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Episode 243: Claire McNear of The Ringer Talks All Things Writing, Jeopardy!, and the Late Great Alex Trebek
129 Plays4 years ago
Claire McNear is a staff writer for The Ringer and the author of Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider's Guide to Jeopardy! (Twelve, 2020).
We jam about her rise in longform journalism and how she came to write this great book.
Social media: @CNFPod
Patreon: patreon.com/cnfpod
Show notes and newsletter: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
This is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Let's meet our guest.
Meet Claire McNear and Her Writing Journey
00:00:08
Speaker
Claire McNear is a staff writer for The Ringer, and the author of Answers in the Form of Questions, A Definitive History, an insider's guide to Jeopardy! with a forward by Ken Jennings. It is published by 12.
00:00:23
Speaker
She's our returning champion for episode 243 with the total winnings of nothing. Alright, let's play.
Claire's Writing Process and Challenges
00:00:37
Speaker
I wish I could say that the first two hours of my workday were really productive and really just me carefully outlining what I was going to do in that day, but that is so not the case for me. I am so a night writer. So I would say my typical day of writing is I wake up, particularly when I was working on the book and I was not tied to deadlines that were not related to the book, I would wake up
00:01:03
Speaker
relatively early and then just spend the bulk of the day agonizing over how I needed to start working on things and not really doing it. And usually around like 4 p.m. I'm like, oh god, oh god, I've really got to do this. And then somewhere in there, I just start writing.
00:01:24
Speaker
I find that my most productive hours for writing are usually between like 10pm and 2am, which is really not a healthy way to do things. So I don't recommend this process at all. But I will say that one of the great things about working on the book, and this is my first book, is I
00:01:46
Speaker
I'm not usually a person who outlines my stories, even when they're longer feature stories. It's universal that it is helpful and good to outline your work, especially longer things. And I just never really do it. And with the book, I had to.
00:02:05
Speaker
And so it was really nice to kind of have that roadmap of what needed to go where and then just sort of getting the interviews that I knew I needed to get because I had already written them down and they were going to go in this chapter or that chapter and sort of following that. So like at 1.30 in the morning where I'm like, oh my God, what am I doing? I at least had kind of instructions for myself from like six months ago.
Podcast Housekeeping and Promotions
00:02:35
Speaker
You can see what I did there, like an episode of Jeopardy. We went right into the thing and then came out to do some more housekeeping stuff.
00:02:45
Speaker
I'm sorry I'm this way. Hey, welcome. This is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, and I'm Brendan O'Mara. Hey, hey, we'll get back into the fray with Claire McNear in a moment. Be sure you're following the show across any and all podcast platforms and keep the conversation going on social media at CNF Pod Across the Big Three. You know what this show is about. It's the show where we talk to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories.
00:03:13
Speaker
And here we are, doing a little bit of that housekeeping. You gotta bear with me. This intro might be a little bit longer than what I've been doing the last several dozen episodes. There'll be a parting shot, of course, which I admit I've just written. I haven't recorded it yet, but I'm really fired up about it. It's gonna come across as very fired up.
00:03:34
Speaker
That's a weird ass preview of the outro in the intro. It's all kinds of messed up right now. But what I really want to get at is the deadline for summer essays is fast approaching for issue two of the audio magazine. March 21st is the deadline for issue two.
00:03:54
Speaker
Go to BrendanOmero.com to find the submission guidelines atop the homepage. You know, while you're there, just sign up for the newsletter too. Once a month, no spam, can't beat it. I'm a newsletter junkie. You know what, I really dig mine. I'm not afraid to say it.
00:04:12
Speaker
while we're on the topic of cool things. This episode is brought to you by Casualty of Words, a writing podcast for people in a hurry. That's you. It's brought to you by Exit 3 Media, the same company that produces this podcast. Every show is under three minutes long. It gives you a little shot in the arm. One listener calls it a little gummy vitamin.
00:04:37
Speaker
of a little inspiration. It's a little something that you can listen to when you're brushing your teeth, give you a little shot in the arm. Casualty of words, wherever you get your podcasts. It's funny how certain things hit you at a certain time. I picked the summer theme for the audio magazine a long time ago.
Summer Inspiration and Writing
00:04:57
Speaker
Randomly, I started reading The Body, a novella by Stephen King, just to get away from some non-fiction.
00:05:08
Speaker
I know, for a bit. And I came across this passage just the other night. Different strokes for different folks, they say now. And that's cool. So if I say summer to you, you get one set of private personal images that are all the way different from mine. That's cool. But for me, summer is always
00:05:32
Speaker
Going to mean running down the road to the Florida market with change jingling in my pockets the temperature in the gay 90s my feet dressed in kids the word conjures an image of the GS and WM Railroad tracks running into perspective point in the distance Burnished so white under the Sun that when you closed your eyes you could still see them there in the dark only blue instead of white
00:06:02
Speaker
But there was more to that summer than our trip across the river to look for Ray Brower, although that loom's the largest. And he goes on.
00:06:13
Speaker
Stephen King the master and he's summoning the very essence of summer. I mean that's what I'm looking for man. I know you've got summer essay cooking. I know there's something in there because we come of age during summer. You leave the school year one person and you arrive at school in the fall someone else entirely.
00:06:33
Speaker
And especially during those really sort of budding developmental years, you can very well have a growth spurt one way or the other, up or out. And you can be a totally different person and you come back in September and you're bronzed from summer. You might have a whole new set of skills, a whole new set of confidence and a whole new aesthetic. And it all happens during summer.
00:06:59
Speaker
Hope you'll tap that vein and get into something. It's a summer is a special time. I hope you'll stretch yourself This will be something special. I'm telling you email me with your submissions creative nonfiction podcast at gmail.com Subject line make sure it's summer there so I just can see it right off the bat and file it away I can't wait to read what you've made time is of the essence clock as they say is ticking
00:07:28
Speaker
If you want to listen to the audio magazine, and isn't that the point? You're going to have to become a member. That CNF Pod Patreon page.
Supporting the Podcast
00:07:36
Speaker
Issue one is free for all, but going forward, you know, this, like I say, it's cheap, but it ain't free. Or it's free, but it's not cheap. One of those. For less than a dollar a week, you'll help make the production of the show possible and the immense work that goes into making the audio magazine.
00:07:55
Speaker
You'll get transcripts and other goodies that I only post to the Patreon page. So it's not just like I'm drawing money out of you for my own personal gain. You're getting a lot of stuff in return. At least I hope you think it's a lot of stuff. I know it is. There's a lot of value there. There are other tiers as well, but that entry level tier gets you transcripts and other random junk and it goes up from there. Patreon.com slash CNF Pod. Shop around.
Night Writing and Social Media Management
00:08:23
Speaker
All right, so Claire McNear is a staff writer for the Ringa and the author of Answers in the Form of Questions, a deep dive into the subculture of Jeopardy. She had access to all the main players, tournament winners, producers, and of course the late Alex Trebek. So let's get right back into the show. Here is my conversation with Claire McNear.
