Brainiac | Ken Jennings | Talks at Google

Hi, I'm Fritz Holznogl. I'm a writer in the AdWords team. Proud Edwards team. I see there's some other AdWords writers right down here. And welcome to another presentation of the Authors at Google program. It's a real pleasure to introduce our guest today. He's been called the Seabiscuit of geekdom, the Joe DiMaggio game show contestants, and Seattle Weekly even called him a walking, talking Google. And Time magazine just last week coined a new term especially for him, celebrinerd. In 2004, he won 74 straight episodes of the game show Jeopardy. In the course of that run, he tallied 2,693 correct responses to questions from Alex Trebek. He hit 160 Daily Doubles and answered 133 of them correctly for a batting average of 83%. And amazingly, 65 out of his 74 wins were locks. He was so far ahead that he couldn't be beat in Final Jeopardy. His total winnings over those 75 games were just over $2.5 million, an average of about $34,000 a game. Since then, he's created his own board game. He's written a monthly column for Mental Floss magazine. He's done commercials for FedEx and Allstate. He signed on as a spokesman for Microsoft's In Carta. Thank you.

Thanks for mentioning that. That's great.

And he also has been working with Comedy Central to develop a game show of his own. I want to ask you about that later. He's appeared on David Letterman, the Colbert Report, the Today Show, Nightline, and Regis and Kathie Lee. And for the next hour, he's here with us at Google. His new book is titled Adventures in the Curious Competitive Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs. It's published by Random House. It was released last week, and it's terrific. He also has a great blog if you're online right now@ken-jennings.com and he'll be appearing tonight at Book Passage in San Francisco. Please give a googly welcome to Ken Jennings. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Thank you. You guys can hear me. Is this working? Yes. Great.

And books went out already, is that right? Great. We're going to chat a little bit here and then we'll take questions from the audience for the second half of the show. Let's start with celebrternerd in your Tongue in cheek. In your blog. You've got a tongue in cheek campaign going to get Celebrinerd more prominent in Google. This is your chance. You're at the source. Do you want to make a pitch for that?

That's the main reason I'm here today, is to help out the page rank of any page using the word celebrinerd. I plead with you. Think of all the people out there right now saying celebrity nerd and wasting those two letters, the T and the Y. If only the word celebrinerd would catch on. Think of the efficiency this country would gain. Thank you and good night.

Let's dish the dirt on Regis for a minute.

You've never actually seen Jeopardy. Have you? Is it?

No, actually, I. Jeopardy. Is it true you were on Regis and Kathie Lee and you told Regis that Jeopardy. Was a man's game, unlike who Wants to be a Millionaire?

It sounds a bit chauvinist. I was using man as a shorthand for It's a real adults game. You know, it's a person's game. I guess. I don't know the PC way to say that.

Did he rise to the challenge? Did he defend who Wants to Be a Millionaire at all?

Actually, he did not. But I think the point stands. I mean, you can win a million dollars on millionaire for 15 questions. I don't know the math, but 15 questions, that's not even going to win you one game on Jeopardy.

But bigger money. Tell us about the book. Tell us about the book a little bit. If you would just give us sort of the backstory on how it got started and what it's all about.

Brainiac is not just a behind the curtain look at Jeopardy. Or the nerd who was on Jeopardy. For six months. Although there is plenty of that. I don't mind talking about myself, but it's more a look at American trivia. You know, when I was a kid, I was this insane trivia buff. I don't know, maybe there's people in this room who had the same weird trivia childhood because many of the people I interviewed in the book had identical childhoods to mine where you wouldn't play outside if you could be inside reading the baseball encyclopedia or Leonard Maltin's movie guide or old TV guide listings or whatever. As far back as I can remember, I've just been obsessed with information. And this is the book I would have wanted to read. Where does trivia come from? Why are our brains so interested in knowing weird facts and regurgitating weird questions about said fact? I realized I was a poster boy for trivia and didn't know Any of the stuff I should know about trivia as a cultural phenomenon. And so that's sort of the story of the book. Traveling the country, meeting trivia nerds of all kinds, trying to figure out what makes them tick, seeing their obsessive subcultures in action. It was a lot of fun.

You were a software engineer yourself. And I'm curious if while you were traveling the country, you noticed that there is a correlation between computer geeks and trivia geeks. Because that's sort of the rep that trivia people have is that there's a high percentage of computer geeks. Do you think that's true?

I think that's true. I think it's harder to get on Jeopardy if you're in the computer business just because that's who they have trying out. You know, there's certainly different, you know, subcultures in the hierarchy of geekdom. And I know it's, you know, the Venn diagram. I don't know how it looks between trivia and computer programmers because, you know, there's a whole different kind of math nerd thing going on among computer programmers that doesn't really come up on game shows. So it's, you know, it's not a perfect thing. But yeah, I think you're right.

That's interesting. Tell me about, tell me about your own computer background. When did you get interested in computers? And you actually were working as a software engineer, right when you were on the show?

That's right. Software engineer from Salt Lake City, Utah. I was actually an English major in college until it was helpfully pointed out to me that, like, no English major has ever supported his family and the history of the world. I know you're a tech writer and I took some technical writing classes too.

I was a history major. That's a lot better.

Yeah, you know, it's like, what's the difference between a pepperoni pizza and an English major? You know, at least the pepperoni pizza can feed a family of four. At that point, I became a double major in computer science and worked for an Internet startup with some friends from high school. When they stopped doing the little things that matter, like paying their employees, I switched over to a healthcare staffing company right around the time the bubble popped and really enjoyed my job. But frankly, I'm not much of a developer. I'm a pretty lousy computer programmer. So it turns out that the same neurons that make for trivia greatness do not necessarily make for the most elegant code.

I guess you talk a little bit in the book about how you were trying to juggle that job in Jeopardy. When you were on the show. And I wonder if you would just talk a little bit about that, about how you kept your appearances a secret for what I guess was like six months or several months while you were pretending to be sick or pretending to be out like two days out of every week. Right?

