings (07:08):
  "Jeopardy seems so chill and sedate when we sit on our couch... but when you actually have to play it in real time, it is crucible."

• Ken Jennings (08:11):
  "Even at a basic level, trivia can be two things. It can be the odd fact, or it can be the pastime of trying to remember the odd fact."

• Ken Jennings (19:34):
  "There's probably some level of classism here as well. These aren't real pursuers of knowledge. We're going to stick with our professors in tweeds."

• Ken Jennings (21:14):
  "Knowledge needs all the help it can get. I think, you know, like knowledge needs a press agent. And if it's going to be trivia, so be it."

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Conclusion

"Saturday Matinee: History This Week" offers a rich exploration of the cultural and historical significance of trivia. Through insightful discussions with Ken Jennings and a deep dive into the evolution of quiz shows, the episode illuminates how trivia has both shaped and been shaped by societal trends. Whether you're a trivia buff or a history enthusiast, this episode provides valuable perspectives on the enduring appeal of testing knowledge in an ever-changing world.

Transcript

[Host]

There are more ways than ever to listen to History Daily Ad free. Listen with Wondry plus in the Wondery app as a member of Noiser plus at noiser.com or in Apple Podcasts. Or you can get all of History Daily plus other fantastic history [e-mail] in business, when you alight upon a good idea and you prove that it's viable, it's popular, it's sustainable, it's profitable, after a while you begin to think, can I expand this idea? So Coca Cola comes out with Diet Coke. Dyson is great at making sucking machines, so they come out with fantastic blowing machines, hair dryers. Reese's has taken the peanut butter and chocolate combo in a thousand directions. Businesses everywhere are looking for these growth opportunities. Podcasting is a business, so I'm looking too. And with the success of History Daily. Thank you very much, dear Listener, I thought, well, what about a History Weekly, right? Yeah, maybe we take an event that happened that same week in History and do a bit of a deeper dive. Maybe get some experts on Mike to really dig in and truly understand the context and significance. Seems like a good idea. It is a good idea. So good that someone's already been doing it for a while now on today's Saturday Matinee, we're bringing you an episode from the podcast History this week and it's a fun one. Jeopardy legend and now host Ken Jennings joins in to help tell the story of the origins of Trivial Pursuit. I hope you enjoy While you're listening, be sure to search for and follow History this week we put a link in the show notes to make it easy for you. Hey prime members, have you heard you can listen to your favorite podcasts ad free? That's good news. With Amazon Music, you have access to the largest catalog of Ad Free Top podcasts included with your prime membership. To start listening, download the Amazon Music app for free or go to Amazon.com ADFreePodcasts that's Amazon.com ADFreeP Podcasts to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads. History Daily is sponsored by Audible, whose best of 2024 picks are here. Discover the year's top audiobooks and originals in all your favorite genres, from memoirs and sci fi to mysteries and thrillers. Audible's curated list in every category is the best way to hear 2024's best in Aud audio entertainment. Like a stunning new full cast production of George Orwell's 1984 heartfelt memoirs. Like Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's lovely one, the year's best fiction, like the Women by Kristin Hannah and Percival Everett's brilliantly subversive title, James, or a personal pick of mine, Malcolm Gladwell's latest audiobook, Revenge of the Tipping Point. Find a new favorite and get listening with Audible because there's more to imagine when you listen. Go to audible.com historydaily and discover all the years best waiting for you.

[Sally Helm]

The History Channel Original Podcast history this week, December 15, 1979 I'm Sally Helm. When Chris Haney and Scott Abbott made a plan to spend time together on this rainy afternoon in Montreal, it probably didn't feel like a life changing decision. They probably didn't think, you know what? By the end of today we will have come up with a billion dollar idea. But they would. The plan that ended up changing their lives was hang out together in the kitchen, have a couple of beers and play Scrabble. But when they go to get out the board, they can't find it. So Haney has to run out to the store and pick one up. He later tells a Florida newspaper, quote, when I got back, I thought to myself, this is the sixth bloody Scrabble board I've bought in my life. There must be money in this business. 45 minutes later, just one beer in. Haney and Abbott have come up with the idea that will set the course of their futures. A board game called Trivial Pursuit. Just a few years later. The game would be huge. We talked about it with one famous.

