← The Political Scene | The New Yorker
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- [00:01]
UNHCR Narrator
Displacement is at its highest level since World War II, but more than $1 billion in essential programs are being cut just as needs grow. Families forced to flee war are arriving in camps hungry, cold, and exhausted. With your support, unhcr, the UN refugee agency, provides essentials for emergencies. Warm clothes, blankets, cooking sets, and shelter materials help families survive the deadly winter ahead. Donate@unrefugees.org Seen.
- [00:35]
Tyler Foggatt
Hi, everyone. I'm thrilled to be on stage this morning with the unbelievably impressive Ken Jennings. There are many adjectives I could use, but impressive is what I went with.
- [00:46]
Ken Jennings
That works for anybody. You can get a war criminal up here and say, wow, it's really, it's.
- [00:52]
Tyler Foggatt
Really impressive what he pulled off. That's, of course, Jeopardy. Legend Ken Jennings. Ken grew up watching the syndicated version of Jeopardy. Hosted by Alex Trebek. But when that show debuted in 1984, Ken was actually living in South Korea. His dad was an international lawyer who moved the family to Seoul when Ken was in first grade. And so Ken was watching Jeopardy. On the only English language TV channel available to him, which was the Armed Forces Korea network. In 2004, when Ken was living in the States again and working as a software engineer, he fulfilled his lifelong dream of competing on Jeopardy. And he was historically good. He won a record 74 games in a row, earning more than $2.5 million. And for many years, he was America's highest earning game show contestant, with various Jeopardy. Tournaments and other quiz shows, bringing his total earnings to a whopping $5,796,214. The New York Times described Ken back in 2004 as a throwback to the days when ordinary people got on television for doing well, not something shameless. He's been described by other publications as America's hardest working nerd and the Seabiscuit of geekdom. In 2020, he won the greatest of all time tournament on Jeopardy, Cementing his status as the goat. And then, of course, he succeeded Alex Trebek as the host of Jeopardy. Just a few years ago, I got the chance to speak with Ken live on stage at this year's New Yorker Festival, and we're sharing the conversation today so that listeners can get a peek behind the curtain of one of the all time great game shows, Jeopardy. I'm Tyler Foggatt, and this is the Political Scene.
- [02:39]
Ken Jennings
Thank you so much, Tyler. What a pleasure. This is very exciting for me.
- [02:45]
Tyler Foggatt
I could not be more excited, personally.
- [02:47]
Ken Jennings
It's like if you read the New Yorker and then suddenly you're on stage at the Festival. It's a little bit analogous to watching Jeopardy. And then suddenly going on the show like the New Yorker has kind of risen up to surround me like Tron, as I always dreamed it would.
- [03:03]
Tyler Foggatt
So, as one fan wrote online several months ago, how lucky are we that the perfect host for the show also just so happens to be the greatest to ever play the game?
- [03:16]
Ken Jennings
That is a lovely sentiment, but I think you can hear how improbable it is. Like, what. What are the odds that someone would be good at playing Jeopardy. But could also host it? And I think the answer is it's kind of analogous to, you know, quarterbacks becoming sportscasters. Not all of them can do it, but the ones that can, they're not good at first, and I was not. But they know the game well enough to kind of keep their head above water until they figure out the broadcasting part of it, and then some of them are pretty good.
- [03:44]
Tyler Foggatt
How does it help you? Does it ever get in the way?
- [03:47]
Ken Jennings
Does it ever get in the way? I mean, the. The main thing about hosting Jeopardy. Is it moves so fast. You're not really putting on any kind of Persona. Like, I'm. I really kind of feel like I'm just playing Jeopardy. At speed with the players every night. I just don't have a buzzer. Um, so I'm very into the game. I'm excited. I want to know what's going to happen next. I'm still trying to do all the things. All the things that Alex was so perfect at. You know, read every clue perfectly because you're kind of narrating a whole audio book every night and set the stakes for the home audience so they have a little bit of play by play and color commentary. You're also the umpire. You're making difficult rulings even though you're backed up by the judges. So all of that stuff is going on, but basically, I just kind of feel like I'm enjoying the game like I did when I. It was in my playing days. Now, that sounds like an ex quarterback. Well, when I was still on the Yankees. Shut up a rod.
- [04:45]
Tyler Foggatt
So in terms of reading the clues, we'll talk more about this later, but obviously a big part of Jeopardy. Is buzzing in. Like, that's kind of the thing that determines who wins a game a lot of the time. And you and a lot of other contestants used to study Alex Trebek's speech patterns. And I would assume that people are now studying your speech patterns so that they know exactly when to, you know, use their signaling device. And so I mean, do you have, like, a pressure to speak consistently? Because I'm like, such a bad person. I would just, like, intentionally, like, introduce pauses to mess people up and stuff. I would not be able to help myself.