Two things to set up the story. Jeopardy. Tapes, as you know, by the way, Fritz here is a five day Jeopardy. Champion himself. Tournament of champions champion.

And that's right, right here. Shucks.

So as he knows, but many of you may not. Jeopardy. Actually tapes five shows a day. You know, a whole week's worth of shows in a single afternoon. You and Alex pretend you change your ties and pretend that that means it's a whole new show. It's a whole new day. And also those shows are taped four months in advance. So I had won about 50 shows before any of them had aired. So I'm flying back down from my office in Salt Lake City to LA two or three times a month, winning 10 Jeopardy. Games on some six figure amount of money and then coming back home unable to tell anyone because I've signed some ironclad confidentiality contract saying that I won't reveal if I've won or lost.

We don't have those here.

Of course not. There's something called a non disclosure. You've probably never seen one. And so, yeah, my parents didn't know my parents would call me on my cell phone. I'm driving down the San Diego freeway trying to get to Jeopardy. And I'm pretending I'm at work. Meanwhile, at work, my boss is tell people that, oh, Ken's home, painting his basement or something. And these are obviously not Google caliber engineers because nobody ever figured out a thing. Nobody ever guessed that I was hiding some million dollar secret. And in the book I say I started to feel like Clark Kent working at his dull office job and then flying out the broom closet window a couple times a week to have this glamorous secret identity. And then he comes back to work and he can't say a thing like, oh, Superman was here, Lois. Oh, wow, that's, you know, I must have missed it, you know.

Oh man. And you got on the show by taking a big road trip, road trip down there with your buddy from Salt Lake City. Has he made it on the show yet?

No, we both passed the test. But he did not. He has not yet made it on the show. I think he has to try out again. But now that the tryouts are online, he does want to audition again.

Good. Tell me a little bit I'm curious about. Because you've been traveling for the last year. I'm kind of curious about regional trivia. And it used to be that there would be different foods. You would go to the south and you'd get collard greens or whatever and you'd hear an accent. You go to New England, you hear an England accent. Do you have any experience of like regional trivia? Did you get asked about presidents in Virginia or you go to the Northwest? Do they ask you about the weather or is there any kind of, is it like trivia like Pan International now?

There actually is some. I don't know about regional differences. I mean, I do, you know, trivia is sort of a regional thing where, for example, Minnesota, Wisconsin area, they love doing these weekend long radio trivia contests where, you know, people, you know, I go to this little town called Stevens Point, Wisconsin. It's a town of like 20,000 something people, 12,000 people every year play in this radio Trivia contest for 54 hours straight. You know, they, they don't sleep for this weekend. They just answer trivia questions on the radio and they spend all year prepping for this by taking notes on every sitcom they watch and so forth. So there are trivia phenomenons like that that are local. As far as the content of the trivia, I have been finding out recently, this is not in the books. I have been finding out recently about the world of international trivia. Like quizzing is very big in Britain. They still have the academic quiz shows where we just have Deal or no Deal. They've got like, you know, PhD candidates answering questions about rocket science or whatever. But it's not just Britain. Quizzing is very big in Belgium, apparently, in Sri Lanka, in Croatia, apparently quizzing is this worldwide phenomenon. So making the questions culturally neutral is sort of an issue.

Quizzing in the form, we know it here, of getting a book or a magazine article or like people just sitting around quizzing each other in pubs or.

Pub quiz is a huge part of it. Often there's like weekend events where sort of like how Google sponsors like the international puzzle team and there's a trivia team that plays here once a year or something, something like that, where companies will send their best quizzing team to face off against other local companies for charity or whatever. It's a cultural thing that we don't really have here very often.

I've heard that the big money aspect is not really the same in Europe too, that you like, go on A game show there and you win big. And it's a refrigerator or a wardrobe or something like that. It's not like a million dollars. Is that true? Anything about that?

Except for who Wants to Be a Millionaire, which they invented, I don't think there really is the big money game show over there. They're answering questions that are much harder than anything Alex Trebek has ever had to say. And yeah, you're right. They're getting a toaster oven or something.

What was a common interaction for you or what is a common interaction for you on the street these days? People recognize you. Do they quiz you? Do they assault you?

Do they assault me? Jeopardy. Sucks, and I'm taking it out on you, Jenn. People are usually very nice. Like, even when I was still on Jeopardy. There wasn't really much backlash. Like, you're ruining Jeopardy. My grandma hates you. I didn't get a whole lot of that. I do get recognized still all the time in weird places. I've been recognized at the top of the Eiffel Tower. I was summoned by PA to the bridge of the Staten island ferry once, and it turned out that he wanted to shake my hand, but I was.

Like, I mean, the guy actually came on. Ken Jennings, please come.

It's like your wife is waiting for you at the front refreshment stand. And my wife's like, standing right there. She's like, what are you not telling me? Many people do ask a very hard trivia question. Like, apparently they carry around a very hard trivia question just in case they meet Ken Jennings, you know, and here you go. And people often don't have a good idea of what is answerable trivia versus what is some thing. I remember because I'm a weirdo, you know, which is a distinction I try to make in the book. But, you know, people will. Some guy I spoke at my mom's elementary school. She's a librarian. I told the kids that reading is good. And afterwards, some teacher comes up to me and he's like, ok, what's the name of George Reeves apartment building on the old Superman TV show? And I was like, oh, I don't know. That's a good one. He's like, of course you don't. It was in only one episode. I was like, good for you. Well done. That'll take you far.

You know, do you have a catchphrase for that? Like, you got me or I do.

Typically, you're a loser. I do typically try to get it wrong. You know, it's less pressure on me. It's more fun for them. Everybody wins. You know.

We were talking a little earlier about trivia and the Internet, right? And you do talk about it in the book. I wonder, I guess, if you would sort of recap what you talk about in the book about how Internet has affected trivia and then I'll follow up. I have a couple questions about that for you.