[Ken Jennings]

Trivia master, if you remember the Trivial pursuit boom of 1984. It was a deeply weird game.

[Sally Helm]

That is Ken Jennings, who holds the record for longest winning streak in Jeopardy. History.

[Ken Jennings]

It was in this blue box, like a way brandy would come or something.

[Sally Helm]

Or as that same Florida newspaper put it, quote, a distinguished blue box that looks as if it might hold Godiva chocolates.

[Ken Jennings]

It kind of had the scrolly letters and then old timey engravings on the board and 6,000 questions, you know, probably 10 times as much as you need.

[Sally Helm]

The game took off. By the end of that 1984 boom, an estimated one in five American households owned a copy of Trivial Pursuit.

[Ken Jennings]

Everybody was sitting around the picnic table all summer playing Trivial Pursuit. That's how I remember my childhood.

[Sally Helm]

And we are still playing trivia today on our phones, at bars and in our living rooms shouting out the answers while watching Jeopardy.

[Ken Jennings]

What is Tuscaloosa, Alabama? Who are the Weather Underground.

[Sally Helm]

Today? The not so trivial history of trivia. What are the origins of this question and answer game and what is it about recalling trivial facts that Keeps people coming back for more. To get the story on trivia, we went to a guy who's made his name answering questions. Can I start with an easy one? What is your name? Can you introduce yourself to me?

[Ken Jennings]

I'm Ken Jennings. I'm a writer, and I was on Jeopardy. 74 times back in 2004. More recently, I'm hosting the show.

[Sally Helm]

Winning 74 games on Jeopardy. Takes work. Jennings told us his preparations left him with a sense of trivia. Anhedonia, or what is the inability to experience pleasure? Can you describe that feeling to me? Like, what does it feel like to stuff your brain with facts in that really intensive way?

[Ken Jennings]

The joy of trivia is just that it's unexpected. You know, under your Snapple lid, you learn something about camel's milk or something, and you think, wow, what an odd little nugget of knowledge to find in the stream of life. But when somebody's, you know, cramming for Jeopardy. For example, you feel like you're gorging yourself. You know, it's like a Nathan's hot dog eating contest where you're. You're no longer eating for pleasure. You really just have to get as many presidential birth dates and state birds in your brain in the next three weeks as you can.

[Sally Helm]

But there's nothing that can totally prepare you for stepping up to the Jeopardy. Podium.

[Ken Jennings]

It's cold on the soundstage. There's kind of a distinct dusty smell of, like, a backstage area. It's a little bit smaller than it looks on tv, but it's much more intense. Jeopardy. Seems so chill and sedate when we sit on our couch and kind of, you know, mumble answers through dinner or whatever. But when you actually have to play it in real time, it is crucible. Your perception of time goes away. The game seems to go by in a second, and suddenly you're blinking like, is that it? Did I win or lose?

[Sally Helm]

He won a lot.

[Trivia Expert]

By now you are very familiar with our current champion, Ken, who is Rutherford B. Hayes. Yes.

[Ken Jennings]

What is Vatican 2?

[Trivia Expert]

Right.

[Ken Jennings]

What is Appalachian spring?

[Trivia Expert]

Correct.

[Ken Jennings]

What is Grant?

[Trivia Expert]

Grant is right.

[Ken Jennings]

What is Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone?

[Trivia Expert]

You are right again.

[Ken Jennings]

What's a photographic memory?

[Trivia Expert]

See that? You got it. Your mind's working well in the mind category.

[Sally Helm]

After his time on Jeopardy, Jennings wrote a book about his experience and about the history of trivia. But before we go back to the beginning, let's get some terms straight. So to ask it baldly, just in your mind, what is trivia?

[Ken Jennings]

Even at a basic level, trivia can Be two things. It can be the odd fact, or it can be the pastime of trying to remember the odd fact. You know, games and quizzes about odd facts.

[Sally Helm]

It is both the game and the facts. And then there are the questions. In his book, Brainiac, Jennings has a whole taxonomy of trivia questions based on the many that he's heard in his life, starting with what he calls the plain vanilla. Recall.

[Ken Jennings]

Just a quick call and response. We spend our whole lives learning facts, and they so rarely come up. So it's nice when somebody says, what's the capital of Ecuador? And you can say Quito.