- [05:21]
Ken Jennings
I wouldn't say, like, when you say studying Alex Trebek's cadence, it makes it sound like I'm some kind of, like, Professor Henry Higgins weirdo with a gramophone or something. But that's kind of true. Like, just having listened to Alex read clues for decades, I feel like I did have a sixth sense of. Here's what happens. The host starts reading a clue. The players are reading ahead because they can see the screen like you can at home. You can read faster than the host can read out loud. So you're trying to get to the response before the host does. Do you take that second, is it right? Does it make sense? Do you feel confident enough about it to buzz? And if you decide you're going to, then you're just laser focused on the end of the sentence, last few syllables. Beat buzz. Because you can't buzz early, as some of you may know. Has anybody here ever been on Jeopardy? I bet there's a few front row. Any others? Congratulations. As you may know, you can't buzz. As soon as you know it, you have to wait for the host to finish reading the clue. Then at that point, your buzzer is activated, and then you can buzz in. If you buzz in too early, you actually lock yourself out for a fraction of a second. I think people at home are often like, hey, Gary's buzzer is broken. No, it's just the adrenaline is making the players kind of buzz a little bit on the fast side. I was more of a listen, I know Alex is reading so well that I'll just kind of time it to when I see the lights come on at home. Like, when I see somebody buzzing at home, that's probably a pretty good proxy for the right millisecond to buzz. And it turned out it worked. And today I think people are doing the same thing about my voice. So I do try to think about that. I read consistently. There's a lot of things that the reader of the clue can do to help the players get to the right answer. And that is what Jeopardy. Wants. We are never trying to confuse anybody. Even though the clues are difficult, the show only works if the players have a fair shot at answering every clue. And that's what we are just hoping for.
- [07:09]
Tyler Foggatt
You do want a few triple stumpers though, right?
- [07:13]
Ken Jennings
We're not against the occasional clue that Nobody knows. It's a little moment to breathe in the game. It makes the audience feel smart. Do you guys love it when you know something that they don't know?
- [07:22]
Tyler Foggatt
It's the best feeling in the world. I recently had it watching Sorry, Heroin. Yeah, I really just asked to do this event so that I could tell everyone about this moment I had. But it was. Yeah, I was watching Jeopardy. And there was like an influencer category and it was the hardest question and it was this photo of Alix Earle appears on the screen and I'm at home thinking, that's obviously Alex Earle. And no one got it. And unfortunately, it was the kind of thing where I think my husband actually thought less of me for being able to get that answer.
- [07:54]
Ken Jennings
In Quizbo, we used to say there's no shame, like a right answer is a right answer. It doesn't matter how much you know about Love island or whatever.
- [08:02]
Tyler Foggatt
Do you guys talk about how lowbrow you want to get on a show where like half the questions are about Shakespeare? Like, how do you balance that?
- [08:11]
Ken Jennings
The writing of Jeopardy. Is basically the whole enterprise of the show. Like Jeopardy. Is the writer's show. And one of the things that goes into building the boards is balancing them. You know, categories are written by a big staff of writers, but they have colors. You know, this one's an academic, you know, blue for academic or whatever they are. This one's a wordplay category. This one's pop culture. And there is kind of a formula of, oh, we haven't had TV yet this week and we, we need a second pop culture category, this board. Are there ever specific questions about is this person Jeopardy. Worthy? I think not so much. I think anybody can be a Jeopardy. Clue. Maybe you don't want Mr. Beast three times a week, but if the people know it, that's what Jeopardy. Should be.
- [08:58]
Tyler Foggatt
How involved are you in choosing the clues and shaping the questions?
- [09:02]
Ken Jennings
We have an award winning writing staff, eight or ten writers, similar army of researchers, like New Yorker style, fact checking every clue, double sourcing every fact and every clue. They do not need me kibitzing. But that said, over the years, Alex would occasionally like, have an idea, like, what if we did this category? Or, you know, I just saw this fact at a museum. Couldn't this be a final Jeopardy. And I do the same thing, like if I see something in the wild. There was something just yesterday, but I can't tell you it might be on the show. The first time it happened, I was in the Old North Church in Boston and there was a Plaque for where Gerald Ford raised the third lantern. And I was like, for the bicentennial, I was like, oh, this could be a final Jeopardy. Gerald Ford in this building raised the third lantern in 1976. And the writers agreed and they put it on the show and then nobody got it right. So I just felt. I just felt guilty.
- [09:54]
Tyler Foggatt
So I'm wondering, like, going back to when you were a contestant, at what point did you realize that you were the best Jeopardy. Player or at least one of the best Jeopardy. Players of all time? Like, was it game 15? Was it game 40? Was it like years after your streak was over and no one had even come close to beating it that you were like, oh, I. I really cooked?
- [10:19]
Ken Jennings
Okay, let me make two things clear. One is that there's a lot of luck in a game of Jeopardy. And there are maybe. I think I went back and looked once just for the math and there's about a dozen games in my run where if one clue goes another way, I actually lose that game, including my first game. Like, I, I'm one clue away from being a zero game Jeopardy. Champion and. But like, for whatever reason, a few breaks went my way and, and so the implication of that is that on any given night, you know, it's. It's unclear who the best Jeopardy. Player was. Like I, I would come back for tournaments and get beaten time and time again by the pride of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Brad Rudder, amazing Jeopardy. Player who just really had my number during tournaments. And also I never thought that I was. My goal coming in was just not to be negative at the end of double jeopardy because you know how people are just disappear from the stage during final. So that was really my only expectation. I. To this day. I think it's, it's weird that it happened.
- [11:21]
Tyler Foggatt
Well, we actually have a clip of that first Final Jeopardy. Which I would love to watch if you are. If you're down.
- [11:28]
Ken Jennings
I love looking at my weird eyebrow less younger self.
- [11:32]
Tyler Foggatt
It's exactly what we're going to do. Please roll the first Jeopardy. CL.
