What Is...? A Jeopardy! Podcast

The Champions Wild Card tournament begins and brings with it a fantastic week of games with tight races for first place in each game, strategic wagering for semifinal berths, and lots of very impressive gameplay. We also get Bill McKinley giving one of the funniest half-hearted attempts to explain away a poor Final Jeopardy! decision in the show's history. We also discuss Ken's Bluesky rants, Stel...

How do you do, fellow kids? We try to appeal to the youth this week and so does Jeopardy!, as their older fans predictably fume about them twisting a very regular wordplay category to make a meme joke. But we love it, and we love this final week of Second Chance as some dynamite players return to the Alex Trebek Stage and we get some truly wonderful gameplay. We also discuss small town Canada hote...

Emily is finally feeling well enough to record a pod and so we do a truncated recap of last week's games, which we are calling "Guy Branum's Second Chance, Presented by Guy Branum, featuring Guy Branum". In other news, Guy Branum joins us to discuss his run to the Second Chance Finals, from feeling like his Jeopardy! journey is satisfactorily complete to what the green room vibes were like. We als...

Emily's constant recommendation of the miniseries "Death by Lightning" pays off as it leads to a get on an FJ, and that's really the headline of this first week of the Second Chance Tournament, where wagering errors and some extremely hard FJs play more of a role in who wins than the actual gameplay. But that's why we play the games, baby! It's high drama and the clue writers get us laughing, J! f...

A category about holiday movies gets us in our Christmas bag as we discuss Christmas Vacation, Jingle All the Way, and Emily's early crush on Bernard the Elf. Will Riley jingles all the way to bank this week with cash stuffing his pockets after a very impressive run and a very, very confusing finish to it. We also have Jeopardy! fans (and the hosts) fuming over a bizarre category that made no sens...

It's a big week for superchamps present and former as Harrison Whitaker's time on J! comes to an end but superchamp Ray LaLonde's (evil?) twin, Ron, makes his debut and sets out to carve a Jeopardy! path of his own. Plus, we get another great 2-day champ in Libby Jones, we get perhaps the horniest clue we have ever read in our time as a podcast, and Ken can't stop thinking about wood. Plus, we div...

The imperial run of Harrison Whitaker marches on, and though he faces a couple tough challenges throughout the week, he heads into the weekend a 14-day champion. Ken also gets to feel like a champion on this episode as we get a few wonderful Ken's Korner moments, Jeopardy! fans fume about his Simpsons residuals, and we dive deep on Jim Thorpe. Plus, Harrison unknowingly gives us a couple gems of a...

Harrison Whitaker is a joy to watch play Jeopardy!, but he also makes our job very hard this week, as his constant parade of correct answers makes it hard to make fun of anything. But comedy finds a way, as we have Jeopardy! fans fuming over something that makes no sense at all, we learn Harrison and John have a shared experience with the elderly, and we dive deep on Nikola Tesla. If you want some...

Now that we have your attention, it's another episode of our Jeopardy! podcast! Googling ourselves leads to some mixed results but there were no mixed results for new champ Harrison Whitaker this week, as he steamrolls the competition on his way to a fantastic week and perhaps superchampdom. Plus, we wonder about his British accent, we dive deep on Queensland, and a contestant gets absolutely brut...

That's the type of hard-hitting question we answer on the show this week, as John returns from his one-week layoff to tell tales about visiting Reno, Nevada and Emily buys a hat that prompts said conversation. Emily also narrowly avoids jury duty, we meet a potentially very strong champion in Allegra Kuney, and a Jeopardy! clue has us pondering everything we ever knew about The Flintstones. Plus,...

It’s fun careers week on Jeopardy! John is off licking his World Series wounds, so Emily is joined by Jeopardy! Master & 9-game champion Isaac Hirsch. We discuss Aaron Levine’s run, the history of Martha’s Vineyard, and Isaac’s short-lived career as a fake elevator operator. Jeopardy! fans fume about the one question they’re sick of answering, so we ask some others, like: how many head injuries sh...

Apologies for the delay but John was up late watching the Blue Jays game because he is an idiot!!! No idiots on J! this week though, as we watch two very good champions dominate the proceedings over the course of a great 5 days of J! including an EPIC game. Plus, Emily gets fooled by a JFAF headline, we get a Response of the Year candidate from Tom, and we dive deep on the Algonquin Round Table. W...