[Sally Helm]

But plain vanilla can get old. So trivia question writers, especially on game shows, will sometimes add a little something extra. Jennings calls this plain vanilla with hot fudge.

[Ken Jennings]

You know, every game cannot be what's the capital of Wisconsin? So it has to be a little more interesting. It has to be more like, this capital of Wisconsin is one of only two US Cities situated on an isthmus, you know, or something like that, where the little bonus thing doesn't actually help you solve the question. Really, Anybody answering there is like, oh, the capital of Wisconsin is Madison, right?

[Sally Helm]

And on the isthmus, it's still Madison, Right?

[Ken Jennings]

That's just there to make the question a little different than the last time they asked about Madison and maybe give the viewer something fun to remember. Doorway.

[Sally Helm]

He lists a bunch of other categories in his book. There's the huge number question, where the answer is a huge number. There's the puzzler, where the question itself gives you the clues to figure it out. There's something called the elusive everyday detail.

[Ken Jennings]

Can you visualize or recall something you've seen or heard a million times? I really like these, you know, where it's just something you know you've seen every day. What color are both of the GS in the Google logo, for example? Like, we've each seen the Google logo tens of thousands of times.

[Sally Helm]

Totally. That one is infuriating, because I'm like, all right, I know there's red in there. I know there's yellow. I'm pretty sure there's blue.

[Ken Jennings]

The G's are both blue.

[Sally Helm]

They're both blue. Oh, my God. So there are the facts themselves. There's the game, and then there are the trivia questions that make up that game. And this practice of quizzing each other on knowledge that some would consider trivial, it goes back a surprisingly long way. Peter Burke, a professor of the history of knowledge at Cambridge University, told us there's evidence that people in 11th century Japan held perfume guessing competitions. Members of the royal court would try to identify the scents they were smelling. During the Renaissance, the quiz format made its debut in Europe. Young people would ask each other to name obscure passages in Italian literature. But perhaps the most direct ancestor to modern trivia can be found in London at the end of the 17th century. Here's Ken Jennings.

[Ken Jennings]

There was, like a newspaper, a newsletter called the Athenian Mercury, where people would write in with kind of general knowledge questions, you know, how big was the Tower of Babel? Or why do I sneeze when I look at the sun? And stuff like that. And London's smartest men would try to figure out answers.

[Sally Helm]

Before there was Google, there was the Athenian Mercury. Later, in Victorian England, some people start collecting their own facts in what they call a commonplace book. At that point in time, a commonplace.

[Ken Jennings]

Book is basically Uncle John's bathroom reader for Victorian age Britain.

[Sally Helm]

But these books are just random facts on a page until 1884, when a Massachusetts educator by the name of Albert Southwick publishes one of them in a new format, question and answer. The book is called Quizism and Its Quirks and Quibbles from Queer Quarters. It has hundreds of questions. Things like, what Queen of England twice set a price on the head of her brother?

[Ken Jennings]

Is that Elizabeth I?

[Sally Helm]

Queen Anne.

[Ken Jennings]

Oh, right, of course. Because the Stuarts had. Yeah, they were Scottish rebels. That makes sense.

[Sally Helm]

Man. He had a good one up his sleeve.

[Ken Jennings]

I've been stumped, but I have the ultimate revenge of him having been dead for 100 years.

[Sally Helm]

Great point. The question and answer format has been born, and it may be the case that people in 1800s, Massachusetts were sitting around doing what we just did with Ken Jennings, asking each other questions from this book. But trivia doesn't really explode in pop culture until the 1920s when it shows up in the pages of a popular newspaper comic. Ripley's Believe it or Not. Robert Ripley's comics depicted unbelievable facts about real life. People like a man who could balance all his weight on his elbow or someone who walked 12 miles in stilts. Jennings calls Ripley the first true trivia celebrity.

[Ken Jennings]

That guy was getting a million letters a week from people who wanted to ask him weird questions or to suggest weird facts.

[Sally Helm]

Around the same time, there is also a huge boom in crossword puzzles in the US And a rising focus on intelligence testing. The US army had used a long list of questions called the Alpha Test to assess recruits during World War I.

