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Welcome to The Moth podcast. I'm your host this week, Michelle deLaski. It's hard to remember a time before Netflix and Hulu and On-Demand TV, even though I grew up without all those things. I'm one of those millennials on the cusp who had a pretty analog childhood. It's been a long time since I watched TV on an actual TV in this episode.

We have two stories about old fashioned television magic. Our first story is a blast from the past and put me right back to childhood on the couch in front of the TV, Jessica Williams and told this story at an L.A. story slam where the theme of the night was respect. Here's Jessica live at The Moth.

I think that's good. When I was 18, my little sister, for my birth, for my birthday, she gave me this journal that she had written in the front cover. It said to Jessica, if you don't make it as a talk show host, maybe you'll make it as a writer instead. Happy birthday.

And when I was 18, that's like the only thing I wanted to do with my life, I was obsessed with the idea of being a talk show host. I would just come home from school and just, like, sit on the sofa and go through Rosie O'Donnell, Maury Povich, Araldo, just down the line.

And it wasn't my personality that squashed those dreams.

It was Geraldo Rivera and his live studio audience, I lived in Maryland, which was like three hours away from New York City, and they would always show on the talk show, they'd say, if you weren't free tickets to send away. So I had to send away to, oh, my God, tickets to all of them, including Geraldo.

And I got four tickets. And I invited, like, the people who I thought were the coolest people I knew. And we had this plan to go up to New York City and go see the show live. And then everyone bailed on me and I was devastated.

And so my mom was like, I'll drive you up there and go see her all day with you, which was horrifying.

And then when we got there, this producer came out and said, who wants to take part in today's show?

And I froze my hands because I had this desperate need for attention.

And I guess her all those producers had a desperate need for people with the desperate need of attention because they picked me to be in their show, even though the theme was women who date the wrong men.

I was only 18 years old and I had only dated two guys in my life. But to be fair, I was technically a woman and they were both technically really wrong for me.

I guess it made for a really boring television because her Aldo's was like really trying to pump up the drama by pouring on the pity.

And, you know, after asking me about my dating experiences, you just kind of grabbed my hand and was massaging it.

And it was really weird because he had this I think it's a star of David Tatta in the web of between his thumb and his index finger.

And that's all I could stare at while the cameras are on me.

And he just kept massaging my hand and saying, you poor girl, how are you ever going to find the right man? And it made me really uncomfortable.

And I tried to diffuse it with a joke, a really bad joke, something along the lines of, well, I guess I'll just stay in my hair blonde because every guy I've ever met always likes girls with blonde hair. But it didn't come out with a joke as a joke. It just came out like a sad person.

And then that was when the studio audience turned on me and gave me this group lecture on self-respect. Most of it's foggy, but I remember one woman standing up and just shouting, girl, don't ever change yourself for a man. At this point, I didn't realize the level of humiliation I had made it to, you know, I still was like, oh, this is going to right.

I think this is going all right.

My mom is a man hater, and I'll just put that out on the table right now. She's also Cuban and talks too much.

And so I she was like in the audience, like kind of talking to herself and then Haraldur noticed. I don't even think he knew she was my mother. He just like saw this woman who had something to say. And he was like, you look like you've got something to say to her.

Why don't you stand up and say it?

And all I could think was like, oh, my fucking God, my mother's going to embarrass me so bad right now.

Like not realizing how badly I had embarrassed myself.

And she stood up and she's I mean, she's like a talker.

It's like she goes on and on and on. You're just always like, get to the point. And so she gave this really dramatic monologue on women and honoring themselves and having self-respect. And I was just dying the whole time. And then the audience stood up and gave her a standing ovation.

And then on our way out, they were all they were still telling me, like, you can't you know, you can't dye your hair blonde. You're pretty, just like you are giving me this pep talk and you know, this many years later, I definitely did learn something from it in terms of self-respect, of, you know, not changing myself for a man, but nothing in terms of getting up on a stage and humiliating myself in front of hundreds of people.

