jeopardy

Ken Jennings wants you to know he didn’t name his trivia game “Kennections.”

“It’s really an unpleasant name,” the “Jeopardy!” champion turned host says of the quizzes now published weekly by Mental Floss. “We have to lead with that. It was suggested by an editor at Parade Magazine, but it doesn’t look good or sound good.”

But Jennings loves the quizzes themselves, which are now collected (kellected?) in “The Complete Kennections.” The Simon & Schuster release, on shelves July 29, follows earlier Jennings books that included more writing. Those include: “Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs,” “Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks,” “Because I Said So!: The Truth Behind the Myths, Tales, and Warnings Every Generation Passes Down to Its Kids” and “100 Places to See After You Die: A Travel Guide to the Afterlife.”

Jennings recently spoke about his books, AI and why trivia matters. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Was writing books always a goal?

I was an English major in college. I wanted to write and to teach, but writing didn’t seem like a practical choice. I was also doing a double major in computer science, and in 2000 it was absurdly easy to get a job at a friend’s startup, even if you were a terrible programmer, which I was.

Writing about geography and myths and fabled places of the afterlife all seem to make sense coming from the brain of a “Jeopardy!” champion.

It’s easy to imagine the same kid in an elementary school library, reading about these things in the World Book encyclopedia during a rainy recess. That’s my origin story. I was just a sponge for weird information. That’s my origin story right there.

I thought of “Jeopardy!” as a fun, crazy summer and did not think it would be my life, so I tried making each book less about “Jeopardy!” and trivia than the one before it.

Is the information in your books trivial, or do you think it’s important to get readers to understand geography and the way our culture passes down myths and tales?

I’m a believer that trivia is not just a bar pastime, or even a way for little Lisa Simpsons to get told they’re smart into adulthood. I always felt trivia was kind of a universal social good, a way to enjoy cultural literacy.

I feel I’m part of the last generation that had to justify having nerdy interests. It was kind of shameful and made you the punchline of jokes in movie comedies and stand-up. Today, it seems self-evident to everyone younger than us that, well, of course you would just be obsessive about lunchboxes or about “Battlestar Galactica” or fossils. That’s totally normalized, and it’s actually good.

But I’ve also been mourning the loss of generalists, people who knew a little bit about everything, which is what “Jeopardy!” celebrates, but it’s not fashionable. We live in a siloed society of specialists. And I really think we’d be better off if everybody knew a little bit about everything.

I do think it’s good to know trivia is not something that makes you better than other people. It doesn’t exist to show off or even to make you feel smarter about yourself. Ideally, it should bring people together and make the world more interesting and make you a more sparkling conversationalist.

“Jeopardy!” and your books strive to make learning facts fun. Is there a lesson there for educators?

I think that’s the beauty of trivia. I wrote a series of books for kids with amazing facts because I liked that kind of book when I was a kid. And you can see it in a classroom, when you see kids’ eyes light up about information and about serious subjects and about knowledge when it’s presented in a fun way, especially with narrative.

Narrative is the secret sauce. It just makes kids think the world is an amazing adventure and you just have to be curious and dig into it. But that gets beaten out of us, and then a lot of us at some point just specialize in one thing. You need to remind people that learning is not a chore. If it’s not fun, you’re doing it wrong. And trivia is very good at that.

Every good “Jeopardy!” clue tells a story in some way, saying, here’s why you should want to know this or here’s what this might have to do with life and the reason why this is not random minutia, which I think is a lot of people’s stereotype of trivia nerds. A trivia question can help you connect it to other things. Trivia is just an art of connections.

That’s certainly true in your “Kennections” book.

I grew up doing crosswords, riddles and rebuses. I’ve always liked trivia that rewards not just the recall of the right fact but has a little more mental clockwork involved so you have to solve some puzzles. You have to analyze the clue and figure out why it exists and what it’s asking or what it’s not asking, what was included, what was omitted. There’s a lot of analysis that can kind of lead you to the right answer by deduction, even if you don’t know the right fact off the top of your head. One half of your brain is just trying to recall these five facts, but you’ve got this other half that’s trying to figure it out and step back and take the big picture. And it might be something outside the box.

The art of it is finding five things that fit in the category but that can have double meanings: Commodore is both a computer and a member of a Lionel Richie combo.

