Fast at the buzzer

It has been quite a year for Kathryn Peters. Last July she became the first executive director of Carolina’s Center for Information, Technology and Public Life. And in March, she competed on — and won — one of America’s most popular game shows, “Jeopardy!”

The Well spoke with Peters about her game-show experience and how her background and interdisciplinary approach prepared her for the challenge. At CITAP, she works with faculty who research the impact of the internet, social media and other forms of digital information sharing on society and politics. “That means that we get to study everything from the hustle economy and the future of work platforms to mis- and disinformation and how they shape our politics,” she said.

Why did you want to compete on “Jeopardy!”

I played Quiz Bowl in high school. I competed through college. I’d always thought about trying out for “Jeopardy!” But as a lifelong perfectionist, I didn’t because the fear of saying something wrong on national television outweighed the sense of fun. When a friend reminded me that tryouts were starting in January 2020, I realized that I’d finally outgrown that degree of perfectionism and fear and decided it was time.

How did your education and professional life prepare you?

I fell in love with both computers and foreign languages in middle school. I have a bachelor’s degree in French from Vanderbilt University. I thought I wanted to become a diplomat. Instead, my first job out of school was at the United Nations as tech support. I spent two years fixing the computers of international civil servants. I went on to do a master’s degree in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where I wrote a master’s thesis on reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.

Before coming to UNC, I spent 10 years as the co-founder and chief operating officer of a nonprofit called Democracy Works. There we built software tools and data sets that helped people navigate voting and understand how the process worked. I had a front row seat to watch the 2016 elections in particular, and to see how mis- and disinformation can disrupt election operations and really shape our politics. The question of ‘what if we ran a technically perfect election and the public did not trust the results?’ led me to want to come work at CITAP and learn from these researchers and support them. The 2020 election let all of us see some of the results of that question.

Kathryn Peters

When did your episodes air?

My two episodes aired on March 22nd and 23rd. I taped in Culver City, California, on February 1st.

“Jeopardy!” tapes at Sony Pictures Entertainment in a building next to the “Wheel of Fortune” studio. The two shows share a crew, and they tape alternating weeks so that we got to use the “Wheel of Fortune” space as our staging area for the contestant briefing and changing rooms and those kinds of things and then got shuttled over to the other studio. I got to see the giant wheel all wrapped up in plastic.

Was there a particular moment that stands out in your memory?

Oh, gosh! It was all a blur until I was done playing. You come in at 7 in the morning and, because of COVID protocols, you’re waiting in a parking garage. It’s an outdoor space, where they do some of the initial briefing — covering the legal stuff, signing the forms. And then they call the contestants for each game randomly just moments before they give you makeup and put you on stage. They tape an entire week’s games in a single day.

I ended up with the very first slot in the morning.

After I got home, I realized that I could not remember anything about the games that I played. I tried to recreate the game boards — the categories, the questions. It was a huge blank. I remembered that there had been a category on MacGuffins in movies only because of our host, Dr. Oz. The show writers had made it a pun; the previous category was eggs, followed by McGuffins, so that it sounded like Egg McMuffins. But Dr. Oz kept recording it as “Egg McMuffins,” and we had to tape it a few times to get that to come out as a pun and not a statement. That was one of the only things I remembered coming out of it.

The really fun part was getting to watch the later games through the week and sitting there playing along almost as if I was watching television but knowing that it was live. I remember feeling like I had this perfect backstage pass. In some ways that day felt more like a dream than playing and winning.

Were you disappointed that Alex Trebek wasn’t the host?

When I started the trial process, he was still hosting, and I had hopes of getting to play with him. But we knew he was sick and how aggressive and unforgiving pancreatic cancer is. I was really sad about his death. But “Jeopardy!” as an institution is bigger even than Alex, as much as he shaped it.