00:09:00
Speaker
What's really great about writing that late at night is that almost everybody else, of course, is asleep. And so not only do you have like a little there's not that much distraction going on, let's just say Internet or social media wise, even if you wanted to say like,
00:09:19
Speaker
have a follow-up phone call or something. It's like, you can't do it. So really, you're trapped with the work. And it's like, okay, well, I can't call this person. I can't contact these people until the next day. So I might as well just bury my head and get the writing done for the night.
00:09:36
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, even, even like follow up emails, like you don't want to look like you're, you've fully lost it. Even if you have like sending emails at like four 45 in the morning, it's like, okay, I'll just write this draft. I'll send it to fire morning and I'll seem like I'm a normal person who does work during normal hours. So yeah, it is, it is definitely kind of a sensory deprivation thing where, you know, it's just me and my unconscious cat in the middle of the night and working till I get too tired.
00:10:04
Speaker
Okay, so we've established that you're a Knight Rider. Not that I've spoken to him, but I think Walter Isaacson is like that to the biographer. He's definitely a big time Knight Rider. But how do you balance other things?
00:10:23
Speaker
your how you sort of juggle social media with, you know, trying to develop stories while you're also, you know, working on current stuff. So you know, how are the there's always a lot of balls in the air. So how do you manage that?
00:10:37
Speaker
Obviously, the goal is to be reporting out the story two or three stories from now, right? While you're working on one big story. I don't think in practice that that is always what happens. And one of the great things about what I do at the Ringer is
00:10:53
Speaker
I not only get to cover a whole range of subjects or sports and culture and just you know everything in between um but it's also I get to write a lot of longer features that have a lot of reporting but also the occasional silly kind of short blog where I can just sort of hammer it out without agonizing over it for weeks and weeks um so you know it's for for the
00:11:16
Speaker
Jeopardy! book in particular, a lot of those people were kind of harder to get. And so there was a lot of, you know, getting somebody like Weird Al or Michael McKeon took, you know, weeks and weeks of kind of going after their publicist and
00:11:32
Speaker
nudging a publicist or, you know, whatever it was. So those things do take a really long time, particularly when it's a celebrity. So, you know, just kind of giving yourself that runway. I find, I mean, I'm getting back to being a night rider and kind of procrastinating throughout the day. I am a person who procrastinates. And with that sort of reporting, like you just don't really have that option. So it sort of forces me into better patterns than I might actually have.
00:12:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny how many writers and even journalists who are in a deadline industry are like pathological procrastinators. It's incredible. So why do you think you're drawn to this particular form of nonfiction writing with those deadlines cracking down on you when you have a propensity for procrastination?
00:12:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think for me, the times that I write best, the times that I'm able to write a lot of the time are the times that I've got like a fire under me. And that is what happens with a deadline. That is what happens when it's 10 p.m. and you've written like 150 words that day. It's a way of, at least for me, somebody who to my own detriment often kind of drags my feet on projects, even when I'm really excited about them.
00:12:53
Speaker
Um, having that like, okay, now it's time to go. You don't have an option. Now we run. Um, has always been helpful for me. What is the nature or the form your procrastination takes?
00:13:08
Speaker
I think it probably is a lot of social media. It's not interesting. I would love to say that I had some fascinating hobby that I was honing in my spare time, but that's not really it. Like I was saying, the great thing with the book was that it just wasn't
00:13:25
Speaker
I was not able to sort of slide into playing solitaire on my computer for six hours or whatever it might be because you have these deadlines and you have to have a manuscript by this date or if it's a feature on the site, you just have to have a draft at a certain time. And I think I'm probably drawn to these scenarios where there isn't that much flexibility.
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah, and given the scope of writing a book, and even if you had a deadline of, I don't know what exactly it was, let's just say it's a year, and you're trying to write 80,000 words or whatever that is, it can seem like, OK, that's far enough away. 80,000 words, it's kind of doable, but I can put some things off. But ultimately, sometimes you start feeling the crunch. So how did you, knowing that you
00:14:20
Speaker
had to hit that deadline. How did you start structuring your research and your reporting days so you were hitting certain benchmarks so you would make the book deadline?
Adapting to Changes and Deadlines
00:14:30
Speaker
Yeah. Well, to give you a little bit of background on the specific timeline for me, it was I had to hand in the first draft of my manuscript in March of this year. And the plan was my manuscript had to be into my editor first draft on March 15th.
00:14:50
Speaker
And then I was going to get married on March 28th in New Orleans. And then instead, the coronavirus pandemic happened. And March 15th ended up being the day that we canceled the wedding. And the great thing about that was that I got another couple of weeks to work on the manuscript. So, you know, it's
00:15:13
Speaker
With the far off deadlines, I think it is hard and I so admire people who are like, I write 2,500 words every single day or 800 words every single day who have that kind of benchmark that keeps kind of going steadily through long periods of time. I am not that person. I will have, you know, in a given week where I have to hand in 8,000 words at the end of it.
00:15:36
Speaker
I will write less than 200 words, five days of that week, and then the entire rest of it on those other two days. Usually what it is for me is I will write a complete draft of something and then spend the full next day absolutely ripping it apart, reassembling everything, totally changing the structure, totally changing the order of everything.
00:15:58
Speaker
cutting half of what I wrote, which is probably not the most productive use of time, but that has always just been the way that my brain works on these things. For you, when you're in that fever dream of writing and then the rewriting, what do you notice in your own work that is a weakness that you're like, okay, this is a wrinkle that I routinely have to iron over?
Claire's Storytelling and Career Journey
00:16:22
Speaker
I often, I so admire
00:16:27
Speaker
like actual kind of beat writers. Like I don't really have a defined beat at the ringer, which is great, but I often have time, I have a hard time, you know, just kind of moving through the action of just sort of like the formulaic story, not to say that a story like that is formulaic, but just sort of like, okay, now you've got,
00:16:47
Speaker
your quote about this, then you need to have your nut graph and then you move into this thing and you need to have like the problem explained really early. And I think that I do, I often have to catch myself on like when I'm trying to get through like a revision of it and I'm like, oh my God, none of this works. Usually it is because I have decided to kind of go down these rabbit holes of the stuff that is not kind of procedural in the story. So often that
00:17:12
Speaker
reworking of something is me kind of being like, well, you know, here are the quotes that I have. Here's the actual story of it. And like, what is the actual way a reader would come to this? Like, what are the questions they would have instead of just thinking about it as a group of words, right? So I think that is something that I have tried to get better at as time has gone on. And
00:17:35
Speaker
One of the readers of my manuscript was my fiancée, who I mentioned to you a little bit earlier, is also a journalist. He does a very different kind of journalism than I do. He's a White House correspondent, and he writes obviously a lot of kind of action-based stories, and he writes very quickly, he writes very well, but it is very different than these kind of
00:17:55
Speaker
Silly four thousand word meanderings down down a weird path that I found that I tend to write He generally we generally do not read each other's work is how I would say it It was sort of like a leap a leap of faith. Um, I mean pre publication, of course
00:18:10
Speaker
Um, it was sort of a leap of faith to hand over my draft to him because I was just sort of agonizing over it and, you know, like, Oh, I don't know. You know, it just, it felt very, very personal and very personally professional and all of that. And, and he was able to kind of combine what he does really well in his work. Um, and sort of be like, no, I don't think you need this kind of weird parenthetical. I love weird parenthetical. It's like, I'm not sure that that adds anything here or, you know, you just sort of went through the whole thing and applied that sensibility to it. And, and that.
