Ken Jennings
Ken Jennings
Kenneth Wayne "Ken" Jennings IIIis an American game show contestant and author. Jennings holds the record for the longest winning streak on the U.S. syndicated game show Jeopardy! and as being the second highest-earning contestant in game show history. In 2004, Jennings won 74 Jeopardy! gamesbefore he was defeated by challenger Nancy Zerg on his 75th appearance. His total earnings on Jeopardy! are $3,196,300, consisting of $2,520,700 over his 74 wins, a $2,000 second-place prize in his 75th appearance, a...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionReality Star
Date of Birth23 May 1974
CityEdmonds, WA
CountryUnited States of America
When you see people who are really good at game shows, the one common attribute is a cool head under pressure: an ability to perform as well in the studio, surrounded by lights and noise, as you do on your couch.
It's so much fun that the money is just icing on the cake. There seems to be a lot of icing.
Even before you understand them, your brain is drawn to maps.
Can You Beat Ken. My experience is that a 15 year old can sometimes know more than his dad. Trivia has an all-age attraction.
Not long after my last win on Jeopardy!, I got a call from the company about this collaboration and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
I once killed a man down south, Alex!
I can't relax and sink back in the couch and watch 'Jeopardy!' the way I used to.
I have always loved maps.
I always feel a certain sense of reverence in libraries, even small city ones that smell like homeless internet users.
You live overseas, you see these exotic places and you want to know about them. But, weirdly, it also made me homesick for all these very prosaic places in America.
Being a nerd really pays off sometimes.
You watch an old 'Jeopardy!' and the categories alone are very plain. 'Poetry,' or 'Movies,' or 'Physics.' If you watch it now, though, there'll be a theme board where the categories are all Hitchcock movies. Lots more jokes, lots more high-concept categories and questions.
There must be something innate about maps, about this one specific way of picturing our world and our relation to it, that charms us, calls to us, won’t let us look anywhere else in the room if there’s a map on the wall.
Sure I have a cell-phone, so I don't have to remember everyone's number anymore, but that really wasn't a core part of my brain.