This UBC grad won Jeopardy! on Tuesday night. Who is Brendan Liaw?
Brendan Liaw has been preparing to be on Jeopardy! since he was about eight years old.
"I think pretty early on I realized like oh OK, I know quite a few of these things," the Metro Vancouver resident told CBC's The Early Edition host Stephen Quinn. "It kind of just ballooned into a dream. I did Reach For The Top in high school, which Alex Trebek hosted briefly, so that also helped."
Now, the University of B.C. graduate and self-proclaimed "stay-at-home son" has finally watched his dream come true.
Liaw spoke with CBC after his first episode of Jeopardy! aired on television.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You won your episode last night. Congratulations. How are you feeling?
To be totally honest, it still feels kind of not real. My dad was in the audience and a couple of friends, and the past two months I've just been texting them every couple of weeks being like, "Hey, I did that right?" Like I didn't just hallucinate being on stage and I'm not gonna watch the episode yesterday and see three strangers and not me.
That's weird. I could see having kind of an out-of-body experience while that was going on.
Oh yeah, watching it yesterday, I was like, oh wow, I do not remember most of what happened.
How did you prepare?
I would say it's pretty much been like a lifelong thing of, you know, paying attention to the news and things that you read and paying attention in classes. But when I got the call, I obviously went into study mode with lots of flash cards and practising on the buzzer. So just trying to get those things up to standard for the show.
Jeopardy! is such a variety of topics and so many questions. How did you decide on categories? Did you go back and look at all shows to see did categories reoccur?
Yes. So there's a wonderful archive of pretty much every game that's been played. I have episodes banked, I had a log of shows on my PVR. So I did watch a lot of Jeopardy! in the four weeks before going on the show.
You've been preparing for how long?
You get the call like four weeks out before actually taping. But again, like, I feel like it's like a lifelong thing for most people that you're sort of always learning and really trying to, you know, increase your knowledge of the world.
How hard is it to perform on stage when you're competing against these other super smart people and you're there behind the podium and the questions start getting fired at you?
You don't really have time to even be nervous. You just have to go out and play. You don't find out when you're playing until like five minutes before. They don't draw names until five minutes before you're going up on stage. It is hard. I don't know if you watched yesterday's game but it was a bit of a nail biter. It wasn't looking good for me at the half but I was lucky with the categories in the second round and managed to rebound and get the win.
What were the categories in the second round that saved you?
U.S. history was one of them, which I think I did OK in. There was a movie category. Plays and playwrights was another.
Were you thinking here I am, Canadian, and I'm gonna answer all these questions about U.S. history?
Yeah, but I mean, I did OK. I got three of them.
The episode, of course, was taped earlier this year, and you've had to keep all of this a secret until now.
Yes, hence the feeling that this is surreal because you can't say anything about it and only, I don't know, 20 other people know that you did it for like two months and you're like, uh, was this just a prank?
So you won Tuesday night, which means you're going to be on Wednesday night's episode. And none of us know, of course, what happened there, and you're not going to reveal that obviously. You're probably under some contractual obligation that's signed in your own blood.
Yes, in my own blood. Yeah, if I tell you, I think Sony gets my soul.
What has this whole experience done for you?
I guess still an appreciation for learning, but also a recognition that this is kind of a crazy thing to do. I'm pretty proud of myself for even just getting on this stage because I think a lot of people try and don't make it. I guess a new found sense of confidence, I guess, in myself, which is nice.
Is general knowledge underrated? Because we all have Google now and if you need to know anything you can. But it's very different in your case just to be able to pull things out of your brain.
I do think it's very underrated. I think it's a muscle that is underutilized these days. And I think it, it's underrated in value. I think people don't realize that knowing things off of your head is maybe actually kind of good for you instead of just pulling out your phone.
It's also kind of fun. It's fun to be able to be like, yeah, I know that thing, like I know the capital of, I don't know, Venezuela, or something like that. Even if it's not particularly useful, it might be one day.
You might end up on Jeopardy!
Exactly. And finally, all that book learning is useful.
You've graduated from UBC. Where are you heading now?
I actually applied to law school for this fall. I'm actually waiting on UBC to get back to me. I've been rejected from every other school I applied to. So it's just UBC now. Yeah. I mean, pending the results of my time on Jeopardy!, that's probably the plan if I get in — some more book learning.
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