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.
The Final Jeopardy! questions seem to be, by design, things you can’t know. And so it’s not about who knows them, but who can figure them out in thirty seconds.
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.
If I start outsourcing all my navigation to a little talking box in my car, I’m sort of screwed. I’m going to lose my car in the parking lot every single time.