00:18:40
Speaker
was really helpful to me and I mean it felt like this incredible leap of faith even like in our relationship because of course when you write a book it is so personal like that is your baby and it was sort of like a lovely moment in our relationship I think I was like oh you got it like you're right you made this way way better
00:19:03
Speaker
If you can survive the trials of giving your significant others a draft of your book. But I've just been like locked in a room with for the better part of a year. So let's back up a little bit. How did you get the sort of the writing bug and the journalism bug?
00:19:24
Speaker
Um, you know, I think I had always loved writing. I had always, you know, been a big reader. Um, I, uh, my fiance and I actually met because we worked on our college newspaper together at the University of Chicago. But when I was in college, I, I remember thinking to myself that there was just.
00:19:44
Speaker
There was no career there that there were. I mean, this was right in the depths of the financial crisis in like 2008, 2009. And of course, like journalism was going through some really painful times as it still is today. But I'm not sure that I was wrong about there not being any jobs. But yeah, I didn't really pursue it. It was not something that I chased. I didn't think it was feasible. So I didn't really look at that. And I was just like, you know, writing is a hobby of mine, but it is not going to be my job.
00:20:13
Speaker
And I moved to New York after college and I worked for a startup doing kind of sales adjacent stuff, which I was horrible at, just the worst at. And ended up going to grad school for international public policy, which was something I'd kind of thought I wanted to do when I was an undergrad. And then when I was there, I began editing the student journal again, sort of the bug bit me again. And I,
00:20:40
Speaker
just fell back in love with it. As soon as I started just working with writers again and writing myself again, it was just like there's nothing else that I want to do. For me, it's always sort of a puzzle and I just get so much joy out of figuring out how to solve the puzzle of a given piece.
00:21:01
Speaker
I moved back home, moved back with my parents after grad school, and just started submitting freelance pitches. And I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but I had some editors take a chance on me. Glenn Stout, who we were talking about before, was kind of the first person to respond to my
00:21:21
Speaker
terrible pitch for a story that I thought up and kind of worked with me on honing that and that eventually led to a sports writing staff job at Espination and then that led to the ringer. I've gotten to obviously expand beyond sports which has been great though I consider Jeopardy to be very much a sport but yeah so that's that was a very long answer but
00:21:43
Speaker
Oh, it's a great answer. What was that pitch that Glenn saw? You said it's a horrible pitch, but he saw something in it. So what was it? Yeah. So I moved back in with my parents in the San Francisco Bay Area, and this was in 2014, the fall of 2014.
00:22:04
Speaker
I was going to say that was the year the Raiders were terrible, but it was one of the many years that the Raiders were terrible. And I had this kind of idea to do this experiential story where like I had never spent any time around the NFL and nobody in my family really cared about football. We didn't watch it. It just like was not a part of my life. Like I didn't even really know like the rules of football, much less, you know, the famous figures and what's important, what's not, and why the Raiders are laughing stock of the league or
00:22:34
Speaker
you know, what have you. And so the story as I pitched it and as it ended up actually happening was just kind of tracing me going to a series of games and just like asking stupid questions and trying to like learn about this football team from scratch, but like having decided to be a diehard fan of it.
00:22:55
Speaker
Finding, of course, in spite of the reputation of Raiders fans for being these very tough, burly people and scary people with scary face paint and spikes and chains, they were really lovely and very welcoming. And so Glenn actually, he was like, I don't know that I can promise that we will be able to run this, but I will work with you on it. And he very graciously kind of
00:23:16
Speaker
you know, ran me through edit after edit after edit and kicked my butt and was extremely helpful. And I mean, we should all be so lucky to have, you know, an editor that good who is willing to take that much time. And in the end, it ended up
00:23:32
Speaker
running at the cauldron, which no longer exists. And I think I got paid, I want to say $250 for 5,000 words that I'd spent like three months working on. Very much like a, you know, freelancing experience. But that led to a thing that led to another thing that led to another thing. And, you know, it was really just kind of getting that first clip where it had some reporting, not good reporting. I don't think it's how I would do that story now, but
00:23:59
Speaker
Glenn really encouraged me to kind of work my voice into it and sort of embrace that. So it was kind of a funny way to stumble into things, but I ran into some people who were willing to be patient with me. Regarding reporting, what would you identify might be a shortcoming that you've identified in yourself as a reporter that you've had to strengthen over the years?
00:24:25
Speaker
Oh, there are a lot of shortcomings. I'm like the worst reporter. I think it it's for me, covering a lot of because I don't have a defined beat, I cover a pretty wide range of things. And as a result of that, I love it. And it is great and very freeing and very fun and exciting. And every story is kind of a new challenge. But it means that I
00:24:55
Speaker
There are often times where I don't have much knowledge about the subject or, you know, kind of the expert level knowledge that you hope a writer would bring to a story. And I think that I have often felt
00:25:09
Speaker
very aware of that and very embarrassed by that. And as a result in my reporting, kind of afraid to ask questions that might come across as stupid questions, often are stupid questions and being afraid to reach out to somebody because they're going to figure out that you don't really know what you're talking about or that kind of thing. And I think the Jeopardy book in a way was actually really informative for me as a reporter because
00:25:36
Speaker
All I did was ask stupid questions. Basically, I sat around the Jeopardy set and just asked dumb questions all day. I called up contestants and just asked dumb questions. And people, generally speaking, I'm sure this is not always the case, but generally speaking, people really are excited to tell you about the thing that they love, that they care about, that they do.
00:25:57
Speaker
And they're not really interested in your particular bona fides. Like as a reporter, you are, of course, supposed to be the least interesting part of it. And often you are. And usually you are. And just sort of dropping that kind of social anxiety of not
00:26:17
Speaker
It's sort of imposter syndrome, and I think that's definitely part of it, but just being willing to just sort of go out there and get what you get and ask whatever comes to you first, because those are often the really revealing moments.
00:26:30
Speaker
You saying like the social anxiety of it. That rings so true for me. I have such a hard time with especially cold calling and trying to pitch myself to get the access that I need to get to get to a story. And I was talking to Louisa Thomas about this a while ago. She's a New Yorker writer.
00:26:51
Speaker
and covers a lot of sports. And it was a Grantland editor, too. So there is sort of a connection there with you guys in a way. But she's just like she hates the phone. She hates having to pick it up. And yeah, and so I feel that way, too, that social anxiety element of like, oh, fuck, I got to I got to call this this this person and try to lobby them in like 20 seconds to talk to me. It just gives me it gives me heart problems.
00:27:17
Speaker
Absolutely. I think I've gotten to where I'm pretty much willing to spam anyone via email, but when it comes to actually having to cold call somebody, my palms are sweating just thinking about it right now.
00:27:32
Speaker
It's so great to hear you say that, and I know that I think even the brilliant investigative reporter Pamela Koloff feels similar. I think I saw a few years ago, she was just tweeting about it, and she actually, I believe, types out a script on her computer. If she's on the phone, she'll just read off of that, just to not sound like a bumbling person. Yeah. Oh, I do that. Absolutely.
