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People I (Mostly) Admire

4. Ken Jennings: “Don’t Neglect the Thing That Makes You Weird”

People I (Mostly) Admire

Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher

Society & Culture

4.61.9K Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2020

⏱️ 42 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It was only in his late twenties that America’s favorite brainiac began to seriously embrace his love of trivia. Now he holds the “Greatest of All Time” title on Jeopardy! Steve Levitt digs into how he trained for the show, what it means to have a "geographic memory," and why we lie to our children.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Somebody who thinks they have an unremarkable memory or a kid who can't learn their times tables,

0:05.6

they still know every word of every song on their favorite album, and they know every player on the roster of their favorite team.

0:11.8

The memory is working just fine when engaged.

0:14.6

Like the people you see on Jeopardy tonight don't have photographic memories. That's not a real thing.

0:18.4

They're just interested in like 10 times the things you are and so more facts stick.

0:25.0

So everybody knows Ken Jennings the amazing Jeopardy

0:35.3

champion 74 straight wins he won the greatest of all time

0:38.7

tournament but for me that's just the tip of the iceberg.

0:48.0

Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt. I once stumbled on one of his children's books.

0:51.0

He writes books for nerdy 12 year olds. And it was

0:54.3

awesome. It was interesting. And then I found he wrote books for adults. And I

0:58.4

started reading those and I couldn't put them down. Now he's got a

1:01.3

podcast and it's incredibly fascinating and here's a

1:04.2

guy who I thought maybe it'd be one-dimensional when I just knew about Jeopardy.

1:07.5

But the more I learned about Ken Jennings, the more amazed I was at how interesting he was, how smart he was, how

1:16.2

multi-dimensional he was. This is a guy I'd like to get to know, this guy I'd like to be friends

1:20.4

with. All right, so Ken, it's really a pleasure to be here at talking today, Ken Jennings,

1:29.0

the Jeopardy Greatest of all Time, a best-song author, probably America's most beloved brainiac.

1:35.4

I can't imagine that you could have scripted a life that's turned out much better than

1:38.8

the one that you've been able to live.

1:41.6

It's a very unusual niche I have found and I feel incredibly

1:45.2

lucky to have landed in it. As far back as I can remember I was a huge game show

...

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