[Ken Jennings]

The confluence of all of this was this 1920s bestseller called Ask Me Another. The product of these two out of work Amherst alumni who wrote a bunch of quizzes from stuff they were kind of forgetting from college. And then they had the great idea of asking, like friend to friend 1920 celebrities to do the quizzes as well. So you would solve the quiz and then you would see if you had a better score than Dorothy Parker or the guy who had just won Wimbledon or Charles Lindbergh or something.

[Sally Helm]

Ask Me Another is published in January 1927. So Ken, we are in 1927 for these questions. Okay?

[Ken Jennings]

Okay. Cast your mind back.

[Sally Helm]

Under the present laws, could a woman become president of the United States?

[Ken Jennings]

I bet even in 1927 that was true.

[Sally Helm]

Yep. Yes. The answer is yes. So Dorothy Parker is answering this kind of question. So. So is Charles Lindbergh. As a newspaper puts it, the month after the publication of Ask Me Another, the new crazy fad has arrived.

[Ken Jennings]

And that was an age of fads. You know, like all the flappers doing the Charleston are sitting on flagpoles or whatever. And for a while they were all sitting around reading each other trivia questions at parties between martinis.

[Host]

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[Sally Helm]

One review of the book says it has suddenly become fashionable to ask embarrassing questions. And by the 1930s, that fashion has spread to the radio airwaves.

[Trivia Expert]

Wants to know how many hearts are there on the 10 of hearts? There are 12 hearts in the 10 of hearts. That is correct.

[Sally Helm]

It starts with shows like Professor Quiz and Ask It Basket. Soon after, there's Information Please.

[Trivia Expert]

Wake up America. Time to Stump the Experts.

[Sally Helm]

It's a straight up question and answer show, but listeners submit the questions and if they stump a panel of experts, they win prizes at first, money, and soon a copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica too. Information please airs over 500 shows and gives away nearly 1400 copies of the encyclopedia during its run. Okay, this is from Information, Please.

[Trivia Expert]

What was the name of the cat that witnessed Alice's trip through the looking glass?

[Ken Jennings]

Oh, I know this.

[Trivia Expert]

Don't jump at conclusions on this one.

[Ken Jennings]

Dinah.

[Trivia Expert]

The name of the cat is Dinah. Now they all knew it. They all knew it.

[Ken Jennings]

Luckily, that's in the Disney movie. That one got easier since Information, Please.

[Sally Helm]

On Information Please, listeners asked the questions. But other shows crop up where listeners answer.

[Trivia Expert]

Typical of entertainment, which most critics of radio deplore, but the public enjoys, are the many types of audience participation shows.

[Sally Helm]

Live studio audiences would play or the shows would call up listeners at home.

[Ken Jennings]

The mainstay of a lot of radio programming in the 40s were these call in game shows where they'd call your house and somebody could win $150 if they knew the temperature Of a refrigerator or whatever.

[Sally Helm]

These shows got huge. By the end of the 1940s, there were 200 different quiz shows on the air. But not everyone was a fan. In 1946, Brooklyn public librarians announced that they would no longer help people answer radio quiz questions. The staff was totally overrun. And some people thought this whole fad was just silly.

[Ken Jennings]

There was a lot of kind of intellectual snobbery around these various trivia fads, Especially these quiz shows where, you know, you'd see letters to the editor from people kind of sniffing that librarians should not be spending all their time answering whatever the question on information, please was the previous night. You know, they had matters of serious import to take care of.

[Sally Helm]

As one 1946 article put it, quote, the library's research services are too valuable to be prostituted by a small handful of persons too lazy to find their own answers to silly questions.

[Ken Jennings]

There's probably some level of classism here as well. You know, just these joes hanging out on their fire escape in Queens. These aren't real pursuers of knowledge. We're going to stick with our professors in tweeds. I think there's some way in which trivia can kind of be a leveling force for knowledge that the ivory towers don't appreciate.

[Sally Helm]

But like it or not, radio quiz shows had captured the minds of the masses. And so when commercial TV is legalized in the US in the early 1940s, the major networks know quiz shows are the future.

[Ken Jennings]

The very first night that American commercial television began, the first things that got broadcast on American TV were versions of popular radio quiz shows. That's how mass culture this was.