00:27:59
Speaker
With marbles in their mouth. I do that too a little bit. I'm like, it's just a great way. And then once the skids feel greased, then it feels easier. But yet when you're in the 10 to 15 seconds where you really need to sell yourself, you need to be as smooth as possible. Yeah. Yeah. So it sounds like you've been there before, right? It's the classic thing. But I think that's so true with reporting. And I think so much of it is
00:28:27
Speaker
Obviously it depends on the kind of story you're working on. And a lot of what I do is, is interviewing people who haven't interacted much with journalists maybe at all. But for, for the, for the people who have, um, you know, whether that's like a professional athlete or, or a coach or, or like a TV producer or something, just sort of knowing that, that, okay, no, like as nervous as I am about this, this is a part of their job. Like they know how this goes. And that for me is kind of a way of, you know, breathing into a bag before I have to make the phone call.
00:28:57
Speaker
Nice.
Creative Freedom and Pitching at The Ringer
00:28:58
Speaker
So you get to SB Nation and what are you, what's the kind of work you're doing with SB Nation? Yeah. So it was an interesting job. I should preface this with I, oh my God, I loved my job at SB Nation so much. I had the best coworkers. It was just the most, like I would laugh every day at work and like who can say that ever about their job. It was just so fun. And I am of course,
00:29:27
Speaker
heartbroken about what has happened to Espination over the last few years with most of those people that I worked with are no longer there. Some of them have left journalism altogether, which is just heartbreaking.
00:29:40
Speaker
I was hired to do basically a social producer job. It was not a staff running job. And so that meant that I was like literally, you know, tag teaming with another social producer to put out the, you know, at SB Nation, Facebook posts and Twitter posts on a given day. And then the part of that that I kind of sold myself on because I was not super interested in the social media side, I'm not good at social media at all.
00:30:08
Speaker
This is not my forte, was that we also did kind of the really quick responsive blogging. And usually those posts were, you know, 400 words around or just about like, oh my God, what a crazy catch or whatever it was. But it for me, or, you know, like aggregating like, oh my God, this athlete just sent this to ESPN or whatever it was.
00:30:34
Speaker
But I had editors and supervisors who were really willing to let you kind of be as voicey as you wanted. So for me, it was this really fun lab where I got to just sort of throw whatever at the wall and I got to do it like 10 times a day and, you know, sometimes go a little bit longer. But at the same time, I was still
00:30:56
Speaker
kind of very early in this freelancing process. So I did have some sort of longer reported things going on at the same time. And again, getting back to the fantastic people that I worked with, like they knew that and I ended up actually having an Esme Nation long form story published with Glenn Stout working on it. And so they were kind of aware that that was more what I wanted to do and let me lean more and more into that. But when I was first hired at the ringer, which was when the ringer launched,
00:31:26
Speaker
back in 2016, I was hired to do
00:31:31
Speaker
kind of like that reactive blogger job again. I forget exactly what my title was when they hired me, but it was like a news desk kind of thing where I had to like do two kind of takey medium length pieces every single day on whatever was going on. And I knew when I took that job that that wasn't really what I wanted to do long-term and that, you know, even strictly sports was not really what I wanted to do long-term.
00:31:59
Speaker
It was a great way to get in the door and also like they, as a destination, I had wonderful editors, have wonderful editors who let me kind of experiment more and more and move towards what I do now. So how did you get to the point where you were getting the opportunity to write the kind of pieces and do the kind of reporting that you really wanted to do? It's tricky. I think
00:32:26
Speaker
And again, a great thing about the ringer, and I talked about this a little bit before, is that the ringer kind of covers so much stuff and in so many different forms that there's always sort of an open invitation to make a good pitch. And it can be about something totally out of left field and it can be
00:32:48
Speaker
You know, it can be like a long-form feature or or it can be kind of a shorter vloggy thing or it can be a podcast or you know a video thing like there's just so much going on at the ringer and I have so many wonderful creative colleagues who focus on different parts of that. So I was able to They very early on were were willing to let me
00:33:08
Speaker
experiment with longer pieces there was not I'm so grateful still that there was not this kind of like no I mean you are you are a news desk person so that is what you do that's the end of it when you know when we had like I like I did a pretty early on I did um
00:33:25
Speaker
We did like a Cleveland week, I think cause like the RNC was in Cleveland that year, I believe. And, and I pitched, I don't even know how I landed. I honestly think I might've just been on like Cleveland's Wikipedia page looking for the weirdest thing I could find. And I found that American greetings was based in Cleveland and that like.
00:33:42
Speaker
The Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake had been created in Cleveland and just pitched something on that and tracked down the original creator of Strawberry Shortcake and talked to some people at American Greetings and did this kind of reported feature on that. And so they were really willing to let me experiment. And then obviously, if a piece is not a complete disaster, which I'm sure some of them were, but maybe not quite all of them, they let you do more and more.
00:34:11
Speaker
With Jeopardy, for example, that was just something that my fiance and I watched together. And the show is interesting because in spite of being this kind of stalwart quiz show, there are these pretty frequent moments of like viral something, you know, whether it's a contestant who goes on a crazy streak or there's, you know, a funny moment where none of the contestants knew the answers to a sports category or what have you.
00:34:35
Speaker
And so there were these kind of windows for me to be like, hey, like I've kind of gotten really into Jeopardy lately. Like, I know this thing is going on. I can write something for us. And then that would sort of catch on there. Weirdly, there was like this vast audience for Jeopardy that I did not foresee at all. But every time I wrote about the show, it would really, really take off. And fortunately,
00:34:56
Speaker
my bosses do not really care. I mean, I'm sure they care about traffic, but it is never a thing that I have been made aware of. But, you know, like, you know, when something has really taken off on social media and that would just happen again and again and again with Jeopardy. So it was really easy to kind of keep pitching stories about the show.
00:35:16
Speaker
as you're making these pitches and you can tether it to Jeopardy, what are the boxes that you're looking to check off that make for a good pitch? And what do you think those boxes are? They have to be congruent with the editors. So what boxes do you know have to be checked off for them to be like, oh yes, Claire, run with that? They let me write about really weird stuff. So I think they give me a really long,
00:35:45
Speaker
leash, which I am so grateful for. But I think it's finding a balance of finding a way of explaining a niche in a way that a larger audience might also be interested. So
00:35:59
Speaker
A thing I have tried to do with Jeopardy! specifically is as I've kind of gotten deeper and deeper into that world and done more and more reporting, there's certainly like a really diehard sector of Jeopardy! fandom where they care so much about statistics and they know
00:36:18
Speaker
you know it's very jargony it's just these very very devoted fans of the show and of players who've been on the show and um and that is like a very very intense really fun and lovely but very intense um corner of the fandom i don't think a piece would work at least at the ringer if you were just kind of writing for those people in that that jargony way so
00:36:41
Speaker
a thing I'm kind of always trying to do is to get that in there so that those people feel like they're still learning something and that it's interesting and that it's speaking to them and knowing enough to be able to do that, but also to kind of widen the story so that if you were just somebody who's like, yeah, I grew up watching Jeopardy, I love Jeopardy, but you don't know what like the forest bounces or best final Jeopardy wagering practices are, you will still be interested. So I did a big story in
00:37:11
Speaker
early 2019 when James Holzhauer was on his 32 game winning streak and kind of became this viral sensation. And I wrote about the Jeopardy buzzer, which is a thing that that kind of nerdy corner of Jeopardy fandom is very, very intense about. But I think it was it was still hopefully interesting to people who, you know, just kind of watched Jeopardy and enjoyed it. And then, you know, they turned it off after the half hour was done. They didn't think about it again. So just finding a way to to touch both of those things is kind of the perpetual mystery.
