My Being on a National TV Quiz Show!

A brief version of what happened

{One of my life’s adages is “variety is the spice of life.” Several people wrote me privately and said that they enjoyed my personal story about the fire at my house. They suggested that it would be good to periodically intersperse some lighter fare in my heavy-duty commentaries about education, energy, election integrity, etc. Consider this to be in response to those requests and my adage. If you like, I have several more stories that are interesting…}

Following the success of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, other networks soon offered competing game shows. For whatever reason, when I saw an ad that Twenty-One (NBC) was looking for contestants, I sent in a basic response saying I’d be interested — and then forgot about it. Who ever hears back from such things?

Anyways, it was a cold dark January night in 2000, and we were snug in our Adirondack home — when the phone rang. The person on the other end asked me if I was still interested in applying for the Twenty-One game show. I was caught a bit off guard (not expecting to hear back), and asked him: what’s the story?

He said that I would be asked several questions and if I passed, I would come to NY City this coming Saturday for a final test. I asked if lodging, etc. would be paid for and he said no. It was Wednesday night, and that seemed like a rather short time to work out such a trip (six hours from where we were). I thanked him and said no. He said OK.

After he hung up I discussed it with Elaine. She said even though it was short notice, we could have worked it out. After thinking about it more, I agreed. Oh well.

About 30 minutes later (about 9 PM) I received a second call, again asking me if I was still interested in applying for the Twenty-One game show! {Something strange is going on here…} This time I said YES!

The guy said OK, there are a dozen questions I’m going to ask you, and if you pass, you’ll come to NYC this Saturday for a final test. I told him to go for it. He then asked some rather difficult questions — like “What is the largest lake in Europe?” {answer} I gave my answers. At the end, he said: Congratulations John, you passed! … Then he gave me the details for the testing for the upcoming weekend.

To this day I have no idea as to why they called me twice! One guess is that two people were making calls and my name was on two lists. But how did that happen? A better explanation is that God wanted us to take a break and He was making sure that we did!

The next few days were a rush. We made reservations at a NYC hotel (not cheap!), closed up our home, and on Friday afternoon drove to the City. We got there and unpacked, and Elaine said let’s go for a walk. She wanted to see the skaters, etc. at the Rockefeller Center, which was a few blocks away. I said fine.

About halfway there, we heard “Elaine! Elaine!” What? A woman ran across the busy NYC street towards us — she was a neighbor in our rural Adirondack community! I noticed that she looked kind of ragged, and she volunteered: When I went out for a walk I decided it didn’t matter much what I wore as I certainly wasn’t going to see anyone I knew! Fortunately, the rest of the evening was interesting but uneventful.

The next morning I went to the NBC studios at about 10 AM. There were 50+ people in this large room. A woman then went through the whole process and answered questions. Yes, they will pay for transportation and lodging to LA for two people. However, no relative of yours could be in the audience when you were on the air. Etc., etc.

She also asked how many people there had been on a national TV game show before. Almost ten people raised their hands! Whoa — some of these people were effectively professional players. I hadn’t expected that…

After an hour or so, we went into another room and were each given a ten-page document of test questions. In the beginning, there was some boilerplate about the program, NBC, etc. Then I read: “Please indicate if you are now, or ever were, an employee of GE, as that disqualifies you.” (FYI: at that time GE owned NBC.)

OMG! I was an employee of GE twenty-plus years ago, but no one had ever said a word about this until now! What a bummer after all that. I answered the questions anyway, but never heard anything more. The next day we went home and resumed our normal programming. It was an interesting side trip.

The moral of this story is: dress carefully, as you never know who you might run into.

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Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:

Check out the Archives of this Critical Thinking substack.

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2023 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time - but why would you?

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