Buzzy Cohen | A Jeopardy! Champion's Guide to Preparing for the Moments that Matter
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Welcome to the Talks at Google podcast, where great minds meet. I'm Emma, bringing you this episode with Jeopardy! champion and author, Buzzy Cohen. Talks at Google brings the world's most influential thinkers, creators, makers, and doers all to one place. You can watch every episode at youtube.com slash talks at Google. Tens of thousands of people take the online qualification exam for Jeopardy! every year.

But only 0.4% of hopefuls will appear on the show. But even after a nine-game winning streak and a victory in the Tournament of Champions, fan favorite Buzzy Cohen maintains that he wasn't actually the smartest contestant in the bunch. He just trained smarter than his competitors. Buzzy adopted quirky strategies and obsessive techniques, from wearing suits every day to studying while hanging from a chin-up bar.

Once he realized how much could be accomplished with great preparation, he became a prep fanatic, testing his theories on everything from deadlifting to tap dancing. Buzzy joins Google to discuss his Audible original book, "Get Ready: A Champion's Guide to Preparing for the Moments That Matter." He reveals the eccentric yet effective training method he developed to prepare for the show and empowers listeners to apply these techniques to train for their own challenges.

Originally published in August 2020, here is Buzzy Cohen, a champion's guide to the moments that matter. Hi, Buzzy. It's nice to be here. So glad you're here. So the way this is going to work is I'm going to give you clues and you're going to answer them. Yeah, I'm used to that. Yeah, I thought that would be the best way to do this.

Let's start with your time on Jeopardy before we get into the book. Sure. Because that's really interesting, you know, and just so people can get to know you a little bit. Fuzzy, you were a fan favorite. You were once described, my favorite word that they used to describe you was impotent. Your antics were a bit polarizing. You actually got a lot of media attention. Yeah. People loved you. They said you had a polished, pinch-faced good look. You were slammed for your brainy swagger. But, you know, standing out

out from the end, other contestants always one of the goals other than winning Jeopardy? My goal was to have as much fun as possible. Jeopardy is one of those situations where you can only be on the show once, you know, so I went out there and every time I stepped out on stage, I was prepared for it to be my last time on stage. And so it wasn't so much about standing out, but just enjoying it as much as I could. And, you know,

trying to squeeze as much out of that experience as possible. And so initially, my first goal really was to buzz in, have Alex Trebek say my name and give a correct answer. That was the bar. So after that, everything was gravy. And, you know, once I had a couple wins, I started doing kind of fun intros and

mostly so that we could turn them into gifts, me and my friends later. And then, you know, it just kind of snowballed from there. I think I have myself some personality and I've got a kind of a distinctive look. And I think people really, you know, had fun with that and had fun teasing me as well about it, which I was totally okay with.

Well, now you're a celebrity. I mean, one of my favorite things that you did was you actually trolled Trebek a little bit with your SNL homage. So, you know, you would say things in Final Jeopardy like, what is see you tomorrow, Trebek? So when you were doing that, were you actually sort of weighing the money on the table versus being able to seize that moment? So, yeah.

What people don't really realize about Jeopardy is how grueling the schedule is. They tape five shows in one day and sometimes to like finish out a season early or something like that, they'll do even six shows in a day. If you're a returning champion, that means you are taping five shows on your feet, you know, show after show after show and really having to be on and attentive and engaged. It's not just like watching five Jeopardy shows in a row.

And so for me, when I had those runaway games where I didn't have to bet a dollar and I knew I would win, I bet zero to give myself a little bit more of a break. You know, here's some time where I don't have to use my brain. I don't have to stress about knowing the answer. And so initially I just bet zero just to take that break. And then I was like, I got to write something. And so I

I just thought of something kind of fun to say. And the see you tomorrow, Trebek, was kind of a joke because I knew I would have to run backstage. I'd have 10 minutes to get changed and I would be back. And tomorrow was really, you know, less than a half an hour later. And so it really came from that. And then I just sort of kept going with it.

Cool. Let's talk about some of, you know, your astounding comebacks because, okay, we just talked about you being way in the lead and being able to bet zero, but there were a couple of times, I mean, I was really holding my breath. So what did you mentally have to do to dig yourself out of that kind of hole?

Yeah, I mean, the kind of infamous comeback was in the second game of the finals for the Tournament of Champions. I finished the first day with zero dollars. I had a tough first game and decided to just bet it all on a final Jeopardy that I missed. My other opponents missed it too, but they ended up with some money in the bank. So I kind of went out into that second game and just said, like I kind of just said, this is my last time on this stage.