There's sort of a few avenues in which the Internet and Google in particular, now that I'm here at Google, I don't have to say Google and other search engines as if people still use other search engines have affected the way trivia works. A lot of it is just the temptation to cheat. If you're playing some trivia game on the Internet, the answer is probably about eight or ten keystrokes away, thanks to the miracle of Google. And so I run a weekly trivia quiz on my website and it's sort of some honor system. No googling. If you're going to Google, don't bother sending in your answers because big deal, my, my Labrador retriever could get seven if he had Google, you know, but people still Google, you know, it's just very tempting. And so a lot of trivia, you know, fora have had to change their rules to allow for that. Like in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, where people are playing trivia on the radio and calling in answers. You know, before they would have to keep file cabinets full of notes, you know, with the credits of every movie ever made and every session musician on every rock song ever played. You know, these people have card catalogs in their basements. And now, you know, these people still have card catalogs, but it's like a butter churn, you know, it's obsolete because every team in town now has access to, you know, the biggest information library ever put together because it's just one Google search away. And so the contest tries to make the questions, you know, Google proof, which typically means they're either so boring you don't care or they're, you know, they're visual. What color is the T shirt of the guy in, you know, and even that is probably so boring you don't care. So. So, you know, that sort of hurt their contest, I think. You know, but people looked nostalgically on some pre Google era, which I think is very interesting.

How is it we've never heard about that? I never heard about that contest until I read about it in your book. It sounds like such a giant deal. I'm surprised it has never been.

These people don't get out much. Probably so you probably haven't met them. It's very localized. Every college town in Wisconsin has this small year long annual Trivia day. But yeah, I had never heard of it either. It's funny.

How'd you find out about it?

I know a couple people. There is sort of a trivia subculture when you get to the highest levels. The people who you know, win on Jeopardy. Are also the people dominating the college Quiz bowl circuit in their day. And they're also the people winning NTN in their local bar. You know, it is sort of the same, you know, very high echelon of know it all trivia nerd. And a few of these people that I knew from Quiz bowl, you know, knew somebody who knew somebody who played in the Stevens Point thing.

I'm interested in Google, the Google angle because, well, I work here, I'm interested in information. But one of the things I feel like I've noticed over the last few years is that I just don't, that I go to the Internet immediately to look stuff up. I don't try and reason something out. If somebody asked me who won the Academy Award in 1972 for something I don't really try and think through what movies were in 72 and who was popular then and all that stuff, why bother, right? Why bother? And so my question I guess is, is that part of my brain muscle weakening and is the Internet sort of picking up the slack for me there? And I guess, I mean the question is, is Google making me dumber? Is there some way in which Google is sort of becoming our common, at least in trivia trivia brain or sort of brain for minutia? Any thoughts about that?

I thought about that a lot, you know, because I mean anyone with a cell phone has noticed this phenomenon. You probably used to know hundreds of people's cell phone numbers. If you're of a certain age, if you're older than 18, say. And now I don't know whose phone numbers do you know? I don't know my parents phone number. You know, I know which hotkey it is and I think Google started the same way. Except there's a hotkey for every single fact ever discovered in the history of human learning. It used to be that if you wanted to remember something like that, you'd be bugging all your co workers for weeks. Oh, okay. Did you see Murphy Brown last night? Okay, I've seen that guy somewhere before. Do you remember the guy with the bald guy who. Or if you memory now is an extension, you're bugging everybody for weeks or what movie is?

I kind of think of it like not everything is full text long division anymore because there's always a calculator handy. And in the same way, maybe I'd. Are we not doing trivia?

I think I've heard teachers say that, right? Kids are getting worse at arithmetic because who the hell cares? I got a calculator. Why do I need to know long division?

Is that affecting? I mean, is trivia getting less popular, do you think? Is there any evidence that trivia is winding down? Because nobody has to remember that stuff anymore.

Trivia tends to be cyclical, so it's sort of hard to say. I mean, when would you say trivia was popular? If I asked you when trivia was popular. When was trivia popular? 50s because of the quiz show scandal. Like the 80s because of trivial pursuit 2000. Who wants to Be a Millionaire is insanely popular. A lot of people don't realize it goes further back than that. Like in 1927 there was some huge jazz age trivia boom where everybody was buying these best selling trivia quiz books at the height of the crossword puzzle craze. So trivia tends to come and go. So it's hard to say if trivia is in a fallow period now. You know, who knows if it's going to come back? I think it maybe trivia won't come back as a fad just because of Google. Because of the information age we live in, we're all saturated with information. You know, if you were a fan of some movie 50 years ago, good luck finding out great behind the scenes trivia about that movie. But now, like every movie you buy, even the crappy ones, you know, if I'm going to rent Chill Factor with Cuba Gooding Jr. There's going to be some three hours of awesome behind the scenes. Cuba Gooding Jr. Chill factor is pretty terrible, my man. Cuba Gooding Jr. Chill Factor's pretty terrible even if you're a Cuba Gooding fan. But there's going to be three hours of insanely detailed behind the scenes minutiae about even the worst movies now. So everybody can be a trivia nerd now. And is it like the Incredibles, if everybody's a trivia nerd, then nobody is. I don't know.

So it sounds like maybe trivia is actually we're like in the golden age. It's like booming rather than right.

It permeates everything now instead of being some, you know, that's kind of a great pet rock like fad.

Yeah, let's talk about. If you don't mind talking about your personal celebrity a little bit. I'm sort of curious. In the book, you tell a funny anecdote about your son stops calling you Daddy and starts calling you something else. And I wonder if you can just talk about what this whole thing has been like through his eyes, how he sees it, and, you know, just what that's like to have a kid when you're a TV celebrity.

He stopped calling me Daddy and started calling me Ken Jennings because that's what they hear on. That's what he heard the announcer say at the open of every Jeopardy. And I think he still sort of has that. Like when I was on TV last week flogging the book people, he would settle down to watch me on tv and he'd be talking to his teddy bear. This is what my wife said. And he'd be like, we're going to watch Ken Jennings on TV right now. So he sort of dissociated it, I guess. Like, it's Daddy's the one who sends me to bed if I don't eat my cottage cheese or whatever. But Ken Jennings is on.