- [11:52]
Jeopardy Announcer
And she's still going strong. Jerry Harvey, we start with you. What did you put down? Which athlete did you think of? Marion Jones. You are correct. And you add a dollar, you go to $7,401. Let's go to Julia Lazarus. Did she come up with Marion Jones? She's shaking her head. Why she was going for somebody else. And I can't figure out who. Gail.
- [12:12]
Tyler Foggatt
I can't figure out who either, but somebody named Gayle.
- [12:16]
Jeopardy Announcer
Every girl named Gayle watching the program today is Going to be very happy. You lost 37.99. That drops you down to $14801. Let's go to Ken Jennings and even 20 grand going into final. Who is Jones? And we will accept that in terms of female athletes, there aren't that many. And you've got $17,201 more for a 37, 201 total. And you become the jeopard.
- [12:48]
Tyler Foggatt
I was, like, weirdly nervous watching that, even though I knew the outcome. I think it's the music.
- [12:53]
Ken Jennings
It's the music.
- [12:53]
Tyler Foggatt
Yeah. How do you feel watching that?
- [12:58]
Ken Jennings
I always think when I see clips of me on Jeopardy. I always think, boy, that guy's dressed very badly. And there. I always think about how close it came. Alex pauses for a second and looks over at the judges and. And that's when I realized you realize this very fast. Oh, what if Marion Jones is right? But they don't take Jones because there was some other track and field star named Jones that I'm not thinking of. And I suddenly realized I'm going to lose this just because I didn't write Marion. And then I just remember the wave of euphoria because, like, one win is enough. Because you're like, oh, I did it. I. I went through this gauntlet, and I'm a Jeopardy. Champion, and they can't take that away from you. And for the rest of the run, I was like, well, that's enough. I, you know, I'm already a Jeopardy. Champion and everything else is kind of gravy at that point.
- [13:43]
Tyler Foggatt
So you mentioned kind of cringing at the way that you used to dress on the show. But I have to say that's like the charm of Jeopardy. I mean, it's Jeopardy. Not like America's Next Top Model. And it's kind of amazing that you have this show that is so exciting to watch and yet the contestants are teachers and librarians and grad students and software engineers. Like, those are some of the most common professions, I think, of people on the show. And so, you know, my question is, is it possible for someone to be too nerdy to come on Jeopardy? Like, I know that there's a, like a, you know, an initial test that you have to take to qualify, and then after that there's an in person component. And so I'm wondering, like, what actually happens in that audition process after you pass the Jeopardy. Test.
- [14:26]
Ken Jennings
We do assign everybody a nerdiness quotient or NQ that, no, this is a little bit above my pay grade. I mean, obviously I got on so the mark of whatever telegenicness is is not. But I think in the past, one of the reasons why we have that in person portion is just to see, to try to get a sense of who will excel once they're on tv. You've taken a very hard written test to get on the show. Weirdly, that is not a perfect Venn diagram circle with being good tv, being able to answer very hard trivia questions, not actually a good proxy for who's great on tv. So we just want people who can walk and chew gum at the same time who will be able to keep up with the game and not, hopefully not kind of go deer in the headlights for a while. Maybe there was a sense of, you know, this person might actually be not a good fit for Jeopardy. Even though their test scores are very good. And now I think there's much more of a sense of let's just put the best people on. Because as you say, the charm of Jeopardy. Is it's kind of a throwback to regular people being on TV without any sense that they've been glammed up that much. Because reality shows are not like that anymore. Even though there's more real people on TV than ever before, they're not themselves, that's for sure.
- [15:48]
Tyler Foggatt
So, I mean, if part of the process is figuring out who will be able to kind of swing it on tv, you don't really know until the person is actually on the show. Right. Like, even if there's a practice round or something, that's not the same as.
- [16:01]
Ken Jennings
And there is.
- [16:02]
Tyler Foggatt
Yeah. And so, I mean, has anyone ever, like, freaked out?
- [16:06]
Ken Jennings
Yeah. It's extremely intense to be on Jeopardy. We think of it as calming, almost ritualized entertainment. Ah, this is the thing that's on at 7 o' clock. And it always goes and sounds exactly like this. And if I went back in time, this is exactly how it would be in 2005 or 1985. But in fact, when you're there, it's extremely tense. It feels like a blood sport because you've never been on TV before in almost every case. So people are kind of nervous and it feels surreal. You're a little bit out of your body and then the game just moves so fast and it's so high pressure and everybody else is so smart. It is an intimidating thing. And people are going through big feelings out there, even though they look calm every night. So please spare your most charitable thoughts for the Jeopardy. Contestants every night who are really putting themselves out there and who are probably really going through Some stuff while you're watching. It's a big ask. And so we do occasionally see. I have seen tears. I have seen borderline panic attacks. It's intense out there.
- [17:08]
Tyler Foggatt
You don't see that part on tv, though. So do you like, stop and then let the person come back after their panic attack or does the round restart? How do you deal with that if a contestant can no longer function during the recording?
- [17:20]
Ken Jennings
Interestingly, whatever those moments are, they almost always happen off camera. They happen during the break, like the gate. The pull of the Jeopardy. Game or the propulsion of a game of Jeopardy Is so strong for people who know the show well, as I assume many of you do, that you can drop people into it and they can kind of go on autopilot. And then during the commercial, that's when they're like, what just happened? I'm up by 3,000 or I'm down by 6,000 or that's when they kind of have the alien abduction is over. And they're like, but we've all grown up on Jeopardy. And so people can kind of do it. And it's an amazing thing to watch.