I'm going to enjoy it. I'm going to have fun. I'm going to play my best. And I think really what it involved was staying in the game that I was in and not worrying about what had happened before. And that allowed me to kind of take a lead in the double Jeopardy round of that game. And then when the Daily Double came up,

I had really prepared myself to be able to seize that moment and make the big bet of making it a true daily double when I had to. And it wasn't about, you know,

oh, I need to make this comeback. It was like, that's the right move to make here. And I didn't hesitate. And I think a lot of people get gun shy. You know, you make a big bet, it doesn't pay off. And you kind of don't want to do that, make that mistake again. And I'd really prepared that when you're in the situation, you know what to do, you make the bet. And then

not only did it allow me to be in the position to win, but it also made my opponents play a little more aggressively than they may have, which worked in my favor too, because they made a couple of mistakes that allowed me to ultimately win. So it was both like,

catapulting myself up and also making everyone else play catch up, which was really those two things combined is what got me that tournament of champions win. And that's great. I'm glad that you already started to talk about preparedness because that's what we're going to talk about today. But before we get dive into that, I think people

I think people are always curious, you know, what, what is your relationship like with your back and the other players, especially like a Ken Jennings. He was interviewed for this book. I think like, does it become like a club? Are you going to check? Yeah.

So there's definitely camaraderie among the other players. Some of us keep in touch like Austin Rogers and Alan Lynn, who I was in the finals with for that tournament of champions. We keep in touch a lot. I see them when I'm in L.A. They you know, when I go to New York, I try to see Austin and.

Other people like Jason Sterlake, who was in my Tournament of Champions, we keep in touch. There's a big community on Twitter that kind of all talks about what's going on with the show. Other players I met in that All-Stars tournament, which was great. I mean, Ken, Brad, these are people that I really admire. And Ken and I have sort of kept in touch. And I see Brad, he lives in LA, so we do pub trivia together sometimes. Dangerous.

Yeah, I mean, we we there's a pub trivia in L.A. that's kind of notorious as being the hardest pub trivia in the country. And there's a bunch of former Jeopardy people that go there. So that's another great way that we all kind of keep in touch. And there are other trivia events that we we all kind of attend and mix up teams and want to play with each other. And, yeah, it's a great community in terms of Trebek because of.

his status both as a producer and the host of the show, our interactions with him are extremely limited for legal reasons. Those of you who have seen the movie Quid Show know that there was a big scandal in the 50s about players being given answers or questions being written with the knowledge that these players knew the answers. So

Game shows are are federally regulated endeavor. And so there's all these compliance and legal people. So what I always tell people is the interaction that you see on TV is basically the amount of interaction we have with Alex Trebek. You know, during the commercial breaks of the taping, he tends to talk to the audience and take their questions directly.

Sometimes we'll have a little chat with him after the show, you know, which you see during when the credits roll. That's kind of the extent I've gone to a couple of tapings just to see, you know, to attend. And he'll often say hi to me. Obviously, he kind of remembers me from from my appearances. But yeah.

Beyond that, I don't have much of a relationship with him. So just as a follow up, you had said that it used to be rumored that they would give contestants like all the questions before to study or the answer. That is not true, right? No, no, they don't give you anything. They they cannot give you anything and they do not give you anything.

So when you are up on stage, when Trebek starts reading out those categories, that's when you know what you're going to have to deal with. So sometimes you'll see the players kind of take a little breath and a pause to kind of say, oh, OK, this is what I'm going to be dealing with. There's no study materials. It's a vicious rumor that I have made my personal goal to eliminate. But really, I mean, when you watch the show, those people know that stuff. They know that on their own.

Wow. Is there a category that you particularly like to see or don't like to see? Like, are there any favorites? I really like the before and after style categories. So I haven't had a pure before and after, but I have had...

uh, governmental before and after. So that was pretty fun. Um, so, uh, but the stuff that I don't, I'm not a huge sports guy. Uh, so sometimes the sports categories are a little tough for me, but I do okay in those, um, the wordplay stuff, you know, anagrams or other kinds of, you know, word puzzle-y kind of things. That's not really my background in trivia. Um, people who come from, uh,

more like cross-wording and stuff like that are really good at that. Ken Jennings is an example of someone who is really untouchable on wordplay. And you saw that in the, um, goat tournament, which I got to go to the taping of when you look at someone like Ken compared with someone like James, both have incredible trivia knowledge, but Ken is really superior when it comes to the wordplay stuff. Hmm. Interesting. So, okay. Let's talk about the book a little. Great. Um,

So Audible is doing production now. This is an Audible original and it is an audio book and you, you read it to us, which I love your voice. It's great. But I'm just curious, like, was it a really grueling process to, to write a book that you knew was going to be read versus writing a book that, you know, read aloud versus writing a regular sort of reading book?