You write that “Kennections” consumes your life — you go into a bagel store and wonder if you can build five questions out of the flavors. Is the problem that in your day-to-day life, you’re constantly seeing things and thinking things this way? Or is the problem that you can’t say this out loud because you’ll make your family crazy?

That’s something I learned early — that being this trivia-loving kid has the potential to be annoying. But my kids know what they’re getting from me at this point. And they both have the gene themselves. One is obsessed with Major League Baseball, and one is obsessed with the history of Disney theme parks, and they have encyclopedic knowledge every bit as awe-inspiring and freakish as I had as a kid. And I’m proud of that.

Do you worry about living in a culture that’s so polarized that facts aren’t even universally received and where AI takes over people’s need to be curious, allowing students to take shortcuts in learning?

I think an oligarch class is going to deliver us a combination of both, where the AI will not only create reliance on it but give us bad, counterfactual information about important issues. And it’s really something I take seriously. It’s really something we need to be pushing back on now.

You don’t want to trust an AI summary of a subject or AI’s take on an issue without understanding who controls that algorithm and why they want you to hear that information.

An unusual alliance of Republican lawmakers and animal rights advocates, together with others, is creating storm clouds for a plan to protect one threatened owl by killing a more common one.

Last August, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved a plan to shoot roughly 450,000 barred owls in California, Oregon and Washington over three decades. The barred owls have been out-competing imperiled northern spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest, as well as California spotted owls, pushing them out of their territory.

Supporters of the approach — including conservation groups and prominent scientists — believe the cull is necessary to avert disastrous consequences for the spotted owls.

But the coalition argues the effort is too expensive, unworkable and inhumane. They’re urging the Trump administration to cancel it and lawmakers could pursue a reversal through special congressional action.

Last month, The Times has found, federal officials canceled three owl-related grants to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife totaling roughly $1.1 million, including one study that would remove barred owls from over 192,000 acres in Mendocino and Sonoma counties.

A female barred owl sits on a branch in the wooded hills, Dec. 13, 2017, outside Philomath, Ore.

(Don Ryan / Associated Press)

Two were nixed before federal funding was allocated and never got off the ground, Peter Tira, a spokesperson for the state wildlife agency, said. Another, a collaboration with University of Maryland biologists to better understand barred owl dispersal patterns in western forests, was nearly complete when terminated.

“Under President Donald J. Trump’s leadership, we are eliminating wasteful programs, cutting unnecessary costs and ensuring every dollar serves a clear purpose,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in a statement when asked whether the grants had been terminated.

Another lever would be for Congress to overturn the owl-kill plan altogether using the Congressional Review Act.

The Government Accountability Office concluded in a late-May decision that the plan is subject to that act, sometimes used by new presidential administrations to reverse rules issued by federal agencies in the final months of prior administrations. Both chambers of Congress would need to pass a joint resolution to undo it.

In the months leading up to the GAO determination, bipartisan groups of U.S. House members wrote two letters to the secretary of the Interior laying out reasons why the owl-cull plan should not move forward. In total, 19 Republicans and 18 Democrats signed the letters, including seven lawmakers from California — David Valadao (R-Hanford), Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles), Gil Cisneros (D-Covina), Josh Harder (D-Tracy), Linda T. Sánchez (D-Whittier), Jim Costa (D-Fresno) and Adam Gray (D-Merced).

Rep. Troy E. Nehls (R-Texas), an ardent Trump supporter, signed the initial letter, and is “currently exploring other options to end this unnecessary plan, which prioritizes one species of owls over another, and wastes Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars,” communications director Emily Matthews said.

Kamlager-Dove said also said earlier this year that she objected to killing one species to preserve another. “And as an animal lover, I cannot support the widespread slaughter of these beautiful creatures,” she said.

If a resolution is introduced, passed and signed by President Trump, the plan will be over. The Fish and Wildlife Service would not be allowed to bring forward a similar rule, unless explicitly authorized by Congress.

Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center, which supports reducing the barred owl population, called the specter of the Congressional Review Act “very scary.”

It’s “an intrusion by Congress into areas where we’re relying on high agency expertise and scientific understanding,” he said. “It’s vibes versus science.”