00:37:42
Speaker
at what point do you realize that there's more than, you know, just a story on the buzzer that there is, uh, there is a book out there and that you can add to the jeopardy cannon that's already out
The Making of the Jeopardy Book
00:37:55
Speaker
there. So what was that like when you realized that, Oh, wow, I've got, I've got a book here. Yeah. I mean, really, it actually was that, that buzzer story that, that was what convinced me that there was,
00:38:07
Speaker
there was enough for maybe a book. So that story really took off. And it was a really funny thing where I got the probably once in a lifetime, it will never ever happen again. But it had kind of blown up that day. And I was out at a pizza place with my fiance that night. And we were sipping our beers at the bar or whatever. And I heard the people next to me talking about my story, which was just this like, oh my god. Like I said, it will never happen again.
00:38:36
Speaker
But it had, it really did take off and it took off with people who love Jeopardy, but were not these kind of diehard people. Like my own experience with kind of stumbling into this beat, and I'm probably the only Jeopardy writer, Jeopardy beat writer in existence, but was that like my early stories
00:38:56
Speaker
were not very serious. They weren't very long. They weren't reported. It was just sort of like, oh, you know, this funny guy with a beard is tearing it up on Jeopardy! And, you know, I enjoyed writing that. My editors were happy with that. It was what it was. But as I kind of kept writing about the show, I started to actually report out these stories and realized both that, of course, there was this huge audience for Jeopardy! stories, even very nerdy ones,
00:39:24
Speaker
but also that there just wasn't very much reporting that had happened, that was happening. And that seems like a lane that I could fit into and that I would be interested in fitting into. And to kind of use that to explain the show in broader, like for one of the things I did for the book was I read just every single other book that has ever been written about Jeopardy or tangentially about Jeopardy. And there are a lot of really great ones written by past contestants, be that Ken Jennings or some more recent ones.
00:39:54
Speaker
Ken's book is fantastic brainiac. I really recommend it if you're interested in Jeopardy or trivia at all. It's sort of about his run, but sort of about the wider world of trivia as well. But a lot of the contestant books are, you know, they're very inside baseball. And of course, of course they are. That makes perfect sense. And they're kind of by contestants for contestants. It's like, so you're training to go on Jeopardy. Here's how you win. Here are like the lists to memorize or the, you know, the things that you should study. And that is very useful to that group of people, but it just doesn't really kind of
00:40:24
Speaker
opened up the world to other people. So it was both realizing that there was this kind of opening in the Jeopardy! world, but also I kind of fell in love with it, honestly. The more I learned about contestants and the more I learned about how important Jeopardy! is to a lot of people and people who spend literal decades trying to get on the show,
00:40:47
Speaker
and people who get on the show and talking to them right after they've competed. And for people who've been dreaming of going their whole life to not have it go the way they wanted it to go is, of course, this colossal heartbreak. Or for people who do have it go that way, how do you make sense of suddenly winning $1 million or $2 million on Jeopardy?
00:41:09
Speaker
And I just, there were so many more stories I wanted to tell. So as I started to think about it as a book, I, you know, I could just like list off the top of my head, like, oh yeah, I had really wanted to, you know, go do this. I had really wanted to go do that. And it was, you know, just a kind of an excuse to just scratch my own curiosity.
00:41:30
Speaker
That's great. In terms of the structure of the book, what was your approach there in sequencing the chapters and the topics you chose to write about?
00:41:45
Speaker
Yeah. My original idea for the structure of the book was that I would alternate chapters between the show and the contestants. And so the show would be how they actually make Jeopardy, what it's like on the set, and a chapter on Alex Trebek, and stuff like that. And then the contestants would be, of course, kind of following along contestants.
00:42:07
Speaker
as they train, as they go on the show, how they use strategy, what life is like after Jeopardy. There's this really fun bar in Santa Monica, California that has in normal times at least a weekly trivia contest that is kind of renowned for being super difficult and draws this cast of notable Jeopardy alumni. And I knew that I really wanted to go experience that.
00:42:30
Speaker
And in the, I found that a little bit restrictive to kind of split the book into two halves that way so that the chapters ended up blending more because
00:42:40
Speaker
For instance, the first chapter is tracing a day on the Jeopardy set. And for me, it didn't really make sense to do that just from the show's perspective. I also really wanted to talk about what is going on with the contestants during this crazy day of taping Jeopardy. So it ended up blending a bit more. But there were a few scenes I knew I wanted. I knew I wanted to go to this bar in Santa Monica.
00:43:05
Speaker
I knew I wanted to go to Trivia Nationals, which is this annual convention in Las Vegas where a lot of former Jeopardy! Champs go and also a whole lot of people who desperately want to go on Jeopardy! Go and kind of see them audition for the show.
00:43:18
Speaker
you know, I knew I wanted to go to the hotel where contestants stay before and after they compete on Jeopardy and there's this kind of infamous bar scene at this hotel on the evenings of tape days. So I knew that I wanted to do that and just kind of finding ways to, not every chapter has a physical scene in it, but there were a lot of physical scenes I wanted and using that to tell a different part of the Jeopardy story.
00:43:46
Speaker
I love the part where you talk about how Holtzauer and the way his strategy of daily double hunting and then going for the bigger clues and just going for the middle of the board and going across versus up and down and how that kind of really revolutionized things, but it's also very
00:44:05
Speaker
controversial in a way in Jeopardy circles. And I think even even Trebek said something to the effect of like, well, if you're going to do this, you better better know what you're doing. Otherwise, you just look like an asshole. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is very disruptive to the game. And, you know, when one of the things that I kind of kind of came to believe as I was working on this is that Jeopardy is two things. It is it is a game and it is a show. And Jeopardy
00:44:35
Speaker
cares more about the show part of it than the game part of it. It is more about the presentation of the program to the people watching from home, like the eight million people who watch every night. It is more for them because it's not really very fun to watch three people play a trivia contest. Nobody is begging for your local bars trivia to be put on network TV or whatever.
00:45:02
Speaker
So I, but of course that, that actual game is what makes the show. So for a strategy like that, it is very disruptive to the show part of it where it's, it's kind of harder for viewers to keep track of the game of Jeopardy when
00:45:14
Speaker
somebody is bouncing all over the board or just kind of raking along the bottom of the board and just sort of tearing the game apart, even if they're winning a ton of money doing it. So yeah, I mean, I think Trebek really didn't mean that. He was like, okay, it's fine to play the game that way as long as you're making the show still entertaining. And that is always kind of the balancing act of Jeopardy.