So I actually, it was interesting when I wrote the first couple chapters, I submitted them to my editor and she was like, she gave me really great feedback. And she said, you're writing this as a print book.

and people use audio books differently. They engage with them differently. So in a print book, for example, you would introduce an anecdote, you'd analyze it, you'd go into the theory, and then maybe return to the anecdote and go into it a little more. That works in a print book because if the person's sort of lost, you can flip back a few pages and remind yourself, oh, right, this was the anecdote that we were talking about.

People don't really use audiobooks that same way. So I had to kind of create more like compartmentalize the anecdote versus analysis stuff. And that was a really helpful piece of feedback and allowed me to kind of continue the rest of the audiobook with that in mind. And the other thing was that

I actually, as I got into the fact that this was going to be my voice and not printed in black and white, I think the writing got better. And I integrated a lot of that kind of voice aspect into the revision phase of the first couple of chapters.

It helped me make it more fun, I think. And it also helped me be a little more free to share this as my experience, the things I've learned, the things that I learned in interviewing the people that I interviewed and less like, oh, I am the authority, which sometimes you write a book, it's printed in black and white and you feel like you have to be the authority on something.

And having it be my voice sharing, it was more like a conversation with the reader and a chance to encourage them to try out some of this stuff, examine what they're doing in these particular ways. And I felt a lot of liberation in doing that.

The actual recording was incredibly grueling. And so I would, I prepared, you know, using the methods that I talked about in the book, but it was still very hard. And, you know, I would finish around four or five o'clock every day and I would really like crash out. Like I was, I was out of gas. It was very similar to,

recording Jeopardy, you know, you're really engaged. Even if we're working long days, there are more passive aspects of our day, right? Where we're reading something or sort of thinking through a problem or organizing things.

And having a full day of really engaged, focused effort is not something where most of us are used to. And so when you experience those, they can really knock the wind out of you. So I did a lot of preparation for that, just as I did for the show. We're going to see how many times we can say preparation during this interview.

If somebody else was going to read your book instead of you, did you have any ideas or thoughts on who you would have liked to have heard read your book? Well, funny enough, I got pneumonia, non-COVID, old school, boring pneumonia the week before I was supposed to record. And I sent an email to my editor that I was like, it takes me down.

you know, you have my blessing to call Brad Pitt to read this. But I actually think it would be fun if like Jeff Goldblum or someone like that read it. Just, you know, someone who,

in their own way has also a kind of quirky sensibility. Yeah. Version two. Yeah. So maybe you can give everyone just a little bit of an insight into how most people prepare for jeopardy and then maybe how your preparation was a little bit different. Right. So most people prepare the conventional wisdom or whatever is you watch the show, you hold a ballpoint pen, you practice buzzing in and shouting out the answer.

And that is almost really good advice. It helps a lot of stuff. It helps you work on your reaction time. You get used to the cadence of Alex Trebek's voice, which is a very important part of the buzzer timing aspect of the show. And you also get used to

the material that Jeopardy asks and the way that Jeopardy asks questions. So a trivia question you might encounter in a Trivial Pursuit game in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire at Pub Trivia is going to be phrased really differently from Jeopardy because they try to embed a couple clues in each clue and you sort of start to get the way that they do that. And the way that if they include a certain word, it's probably a little bit of a clue as to what they want you to answer.

So that's sort of helpful. And what I found is that it left me wholly unprepared for the actual experience, you know, playing against my dog at seven or seven 30 at night on the sofa versus being on my feet at 10 AM in the studio under lights against two people who knew as much or more than I did. It was just, you know, night and day. And so, um,

I did a lot of things to try to integrate the internal and external context of the information that I was going to need to know. So what did that mean for me? Well, I would carve out my study time to be at the times of day when the show tapes as opposed to in the evening. Those of us who

have any experience using our brains during the day, which I hope is everybody who's watching this, if you are someone at Google, know that, you know, at 10 a.m., at 1 p.m., at 3 p.m., at 6 p.m., your focus, your attention, your cognitive abilities are really different. And so what I worked on doing was really training myself in that cognitive context and

And seeing when I was sharper, when I was maybe a little more dull and working those times to try to just make myself as consistent as possible. The other thing I did was I realized how stressful the situation of taping the show can be. And I really racked my brain to figure out how to recreate that.

having to use my memory in that stressful internal context, right? Of the cortisol rushing through my brain, my heart pounding, my brain going totally blank. Anyone who's been on the show has had that experience of knowing something and just not being able to come up with it because you're just kind of

Feel like you're on a roller coaster. And so what I used to do was go to the gym, hang from a chin up bar, hold the top of a plank, push a sled and have a trainer quiz me on my flashcards that I was creating. And it basically it didn't train me to not have the stress response because that's going to happen. It's a big event. You're going to be stressed.

What it trained me to do was kind of get through the block of the stress and access all the knowledge that I had. And so that was a huge, huge, huge change for me. And the other thing was, you know, when I did practice watching the show with the buzzer in my hand or my mock buzzer, I did it standing up. I did it wearing a suit and tie. I did it wearing the shoes I was going to wear. I really recreated the experience of being on the show as much as I could.

I would DVR the show and watch it, do my practice watching at 10 a.m., at 11 a.m., at 2 p.m. I started wearing a suit and tie every day so that that little stress of like suiting up disappeared. You know, it was just another day for a month before the Tournament of Champions. I woke up at the time of day I was going to have to wake up for the tournament.

knowing that I'm not a morning person and that, you know, the best I can do to kind of get myself used to that challenge, the less of a challenge it would be on the day. So that's just some of the stuff that I did. And there's plenty more. And anyone who is really interested in

maybe taking the jeopardy test or if you've taken it and waiting for an audition or if you've had an audition and you're waiting to get the call i would definitely check out you know not to do a plug but there's a lot of little tips and tricks from my um experience uh getting ready for the show and there was a huge huge leap in my performance from my first time the nine games to the tournament of champions i was a much more dominant player in the tournament of champions

And I continue to improve my abilities at Jeopardy by refining this stuff. And so I think the proof is in the pudding, right? I mean, you did phenomenally well. And those are amazing methods that you just shared with us. And again, there are plenty more in the book. Is there anything looking back you would have done differently? I think...

The way I prepared for All-Stars was took it even a level further. I used some methods related to sequence repetition so that in my studying, I was using my time more efficiently.

The one thing that I didn't do that well in getting ready for All-Stars was I didn't give my brain enough time to rest. I think I was really, I felt a lot of pressure because it was a team tournament to really do well. And I think I needed to...

kind of do a deload as we call it in weightlifting or, you know, like a taper. I used to swim. So there's like a taper period where you kind of, you're still working out, but you're not going to your full, your fullest, um, extreme. And I kind of needed to do a little bit more of that. I was so anxious and I, the, the like kind of

maniacal studying was a way, a coping mechanism for the anxiety. And it really didn't serve me as well as it could have. So I think that's a big thing that I learned about myself. Not everyone needs that, but I really needed it. Well, thank God you don't have anything else going on, like a day job or two children. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I had a newborn actually when I was getting ready for all stars. So it was

It was nuts. So one thing that I'm curious about is, you know, when you came up with the concept for this book, did you sort of when you did you know that you were sort of doing all of this kind of different preparation for Jeopardy or afterwards? Were you sort of like, wow, look at all the things I did that that worked?

Yeah, it was sort of an afterwards thing. Going into the Tournament of Champions, I felt a lot more pressure to perform well. And I started this process of the book and everything before All-Stars. So it was sort of that post-Tournament of Champions period where I started formulating the book.

And I thought of myself like an Olympic athlete, which is sort of silly when you think about Jeopardy, but I was in this elite class of Jeopardy people. And all my friends now had expectations. There were no expectations the first time I was on the show. So I really wanted to do well. And so I was pushing myself to find ways to really improve. After the Tournament of Champions,

I was really hooked on this, like seeing the results of all that hard work. And I decided to try something else. And I actually entered a national deadlifting competition. And

And I ended up winning that and applying a lot of the same preparation stuff. And it was in that period that I started talking with people about how I was kind of doing this and the preparation aspect really caught people's attention. And then I started talking with other people about the kinds of really unique or effective things that they would do to prepare for all different kinds of experiences. And that was really when I think that this whole thing

really took hold. And I think starting from the idea of preparation as opposed to planning, that's a big theme in the book. And it's sort of all comes from there. And seeing how people- Can you give some definitional differences for us of planning versus preparing? Sure. Yeah. A plan is kind of this essentially, plans are fun, right? Because plans are essentially a work of fantasy. It's like, I'm going to do this and then this will happen. I'm going to do this and then this will happen.

It's like a recipe. So there's a lot of assumptions that happen in a plan. In terms of Jeopardy, people have these plans like, oh, I'm going to hunt for Daily Doubles. I'm going to bet it all on the Daily Double. I'm going to get it right. I'm going to win all these games. And then they get on stage and there's two other people that are just as smart and fast as they are. And that wasn't part of their plan, right? Preparation is more about

thinking through all of the challenges and really giving yourself the ability to work with those challenges, to overcome those challenges, to really be in the moment and not have such a fixed plan. So going back to the recipe analogy,

preparation is sort of like learning cooking skills. So it's a lot more work. It's a much bigger time investment. It can be a lot less fun because you're having to kind of like go step by step and really add these skills that you may not even need.