[Sally Helm]

Those TV shows are like the radio shows on steroids. Ratings go through the roof. Prize money, too. In September 1955, the first time a contestant wins the full prize money on a show called the $64,000 question, around 85% of all TV sets in the country are tuned in.

[Trivia Expert]

So, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64. Yes, the $64,000 question.

[Sally Helm]

And in a way, it isn't hard to understand why American audiences might have latched on to this sort of right, wrong format. It's a lot simpler than most other elements of daily life.

[Ken Jennings]

Game shows are kind of a reassuring world where, unlike in politics or advertising or anything else, all questions have a simple and correct answer. There's an authority figure, a godlike authority figure who will tell you if you are right or wrong. And questions all have answers, and nothing goes unsolved. By the time the show has ended, everything has been wrapped up. And I think that's very pleasing.

[Sally Helm]

But you know what isn't pleasing? When you discover that reassuring world has been built on a lie.

[Trivia Expert]

The dramatic climax of the probe of fix and rigged quiz shows.

[Ken Jennings]

I think people felt like they'd been made fools of.

[Sally Helm]

By the 1950s. TV quiz shows are the hottest thing around. And when a new show called 21 premieres in the fall of 1956, it doesn't particularly stand out from the pack. Like many quiz shows, 21 is built on the idea that contestants are armed with their wits alone.

[Trivia Expert]

Neither player inside the studios can hear anything until I turn their studios on with switches which I control right here in front of me. Nor can they see anybody in the television studio audience because of the way the lights are constructed.

[Sally Helm]

In November 1956, an English instructor named Charles Van Doren comes on the show as a contestant to challenge the reigning champ, Herbert Stemple.

[Trivia Expert]

Would you like time to think it over as much as you can spare?

[Sally Helm]

Audiences are on the edge of their seats as Van Doren struggles to get the answers.

[Trivia Expert]

Oh, I think that Henry VIII married three Catherines. Now, you mentioned Catherine of Aragon, who.

[Sally Helm]

Was the other Catherine, and achieves nearly superhuman feats of recall.

[Trivia Expert]

Catherine Howard. Right.

[Sally Helm]

After a series of dramatic ties, Van Doren finally beats Stemple and goes on to win more than $100,000. He's a real public darling.

[Trivia Expert]

But then Van Doren retracts his earlier denials of getting any assistance. He admits that he received dramatic coaching and the questions and many of the answers.

[Sally Helm]

Van Doren later confesses to cheating, and a congressional investigation finds that this is a widespread practice on the popular TV quiz shows. To the quiz watching public, this is a huge blow.

[Ken Jennings]

I don't think Americans had ever been lied to by television, or at least they weren't aware that they had. I mean, today that's commonplace. We assume that reality shows are manipulated. Even the ones that seem like we're seeing everything, we're really not. Documentaries have a spin. Even the news might be fake news, but that was all kind of brand new to America in the 50s.

[Trivia Expert]

Charles Van Doren arrives to apologize and attempt to explain to the millions whose friendship and respect he has won.

[Ken Jennings]

People had very early parasocial relationships with game show contestants, and they felt like they knew them and they were inviting them into their homes. And when they found out that the feats of knowledge they were watching had been faked, it would be like finding out that the Olympics were faked or that Lance Armstrong was juicing. You know, like, oh, well, that wasn't as remarkable as I thought.

[Sally Helm]

These cheating scandals stop the trivia trend in its tracks. For the next two decades, radio and TV quiz shows basically go dark until.

[Trivia Expert]

Let's play Jeopardy.

[Ken Jennings]

The elevator pitch of Jeopardy. Is just like. Just as the players were given the answers in the 50s, we're gonna give them the answers, but this time there's a twist. They have to come up with the questions.

[Sally Helm]

Wow. Funny to see it as a reaction to having been given the answers. They're like, haha, can't do that again.

[Ken Jennings]

It was actually Merv Griffin's wife Julanne. They were on a plane and she said, well, why don't you give them the answers? And Merv said, no, no, no. That's the whole problem. And she said, no, no, no, listen, 5280. And Merv said, how many feet in a mile? And that's when Jeopardy. Was born.