A California spotted owl is shown inside the Tahoe National Forest in California on July 12, 2004.

(Debra Reid / Associated Press)

Wheeler said he believed it was more likely the program would be deprioritized amid budget cuts than eliminated through the Act.

“If we don’t move forward with barred owl removal, it will mean the extinction of the northern spotted owl, and it will likely mean the extinction of the California spotted owl as well,” he said.

Science is on its side, he said. A long-term field experiment showed that where barred owls were killed, the population of spotted owls stabilized.

For animal welfare activist Wayne Pacelle, who has galvanized opposition to the owl-cull plan, it’s a hopeful turn of events.

“Even if they had full funding for this, we don’t think it could possibly succeed,” said Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy. The land area where the barred owls need to be controlled is just too vast, he said. And barred owls from elsewhere, he said, will simply fly in and replace those that are felled.

As few as 3,000 northern spotted owls are left on federal lands. The brown raptors with white spots are listed as threatened under both the California and federal Endangered Species Act.

California spotted owls are also in decline, and federal wildlife officials have proposed endangered species protections for two populations.

The two sides of the fierce debate agree that barred and spotted owls compete for nesting sites and food — such as woodrats and northern flying squirrels.

Barred owls and spotted owls are similar in appearance and can even interbreed. But barred owls are more aggressive and slightly larger, in addition to being more generalist when it comes to what they’ll eat and where they’ll live, allowing them to muscle out their fellow raptors.

Federal wildlife officials and some conservationists consider barred owls invasive.

As Europeans settled the Great Plains, they suppressed fire and planted trees, allowing barred owls to expand westward from their origin in eastern North America, biologists believe.

“I would call this an invasion, and I would call these non-native species,” Wheeler said.

On the flip side, some see the owl arrival along the West Coast as natural range expansion.

There are also conflicting views of the cost of exterminating so many owls.

Opponents estimate it will cost about $1.35 billion, extrapolated from a $4.5-million contract awarded to a Northern California Native American tribe last year to hunt about 1,500 barred owls over four years.

A 2024 research paper, however, concluded that barred owl removal in the range of the northern spotted owl would cost from $4.5 million to $12 million per year in its initial stages, and would likely decrease over time. At $12 million a year, the 30-year plan would run $360 million.

Pacelle’s Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy have also sued the Fish and Wildlife Service in U.S. District Court in Washington state over the plan. Friends of Animals, another animal welfare group, filed suit in Oregon.

Wheeler’s Environmental Protection Information Center has intervened in the suits in defense of the plan, and those cases continue to advance.

WNBA All-Star weekend is only a few days away, with the anticipation of hometown favorite Caitlin Clark serving as captain of Team Clark for the game in Indianapolis palpable among fans.

Nothing like a pulled muscle to mute the buzz.

The Indiana Fever superstar guard grabbed her right groin and appeared to be holding back tears as she exited with 39.6 seconds to play in a victory against the Connecticut Sun on Tuesday night.

“[Clark] just felt a little something in her groin,” Fever coach Stephanie White told reporters. ”She’s being evaluated, we’ll see where we are with that, and certainly we’ll have another evaluation, probably a conversation in the morning, and see where we are.”

Teammate Aliyah Boston tried to console Clark as she walked to the basket stanchion and tapped her forehead against it before sitting down and covering her head with a towel. She did not speak with reporters after the game.

This is the fourth leg injury of the season for Clark, who is averaging 16.5 points, 8.8 assists and five rebounds a game. She missed five games — including the Commissioner’s Cup Championship — because of a left groin strain and missed five games with an injury to her left quad. She also missed the Fever’s preseason opener May 3 because of tightness in her quad.

Before this season, Clark, 23, had never missed a game in college or the WNBA because of injury. She played all 139 games at Iowa, then 46 games in a row to start her WNBA career.

“It’s been challenging mentally, just, you know, staying in it,” Clark told reporters July 8 before her return from the left groin injury. “I’ve been here for hours and hours on hours trying to get my body right and do everything I can to put myself in a position to be available the rest of the year.”

The Fever plays the New York Liberty on Wednesday at Barclay Center ahead of the All-Star Game, which will be played Saturday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, the Fever’s home arena. Clark is also scheduled to compete in the 3-point contest Friday.

