The Pentrivium: On Useless Knowledge
Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Astronomy, and Genealogy.
I was on Jeopardy once. It didn’t go particularly well. But it could have gone a lot worse. Your Genealogian was a contender.1
My sights were set low. It would’ve been nice, of course, to win an episode or two. But having done minimal preparation and study, I fervently wished only for one thing: to not to humiliate myself on national television.2
I came in second place. They gave me $1000 and a photo with Alex Trebek. The cash was enough to cover my flights plus a nice post-taping celebratory lunch in Santa Monica for local friends and family. That and a one way ticket to Palookaville.
What was I celebrating, you ask? And here I thought you were paying attention. The fact that I hadn’t humiliated myself on national television! Embarrassed myself, sure. But who among us hasn’t embarrassed themselves in front of a studio audience? I’ll take what I can get.
Based on my shambolic presentation on this Substack, you might surmise that the fine folks at the American Broadcasting Corporation will put any old bum on Jeopardy. But I clean up real nice. I had class. You have to take a few tests and show up for an in-person try-out. They need to make sure you won’t disconcert the faithful primetime viewing public, and they don’t want to send a lamb to the slaughter (though that’s occasionally good TV).
I’ve been told that for any given episode, all three contestants know the majority of the “questions”—and in my limited experience, that’s true. Occasionally you’ll get a phenom who knows all the answers, or close to it, but that’s a rarity. Most games come down to reaction time. Memory to front of brain, front of brain to finger.
My reaction time was not good.
But, the point is, I did know a lot of trivial information. It just turns out I wasn’t very good at summoning that trivia under the hot studio lights and the charismatic glare of the most famous game show host in television history.
It got me thinking though. What about the most trivial information of all? So trivial that it’s only of interest—glancingly—to about ten people, and of central interest to only one—me? So trivial that I could fabricate it and most people wouldn’t know or care?