I would like to have played against Ken.
I think it's now forever impossible.
But I'm a big fan of his.
I would have enjoyed that.
When I finished the professor's tournament,
they asked me that same question.
Or is there anybody you'd like to play in the future?
They might have said,
and it was shortly after Matt AMODIO had finished his run,
which was something that besides maybe James, we hadn't seen in years,
something like that.
And I said, like an idiot.
Well, you know, I'd like to play that an over.
He's a great player and I'd like to see how I could do.
And then I had to play him that ammonia
and it was not all that was cracked up very good at jeopardy.
And you did pretty well yourself. Got away with it.
I don't remember how it ended, though.
And I'd like to play Ike Barinholtz because he looks like a lot of fun
and he's a good player.
Yeah, I would say probably all the players that
were I was sitting at
home just thinking like, how do they know any of this?
So players like Roger, Craig,
Alex, Jacob, Larisa Kelly,
Julia Collins,
people who bet really big.
I would love to
play against people like that.
Yeah, I'm strong on dance hits of the 1980s
and I think I could probably handle Major League Baseball up until about 1970.
You know, as a kid, I would read all the old stories about the the players
from the thirties and forties, and I probably retain a certain amount of that.
But then when you get to modern days, the
I don't I don't know nothing, nothing.
I would I would say
specific comics from Calvin and Hobbes
of Kalahari
doesn't really come up very.
Often. It's not a category.
But there's so much material there. You know.
I think on calculus
just I compute the following integral.
I feel like I can I can give you a run.
I would love to.
I would love, I think an attitude
more than a resource is the most important thing
because so many people run into me and they say, Oh,
this would be a great piece of trivia and it's so niche.
And I really narrow that Jeopardy appeal to a wild, wider audience.
And they would never ask it.
So just a sense of when something is just on the periphery of enough
people's knowledge that they'll get that aha moment when they ask it.
And that way you can avoid just memorizing
all these little crumbs of trivia that will never come up.
I think there
again is as what's your name again?
As Matt says, it's more a notion of connectedness
that I look for, that there are facts that kind of like
King Louis, the ninth of France, was also a saint to the church.
Those connections make for good trivia questions, I think.
And if you can figure out
how these things relate to those things, how these books by an author and I
don't want to stick my neck out for boy but these Did you see what I did there?
Yeah, I think it's the obscure connections that lead to good trivia.
So I think rather than try to memorize a list of facts, just acquire knowledge
in a broad range of fields and try to see how they fit together.
Yeah, I would echo the
open mindedness of it.
Like just be open to open to new experiences.
You might write something off like, Oh,
I don't ever want to read anything about opera.
I don't ever want to read anything about classical music or art
or bands of the 1970s or Calvin and Hobbes.
But I think, yeah, if you're just
open to to new stuff,
you might find something that really interests you.
Sorry that it's not a specific book.
Do we have specific book.
Guys or anything?
I think it's in Britannica.
You have to be more broad.
Yeah, you do.
I kind of have one.
It was one of the wordplay ones.
I think it was like a before, during and after.
You had to put the put smash these phrases together.
And the answer was, but it's Sour Patch kids in the hall monitor.
And it was
really satisfying to get that one right because you had to smash it all together.
But also it gives you kind of like this funny image at the end.
Of I remember that clue and I couldn't get it.
Yeah, I got that one.
So I think my favorite clue was
a during Joe Box hosting
I when it was asking about a Lee Majors 80 show.
So I was after $6 Million Man
and so I correctly said Fall Guy,
which was in the recesses of my head somewhere just buried.
And I said, Oh, this is so obscure.
I can't believe I know this is this season, right?
I say it.
And Joe Buck's face lit up because this was clearly something
as a teenager, whatever age he was, he loved it
and was so surprised that somebody my age got it.
And that joy in his face just came through.
And it it made my day. That's great.
I don't know.
