016 Quintessential Quizmaster Transcript (Alex Trebek)

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Michael: This person died in 2020 at age 80

Friend: Walter math . Out.

Michael: No, but Greg, yes, he ran a leg with the Olympic torch in advance of the 1996 games. And Atlanta,

Friend: all I want to say is Joan Rivers, and I know it's not Joan Rivers.

Michael: He appeared frequently as himself and movies, including in Charlie's angels in 2000. And on the Colbert report,

Friend: Jim brown,

Michael: not Jim brown. He was an authoritative and unflappable fixture for millions of Americans. He had impeccable diction.

Friend: I have no idea, Johnny.

Michael: Not Johnny Carson. He won six Emmys and a lifetime achievement award.

Friend: I'm thinking like a Dan rather type, but he's still alive.

Michael: He had a friendly rivalry with pat Sajak.

Friend: Oh, Bob Barker,

Michael: not Bob Barker. He hosted jeopardy for a record setting. 37 years.

Today's dead. Celebrity is Alex Trebek.

Alex: I love you till next time.

Michael: welcome to famous and grave. I'm Michael Osborne.

Amit: My name is Amit Kapoor .

Michael: And on this show, we go through a series of categories about multiple aspects of a famous person's life. We want to figure out the things in life that we would actually desire and ultimately answer a big question. Would I want that life today?

Alex Trebek died 2020 age, 80 category one creating the first line of their obituary. Quick programming note on this, the New York times deviated from format. So I had to look around and the only one I could find that approximated, it was the Washington post

it's

devastating. I know that was very disappointing.

Anyway. Alex Tribec who became known to generations of television viewers as the quintessential Quizmaster, bringing an air of bookish polities to the garish Coliseum of game shows. As the longtime host of jeopardy died November 8th at his home in Los Angeles. He was 80.

Polities Paula politesse, it's polite with SSE after that. So PLTs politics. That's what I said.

Amit: I have no idea how to pronounce it. What does Garrish so

Michael: bookish polities to the garish Coliseum of game shows. So I think what they're saying is most other game shows are garish, but jeopardy separates itself out.

Yes, they actually that's my main criticism of this obituary. Is that like, why are you taking jabs at other

Amit: game shows? I think that has everything to do with the long run of jeopardy and has everything to do with Alex's appeal. I think, yeah. I read a word in one of the other obituaries that jeopardy was a show without history on it.

It basically just means hoopla and fanfare. Yeah. I think that was good of the Washington post to do that, I

Michael: guess. So I don't know. I mean, it's not just longevity, it's actually reputation that distinguishes jeopardy. You know, if you look at wheel of fortune or if you look at prices, right. Then those are, I think the nearest comparisons in terms of popularity, they're not as intellectual, they're not as smart.

Right. But

Amit: it's the lack of

Michael: it's the lack of garishness. Yeah.

Amit: I guess what did they use the beginning Quizmaster quintessential Quizmaster, which is true. And I didn't know a lot about that until researching for this episode. How much of Tribeca career pre jeopardy was actually in the quiz category?

That's right. What's it missing other than being in the New York times?

Michael: And that's an interesting question. I'm not sure it's missing a whole hell of a lot. Actually. There's not other things that we know him for. Yeah. Well, I hate that. I don't know this word polities. It makes me feel stupid.

Amit: You don't know how to pronounce it, but you're able to define it.

Like it was, if it were an sat word, you take the Latin origin, how

Michael: to say, oh, I actually did this the other day. I had to say

Amit: it's already been Googled how to,

Michael: how

Amit: to say politics here. Is that a for, can we use that phrase ABG already been Googled paletas? Politesse the Litas. Why is your just have such a robot voice?

That's YouTube. Oh yeah. It rhymes with elitist

Michael: pollutants. Oh, interesting. I use

Amit: that changer when I finally pursue freestyle rapping, as I've intended to do for a while. I have a word that

Michael: can rhyme with elitist. That's comes up bullied. So I have my score. I'm going to give it an eight and it's because this word bothered.

Amit: We just don't know enough about the Washington post style. I just don't even feel right. Grading. It it's like a substitute teacher.

Michael: I agree. But you know the classes in and we still have to take the test. So.

Amit: It was comprehensive absence of Canadian as a problem. Lots of adjectives on that we didn't know.

Right. Which is very fitting for the show that he represented. So I'm going to go seven. Okay. Yeah.

Michael: Uh, these get seven and eight with an astrocytes. Normally we're

Amit: much more enthusiastic. We're like, damn right. I'm going to give it a seven.

Michael: It's not that I even want to necessarily promote the New York times for any reason whatsoever.

I just have become very habituated to their first line of the obituary. And you're absolutely right. I don't know how to compare this with other Washington post first lines of their

Amit: arbitrary. I think that's the thing you started us out with the. You should start with the good news first. I apologize.

Are you okay? So then tell me later, tell me afterwards that exactly the Washington

Michael: that would have been deceptive. I'm going to read you what the New York times says. So just your cleaner. Okay. There's the headline. Alex Trebek, longtime hosted jeopardy dies at 80. And then the first line is at a restaurant.

So four years ago, a stranger went up to Alex. Tribec the longtime host of jeopardy. And as strangers often did try to stump him. Okay. There's a nice story, but God damn it. I want the first line of the obituary from the

Amit: New York times. Yeah, Aiden's seven, eight and seven. Let's let's

Michael: move on category two, five things.

I love about you here. I'm at, and I worked together to come up with five reasons why we were talking about this person and why we might love them.

Amit: I bet you got a lot. I do that a lot. You can go first though.

Michael: All right. I'll lead with the strongest thing I got here. He asity man, both a promoter of it and somebody who embodied it as a life quality, I could not think of anything more admirable.

Yeah. To me, it's what life is all about. Being interested in things and people in different subjects and different knowledge domains to be a curious individual is to be virtuous. So yes, it's a great Buddhist

Amit: thing. Isn't a very like mindful thing to approach things with curiosity. That's not true. Not with attachment.

Yeah. But where you're saying is he was both a curious individual, any promoted, the idea of curiosity. Correct. So it's not only a desirable quality in a person, but he's promoting this virtuous quality to the world. Exactly. Is all about it. Okay. I'm going to go with focus when you read the stories about a lot of former contestants and former champions, one of the things they said most frequently.

That they were most impressed by him was that he paid attention. So he listened to every detail of what they said off camera and ever, he talked to people. There was no question whether he was listening or not all, it will also just say the, the work ethic that accompanied the way he approached jeopardy.

So he read every single clue prior to the start of the show to make sure that a, he could pronounce everything and it could roll off the tongue. And suddenly he also wanted to make sure that nothing was too too difficult. Yeah. We recorded 8,000 something shows and he read every single clue in advance.