You're a great guy.

Exactly. And I was on Sesame Street. So I'm hanging out with Grover, and Dylan's totally underwhelmed because he's a year and a half. He probably thinks everybody gets to hang out with Grover. Like, oh, yeah, Dad's talking with Grover. I know Dad. I know Grover. Why shouldn't they hang out? So I think he was a bit young to miss how cool it was. So of course I'll embarrass him as he grows up. Every first date he ever goes on, I'll whip out the Jeopardy. Slides and he'll get sick of hearing about, oh, Dad's talking about Jeopardy.

Again. I didn't know you were on Sesame Street. That's awesome.

Yeah, Grover, I got that.

What did you do?

How did I do?

No, what did you do? Yeah, how did you do?

I won 74 straight Sesame Streets. Grover and I stressed the value of eating a lot of fresh fruit. It's apparently something Grover feels deeply about. Me and Grover and a talking pineapple. It was a lot of fun.

Did you get to ask for fresh fruit, or did they just give you fresh fruit as well? Your topic.

That's sort of what they had. They're doing some kids are too fat thing. So if you watch Sesame street now, like, cookie monsters eating, like, you know, soy cookies or something now. But it's cool, like, you get to hang it like, you get to go to Mr. Hooper's store and see all the little funny labels on the wall. And you can. If you've got very narrow shoulders, you can get an Oscar, the Grouch's can. And it was fun. It was like childhood flashbacks in New York City.

They film it in New York City?

Yeah, it's in Queens.

Wow, that's awesome. What a great story. So is your son. I guess I have to ask, is he a trivia buff? Has he got the gene?

I think he might have the gene. Like, trivia is often absorption, and maybe he's too young to have absorbed much. He's not. If the Trivial Pursuit question is about Watergate, he's not like, buzzing in there. He's only three. But he seems to have the sort of the early signs. Like, I think. I think there's a component of memory to it. He seems to have a very good memory. Like, you read him a Curious George book for bedtime one night. The next night he can pretty much read it back to you. And it's sort of creepy, but, like, it's definitely a sign of trivia.

What about ad jingles?

Yeah, like, he's really good at remembering songs. Like, he doesn't watch a whole lot of tv, but, like the Wiggles. I don't know. Do you guys know this? Australian guys wear jumpsuits or something. He can sing back any Wiggle song he's ever heard. So he seems to have the memory for it, you know, whether he'll have the interest. Hard to say. But, yeah, maybe he'll be breaking my Jeopardy. Record someday. I don't know.

Tell us about the Comedy Central game show. I know that it sounds like that's on hold right now, but you were developing a game show with them, and I'm real curious just to hear about what that process is like and what maybe you learned about. Either about television or about game shows in general. About what you have to do or what the imperatives are or about myself or about yourself. Yes. What did you learn in your heart about that stuff? And is there any chance we might see it sometime soon?

Yeah, right after Jeopardy. There was some interest in a lot of people in having some Ken Jennings game show. And I was working with Michael Davies. He's like the British guy who brought who Wants to Be a Millionaire? To the States. And we were sort of working on developing some. Some Win Ben Stein's Money, like game show, except instead of Ben Stein, here's the twist. It's me. It's like a gentile win Ben Stein's money or something. And, you know, it was sort of a funny show. I think Ken Jennings versus the rest of the world was the gimmick was the title. And the gimmick was, you know, you find five people of a certain demographic. It's Ken against barbers, or it's Ken against great grandmothers or, you know, people who ate the black eyed peas or crossword puzzle fans or, you know, you pick some demographic and have me face off against them. And the show was very funny, and we were developing it for Comedy Central, and they really liked it. The story I heard was that they thought they were in the market for a half hour game show to pair with the Daily Show. And then Stephen Colbert's show was a big hit. And, like, I'm a huge fan of the show, so I can't really complain. I was watching it too. I'm definitely part of the problem. And so they were no longer in the market for a game show, so we're sort of pitching it around to see if anybody else wants it. It's a funny show, and I would love for it to see air. And I've loved game shows ever since I was a kid. So, I mean, there's a story of Brainiac of me not wanting to go to school when I was 5 years old, not wanting to start kindergarten because I'd miss Family Feud. I wouldn't be able to see Pyramid and Password every day anymore. So I would love to see the game show take off again.

Didn't you say you were excited when you had a third sister? Because I gave you five in the family for family feuds.

Exactly. When my sister was born, I was like, that's five of us. You. I get to meet Richard Dawson now. This is gonna be awesome.

Did you work any feud like elements into the. Into your own show? Are you trying to work. Is it like, is there a family family component or anything?

I guess there sort of is. It's five contestants. I didn't think of this. It's five contestants with something in common. Holy cow. Family two's gonna stress if you start.

Dressing like Richard Dawson. That's the worry about it.

The light brown suit and the vest and everything.

And you were just on the Colbert Report. You mentioned the Colbert Report. You were just on last week. I'm curious about that too. What do they tell you beforehand? Do you meet him? Is he crazy?

You guys know the Colbert Report? For those who don't know it, it's a fake news show and it's a Fake news pundit show. So he's sort of a blowhard and an idiot. And the pre interview for the show is very funny because normally a TV pre interview would be like, okay, we want to ask you about Jeopardy. What's Alex like and what did you do with the money? It's the same five questions over and over. But the Colbert pre interview, they're like, ok, you know, he's just playing a character. He's going to be pretending to be an idiot, right? That's like the main thing. And then the second thing is don't be funny. People come on and try to be funny. It's just death pretty much just sit there and let him be funny. He'll use you as a prop. It'll be great. You know, that's sort of the substance of the interview. Oh, and don't crack up. They're like, don't crack up. When people break character, it sort of ruins the show. So it's very high pressure. It's like an acting gig. And if you saw the show, I cracked up repeatedly because I think he's very funny and I'm a huge fan of the show, but he's a lot of fun. He'll come out and hang out with you backstage beforehand and he's a cool guy. I had a good time.

