On the Shelf
The Full Kennections
By Ken JenningsScribner: 480 pages, $21If you purchase books linked on our web site, The Occasions might earn a fee from Bookshop.org, whose charges assist unbiased bookstores.
Ken Jennings needs you to know he didn’t title his trivia recreation “Kennections.”
“It’s really an unpleasant name,” the “Jeopardy!” champion turned host says of the quizzes now printed weekly by Psychological 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.”
However Jennings loves the quizzes themselves, which at the moment are collected (kellected?) in “The Complete Kennections.” The Simon & Schuster launch, on cabinets July 29, follows earlier Jennings books that included extra writing. These embody: “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 lately spoke about his books, AI and why trivia issues. This interview has been edited for size and readability.
Was writing books all the time a aim?
I used to be an English main in faculty. I needed to put in writing and to show, however writing didn’t appear to be a sensible alternative. I used to be additionally doing a double main in pc science, and in 2000 it was absurdly simple to get a job at a pal’s startup, even in the event you had been a horrible programmer, which I used to be.
Writing about geography and myths and fabled locations of the afterlife all appear to make sense coming from the mind of a “Jeopardy!” champion.
It’s simple to think about the identical child in an elementary faculty library, studying about these items within the World E-book encyclopedia throughout a wet recess. That’s my origin story. I used to be only a sponge for bizarre info. That’s my origin story proper there.
I considered “Jeopardy!” as a enjoyable, loopy summer season and didn’t assume it could be my life, so I attempted making every e book much less about “Jeopardy!” and trivia than the one earlier than it.
Is the data in your books trivial, or do you assume it’s essential to get readers to grasp geography and the best way our tradition passes down myths and tales?
I’m a believer that trivia is not only a bar pastime, or perhaps a manner for little Lisa Simpsons to get informed they’re sensible into maturity. I all the time felt trivia was form of a common social good, a option to take pleasure in cultural literacy.
I really feel I’m a part of the final technology that needed to justify having nerdy pursuits. It was form of shameful and made you the punchline of jokes in film comedies and stand-up. Immediately, it appears self-evident to everybody youthful than us that, properly, in fact you’d simply be obsessive about lunchboxes or about “Battlestar Galactica” or fossils. That’s completely normalized, and it’s really good.
However I’ve additionally been mourning the lack of generalists, individuals who knew a little bit bit about every thing, which is what “Jeopardy!” celebrates, nevertheless it’s not modern. We reside in a siloed society of specialists. And I actually assume we’d be higher off if everyone knew a little bit bit about every thing.
I do assume it’s good to know trivia will not be one thing that makes you higher than different individuals. It doesn’t exist to point out off and even to make you are feeling smarter about your self. Ideally, it ought to convey individuals collectively and make the world extra attention-grabbing and make you a extra glowing conversationalist.
“Jeopardy!” and your books attempt to make studying information enjoyable. Is there a lesson there for educators?
I feel that’s the fantastic thing about trivia. I wrote a collection of books for youths with wonderful information as a result of I preferred that form of e book once I was a child. And you may see it in a classroom, whenever you see youngsters’ eyes gentle up about info and about critical topics and about information when it’s introduced in a enjoyable manner, particularly with narrative.
Narrative is the key sauce. It simply makes youngsters assume the world is an incredible journey and also you simply need to be curious and dig into it. However that will get overwhelmed out of us, after which a variety of us sooner or later simply focus on one factor. It’s essential to remind people who studying will not be a chore. If it’s not enjoyable, you’re doing it improper. And trivia is superb at that.
Each good “Jeopardy!” clue tells a narrative ultimately, saying, right here’s why it’s best to wish to know this or right here’s what this may need to do with life and the explanation why this isn’t random minutia, which I feel is lots of people’s stereotype of trivia nerds. A trivia query may help you join it to different issues. Trivia is simply an artwork of connections.
That’s actually true in your “Kennections” e book.
I grew up doing crosswords, riddles and rebuses. I’ve all the time preferred trivia that rewards not simply the recall of the precise reality however has a little bit extra psychological clockwork concerned so you must remedy some puzzles. It’s important to analyze the clue and work out why it exists and what it’s asking or what it’s not asking, what was included, what was omitted. There’s a variety of evaluation that may form of lead you to the precise reply by deduction, even in the event you don’t know the precise reality off the highest of your head. One half of your mind is simply attempting to recall these 5 information, however you’ve received this different half that’s attempting to determine it out and step again and take the large image. And it could be one thing exterior the field.
The artwork of it’s discovering 5 issues that match within the class however that may have double meanings: Commodore is each a pc and a member of a Lionel Richie combo.
You write that “Kennections” consumes your life — you go right into a bagel retailer and surprise in the event you can construct 5 questions out of the flavors. Is the issue that in your day-to-day life, you’re continuously seeing issues and pondering issues this manner? Or is the issue that you could’t say this out loud since you’ll make your loved ones loopy?
That’s one thing I realized early — that being this trivia-loving child has the potential to be annoying. However my youngsters know what they’re getting from me at this level. And so they each have the gene themselves. One is obsessive about Main League Baseball, and one is obsessive about the historical past of Disney theme parks, and so they have encyclopedic information each bit as awe-inspiring and freakish as I had as a child. And I’m pleased with that.
Do you are worried about dwelling in a tradition that’s so polarized that information aren’t even universally obtained and the place AI takes over individuals’s have to be curious, permitting college students to take shortcuts in studying?
I feel an oligarch class goes to ship us a mix of each, the place the AI won’t solely create reliance on it however give us unhealthy, counterfactual details about essential points. And it’s actually one thing I take critically. It’s actually one thing we have to be pushing again on now.
You don’t wish to belief an AI abstract of a topic or AI’s tackle a problem with out understanding who controls that algorithm and why they need you to listen to that info.