Michael: I like going, okay, good one. Shall I take number three? Yeah,

Amit: he cursed a lot. I said

Michael: there's some really great Hotmail outtakes on the internet. So keep watching jeopardy

Amit: 24 hours a day and call this number dumb son of a bitch. You don't watch it. 24 hours a day. There's a daily cash prize of $1,000. And fuck no shit.

Call now and play phone.

Michael: Jeopardy. Fuck. 'em mayor. I love hearing him curse cause he's so straight laced. Another thing I have on here that I don't think I'm going to nominate for the five things is his love of suits. The man is an incredibly well-dressed right. And I just love hearing F bombs drop from somebody who's seemed straight laced and presents so well because of the contradiction because of the contradiction.

But I also, I like that, that there there's a, a hidden expressiveness about him. Right? You feel you, you get this sense from the man that there's more going on and that he's kind of containing that. I curse quite a bit and I like to break the ice with people. Use

Amit: like I'm usually it's a litmus test, a stranger.

Michael: I don't know if it's coolness. Exactly. I guess

Amit: it's arming

Michael: also, but I feel like it normalizes things. So I am with every stranger I meet, I'm kind of waiting to like, can I curse yet to just see if, uh, you know, to see if it's okay. And I, I just love that Alex Trebek was known for this behind the

Amit: scenes kind of story about that.

When I went to a freshmen orientation for college. My friend, Patrick, who was one of my high school friends. And during this like orientation, as we're meeting new people for the first time, you know, you'd sit down at lunch with them and we had kind of come up with it as a test of how these people react.

If we just say like, uh, Hey, do you like the fucking okra? And it was like our way to filter out if we can be friends with these people. So, yeah, I think the sad ending is we didn't really make any

Michael: friends. Maybe that's for the best. I mean, I think it should be a filtering test, you know, I think it, it, it signals to somebody that you're comfortable with them when you curse.

Maybe it was because it was prohibited when I was a kid. And you know, when I finally got to watch PG 13 in our movies, I hear people say, fuck all the time

Amit: or whatever, but you like it on Alex because he is so composed, but it's giving this reality to him, but also a confidence. Yes. I'd like to find out something you said, uh, the suits, you know, as part of this, as part of this seemingly Lee contradiction, but some do a throwback to Roger Moore, Alex Trebek.

Dapper. Yes,

Michael: I think so too. Yeah. We've had at least two dapper dead celebrities,

Amit: pre and post mustache. That's right.

Michael: Great. Cool. And where do you go for number four work schedule?

Amit: They filmed, I think 10 shows of jeopardy in two days it was like every Tuesday or Wednesday, he goes in and works from like 6:00 AM to 7:00 PM.

They fire off five shows the winner goes back, changes clothes, and they keep recording, but that's it two day workweek. He had the rest of them. I'm sure there's lots of additional time to do, but I idealize that. I mean, I think that's five day workweek is nonsense and I liked that. Alex figured this out.

Yeah. Fuck Tim Ferris

Michael: with his four day bullshit. Let's cut that. Yeah. I mean,

Amit: think about family time, kids time. It's I have so many problems with the five-day work week. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Why, why it's five sevenths of my life, so to speak. So I love that Alex did it this way. Yeah, I

Michael: agree.

Did you catch what he did for breakfast?

Amit: He said like diet Coke and Reese's pieces or something.

Michael: Diet Coke and a candy bar. Yeah. I thought that that's when you were saying Workday, you are also speaking to Workday routine

Amit: because he does not look like at all the type of person that would drink Cola and candy

Michael: for Brendan and did not exercise too.

But we'll talk more about that. I think. So. Am I taking five? I have committed stepdad. So he had two marriages. We'll get to that later. And he had a step daughter, but he developed a real genuine relationship with his adopted stepdad. He actually adopted her at age six, first of all, but brought her into the family.

And the reason I have this is because I've met a handful of stepdads over the years. That is a thankless job at most. Stepdad's, you know, they try and step in and they realize they're not the biological guy, but they still have all this expectation and roles. And I think it's just hard. I think it's really thankless.

And he, from what I could see performed really, really well. Step-daughter ended up actually working on jeopardy as a producer at times. Really? Yeah. In that great. I mean, she was involved in the production. I think I started listed as a producer. I know she worked on the crew, so I think it's got to be called

Amit: out.

I like that a lot. You know what pop culture is like really done terrible things with the idea of step-parents and stepchildren example. I can't think of a movie, but just think of the idea of like this, this awful phrase, like red headed stepchild or wicked stepmother, you know, you just assume that it's, it's a bad relationship.

That one side is either the child or the parent, or both are bad or that they essentially hate each other. For some reason, I love this correction of Alex, Rebecca, because I mean, there's so much of that, right? We talk about our. I love and marriage category. Right. And we've clearly on our earth that a lot of people that we've talked about have children from multiple marriages.

And so it's a fact in modern day America, it just is that a lot of people will have step relationships.

Michael: And I think you have to go 150% to like assert yourself into a step role. You

Amit: know what I mean? And it's an easy excuse. I think somebody would talk about it that much. No, I don't think so. That's why I liked that you brought it up because it's an easy excuse to have conditional love.

Right. You know, a parent child is we assume it's going to be unconditional love a step relationship. We kind of assume it's conditional. But what you're saying about Alex Trebeck is that he had unconditional love

Michael: that's right. So that is that our five. So, okay. Let's review real quick. I said, curiosity, you said focus.

Then I said, cursed a lot. You said workweek, workweek. And I said, committed stepdad. That's five. Before we move on, I got to throw something in here. I can tell just the way we're talking right now. Like there's a lot to love about this guy. We even had so much stuff. We didn't even cram it all in. I was listening to a podcast recently of somebody talking about Alex tra back around the time of his death.

And they led with, he's got a hundred percent approval rating. I had a friend yesterday, uh, who I said, you know, we're doing Alex Trebek on famous and gravy tomorrow. He goes, fuck that guy. So the first time I ever heard anybody say that, so I almost feel like you have to make the case a little bit for why we shouldn't love this man.

And I don't know where else to do it in our

Amit: show. Let's take a stab at it.

Michael: I think his case was that there's a smugness you'll learn

Amit: from Courtenay and lattice. Fu if you visit 17th century, one of these gatherings. Yarn. What is the salon silos? What is salon? I know you are . Yeah. It's the, unshakeability the unflappability that you talked about, that, that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

Michael: You would also hear him at times. I'll almost have a slightly condescending demeanor on the show. Right? You would hear him correct somebody and be like, no, you didn't get that. You dumb shit. Like the subtext of it,

Amit: which was all the parodies of him were exactly that of like, people like blowing up because they just can't stand his

Michael: smugness.

