Ken Jennings > Quotes

“Trivia is mainstream. 'Nerd' is the new 'cool.”
― Ken Jennings

“After all, we're currently living in a Bizarro society where teenagers are technology-obsessed, where the biggest sellers in every bookstores are fantasy novels about a boy wizard, and the blockbuster hit movies are all full of hobbits and elves or 1960s spandex superheroes. You don't have to go to a Star Trek convention to find geeks anymore. Today, almost everyone is an obsessive, well-informed aficionado of something. Pick your cult: there are food geeks and fashion geeks and Desperate Housewives geeks and David Mamet geeks and fantasy sports geeks. The list is endless. And since everyone today is some kind of trivia geek or other, there's not even a stigma anymore. Trivia is mainstream. "Nerd" is the new "cool.”
― Ken Jennings, Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“The decline of geography in academia is easy to understand: we live in an age of ever-increasing specialization, and geography is a generalist's discipline. Imagine the poor geographer trying to explain to someone at a campus cocktail party (or even to an unsympathetic adminitrator) exactly what it is he or she studies.
"Geography is Greek for 'writing about the earth.' We study the Earth."
"Right, like geologists."
"Well, yes, but we're interested in the whole world, not just the rocky bits. Geographers also study oceans, lakes, the water cycle..."
"So, it's like oceanography or hydrology."
"And the atmosphere."
"Meteorology, climatology..."
"It's broader than just physical geography. We're also interested in how humans relate to their planet."
"How is that different from ecology or environmental science?"
"Well, it encompasses them. Aspects of them. But we also study the social and economic and cultural and geopolitical sides of--"
"Sociology, economics, cultural studies, poli sci."
"Some geographers specialize in different world regions."
"Ah, right, we have Asian and African and Latin American studies programs here. But I didn't know they were part of the geography department."
"They're not."
(Long pause.)
"So, uh, what is it that do study then?”
― Ken Jennings

“Eratosthenes, the mapmaker who was the first man to accurately measure the size of the Earth, was a librarian.”
― Ken Jennings, Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks

“Borders may divide us, but, paradoxically, they're also the places where we're nearest to one another.”
― Ken Jennings, Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks

“I always feel a certain sense of reverence in libraries, even small city ones that smell like homeless internet users.”
― Ken Jennings, Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks

“The great thing about knowing stuff is that anyone can do it.”
― Ken Jennings, Greek Mythology

“The real cocktail party conversation would probably go something like this:
"Actually, I have a degree in geography."
"Geography? Wow, I'm terrible with maps. I bet YOU know all your state capitals, though!"
(Geographer's smile freezes, left eye starts to twitch uncontrollably.)”
― Ken Jennings

“There must be something innate about maps, about this one specific way of picturing our world and our relation to it, that charms us, calls to us, won’t let us look anywhere else in the room if there’s a map on the wall.”
― Ken Jennings

“Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, has argued that geography seems less relevant than ever in a world where nonstate actors -- malleable entities like ethnicities, for example -- are as powerful and important as the ones with governments and borders. Where on a map can you point to al-Qaeda? Or Google, or Wal-Mart? Everywhere and nowhere.”
― Ken Jennings, Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks

“In general your brain stretches out time when there's a lot going on. That's why time seems to pass more slowly in childhood than it does in adulthood—because kids are doing so many new things for the first time. If you want to have a longer-seeming life, that's the secret...Keep trying lots of new things, and enjoy each moment!”
― Ken Jennings, The Human Body

“In his book Why Geography Matters, the geographer Harm de Blij argues that the West’s three great challenges of our time—Islamist terrorism, global warming, and the rise of China—are all problems of geography. An informed citizenry has to understand place, not because place is more important than other kinds of knowledge but because it forms the foundation for so much other knowledge.”
― Ken Jennings, Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks

“Trivia, as I’ve said before, shouldn’t really be called “trivia.” Facts about history, geography, books, movies, music—this is the stuff that used to be called good old-fashioned “general knowledge,” the stuff that everybody was supposed to remember from school, regardless of their career niche. We lost something the more we specialized—it started to drain away this vast pool of information that everybody knew. Knowledge was what connected us, and now it distinguishes us.”
― Ken Jennings, Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“In this country, we were not into detail. Europe developed detail.” “Why do you think that is?” “Weather. The whole history of England consists of finding things to do out of the weather. Which tells you why Russia was even worse. That’s why Russian novels have 182 characters: bad weather.”
― Ken Jennings, Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“I pick up Dylan. He certainly takes after his father: about three-quarters of his body weight seems to be head, and three-quarters of that is ears.”
― Ken Jennings, Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“Many cases of twentieth-century American map geekdom, it seems, began the same way that many twentieth-century Americans began: conceived in the backseats of Buicks”
― Ken Jennings

“What are those bulb things you're slicing?"
"You've never seen fennel? It looks like celery and tastes like licorice.”
― Ken Jennings, Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“There were two problems with this idea. First, it led to crappy “virtual reality” movies like Virtuosity and The Lawnmower Man. And second, in the long run, it turned out to be totally wrong.”
― Ken Jennings, Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks

“Something can be important without being serious.”
― Ken Jennings, Planet Funny: How Comedy Took Over Our Culture

“(Trunk-or-treating, for those who don’t know, is just like trick-or-treating, except with cars instead of houses, lame decorations instead of awesome ones, and no fun instead of fun.)”
― Ken Jennings, Because I Said So!: The Truth Behind the Myths, Tales, and Warnings Every Generation Passes Down to Its Kids

“To be rooted,” wrote Simone Weil, “is perhaps the most important and the least recognized need of the human soul.”
― Ken Jennings, Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks

“Every day we forget stories. I saw a funny video about a cat on the Internet this morning, but when I tried to tell a friend about it, I suddenly had no idea how it ended.”
― Ken Jennings, Greek Mythology

“I feel about Flannery O'Connor the same way that terrible people feel about Ayn Rand.”
― Ken Jennings

“Many Indigenous cultures have no tradition of judgment in the afterlife at all. It stands to reason that the spirits didn’t reward or punish everyone perfectly in this life, so why should they start now?”
― Ken Jennings, 100 Places to See After You Die: A Travel Guide to the Afterlife

“So maybe we never would have realized we were so compatible if we hadn't been trading song lyrics and movie dialogue. That's textbook trivia right there."
Mindy looks unconvinced. "But that's how *everybody* gets together. They find some dumb thing they both know a little about that they can talk about until the waiter brings dinner. According to you, there probably isn't a marriage or a relationship or a friendship anywhere today that wasn't jump-started by trivia."
"I think that's exactly right," I agree. "To trivia.”
― Ken Jennings, Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“As a kid, I always assumed the know-it-alls on Jeopardy! were obviously the smartest people in America. If you were smart, that's how you showed it: by knowing all your state flowers and kings of Saxony. But what if Rob's right and that's a different, much shallower kind of intelligence? Is my mountain of flash cards all for naught?”
― Ken Jennings, Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“If you never open a map until you're lost, you're missing out on all the fun.”
― Ken Jennings, Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks

“...there probably isn't a marriage or a relationship or a friendship anywhere today that wasn't jump-started by trivia.”
― Ken Jennings, Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“Your butt may like to sit, but your butt is not the boss of you! Say no to your butt.”
― Ken Jennings, The Human Body

“The commercial break before Final Jeopardy is usually the only time that the show stops tape. You’re given as long as you want to do the math required to make your wager.”
― Ken Jennings, Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs