June 11, 2025 • 56 mins
In 2009, a 10-year-old from Arizona flew to Los Angeles to compete on a new game show offering child prodigies the chance to win $500,000. But almost immediately, he could tell something was off. The experience had a profound impact on his life — and confounds legal scholars to this day.
Plus Dana takes us behind the scenes of her appearance on Jeopardy!, and Jason explains how his two-year-old daughter wound up answering trivia questions on The Rachael Ray Show.
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Hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English
Written by Jake Rossen
Produced by Josh Fisher
Editing and Sound Design by Jonathan Washington
Mixing and Mastering by Baheed Frazier
Additional Editing by Mary Dooe
Research and Fact-Checking by Jake Rossen and Austin Thompson
Original Music by Elise McCoy
Show Logo by Lucy Quintanilla
Executive Producer is Jason English
Got a question or comment, or want to invite Zaron to compete on your game show? You can reach us at veryspecialepisodes@gmail.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Originals.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is an iHeart original.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Welcome to Our Little Job.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
It's two thousand and nine and Ben Moehler, a ten
year old fifth grader from Arizona, should.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Be in school instead.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
He's standing on a stage in Los Angeles. He's enclosed
in a prop the shape of a doughnut that's being
pulled to the rafters for a dramatic reveal. Behind him
is a giant seventy five foot screen. In front of
him are roughly three hundred audience members. His father is nearby,
(00:51):
and so are television cameras. Ben's vision isn't great and
things are a little blurry, but he can hear the host,
Kevin Pollack.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
He's selling the shell right.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
He's talking about how these are the hardest questions that
I've ever been put to television quiz, but these are
the smartest kids that we've ever brought, you know before.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Ben is taping a new game show on the Fox
Broadcasting network. It's called Our Little Genius. He's one of
several child prodigies who have been invited to test their
knowledge for a chance to win up to five hundred
thousand dollars. Ben's specialty is dinosaurs. He's prepared for this
(01:37):
for months. He knows as much as any ten year
old possibly could about palaeontology. If he does well, there's
the possibility he could earn enough money to pay for college.
He nails the first question, which consists of a multi
part answer, but when the next question comes, Ben is confused.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
I can't really see it on the big screen, but
I can see it on my small screen. That's where
my emotion start to. Really I'm getting really confused, and
I'm getting really in my own head about like is
there another game being played on me that I didn't understand.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Until right now. Because something is not right here.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Something isn't right, And it's not because the question is
too difficult. It's the opposite. Moments before he walked onstage,
a member of the production team approached his father with
information about the game, information that Ben now realizes is
(02:41):
the answer to the question. Even at age ten, Ben
realizes that isn't supposed to happen on game shows. In fact,
it's a violation of federal law.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
You would be able to see on my face just
confusion and concern, and on the tip of my tongue
in that moment was me wanting to say they told
me the answer to this off stage.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Something's not right here, but can they start over?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
In a split second, Ben has to decide whether to
answer the question in a way that feels like cheating,
or tell a studio full of people that the quiz
show they're taping isn't on the level, that maybe these
child geniuses are getting a little extra help. While he's
still processing all that, the stage lights suddenly and mysteriously
(03:38):
go out.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Yeah, something is afoot.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Welcome to very special episodes and I heart original podcast.
I'm your host Dana Schwartz, and this is Hemi Demi
semiquaver a modern quiz show scandal.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Welcome back to very special episodes. I'm Jason English, She's
Danas Swartz, He's Sarah Burnette. What any of you have
a stressful game show experience you want to share here?
Speaker 2 (04:09):
I mean, Jason, I was on Jeopardy.
Speaker 5 (04:12):
I don't want to drag gan ya. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
I was on Jeopardy. It was not a great I
didn't do the best. It was not like a gold
medal situation for me. I'm not one to make excuses
in my defense. I was twelve weeks pregnant at the
time until I was just like housing saltine crackers backstage,
and so I was like nauseous and in a cold
sweat the whole time, But no one knew I was
pregnant because it was like, you know, it's like very early.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
But still it was not the best performance of my life.
But it was a dream come true just to be
on Jeopardy, but very scary, and at that moment I
realized I never wanted to be on television a or
maybe be perceived.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
Ever again, you've done Jeopardy, Celebrity Jeopardy next, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Could kill Celebrity Jeopardy. Those questions are way easier.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Now.
Speaker 6 (05:00):
How was the button pushing? I've always wondered this is
it really hard?
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Impossible? I mean, that's the real problem of Jeopardy. It's like,
even if you know the answers, it's just a game
of being able to push it faster than the other people.
It's very hard and very stressful.
Speaker 6 (05:13):
Do they give you pointers. They're like, hey, you gotta
have real quick thumb strength and maybe like spend the
two weeks before the show practicing.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
You do a practice round before, but I don't know
if you can prepare for it. It's just kind of like,
I don't know, Maybe you can and I just didn't.
But I was just like, you know what, getting on
Jeopardy was the bucket list item. Now it's in the
universe's hands.
Speaker 6 (05:33):
Oh yeah, you went up so high in my esteem.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
I'm so jealous.
Speaker 6 (05:36):
I've always wanted to be on Jeopardy.
Speaker 5 (05:37):
Saron, have you ever been on any kind of game show?
Speaker 6 (05:40):
No, I've never done a see I've never even been
on a game show set. And I've been on a
lot of TV sets and shows and stuff, but never
a game show. I don't know why. It's just like
the side show, like the midway of the County Fairgrounds
I never go to. So, yeah, what about you, Jason.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
I've never been on a game show. But in I
think it was twenty eleven, I did go on the
Rachel Ray Show with my two year old daughter.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
What how did I not know this?
Speaker 5 (06:03):
And let Rachel Ray quiz her our presidential history? Oh
my god. After hearing Ben tell his story, I feel
like a terrible Paris and we can put a pin
in that. Just let Ben tell his story and get
into this. In the outro.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
In the early two thousands. Unscripted television was popping up everywhere.
The contestants came cheap but earned huge ratings. Nearly twenty
nine million people watched the American Idol Finale in two
thousand and nine, featuring Adam Lambert and Chris Allen.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Of the four major.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Networks, Fox was always pushing the envelope for the next
unscripted sensation. There was Man Versus Beast, which pitted a
professional sprinter against a giraffe, and a professional eater against
a Kodiak bear and a hot dog eating contest. The
Moment of Truth, which strapped participants to a lie detector
(07:05):
and asked them in reacingly personal questions, and The Swan,
which crowned a winner based on who got the most
impressive plastic surgery. In this tsunami of tastelessness was a
relatively harmless entry, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?
Debuted in two thousand and seven and tasked adults with
(07:28):
questions called from grade school textbooks with assistance from kids.
It was successful enough that the network contemplated how they
could pursue the child prodigy genre. The answer was Our
Little Genius, which came from Super producer Mark Burnett of
Survivor fame, as well as Mike Darnell, Fox's in house
(07:52):
reality show Mastermind. Mike was responsible for the Giraffe Races, sure,
but also a lot of hits in reality TV terms,
this was like Scorsese teaming up with Tarantino. The premise
was simple. Take a kid between the ages of six
and twelve who had a knowledge specialty, their field of genius,
(08:17):
and ask them a series of multi part questions that
required between three and ten answers to complete. It wasn't
multiple choice, but if they got it right, they'd win cash.
The parents then decided whether their child should keep going
to win more cash or risk losing what they've already won.
(08:39):
A panel of experts in a given category could weigh
in on the kid's chances of success. If they navigated
all ten levels, they'd walk away with five hundred thousand dollars.
The show's producers recruited from MENSA, from schools for gifted children,
and from the media, which loved to cover kids doing
(09:02):
extraordinary things. That's how they found Ben. Tw thousand and nine.
Ben was living in Gilbert, Arizona, happily immersed in paleontology,
passionate about it in a way that children often are.
His mother, Eke, was a teacher. His father, Sherman, had
a few different careers, including one as an electrical engineer.