Yeah. Yeah. So I guess I want to throw a little bit of water on how much we love this guy, because he, I think has right now his reputation and his approval rating really couldn't be higher even two years after

Amit: his death. Yeah. But he certainly had his detractors. I mean, this personality he has is really nice as a host that we view on TV.

But if you imagine that on like a.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah, no, it's a good question. Well, it's a good reminder that the experience of someone on television is very different than the experience of someone in real life in person. Yeah. All right. Let's move on. Okay. All right. Category three. Malcovich Malcovich. This category is named after the movie being John Malcovich in which people take a little door and enter into John Malcovich his mind, and they can have a seat right behind John Malcovich his

Amit: eyes.

Malcovich Malcovich Malcovich Malcovich Malcovich what are you got here? I have what I call being Santa Claus. I just made up that phrase, but this is what it is. And it happened a few times, but if I need to just tell it in the form of one. I can, and this is from one of the articles I was reading. I think this was after Tribec died.

They interviewed a bunch of former contestants and specifically former champions. So there are moments in jeopardy where somebody gives an answer, but it's not quite enough. Right. But it's not clearly wrong. It's just kind of in this gray area,

Michael: let's ask the judges. Isn't this a moment where you say

Amit: no, there's another instance that I still think the judges are speaking into his ear and saying, we may be able to allow this, but he doesn't overtly say let's ask the judges.

I see. So what he does is somebody gives an answer that's partially incomplete or partially complete, and it just needs a little more. Tuning on it in order to be right. So the way Alex Trebek delivered that it was gift giving, he looks at you like he has so much confidence in you and he gives you a little bit of a hint towards what else you need to say, but

Michael: in his tonality or in his voice

Amit: or something, they said he kind of does it in his look.

Interesting. So I guess maybe there is a slight intonation change, but the example I read, so this was from somebody who he said he almost missed on the clue. The clue that he received is it's the accident that got 78 year old, Texas lawyer, Harry Whittington into political news in 2006. Okay. And the contestants said, what is getting shot in the face?

And Alex gestured for more. So he did like a hand or he raised his eyes to kind of indicate you need to give a little more. And the contestant then said by dictation, And then that was the correct answer. Wow. So I would love to be in that seat where you want to look at somebody and you say, okay, you're just a little closer to winning it a little closer to potentially money.

And he just like sends this Jedi mind, force out and tries to like telepathically. Tell them in his face without any words, you've got the answer on the tip of your tongue. And if I look at you and smile at you and gives you a little more confidence, it's going to.

Michael: That's great. I mean, it's direction in a sense, but it's, it's so subtle.

It's embodied language. It's

Amit: energy transfer too, depending on what you believe in. I mean, it is, it is a powerful force by looking at somebody's emoting in a certain way with your face and letting that little bit spill out.

Michael: And so this is a Malcovich moment because you not only want to see what's going on behind the eyes of the man, who's able to do that, but like the whole experience of the

Amit: body of being.

Yeah. So I want to see behind the man, which is the mind behind the mind of saying, okay, this is my it's time to be done. Yeah. Okay. And then the actions that go into it, where you're shaping your face, you're shaping your eyes mouthing. You're going for the eye contact. You look at him, you see the light bulb go off, they drop the answer and then there's just dissipation.

Yeah. I mean, there's silent applause everywhere, but yeah, all that occurs in three seconds and I think that'd be great to have a front row seat to that's a

Michael: great one. Yeah. All right. My Malcovich moment, I'm going to go with the kind of simple one. When Alex Tribec was still working at Canada and the, at the CBC Canadian broadcast corporation, he had to announce that Kennedy had been shot and killed.

I really, yeah. He was on air and he was the guy who had to deliver that message. And I just think that'd be interesting. Like what a moment, you know, I think he's Canadian. So he's got a different relationship with what this means, but actually like. A broadcaster in that moment. What do you think

Amit: it's like,

Michael: that's a great question.

It's actually not so different than yours in a way. I feel like that is a moment of empowerment. You'll have to imagine that you're connecting with a much larger audience in that moment, but I also just found it an interesting bit of trivia. What did it feel like? That's a great question. As disorienting as scary as every, as it must've felt for everybody else.

But I think you communicate that emotion and the nuance

Amit: of the voice. Yeah. And you also have to communicate a calmness. I think I, yeah, I

Michael: think that's right. Category for love and marriage. How many marriages also, how many kids and is there anything public about these relationships? Shall I just knock it out first marriage, Elaine, I don't know how to spell her last name.

Oh, Elaine . She was a former Playboy playmate and they were married in 1974, divorced in 1981, no kids, but there was this adopted daughter. Nikki is her

Amit: name. So the, she had had the daughter from a previous

Michael: or a previous relationship. Yeah. And then Alex was 34 when they married and 41 when they divorced and it sounded like an amicable divorce.

It is worth noting though, that this marriage and divorce happened before he became host of jeopardy. And he was sort of hopping from gig to gig game show, to game show and not making a lot of money. So it does sound like there was actually a real financial pressure on the marriage at that time. Okay.

And then wife, number two, Jean caravan, they married in 1990. Alex was 50 years old and they did have two children, one boy and one girl, Matthew and Emily. And they were together until Alex died at age 80.

Amit: Okay. What did she do for a living? I read this,

Michael: I saw a few different things. I know at one point she had a flower business.

She was in a real estate and that may be, that may be another there's a New York. Okay, how

Amit: did they meet?

Michael: That's a good question. I did read this and the cause I read a biography of Tribec. I can't remember. And one thing I did not note is that there's a very large age disparity. She was significantly younger, I think 24 years younger than him.

Okay. Um, that's very Mandela. So yeah, quite a large age gap. Here's something I did not know about Alex Trebek, that he was an attractive man. Oh

Amit: yeah.

Michael: Oh, I see it now, but I don't know when you're growing up. Everybody's got gray hair is just old. Yeah. You know, and I never would've thought of him as. You know, desirable from an attractive way.

And I just hadn't thought about it in years. And so then he was married to a woman who was a Playboy playmate. And you know, when he was in Canada and Toronto and Ottawa before that was described as like one of the city's most eligible bachelors like that, that surprised me. I would not have thought that.

Amit: And I think throughout his career, there were people throwing themselves at him. I don't think there was any accusations of infidelity, but I

Michael: read that I didn't see anything. I think he was quite the recluse. He, you think he was a family, man, I'm not real close, but I think he, he shied away from any advances that happen.