00:45:36
Speaker
Now, in terms of the narration and then your part in the book itself, like you're in it, but very little. And I was wondering what the decision was and the calculus you were undergoing about how much to put yourself into the story versus not putting yourself in the story. I felt a little
00:45:56
Speaker
weird about where it landed, because you're right, I am in it a little bit, but not very much. And I couldn't really decide if it was distracting to have it be that way. I have not received hate mail on this specific point, so maybe it was okay. But yeah, I think
00:46:17
Speaker
Maybe it's just lingering anxiety about asking dumb questions, but there were certain scenes where I kind of wanted to capture how bizarre it was to be there. For me, just kind of being out of place, like at trivia nationals, it is this very devoted, insular,
00:46:36
Speaker
community. And a lot of the time when I was at Trivia Nationals, people were kind of like looking sideways at me, like not even knowing that I was a reporter, but just being like, it's clear that this is not a trivia person. Like this person is not here for Quiz Bowl. This is not a former Jeopardy! person. And she's not one of us. I legitimately had multiple people come up to me over the course of Trivia Nationals and be like,
00:47:02
Speaker
So who are you? Like what is going on here? And it's like a big event, like it's hundreds of people and still I kind of stood out and I sort of wanted to capture not so much my own awkwardness but let that kind of reflect back on this community and what a kind of cohesive thing it is that you can be identified as an outsider pretty immediately.
00:47:31
Speaker
So much of the Jeopardy world is kind of funny. Like it's sort of funny that people take it this seriously, right? Like there is a kind of humor to that that people sort of
00:47:41
Speaker
reshape their lives around a game show and I of course you know never wanted to make fun of these people and and I absolutely get and and believe it in support like why why it is um so so important to so many people but it is there is kind of a humor and having myself in there kind of let me just describe a scene in very neutral terms which I think hopefully captured some of the kind of
00:48:08
Speaker
strangeness and funniness of a lot of those places.
00:48:13
Speaker
And I love, too, that you couldn't really talk about Jeopardy's first incarnation or its reboot in 1984 without first going all the way back to the 50s with the game show scandal that really changed the landscape of trivia shows. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that, about what that did to trivia and game shows going forward.
Jeopardy's History and Trebek's Legacy
00:48:40
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So if you've seen the movie Quiz Show, you will know the basics of this. But in the 50s, there was Quiz Show's really, really big television. It was network TV heyday. There were like six total channels. And game shows were a really big deal in particular. Quiz shows were a really big deal.
00:49:02
Speaker
There was this cheating scandal that happened where the most notable one and the one that's in quiz show is this Columbia lecturer, Columbia University lecturer named Charles Van Doren went on the show 21 and he was a smart guy and he was charming. He was a good looking guy. He was young. He came from this prominent New York family and the producers of 21
00:49:26
Speaker
thought, oh yeah, he'll make great television. So what they did was, while he might have actually done pretty well on his own, they basically manufactured this incredible record-breaking run and had him become the first ever contestant to win $100,000. And they did this by both feeding him some of the answers and in some cases actually asking his opponents to throw games.
00:49:53
Speaker
that that or a version of that was happening on a few other really popular game shows at the same time and it came out and he I mean he had been like front page news it was sort of like a Ken Jennings thing where like everybody was like oh my god is he gonna win again tonight and he did he kept winning for weeks and weeks
00:50:12
Speaker
And so when it came out that that was bogus, that he had not really done that, that that was the show's producers, it was this national scandal and that itself was front page news and there were congressional hearings and Eisenhower complained about it and it was this really big deal. And the FCC amended the laws in a direct response to this to make it illegal to cheat on a quiz show. And so that is actually federal law.
00:50:41
Speaker
In the years immediately after this happened, audiences that had of course loved these quiz shows were reasonably enough kind of scandalized by this and didn't really trust what they were seeing on TV anymore even though producers had really a lot of reason to be totally upfront about everything and keep everything very much above the board. So the premise of Jeopardy is
00:51:04
Speaker
basically just making fun of these laws or at least, you know, kind of thumbing their nose at that. And the show first came on the air and I think it was 1964. So it was really just a few years after this had all happened. So it was very fresh in audiences minds. And the idea is with that, what is who is set up?
00:51:28
Speaker
you are handing over the answer, the clue is handing over the answer to the contestants, and then of course they have to work out the question. But that itself is a joke about like, yeah, we are giving our contestants the answer. So it was this kind of winking nod to the Quisho scandals. And so there has always kind of been this humor, this whimsy to Jeopardy.
00:51:51
Speaker
And what were some of the hurdles that specifically, you know, the show and Alex Trebek had to clear once the show was rebooted in 1984? Yeah, so so with the the early so it came back on in 1984 and
00:52:10
Speaker
There was this sort of nationwide trivia craze in the 80s kicked off by the board game Trivial Pursuit, which I believe came out in 81. And it was like this smash hit thing. And Merv Griffin, who created Jeopardy and who created Wheel of Fortune, Wheel of Fortune was still in the air.
00:52:29
Speaker
But he started thinking about like, well, you know, maybe we could capture this this trivia craze and get Jeopardy going again. So, you know, he, you know, came to Turbac and they did this, they they launched this pilot. And I think
00:52:42
Speaker
By that point, there at least was not this underlying suspicion that all was not as it seemed. That had gone away, though of course they kept that sort of iconic what is, who is format. The show was a hit pretty much from the beginning. There were enough people who kind of remembered Jeopardy that it already had that built-in nostalgia. But he was a very different host. The original host was Art Fleming.
00:53:05
Speaker
And Art Fleming played this kind of affable awe-shucks guy, and he was beloved for it. It was a very, very popular show. But then, of course, Trebek comes in, and he's kind of slick, and he knows all the answers, and he's going to let you know it. And he used to take the famously difficult Jeopardy! contestant test every single year, and he would pass it year after year. I mean, he really kind of knew a lot of that stuff. He kind of was that sort of trivially inclined person.
00:53:34
Speaker
But I think he was also the producer of the first three seasons of the reboot. And so he was he was really, I mean, he was running the show in addition to hosting the show. And he he was the one who identified that show versus game divide and tried to make the show while still staying true to its kind of nerdy roots, fun to watch. And and so that that involved injecting more humor, more pop culture into it, which was kind of scandalous at the time for
00:54:04
Speaker
trivia purists who think it should all be very, very academic, very serious stuff. And suddenly there were these pop culture clues and also making it so that just from the gameplay side, you used to be able to ring in as soon as you knew the answer. And it kind of made this like bell sound and it was quite disruptive to viewers. And so Trebek could be halfway through a clue and suddenly a contestant rings and shouts the answer and they move on. So it kind of isn't as much fun to watch because it's harder to play along from your couch.
00:54:32
Speaker
And so he changed that. So now players from the beginning of that to today have to wait for the clue to be read in full before they can ring in, which of course turns it into this kind of game of buzzer timing as well, which he was aware of. But he wanted to make it a fun show to watch.