(09:26):
They were all too happy to encourage and nourish his fascination.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
So when his younger son came along and he's like,
I want to do paleontology. As a parent, you want
to encourage your kids. But he just didn't know, like,
how do I actually do that? So he sought out
experts to ask, and in this case, down here in
Tucson is the world's largest Gemen mineral show.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Arizona is a good place for dinosaur lovers. The Southwest
is home to lots of fossils. Ben's father made the
right contacts to facilitate Ben's education.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
He even got permission.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
For Ben to go on a fossil excavation where he
looked on in amazement at an actual stegosaurus tooth.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Teeth of Stegosaurus are quite rare, so that was one
of those times when everyone puts their tools down and
we all gather around to look at it.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Ben's knowledge of dinosaurs earned him other opportunities like volunteering
at a museum in Mesa to answer questions about everything
from fossils to the theory of evolution.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
And it was basically my responsibility to stand there and
answered people's questions as they came. By the way that
the exhibit was laid out, people would kind of turn
a corner and sometimes they would see the Therizinosaurus looming
over them, and they just scream and run away. But
those who are brave enough to actually go into the
side gallery would see an eight year old standing there.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
He also got some media attention, including on the local
news and a write up in a magazine, though he
can't be certain that's likely where the producers of Our
Little Genius discovered him, least a phone call to his
parents and explain the premise of the show. Ben knew
something was up when his father picked him up from
(11:14):
school one day rather than let him take the bus.
Maybe Ben thought another family cat had died. Instead, his
father told him a quiz show was looking to have
him on.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Like, I was not pressured into doing this in any way.
He would have been perfectly happy, I think telling him no,
thank you, but again because all the other times I
had been on, you know, interacting with media had been
no big deal.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
The opportunity to win five hundred thousand dollars was significant.
It could cover not only his education but his brothers.
And while his family wasn't in financial trouble, Ben had
a loose concept of the greater financial crisis hitting the
middle class. In Ben's mind, that might impact his ability
(12:01):
to attend college.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
I mean, again, this is two thousand and nine. I'm
ten years old, but the recession is happening. And when
I came home from school, I would be watching on
the nightly news everything about the stock market crashing.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
And I know that in order.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
To succeed at the career that I wanted, I needed
to go to college. College costs a lot of money,
and here was an opportunity for me to potentially earn
my way using.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
The knowledge that I already had.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
So to me, it seemed like, I mean, why not,
you know, what's the worst that could happen?
Speaker 2 (12:31):
But Ben's parents weren't stage parents. They didn't place any
pressure on him.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
They basically encouraged me to like, look the third question,
the ten thousand dollars safety net question. Make that the
goal as long as you can answer the first three
questions in a row. You walk away with at least
ten thousand dollars and that'll still help with tuition. That'll
still put you ahead of where you would have been.
So just focus on that. Everything after that can be
a bonus. Yeah, just focus on getting those first three
(12:56):
questions correct.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
The taping of Our Little Genius was set for December
two thousand and nine. That gave Ben a few months
to cram as much information into his brain as he
possibly could. He soaked up details of fossil discoveries of
genus and species, sizes and characteristics, and the producers also
(13:18):
said they wanted generic paleontology rather than limiting it to
just dinosaurs, which added whole new subjects to cran.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
When my dad would take time off to go and
study with me, he would it was stuff like, you know,
printing off web pages with list of questions about fixtinct
animals just so that we understood like what the potential
questions could be.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
But here's the issue with dinosaur trivia. It's not like
math or history where things can be cut and dry.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
There was a lot of like, well, this source says,
this answer, this sources this answer, well, this answer, this
source is newer, so this may be based on more
up to date information. You know, this source looks more
trustworthy than the other one, so again it's not quite
as unambiguous about what the answers to some of these
questions could be.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Ben also did mock appearances for producers, answering questions over
the phone and sometimes in front of a camcorder at
his house.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
A few of them were recorded.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
They had us set up a camcorder and a tripod
because they wanted to ask me questions over the phone
and verify that, you know, I wasn't looking at a
sheet of paper to answer it, or that someone else
wasn't like, you know, whispering in my ear. There were
a few interviews we did where it's it's us in
the family, sitting down in front of the camera and
they're asking me questions and I'm answering them.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Ben thinks he got about seventy percent of the questions
during the practice rounds correct.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
That was the one about in the test rounds, I
had been asked named the three carnivorous dinosaurs larger than
Torontosaurus rex.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Unbeknownst to Ben, this would be important later. For now,
Ben's parents signed a release, and Ben also signed a
contract at ten in this the state of California. It's
a binding contract if it's been reviewed and approved by
a court.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
So it says I understand that as a contestant on
the series, I may be subjected to severe mental stress, embarrassment, shock, surprise,
or other unfortunate emotions in response to the events, stunts,
and or challenges on the series.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
In addition, I understand that as a contestant on.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
The series, I may reveal and or relate, and other
parties may reveal and or relate information about me that
is of a personal, private, or embarrassing or unfavorable nature,
which information may be factual and or fictional, So you
may be embarrassed, and it may or may not even
be factual.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
The contract also made a point of the seriousness of
trying to cheat.
Speaker 7 (15:51):
I am aware that it is a federal offense punishable
by fine and or imprisonment for anyone to do anything
which would rig or in any way influence the outcome
of the series with the intent to deceive the viewing public,
and that it is a federal offense to offer or
to accept any information or secret assistance in connection with
the series. I agreed that I will not participate in
(16:12):
any such act or any other deceptive or dishonest act
with respect to the series. If anyone tries to induce
me to do any such act, I must immediately notify
the producer.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Ben scribbled his initials next to the passage, and soon
it was time to head to California, where Our Little
Genius was taped at Los Angeles Center Studios and one
of their massive eighteen thousand square foot sound stages. Ben
and his father arrived there in December two thousand and nine.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
I remember waking up that morning when it was still
dark out, and it's just one of those days where
you're like wide awake the sucond. You wake up and
it's like, well, today's day. Start going through the facts
in your mind because today's the day. You know this
could who knows this could change everything?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
It would change everything. And it all started with a
curious conversation backs age. When Ben and his family arrived
for the taping of Our Little Genius, the studio was
slowly filling up with audience members and a bustling crew,
(17:24):
including host Kevin Pollock. Ben doesn't remember interacting much with
Kevin or with any of the other kid contestants. He
does remember someone on the show, an adult, asking a
weird question.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
He was trying to strike up a conversation to me about, like,
well do you like do you like coffee? And I'm like, no,
I'm ten, I don't like coffee.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
But he did notice something peculiar. While the kids were
on stage, they were asked to pretend to have gotten
an answer wrong and to look slightly dejected.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
So that you know, in the case that there's an
emotional meltdown, they've got footage that like doesn't involve a
small child like complete breaking down, Right, They've got a
more controlled, faked rehearsed ending that they can go to.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
As Ben later found out, they wanted the option of
using a reaction that would be less disturbing for viewers.
As this is going on, Ben is getting a microphone
threaded through his clothing, a red button up shirt and slacks. Then,
shortly before Ben went on, someone involved in the production
(18:33):
told his father something. It was information about dinosauria, the
umbrella term for two distinct groups of dinotes, the lizard
hipped and the bird hipped.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
They had already asked me questions about that I already
knew all that, and what this producer wanted to make
sure my dad made sure that I knew was that
this had happened in eighteen eighty eight, This official division
of dinosaur had happened in the year eighteen eighty eight,
and that it was the researcher Harry Seely that had
made that distinction.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
To put this into some context for the non paleontologists listening,
this is not what would be considered common information to
have in all of Ben's preparation. He hadn't been expecting
to feel these types of questions.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
But in all these questions they had been asking me
about dinosaurs, it was about dinosaurs and not about like
the history and development of paleontology as a field all
that much.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
There's a few key names and dates that would come up.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
But yeah, knowing Harry Seely eighteen eighty eight off the
top of your head, I mean even today as a paleontologist,
is like, not something that's useful to know, right.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Sherman later told Ben he wasn't sure what to do
with the information he'd been given, that maybe it would
simply be a matter of knowing Harry Seely in case
he was mentioned during the show. It didn't seem wrong,
not right away.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Then, and he's like, I'm it was implied to me that,
like this is important contextual information for someone who might
be on your expert panel, Like this person might be
a descendant of Harry Seely or might be a scholar
in Harry Seely's work.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
And like you might look stupid if you don't know
who that is.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Each kid competed one at a time. Finally, it was
Ben's turn on stage. He stood inside of a giant
illuminated ring that slowly rose to the ceiling. A panel
of expert stood at the ready to advise a Ben's
father if he needed guidance on whether Ben could answer
the question.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
We're going to consult the experts on.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
The experts are going to get to see the question,
and then they talk amongst themselves and decide, like, okay,
does it could a ten year old realistically get this
question right? And so they can advise the parents like
either go for it, try for that five hundred thousand dollars,
or like don't risk it.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
If you cash out now, you'll keep you know whatever.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
The previous tier was above one hundred thousand, so they
were there kind of as the lifeline, but like realistically,
in the function of entertainment property, they're there to make
faces at the camera, and that in a situation I'm
sure they were hoping for would be the experts say, like, no,
I don't think a ten year old can answer this.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
The first round of questions began. Ben was asked to
name the major geological periods of Earth's history in order.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
You start with the Cambrian Ordavision, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Paleogene, Neogene, Quaternary.
