FRANKLIN ALLAIRE is a PhD student in Educational Foundations in the College of Education at the University of Hawai‘i at M
noa. His interests include science education, identity theory and salience, and post-structural relationships between ontology and epistemology. In his spare time he enjoys running, photography, and stunning friends, students and colleagues alike into silence with annoyingly useless trivia and (occasionally made up) facts. Never a contestant on Jeopardy!, Franklin looks forward to the day when he’ll be able to wear his costume that won him second prize in an Alex Trebek look-alike contest in a battle of wits with other Jeopardy! and Philosophy authors.
ROBERT ARP has interests in Philosophy and Pop Culture and ontology in the information-science sense. He is the author or editor of numerous books, book chapters, and articles in these realms. See his website at: robertarp.webs.com. Why in the F does it have to be Jeopardy! with an exclamation point, instead of simple, Jeopardy? Not with the question mark, of course . . . that’s just part of my question.
You: “Sorites Biographies for $200.” Alex: “This university, founded in 1869 as a normal school is currently in the middle of nowhere.” You: “Er, umm, what is Southern Illinois University Carbondale?” Alex: Correct. You: “Sorites Biographies for $400.” Alex: “This obscure American academic doesn’t subscribe to cable, has no satellite dish, and lives in the middle of nowhere, where he writes semi-philosophical literature obsessively.” You: “Er, umm, who is RANDALL AUXIER?” Alex: “I’m sorry, that is incorrect. The right question is ‘Who is no one you’d care to read about?’”
JOSEPH J. FOY is the Associate Dean of the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha, and member of the political science department of the University of Wisconsin Colleges. He is the editor of Homer Simpson Goes to Washington: American Politics through Popular Culture and SpongeBob SquarePants and Philosophy: Soaking Up Secrets Under the Sea! Foy is also the co-editor of Homer Simpson Marches on Washington: Dissent through American Popular Culture and a forthcoming collection on political philosophy contained in movies, television, music, and consumer culture. He has contributed chapters in collections on The Hunger Games, True Blood, Star Trek, The X-Files, the music of the Rolling Stones, and the creative works of Joss Whedon, Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams and Ang Lee. Foy can also say with absolute confidence that Archibald Leach, Bernard Schwartz, and Lucille LeSueur have never been in his kitchen.
In 2004, KEN JENNINGS was an anonymous software engineer from Salt Lake City, Utah, when he notched up seventy-four consecutive Jeopardy! wins, still an American game show record. Since then, he has written four books: Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs; Ken Jennings’s Trivia Almanac: 8,888 Questions in 365 Days; Maphead: Charting the Weird, Wide World of Geography Wonks; and Because I Said So!: The Truth Behind the Myths, Tales, and Warnings Every Generation Passes Down to Its Kids. He lives in Seattle with his family.
MATT KOHLSTEDT is completing his PhD in American Studies at The George Washington University. In 2009, he won five games of Jeopardy! and was a semifinalist in that year’s Tournament of Champions. He would like to assure his current and former teachers that he knows how many articles are in the US Constitution. And, since everyone asks, no, he didn’t get to hang out with Alex, but he did seem like a good dude during their limited interactions. (He’s also glad to hear Alex is back at work after his heart attack.) Having not done so on the show itself, Matt would like to credit his parents and grandparents for their help and inspiration. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife, dog, and, as of August 2012, his first child (and 2029 Teen Tournament sensation).
RICK MAYOCK drives by the Jeopardy! studio at Sony Pictures every day on his way to work at West LA College, which reminds him to prepare his philosophy lecture in the form of a question. He’s a frequent contributor to volumes on philosophy and popular culture, including The Beatles and Philosophy: Nothing You Can Think that Can’t Be Thunk, The Rolling Stones and Philosophy: It’s Just a Thought Away, and The Catcher in the Rye and Philosophy: A Book for Bastards, Morons, and Madmen.
Being a long time professor of Classical and Medieval Rhetoric at UC Berkeley has thoroughly prepared DANIEL MELIA to answer in the form of a question. Socrates does little else, and encouraging students to construct legitimate Aristotelian syllogisms requires constant answers formed as questions (“What is an undistributed middle term?”) With a second professorial hat in Celtic Studies, information about historical linguistics (“Those Darned Etruscans”), Celtic languages, Gaul, Rome, and other ancient and modern cultures has to fit into his head as well. Undergraduate studies in the Victorian period, and pre-med courses have also left their residue of trivia, although a significant portion of everything he knows was acquired in the 1960s at the Phillips Exeter Academy. A strong amateur interest in strong drink (he sponsors a student-led course on the history of scotch whisky) helps with “Potent Potables” and an intermittent career as a volunteer supernumerary (“spear carrier”) at the San Francisco Opera would have helped had he ever had a shot at the “Dreaded Opera Category.” He and his wife, Dara Hellman, who were married on the Jeopardy! set, live in Berkeley with their two toy poodles. His son, who first encouraged him to try out for the show, is a Navy veteran and student who lives in New Orleans.
NICOLAS MICHAUD teaches philosophy in Jacksonville, Florida. He has a particular love for the study of Machine Intelligence and has taught numerous courses on the subject. However, it was not until the computer program, “Watson,” kicked humanity’s butt on Jeopardy! that Nick realized the robot apocalypse is nigh. In order to prepare for this event, he suggests buying lots and lots of cookies . . . because 1. our robot overlords will have no use for them, and 2. cookies make everything better.
GEORGE REISCH is the series editor of the Popular Culture and Philosophy series. He teaches philosophy and intellectual history in Northwestern University’s School of Continuing Studies and researches the history of philosophy of science in the cold war.
TIMOTHY SEXTON was named Associated Content’s (now Yahoo! Contributor Network) inaugural Writer of the Year just four years after earning his BA in English from the University of West Florida. He currently writes two daily columns for Yahoo! Movies and regularly contributes on a variety of topics and subjects related to entertainment. He is the author of two novels and a chapter in Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy: The Footprints of a Gigantic Mind. His ambition is not to one day become a Jeopardy! contestant, but to become a Final Jeopardy! clue. Hopefully, not in the category of Notorious.
BRENDAN SHEA recently graduated from the University of Illinois with a PhD in Philosophy and is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Winona State University. He works on the philosophy of science, logic and inductive reasoning, and the history of philosophy. As a Jeopardy! contestant, he would try to avoid State Capitals (unless it’s just the Midwestern ones, in which case he might be okay) and Opera.
ELLEN SORG is a lover of Jeopardy! who never (or rarely) misses an episode, and she adores Ken Jennings. She spends her days as the Chair of a large English Department in northwest Ohio. Ellen received her Master of Arts in Literary and Textual Studies, and she is kept busy with her ongoing writing and research projects.
DANIEL WANLESS is currently pursuing his PhD in Philosophy at the State University of New York at Albany. He has worked as a Lecturer in Philosophy at Dominican College and as an Adjunct Professor at Berkeley College. He has also spent time as a Visiting Scholar at the Hong Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College. In real life he answers in the form of a question and questions in the form of an answer.
SHAUN P. YOUNG is the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Manager for the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Toronto. He has a doctorate in political science and has taught at the University of Toronto Scarborough, Carleton University, York University, Brock University, and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. His research interests focus on issues of justice in multicultural societies, and he is the author or editor of four books and fourteen essays in peer-reviewed journals. Given their similar backgrounds (Canadian, studied philosophy at university, born in Ontario, . . .), Shaun continues to search for the six degrees of separation between him and Alex Trebek.