00:54:50
Speaker
In a recent story you wrote about Trebek, there's this quote you cited from something you said in 1974 regarding hosting because he had some game show host experience before he took the Jeopardy mantle. He said, I don't want to do this all my life. Hell, I don't even watch game shows, but it gets me down here, opens the door into films down here being LA.
00:55:11
Speaker
I know it's not the usual route, but anything can happen. But of course, he becomes maybe the most iconic game show host of all time. And he just leans into it and really owns the role in a way that I find really endearing because he definitely surrendered something and maybe surrendered an old dream to really embody this persona for this iconic game show.
00:55:36
Speaker
Absolutely. That quote is spot on in that he moved to Los Angeles from Toronto explicitly. I mean, it was for a game show hosting job, but it was explicitly kind of his attempt to break into show business and he hoped to become an actor. And I think as much as he was doing well on that Jeopardy test,
00:55:58
Speaker
I think that character of scholarly, giving side-eye to his contestants who miss a clue or have a weird hobby or whatever it was, that was a character. He was acting. He knew that audiences liked that, and that was a performance for him. And I think that there was so much he was doing that doesn't really come across when you're just watching it a half hour. I mean, that speaks to how good he was at it.
00:56:26
Speaker
When you were, for lack of a better term, just lucky enough to speak with him before he passed while you were doing the book, was he himself or was he acting as the caricature, not the caricature, but like the character we have come to know him on TV? What was your impression when you got to sit down with him? You know, I think that he was playing that character, but I think that
00:56:56
Speaker
You know, to a great degree, that was who he was. I think he was this kind of avuncular, you know, big reader who thought that the classics were important and, you know, you should know the English Kings and you should know Shakespeare and he loved Mark Twain and he was sincerely disappointed as a person if you didn't know something about Mark Twain.
00:57:19
Speaker
So I think that they are not, like it was not a totally disingenuous character, but I think that he, as with anybody in Hollywood, probably anybody who's had at least the same job for a really long time, he was very good at playing that figure in public and in interviews and on the Jeopardy set. And again, I mean, he knew that people liked it. Like he knew that he was making me laugh in my interview with him.
00:57:48
Speaker
it was kind of hard to get him to drop the veil a little bit, which is why actually in that story you just quoted, I turned to a lot of his older quotes from the very beginning of his acting career, his hosting career, because he kind of just settled on his 15 or 20 jokes that worked really well. And that was pretty much all you were gonna get out of him in many interviews.
00:58:15
Speaker
Going into an interview with someone who is larger than life like that, how did you prepare for that and try not to be just overwhelmed by the personality sitting across from you? Yeah. I was really, and I can say this now, I think, I was really nervous for that interview. I bet.
00:58:37
Speaker
Uh, I mean, it was both because it was for a lot of reasons. I obviously needed the interview to go. Okay. Because I needed those quotes. Um, but also like, of course, you know, I watched Jeopardy I'm a Jeopardy fan. Like it was kind of nerve wracking to meet this guy that I've watched on television for, you know, my, my whole life basically. And I read as many interviews with him as I could find, or at least recent ish interviews. And like, of course kind of realized that he had these one liners and it is this kind of thing where you hear.
00:59:07
Speaker
somebody start going into the spiel. And it's like, I know how this goes. It's like, I know what the next feat is. It's a good joke. Thank you. But like, I get it. I know. So trying to kind of avoid that. But I also, I had read some interviews with him where he seemed a little bit prickly.
00:59:24
Speaker
And I was really worried as a reporter and as a Jeopardy fan that he was going to, you know, get fed up with my questions and walk away or you just, Alex Durek will be disappointed with me. It would be such a personal and professional blow. But then, you know, he was lovely. He really was and was really generous with his time. I think, you know, as much as I was saying that he kind of had this
00:59:53
Speaker
outer facing version of himself that he liked to share and felt comfortable sharing like he did really enjoy engaging with with people and with audiences with fans and to some degree with reporters probably not as much but he liked that and I think he also like as a performer I think he knew that that meant a lot to people and wanted to give people their kind of Alex Trebek experience.
01:00:19
Speaker
as as as what happened right around the time I think your pub date you know he he passes away I mean it's within days of each other's like what was that like to just you know your first book publishes it's about Jeopardy you spoke with Trebek you know you really you know on honor the person he is in this book as well as the game and then you know he does pass away from pancreatic cancer at the age of
01:00:44
Speaker
80 years old. So what was that moment like, you know, as your books coming out and Alex passes away? Yeah, so he passed two days before my book came out. And, you know, obviously, we all knew he was ill. And, you know, he'd been diagnosed with with very advanced pancreatic cancer. And I mean, that is just a brutal, brutal disease. And
01:01:12
Speaker
And he was pretty upfront about it too, when he would talk about it. He was like, the odds aren't good. He would kind of have this sense of humor. But he made it a year and a half. And to some degree, it sort of felt like, well, if he's doing this, if he's still going strong a year and a half into this just absurd disease where hardly anybody makes it that far,
01:01:34
Speaker
Maybe he'll just go on forever. He'll keep posting Jeopardy well into his hundreds And so it did feel weirdly shocking in spite of the fact that you know to some degree it should not have been a shock So yeah, I mean for me It kind of set off a frenzy of like oh my god What do we do now? And I was really lucky to have gotten to spend some time with him. So a lot of the book is about him and I felt
01:02:02
Speaker
comfortable that it was, you know, kind of a reasonably fair way of capturing his legacy. So I at least wasn't worried. It wasn't like a Trebek takedown hidden in there or something. But yeah, it was it was
01:02:18
Speaker
I think I had never done TV before and within an hour or so of the news breaking of his death, I was doing Canadian television from my living room, which was incredibly surreal. I have not looked up the clip. I don't want to see it. I'm sure it was not good. So it was kind of a weird thing where there had been this sort of expected
01:02:43
Speaker
media tour. And I had all these interviews lined up for that week. And then of course, that like tripled or quadrupled. So I suddenly kind of
01:02:50
Speaker
In a weird way, I mean, like people wanted to talk about the legacy of Trebek and I really liked him, really admired him. And like I said, I mean, it wasn't a takedown because I didn't find a takedown to write. There didn't really seem to be a dark side, thank goodness. But I kind of was put into this strange position as a writer, as a journalist of kind of being like this advocate for Trebek. Like everybody wanted to kind of have you on to talk about like,
01:03:17
Speaker
Isn't he just the best? Isn't he the best guy? Like, tell me about how he's the best guy on the best show. And it's like, well, I mean, he was he was great. But it's it was sort of a strange situation to be put into.
01:03:28
Speaker
So of course in the book too, you talk about Jennings and Holtzauer and is it Ritter? I'm sorry. Rutter.
Jeopardy’s Champions and Future Hosts
01:03:38
Speaker
And those are the three most iconic champions of the last 20, 25 years or 20 years or so, maybe of all time. And they all have their strengths and different strategies too.