The Carboniferous is a period of time in other parts
of the world that they or actually they do it
here in the US too. It's subdivided into different sub periods.
(21:45):
Some consider them full period some consider them sub periods,
and they're named after places where these major exposures are.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Technically there was more than one correct.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
Answer, So the lower one is called the Mississippian period,
and the upper one is called the Pennsylvanian period. So
the twelve part answer that I gave, which is the
one that they accepted, has just carboniferous.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
There was a beat, and then Kevin Pollock announced Ben
had gotten all the answers right for the first prize
of one thousand dollars. The ice had been broken. Ben
could do this stand in front of a bunch of strangers,
under hot studio lights and under pressure recall arcane information. Hey,
(22:28):
it was about dinosaurs.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Like I know, I had a different interest set.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
You know a lot of kids my age were in
a Pokemon and they made them memorize hundreds of those suckers, right,
so me knowing twelve things in a row is like
not a big deal.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
The second round of questions came. This time they were
worth five thousand dollars.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Right, So the question they ask is, you know what
two major groups are the clay DINOSAURA broken down into
and again this is all paraphrasing. I don't remember the
exact like language here, but what they're asking is what
are the two major groups of dinosaurs?
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Who named them? And what year did he name them?
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Something wasn't right. The answer was Harry Seely and eighteen
eighty eight, the same name and year his father had
been fed. Just before Ben walked onstage, Ben deliberated answering
was worth a lot of money, college money. But wasn't
(23:28):
this cheating and.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
Of course I already knew the names of the groups,
but I would not have known, Harry Seely eighteen eighty eight.
Had they not used my father to give that information,
had they not tricked him into thinking that this was
about one of the experts, I would not have known that.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Ben was also thinking of that contract. Was it too
late to disclose? Someone had fed him answers? Had he
done something wrong?
Speaker 4 (23:53):
My impression was like, all right, I promised not to
embarrass the production team, and that like, whatever I say,
they can do whatever they want with it, and it
might be a huge mistake right to say the truth.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
The other problem was that our little genius didn't appear
to have a contestant advocate on set, someone a child
could turn to who wasn't directly part of the production.
Child actors have those protections, child geniuses do not.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
Again, there was no representative on stage of a neutral
third party. For a production that is done ethically and
with safety in mind, you know, you should have a
third party who does not have a stake in the game,
who is present as a resource for the child. You know,
who is not from the production team and is not
one of the parents.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Ben answered Harry seey and eighteen eighty eight, and again
Kevin Pollack told him he was correct, but the relief
he had felt after the first set of questions was
replaced by confusion. This wasn't how game shows were supposed
to work. You had to come up with an answer
on your own, not parrot what had been told to you.
(25:09):
Kevin Pollack delivered the third round of questions, which were
worth ten thousand dollars. This time the problem was something
very much like the one he had answered during his
test runs at home, when he had been asked to
name three carnivorous dinosaurs larger than.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
The t rex, and then in the actual taping, they
asked me first name the largest dinosaur ever known, and
then named the four carnivors dinosaurs larger than t rex.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
One question, five answers. To Ben, it was convoluted and confusing.
He had demonstrated knowledge of three during the sample game.
Now there were four, plus a bonus answer, the largest
dinosaur ever discovered. Ben knew the answer they were looking for, Argentinosaurus,
(26:00):
But this time the issue wasn't being fed the complete answer.
It was that Ben felt there was more than one
correct answer, or no way of knowing the right answer.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
And so what they were looking for Here again we're
talking about biggest. That can mean a lot of different things.
It can mean the longest, it can mean the tallest
at the hip. Because dinosaurs in their natural posture the
two legged bipedal dinosaurs, so all the carnivores are going
to be basically their body is parallel to the ground,
so their highest point is not like the head the
(26:33):
way that humans stand. It's the hip is usually the
highest point. So if you're looking for tallest, it's usually
measured like at the hip. There's weight, and I think
it's pretty intuitive to understand that it's difficult to estimate
how much an animal would have weighed when we only
have a skeleton.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
The problem was also that some species didn't necessarily have
complete skeletons at the time, making an objective measurement difficult.
Ben gave the best answer he could.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
What if it's forty three feet.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
You know you're hinging, literally wagering ten thousand dollars on
this question. You know, even the answer that I gave,
which is Spinosaurus, carcard Antosaurus, and Giganotosaurus. Even at that
time you could have argued we don't actually know that
the one or two specimens of these animals we have
are larger than the largest t Rex.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
But he couldn't think of a fourth. Under pressure, he
answered Suka Mimas. The show was looking for Tyranno Titan,
which was at the time not conclusively proven to be
larger than t Rex. While it did appear in some
reference material, there was no consensus about its average size.
(27:45):
This time, Kevin Pollock didn't have good news. The answer
had been judged to be incorrect, and then suddenly there
was a production issue.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
When I gave the answer Suka Mimas spelled incorrectly pops
up on the screen, and then they cut the lights
and they pretend that there's a power outage.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Ben was led off stage and into a room. When
they came back on, Kevin Pollack had an announcement Ben
could try again in what amounted to.
Speaker 5 (28:17):
A do over.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
And here in that side room is where I learned
that we could have another go. I didn't know until
that point that they would let me try again again.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Ben made it to the third set of questions. Kevin
Pollack wanted to know what family smilod On belongs to.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
Of course, I know what Smilodon is. I know that
it's a cat. So the guest that I make is like,
I don't know. Felis I think is verbatim what I said.
Felis is the genus name for the domestic cat, and
it's quite close to Philiday, right, Felis Pheladay. But that's
not the answer they were looking for. So I end up.
(28:56):
You know, at that point, they're just like, all right,
you're done.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
As he walked off the stage, a confusing series of
emotions began to grip him. One of the worst feelings
was that he had let his older brother down, that
he could have potentially paid for his college if the
game hadn't been a mess of leaked information and ambiguous questions.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
He didn't know that at the time, and I'm really
glad that he didn't know that He was there when
we filmed. You know, he was there in the audience
when we filmed the show, and so he saw me
like bomb on stage, and so I'm really glad that
he didn't know at the time, like I was trying
to get money for both of us, because that would
have made me feel a lot worse if, like I
had promised that to him.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
At the taping, Ben was routed to a child psychologist
who asked some perfunctory questions.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
At least that's what she identified herself as. And she
basically looks at me and she goes, yeah, he looks
pretty sad.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
He and his family were then ushered into an suv
and driven back to their hotel.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
We get back into the SUVs and we go back
to the hotel, and I am given a couple of
hours to myself in the hotel room to kind of
come to terms of the th that I blew it.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Heading home, the reality was sinking in. He had failed
to advance, a failure his ten year old self thought
might endanger his chances of pursuing his passion paleontology without
prize money, where would money from college come from. Later
Ben was affected by another realization. He had effectively cheated,
(30:33):
not with any premeditation, not because he wanted an advantage,
but because he had been put in an impossible position.
The question was what was anyone going to do about it?
And what happened with the other kids. The original quiz
(31:01):
show scandal was in November of nineteen fifty six, when
a handsome man named Charles Van Doren stepped down to
the set of twenty one. An English instructor at Columbia University,
Van Doren had been invited to the show at the
behest of producer Albert Friedman. For the next fourteen weeks,
(31:23):
van Doren listened intently to questions, his brow furrowed in
deep concentration. Then he'd emerge with the right answer, enough
of them to dethrone the show's reigning champion, a comparatively
nerdy player named Herbert Stemple. Van Dorn became a national celebrity.