- [17:55]
Tyler Foggatt
This is the political scene from the New Yorker. More of my conversation with Ken Jennings after the break. It's one of Britain's most notorious crimes, the killing of a wealthy family at White House Farm. But I got a tip that the story of this famous case might be all wrong.
- [18:20]
Ken Jennings
I know there's going to be a twist one day, a massive twist at.
- [18:23]
Tyler Foggatt
Every level of the criminal justice system. There's been a cover up in this case. I'm Heidi Blake. Blood Relatives is a new series from in the Dark and the New Yorker. Find it now in the in the Dark podcast feed. You mentioned in Brainiac, your book published in 2006. I should also mention that Ken is a New York Times bestselling author of many books. You mention in the book that there was, at least at that time there was a long backlog of men who would qualified for the show through their test but hadn't been on yet. But there were fewer women. You noticed that women were getting faster callback times, ostensibly because there were fewer women trying to get on the show. Is this still the case and are there other patterns you've noticed, like whether it's gender or like a certain kind of like, do you have too many attorneys?
- [19:18]
Ken Jennings
Like, that's always true. I think it's actually gotten a lot better. The big sea change for Jeopardy. And this kind of predates my time is, you know, when I tried out for the show. I had to. I had to wait. You had to wait for Jeopardy. To come to your town, go to the mall, do a little questionnaire, and then be invited back. Or in my case, a friend and I drove down to LA just to show up at the Radisson and try out for Jeopardy. And this self select, as you can imagine, for a certain kind of very confident, trivia kind of person. And so what you get is like too many. Like proportionally you get too many white men trying out for Jeopardy. Because that's the kind of person who watches Jeopardy. And thinks, eh, you know, like, you know, when you poll, like, how many men think they could take a point from Serena Williams, you know, and you can get 35% of men to be like, yeah, when in fact the real answer is no. So I think because of how that worked, you would get people who assumed they were good at trivia. And then you got more men than women trying out because just the kind of the imposter syndrome of all the things that come with our culture about performing as a woman in a high pressure environment like that. And when we moved the test to online, just lowered some barriers to entry. Like, that turned out to be great. It did not solve the problem. But we now have women trying out at a greater percentage, people of color trying out at a greater percentage than before. It hasn't solved the problem we have of wanting Jeopardy. To look more like America. But it went a long way.
- [20:50]
Tyler Foggatt
It's also easier to study for Jeopardy.
- [20:52]
Ken Jennings
Now.
- [20:52]
Tyler Foggatt
Right?
- [20:53]
Ken Jennings
It's a whole different era. Like when I was on the show, like those three people you see, they're just kind of like people who did it as a lark. Like, we like Jeopardy. Our friends say that we should go on, but these are just normal people. And today, increasingly, we're in a Moneyball era of Jeopardy. Where people do train for years to be on the show. I know people who have essentially built simulators at home the way a pilot might. People who have their own buzzer lineups, people who write their own software to barrage them with Jeopardy. Clues, people who do study the math, the game theory of the wagering. It's been professionalized and of course, the strategies have changed.
- [21:31]
Tyler Foggatt
Yeah. I want to ask you a lot more about the strategies. So the strategy of hunting for the daily doubles, that's something that we often associate with Holzhauer, who used it so successfully. But I feel like the first time that I noticed it happening was in the game that you and Brad Rutter played against Watson, the IBM supercomputer which, you know, seemed to be on the prowl for the daily doubles. And then you guys kind of had to do the same thing in order to compete with it. I mean, do you trace some of those strategies back to the Watson?
- [22:01]
Ken Jennings
When IBM programmed Watson, they interviewed a lot of Jeopardy. Contestants with ideas on strategy and so forth. And I think so a lot of those ideas actually came from humans to Watson, back to humans. Just like AI is taking human work today and then using it to put humans out of work. And I think that came. I mean, people have been jumping around the board since the 80s. That was a player named Chuck Forrest who thought he.
- [22:25]
Tyler Foggatt
Forest bounce.
- [22:26]
Ken Jennings
Right, the forest bounce. And it wasn't to look for daily doubles. It was to keep your opponents a little off balance. Like if they're still thinking about opera and you hop to nine letter words, maybe they're going to forget that they're looking for a nine letter word. And then there were players like Arthur Chu, who specifically were looking for daily doubles. And that's the game changer there. Just probability wise, you want to put the game away as early as possible. Because I think historically players are about 50% conversion on final Jeopardy. And that's just a lot of uncertainty. You don't want a 50% chance of winning at that point. If you can lock up the game before Final Jeopardy, you do it. And historically, daily double conversion is much higher. I'm sure for some players it's upwards of 80%, in fact. So that's why you see players just laser focused on those daily doubles and then making what seem to be like crazy, cartoonishly big wagers, because they know that's the moment to try to put the game away. And occasionally you'll see a big risk go awry. But it's just like poker. It's still the right way to play.
- [23:23]
Tyler Foggatt
So when you were competing on the show, you played a pretty normal chill game.
- [23:27]
Ken Jennings
Thank you.
- [23:27]
Tyler Foggatt
Yeah, like, it wasn't. It didn't seem like you were employing like some crazy strategy. It seemed like you were just trying to answer as many clues correctly as you could. But you've had to change your strategy over time when you've like gone up against players like Holzhauer. So what is it like playing that more aggressive style? Like, does it feel comfortable?