Thank you. That was Jessica Lee Williamson, Jessica Williamson is an artist and television writer living in Los Angeles. Her credits include I'm Dying Up Here, Medical Police and F is for family. Jessica has also told a whopping 39 stories on mothe stages all around the country. If you want to tell a story at the mouth. Remember, you can go to our website, the math dog, to pitch us your story and find information about upcoming Slamdance. Up next, West Hazard West told the story at a Jersey City story slam where the theme of the night is exercise.

Here's where we live at Belmont. All right. Hey, in October 2017, I got a really good email, maybe the best email I ever got in my life, or at least the most exciting. It told me that I had passed the online test and I was invited to go audition live for Jeopardy. I got to do that. I was very, very excited.

Thank you. And sort of an email I've been waiting for for 20 years, and I love that show. Really, really enjoy it. And on an average day, if I have the time, I will watch the daily episode of Jeopardy on TV and then, like, you know, spend 90 minutes a day looking at random crap on Wikipedia. That's how I have fun. All right.

I got that email. I'm like, oh, we're obviously going to orient our entire lives around this now. And so I started going hardcore, like every day watching it. I would watch old episodes on YouTube. I bought a student atlas like minimum 90 minutes map studies every day, UK Kings Line of succession. I'm like in the J archive, like a database of all the online Jeopardy episodes. Just every single day hours is like, you know, and I start like I started watching it, like behind the music stand standing up with a ballpoint pen in my hand to get the timing down, like I'm like really into it and throw some numbers at you.

Every year Jeopardy says, know, we're going to have online testing.

About 300000 people say, I would like to take that test. And Jeopardy allows about 70000 of those people to take the test. And of those seventy thousand twenty five hundred, get invited to go audition live. And of those 2500, about 400 people per year get to be on Jeopardy.

The odds are not in your favor, but I'm like, whatever and backtrack. I take an online test and it's 50 questions. And, you know, it just, you know, you watch them on screen, a little box pops up, you type in your answer, it stays there for eight seconds and it goes away. And the next question, out of those 50, I know from research online that you've got to get at least thirty five out of the 50 to even make the cut.

And like, I was scoring like as I go through, like, you know, I've been doing this like and I played high school ball, college quiz bowl, lost my virginity at twenty one.

I play trivia.

All right.

Like so I'm into it and I think I only got like a thirty seven on that test which is not great, but just over the line I find great.

And then you go in for the, the live audition and it's three parts. So the first part is like a 50 question test again.

But this is a little bit different because it's a recording of Alex Trebek and he does the answers and they give you a blank sheet with 50 answer spots on here. And you kind of have an advantage with this one because they don't get yanked away after each question. And if you're moving through these questions at the speed that an average Jeopardy person needs to be at, you're going to bank some time.

Some of them you're just going to know immediately, some of them you might not get immediately, but you can, like, jot a little note down to yourself. And at the end of that, you know, you get like maybe a minute or so we can go back and, like, nail the answers.

And I got to say, I'll stand before you here with humility and then say that on that 50 question test, I, I friggin murdered that like like forty seven, just destroying the hair, feeling real strong, like oh whoa.

Yeah. Because like three of them like all right, I didn't know them. That's life.

I didn't know three but like at the very end like with like 17 seconds left to go there were just three that were like just at the top of the tongue, the edge of the mind.

I was just like basically, what's the capital of Croatia? What is the Civil War internment camp where war crimes were committed? And what is the element within your body that helps break down proteins? And I couldn't get it. I couldn't get it. And I couldn't get it. No, like 17 seconds later, it was like. Zagreb, Andersonville and Zakhele here, you guys are doing good. All right, nice.

And then you go up in the second part of the interview is like a mock game and didn't really care. Like, you know, these are just softball questions. You know, there's no steaks, no Alix's, no lights, there's no crowd. It's you like 20 other people in a hotel room in whatever town you're in. And I was going there and they really they don't care.

They just want to know some basic stuff. Do you know how to play Jeopardy? Do you answer in the form of a question? Do you keep it moving? Do you have good energy? Do you look crazy on TV like, you know, basic stuff like that? And I'm just whipping through I'm like Emancipation Proclamation. Rosa Parks is hitting. It is like, you know, like John McCain was one of them.

That was weird, but it got it was nice and like so cool feeling good on that.

