4. Ken Jennings: “Don’t Neglect the Thing That Makes You Weird”
People I (Mostly) Admire
Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher
4.6 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 3 October 2020
⏱️ 42 minutes
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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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