Latest news with #AlexTrebek
New York Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Ken Jennings: Trivia and ‘Jeopardy!' Could Save Our Republic
When I first stepped behind the host lectern on the quiz show 'Jeopardy!,' I was intimidated for two reasons. Most obviously, I had the hopeless task of filling the very large shoes of Alex Trebek, the legendary broadcaster and pitch-perfect host who'd been synonymous with the show since 1984. But I was also keenly aware that the show was one of TV's great institutions, almost a public trust. Since I was 10 years old, I'd watched Alex Trebek carve out a safe space for people to know things, where viewers get a steady diet of 61 accurate (and hopefully even interesting) facts every game. And I wondered: Even if 'Jeopardy!' could survive the loss in 2020 of its peerless host, could it survive the conspiracy theories and fake news of our post-fact era? Facts may seem faintly old-timey in the 21st century, remnants of the rote learning style that went out of fashion in classrooms (and that the internet search made obsolete) decades ago. But societies are built on facts, as we can see more clearly when institutions built on knowledge teeter. Inaccurate facts make for less informed decisions. Less informed decisions make for bad policy. Garbage in, garbage out. I've always hated the fact that 'trivia,' really our only word in English for general-knowledge facts and games, is the same word we use to mean 'things of no importance.' So unfair! Etymologically, the word is linked to the trivium of medieval universities, the three fundamental courses of grammar, rhetoric and logic. And much of today's so-called trivia still deals with subjects that are fundamentally academic. Watch a game of 'Jeopardy!' tonight, or head down to your local pub quiz, and you're sure to be asked about scientific breakthroughs, milestones of history and masterpieces of art. Trivia, maybe — but far from trivial. There might also be questions about pop lyrics and sports statistics, but even those are markers of cultural literacy, the kind of shared knowledge that used to tie society together: the proposition that factual questions could be answered correctly or not, that those answers matter, and that we largely agreed on the authorities and experts who could confirm them. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
CBC
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
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.
Toronto Star
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Toronto Star
An Alaska Mother's Day tradition: Mingling with ice age survivors on a farm
PALMER, Alaska (AP) — It is one of Alaska's favorite Mother's Day traditions, getting up close and personal with animals that have survived the ice age. All moms get a daisy and free admission Sunday at the Musk Ox Farm in Palmer, about an hour's drive north of Anchorage. Once inside they will have the chance to view 75 members of the musk ox herd, including three young calves just getting their feet under them. Also a draw is an old bull named Trebek, named after the late 'Jeopardy!' host Alex Trebek, a benefactor of the facility.
Washington Post
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
An Alaska Mother's Day tradition: Mingling with ice age survivors on a farm
PALMER, Alaska — It is one of Alaska's favorite Mother's Day traditions, getting up close and personal with animals that have survived the ice age. All moms get a daisy and free admission Sunday at the Musk Ox Farm in Palmer, about an hour's drive north of Anchorage. Once inside they will have the chance to view 75 members of the musk ox herd, including three young calves just getting their feet under them. Also a draw is an old bull named Trebek, named after the late 'Jeopardy!' host Alex Trebek, a benefactor of the facility.
The Independent
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
An Alaska Mother's Day tradition: Mingling with ice age survivors on a farm
It is one of Alaska's favorite Mother's Day traditions, getting up close and personal with animals that have survived the ice age. All moms get a daisy and free admission Sunday at the Musk Ox Farm in Palmer, about an hour's drive north of Anchorage. Once inside they will have the chance to view 75 members of the musk ox herd, including three young calves just getting their feet under them. Also a draw is an old bull named Trebek, named after the late 'Jeopardy!' host Alex Trebek, a benefactor of the facility. 'Who doesn't want to celebrate Mother's Day with a musk ox mom and the most adorable calf you're ever going to find in your life?' said Mark Austin, the farm's executive director. Mother's Day is the traditional start of the summer season for the farm, which traces its roots back to 1964 and at several locations before moving in 1986 to Palmer. That move put it on Alaska's limited road system, provided easier access to grazing land than in tundra communities and it to incorporate educational opportunities at the farm facility, which is dwarfed by the the Talkeetna and Chugach mountain ranges. 'When we opened the doors here, we started doing Mother's Day as a grand opening every year,' Austin said. He called it a natural decision, celebrating mothers with cute, newborn baby musk oxen on the grounds. So far this year, three baby musk oxen have been born and are on display, and more could be on the way. Mother's Day is the busiest day of the year, attracting more than 1,500 visitors. It is a tradition that now stretches over three generations. 'It's a huge, just kind of rite of passage for a lot of people,' Austin said. 'If we ever talked about not doing it, there'd be a riot.' Musk oxen are ice age survivors. 'They were running around with saber-toothed tigers and mastodons, and they're the ones that lived,' Austin said. The herd members all have diverse personalities, he added, and they are crafty, smart and inquisitive. Their closest relatives to animals of today would be Arctic goats. Mature musk ox bulls can stand 5 feet (about 1.5 meters) tall and weigh as much as 800 pounds (about 360 kilograms), while female cows are smaller at about 4 feet (about 1.2 meters) and up to 500 pounds (about 230 kilograms), according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's website. They are stocky, long-haired animals with a slight hump in their shoulder, a short tail and horns, the website says. The Inupiat call musk ox 'itomingmak,' which means 'the animal with skin like a beard,' for its long hair hanging nearly to the ground. The mammals once roamed across northern Europe, Asia, Greenland and North America before they began to die off. By the 1920s the last remaining ones were in Greenland and Canada. Efforts to reintroduce the musk ox to Alaska started in 1934, when 34 were delivered to Fairbanks from Greenland. Since then, the wild population has grown to about 5,000, located throughout the nation's largest state, Austin said. The nonprofit farm welcomes donations from visitors on Sunday. Some people will make a beeline for the baby musk oxen, while others will throw a $100 bill on the counter first. 'We do like to see the donation, but we truly offer this as an event to the community, as a thank you,' Austin said. 'It really gives us a chance to give something back.'