The difference is when you are going along a recipe and something doesn't go according to plan, something takes longer to cook or you don't have an ingredient. It's much harder to roll with it. And maybe you'll be able to, but maybe not.

if you have the cooking skills, you can say, Oh, this pan, you know, heats up a little faster than, than I thought. So I can, you know, I know how to adjust for that, or I can, you know, cut my food, you know, the vegetables a different size, or, Oh, I'm, you know, right now I'm, I'm away. I'm at altitude. I'm at 5,000 feet. So I was cooking a chicken last night and takes longer to cook things at altitude, but because I kind of understand the,

the science or the background, or, you know, I'm working off of the, you know, internal temperature and all these other things. It's not just about put it in the oven for an hour, which if I did that, I would have raw chicken. And so that's really the difference of planning and preparing. I know I kind of went into the analogy hard, but, you know, just to give you an example, I think a lot of parents like myself are dealing with

COVID and what that means for educating our children. And I keep saying that COVID does not like your plans. Whatever plans you make, COVID is working really hard in an unconscious way to undo those plans. So for instance, my kid's school sent out a thing a month ago that they were going to be teaching in person and they had all these different guidelines and they had all this stuff. And then Governor Newsom said, no schools are going back. So that plan is kaput.

And my wife was, you know, my wife was presenting all these things. What if we did this? What if we did this? What if we try this? And it was really making me uncomfortable until I framed it in the terms of, oh, we're not trying to make a plan. We're trying to prepare. We're trying to have a lot of different options. And if X goes wrong, we can roll into failure.

why and we've already thought through why we've already figured out what that involves and so it's kind of a it can be a lifestyle right preparing versus planning and it takes some of the anxiety out of it even though you're thinking through some worst case scenarios because you're not when something goes wrong you're not totally left with nothing you're like okay cool I'm

this is not what I wanted to happen. But I know how to, I've got three other options that I've already prepared for. I think we all have to be doing that right now. And so this is super timely. I'm glad to see that you are applying your own methods to your personal life. So out of all the advice in this book, and there's a lot of it, what do

you think people usually need the most help with? I mean, you talk about a lot of different topics in this book, but is there something that most people like, like this is the thing you need to focus on when, when preparing versus planning? Yeah. Well, I think the preparing versus planning thing is sort of the, the kernel in all of this. And I think all the other advice sort of stems from that. As I say in the book, a lot of it depends on who you are, what your challenge is, you know,

doing an interview on a video remotely is a really different situation than doing something on a stage. And I prepared differently for it. I mean, it seems like a small thing, but I got up here. This isn't my, you know, I'm renting this cabin and I sat down and the chair was squeaking and, you know, just putting myself in this situation. I was like, okay, if that's going on during this interview, I'm going to be really distracted, really self-conscious. So I found a

another chair. It seems really dumb, but just putting yourself into that, okay, what's the actual situation, inserting yourself into what you're going to be doing. And then I think the other aspect is understanding your audience, understanding, you know, the interviewer, what everybody wants to get out of this.

And, and doing that to really get inside the experience, understanding what the objective is, and preparing for that, as opposed to preparing for what you maybe think the objective is. In the case of Jeopardy, a lot of people are like, oh, so you just have to study for everything. And in a broad sense, that's sort of true. But in a more specific sense, as I said, there's

categories, their subjects that Jeopardy really likes to talk about. And that's where I focus in terms of like literature, for example. They love asking about Shakespeare. They love asking about Eugene O'Neill. They love asking about John Updike. It's these little things where it's like, OK, if you can know that stuff really well, you don't have to study all of Western or world literature even.

In terms of Shakespeare, you don't have to read all the plays. You just need to know the main characters and the settings so that when you hear Portia, you know what play they're talking about. When you hear Cordelia, you know what play they're talking about. You don't even have to know King Lear or the plot. But if you know that Cordelia equals King Lear, you're going to get the question right. And the same thing with all the other things that we're dealing with in life. We sometimes...

overemphasize the content and under and emphasize the context. And I think that understanding the context, understanding the audience, understanding the objective is really, really crucial to being successful and preparing in an effective way. Otherwise, we're spinning our wheels, right? Absolutely.

I could have read all of Shakespeare's plays. It wouldn't have been a very good use of my time. You know, in doing an interview, I could, you know, find out all of Megan Green's biographical history, know the, you know, corporate structure of Google or whatever else. In a sense, that's somewhat related to what we're doing here, but it doesn't really help me and it's kind of a waste of time. And I think those are very exaggerated examples of

Sometimes what we're always doing, and it feels really good because it feels like we're doing something to prepare. And so in that sense, there's a little bit of like, oh, I prepared, I feel good. But we're not really preparing the way that we should be or the way that's going to really help us. And so a lot of times what happens is you get in the situation, it doesn't go the way you hoped it would go. And then you're like, oh, I wasted all that time.