Clark and Napheesa Collier of the Minnesota Lynx were named captains of the All-Star teams and drafted the rosters after getting the most fan votes. Clark finished with a record 1,293,526 fan votes and Collier received 1,176,020.

Getty Images

Funding ‘essential’

Reuters

These long-running shows will no longer air only on TV stations.

What are “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune”?

Beginning this fall, the two shows will expand beyond their broadcast runs to streaming services Peacock and Hulu in the U.S., Sony Pictures Television announced Tuesday.

Fans still will be able to continue their routines by watching new episodes of the programs on their local stations.

But the new licensing agreements with Peacock, owned by NBCUniversal, and Hulu, owned by the Walt Disney Co., mark the first time current-season episodes also will be available on national streaming platforms the day after they debut on broadcast TV.

The move is a recognition by Sony that broadcast TV audiences are aging, and the studio must expand its reach to stay relevant with younger viewers. Until now, the game shows provided a bulwark for TV station operators struggling to hold onto viewers amid the flight to streaming. Stations were able to exclusively offer two of the most popular shows on television at a predictable time, drawing viewers to their evening lineups.

Now that exclusivity is gone.

The deals also will give Peacock and Hulu access to older episodes of the programs, enabling their viewers to binge on the brainteasers.

“We are thrilled to bring America’s favorite game shows to an even wider audience on Hulu, Hulu on Disney+, and Peacock,” Keith Le Goy, chairman of Sony Pictures Television, said in a statement.

Sony owns the shows and produces them on its Culver City lot.

The shift comes as Sony continues to battle CBS over distribution rights to the two shows. In April, a Los Angeles judge ruled that Sony was no longer obligated to provide episodes to CBS, which has delivered batches of episodes to television stations around the country for decades.

After that ruling, the Paramount Global-owned network appealed. A three-judge appellate panel paused the order and last week, the judges ruled that CBS could continue to distribute the shows during the appeals process.

CBS maintains Sony lacks the legal right to unilaterally sever ties.

The dispute burst into view when Sony terminated its distribution deal with CBS last August. It later filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit that claimed CBS entered into unauthorized licensing deals for the shows and then paid itself a commission. Sony also maintained that rounds of budget cuts within CBS had hobbled the network’s efforts to support the shows.

In February, Sony attempted to cut CBS out of the picture, escalating the dispute.

CBS was not involved in the streaming pacts announced Tuesday.

Hulu and Peacock will begin streaming the shows in September with the launch of the 42nd season of “Jeopardy” and the 43rd season of “Wheel of Fortune.”

CBS has notched another small victory in its legal battle with Sony Pictures Television, winning an appellate court ruling that allows the network to continue to distribute “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!” as its court case continues.

Sony owns the shows and produces them on its Culver City lot.

Last month, a Los Angeles judge ruled that Sony was no longer obligated to provide episodes to CBS, which has served for decades as the conduit, delivering batches of episodes to television stations around the country.

After that ruling, the Paramount Global-owned network appealed. A three-judge appellate panel paused the order and asked both sides to submit their arguments.

On Wednesday, the judges wrote that they had reviewed filings from both sides. In a one-page order, the panel granted CBS’ request to keep the stay in place, allowing the network to continue its distribution duties during the appeal .

CBS maintains Sony lacks the legal right to unilaterally severe ties.

Sony terminated its distribution deal with CBS in August and later filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit that claimed CBS entered into unauthorized licensing deals for the shows and then paid itself a commission. Sony also maintained that rounds of budget cuts within CBS had hobbled the network’s efforts to support the two shows.

In February, Sony attempted to cut CBS out of the picture, escalating the dispute.

CBS has said Sony’s claims “are rooted in the fact they simply don’t like the deal the parties agreed to decades ago.”

CBS takes in up to 40% of the fees that TV stations pay to carry the shows. The company took over the distribution of the program when it acquired syndication company King World Productions in 1999.

King World struck deals with the original producer, Merv Griffin Enterprises, in the early 1980s to distribute “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel.” Sony later acquired Griffin’s company, but those early agreements remain in effect.

As viewing of traditional TV has declined due to competition for streaming in recent years, the two daily game shows have continued to thrive and are among the most-watched programs in television.

A Sony representative was not immediately available for comment.