Did you succeed in not being funny?

I think I was pretty unfunny. Anybody see it? I tried to be not funny, so I hope I achieved that goal. At one point he asked me something about being a Poindexter. And I was trying to come up with whatever the noun form of poindexter would be. Poindexter toot or poindexter hood or whatever. And he had the joke. He was like, I believe it's Poindexterity. So now we know the condition of being a Poindexter is Poindexterity.

And I have. I know that from reading your blog and from personal experience that people always ask what Alex Trebek is really like. So I thought what I'd like to. What I'm sort of curious about to hear from you is if people tell you what they think of Alex Trebek.

That's a good question.

And if. What do they say? Are there some common things they either praise or complain about?

Alex Trebek is apparently some great cultural Rorschach test or something. What you think about Alex Trebek apparently reveals who you are. This nice Canadian man, because some people just hate him with the white hot passion of a thousand sons. They'll Ask me what Trebek is like and it's clear that the, the subtext is like, he's a jerk, right? I mean, he's an a hole, right? Because I can tell he's totally smug and he pretends to know all the answers and I don't know what he thinks he's doing with those accents. He does, but oh no, I'm sorry, it's Azerbaijan. I'm sorry. He pretends to know the answer all the time. But many people on the other hand, are huge fans. I put up a joke blog post about a month ago suggesting things that Jeopardy. Could do to liven up their format. It was just a joke, but a couple of the quotes got pulled out of context and got run in like the tabloid, the New York Post, to make it look like I was bashing Jeopardy. And I got more angry all caps emails from AOL addresses than you would believe. Everyone over 70 in America felt they had to send me some angry email because to people of a certain age, Alex is like, you know, he's like James Bond. You know, he's like a sex symbol or something. So don't mess with Alex in person. He's a very nice guy. He's, you know, he's not as stern and as dignified as he appears on the show. He's looser, he cracks jokes, he'll do little bits of accents and soft shoe and you know, song and dance, which you wouldn't expect.

I think that's the lot of my questions. How would you like to read a few pages from the book and then we'll take questions from the crowd.

Okay. I was trying to read, I was trying to find an excerpt that was sort of Google centric and that actually covers something I already, I already sort of addressed. So this is, this is going to be great, great tv. But just talking about how Google has changed the yearly radio trivia contest in Stevens Point, Wisconsin since people can now look up the answers. So here's just a little excerpt from the book about the contest. Well, I don't know, maybe I should just read about the contest in general since we sort of already talked about Google. Are you guys going to be okay if I don't mention Google so much? Let's do this. There is no shortage of players willing to take this daunting 54 hour challenge. In a town of under 25,000 folks, enrollment for the contest hovers at a remarkable 12,000 year after year. And that's just the people officially registered. You can't quite say that half the town takes part because many contest regulars are former residents or out of towners who make a yearly pilgrimage. But even so, there's no way around it. This is a town that goes Radio Gaga for its Radio Trivia. The prize for their efforts. Well, there really isn't one. The top 10 teams each get a little trophy, and that's it. I drove into Stevens Point in a rented Nissan Altima right before the parade start. A few hours earlier, I'd wanted to rent a compact, but the larger Altima is a concession to the long legs of Earl Cahill. He's my 6 foot 9 college roommate who tried out for Jeopardy. With me, who's decided to come with me to check out the contest. Are you going to register to play? I ask him. No, I just want to see what it looks like when a whole city goes trivia crazy. Would you look at that? We're driving down Division street, the commercial strip that runs through the center of Stevens Point. It's completely familiar in its commercialized anonymity. We could see these same convenience stores, muffler shops and Burger Kings anywhere in America, but here. There's one difference. Every single sign board on the street is trivia themed. Welcome trivia players. Trivia 36 Keep On Trucking trivia special Doritos 159 Earl and I stop at Taco Bell for a late lunch, and even though the place is set to be gutted and remodeled in less than a week, they're hawking trivia, too. Closing Monday for Demolition. Welcome Trivia Fans. Stevens Point is a small town, says contest organizer Jim Oliva, but it really kicks it up for Trivia Weekend. Trivia has put Stevens Point on the map nationally, garnering mentions on CNN and national newspapers in Leno and Letterman monologues. The contest was even the subject of a Jeopardy. Clue once, though all three contestants were stumped on the correct response. And trivia has shaped the town as well. As recently as the late 70s, the old style phone circuits in the Stevens Point exchange meant that only 72 excuse me, 72 callers could be connected by phone at any given time most of the year. This wasn't the problem during Trivia Weekend, though, hundreds of callers might be trying to call in answers to the radio station at once. You could go 10 minutes without getting a dial tone, recalls John Eckendorf, who has been Jim's co writer since 1989. That 10 minute delay might be annoying if you're calling in a trivia answer. But local officials worried more about the potential for 10 minute delays on 911 calls and other emergencies. The contest forced AT&T to update the phone equipment with new digital technology about a decade ahead of schedule. Despite all the hoopla, I have a confession to make. As Earl and I head to our hotel to drop off our bags, and as I watch the parade later, I'm skeptical. I have a problem with the Stevens point format. In my head, I'm putting air quotes around the word trivia every time I see or hear it. Because to me, this isn't trivia. I've always associated trivia with the unexpected joy, the epiphany, the ego stroke of mentally dredging up answers you didn't even know you knew. But Steven's point players aren't standing on a stage holding buzzers. There's one thing wrong with a contest where the players are sitting at home with seven minutes to come up with each answer. And you've probably spotted it already. Google. So that's how Google first enters into the book.

And that's one of several trivia contests you go to. You go incognito to a trivia contest in Boston, right?

Yeah. I have to wear a Red Sox cap down low over my head. So nobody's like, hey, they've got that guy from Jeopardy. On their team. You know, get him. So I was in disguise.