And that's kind of true. But preparing isn't a waste of time. But maybe the way that you prepared wasn't the most effective.

Exactly. Well, you always talk about knowing your task in the book. And I've internalized that as part of my preparation. Like my task today was to get this right. But what I like that I heard you say once was this book is kind of a manual. And, you know, maybe you don't need everything in the book, but you can listen to it. And then maybe you're like, hey, I still need a little bit help with...

with my timing or I need help with, you know, props and you can go back to those particular chapters and dig deeper. Is that sort of, was that the intention? Yeah. I mean, I definitely didn't think I was going to make a totally, I

comprehensive guide to preparation. I was going to kind of set a way of approaching preparation and then dive into some of the stuff that I discovered that worked and that other people found worked.

I really think it's helpful. The subtitle of the book is Preparing for the Moments that Matter. And the more that I'm hearing from people who have listened to it, it's really helping you be as confident, communicate as effectively and be as prepared for situations.

kind of the day-to-day stuff as much as those big moments. And I think that listening through the whole thing is certainly helpful. And then, you know, I kind of talk about it like, like a travel guide, you know, back in the days of travel, right? You were, you were going to Italy, you got the Lonely Planet Italy or whatever your preferred guidebook brand is. And, and,

You maybe read the whole thing, but then once you kind of set your itinerary, you focus on the stuff, the places that you're going, the things you want to do, and you don't need every section. You know, if you're not going to Naples, you don't need to open up Naples again. If you're doing a presentation in,

let's say where you've got props, you've got a big screen or something like that. Yeah, maybe the props thing is helpful. If you get thrown off when something goes wrong, like a failure thing, maybe that making friends with failure chapter is really helpful and you kind of need to drill into that. There's all these different little sections. And like I said,

It's really depends on you and what you need and also what you're going to be doing. You know, when I was preparing for a deadlift competition, it was a very different experience than preparing for Jeopardy. And since then, I've been taking up tap dancing. And that is also a really different thing. And I'm kind of like different aspects of this competition.

approach apply for different tasks. Awesome. I invite everyone, if you want to ask a question, please type it into the live chat. I think we'll start with an audience question now if we can.

From Molly Beerman. Hello from a fellow Jeopardy alum. She taped a few weeks before COVID restrictions hit. You know, she said, like tech, Google, Jeopardy has somewhat of a glass ceiling. Relatively few women comprise the ranks of prolific champions.

What do you think that is and what could be done to make preparation more equitable? That's a great question. And I think part of it is a little bit of the boys club of trivia that exists, you know, starting even in high school. I was a part of the high school quiz bowl team, and I think we had only one or two women on the team, I think,

That continues in college. I think it's about making trivia spaces more friendlier to women, which is certainly something that I think is important. And there are so many great female champions out there.

I think that the truth of the matter is that that rare error of the Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer, it's like too small of a sample size just because it's so hard to get there. But there are a lot of, even in that kind of elite, you know, that next tier down, folks like Julia Collins, Stephanie Jass,

They are certainly up there. And my friend Pam Mueller is one of the best trivia players I know. And sure, there maybe aren't as many 25 or 30 game winners among women. But I think that there's often people ignore the...

incredible like five, seven, nine game winners. This last tournament of champions, which they rebroadcast had incredible women, Anaki Garcia, Lindsay's last name, I'm forgetting. There's Rachel Lindgren, I think is her last name. So I think that a lot of it is about kind of opening, like I said, opening up the spaces and making them less hostile to women. I think there is

certainly a sense among certain set of kind of the trivia world that trivia is for boys or something like that. And I think that comes from like a lot of the people that do trivia are really insecure. And then us nerds like are, you know, we want to guard whatever we have. And I think that's just the wrong, the wrong mindset to have in life. So I'm not sure if I've totally addressed your question, but what I do hope is that that,

that the preparation methods are really accessible. I think that some of the other stuff that can create obstacles is that, as we know, women, let's say in a family, are often tasked with more of the unpaid labor of family life and housemaking in an unequal fashion. And so

I my household is not particularly like that. But I think, you know, if you've got a husband and wife, the husband might have more time to, say, study at, you know, when the kids get home from school or something like that, when traditionally a wife is dealing with housekeeping stuff, even if they both work jobs. I think that's a I'm hoping that our society is moving away from that kind of thing. But I think that's actually as much of a challenge as anything.