(31:44):
He won one hundred and twenty nine thousand dollars or
the equivalent of one point five million today. He got
a job with NBC, but by summer of nineteen fifty eight,
he was on a different kind of hot seat. Twenty
one had been rigged for Van Doren to win. He
(32:04):
had been given the answers, so had Stemple. Both had
been coached to appear as sympathetic as possible to the
viewing audience. Along with other contestants, Van Doren lied to
a Manhattan grand jury about the allegations before finally coming
clean in nineteen fifty nine. He lost his jobs at
(32:26):
Columbia and NBC and rarely spoke about the scandal.
Speaker 8 (32:31):
When that came to light, Congress actually held an investigation,
They held hearings, and is really the first time in
the nation's history that it became widespread public knowledge that
a lot of what was being presented on TV wasn't
actually real, And what came out of those Congressional investigations
was ultimately a criminal law.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
That's George Bright again. George is the Deputy District Attorney
for Ventura County in California. In twenty nineteen, while he
was still a law student at Chapman Universe City, George
authored a paper where he took a deep dive into
the legal consequences of manipulating televised contests. After the quiz
(33:17):
show scandals, the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC was given
new powers to enforce fairness in game shows, and.
Speaker 8 (33:26):
It actually makes it a federal crime, punishable by up
to a year in prison, to predetermine the outcome of
an intellectual game, game of chance or a game of
intellectual skill with the intent to deceive the viewing public.
So it's actually a crime for producers to rig broadcast
(33:47):
game shows.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Following the quiz show scandals of the nineteen fifties, game
shows cleaned up their act. No one wanted to be
caught feeding answers to contestants and risk their reputations or
their freedom, but there were still controversies. In the nineteen seventies,
a game show producer criticized Hollywood Squares for writing funny
(34:10):
answers for their celebrity panel, even though they still had
to give a proper and unrehearsed response. Later in two
thousand and one, a game show on UPN titled Manhunt
received negative press when a producer revealed certain scenes had
been scripted. The show, about people being hunted by paintballers
(34:32):
on a remote island in Hawaii, actually shot some scenes
at a Los Angeles park. Those were gray areas in
which the lines between entertainment and competition seemed to blur.
Is a competition with physical skill or talent and intellectual contest?
(34:52):
Could you get in trouble for rigging a singing competition
or a stand up comedy game?
Speaker 3 (34:58):
No one is really sure.
Speaker 8 (35:00):
So I mean, I think it's debatable whether or not
comedy is an intellectual exercise, or whether or not something
like singing would be an intellectual exercise. But yeah, I
mean it's fairly broad what intellectual even means.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
What's more, the FCC rule only applies to over the
air broadcast networks. Something on Netflix wouldn't be of concern,
but Fox was and is a broadcaster on public airwaves.
If Our Little Genius was indeed tainted by improper disclosure
of information, then USC five oh nine would certainly apply.
Speaker 8 (35:37):
Uh, show like Our Little Genius, I don't think there'd
be any doubt that it would come within the purview
of the statute. I mean, that's the very quis essential
type of quiz show that the statute was designed for.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
In order for that to happen, the FCC would have
to learn about it in the first place. But back
home in Arizona, Ben was having trouble coming to terms
with the Our Little Genius debacle.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
Yeah, So, in the immediate aftermath and in the the
time to follow, I honestly did not talk about it
very much.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
I didn't really want to.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
I felt embarrassed about the fact that I had wasted
I felt like I had wasted so much of their time,
my father's time, and my mom and my brother and
my grandfather's time, because they all got flown out with me,
you know, to la to do this.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Worse, Ben felt like he had been cheated out of
a fair.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
Shot, and so yeah, in the immediate aftermath, I'm feeling frustrated.
I'm feeling cheated of an opportunity to have actually earned
my way. I'm feeling ashamed of myself for cheating, for
knowing that they had given me an answer, and for
bowing to the pressure to go forward with it.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Finally, his father, Sherman, decided to sit down and pen
a letter to Mark Burnett Productions. In it, he detailed
what he felt was in propriety on the part of
the production of Our Little Genius. He wasn't the only one.
In a separate letter said in December two thousand and
nine to the FCC, the parent of another contestant detailed
(37:12):
a surprisingly similar story. The parent alleged that a producer
had phoned with a list of categories that might be
in the show to assess whether their child was well
versed in them. Here's George bridegim again.
Speaker 8 (37:29):
And your son needs to know the Italian names of
the piano pedals, and were getting so hyper specific that
this parent was convinced that the producer was essentially feeding
him what the questions were going to be in advance
of the taping.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
The parent stated they suspected the producer had given them
four specific answers to questions because the child was coming
on as a music prodigy. The parents were told they
should brush up on the names of musical notes, and
that it was very important the child knew the sixty
fourth note pemi demi semiquaver. When the parent broached their
(38:11):
concerns over how the show questions were selected in a
meeting with a production lawyer before taping, their child's appearance
was abruptly canceled. Whether they actually got the relevant answers
remained unclear, since the child never appeared on the show,
but it was enough for the FCC to take action
(38:32):
and launch an investigation, and that may have made some
kind of history.
Speaker 8 (38:39):
So interestingly enough, from the time the statute was created
in the nineteen fifties all the way to the present time,
I believe Our Little Genius is the only show that
the FCC actually seriously investigated for violating the statute.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Soon Our Little Genius was becoming Our Little Scandal. In
January twenty ten, just a week before the series was
scheduled to premiere, The New York Times reported that Fox
was pulling the show, which was supposed to air directly
after American Idol. Instead, a rerun of the four hundred
(39:16):
and fiftieth episode of The Simpsons would air in its place.
Eight episodes had been taped, none would ever see the
light of day. According to co creator Mike Darnell, Burnett
had found quote certain information that was relayed in a
way Mark found worrisome and offered to reshoot the show
(39:38):
by paying for production costs out of his own pocket.
According to the Los Angeles Times, it was Burnett who
informed Fox there was an issue. In his own statement,
Mark Burnett said that some concerns had surfaced about contestants
being given more information than needed, and that the company
(40:00):
was no longer comfortable moving forward with the show. Burnett
said the following, I recently discovered that there was an
issue with how some information was relayed to contestants during
the pre production of Our Little Genius. As a result,
I am not comfortable delivering the episodes without reshooting them.
(40:20):
I believe my series must always be beyond reproach, so
I have requested that Fox not air these episodes.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Mark Burnett is one of the pre eminent producers of
unscripted programming on television. Even though we were incredibly pleased
with the quality of Our Little Genius, we respect and
appreciate its due diligence and the decision to pull these episodes.
We agree there can be no question about the integrity
of our shows. While these episodes will not air, the
families who participated in the show will receive their winnings,
(40:50):
and we are grateful for their participation.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
This decision triggered an intriguing dilemma. The FCC rule prohibiting
the orchestration of game shows applies to shows that, per
the rule, are intended to mislead the public. But how
can you mislead the public if your show is never
seen by the public. What jurisdiction does the FCC have
(41:15):
over a show alleged to be improper when it never airs.
That question was never really put to the test. While
the FCC reportedly opened an investigation into Our Little Genius,
they never arrived at any conclusion. Since it was never broadcast.
It would be hard for anyone the FCC included to
(41:38):
argue viewers had been misled. It just disappeared, and even
if it had aired, the FCC's purview would probably have
been limited to the broadcaster, Fox, not the production company.
According to George Bridegan, once the decision was made not
to air the show, the FCC abandoned its investigation.
Speaker 8 (42:01):
There's a legitimate question about whether or not a crime
even occurred. A good analogy would be if a cop
were to sit in a bar and see a guy
get absolutely drunk, go and grab his car keys and
start to walk out towards his car, stop him before
he even gets into the car, and says, hey, we're
going to conduct a dui investigation. And it's clear that
(42:23):
this guy is completely drunk, but he never actually drives
the car. Did he commit a UI have no, of
course not. It's sort of the same thing that Fox
did here. The show is never actually broadcast across the air,
and the statute is designed to protect the viewing public.
So if the viewing public isn't ever being deceived with anything,
there's really no reason for the FCC to continue pursuing
(42:45):
the investigation.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Naturally, we wanted to get the other party side of
the story. We requested a comment from Fox, but didn't
receive a reply. Mark Burnette was not able to be
reached for comment, and Mike Darnell's representatives did not respond
to a request for comment. To be clear, the FCC
never disclosed or alleged any evidence of wrongdoing to the
(43:09):
credit of Mark Burnett, Mike Darnell, Fox, and everyone else involved.