In fact, it sounded like a very healthy marriage, the second wife in particular, and even the divorce from the first wife and then older father, right? I mean, he married a much younger woman, but he becomes a new dad after he's age 50. And I guess I wanted to ask, like, do we make of anything. Of becoming

Amit: an older dad.

Yeah. Everyone always argues right. That you don't want to be an older father. And I want to stop all this by just saying, I understand how it's, it's not a fair trade, right. Women certainly have biological restrictions that make it much harder to be apparent later in life. Yeah. And I'm not, that's not fair, but the case I hear from friends and peers and stuff of not wanting to be an older father is that you can't get on your knees and play with your children and play ball and go to the games and stuff like that.

Yeah. Your

Michael: energy diminishes and

Amit: so forth. David Letterman talks

Michael: about that. I think George Clooney does too. I don't know if it's a regret, but I've heard him talk about being an older father, but

Amit: you look at somebody like Clooney, I think had kids in his fifties. I mean, these are very fit capable guys. Do you think they are missing any part of the gift of fatherhood by doing it that late asking for myself?

Yeah,

Michael: sure. I don't think so. I, you know, I didn't become a father till I was 34 or 35 and there, it was a part of me that wished we had started earlier. For this exact reason that I would have liked a little bit more energy at the same time. Wasn't ready. You know, and I, I do think the norms on this are shifting in a healthy direction.

And let me put it this way. I absolutely don't want to be part of any stigma around older fathers or older mothers for that

Amit: matter. Do you mean you don't want to be the recipient of a stigma or you don't want to do anything to perpetuate that stigma? Both.

Michael: But when I said that, I was thinking about perpetuating the stigma, quite the opposite.

If anything, I mean anybody who is interested in being a parent, I want them to be able to do it whenever they can. There are, as you said, biological realities around this.

Amit: Ways of being a

Michael: Baron. That's true. And those biological realities are harder for women, obviously, but we're talking about dads, I guess.

I think you should be able to do it whenever you want to. I do think, and I want science and I want society to accommodate that as much as possible. I also do think one thing that happens when you become a parent is your social life gets completely up ended. And some of the people you bond up with are other new parents.

If you are in your fifties and you're becoming a new dad, you might not meet a whole lot of other men or women or whatever in a similar age bracket. And I think that that plays into the experience of parenting in a big way, because as I said, your social life gets upended and reorganized around the children's lives.

Amit: I think one other thing that, uh, I saw Tribec say, cause he, he went into depth very peacefully just by the, the horrible disease that took his life. But he did say one of the things that he will miss out on is meeting his grandchildren. So I

Michael: had that in regrets

Amit: later. Yeah. I mean that, that is something to consider, I think if it is,

Michael: but I think the experience of being a dad is life up ending and the experience of being a grandparent.

I don't know, but it's just is icing. Well, there's,

Amit: there's a bit of a trade-off too, right. Or you're either just not ready, you know, or maybe you, you run the risk of maybe never meeting your grandchildren to me that the latter risk. Soccer, but it's much better than to have children when you're really not ready.

That's right. That's exactly right. What are we making of the whole Alex, Rebecca Love and

Michael: marriage. It gets a high score from him. I saw all three children, his adopted daughter and his children with gene, all like having great things to say about what a committed and involved father he was. I think he was a little bit of a disciplinary in at times, or at least had rules and believed in boundaries.

But I think that's a good thing. I think that's a mark of a good father and I think he's clear he is committed to it. I think like he made time for his family based on available information based on what I read and BI biography and based on what I saw the children saying around the time of his death and after his death, shall we move on?

Yes. Category five net worth

Amit: 75 million. That's what I saw. I kind of wanted it to be a little higher. Really? Yeah. Getting like towards the end, he was getting 10 million a year from jeopardy

Michael: 75 millions, a lot of fucking.

Amit: Oh, yeah, but I'm just, I'm just saying, I CA when I learned that he was making 10 million a year on jeopardy, I thought like, when I finally did the research on this question, it was going to be higher.

It's a tremendous amount of money. He doesn't have the amount of money. I'm very, doesn't need any more. Nobody needs anymore. It

Michael: feels like almost a little bit uncomfortably high. I mean, he's deeply involved in philanthropy. I will say this too. It really seems like he manages money. Well, like you get the sense that he he's a handyman.

He knows how to fix. And I got a story about that later, or maybe I got it now. So when he buys a house in LA, he at some point decides to buy a house next door and fix up one of them. And he rents out the other one to Pete rose of all people. So Pete rose is,

Ales

Amit: who not

manage money. Well,

Michael: Pete

rose does not manage money.

Well, uh, was Alex Trebek's tenant, and anytime anything would break Alex Trebek would come running over with his tools. This is how the man got his exercise was like by

Amit: running over to Pete Rose's house to fix the faucet

Michael: or around

his own house to fix the faucet. Like, I mean, I think he would strap on the tool belt and sweat it out.

That's how he like

got his cardio

Amit: That's how the diet Coke and Snickers bar was metabolized.

Michael: According to him. Yes.

Amit: I have a feeling, a lot of our listeners probably don't even know who Pete rose was. Baseball player slash manager got in trouble for. gambling On his own team, God people in the hood, Pete rose, rose, I guess that's true.

I don't think so. He also did at one point, I think hold like some really remarkable history.

Yeah. Yes. And is famous for not being a part of the major league baseball hall of fame. All right.

Michael: Anyway, that's Pete rose was Alex Trebek's tenant. Isn't that great.

Amit: Yeah.

Michael: Yeah.

Anyway. All right. 75 million. I don't know what to say about it.

Other than I'm I'm very happy with, it seemed like our shit ton of money, but also given his work ethic. I'm very good with that number. Yeah, but it's, I mean

Amit: he recorded over 8,000 shows of jeopardy is a desirable. I don't it's, it's desirable up to an extent. I think that's a conversation that we end up always having.

There is a too much discomfort of like, it's your inability to. Certain decisions, the way that you have trust issues, you just come up because you have so much, and that people are at it for different ways. And it's really hard to have you deep connections after a certain point. That's where it becomes troublesome.

I don't think he is in that category. Well, he's just in the category of very wealthy

Michael: celebrity, very recognizable he's on TV all the time, but it's, it's not, it's not the kind of fame where there's like a sort of, I dunno, insane attribution of how much power he has. Yeah. And which I think maybe is part of the desirability question around net worth, because money is one expression of power, but so is notoriety.

It's one thing to have 75 million, if you made it as an entrepreneur, or if you made it as a criminal, if you made it, you know, hosting a game show where you're asking, you know, kind of brainy questions to America for 37. The representation of fame around that number. I'm pretty okay with like the nature of his fame, I guess.