I guess I've always been happy with the times
when I didn't know the answer right away and I was able to figure it out
while that clock is ticking with neither of my opponents buzzing in and one
involved people whose names were herbs and spices or something like that,
and they showed a picture of a drummer and I didn't really recognize the guy,
but they described him a little bit and he was the drummer for Cream.
And during the time that the clock
was ticking down, I was able to cook up the name Ginger Baker.
And on the show, when they
paused, I think was edited out
because it felt like it was 20 minutes in my mind, or at least five full seconds.
But I was very proud of finally coming up with Ginger Baker, one of.
I think it was said already,
but I'm finding I'm finding out that
you could be interested in the subject if you've just learned a little bit more.
So if you think you don't like a subject, it's too boring.
It's because you don't know enough yet.
So I, I found I so much about the fashion world to be interesting.
I look forward to one day
actually exercise a lot of what I wear, but I still find it interesting.
And so I think the difference between earlier in me
and today me is that I do not write off subjects
as being uninteresting.
I would say, and this is maybe a cop out, but is to keep asking this question
and getting perspectives not over rotating on any perspect
any answer that any one particular person gives you on this.
Like people will give all sorts
of advice in very, very strong ways, like don't do this, just do this.
Kind of take all of
that into account like I read so many.
But the one really awesome thing about people after they come on the show
is they can kind of freely talk about like what their entire experience was like
leading up to it.
And people will tell you exactly how they prepared and what things worked
and what things didn't.
And none of them, none of these things, I think, are like 100% correct.
But you can kind of piece together the parts that you like the most
and come up with something that you feel is like a cohesive approach
to getting better at it.
I'm just going to repeat what Matt said because it was exactly
what I want you to hear what I said, but I never hear you said.
So I found
first of all, I gave myself permission to go down a web search.
I don't want to say any particular
brand of a web search company, but web search rabbit holes.
When I encountered a thing that was interesting, I allowed myself
even in the middle of a conversation while we were prepared, I told my wife,
Look, I'm going to just get out the phone and try to figure out who that was.
And so when it came to a thing like opera, I'm not particularly an opera fan,
but I found that once you start to see these opera composers and performers
as real
people who just happen to live a long time ago,
but they did
interesting things in interesting ways and they worked with writers.
They didn't
necessarily write their own libretti, and those would have been constructed
by people who themselves were great writers.
So again, it's getting these connections of what
what real people were really doing.
You know, the artists and writers and the opera composers
and so on, and long ago were interesting people with real lives.
I'm interested in learning about them.
You know, if I go to a diner, it's over easy every time.
Got to be overeasy.
Why not Sunny side up? I don't know.
I learned how to say over easy when I was like ten,
and it seemed so adult at the time.
So I looked at him.
I went that with eggs, but if I can get eggs Benedict,
that changes the whole equation. That's going to eat eggs.
I do. I do. I like poached.
Eggs.
And the toast. Yeah.
Very nice. And they fried the crispy bits on the.
Yeah.
My answers easy. I would be a dog.
I love dogs. I care about them very deeply.
And I know any dog in my household has the easiest life on earth,
so that would be.
I would become whatever is the primary
predator of the type of dog.
Just for this for this, though.
So it's to say your dog is what?
I don't know. Oh, God.
I just hope that part of it comes in and go, Oh.
The correct answer is obviously. Bird.
Here's the thing about birds. Not Albers, not emus.
Kiwis are awesome. Just know the kind they can fly around.
How cool would that be?
You could fly around and look at stuff
and you wouldn't have to think very hard any bird.
You realize you can fly now too.
In fact, you probably did to come to L.A..
No, I just love that airplane. That's a little bit different.
Yeah, maybe not any bird.
Maybe a proud, bold, soaring, majestic bald eagle.
Do you have a problem with that?
I have no problem with you being a bald eagle. Oh, thank you.
But with thumbs so I could buzz in.
Yeah, And then I would do really well.
Probably on the the bird related categories.
Yeah.
Jeffrey.
I like.
I like that guy.