And you talked to some other trivia mavens. I know Fred Worth is an old 1970s trivia author you talked to, and you cover Trivial Pursuit in there, and it's a great read. I had the chance to read it last week, and I recommend it.

Well, thank you so much, Fritz.

Yeah. Well, thanks for being here. Questions start right here.

But I have to ask. Can you tell the story of the giant styrofoam head?

The giant styrofoam head. Okay. For a while, I had a giant styrofoam head of my own head sitting in my garage. It's like about the size of a small car or something. You know, it's about the size of a VW Beetle. And I guess a local parade in Utah had wanted to have floats about local celebrities. And so there's this huge Ken Jennings head driving through downtown Draper, Utah, or whatever on the fourth of July. And so it doesn't look unlike me. There's a certain angle where it sort of looks like me. It looked nothing like me. I thought, yeah, the back from the top on Google Earth, it looks just like me, actually. But after the parade, they called me, and they're like, so do you want a Styrofoam version of your head. And you don't say no to that question. But it's not like I was waiting for that call, so I didn't know what to do with it. Do you charge admission? Do you put a Santa hat on it and put it on your roof every year? What do you do with a Styrofoam model of your head the size of a car? So they brought it over to my house and left it. And when we moved from Salt Lake to Seattle, I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't want to throw it away. What do you do? Do you do some cathartic thing? Do you take a chainsaw to it? Do you put a cherry bomb in it? I mean, is that weird? Am I going to be telling my analyst about that in 10 years? So I finally just put it on ebay for charity to see if anybody would buy a Ken Jennings head the size of a car. And yeah, like, the bidding got up to like $210. I think Woot.com bought it. You guys ever look at Woot? I think the Ken. I think the Kenhead is going to show up in a big bag. Oh, crap. From Woot one of these days. So, yeah, I am now head free.

Has anybody here been on Jeopardy. Or tried out for Jeopardy, by the way? Have we got any? That's right. Three times, Right.

Congratulations. That's not easy to do. Well done.

That's the guy. Okay, more questions. I see back here. I'm supposed to repeat the questions.

I just wanted to know what you.

Thought of as someone who sort of big in the game show world, what do you think of shows like Deal or no Deal?

As someone who's big in the game show world, what do you think about Deal or no Deal or games that maybe are dumbing down the game show?

Deal or no Deal's funny to me because it's like the anti game show. It's like the Bizarro World game show. Like, what if game shows require no skill whatsoever? It's like, great. That's what we want to air. You know, let's greenlight that, you know. And I've seen the show and I can see the appeal of it. You know, you can sort of see it's very well structured. But still, to me, like, it sort of insults me that you would call that a game show. You know, it's like playing Candy Land with your mom. You know, there's. There's no element of skill whatsoever. It's just that the Models are prettier than Baron Gumdrop or whoever the denizens of Candyland are.

That's not necessarily a new thing, though. Game shows that maybe don't require. In fact, that one reminds me of Treasure Hunt. If you ever saw Treasure Hunt in like the 70s, it's essentially treasure Hunt.

And there's still part of the. There's no play along to it. You're not yelling out answers at your screen like pick 28, pick 28 or whatever, but you are seeing normal people flirting with life changing amounts of money. And that's sort of fun on its own.

I guess in Jeopardy they emphasize, at least in the tryouts, the play along aspect that it's not it's all about you, but it's really about all these people at home that are going to play along and they want to enjoy playing along. They need to have time to answer the questions and everything. You're right. That one, I guess that one you can, you can sit at home and say, do it or don't do it. Take it, take it.

I guess there is some plan right back there. Yeah.

So I was just wondering what kind of preparation you went through as you were going through winning all of these episodes. Did you study world capitals and presidents?

What kind of preparation did you go through for Jeopardy?

There's a chapter in Brainiac which is pretty much, I wouldn't call it how to because it sort of reads like some crazy Unabomber style thing of me letting Jeopardy. Rule my life in the three weeks leading up to being on the show. But I did plenty of stupid stuff. I used to watch the show standing up behind my La Z boy at home pretending it was a contestant podium and snatching from my toddler one of these Fisher Price ring stacking toys and pulling off the donuts and using that for a pretend buzzer, trying to figure out the timing and also like you say, studying the stuff that always comes up on the show. My wife and I made flashcards of world capitals and presidents. I don't drink. Like I'm a Mormon teetotaler. So also the potent potables we had, you know, on the front it's like, you know, Harvey Wallbanger. And on the back it's like, you know, what is vodka, orange juice and Galliano, you know, so for, you know, for three weeks around our house, pretty much all we talked about was the presidency and cocktails. It was like, it was like, it was like going to college with President Bush. You know, It was very weird around our house for three Weeks.

What are your bad categories?

A lot of them I learned on the show. Like country music kept coming up. Country music time and time again. I'd be like, my gosh, I'm a little bit rock and roll. It turns out hockey. There was always hockey that I sucked at. And I knew I was pretty weak at corporate America type stuff. And then. So it's sort of fitting that that's how I lost. I'm the H and R Block Question sitenet. I knew I didn't know that kind of stuff.

Next.

Two questions for you.

One, what do you think about crosswords? Are you a fan of them? And two, what kind of relationship did.

You develop over the few months, over the months that you were on Jeopardy.

With Alex Trebek?

What do you think of crosswords? And what kind of a relationship did you develop with Alex Trebek over the time you were on the show?

Strictly platonic. I don't know. I don't know what you've heard, but I'm actually a pretty big crossword fan. I used to time myself every day with the New York Times crossword because it ran in my student newspaper. And I actually just this spring went to Stamford, Connecticut, where they have the big crossword tournament every year. And I was supposed to give out the awards, but I asked if I could play as well. And they're like, I guess. Ok. So I played and I actually won the rookie division. So I had to give myself an award. It was very awkward. But there definitely is a big crossover between crossword people and trivia people. I think a lot of the. I say in the book that a lot of the people who used to write for who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Were crossword constructors. That's sort of how they paid the bills. Alex Trebek. When I was on the show, I sort of thought maybe he didn't like me. He seemed a little chilly. I sort of wondered what I had done. Does he not like sharing the spotlight? But the story I tell at the end of the book is coming back. He comes back on stage after my last game, and he's in his shirt sleeves, which you never see. You never see Trebek without a jacket. And it's weird. It's like seeing your parents naked, seeing Alex in shirt sleeves because you've never seen him before. And he's like. He's actually sort of choked up, like, well, Ken, we're going to miss you around here. And I was very touched, you know, I guess he did like me after all. He just sort of had to pretend to be strict and authoritative and stuff, but I think he misses me.