[Sally Helm]

Jeopardy. Premieres as a daytime game show in 1964. The format asks three contestants to identify trivia questions given just the answers. And for the audience at home, Jeopardy's.

[Ken Jennings]

An interesting case because it's a little bit aspirational. You know, people will watch that show even if they only know two or three clues a night, and they still love it.

[Trivia Expert]

There are your six categories for this half.

[Sally Helm]

This one is from the original Jeopardy.

[Trivia Expert]

In England. Early ones were called dandy horses and Swift Walkers.

[Ken Jennings]

Maybe I guess I should do form of a question, right? What are bicycles?

[Trivia Expert]

Bicycles, right.

[Ken Jennings]

Yes.

[Sally Helm]

What are bicycles? It is funny that they were dandy horses and Swift Walkers. It's just like, okay, what moves? Horses. Walking. They must be sort of like that. In its first 10 years on the air, Jeopardy. Brings the quiz show back to life. But it's still just daytime programming, and there aren't really any other trivia shows making their own comebacks.

[Ken Jennings]

It was really the lone survivor. It was the only link of the family tree that was still producing fruit.

[Sally Helm]

That is until the early 1980s, when those two Canadians on that rainy afternoon decide to package trivia up and sell it in a distinguished blue box. Trivial Pursuit revives the genre once again, bringing it into millions of homes. Meanwhile, college students and pubgoers are playing trivia games of their own. And that old favorite game show, Jeopardy. Gets its primetime reboot along with a dazzling new host.

[Ken Jennings]

Alex Trebek is kind of a sex symbol in the 80s. They kind of marketed him that way with his. With his debonair mustache. He was kind of a Don Johnson figure in a lot of the ads. I don't think people Remember that.

[Sally Helm]

Then you don't mind being in Jeopardy.

[Trivia Expert]

Jeopardy is my life.

[Sally Helm]

It's the second most exciting game I know.

[Ken Jennings]

Clearly there is something in the water. Trivia is kind of a boom and bust cycle. And in 1984, Gen X and their parents are ready for trivia.

[Sally Helm]

We picked a question out of that first Trivial Pursuit box from 1984. Who sent the first telegraph message in 1844? What hath God wrought?

[Ken Jennings]

Oh, is it. Is it not Samuel Morse? I will say Morse.

[Sally Helm]

It is Samuel Morse. It is indeed.

[Ken Jennings]

I was afraid it was a trick question.

[Sally Helm]

No, no, just an easy one for you. Ken Jennings.

[Host]

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[Sally Helm]

Pretty early on, the Trivial Pursuit guys end up with a big lawsuit on their hands. It turns out they'd based a lot of their questions off this series of trivia encyclopedias by a guy named Fred Worth. And he notices, partly because in his.

[Ken Jennings]

Books he had planted a false fact. He had said that Columbo's first name was Philip on the TV show Columbo and Trivial Pursuit had used that fact, and that was his smoking gun. Because Columbo, in fact, does not have a first name, and it is not Philip.

[Sally Helm]

And that's kind of a grand tradition, right? Like putting a fake definition in your dictionary to see if someone's just copying your dictionary.

[Ken Jennings]

Yes. Dictionaries often have fake words. Road atlases will have fake streets or towns just so that they know if their competitors are stealing their database.

[Sally Helm]

Fred Worth, Seuss the big question, can.

[Ken Jennings]

You copyright a fact and the courts decide?

[Sally Helm]

No. Facts are facts. You can't own them. It's not the last lawsuit in the history of trivia. There's a case in 2000 involving another big trivia show of the time, who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The suit hinges on a seemingly tiny should a question have used the word what or the word which? The stakes of trivia have gotten extremely high at this point, like a million dollars high. And who Wants to Be a Millionaire is extremely popular. In its first season, it averaged 29 million viewers per episode.

[Ken Jennings]

The Gen Xers had their Trivial Pursuit and Alex Trebek and the Millennials had the who Wants to Be a Millionaire boom.

[Sally Helm]

Though Jeopardy. Was still big, too. Jennings appears on the show in 2004 to begin his iconic 74 game winning streak. It's still the record for most wins in a row. And many articles published at the time begin to ask, is Ken Jennings the smartest man alive?