I think that's great. You do have two daughters, so we hope to see them on Jeopardy in the future. My daughter is my older daughter is ready for it. She's really wants to be on the show. I bet. I bet. So, you know, I'll just ask one question in the meantime, and then we'll take some audience questions. You are a snazzy dresser. We just we talked about how you suit.

suit up. Your dad owned a clothing store. I do see a comment about where you get your inspiration. Was it how I met your mother with suit up or this was obviously in your blood from a young age, but I think dressing for success is important. Yeah. I mean, as you know, there's a whole chapter about this. And I think I learned at a very young age from a family friend

who was retired, he still wore a suit and tie every day. And I was like, what is your deal? And he was like, whenever you have to perform your best, you know, for men, at least we're usually in a suit and tie. And, you know, for women, maybe that's a dress and dress shoes or a blouse and, you know, pants or whatever your particular look is. And most people are not comfortable with

in this because it's as the workplace becomes more casual, we're less familiar with dressing this way. And all of that can create challenges in the terms of how we feel. We feel less comfortable. And I don't think anyone would argue that we perform our best when we're uncomfortable. And so for me, it was about, like I said, making wearing a suit and tie just another everyday activity. And

and making it so that I could wear it comfortably. I knew what went together. I mean, that can be a huge stress for people. You've got a couple of suits or one suit and you kind of don't know what shirt and tie to wear with it or got a skirt and a blouse, but what shoes. It's like all that stuff is making you feel insecure, uncomfortable, out of place,

And the more you can do to eliminate those challenges, you know, it's like there's whatever you're doing, if it's important enough for you to get dressed up, it's probably...

already stressful and challenging. So my mindset was like, okay, what can I take out of the challenge category? And for me, that was, I knew I wanted to wear a suit and tie on the show. So I said, all right, I'm going to make that just another everyday occurrence. And so when I was getting ready for the show, I knew my clothes fit me. I knew different

Different ties are different lengths. I knew how to kind of tie them, which knots to use for each one. I mean, it's a little stuff, but then you get backstage and the contestant coordinators turn into wardrobe assistants and they're helping people get their clothes on correctly. And I just can't imagine that that helps you feel the most confident.

Right before a moment that at least for me and I think a lot of people have been on the show is a you know lifelong dream and then you can't have this maybe Infantilizing moment right beforehand. So that was that was really what it is for me It was just I want to I want to feel like I'm just in my own skin Yeah, I mean you probably intimidated everyone else and you look great even today and

Thank you. All right. How about another audience question from Amir? Hey, Buzzy. Thanks for sharing your experience with us. Can you share with us how you get your mind back on track when you feel yourself begin to panic under pressure? Yeah. One of the tools that I found really, really, really effective was using rituals. And so this is something that athletes do a lot.

And I kind of borrowed it from that where little, you know, like a pitcher, you know, before they pitch, maybe go through the same sequence of motions, checking the bases, even if there's no one on base. And it just kind of like gets them back into the performance thing. And the key is you need to practice with those rituals.

As a kid, my parents tried to get me to play golf. One of the things that one of the golf instructors said was like, you do the same thing every time before you hit the ball. You take the same number of practice swings. You step up the same way. And essentially what it does is those rituals change.

kind of reset your brain and, and also help create, help the automatic stuff happen afterwards. So it's like the, the ritual of two practice, you know, step up, put my left hand on first right hand to practice swings. Then what comes next is,

kind of becomes automatic, right? And the analogy I give in the book is like, you know, if your friend says, hello, my name is Inigo Montoyo, then Megan says, I have come to kill your father. That's wrong. No, that's wrong. But you killed my father, prepare to die. I mean, people who... You were not ready. I was not.

That kind of automatic response is what you're trying to get out of yourself. And so I think that there's a lot of little kind of ritual type things that I did for the Jeopardy show that other people do, like snapping their fingers, tapping your toes inside your shoes.

you know, creating little patterns that you can do. And I think really engaging your body in that is a really important aspect. One of the things that I would do coming out of the commercial breaks before the tape started rolling was I would always kind of do the same little like stretch on the lectern at Jeopardy. Please show us.

Well, I mean, it wasn't, it's not that big a deal. I would just kind of like put my, put my hands and sort of stretch a little bit, you know, and it just was like, okay, we're, we're gonna, now, now it's jeopardy time. And it's sort of like, whatever, if I was re, you know, cause during those commercial breaks during taping, you're kind of reliving what went wrong, what went right. And it kind of was like a way for me to cue myself. Okay. Now's the time get, get your head back in it. And so that is really my best answer for that question is really, um,

creating effective rituals or micro rituals that you involve in your practice. They don't work unless they're part of your practice, but you involve in your practice and your preparation that get you back on track.

Awesome. All right. How about one more audience question from Jack Mooney? Did you invest any time in replicating Roger Craig's study strategy, which is analyzing questions to find the highest payoff for study time on each topic?

The short answer is yes. So the sequence repetition method is essentially kind of what Roger Craig has really pushed. He's another Jeopardy champion. He was part of the All-Stars. He, before James Holtzauer, had the highest one-day score for Jeopardy. And I think he also had the two highest daily doubles in history before, again, before James.