I didn’t know very much about Dr. Oz. Previous contestants signed a letter opposing him, in part because he’s been a huge peddler of mis- and disinformation on his television show. There was an active fan boycott for the period in which my episode aired. It was deeply ironic given my work on mis- and disinformation to then find myself tied up in a real-world conversation about who we platform and how we platform them. But I was not going to let it ruin the joy of getting to take part, because, like I said, “Jeopardy!” is bigger than any given person.

Were there any categories you felt especially confident about?

There was one titled Words in Books. That was absolutely my happy place. I’m a literary nerd. One of the most fun clues I got to answer had to do with the author Alexandre Dumas. They noted that Dumas was one of the first to use this word in regard to equal rights, regardless of gender. So I said, ‘What is feminism?’ That made me really happy.

Was there ever a question you thought you knew and goofed?

Oh yeah. You’re working on instinct. You’re working so fast. There was a clue about a substance called Draculin that allows this particular animal to keep blood flowing in its victims. I buzzed and guessed mosquitoes. But the answer was vampire bats.

When did it become clear you were in the lead?

The amounts of money that each player has are put on a little digital lightboard to the left of the clue board where you can see it from your podium. The game is so fast-paced you don’t get to stop and look up and process it very often. There was a moment late in the second round when I realized that I was in the lead, and we were running low on time.

And then they stopped and put up the Final “Jeopardy!” category. At that moment, I realized the game was mine to lose.

How much did you wager?

Betting from being in the lead is, in some ways, the easiest place to be. Look at your competitor’s dollar amount. Double it. That’s the maximum they could possibly bet. Add one dollar so that you would come out ahead of them, and make sure that whatever you wager gets you to that amount. The most heartbreaking thing you could do is bet smaller than that, get it right and lose because you wagered too little rather than because you didn’t know the answer.

Going into the Final Jeopardy, my opponent had $10,000. So I needed to wager to get to $20,001. I forget exactly what number I needed to put down to get to that. But that is what I wagered.

What was the clue?

The topic was Shakespearean references in history. The clue was something to the effect of during December and January of 1978 and 1979, this term, taken from the first line of a Shakespearean history, was used to refer to a British labor strike. I heard it, and I didn’t think I knew it, and I felt a deep sense of concern.

Then intuition kicked in. I thought of the phrase “the winter of our discontent” and how it sure seemed like it could be the start of a Shakespearean history. And the labor strike was in December and January. I put it down to see what happened. In the end, my wager didn’t matter, since I was the only one who got it right.

You won! How did it feel?

I was like, Did this really just happen? But you don’t get a moment to sit with it. You get rushed back over across the lot to change your clothes and lint-roller them and run back to begin taping the next episode moments later.

So that it would look like you came back the next day?

Yes. They make you arrive on set with three outfits for your taping day.

Someone like Ken Jennings, who wins over and over and over, must be there all day?

Yep. All day. Five episodes taped. You come back a second day, you tape five more episodes, and then there’s a two-week break. Someone like Ken Jennings is going back to his job and having to explain why he was weirdly out two days every two weeks for like a really long time.

So you came back and …

… proceeded to lose.

Because you had a better competitor, or were you tired?

All of the above. Part of it is that I had a competitor who was excellent on the buzzer. So anything that we both knew, he tended to get. And part of it is luck — which categories come up in a given game, what spread of knowledge is on the board. Everyone who makes it through the casting process is talented enough to win a game. Getting to go really gave me an appreciation for how much a game of luck it is. I would frame it less as I lost because I did badly and more that I won because I got lucky.

Was competing on “Jeopardy!” a bucket list thing?

It was very much a bucket list thing. I joke that I work with a MacArthur genius [Tressie McMillan Cottom]. I work with someone who has been written up on the front page of the New York Times as being right about all the big things [Zeynep Tufekci]. I work with a Carnegie Fellow [Alice Marwick]. We have this group of really excellent people in their own fields. And as much as this isn’t quite the same flavor, it felt really fun to do something excellent and rewarding in my own area of expertise. Feeling like I’m playing into that story, that narrative of excellence for the center, is nice. They’re so great. I’m barely keeping up with them as it is!

Watch a video about the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life.