Once suggestions of impropriety were discovered, they yanked the show.
But was it improper? Asked about the controversy later in
twenty ten, Kevin Pollack said, quote, there were some questions
along the way as to how do you find out
(43:32):
what a little genius actually does or does not know
prior to the quiz end quote where's the line between
assessing a kid's knowledge and giving them knowledge, between seeing
if a kid knows about dinosauria and if he knows
the name Harry Seeley, between knowing musical notes and specifically
(43:54):
knowing about the Hemi demi semiquaver.
Speaker 8 (43:58):
Well, ultimately, it'd be up to a jury about where
the line.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Is for all of this.
Speaker 8 (44:04):
Could you meet with a contestant ahead of time and say, hey,
we want to make sure your child is at least
somewhat familiar with these topics. I think you probably could,
But where the clear line is is you definitely can't
be telling them what the questions are in advance and
then presenting it to the viewing public as if the
contestants hearing this information for the first time or they're
(44:25):
getting these questions for the first time.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
But it does leave a pretty big unanswered question, what
would be the reason for slipping crucial trivia to the kids?
Why not just let them answer and let the chips
fall where they may. George Bridigham has a theory.
Speaker 8 (44:45):
And then it's from the parents FCC complaint. They gave
answers to probably about three or four questions, and it
seemed kind of apparent that the production wanted the children
to be able to get at least through three or
four questions. They didn't want them all to be getting
knocked out of the very first question, because that just
doesn't make very interesting TV.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Perhaps producers had realized they had concocted a show that
was too difficult for kids to excel in that watching
children fail over and over again wasn't going to be
palatable to audiences, and so some steps needed to be
taken to better their chances. That could be the reason
(45:28):
the show also elected to institute the do over, where
kids who missed out on the first four questions got
a second chance, a change made later on and just
before episodes were being taped. But if this was about
making the audience feel good and the kids feel good,
it did a lousy job of it. Ben Mueller didn't
(45:50):
feel anything but resentment. He had come to play an
honest game, and in his view, that opportunity never came,
and it affected him deeply.
Speaker 4 (46:02):
Now here's another kind of darkly humorous aspect to the
story is that after a couple of hours alone in
the hotel room, that little boy perished in that hotel room.
The adolescent who emerged afterwards was a little bit older,
a little bit smarter, and wiser about how the world
really works, you know, but not the same person at
(46:22):
the beginning and end of that day.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
There were consequences that went well beyond preparing contestants for
a game. Kids as young as six were being put
in positions of feeling inadequate in front of an audience,
of letting their parents down, or if a parent should
decide their child couldn't answer a question, feeling their parents.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
Didn't believe in them.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
It was bumpy psychological territory. The cardinal sin of Our
Little Genius may not have been that it divulged some
information to the kids. It was that kids should never
be signing contracts warning them that a TV show could
cause severe emotional distress.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
No, I didn't think that this was going to be
anything controversial, right. I really took at face value that
this was I was being given a chance to answer
questions using the knowledge that I had to potentially win
my way to be able to not worry about college tuition,
And like, what a huge relief that would have been,
Like what it is hard not to think about how
(47:28):
different my trajectory would have been if I had legitimately
been given that chance. My understanding was that this would
be a legit chance, and so I studied, you know,
I put my back into it with the understanding that,
like this is the opportunity, You're never going to get
an opportunity like this.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
Again, what about the other Little Geniuses?
Speaker 2 (47:46):
The show's publicity material didn't use last names, which makes
locating them difficult. We approached one other player we could identify,
but because he was just six at the time, it
couldn't recall a whole lot. The person's parent, while not
consenting to an interview, told us they were never given
information by the show's producers, meaning that not all Little
(48:10):
Geniuses had the same experience. As of this recording, Ben
is the only contestant from Our Little Genius to come
forward publicly. In twenty twenty one, he decided to speak
to reporter John Deanna of the Arizona Public and detail
his experiences. It was difficult then and it's difficult now.
(48:32):
He wasn't sure he wanted to revisit the story for
this podcast, but ultimately he decided to move forward.
Speaker 4 (48:40):
So I didn't talk about it much with my parents.
I didn't want to. I didn't talk about it at
all really to my friends for many years afterwards, because
I just didn't know how to tell the story.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
This story has mostly been about Ben Mohler as a
ten year old, as though he were frozen in time.
But Our Little Genius was fifteen years ago. There's another
Ben Mohler story to tell, the one where bendes there's
a lot of learning left to do, But.
Speaker 4 (49:10):
At the time my response was, you just have to
learn more. Knows to the grindstone, take the opportunities as
they come.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
He had worried about missing out on college. Instead, it
was the lass that drove him to work harder than ever.
Speaker 4 (49:24):
I made the choice the same day to double down
on paleontology. I blamed myself for not knowing enough. Even
if I disagreed with the questions that I had been given,
I still felt that I felt that I had been right,
but that if I had still known more, I would
have done better.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Ben attended the University of Arizona and earned two degrees,
one in ecology and evolutionary biology and one in the geosciences.
He digs up dinosaur bones with an adult knowledge and
a ten year old's curiosity. He pursues his passion as
a researcher and educator even after the quiz show experience
(50:05):
threatened to contin emanated, and he's found some measure of
peace in realizing his younger self isn't to blame. His
love of science is intact.
Speaker 4 (50:17):
I would say, what from the beginning really hooked me
about paleentology and has continued to keep me in this
space even now at age twenty five, is just the
fact that there's really no limit to the number of
questions you can ask paleontology. The purview of this of
this field of study is all of earth history and
(50:38):
every aspect of the Earth.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
Now Ben Mahler can be the one asking all the
questions he wants, and he relishes not always knowing the answer.
This whole episode made me just stressed out in general.
It made me nervous for Quisho producers, It made me
(51:02):
nervous for parents, and it made me anxious for children.
This is just a very anxious episod for me.
Speaker 6 (51:08):
Oh my god. It was so surprisingly moving, like when
he says the line about the hotel room, like he
relish is not always knowing the answer at the very end.
But before that, when he's talking about the little boy
who perished symbolically in that hotel room, broke my heart.
I was like, oh my god, I'm not a parent,
Thank God, because I think I would make terrible decisions
and put my children in these places where they would
have these stories and I'd have to hear them on
(51:29):
a podcast and go, oh man, I messed up. But
that little boy broke my heart. And then I was
so glad that he made it and became a palaeontologist.
This is the whole story was a roller coaster.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Kids should never, though, feel like financial responsibility for their family.
That's what stressed me out the most. But thought that
these kids knew that, like the money mattered, and like
what they did had like real world implications, like that
broke my heart.
Speaker 6 (51:51):
His brother's future is hanging on how well he does
his a ten year old on a crazy set and
he's being told to have it was crazy for me,
just like also two thousand and nine, what a wild
time in reality TV. They were just throwing everything at
the wall. I'd forgotten how crazy it was.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
Jason.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
See, this is why what you did was okay because
your child wasn't under financial pressure. It was just entertainment.
Speaker 5 (52:12):
Well, so I'll tell you the story here. When she
was two, we had a series of place mats. They
were like two dollars place mats I'd gotten from Kmart,
and one of them had all the pictures of the presidents.
And she's learning to talk. She'd like point and say
who's this, who's this? And so I would say that's
Richard Nixon.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
Richard Nixon, who shows up in every one of these episodes.
Speaker 5 (52:36):
And then she would ask, what does he say, and
I just thought it was a funny thing. So we
filmed a little video and so I'd ask her what
does Ronald Reagan say? And she'd say, mister Gorbachev, tear
down that wall. Oh. So we posted that on YouTube
and Gawker picked it up. At the time, very influential
(52:56):
Ryan Williams, producer called and asked if they could run
the video on the nightly news. I was like, sure,
Good Morning America played it the next day. Wow, you know,
millions views. And then Rachel Ray's team called and said,
would you guys want to come on and talk about
the making of this video? And we're like, okay, well
(53:16):
come on. And we get there and they've recreated like
a giant version of this place map and put it
in the middle of the set and they have us
come out and little Charlotte gets to ask questions and
has to go and point at the board and do
her little impressions. And it was incredibly stressful in the
moment of like, oh my god, what are we doing?