- [23:47]
Ken Jennings
No, I still find it very uncomfortable. At the time when I was first on, it was not a choice. Everyone played that way, you know, like, oh boy, let's take around the house for 200, Alex. And they would march consecutively through A category. If I know Jeopardy. Viewers, many of you miss those peaceful, reassuring days of orderly movement down the board.
- [24:07]
Tyler Foggatt
Well, also, there are clues in the earlier questions that help you understand the harder ones. Like, it makes sense to go that way.
- [24:14]
Ken Jennings
The show aesthetically prefers people to go down the board. And the contestant producers will still say, you know, there's advantages there. You may want to get a better sense of the vibes of a category before you move to the harder stuff. But players know that really what counterbalances all that is whoever finds the Daily Doubles first is more likely to win. It's like controlling Australia in Risk or something. So that's why you have players actually making heat maps of where on the board the Daily Doubles tend to be. Historically, over time, they are placed by humans, so it's not a random effect. For whatever reason. There are certain. Not just rows, but columns that are more likely to have the Daily Doubles than others, and good players have done the research on that.
- [24:56]
Tyler Foggatt
Have you thought about randomizing them?
- [24:58]
Ken Jennings
The problem with randomizing is there's a kind of clue that is a Daily Double. Aesthetically, when we're looking for a Daily Double, there's a sense of what's a clue here? That the players benefit by having a few extra seconds, that the audience benefits by having a few extra seconds. There's a bit of deduction maybe involved or combining multiple pieces of information, some bit of mental work to do that's a good Daily Double. If it's something where you just look at it and you're like, oh, that's easy. That's Mahler. Everybody knows that. You know, whatever. A simple linkage of fact, that's not a good Daily Double. And so, for whatever reason, that tends to be in a certain part of the board.
- [25:34]
Tyler Foggatt
No, I love the Daily Doubles. I feel like it's kind of the only time on television where you can see someone's brain working in real time.
- [25:42]
Ken Jennings
The other day, someone, I needed a wager, and it was kind of a tense situation, and the person was like, do you guys edit this out? Can I think for a while? And I was like, no, we. We need a wager.
- [25:56]
Tyler Foggatt
I'm wondering if you can speak to the kind of intelligence that Jeopardy selects for or suggests. Like, I mean, you are obviously someone who has incredibly deep knowledge, and this is clear from the books you've written and just, you know, the fact that you have a demonstrated curiosity about so many things. But when you read about how people prepare for Jeopardy, and especially, like, the concept of Pavlovs, like The idea that if you see British university mentioned in a clue, it's most likely going to be Cambridge or Oxford. And like, you can just study for the game that way.
- [26:29]
Ken Jennings
Sometimes it's a lock. You know, like Norwegian composer is always Edvard Grieg. You know, there's exactly. There's some of these where you just need to know that.
- [26:36]
Tyler Foggatt
Yeah. And so, like, if. If part of the game is just kind of learning those associations, then it does make me wonder whether really deep knowledge is a requisite for success. It's not like the contestants might know what year this war happened in, but would they be able to write an essay on the war?
- [26:54]
Ken Jennings
They would not. In general, Jeopardy Is a game for generalists. And to me, that's kind of the beauty of it, because we live in an age of specialists. You know, people get in these very deep career silos or even like avocational silos. You know, people really are like, well, I like this kind of jazz, but not that kind. Or, you know, I follow the American League, but not the National League. You know, even our hobbies are very specialized and kind of isolating in a way. Jeopardy. Is from a different time when we had this idea that cultural literacy united people and so you would know a little about everything. And there's a couple effects of that. One is that shallow knowledge performs pretty well on Jeopardy. I mean, for whatever. And I don't want to say, like, these are not Rain man style savants that just learned a series of facts. Like, these are in general, curious, engaged people who know that stuff because it interests them. In fact, the reason why they're generalists is because everything interests them. Like in the same way that you don't have to study the lyrics of a song you like or the roster of the team you like. If you're interested in everything, facts just stick in your head. I guess the other corollary of that is that it's kind of a hopeful thing. I think it makes me kind of miss a time when we were united by a broader culture. Not that necessarily. We need to go back to a monoculture of three networks. There were certainly some downsides to that. Representation wise, it was terrible, but there was a sense of what people knew and what your co workers would know and what your friends would know just about the world. And as we get into kind of lower information voter times, honestly, I'm nostalgic for a time when you kind of assumed that we were all held together by this common culture. And Jeopardy. Maybe is the last, like, kind of the last bulwark of it, but we're proud of that.
- [28:44]
Tyler Foggatt
I mean, how do you ensure that during a time when facts themselves are becoming so politicized? I mean, you're probably not going to have a Jeopardy. Clue that's like the winner of the presidential election in 2020. But, I mean, are you on the lookout for, I mean, is it just a matter of accepting both what is the Gulf of Mexico and what is the Gulf of America as the right answer to a clue? Or, like, how do you kind of ensure that politics doesn't get in the way of, like, our last apolitical, beloved cultural institution?