I'm okay with, should we move?

Amit: I think so. I think we covered it. I think we're, we're good with where the money is. Category six,

Michael: since Saturday night live or halls of fame. This category is a measure of how famous a person is. We include both guest appearances on SNL or the Simpsons as well as impersonations.

So we have to get the

Amit: easiest one out of the way.

Michael: Oh, the welfare all will fail on us. So Mr. Connery, why don't you pick? It looks like this was my lucky day. I'll check the rapist for 200 that's

Amit: therapists.

That's

Michael: therapist, not the rapist.

Amit: And on the Canadian equivalent of SNL, which I forget what that's called, but Eugene Levy played Tribeca. That's right. Uh, SCTV, a CTV that doesn't stand for second city telephone.

It

Michael: doesn't but it is SCTV. That's right. And he apparently Tribeca said Eugene Levy did a better job.

That's fine though. I don't think will Ferrell's impersonations are quote unquote. Good. No, it was just funny. All right. Let's move on to the Simpsons. He also did voice himself on the Simpsons. I'd forgotten about this episode. It's called miracle on evergreen terrace. Marge Simpson goes on jeopardy. She is a negative money Tribeca trying to recap, uh, try to get it from her.

And she runs away.

Amit: Aren't we forgetting something Marge. You were down $5,200. Mr. Trump. I asked you before the game, if you knew the rules and you said you did, judge has

Michael: one other thing I forgot to say about the SNL impersonation. Not only did he love it, he said it means you've arrived. Oh, did he say

Amit: that he actually said that. Thank you, Alex. For validating our

Michael: category. Finally, Hollywood walk of fame. He's got one in 1990. Okay,

Amit: so hit the trifecta and let's, I mean, let's also not forget the something like eight plus Emmys, an Emmy lifetime achievement award, the amount of movies that he played himself, or even TV shows.

If you look at that list is overwhelming. I wrote some of them down here. Uh, rain man, golden girls. Cheers jumper. Beverly Hills 9 0 2 and oh, family guy. I mean, it's a huge list.

Michael: Yeah. So the man's famous. Yes. All right. Category seven. Over, under, in this category, we look at the generalized life expectancy for the year.

They were born to see if they beat the house odds and as a measure of grace. So the life expectancy for men in Canada, they give it 1940 to 42. He was born in 1940. It's 63.04 years at birth. And at one year it's 67.04, for whatever reason, Canada reports these after you've made it past a year, I guess back then they were accounting for infant mortality.

So anyway, either way, Alex Tribec died at 80, so he's many years.

Amit: But we do this category also to talk about the grace.

Michael: Can I say something before you hop on that? I had it in my head. He died young.

Amit: I kind of did too. Right. Well, cause he looks so good. And

Michael: I guess maybe that is to your, which I think where you were going with this as a measure of grace,

Amit: he looked at her, right?

Yeah. I would the thought if without any data I would have guessed 65.

Michael: Yeah. I was surprised about this. I thought we were going to be much closer, so, and it was pancreatic cancer and it got him pretty quick.

Amit: Yeah. Which is, I mean, that's what killed Steve jobs. It's one of the worst kinds of cancer. A good friend of mine lost his brother to that few years back and it is absolute least.

Devastatingly.

Michael: Hell yeah. I mean, he said there's a mid-stage four and there's no such thing as stage five. I mean, it's, you know, th th this doesn't look good and he made a lot of public announcements about this. Yeah. And there were stories he would do the show and then go back to his dressing room and just curl up on the floor, crying in pain.

Yeah. I mean, that said it did happen fairly quick. I don't know. Should we make anything about the nature of the death? I'd have been wondering if this is something we should be talking about. Uh, I mean,

Amit: I think we do, because we don't want painful deaths. We've kind of learned that long, drawn out painful deaths, both for you and your loved ones do not seem to be desirable.

Michael: I don't think we're alone and not wanting that, but, but the point

Amit: is we w we kind of weigh it, right. The whole thing. And you shouldn't like, it's a little unfair you shouldn't way just the ending.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Given that death looks uncomfortable and painful most of the time, you know? Okay. My top choices, I don't want too much pain.

If I don't get that, then I don't want it to be drawn out. I also don't want it to be violent. So I guess for me, this is like not a bad death, necessarily 80 is a pretty good age. He made it into the over and a little bit young, but not away young. And I don't want to go through pancreatic cancer. I don't want to go through any kind of cancer.

Yeah, cancer's going to come along and this is how I'm going to go. He got a chance to say goodbye and write it out to the end. I don't know. It looks not that bad given that no death looks that good. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Amit: But I, I guess the point we're making is the public Alex Tribeca that we saw that he presented himself with.

It was extremely graceful. The, I

Michael: agree. Let's pause for a word from our.

Amit: Michael, I'm thinking of a book.

Michael: Is it a biography? Uh, is not, uh, something in the humor section? No. Um, I'm going to need more information. What are you thinking of you don't read. Of course. I read, I read all the time. I've got like three books on, at least. So you have no

Amit: guesses about what your yeah, no, no.

What I'm thinking of? Oh,

Michael: what book you're thinking of? Great Gatsby.

Amit: This is not a bad guess, but it's not correct. You try me.

Michael: What do you mean? I got to think of a bucket. You need to try and guess what it is. Yeah. Okay. I've got a book, uh, catch her

Amit: in the right other,

Michael: how did you do that?

Amit: Because I shop at half price books regularly.

It was incredible. Uh, do you know what half price books is celebrating? 50 years of buying and selling books, movies, and music, half price books has 125 stores and you can find out more@hpb.com. Was that really

Michael: correct? But it was more fun to pretend like it was

thus far. We have been after easily knowable information. This point in our show, we get to the more introspective questions. This is where we start to take a good guess of what we think it might have been like to be this person. The first of these categories is man in the mirror. What did they think about their own reflection?

Oh, man. What do you got?

Amit: I tried to think deeply or counter-intuitively on this and I couldn't find it. I think it's just a clean. Yes, I agree.

Michael: What's not to like, and I think that he does look confident. I think he was a handsome man. I think, you know, he had a mustache for awhile and then he didn't, and that was exciting for a lot of people and a good smile.

So I don't need to make this one problematic. I think that

Amit: let's go both go. Yes. Yeah. Very linear aging too. Like you look at early pictures of him at 30 and then pictures at like 70 and it just looks

Michael: okay. Yeah. That's a good way of putting it linear. All right. Next category, outgoing message. Like man, in the mirror, we are interested in how they felt about the sound of their own voice.

When they heard it on an answering machine, you have reached

Amit: the voicemail box.