(53:39):
And that Rachel Ray's staff was great. They're like, look,
if it doesn't work, like, we just won't run it.
It's fine. Like they had the dogs from the dog
show there that day, and so that was like a
fun thing. Backstage, we have good photos with Rachel Ray.
Oh that's awesome. But there was no money or no scandal.
I had given her the answers, drilled the answers into
(53:59):
her over our place, map learnings.
Speaker 6 (54:02):
No, wait, I have to know something. What does Charlotte
say about this? What does she recall of this moment?
Speaker 3 (54:07):
Does she?
Speaker 5 (54:07):
Yeah, doesn't recall it at all. But we have the
Brian Williams video and the Rachel Ray video, which we
will occasionally pop out when her friends come over and
she'll act embarrassed, but I think she thinks it's pretty cool.
Now we're in college essay season where she can take this.
Oh yeah, like any direction. It can be like my
(54:28):
stage dad, try and make me the bread winner after
the two thousand and eight financial crisis.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
I'm going to insist that you send me this video.
Speaker 5 (54:37):
Yeah, this is gold.
Speaker 2 (54:38):
I can't believe I've never seen this.
Speaker 5 (54:40):
Maybe we can play a little of it here in
the episode.
Speaker 3 (54:43):
I would love to.
Speaker 9 (54:44):
You may have heard of the term presidential scholar, but
the following piece of video, which got very big on
the web today, brings.
Speaker 5 (54:51):
New meaning to that term.
Speaker 9 (54:53):
Two year old Charlotte English of Wayne, New Jersey got
a place Matt showing the US presidents on it as
a gift from her trivia above dad, who bought it
for a kmart. Check out her knowledge.
Speaker 5 (55:07):
Hey, what are you doing to your place? Matt? Can
you show me where Richard Nixon is?
Speaker 3 (55:14):
And what does he say?
Speaker 7 (55:16):
And?
Speaker 5 (55:18):
Very good, where's Ronald Reagan?
Speaker 3 (55:25):
That's right? And what does he say? Mister rocks right?
Speaker 5 (55:36):
Very special episodes is made by some very special people.
Today's episode was written by Jake Rosson. He's one of
our most prolific contributors. His last episode was the one
about the time the Harlem Globetrotters actually lost. He's written
about stolen moon Rocks, the kid inside the et costume,
and many more and more to come. Our show is
(55:57):
hosted by Danis Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English. Our
producer is Josh Fisher. Editing and sound design by Jonathan Washington,
Mixing and mastering by Beheid Fraser. Additional editing by Mary Doo,
Original music by Elise McCoy, Show logo by Lucy Quintania.
Our executive producer is Jason English. If you ever want
(56:18):
to email the show, hit us up at Very Special
Episodes at gmail dot com. Very Special Episodes is a
production of iHeart Podcasts.
Originals.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is an iHeart original.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Welcome to Our Little Job.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
It's two thousand and nine and Ben Moehler, a ten
year old fifth grader from Arizona, should.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Be in school instead.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
He's standing on a stage in Los Angeles. He's enclosed
in a prop the shape of a doughnut that's being
pulled to the rafters for a dramatic reveal. Behind him
is a giant seventy five foot screen. In front of
him are roughly three hundred audience members. His father is nearby,
(00:51):
and so are television cameras. Ben's vision isn't great and
things are a little blurry, but he can hear the host,
Kevin Pollack.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
He's selling the shell right.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
He's talking about how these are the hardest questions that
I've ever been put to television quiz, but these are
the smartest kids that we've ever brought, you know before.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Ben is taping a new game show on the Fox
Broadcasting network. It's called Our Little Genius. He's one of
several child prodigies who have been invited to test their
knowledge for a chance to win up to five hundred
thousand dollars. Ben's specialty is dinosaurs. He's prepared for this
(01:37):
for months. He knows as much as any ten year
old possibly could about palaeontology. If he does well, there's
the possibility he could earn enough money to pay for college.
He nails the first question, which consists of a multi
part answer, but when the next question comes, Ben is confused.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
I can't really see it on the big screen, but
I can see it on my small screen. That's where
my emotion start to. Really I'm getting really confused, and
I'm getting really in my own head about like is
there another game being played on me that I didn't understand.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Until right now. Because something is not right here.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Something isn't right, And it's not because the question is
too difficult. It's the opposite. Moments before he walked onstage,
a member of the production team approached his father with
information about the game, information that Ben now realizes is
(02:41):
the answer to the question. Even at age ten, Ben
realizes that isn't supposed to happen on game shows. In fact,
it's a violation of federal law.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
You would be able to see on my face just
confusion and concern, and on the tip of my tongue
in that moment was me wanting to say they told
me the answer to this off stage.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Something's not right here, but can they start over?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
In a split second, Ben has to decide whether to
answer the question in a way that feels like cheating,
or tell a studio full of people that the quiz
show they're taping isn't on the level, that maybe these
child geniuses are getting a little extra help. While he's
still processing all that, the stage lights suddenly and mysteriously
(03:38):
go out.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Yeah, something is afoot.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Welcome to very special episodes and I heart original podcast.
I'm your host Dana Schwartz, and this is Hemi Demi
semiquaver a modern quiz show scandal.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Welcome back to very special episodes. I'm Jason English, She's
Danas Swartz, He's Sarah Burnette. What any of you have
a stressful game show experience you want to share here?
Speaker 2 (04:09):
I mean, Jason, I was on Jeopardy.
Speaker 5 (04:12):
I don't want to drag gan ya. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
I was on Jeopardy. It was not a great I
didn't do the best. It was not like a gold
medal situation for me. I'm not one to make excuses
in my defense. I was twelve weeks pregnant at the
time until I was just like housing saltine crackers backstage,
and so I was like nauseous and in a cold
sweat the whole time, But no one knew I was
pregnant because it was like, you know, it's like very early.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
But still it was not the best performance of my life.
But it was a dream come true just to be
on Jeopardy, but very scary, and at that moment I
realized I never wanted to be on television a or
maybe be perceived.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
Ever again, you've done Jeopardy, Celebrity Jeopardy next, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Could kill Celebrity Jeopardy. Those questions are way easier.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Now.
Speaker 6 (05:00):
How was the button pushing? I've always wondered this is
it really hard?
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Impossible? I mean, that's the real problem of Jeopardy. It's like,
even if you know the answers, it's just a game
of being able to push it faster than the other people.
It's very hard and very stressful.
Speaker 6 (05:13):
Do they give you pointers. They're like, hey, you gotta
have real quick thumb strength and maybe like spend the
two weeks before the show practicing.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
You do a practice round before, but I don't know
if you can prepare for it. It's just kind of like,
I don't know, Maybe you can and I just didn't.
But I was just like, you know what, getting on
Jeopardy was the bucket list item. Now it's in the
universe's hands.
Speaker 6 (05:33):
Oh yeah, you went up so high in my esteem.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
I'm so jealous.
Speaker 6 (05:36):
I've always wanted to be on Jeopardy.
Speaker 5 (05:37):
Saron, have you ever been on any kind of game show?
Speaker 6 (05:40):
No, I've never done a see I've never even been
on a game show set. And I've been on a
lot of TV sets and shows and stuff, but never
a game show. I don't know why. It's just like
the side show, like the midway of the County Fairgrounds
I never go to. So, yeah, what about you, Jason.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
I've never been on a game show. But in I
think it was twenty eleven, I did go on the
Rachel Ray Show with my two year old daughter.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
What how did I not know this?
Speaker 5 (06:03):
And let Rachel Ray quiz her our presidential history? Oh
my god. After hearing Ben tell his story, I feel
like a terrible Paris and we can put a pin
in that. Just let Ben tell his story and get
into this. In the outro.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
In the early two thousands. Unscripted television was popping up everywhere.
The contestants came cheap but earned huge ratings. Nearly twenty
nine million people watched the American Idol Finale in two
thousand and nine, featuring Adam Lambert and Chris Allen.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Of the four major.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Networks, Fox was always pushing the envelope for the next
unscripted sensation. There was Man Versus Beast, which pitted a
professional sprinter against a giraffe, and a professional eater against
a Kodiak bear and a hot dog eating contest. The
Moment of Truth, which strapped participants to a lie detector
(07:05):
and asked them in reacingly personal questions, and The Swan,
which crowned a winner based on who got the most
impressive plastic surgery. In this tsunami of tastelessness was a
relatively harmless entry, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?