And he's, first of all, an incredibly sweet guy, a computer science guy, and great at analyzing how Jeopardy works. I used a little bit of software that involves sequence repetition called Anki, which is basically a flashcard app. And then based on your confidence in your answer, it will basically reshuffle the deck and

so that you only see the questions that you need the most work on in any given study session. So this is really helpful for subjects that are broad or that have a big variety in terms of whether you know it or don't. World capitals is a great example where I don't need to study the world, the capital of the United Kingdom, London or France as Paris. I don't need to see that. But if you're using conventional flash cards, you have to get through those to get to the hard ones.

And so by just saying, yeah, I know that cold, I know that cold, maybe you'll see them again in a week or two weeks just to make sure you've got it. But you're going to see the stuff that's hard. And maybe that's Tegucigalpa or Bandar Seri Begawan or Bishkek or Tashkent or, you know, all of these world capitals that we don't talk about that much.

And so that is a really, really effective way. And I think the other important thing for something like Jeopardy is making sure that you're making your flashcard decks with the right materials. So sometimes I talk about this a little bit where someone will study the order of the presidents thinking, OK, I'm

learning the presidents, that's maybe not as effective as, say, studying who won or the election year or when someone died or was assassinated so that you know who was the president in 1860

seven or in, you know, 1903 versus I know that this person is the 18th president or the 30th president or whatever, because they're not going to ask who was the 30th president. They're going to ask who signed this bill in 19, whatever, or this man fought with Congress over this bill of this year. And so, um,

It's really important that you are studying the right information, but I really am a big fan of the sequence repetition method, not only because it makes your study time more effective by, again, avoiding the stuff that you know really well and only kind of bring that up once in a while. It also makes the study time more interesting.

because you're not kind of sleeping through half of the, you're not kind of zoning out as you rattle off, you know, the state capitals that you already know. You're only dealing with the stuff that kind of challenges your brain. And so you're more interested in the material, which I think is a really important aspect of keeping your practice and preparation time, keeping you doing it, you know? And you retain all this information? Yeah.

So now, I mean, it's been over a year since I've prepared for a Jeopardy appearance. So a lot of it is gone. But what I found was that like from getting ready for the Tournament of Champions, when I started studying again, it came back very quickly. So I think if I started studying again, a lot of it would come back. But right now, a lot of it is gone.

Um, you know, I know the names and I know some of the stuff, but, you know, I had 30,000 flashcards I was studying, um, for all stars. So, um, on any given day, I was only maybe seeing two to 3000 because that was what I had to work on according to the app. Um, but, um, you know, I don't, I don't still know all of that information. It was a lot of information, you know, a lot of information in the world, a lot of them.

Buzzy, my last question. Yes. Will we see you on Jeopardy again, either as a contestant or maybe as a host? Or is there anywhere else that fans might see you pop up? So I, as of right now, have no plans to be back on the show. I certainly aspire to be back on the show as a contestant or a host. I love that game so much.

I, you know, right now there's no production going on in LA, so there's no other game shows. And so right now, if you are a Buzzy Cohen fan, getting the Get Ready audiobook on Audible is your best bet. And

So that's the plan for now. And I would really love for those of you out there who are checking it out, who've already listened, who are going to listen, I really want to hear like what stuff works for you, what excites you, what didn't work maybe. Or one of the keys with this audio book for me was inviting people to try things. You know, a lot of the stuff I did is maybe a little silly sounding, but I tried it because what did I have to lose? And some of it worked.

The stuff that didn't work is not in the book. But I'm really excited to hear the kinds of things that people come up with and try. You know, one of the things that I interviewed a glassblower named Alex Rosenberg, who was on Blown Away, the Netflix show. And one of the things he talks about is part of glassblowing is public failure, which is something I think a lot of us have a hard time with.

And so when he teaches, he brings his classes out to a karaoke bar so that they can kind of embarrass themselves in front of their classmates and they can kind of get over that. That's something I wouldn't have thought of. And I really love that. And so I'm really excited to hear what else people come up with.

where they can apply this preparation versus planning mindset. It's been already, I've gotten so much great feedback and I really, that's the most exciting thing for me. And I can't wait to hear what,

where else people take this. Well, Buzzy, I'm endlessly impressed by what you've achieved and proud of you. And I'll always pick you to be on my trivia team. Thank you so much for being here. Everybody, please go out and get Get Ready, a champion's guide to preparing for the moments that matter available on Audible. Bye, Buzzy. Bye, Megan. Thanks so much.

Thanks for listening. You can watch this episode and tons of other great content at youtube.com slash talks at Google. Talk soon.