Way in the back there.

So I think I caught your first episode on Jeopardy. And I feel like it ended or near it at some point. There was a daily novel Alex was cutting before you really have a chance to consider the answer.

Oh, really?

Is that a completely arbitrary amount of time for Daily Doubles or based on his likes?

So the question is Daily Doubles, they redo the question. There's an amount of time there where you have to answer. Is that an arbitrary amount of time? Is there a set period of time?

My understanding is that there is a sound effect, right? Or is it maybe not on Daily Doubles?

I think on that he just comes in and says, I'm sorry.

I think it's pretty much all him. And I think it's sort of up to him, which is weird because the whole game can hinge on it. And it's just Alex being like, hey, on the end, you're sort of cute. You get 20 seconds on this Daily Double, ma', am, or whatever. But I don't remember that particular time. I do remember one case where he let me go a long time. Like, I sort of start going, who is? And I think if you time it, it's like 25 seconds or something, you know, which is unreal. In Jeopardy Seconds, that's an eternity. So, yeah, I think that's pretty much host discretion.

The real gap is like five seconds on a regular question, I think. And I think it's sort of. I'm guessing it's sort of supposed to be the same thing. But then he has discretion.

I think he sort of wings it.

Like, widen the strike zone. Sure, Hannah.

So obviously a lot of your high scores came from just answering a lot of questions, right? But you're clearly using some sort of really well executed betting strategies. Can you talk a little bit about what you were doing and whether you were applying any sort of game theory in any of your games?

Can you talk about your betting strategy? And if you applied game theory, Jeopardy's.

Been pretty extensively analyzed. Like, there's PhD dissertations on how to bet on Jeopardy. And because it turns out it's sort of counterintuitive. Like, for example, if you're in second place, as you well know, if you're in second place going into the final, you should bet almost nothing. You should not think I'm behind. Gotta bet it all. You gotta wager almost nothing and hope that both you and the leader get it wrong, because he or she should probably bet the whole thing or close to it. But like in many of my games, the strategy didn't seem to matter that much. I mean, that's the cool thing about locking up 65 of your games before the final question. You know, strategy is sort of irrelevant. On daily doubles. You often try to make a better situation for yourself by not losing the lock if you have one or not losing a 2/3 situation where I can't believe I'm getting into this. You should probably all go back to work. You want to keep some 2/3 scenario where you do not go below 2/3 of the leader or you do not lose that advantage over the second place player because that affects final jeopardy betting. So you want to bet in such a way that you can move yourself up a ranking and how the scores wind up without dropping one if you get it wrong. But it's pretty inexact science if you feel good about the category. You know, if it's Academy Award winners, I bet 14,000 and I don't regret it. Damn it. I mean, that was the day I passed the all time Jeopardy. Record. But ordinarily you don't want to do that kind of stuff. You know, I think you should always bet less than you think. That's sort of my.

You were kind of aggressive or known for being kind of aggressive in daily doubles, though, is that right?

Depending on the category. Yeah. But it lost me in my last game. I mean, everybody talks about H and R block, but it's like, you know, Bill Buckner was just the second outer. I guess it's the pitcher's fault for the unearned guys that were on base when Bill Buckner lets the grounder go through. You know, it was actually the two daily doubles I got wrong in that game that sort of hosed me.

Opened the door.

Yeah. And I bet too much on both of them. Certain.

So you talked earlier about maybe Alex getting bored with doing Jeopardy.

Day after day after you had been.

On for a whole bunch of games even though you're winning all this money. Did you get bored after that? Did you say, well, maybe I'd like to finally lose and end the run.

You ever think that?

Did you get bored during your run?

It's sort of an interesting psychological test. Like can the most interesting rewarding thing on the planet become boring for this little lab rat if you shock him enough times? You know, and it's true, you know, you know, Jeopardy. Just zaps the pleasure center. It's so much fun. It's high stakes game against very smart people. You're making maybe $68,000 an hour. That's a pretty good hourly rate, even at Google. I would assume so, you know, it should be the funnest thing imaginable. But yet, if you do it for a whole summer, you know, if it becomes, in effect, a summer job, you do sort of start to think, well, frankly, this was more fun in April, you know, and towards the end, I did sort of start to think, you know, when do you throw one? I think I would have lost my hundredth game. Luckily, I arranged to lose my 75th game without really meaning to. But I think I would have thrown the hundredth game in Final Jeopardy. You know, the final Jeopardy. Answer would have been, what is I'm out of here. You know.

What about the people you were on the show with? Obviously, after some time you had some notoriety and people would come in. What was that like? What were the contestants like with you before?

It would just break my heart. I mean, people are nice, but I mean, it was their lifelong dream to be on Jeopardy. Too. Same as me. Except I'm ruining it for like 149 of them. I guess. So, yeah. I've never really ruined 149 lifelong dreams in a row like that.

It didn't keep you from winning 74 games?

No. I mean, obviously this guilt did not make me throw a game, but. But I felt bad about it in a hypothetical sense.

Hypothetical, yeah, sure.

Can you talk about the mental part of the game? Were there any times where you felt maybe overconfident and that led to any sort of mental mistakes?

Can you talk about the mental part of the game?