Debuted in two thousand and seven and tasked adults with
(07:28):
questions called from grade school textbooks with assistance from kids.
It was successful enough that the network contemplated how they
could pursue the child prodigy genre. The answer was Our
Little Genius, which came from Super producer Mark Burnett of
Survivor fame, as well as Mike Darnell, Fox's in house
(07:52):
reality show Mastermind. Mike was responsible for the Giraffe Races, sure,
but also a lot of hits in reality TV terms,
this was like Scorsese teaming up with Tarantino. The premise
was simple. Take a kid between the ages of six
and twelve who had a knowledge specialty, their field of genius,
(08:17):
and ask them a series of multi part questions that
required between three and ten answers to complete. It wasn't
multiple choice, but if they got it right, they'd win cash.
The parents then decided whether their child should keep going
to win more cash or risk losing what they've already won.
(08:39):
A panel of experts in a given category could weigh
in on the kid's chances of success. If they navigated
all ten levels, they'd walk away with five hundred thousand dollars.
The show's producers recruited from MENSA, from schools for gifted children,
and from the media, which loved to cover kids doing
(09:02):
extraordinary things. That's how they found Ben. Tw thousand and nine.
Ben was living in Gilbert, Arizona, happily immersed in paleontology,
passionate about it in a way that children often are.
His mother, Eke, was a teacher. His father, Sherman, had
a few different careers, including one as an electrical engineer.
(09:26):
They were all too happy to encourage and nourish his fascination.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
So when his younger son came along and he's like,
I want to do paleontology. As a parent, you want
to encourage your kids. But he just didn't know, like,
how do I actually do that? So he sought out
experts to ask, and in this case, down here in
Tucson is the world's largest Gemen mineral show.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Arizona is a good place for dinosaur lovers. The Southwest
is home to lots of fossils. Ben's father made the
right contacts to facilitate Ben's education.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
He even got permission.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
For Ben to go on a fossil excavation where he
looked on in amazement at an actual stegosaurus tooth.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Teeth of Stegosaurus are quite rare, so that was one
of those times when everyone puts their tools down and
we all gather around to look at it.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Ben's knowledge of dinosaurs earned him other opportunities like volunteering
at a museum in Mesa to answer questions about everything
from fossils to the theory of evolution.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
And it was basically my responsibility to stand there and
answered people's questions as they came. By the way that
the exhibit was laid out, people would kind of turn
a corner and sometimes they would see the Therizinosaurus looming
over them, and they just scream and run away. But
those who are brave enough to actually go into the
side gallery would see an eight year old standing there.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
He also got some media attention, including on the local
news and a write up in a magazine, though he
can't be certain that's likely where the producers of Our
Little Genius discovered him, least a phone call to his
parents and explain the premise of the show. Ben knew
something was up when his father picked him up from
(11:14):
school one day rather than let him take the bus.
Maybe Ben thought another family cat had died. Instead, his
father told him a quiz show was looking to have
him on.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Like, I was not pressured into doing this in any way.
He would have been perfectly happy, I think telling him no,
thank you, but again because all the other times I
had been on, you know, interacting with media had been
no big deal.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
The opportunity to win five hundred thousand dollars was significant.
It could cover not only his education but his brothers.
And while his family wasn't in financial trouble, Ben had
a loose concept of the greater financial crisis hitting the
middle class. In Ben's mind, that might impact his ability
(12:01):
to attend college.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
I mean, again, this is two thousand and nine. I'm
ten years old, but the recession is happening. And when
I came home from school, I would be watching on
the nightly news everything about the stock market crashing.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
And I know that in order.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
To succeed at the career that I wanted, I needed
to go to college. College costs a lot of money,
and here was an opportunity for me to potentially earn
my way using.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
The knowledge that I already had.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
So to me, it seemed like, I mean, why not,
you know, what's the worst that could happen?
Speaker 2 (12:31):
But Ben's parents weren't stage parents. They didn't place any
pressure on him.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
They basically encouraged me to like, look the third question,
the ten thousand dollars safety net question. Make that the
goal as long as you can answer the first three
questions in a row. You walk away with at least
ten thousand dollars and that'll still help with tuition. That'll
still put you ahead of where you would have been.
So just focus on that. Everything after that can be
a bonus. Yeah, just focus on getting those first three
(12:56):
questions correct.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
The taping of Our Little Genius was set for December
two thousand and nine. That gave Ben a few months
to cram as much information into his brain as he
possibly could. He soaked up details of fossil discoveries of
genus and species, sizes and characteristics, and the producers also
(13:18):
said they wanted generic paleontology rather than limiting it to
just dinosaurs, which added whole new subjects to cran.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
When my dad would take time off to go and
study with me, he would it was stuff like, you know,
printing off web pages with list of questions about fixtinct
animals just so that we understood like what the potential
questions could be.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
But here's the issue with dinosaur trivia. It's not like
math or history where things can be cut and dry.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
There was a lot of like, well, this source says,
this answer, this sources this answer, well, this answer, this
source is newer, so this may be based on more
up to date information. You know, this source looks more
trustworthy than the other one, so again it's not quite
as unambiguous about what the answers to some of these
questions could be.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Ben also did mock appearances for producers, answering questions over
the phone and sometimes in front of a camcorder at
his house.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
A few of them were recorded.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
They had us set up a camcorder and a tripod
because they wanted to ask me questions over the phone
and verify that, you know, I wasn't looking at a
sheet of paper to answer it, or that someone else
wasn't like, you know, whispering in my ear. There were
a few interviews we did where it's it's us in
the family, sitting down in front of the camera and
they're asking me questions and I'm answering them.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Ben thinks he got about seventy percent of the questions
during the practice rounds correct.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
That was the one about in the test rounds, I
had been asked named the three carnivorous dinosaurs larger than
Torontosaurus rex.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Unbeknownst to Ben, this would be important later. For now,
Ben's parents signed a release, and Ben also signed a
contract at ten in this the state of California. It's
a binding contract if it's been reviewed and approved by
a court.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
So it says I understand that as a contestant on
the series, I may be subjected to severe mental stress, embarrassment, shock, surprise,
or other unfortunate emotions in response to the events, stunts,
and or challenges on the series.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
In addition, I understand that as a contestant on.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
The series, I may reveal and or relate, and other
parties may reveal and or relate information about me that
is of a personal, private, or embarrassing or unfavorable nature,
which information may be factual and or fictional, So you
may be embarrassed, and it may or may not even
be factual.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
The contract also made a point of the seriousness of
trying to cheat.
Speaker 7 (15:51):
I am aware that it is a federal offense punishable
by fine and or imprisonment for anyone to do anything
which would rig or in any way influence the outcome
of the series with the intent to deceive the viewing public,
and that it is a federal offense to offer or
to accept any information or secret assistance in connection with
the series. I agreed that I will not participate in
(16:12):
any such act or any other deceptive or dishonest act
with respect to the series. If anyone tries to induce
me to do any such act, I must immediately notify
the producer.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Ben scribbled his initials next to the passage, and soon
it was time to head to California, where Our Little
Genius was taped at Los Angeles Center Studios and one
of their massive eighteen thousand square foot sound stages. Ben
and his father arrived there in December two thousand and nine.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
I remember waking up that morning when it was still
dark out, and it's just one of those days where
you're like wide awake the sucond. You wake up and
it's like, well, today's day. Start going through the facts
in your mind because today's the day. You know this
could who knows this could change everything?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
It would change everything. And it all started with a
curious conversation backs age. When Ben and his family arrived
for the taping of Our Little Genius, the studio was
slowly filling up with audience members and a bustling crew,
(17:24):
including host Kevin Pollock. Ben doesn't remember interacting much with
Kevin or with any of the other kid contestants. He
does remember someone on the show, an adult, asking a
weird question.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
He was trying to strike up a conversation to me about, like,
well do you like do you like coffee? And I'm like, no,
I'm ten, I don't like coffee.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
But he did notice something peculiar. While the kids were
on stage, they were asked to pretend to have gotten
an answer wrong and to look slightly dejected.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
So that you know, in the case that there's an
emotional meltdown, they've got footage that like doesn't involve a
small child like complete breaking down, Right, They've got a
more controlled, faked rehearsed ending that they can go to.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
As Ben later found out, they wanted the option of
using a reaction that would be less disturbing for viewers.