- [29:15]
Ken Jennings
I mean, this has never come up before. For decades and decades of Jeopardy. Republican and Democratic administrations, the show is weirdly universally popular. It's popular in red states and blue states, young people and old people. Somehow, I think it just kind of got grandfathered in before the culture wars reached, like, Coulter Kampf levels. And so this is the first time we're actually having to think about that. You know, we would have to accept Gulf of America. I think that's, you know, our rule is like, do media outlets use this word? And that's now an alternative answer. I don't think that player would endear themselves to the home audience with their Gulf of America response. But certainly Jeopardy. Is still a place where facts do matter. And if we ask a question about the moon landing, we would not accept what is that didn't happen. You know, or if it's a question about MRNA vaccines, you know, you can't just buzz in and say, what are Bill Gates microchips? Or, you know, like, like facts do matter on Jeopardy. And. But it's a hopeful sign to me that it is still this broadly watched show where for 30 minutes a night nationwide, people do kind of accept these are questions that have correct and incorrect answers. And maybe, maybe I'm deluding myself, but it seems like a sign that we, we could get back to that, to that society at some point.
- [30:46]
Tyler Foggatt
So on the subject of politics, in 2004, after your incredible win streak, you mentioned that Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid both called you and tried to get you to run for Orrin Hatch's Senate seat in Utah. Can you tell us a little more about that?
- [31:04]
Ken Jennings
I mean, that's kind of the story right there. I mean, as you might remember, then and now, Utah politics, the Democratic candidate was always a sacrificial lamb of some kind. I like to see this as a sign of, if not personal merit, at least Jeopardy's great cultural bonafides. But really, it's probably more a story about the thin Democratic bench in the state of Utah in 2004. Like maybe this guy will get some national headlines, some fundraising, some help for down ballot races if there's a celebrity on the ballot. So I'm a little cynical about that, but I did not think about it for very long. My wife's here. She will know that I, I thought about this for about 10 minutes before I said no. You know, I've, I've already kind of done enough interesting things to my family. I'm not going to ruin my family's lives by going into politics.
- [31:51]
Tyler Foggatt
What were your plans for your kind of like post Jeopardy. Life? Because obviously it took many years for you to then return to the show in a more formal capacity. And I think I read that you kept your job as a software engineer at least for years. Yeah, for years. Even though in your book you mentioned that you were a mediocre software engineer at best. I don't believe that it's true.
- [32:12]
Ken Jennings
I wish I could show you my code. I had been a computer science major in college. I'd actually been an English major. And at some point that's what I loved. I loved to write. But somebody told me the joke which some of you might have heard, which is, what's the difference between an English major and a large pepperoni pizza? Anybody know this one? The pizza can feed a family of four. And at that point I made sure I had a computer double major. So I graduated right at the height of that first kind of dot com boom. A lot of my friends had dropped out of school to join startups, so I got a job very easily. But it turned out I was not a very good or happy computer programmer. So here I am, like in my mid to late 20s, having this very early midlife crisis basically of what have I done? And I'd gotten married in my mid-20s, so I'd come home from work every day just a little bit glum about what a crappy programmer I was. And just tell my wife, hey, I think I'm gonna go back, I'm gonna apply to law school or I'm gonna take the foreign service exam. She will often remind me all these weird ideas I had. And honestly, I'm gonna go on a game show was not one of them. That was kind of an unlooked for thing. But the thing to remember is I, I always thought it was gonna go away. Like I never. It's funny now, 20 odd years later to be like, well, he's the host Of Jeopardy. There's clearly a narrative arc here. But at the time, I was just waiting. We were just waiting for it to end. Like, boy, what a crazy summer we're having. Dad's still on Jeopardy. At some point, somebody asked us, are you gonna get. Do you think you're gonna get recognized on the street? And I just laughed. I was like, no. Can you imagine recognizing somebody on the street because they were on Jeopardy Today? It doesn't seem weird. Of course, I would recognize Amy Schneider or James Holzhauer, but at the time, no, you would not recognize somebody because they were on Jeopardy. My idea was maybe at Costco because that person could see your name and your face. So my wife and I had this bet. The over under was 10. I would get recognized 10 times at Costco. But that's just a sign that we thought the whole thing was going to go away and then we'd have a normal life. And then it just kept not happening.
- [34:18]
Tyler Foggatt
Yeah. My favorite fact about that period is that when your run was airing, you became so famous and known as Ken Jennings that even your son, who was 2 at the time, started calling you Ken Jennings. Does he just call you dad now or.
- [34:35]
Ken Jennings
He called me Daddy before. He calls me dad now. But that summer when Johnny Gilbert was saying Ken Jennings, he just started calling me Ken Jennings. Always the whole thing. Like Charlie Brown. It's unclear why.
- [34:51]
Tyler Foggatt
In a minute. Ken's relationship with his predecessor, the legendary Alex Trebek. This is the political scene from the New Yorker. We'll be right back.
- [35:11]
Katie Drummond
What the hell is going on right now? And why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis. And maybe you are, too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week, I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview. Conversations are fun.
- [35:38]
Ken Jennings
I want a shark that.
- [35:40]
Katie Drummond
That eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.
- [35:44]
Ken Jennings
So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the.
- [35:47]
Katie Drummond
Unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every week, we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times. Meaning and context. True or false. You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me. One day, at some point, as of yet undefined, in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to the Big Interview. Right now, in the same place, you find Wired's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
- [36:28]
Tyler Foggatt
I'm wondering if you can talk a bit about your relationship with Alex Trebek. I know that when you were competing on the show, you weren't able to really talk to him much at all because of all the FCC rules.