[Ken Jennings]

Our modern idea that people on Jeopardy. Represent the best and the brightest, I think that's a very, very recent assumption and, you know, kind of a dangerous one because it just means we don't have a lot of other intellectual role models anymore for much of the 20th century. We could point to somebody like Einstein. You know, there'd be public figures like that who were public intellectuals. Who are those people? Now? It's kind of game show champions by.

[Sally Helm]

Default, unfortunately, like Ken Jennings.

[Ken Jennings]

But I guess, you know, I should make clear that doesn't mean that something like Jeopardy. Is a pure index or ranking of American intelligentsia. You know, there's a lot of luck involved in all these shows and some degree of privilege. Not everybody deals with the same upbringing and background, and there's not perfect equity of opportunity on any trivia game.

[Sally Helm]

But on the set of a trivia show, it can feel like a pure battle of wits. The simple right or wrong answer, the rush of satisfaction when, you know, the fact is that, I don't know, like, healthy for society to sort of gamify knowledge in that way.

[Ken Jennings]

We've gamified everything else in general. Is it good to create that kind of competitive adrenaline urge to everything? I don't know. But knowledge needs all the help it can get. I think, you know, like knowledge needs a press agent. And if it's going to be trivia, so be it. You know, if that's what makes a bunch of kids think it's fun to remember stuff, that's great. That's great. It shows them that the facts they know have value, which is true. I think we need more people who think that.

[Sally Helm]

Thanks for listening to History this week. We here at the show do believe that remembering facts is fun. So stick around until the end of the episode to test your knowledge of trivia that you may have heard heard on this very podcast. For historical facts that you can see, check your local TV listings to find out what's on the History Channel today. And if you want to get in touch, please, please shoot us an email at our email address, historythisweekistory.com or you can leave us a voicemail 212-351-0410. A very special thanks today to our guest, Ken Bennings. He's the author of Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs and the host of the History podcast Omnibus. Thanks also to Professor Peter Burke, who shared his expertise on the history of knowledge with us, including about those perfume guessing competitions in Japan. He is the author of many books, including what Is the History of Knowledge? And thanks to NYC trivialague and Slantsha, where the History this Week team celebrated our 100th episode by trying out trivia ourselves history this week, November 10, 2021. This episode was produced by Ben Dickstein.

[Trivia Expert]

He might have the miles. You know what?

[Sally Helm]

He might have the mill.

[Ken Jennings]

I'm going to switch it.

[Sally Helm]

You are?

[Ken Jennings]

I'm going to switch it.

[Sally Helm]

And Julia Press.

[Ken Jennings]

These outdoor dining structures is like all.

[Sally Helm]

Of a sudden I'm intimately close with this man in his cap. History this Week is also produced by Julie Magruder. I think, I think we had really a lot of good teamwork. I think we bonded.

[Ken Jennings]

I think we will now produce better episodes.

[Sally Helm]

And me, Sally Helm. No Harry Potter questions in the magic section. One magical lore question was included there. That was McKamey Lin, one of our executive producers. Our other executive producers are Jesse Katz and Ted Butler. Our editor and sound designer is Dan Rosado. Our researcher is Emma Fredericks. And now we give you a series of actual questions asked to Ken Jennings on Jeopardy. The answers can all be found in past episodes of History. This week. Get ready to play along. Okay, these first two are puzzlers. There are clues in the question. Number one, a Montgolfier is a Louis XVI chair with a back often shaped like one of these. Number two, when giving your pennies to UNICEF on Halloween, hold one back for this guy five days later if you're British. All right, now, here comes some plain vanilla recall for you. Number three. This Braves slugger hit 375 of his 755 career home runs in the 1960s. Number four. It's said Nero did this while Rome burned in 64 A.D. number five. On March 3, 1934, this public enemy escaped from Lake County Jail in Crown Point, Indiana, allegedly using a wooden gun and a recent one to wrap us up. Number six. After Antietam Lee withdrew into Virginia and whooped burnside at this December 13, 1862, battle, the answers were. Drumroll, please. Number one, balloon. Number two, Guy Fawkes. Three, Hank Aaron. Four, fiddled. Five, John Dillinger. And six, the Battle of Fredericksburg. Thank you so much for listening to History this week and for playing along. We will see you next week.

[Host]

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