I Was On An NBC Game Show. Here's What Happened:

Don't let me catch you in a 7/11.

The only thing worse than losing $75,500 to an animal psychic in a general knowledge contest is hitting the Heisman Trophy pose on stage moments before losing $75,500 to an animal psychic in a general knowledge contest.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Last night, I appeared on NBC’s trivia game show, “Weakest Link”. I filmed the show in Los Angeles back in November 2022, which means I’ve been losing sleep over this for 16 months now.

Over the last 24 hours, a lot of people have asked how I got on the show.

Answering that question requires letting you into a personal part of my life so nerdy it would make Urkel push me off the monkey bars, but hey — once you’ve been humbled on national TV, pride is more of a distant memory than a tangible focus.

My #1 bucket list item is to make it on Jeopardy! someday. You can tell this is true because I write Jeopardy! the right way with the exclamation point.

As part of my Jeopardy! obsession, I often go on Reddit to the Jeopardy! community to discuss that night’s episode with other people. (But I promise, I can also throw a baseball, make a layup, and dance at weddings.)

One day, the casting producer of Weakest Link made a post looking for contestants for season 3. About a month before, I had quit my finance job and moved to a coffee farm in Hawaii. I sent her an email highlighting my journey from corporate refugee to surfer bum. She loved it.

Two Zoom auditions later, I found myself standing on the corner of Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax at Television City Studios.

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We’re not going to spend much time here on the day of the taping, but I will tell you this: TV is slow. There’s a lot of standing around. A lot of twiddling your thumbs. A lot of trying to remember whether the Turkish currency is the lira or if they’re using the Euro nowadays?

Anyway, the show.

If you’ve never seen Weakest Link, here’s the basic premise.

Eight contestants compete for $1 million. All eight contestants are on the same team until the end when only two are left, at which point they go head-to-head. The more questions you and your teammates get right, the more prize money you accumulate. But at the end of each round, everyone casts a vote for the player they want to send home — in theory, the Weakest Link.

So there are eight of us. A fraud investigator, a volunteer, a chemist, a flight attendant, a delivery driver, a student, a psychic medium, and Kirkland brand Tom Selleck.

(Spoilers ahead!)

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After a practice round, the show started. Everyone thinks they’d be nervous, but I didn’t feel even a pinprick of anxiety during filming. You try watching Detroit sports your entire life. You’d be emotionally stunted, too.

Weakest Link is a tricky show. You want to do well enough so you don’t get voted off, but you might not want to do too well. If you do too well, you get a target on your back. If you watch the show with any consistency, you’ll notice a pattern:

When three people are left, two of them tend to gang up on the strongest opponent. It’s good strategy — why would you want to have to beat the best in the final round?

So going into the game, I had a plan:

“Get as many right as possible, but get a couple wrong on purpose. That way, you’ll fly under the radar.”

Well, you know what they say. Everyone has a plan until you’re on network TV and you have an ego the size of Jane Lynch’s career that would never let you get a trivia question wrong on purpose.

(Although I did think about saying, “Firetruck?” when Jane asked me to fill in the blank in the nursery rhyme “duck, duck, ______.”)

So they asked me questions and I answered questions. They even had the courtesy to ask me a couple of world capitals, although I wish they would’ve hit me with Turkmenistan or Suriname so I could’ve really flexed. South Korea? Australia? That’s the sort of stuff you learn when you’re playing Duck, Duck, Firetruck.

The game starts to whittle down. People get voted off. Eventually, the psychic medium Laura and I are the only two left.

(Editor’s note: Laura is a wonderful person.)

Once two players are left, the game switches to a best-of-five trivia contest. Laura gets a question, then I get a question. After five questions, whoever has the most right wins.

She gets question one right.

I get a question about Superman, his home planet, and the periodic table. I say the right answer while I’m thinking aloud, but convince myself that “Krypton(ite)” can’t possibly be a real element. So I guess and get it wrong.

I've spent a lot of time in the last 16 months thinking about what I could’ve done differently or how I could’ve gotten more questions right.

As a grown man, I feel no shame in getting a question about a comic book superhero wrong. I can live with this.

Laura gets question two right. I get a question about college football, which is very convenient because the only thing I watch more than Jeopardy! is college football.

A brief pause here to give you some insight.

From the time I found out I was going to be on the show to the time it ended, I never, not for a single second, thought there was any possibility that I would lose. It just … wasn’t going to happen. No doubt in my mind.

So when I got my college football question about the Heisman Trophy, I decided to hit the Heisman pose on stage, a la Desmond Howard in the end zone at the Big House in 1991.

Again, much like my mustache, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Laura also nails question 3. I hold serve.

But then, she stumbles. Laura misses question 4 giving me an opening.

“Naturalist Jane Goodall said her life’s work was inspired by a 1914 book featuring what title character?”

Two things pop into my head: Planet of the Apes and King Kong.

I rule out Planet of the Apes because how could that movie possibly inspire anyone to work with apes, and then settle on King Kong, neglecting the fact that no movie could possibly deter petite women from working with apes more than King Kong.

Tarzan never crossed my mind. I was more a of a “George of the Jungle” guy.

Laura has a chance to clinch, but misses question 5.

I have life!

It’s do-or-die.

Answer right, and the game goes into overtime.

Answer wrong, and it’s over.

“In the 1940s, the convenience store chain Totem Stores adopted what new name to reflect its business hours?”

Now, dear reader, if you also acted as dear watcher last night, you were almost certainly screaming “7/11” at your TV. I do not blame you. In fact, that’s a very good answer.

But what they don’t tell you is that when your brain decides to go rogue with the median U.S. annual household income on the line, there’s no wrangling it back in.

My brain heard “drug store”. I never processed “convenience store”.

I’m thinking CVS. Walgreens. The Washington Nationals logo. So I hem, I haw, and I finally spit out “24-Hour Drug”, knowing that it’s all over, and the prophecy won’t be fulfilled.

7/11.

7 f***ing 11.

I can tell you one business that’s lost my patronage for life.

The game ends.

Laura wins.

I go home and Google, “Men In Black memory erasers real life”.

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This was one of the coolest experiences of my life. I had a blast, Jane Lynch was everything you’d want her to be, and everyone at NBC made it a special day.

We’ve spent almost 1,500 words here, and there’s a lot I haven’t talked about. The behind-the-scenes. The set. The other questions. The day itself. The shirt (shoutout Second Wind thrift store in Kealakekua, Hawaii).

If you ever want to get together, we can talk about that stuff.

But since this is Adamant Insights, I’m legally obligated to leave you with a lesson.

And here it is:

Do silly things in life.

The only reason this opportunity came about is because I quit my job and moved to Hawaii to live in a tiny little shack on the bottom of a coffee farm with a half dozen 19-year-olds. It gave me a cool story, and cool stories open doors for you.

The last two years of my life have been bizarre and strange and exhilarating and often highly, highly questionable. But one thing is clear to me: Fortune really does favor the bold.

Just don’t ask it for $75,500.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for watching. And thank you for all your support.

Until next time.

Until Jeopardy!

Adam