- [36:39]
Ken Jennings
There's still regulations. Yeah. I mean, left over from the scandals of the 50s. So going on a game show today is still very strict. Like, contestants kind of get sequestered, like a jury. If one person has to pee, everybody gets a bathroom break. Just to eliminate any possible optics of, like, oh, the show is skewed in favor of Marcy, or that must be where they gave Dan the answers, or whatever like that. It just can't happen. Like, there would be congressional hearings and jail sentences if the game show were rigged today. And so as a result, you never hang out with the host. Like, we would see Alex at the top of the show the same time the home viewer saw him. And occasionally I would run into him over the years. But, like, the whole time, you're just kind of seeing him as. I don't know if you. You know, we kind of have this idea after we lost Alex, we kind of thought of him as, you know, America's grandpa or smart uncle or something, and Canada's, for crying out loud. But at the time, some of you may remember more accurately, he had a little bit of a brittle quality on stage. Like, he liked to be stern sometimes. He was perceived as smug when he corrected people. He had the very good accent in every language, which I do not have. I'm so jealous of all of Alex's hosting toolbox. He was so good. But the whole time I'm a contestant, I'm like, does this guy like me, or is he, like, kind of fed up? Because he would always just be a little, like, you know, a little disapproving, kind of. That kind of Alex Trebek. Well, I don't know about this Persona. And on my last show when I lost, he actually came back out after the game. He was in his shirt sleeves, which you never. You never see Alex out of a jacket.
- [38:07]
Tyler Foggatt
It was like, I can't even imagine that.
- [38:10]
Ken Jennings
It's like seeing your parents naked. You can't imagine. You don't want to see Alex in a. He looks good, though. But he was, like, moved. He was like, I can. We're going to miss you around here. And I was like, I didn't know. Like, all this time, Alex. Alex didn't dislike me. Like, I was genuinely touched by that. So it was mostly just admiration of his. Of his hosting ability. And the only reason I can kind of keep my head above water hosting today is because I saw him do it for so many years, including Up Close. Just phenomenal. Like, he was made for it.
- [38:43]
Tyler Foggatt
Did he ever talk to you about potentially hosting the show in the future?
- [38:47]
Ken Jennings
Yeah, sometimes he would joke about it because over the years, people would ask me, hey, when Alex retires, And I would say, no, it's not going to happen. Every broadcaster wants this job. After he got sick, I was consulting on the show at the time, and I talked to him a few times about it, including, although we didn't know this, the weekend he passed away, I was supposed to come in and rehearse, and it got canceled because he had passed away that the night before, and nobody knew. It was like, we knew he was gonna start another round of chemo. So I had been enlisted to guest host a little bit. But we were all sure he would come back. He had rallied so many times. And I talked to him on the phone, and his voice was not the same, but he still sounded like Alex. And one of the things I remember him saying, he, like, thanked me. He was like, boy, Ken, thanks for filling in. Like, this is. And I was. I was like. I was gonna ball. I was like, alex, no. Like, we should be thanking you. Are you kidding? Like, 37 years. He always believed the host was not the star of Jeopardy. That was typical game show practice. And Alex said, no, no, no, no, no. The players are the star. The clues are the star. The focus of Jeopardy. Should never be on the host. And he was 100% right. And I don't know if any other host would have got to that conclusion just because that's not the way show business works, you know. Less of me, please. But he was right.
- [40:03]
Tyler Foggatt
I mean, there are theories that he kind of had you in mind for a while to host. We actually have a clip of an interview segment from 2014, when you returned to the show to compete in a tournament. If we can roll the Trebek clip.
- [40:16]
Jeopardy Announcer
Now because of the 74 games you have won and all the other games in which you have participated. Do you think there's the advantage of being an intimidating factor for these others?
- [40:28]
Ken Jennings
I hope not, because, I mean, everybody here is so good. I mean, it's a very different. I notice a huge difference coming back to play tournaments because everybody's so good. But, you know, I do. I've been behind this podium a Lot. And I feel really at home here. So I. I get that.
- [40:41]
Jeopardy Announcer
How would you feel over. Well, no, we won't talk.
- [40:44]
Ken Jennings
We won't talk about it.
- [40:45]
Tyler Foggatt
I mean, that seems pretty pointed right.
- [40:48]
Ken Jennings
At the time, I thought that was weird. I. I don't. It was so clear to me for years that you would never get an ex. Contestant to host Jeopardy. With all the lack of charisma that a Jeopardy. Contestant brings with them. Why would you do that? Um, and I still. I'm a little bit surprised. It's a very unconventional thing. I guess the question is, can you take a great broadcaster and teach them Jeopardy? Can you take a. A Jeopardy. Contestant and teach them the broadcasting angle? They both seem like a bit of an uphill climb, I guess. And so it was a difficult task when Alex passed away, but I. I feel very lucky. Like, I feel like the. The good little boy that won the chocolate factory somehow, like all the other guest hosts got sucked up into the chocolate pipes or whatever, and Dr. Oz or Aaron Rodgers are still up there somewhere. It was just always my favorite thing. Jeopardy. Was my favorite thing as a kid, and it meant so much to me, like a safe space where smart people knew stuff. And it was clear that that was a thing, like you could be this kind of grownup. And so to, like, now be on my favorite show. I just learned the word pronoia. Do you know this word, pronoia, Tyler?
- [42:02]
Tyler Foggatt
Never heard of it.