Yeah. Knowing the answer is pretty small. Well, I don't know if it's small, but it's a part of Jeopardy. That all three contestants share equally. So there's a lot of other aspects to it. Yeah. Mentally, I mean, there's fatigue. I mean, if your plan is to win 75 games, you're going to be playing 10 shows every 48 hours and your feet hurt, your brain hurts. So there is that. Trying to make it a marathon and not a sprint. There's very few head games. I remember a few contestants trying to psych me out backstage or something, but there's very little of that. It's very collegial. They sort of fool you into forgetting the game theory and thinking that we're all in this together, which couldn't be further from the truth. Jeopardy. Is a zero sum game, but, yeah, mental mistakes, fatigue. I don't remember getting cocky. I mean, I guess I did start to bid too much. I Guess you could say I lost that last game because I started bidding too much.

Did you eat differently? Did you like carbo load the nights.

Before the Jeopardy Diet? Yeah, it's going to be my second one.

What about. Did you have like a lucky breakfast or anything like that? You ate every.

I usually ate the same stuff backstage on Jeopardy. I usually ate all the pineapple off the tray. And I don't. That's not like a baseball player superstition, like not changing your jock or whatever. It was more like I just like pineapple. But I did sort of get into these routines without really meaning to, like writing my name differently on the podium every show. That was just an accidental routine that I felt like I shouldn't switch. I'm not superstitious, but I hear that superstitions can get you whether you believe in them or not.

Yes.

What's the lag time between when you.

Film an episode and when it airs.

And how did that affect the game? Once Dustin saw you on TV and knew where you were, what's the lag time between when a show tapes and when it airs and how did that have an effect on the game itself as you were playing?

When I was on, it was usually four months. So 48 shows have taped before any of them air. And before then it would be even more heartbreaking because everybody would come in bright eyed and bushy tailed and then one of the contestant people would have to be like, this guy has won 36 games or whatever. And you could just see their faces fall. At least when the shows had started to air, there was more like he's still here. You know, like you walk into the room and you're immediately hated. And you know, many, and frankly many trivia nerds know that feeling anyway. But it's especially pronounced backstage on Jeopardy.

Yes.

So after four months, how did you reveal to your family and co workers that you were on Jeopardy. How they reacted.

So after four months, how did you reveal to your family and friends that you were on the show and how did they react?

They found out pretty much the same way everybody else did. They just started watching it every night. And I'd feel bad because they'd be so tense, like, is this going to be the night he loses? Because they're thinking, ok, three games tops. Is this going to be the night he loses? And I don't want him to tell him, you can chill out there, dad, it's going to be ok.

Did you tell them when you went down and tried out and you got on the show, did you call your.

I told them I was going to.

Be on the show.

I told them I was going to be on. I just didn't tell them if I had won or lost that first game and so by extension every following game.

Right, I see.

And you know, they would have had every right to be mad. And I sort of wondered, are they going to be mad? But I mean, I think my parents were just busting buttons, you know, they were so proud and annoying all their friends with the news that they didn't have any time to be mad at me for keeping them in the dark for four months.

Yes.

So how do you sort of square this sort of fact based, trivia based career that you have in your religious spirituality?

Right.

How do you reconcile the fact based fame career you have on with your spirituality with your religion?

Right. I'm devoutly church going Mormon and I assume there's some stereotype that, well, you know, how could somebody religious go on Jeopardy? They're going to get all the evolution questions wrong or whatever. What is there were no dinosaurs. Alex, I refuse to answer this. When you say Pleistocene, you mean Tuesday. Right. But I don't know. I think I would actually say my religious upbringing actually. I think intelligence is actually sort of valued in. First of all, I mean, first of all, the general stereotype about religious people being sort of the general media stereotype belief of religious people being hopeless mouth breathers. I don't think it's totally true. I mean, I'm sure, I assume there's very smart people who are religious to one degree or another. And in particular my Mormon faith. I think within the LDS community, intelligence is sort of prized. There's the idea that you can't take it with you unless it's intelligence. The stuff you learn is like assuming there's an afterlife. It's probably the one thing that's going to go with you. So we should value that above the car you drive or whatever. And so I think that sort of stayed with me during my life. I think that's a big part of what made me who I am.

Great answer. Yes. Way in the back there.

What do you think of the change.

Of rules to allow people to play as many games as they can?

What do you think of the change of rules to allow people to play more than five games?

Totally against it. That sucks. I need to go back to work and start unit testing. This thing I did three years ago, I actually had like, if I was not the guy, I think I'd be against it just because of the risk of that happening a lot? Because I think, you know, one time it's funny if some guy's on the show for six months but you know, like many things that's not so funny if it happens all the time and you know this guy has some unfair advantage or woman, you know, this player has an unfair advantage over everybody else. There's an incredible home court advantage to that left hand podium. You know, the, the buzzer skills you got and the inner calm you probably have compared to the other two and the intimidation factor. So there is the potential for that to be trouble for Jeopardy. I think. But that said, it's about my favorite Jeopardy. Rule.

Until we've got time for one more question. Who's got a great one? You're down in front. Front counts for great.

So I'm wondering if your family and friends sort of went through phases of, hey, Ken's on Jeopardy. Oh, he's still on Jeopardy. Hang on. How many has he won now? Did the reactions change? How did they change over time?

Did your family get bored with you? Is that what you're asking?

It's like the six stages of grieving or whatever. The six stages of Jeopardy. Yeah, there's definitely a sense in which, you know, it's funny just how the weirdest thing imaginable can just be normalized so quickly. You know, at first every night it was on, my sister would come over to my house to watch, like, OK, we're going to be there at 6:30. She's so excited. And it took about a week for her to be like, yeah, we'll just watch it at home tonight. And when I say watch it at home, I mean watch 24. So yeah, I think they very quickly just got used to the new status quo.

All right, I think that that almost concludes today's presentation. Ken's going to sign a few books if you're willing afterwards. And again, if you're in San Francisco and want even more, Ken Jennings, he is going to be at Book Passage at the Ferry Building. Is that right? The Ferry Building in San Francisco at 7 o' clock tonight doing a reading and meet and greet. Thank you all for coming and bow to hand.

Thank you. Friendly.

Awesome.

That was a fun.