01:03:51
Speaker
in talking to them and dissecting how they went about the game, of the three, who impressed you most? It's a weird question to answer because I feel like I know all of them now. I'm very friendly with them and Ken graciously wrote my foreword and
01:04:13
Speaker
James and Brad both, as they were in the midst of filming The Chase, which is now on air, they, in the middle of one of those tape days, like hopped on this event that I did at the 92nd Street Y. So I know them all, so it's weird to talk about them kind of objectively as Jeopardy! contestants, but I think I was, I've been so impressed by
01:04:39
Speaker
Ken, obviously with all those, those caveats, um, where he, he first started playing like 17 years ago, I think almost. And, um, obviously went on that, that 74 game win streak. Yeah. I mean, it was, it was wild and there, there hasn't been anything like it since, um, he kind of made this point when he won the greatest of all time tournament last year. We're faced with playing against James. He had to just adopt James Holt tower strategy.
01:05:07
Speaker
and bet really huge numbers and go all in and just totally leave behind that conservative strategy that made him a champion in the first place. And he did it. He won. He won that tournament. He beat James. And to some degree, playing that way depends on the luck of who finds the Daily Double. So there is always an element of luck. There is luck in that. There's luck in any Night of Jeopardy.
01:05:35
Speaker
but the fact that he's just been able to remain that good in so many different contexts. And that also applies to Brad, frankly, where they have played in so many different tournaments and won so many of them. And you look at these other people who were really dominant Jeopardy champions and maybe they won a tournament, maybe they won two. I'm not even sure that there are, I'm gonna get angry emails about this, but I'm not even sure that there are other
01:06:04
Speaker
non Brad, Ken James champions who won multiple tournaments. So few people have been able to to accomplish that over, you know, multiple decades. Like they've both been on the show for like two decades, Brad and Ken. And they both remain like number one and number two flip flopping pretty much every time they're on the stage. Obviously, you know, Brad Brad came in third in the greatest of all time tournament. But like they are so good. And
01:06:32
Speaker
Yeah, I'm excited. Ken obviously now works with the show. He's a consulting producer and he's going to be the first interim host of the show. And so he has said that he's never going to play Jeopardy! again. And sadly, I think that he's probably disqualified himself from ever competing on Jeopardy! again, just by doing the work that he has now. That makes sense, yeah. Yeah. But I think probably, I mean, almost certainly we see Brad and James again, at least. And I'm very excited to see more of that.
01:06:59
Speaker
Yeah, and that segues into the last thing I wanted to ask you, like Ken being the first interim host of the show, there's of course a lot of speculation of who might take up the mantle of the permanent host. Who would you like to see or who do you think might end up taking up the podium?
01:07:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean we know a bit about what the show might be thinking. There was a really great report actually in the Los Angeles Times just the other day about how the reporter wrote at least that like agents across Los Angeles had been kind of taken by surprise that there was actually a search going on for the host because everybody had just kind of assumed it would be Ken Jennings and I think Ken is absolutely
01:07:48
Speaker
still in the running but the show is clearly, you know, hoping to talk to more people and I think they I mean they they have made pretty clear that what they're looking for is somebody who Has that scholarly academic authoritative air to them that that Trebek had but then of course you also want the other half of what Trebek did so while the kind of actor part of it where he was really fun to watch and Worked with the audience and knew about the audience and cared. Um so I
01:08:19
Speaker
I, you know, Anderson Cooper had been rumored in previous years. I don't know. I mean, he has said that he's not interested in it at this point. But I was watching him on the New Year's Eve broadcast right from my couch, my big exciting 2021 reunion. And he's so fun. Like he kind of is one of those figures where
01:08:39
Speaker
he's he has the kind of gravitas of being a newscaster but he is really funny and he's fun to watch but he's not distracting you know like the host of Jeopardy cannot be distracting so somebody like that Meredith Vieira is it is somebody I just love love obviously has this broadcaster background has has since hosted many
01:08:58
Speaker
game shows and been very successful at that. And she graciously spoke to me in the book. So those are two names for sure that I'm curious about. And I'm really excited to see Ken's episodes as well.
01:09:12
Speaker
That's awesome. Well, Claire, this was so great to get to unpack the book in your journey through journalism to get you where you are at the ringer. So I really appreciate your time.
Connect with Claire McNear
01:09:24
Speaker
And where can people find you online and get a little more familiar with your work and maybe reach out to you on social media or something?
01:09:32
Speaker
Yeah, I'm on Twitter at Claire McNair and you can buy my book wherever books are sold. And yeah, I'd obviously love to hear from anybody about Jeopardy or anything else.
01:09:51
Speaker
That was cool, right? Thanks for Claire if you're still listening. Thank you. And thank you CNFers if you're still listening. I never know. Frankly, I think people like totally just abandon ship around minute 40 and they missed this. This is what you're missing. They don't know because they're gone already, but someone is sticking around and I thank you. I see you.
01:10:17
Speaker
I'm still doing the leave a written review and get some coaching deal. Take a screenshot of your published review on Apple Podcast and I'll coach up a piece of your writing of up to 2,000 words. Someone has already jumped on the deal and I'm eager to help them out. We're going to have some fun.
01:10:34
Speaker
I'm just extending this deal until we hit 110. I might extend it once we hit there, but for now I'm capping it at 110 we're at 103 right now so seven spots available so to speak
01:10:49
Speaker
And that's what this fucking shit show is all about, right? We're gonna have fun. It's fun. It has to be. I have no patience for the people who think writing is so fucking hard and agonizing and I hate it so much. Then don't do it. Writing, make no mistake, writing is difficult. It can be hard to tap into some difficult subject matter.
01:11:12
Speaker
But everything once you get to a certain level starts to lose its luster in terms of the honeymoon period and it becomes Just like anything else Yeah, it's chess is difficult Painting is difficult and it looks easy when we see the masters do it because they are masters and they had the courage to paint shitty paintings and get their asses kicked in chess or Cook shitty ass meals until one day they developed the skills over years and low
01:11:42
Speaker
There you go. So writing, yes, it's a chore at times. I know what it's like to get edits and you think you're close to finishing and then you realize how far away you are from the goal line. And then you just put it in the drawer because you just want to ignore it. And then a year goes by and you're like, damn it, I got to get back to that thing. Otherwise, it's got to get done. Otherwise, the thing hangs over you and you have other things you want to do.
01:12:09
Speaker
So, and if you're a pro, and I know you are, and you signed up to be a pro, let's do this. Because the work is never 100% bliss, but you show up anyway, and this is something we get to do, and maybe with a certain degree of coaching that I can give you in that piece that you want to land somewhere, we'll level you up, and with a certain rigor in my eye, then maybe we can at least make it the best version of itself. Make no mistake, the piece will improve when we work together.
01:12:39
Speaker
Will it land in the magazine or the journal you want? That's out of our control. You never know. They could have had... You just don't know. You can only control those controllables. But my aim is to make you feel more alive with the work than you've ever felt before.
01:12:55
Speaker
I want you to say, fuck your BO. That felt good. And realize that the work itself is its own reward, because it really has to be. Because that's what's within our control. And I have to believe that if you approach the work with that element of play, shit'll start getting published for you. I gotta believe that.
01:13:13
Speaker
Oh man, I am fired up. And it sucks to get so fired up and know that it's time to go. So do me this one solid CNF-ers. Stay cool. Stay cool forever. See ya.