We are back and we are delirious as John is coming off of a work trip and the fact his Toronto Blue Jays just minutes prior to recording clinched a spot in the World Series. But hey, we have a fun week of one-day champs concluding with Dargan Ware, a guy that you simply have to see. Elsewhere, we get a very charming Jeopardy! anecdote, John very much agrees with what the fans are fuming about this...

TJ Fisher makes it to the Tournament of Champions and we learn about the duality of Jeopardy! headlines as the US Mirror goes wild over his victory (and defeat). We go wild for this great week of games too as Ken gets a Trebek-like slam on a contestant's anecdote, we go heavy on Wager Talk™, we get a "Name of the Year" candidate, and we dive deep on VeggieTales. Speaking of tales, we spin a few in...

The Ghost of Merv Griffin is here and so is the ghost of John and Emily's 30s, as Emily finally hits the big 4-0 and John is soon to follow. We discuss the feeling of getting older, Emily's big birthday bash that was attended by some high-profile J! contestants, and a suspect gift that was given to Emily by one of those very same contestants. Oh, and a week of Jeopardy! happened in where we get a...

We say goodbye to one great champion last week and welcome another this week as Steven Olson has a great run and comes up with a couple Responses of the Week along the way. We also get some wagering controversy in Friday's game, Ken reflects on his fashion choices during his 74-game run, and we dive deep on Occupy Wall Street. If you want to dive way deeper into our show, help support it at patreo...

Obviously if there is a Final Jeopardy! about Borat, we are going to discuss Borat. And we talk about some other stuff this week too, as Paolo Pasco continues his fantastic run all the way to a Tournament of Champions berth, we have a new player in the JFAF game (The National Enquirer!) and a contestant has a reaction to missing a clue that greatly tickles us both. If you want to be tickled by mor...

That's right, your very favorite comedy podcast about America's Favorite Quiz Show is BACK for Season 3 of our show and Season 42 of Jeopardy!'s. And we go all the way deep on this one as we reconnect with Jonathan Hugendubler, we meet a few listeners of our show who find success on the J! stage, and the week proves ripe for anecdote and response of the week candidates. Plus, J! fans are fuming ov...

The most prestigious night in show business is here, it's the 2nd Annual Jeoppy Awards, presented by What Is...? A Jeopardy! Podcast. All the stars are out as we hand out the coveted awards to the surprise of the season, the Ken's Korner Award for Ken Jenningsism, and of course, the legendary Anecdote and Response of the Year. Plus, we introduce a few new awards, get our first-ever live acceptance...

The most prestigious awards season in television is here, as we kick off the 2025 Jeoppys with an interview with our second-ever Player of the Year, Drew Goins! From a tough loss in his initial game against David Erb to a surprise entry in the Tournament of Champions, we talk to Drew about it all. We learn how he has become friends with Lisa Ann Walter, how he monopolizes the children's section of...

We made it! It's the final week of Season 41 of Jeopardy!, and the first FULL season of WIAJP is in the books with this extra-long episode as Scott Riccardi aims to keep his superchampion streak through the summer break. Can he do it?! We find out here, as we definitely do impressions of Andrew Dice Clay, Scott definitely runs out of anecdotes, and Jeopardy! fans are fuming about the IRONCLAD LAW...

It's another huge week for Scott Riccardi on Jeopardy! as he becomes a super-champion and looks to carry his run all the way into Season 42 as we head into the final week of Season 41 gameplay. We have a fun time getting sidetracked on this episode as we discuss Love Island, Emily's stoned journey in Las Vegas becoming a reality, and the show's continued insistence on shoehorning Harry Potter cont...

It's Scott Riccardi Week on Jeopardy! as the champion goes on a wildly impressive run, winning every game and racking up a very impressive money total. And the games are great too, with some more excellent competitors with even better names lined up to play against Scott. Plus, we get a Jeopardy! poem, a guy who hates music, a Justin Bieber lyric mishap, and we dive deep on the Hope Diamond. If yo...

That's right, it's the first edition of Jeopardy! Couples Are Fuming, as the claim made by several news outlets that Jason Singer and his wife Susan McMillan were the first married couple to both win on Jeopardy! causes a stir between former players, J! fans, and the news outlets themselves. It's a dramatic week on the Alex Trebek Stage as well, as we tie the one-day champion streak, Jason's expre...

It's a milestone week in Jeopardy! history as a Final Jeopardy! clue asks a contestant about her great aunt, whom she is also named after. It's serendipitous for that one-day champion who shares a theme with every other champion this week: they win one game. Jeopardy! closes in on the longest such streak in the show's history and we continue our streak of being stupid about this show as we discuss...