Michael: I'll give you my answer. I said the diction, which was kind of called out in the obituary is too good. It's basically, I think it's a yes, but I think you could also say that there's a KCK. Some know, which is when the voice is too valuable to actually put it on your answering machine.

I think I'm going, yes.

Amit: What are you guys? I'm going to make a case what you talked about at the beginning. I think thing I love about you. Number three, was that. Causes a lot. Yes. So there is a, there is a Alex Rebecca host of jeopardy and there is a real Alex for back.

Michael: Okay. So let me pause on that real quick then.

So I agree with that. I think we even kind of weave the viewer knew that, and I, you know, I feel like there are some people whose fame, we don't distinguish the man in front of the camera or the woman in front of the camera and the man or woman behind the scenes. Yes. I think with Alex Trek, there was almost a conscious I've got more here, but this is all you knew, but you knew it like the viewer was conscious of the withholding and was okay with it and kind of admired him

Amit: for it.

Yeah. So here's the question I'm posing. If he's recording the outgoing message, does he do it as the host of jeopardy or does he say, please leave a fucking message.

Ah, but he can't, he can't do the latter because who knows who's calling. And so given that he is so important for him to maintain this. Of the host or jeopardy and the agents and the advertisers and whoever are calling. I think he just lets the machine do it.

Michael: I'm ready to sign off on that. I,

Amit: I think this is not at all to say that he doesn't like his own voice.

That's right.

Michael: This is not about self perception so much. It's also about voice consciousness and what it's being used for and how much it matters, how much it matters. Yeah. It's sort of a Casey case of no, in a way. All right. The next category, regrets, public or private. Do you want me to start?

Amit: Uh, yeah, I, I don't have a ton here, so I do want you

Michael: to start.

Okay. I don't have a ton here either. On the public front, we already talked about wanting to have a grandchild. He did joke at one point during Ken Jennings, his run, that he was spending more time with Ken Jennings than with his wife. But I don't know if that's actually a regret. And the other thing that was sort of show specific, at least on the public side.

Do you, are you familiar with the term, the forest bounce? I am.

Amit: I learned it over the last week. Yeah.

Michael: Oh, so you.

Amit: Yeah, it's basically the strategy. So the way jeopardy is designed and the way most people play is you start in a category and you go all the way down

Michael: on a category with the lowest dollar value.

And then so 200 and 400 to 600, 870.

Amit: Yeah. And then the forest balance was there was this guy named Forrest who was a champion and he just randomly picked categories, but he felt. It gave him an edge because he knew what he was picking, but the other two contestants could not predict what would be next.

So they would kind of be psyched out in some way. Correct.

Michael: His name is Chuck forest. And the other thing about this strategy is it did apparently give you a better chance of landing on the daily double. And if you go back and look at a Chuck forest, his record, he did pretty well. Apparently Trubek hated it.

It really pissed them off when people would go out of order. I saw that and I did wonder if he didn't have a regret about this should be the rules of jeopardy that we should, you have to go in order, but I don't know. There's not much to be said. So that's all I got on there on the regret side. I didn't see a whole hell of a lot more.

I think on the private side, I've got a little bit more. This is. Quite a few times on the show, but flirtations with acting, did you see some of the, his attempts to get acting roles?

Amit: Yeah. I mean, other than the playing himself, yes, there was, was it an X, Y that's the

Michael: best one where he and governor Jesse Ventura, I think before he was governor and played a bad guy, it was like they were called men and black and they were protecting aliens or something.

I never saw the episode, but I actually think Alex Tribeca would play a good, bad guy, but I think he could do that well. And, uh, he wasn't able to get roles cause he was typecast as the host of jeopardy. I mean, he couldn't, he couldn't do anything but play himself. And he realized that pretty soon.

Amit: Yeah. I think that's a regret and that's kind of what I wonder is the fact that he can't do anything, but play himself.

There was clearly this voicemail argument for, to Alex WebEx. Yeah. But I guess he only had to do it two days a week. You know, I made the case in Leonard Nimoy with, I didn't like the singular association with the character. Yes. And Alex, Rebecca is definitely one of those that we have a very singular association with him.

No question. I mean, I don't think he was public about it being a problem. I think like you said, he didn't, he wasn't. Out and about that much outside of the show, he had very good family life. And as soon as the camera's turned off, he played himself. So I don't see that as much of a regret for him. I am curious though.

So jeopardy, this version of jeopardy launched 1984, correct. When he was 44 years old. What about all that time leading up to it? We know about the marriage that ended amicably after seven years. Are there any regrets in that time that you viewed or read about. I

Michael: don't think so. I mean, you know, it, he settles on dude, by the way, you know, one thing that hasn't come up yet is how we got into this game.

Show rocket

Amit: in the first place. It involved Alan Thicke and Lucille ball,

Michael: correct? Alan Thicke of growing pains, fame, the dad on growing pains. It was sadly not with us and Lucille ball who played, you know, I love Lucy. She doesn't,

Amit: I was roommates with album thick, I

Michael: would think is the reason Alex Tribeca is with us there.

One thing I tried to find, cause he wasn't just roommates with him. Like Alan Thicke is the man who said, and this is in the biography, said, Alex, you needed to move to LA. Like there is opportunities galore here. I'll hook you up. He

Amit: gets a fellow Canadian come this way

Michael: seriously. And Tribec gets a job as some game show.

I'm forgetting the name of it. It gets canceled. Alan Thicke hooks him up with a second job. Um, I mean like he is really instrumental in getting his career underway. I couldn't find anything. Did they remain friends over the years? I got really curious about this. Cause I would've thought given that tobacco's Alan Thicke, a debt of gratitude for everything that happened as

Amit: this Leonardo DiCaprio.

How's that he got to start on growing pains. Oh, right.

Michael: Fuck. Hold on. Fuck. Yeah, save that for a future conversation. That's a good question. I don't see it. So in the seventies, he is sort of like beginning to ingratiate himself with Hollywood, Lucille ball, as you said, recommends him. I think more than once as a game show host.

Clearly see his aptitudes for it. He does talk about trying cocaine once and hating a does that is he also talked to, there was some like weekend getaway thing that a show that he was a part of that there was like a retreat in Mexico where apparently there's a fair amount of celebrities at the time.

It was the first time he felt like he was like making it in Hollywood. So I don't know. I think that that draw is there. I think he sees opportunities for himself. He was a broadcaster kind of journalist broadcaster in Canada before he got to LA what exactly is the plan? It's kind of unclear. Are there regrets?

I don't think so. I don't think he wants to be a journalist or a newsman. I think he's handsome enough to make it as an actor, but he's not like taking acting classes necessarily. This game show host thing seems to be a destiny calling. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't see the

Amit: regret. A lot of persistence, you know, a lot of trial of new game show formats that he did for other people they failed and he kept.

