Access Utah

Our guest for the hour on Wednesday is Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings, who will be in Salt Lake City on January 30, for an appearance at The King’s English Bookshop. He’s out with a new book: "Because I Said So: The truth behind the myths, tales, and warnings every generation passes down to its kids." Many of these myths and warnings are culture-specific. We’ll talk about the Korean “Fan Death” tale, which Jennings first encountered growing up in Seoul. Ken Jennings also grew up as map nerd, and we’ll talk about his previous book: Maphead, in which he travels the nation meeting others of his tribe--map librarians, publishers, "roadgeeks," pint-sized National Geographic Bee prodigies, and the computer geniuses behind Google Maps and other geo-technologies. Jennings says that technology and geographic illiteracy are increasingly insulating us from the lay of the land around us, and we are going to need mapheads more than ever.