And then the third part is just like a little mock interview, like, you know, they ask everybody the same question, what would you do if you want a bunch of money and everybody's like, oh, you know, fix up the house, pay off some debt, travel, help the grandkids. And I said that I wanted to reunite the cast of the nineties sitcom from Fox Living Single for my fortieth birthday party.

Yeah. And they reacted thusly. And at the end of it, I'm like, I'm my own harshest critic. Like when I fail, I tell myself in detail how I failed and how I, you know, maybe you can correct in the future. I got out of that. I was like, well, how do you feel you did? And I do not think I have could have conducted myself better. Let's continue to study as if we're going to be on Jeopardy.

And that's a big commitment because they tell you nothing. They don't tell you your scores. You don't know. I only know again, I'm keeping track like they you get out of there and like. All right, everybody, thank you so much for coming. You should be proud you made it this far. You know, if we get in touch, you'll be within the next 18 months and that's it.

Just go home and wait eighteen months for a phone call that may never come. All right? And I'm just like just like, get out of there. I'm just like you.

Do you know what pressure is like?

My garlic thing about the scenario about going on jeopardy. Like what could happen? Like best case scenario, you go on, you win like ten, fifteen, twenty games. You become a minor national celebrity. You go on fallin, you're like, you know, like, you know, you get to retire and just like play trivia and write trivia books for the rest of your life. That's best case scenario. And I knew that probably wasn't going happen.

But like worst case scenario, I was watching the game. The answer was Harriet Tubman at home. And I and I said, Sojourner Truth, what if that happens? All right, what if I just go on national TV, embarrassing my whole family, getting black history questions wrong, like, you know, just like that.

It is insane. It's intense. All right. Just like and like all this stuff is going through my head.

So, like, I got to the point where like four or five hours a day easily, like studying, just like I get to the point where I wouldn't allow myself to go to bed if I didn't hit five final jeopardy in a row. Like you get one wrong. You better believe you're getting up and looking at hold article up on Wikipedia, like the whole thing, like, you know, intense. I had Broadway trivia books, Bible trivia, the whole bit.

It was crazy. And then one day I got an even better phone call and then I got an email. And if you happen to watch Jeopardy this past July, you will see that I was a three time Jeopardy! Champion.

I was very excited. Thank you very much. That was Wes Hazard. Wes is a comic storyteller and actor, and he aims to bring wit, energy and honesty to the stage or the screen. His book, Questions for Terrible People, was published by Simon and Schuster in 2016 and features questions like What's the biggest lie you've ever told to get a job? We wanted to hear more from Wes about what it was actually like being on Jeopardy and to talk a little bit more about the late, great Alex Trebek.

Here's Wes. Leading up to my performance or appearance, I should say, on Jeopardy, I'd spent about five months of prep getting really psyched for it. What that does not prepare you for is actually being on set and just the magic. It's so weird. I had been a Jeopardy fan for 20 years, so I've seen that studio that set many, many, many times. So in a way it felt familiar, but at the same time it was totally new.

You got there. The thing that struck me was how big it was. It was just a massive expanse of room, much bigger than it looked on TV. As far as meeting Alex, there was no sort of star struck quality because he is so good at making people comfortable. Like his job every single day is to take three people who are having the biggest moment of their entire lives and make them comfortable, get them set to play, put them at ease and he is so good at it.

So meeting him was just like, this is like an uncle or something, you know? So that was really special. And it was just so great to to be in his presence. It's hard to believe that, you know, he won't be on the show anymore and you'll miss him. But I think it just speaks to how good he was at his job. He is an American institution. I will say that I was very saddened by his passing, but it felt more like when you see a skyline that no longer has a building that you used to love, it felt like that.

That was West Hazard to see photos of us with Alex on the set of Jeopardy head to the extras for this episode on our website, The MMORPGs Extras. That's all for this week from all of us here at the must have a story where the week.

Michelle deLaski is a producer and director at The Moth, where she helps people craft and shape their stories for stages all over the world. Podcast production by Julia Purcell. The Moth podcast is presented by the Public Radio Exchange helping make public radio more public at Pig.