Yeah, and he kept persisting and eventually Lucille ball told Merv Griffin that you should have Alex Robeck hosts this jeopardy that you're restarting in 1984. And the rest is history and the rest is history. But I do want to point this out. So this is not a regret, but do you remember the Nelson Mandela conversation we had about importance?

You know, and you, you said something to the effect of, well I'm 43 years old. Who knows if that ship has sailed? Yes. Alex req started out in jeopardy at 44. I, I'm not just saying that as inspiration for you, Michael, is that you even said in the Kenny Rogers episode that Kenny Rogers trajectory started at like age 38 and you use Brian Cranston as another example.

I love these examples maybe just because I'm 44, but I love the never too late example. I agree.

Michael: I got one more. And the regret that I feel like we have to talk about the jeopardy success. Who's going to take over the reins.

Amit: He didn't know though. No,

Michael: but I, I speculate on this as a regret if he didn't have a better plan for it, because he's, nobody can mentor the successor.

I was trying to think of other handing over of hosts. Right. I would, for whatever reason, I was a night show. Definitely. Tonight show is a good example. I suppose I was thinking about the daily show. I like Trevor Noah, but I haven't really watched much since Jon Stewart.

Amit: It lost me.

Michael: Yeah. What's another example I was thinking about.

I can't

Amit: think of it in terms of television, but CEOs do it all the

Michael: time. Yeah, well, sure. I guess that my point is that. Tribeca knows successful of the program of jeopardy. And he knows that this is an institution in American television and around the world for Christ sakes, didn't have kind of a responsibility to train the successor.

I kind of want that of him. And I wonder if he didn't think about that. I mean, there were, there were names throw, there was a lot of names thrown out and right now they don't even really have a permanent house duties. Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, there's all kinds of, you know, controversy and messiness that happened.

Did you follow what happened with this guy? Mike Richards? There's a journalist at the ringer, a woman named Claire McNeil who wrote a book all about jeopardy and yeah, I read one of her articles. Yeah, it's really good. And she was up to speed on who this guy, Mike Richards was, who there was a process for.

Who's going to be Alex Trebek successor and he. Nominating himself kind of there's some like behind the scenes shenanigans, but the guy also had a podcast. And if you go back and listen to it, guy sounds like, like not a great guy. There's some real sexism coming out. There's some real like immaturity coming out.

And because of her reporting, he ended up actually step away from that role. There was so much negative blow back. Anyway, I feel like if you are at the helm of something, but you have a responsibility to figure out who's going to follow you. Even if cancer comes on kind of fast and you don't know that, you know, when, how you're going to die.

I don't know. He's 87 in the late seventies. Anyway, he knew he was like maybe heading towards retirement. I

Amit: feel like it could have been on a graph. What's the argument against for not naming yourself. I don't know. I mean, it's

Michael: such a like neutral place to, to like celebrate intellectual realism. You know, I feel like we don't have enough of that.

And in American culture, right. Quite the opposite, we live in an anti intellectual culture in Jeopardy's stands in the face of that. And Alex Tribec like embodies that thing. Number one was curiosity. So there's a part of me that feels like, yeah, you have an obligation to find the next person like represents what it means to celebrate intelligence.

You know, what. Yeah, I understand.

Amit: I'd maybe I'm mad at him. Yeah. I think, well, you are. And maybe if he knew you were mad at him and he knew that you times several million people could potentially be mad at him for it. That could be a

Michael: regret. All right. Next category. Good dreams. Bedrooms. Does this person have a haunted look in the eyes?

There's something that suggests turmoil inner demons or unresolved

Amit: trauma. Absolutely. The man was like a life-long insomniac. Yeah. And that doesn't come out of nowhere. I don't think that's completely, I mean, maybe it can be completely genetic, so there's a lot of speculation. A lot of unanswered questions and insomnia is miserable.

Yes. I have experienced it in bouts. It is miserable. So I'm saying horrible dreams. I

Michael: agree. But I want to talk about this. Look in the eye.

Amit: Okay. I see something. You do. I, I do. I don't know

Michael: what it is. It may be. It's a little bit of the condescending. This that comes when a contestant gives the wrong answer.

There's a little bit of like sharpness there. I don't think the guy is nasty necessarily, but Pisces something here.

Amit: I see something. But it's interesting. Cause I said in my Malcovich moment that he had this ability just at a time to turn on the eyes and let you spill out the rest of the answer. But what you're saying is just the constant look.

I mean, there may have

Michael: been something there. Parents did split at a young age. His father was an alcoholic. It sounds like. I think that there's a lot of self-determination in his story. I think that there's also this reserved quality, but yeah man, I don't know what it is. It's not a strong one. It is a slight bad dreams if you remove the insomnia from it.

But yeah, I see something here. Yeah. I

Amit: wonder if it's like there's so much knowledge and so much disparate knowledge. Going through his head by reading all these clues every day. So write 10 episodes over two days, whereas 8,000 over the course of time. So all this knowledge and all of these facts, they all pass through.

I mean, he said that he could typically answer about two thirds of them. Right. But I don't know. You just know this many facts. I wonder if your brain just starts to move into directions of looking for patterns, where patterns aren't there. And it's hard to turn off your mind with that much knowledge in just all across the board.

But do you see the two or do you see the look I need to look at I didn't, but I I'll take a closer look. All right then. But I did see the insomnia and to me, like that's horrible dreams. That was that's horrible dreams. Cause it is like, if you don't fall asleep well, and insomnia dreams are bad. Typically

Michael: the second to last category, cocktail, coffee or cannabis, this is where we ask which one would we most want to do with our dead celebrity?

It's maybe a question of what kind of drugs sounds like the most fun or another philosophy is that. A particular kind of drug might allow us access to a part of them that we're most curious about Amit. What do you have

Amit: cannabis? And I'll tell you why. So I don't think there's a lot of access problems with Tribeca because as they say, like, as soon as the show was an Aaron, he was self-deprecating he was making jokes.

He was cussing, as you said, I don't think it takes that much to get access to the other part. What I'm saying is though what I said about the insomnia that maybe it's just all this knowledge and this like pattern seeking and stuff that he just overdosed on it with some cannabis, he may be able to put it together.

And I don't, I'm not saying that's my role with him, but with as much knowledge that is stored inside of him, I want to kind of get his, like, you've all heard RAs history of the world through Alex Trebek,

Michael: author of sapiens. Yes.

Amit: Yeah. I kind of want to know how TCS, how we got to this point and.

Michael: I mean, do you consider him an intellectual or is he just promoting intellectual ism?