- [42:02]
Ken Jennings
It's the opposite of paranoia. Pronoia is the conspiracy theory belief that the universe is conspiring on your behalf. And boy, what an irritating thing to hear someone say that. Boy, why does everything keep working out for. But I just feel so lucky. Like, I. I get to work at my favorite place and host my favorite show. And. And I take it seriously because I think Jeopardy. Does still mean that to the nerds of tomorrow.
- [42:31]
Tyler Foggatt
So I'm getting a lot of audience questions, as you would imagine. Um, so the first one mentions the amazing Jeopardy. Moment where you, you know, you answered with what is a hoe? Um, you know, the. The. The clue being. What was it this term for a long handed gardening tool can also be a moral pleasure seeker.
- [42:51]
Ken Jennings
That's exactly it. Wow.
- [42:53]
Tyler Foggatt
I did my research. I didn't want to be closet Jeopardy.
- [42:55]
Ken Jennings
Super fan. Ken, what's a hoe?
- [42:58]
Jeopardy Announcer
No. Whoa, whoa.
- [43:04]
Ken Jennings
Whoa.
- [43:06]
Jeopardy Announcer
They teach you that in school in Utah, huh? Al, what's a rake? A rake is right. You select.
- [43:13]
Tyler Foggatt
But this question asks, do you think that Jeopardy. Clues are written to elicit wrong answers that are really funny or Will the contestants embarrass themselves with no help?
- [43:24]
Ken Jennings
I was so sure that that was a trap. Like, because who would see this long handled garden instrument is also a pleasure seeker and not say, hey, what if someone says ho here? But apparently they did not like. Our two current head writers, Billy and Michelle were both on staff when that happened. And I now see the Jeopardy. Ethos is not to try to trap people. And the players think it is like, the players are like, oh, Because Jeopardy. Clues are difficult, they're dense. They're kind of in their own. Their own weird little kind of dialect that's not quite English, full of red herrings and misdirection and little references. So it is its own complicated thing. But there are never traps. You know, we know that the game works when we elicit correct responses the most direct way possible. So no, there are no traps on Jeopardy. That's sad. I still feel like they owe me 200 bucks or whatever that was.
- [44:18]
Tyler Foggatt
What's the weirdest strategy you've seen someone use on the show?
- [44:22]
Ken Jennings
There's a Jeopardy. Rule that you can continue to respond until the host rules against you. And that was just to avoid awkward situations of, I don't know, somebody being asked to repeat something and changing it or we don't have a. The first thing out of your mouth is the response rule. We have a. You can tweak your answer until you get a quick no from Ken. But that does mean it does incentivize people who just, like, can game the system. You know, like, they can say, what is Mesopotamia? And if I don't look happy about it, they can just start yelling, assyria, Sumeria, Babylonia. You know, and I've seen people try to work that a little bit. I don't recommend it. You don't want to annoy the host.
- [45:02]
Tyler Foggatt
Do you see anyone? I mean, now I'm just like, I have, like, a cheater mentality. So I'm starting to think of strategies that people should use, and you can tell me if any of them would ever work. Has anyone ever tried, like, mumbling their answer so that they can't be penalized for incorrect pronunciation?
- [45:17]
Ken Jennings
I feel like mumbling is too risky. You'd be more likely to know it and then get ruled against. Because we are kind of strict about Jeopardy. Pronunciation. The metric is not do I think this person was saying love's labor's lost. Like, I actually have to hear every apostrophe s in love's labor's lost. Like, if somebody were to say love's labor's lost or Love's Labor Lost. I would have to rule against them. It's gotta be a plausible pronunciation of the right spelling. Or in Final Jeopardy, a plausible spelling of the right pronunciation. Or I'm supposed to rule against them. And I feel mean, but I do.
- [45:47]
Tyler Foggatt
So we have, like 30 seconds left, but I'm wondering if you want to do a very quick lightning round where all the answers are subjective.
- [45:54]
Ken Jennings
So I love a lightning round.
- [45:55]
Tyler Foggatt
Okay. So a category that you'd like to see on Jeopardy. More often.
- [45:59]
Ken Jennings
What is 80s pro wrestling?
- [46:02]
Tyler Foggatt
A category that should be eliminated permanently.
- [46:05]
Ken Jennings
What is Tool Time? The long handled garden instrument.
- [46:10]
Tyler Foggatt
The best quiz show that isn't Jeopardy.
- [46:14]
Ken Jennings
What is who Wants to be a Millionaire? Yeah.
- [46:16]
Tyler Foggatt
The best board game.
- [46:18]
Ken Jennings
Yeah. What is Risk? Actually, Big risk.
- [46:23]
Tyler Foggatt
Good answer. Most intimidating Jeopardy. Contestant who you played against.
- [46:28]
Ken Jennings
Who is James Holzhauer or what is Watson?
- [46:33]
Tyler Foggatt
Look, if there's one thing about Watson, he would have been a terrible Jeopardy. Host. So you definitely.
- [46:37]
Ken Jennings
Thank you. I believe this, too. Thank you.
- [46:39]
Tyler Foggatt
Thank you so much, Ken, for being here with us.
- [46:43]
Ken Jennings
This was so fun. Thank you, Tyler.
- [46:57]
Tyler Foggatt
This has been the political scene from the New Yorker. I'm Tyler Foggitt. This episode is produced by Michelle o' Brien with mixing by Mike Kutchman and engineering by James Yost. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Our theme music is by Alison Layton Brown. Thanks so much for listening and have a happy Thanksgiving. From prx.