Because I think there's no question he's doing that. This is

Amit: beyond trivia. I think that's something that's debated and that's like in, you know, the SNL impersonation, I think he is. Yeah. I think he is. And I think you can become an intellectual, right? It's not necessarily that a nature thing. And I just think by the nature of his job in order to do it as well as he did, he became an intellectual.

Michael: Yeah, it's good. I like that answer. Shall I go? Yes. So usually when I sense intelligence, I go coffee because I want to learn from people, but I actually went cocktail here for a couple reasons. One is that I think the sense of humor is there. Actually I want to hang out and have a drink and laugh with them, not smoke a joint, but actually like have a drink and laugh and that kind of like light buzz and kind of way.

But I also do still have some real questions about like, I want to get inside a little bit. And my mechanism for that usually is a drink and I Steph drank and I think it'd probably be like a whiskey sour or something, maybe discussion soda. It should be a little bit classy. Cause he's adaptive. Yeah. I have my suspicions about what's really going on inside and I, I, you know, I, for what it's worth, I admire his boundaries in terms of how much he did and did not let the public in.

I think the man is, comes across incredibly balanced. I think it's something very admirable about him, but everybody's got a secret insight somewhere and I'd like to find out what his are. It is. I assume there's more than one I said are,

Amit: yes. I want to say something about the way you led off with, which was the humor.

So some of the things when they went to commercial break and all Tribec used to talk to the audience and they would throw questions at them and a lot more repeat, but I read some of the funnier things that he said that often he was asked, how do you prepare for each. And he had an answer. He used to like to give what he'd say I drink it's all right.

Yeah. And then it asks, who should succeed you as host. And he said, Betty White.

Michael: Yeah. I saw that. I saw that one of my favorite ones. Somebody said, uh, boxers or briefs and he paused and said, thought I would come in with that soon. It's just great. Well, shit. All right. I think we're here. The VanDerBeek named after James VanDerBeek, who famously said in varsity blues.

Amit: I don't want

Michael: your life Amit based on everything we've talked about, Alex tra Beck's life. Do you want to,

Amit: I don't like the insomnia that's ox. Yeah. I don't like dying from pancreatic cancer, but it sounds like he managed that as lucky as you can, given the horror of that illness where I kind of struggled a little bit though, is the meaning of what's at all for.

But I think I landed on it. And I think what we kind of talked about with knowledge, you know, putting intellectual ism out into an accessible part of the world and make it entertaining. I think there's tremendous virtue in that, you know, you just think about being a game shows what I want to be a game show host and that's my life's work.

I mean, I don't think so, but I don't think he was that I think he was a purveyor of knowledge and one who celebrated it and made it entertaining and accessible. You know, when we first met, do you remember who I worked for? You're a Wikipedia at the time. Yes. At the Wikimedia foundation that manages Wikipedia also synonymous with knowledge, but somehow being cool, you know, and that's kind of what Tribeca was, you know, you said we're gravitating towards the anti-intellectualism.

Yes. He didn't. He made it entertaining. He made it constant and broadly appealing. And I think there's meaning that, uh, that everything we said about the family sounds great. There's no visible analysts or negative things. I didn't hear a lot about the friendships. There's a little concern about, you know, maybe he announced.

Separated, but all of it together. Yes. I want your life, Alex,

Michael: Rebecca. I mean, that's basically where I'm at. I mean, I do think the family life is good. I do want to see grandkids. I do, but that's icing on the top. I think that the thing that I came out of the gate with curiosity, both a promoter of it and an embodiment of it.

And sometimes I feel like the answer to all life's problems is captured in that work, that whatever else you're going through at any point in life, When you find and locate a nurture, your inner curiosity, like you are on the right track. That is like the whole fucking ballgame for what life is all about.

I guess there's a little bit of a question in my mind about jeopardy as a representation of intellectual realism, the relationship between trivial knowledge and true knowledge, right? Wisdom. Even not just information, but listen, wisdom is a good word. Yeah. I think jeopardy comes as close to anything as promoting that and in an almost subversive way, because it is built around this very tight structure of we're going to bang through these questions really fast.

And there's a dramatic arc from jeopardy to double jeopardy to final jeopardy. And I think that what it means to host anything is. I heard IRA glass say this once it's, you know, you're throwing a party to host is to throw a party. And I think he's throwing a party. Maybe they'll find somebody else to take the helm.

And maybe that person will have resonance with a mass audience. I wouldn't be surprised though, if this game show dies in the next few years, because, because he just did it so goddamn. Well, I was a pretty strong guest, even though I was trying to hold myself back. I don't even really see the case for the, no, I guess the biggest case for the no on the VanDerBeek here is that I don't want to be

Amit: smug, you know, received a smug even.

Correct.

Michael: And I think that's why the second thing I love about him is that he said, fuck

Amit: a lot. Cause he wanted to make sure people knew that God

Michael: damn right. You know, like I it's, so hell yeah. I want this life. I mean, I think a resounding yes, I want your life. Oh, extra buck.

Amit: You can't into lover. You my plasma.

Michael: This is the Canada

Amit: thing. So who's going to take us out. Oh, I kind of want to see you do it. Do you think he can do it? Yeah. Okay. So Michael you've arrived at the pearly gates. You are Alex Trubek. You are meeting St. Peter, the proxy for the Unitarian afterlife, make your case.

Michael: And I don't have to do this in the form of a question.

Saint Peter, Alex here, who, by the way, I am a lifelong Catholic. I'd like to keep this as simple as possible. What I'm known for, what I did with my life was I was lifelong learner. I started at a very young age and it carried through into adulthood. Then eventually I was given an opportunity to host a show.

The point of it was. To demonstrate the breadth of knowledge that humankind has discovered and is exploring. I was there to help people see what it looks like and what it feels like to be smart and to strive to be smarter. And that is a great thing. Being curious and leading a life of exploration in whatever knowledge domain it may be is enriching.

It's empowering. And it may be the whole reason that we're here. And I was there to promote that both in who I was as a man. Who I was in my family, who I was on television for 37 years. I tried to do it with grace. I tried to do a humor and I tried to do it with humility. And for that, please Imam

thanks so much for listening to this episode of famous and gravy. If you're enjoying our show, please go to apple podcasts to rate and review us. It really does help new listeners to find the show. We would love to see you on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is at famous and gravy. We've got lots of fun stuff there on our Twitter feed.

Also, please sign up for our newsletter on our website, famous and gravy.com famous and gravy was created by and me Michael Osborne. This episode was produced by Morgan Hanukkah, original theme music by Kevin Strang. And thanks also to our sponsor. Half-price. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next.