As this is going on, Ben is getting a microphone
threaded through his clothing, a red button up shirt and slacks. Then,
shortly before Ben went on, someone involved in the production
(18:33):
told his father something. It was information about dinosauria, the
umbrella term for two distinct groups of dinotes, the lizard
hipped and the bird hipped.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
They had already asked me questions about that I already
knew all that, and what this producer wanted to make
sure my dad made sure that I knew was that
this had happened in eighteen eighty eight, This official division
of dinosaur had happened in the year eighteen eighty eight,
and that it was the researcher Harry Seely that had
made that distinction.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
To put this into some context for the non paleontologists listening,
this is not what would be considered common information to
have in all of Ben's preparation. He hadn't been expecting
to feel these types of questions.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
But in all these questions they had been asking me
about dinosaurs, it was about dinosaurs and not about like
the history and development of paleontology as a field all
that much.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
There's a few key names and dates that would come up.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
But yeah, knowing Harry Seely eighteen eighty eight off the
top of your head, I mean even today as a paleontologist,
is like, not something that's useful to know, right.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Sherman later told Ben he wasn't sure what to do
with the information he'd been given, that maybe it would
simply be a matter of knowing Harry Seely in case
he was mentioned during the show. It didn't seem wrong,
not right away.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Then, and he's like, I'm it was implied to me that,
like this is important contextual information for someone who might
be on your expert panel, Like this person might be
a descendant of Harry Seely or might be a scholar
in Harry Seely's work.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
And like you might look stupid if you don't know
who that is.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Each kid competed one at a time. Finally, it was
Ben's turn on stage. He stood inside of a giant
illuminated ring that slowly rose to the ceiling. A panel
of expert stood at the ready to advise a Ben's
father if he needed guidance on whether Ben could answer
the question.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
We're going to consult the experts on.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
The experts are going to get to see the question,
and then they talk amongst themselves and decide, like, okay,
does it could a ten year old realistically get this
question right? And so they can advise the parents like
either go for it, try for that five hundred thousand dollars,
or like don't risk it.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
If you cash out now, you'll keep you know whatever.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
The previous tier was above one hundred thousand, so they
were there kind of as the lifeline, but like realistically,
in the function of entertainment property, they're there to make
faces at the camera, and that in a situation I'm
sure they were hoping for would be the experts say, like, no,
I don't think a ten year old can answer this.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
The first round of questions began. Ben was asked to
name the major geological periods of Earth's history in order.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
You start with the Cambrian Ordavision, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Paleogene, Neogene, Quaternary.
The Carboniferous is a period of time in other parts
of the world that they or actually they do it
here in the US too. It's subdivided into different sub periods.
(21:45):
Some consider them full period some consider them sub periods,
and they're named after places where these major exposures are.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Technically there was more than one correct.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
Answer, So the lower one is called the Mississippian period,
and the upper one is called the Pennsylvanian period. So
the twelve part answer that I gave, which is the
one that they accepted, has just carboniferous.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
There was a beat, and then Kevin Pollock announced Ben
had gotten all the answers right for the first prize
of one thousand dollars. The ice had been broken. Ben
could do this stand in front of a bunch of strangers,
under hot studio lights and under pressure recall arcane information. Hey,
(22:28):
it was about dinosaurs.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Like I know, I had a different interest set.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
You know a lot of kids my age were in
a Pokemon and they made them memorize hundreds of those suckers, right,
so me knowing twelve things in a row is like
not a big deal.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
The second round of questions came. This time they were
worth five thousand dollars.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Right, So the question they ask is, you know what
two major groups are the clay DINOSAURA broken down into
and again this is all paraphrasing. I don't remember the
exact like language here, but what they're asking is what
are the two major groups of dinosaurs?
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Who named them? And what year did he name them?
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Something wasn't right. The answer was Harry Seely and eighteen
eighty eight, the same name and year his father had
been fed. Just before Ben walked onstage, Ben deliberated answering
was worth a lot of money, college money. But wasn't
(23:28):
this cheating and.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
Of course I already knew the names of the groups,
but I would not have known, Harry Seely eighteen eighty eight.
Had they not used my father to give that information,
had they not tricked him into thinking that this was
about one of the experts, I would not have known that.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Ben was also thinking of that contract. Was it too
late to disclose? Someone had fed him answers? Had he
done something wrong?
Speaker 4 (23:53):
My impression was like, all right, I promised not to
embarrass the production team, and that like, whatever I say,
they can do whatever they want with it, and it
might be a huge mistake right to say the truth.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
The other problem was that our little genius didn't appear
to have a contestant advocate on set, someone a child
could turn to who wasn't directly part of the production.
Child actors have those protections, child geniuses do not.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
Again, there was no representative on stage of a neutral
third party. For a production that is done ethically and
with safety in mind, you know, you should have a
third party who does not have a stake in the game,
who is present as a resource for the child. You know,
who is not from the production team and is not
one of the parents.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Ben answered Harry seey and eighteen eighty eight, and again
Kevin Pollack told him he was correct, but the relief
he had felt after the first set of questions was
replaced by confusion. This wasn't how game shows were supposed
to work. You had to come up with an answer
on your own, not parrot what had been told to you.
(25:09):
Kevin Pollack delivered the third round of questions, which were
worth ten thousand dollars. This time the problem was something
very much like the one he had answered during his
test runs at home, when he had been asked to
name three carnivorous dinosaurs larger than.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
The t rex, and then in the actual taping, they
asked me first name the largest dinosaur ever known, and
then named the four carnivors dinosaurs larger than t rex.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
One question, five answers. To Ben, it was convoluted and confusing.
He had demonstrated knowledge of three during the sample game.
Now there were four, plus a bonus answer, the largest
dinosaur ever discovered. Ben knew the answer they were looking for, Argentinosaurus,
(26:00):
But this time the issue wasn't being fed the complete answer.
It was that Ben felt there was more than one
correct answer, or no way of knowing the right answer.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
And so what they were looking for Here again we're
talking about biggest. That can mean a lot of different things.
It can mean the longest, it can mean the tallest
at the hip. Because dinosaurs in their natural posture the
two legged bipedal dinosaurs, so all the carnivores are going
to be basically their body is parallel to the ground,
so their highest point is not like the head the
(26:33):
way that humans stand. It's the hip is usually the
highest point. So if you're looking for tallest, it's usually
measured like at the hip. There's weight, and I think
it's pretty intuitive to understand that it's difficult to estimate
how much an animal would have weighed when we only
have a skeleton.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
The problem was also that some species didn't necessarily have
complete skeletons at the time, making an objective measurement difficult.
Ben gave the best answer he could.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
What if it's forty three feet.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
You know you're hinging, literally wagering ten thousand dollars on
this question. You know, even the answer that I gave,
which is Spinosaurus, carcard Antosaurus, and Giganotosaurus. Even at that
time you could have argued we don't actually know that
the one or two specimens of these animals we have
are larger than the largest t Rex.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
But he couldn't think of a fourth. Under pressure, he
answered Suka Mimas. The show was looking for Tyranno Titan,
which was at the time not conclusively proven to be
larger than t Rex. While it did appear in some
reference material, there was no consensus about its average size.
(27:45):
This time, Kevin Pollock didn't have good news. The answer
had been judged to be incorrect, and then suddenly there
was a production issue.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
When I gave the answer Suka Mimas spelled incorrectly pops
up on the screen, and then they cut the lights
and they pretend that there's a power outage.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Ben was led off stage and into a room. When
they came back on, Kevin Pollack had an announcement Ben
could try again in what amounted to.
Speaker 5 (28:17):
A do over.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
And here in that side room is where I learned
that we could have another go. I didn't know until
that point that they would let me try again again.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Ben made it to the third set of questions. Kevin
Pollack wanted to know what family smilod On belongs to.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
Of course, I know what Smilodon is. I know that
it's a cat. So the guest that I make is like,
I don't know. Felis I think is verbatim what I said.
Felis is the genus name for the domestic cat, and
it's quite close to Philiday, right, Felis Pheladay. But that's
not the answer they were looking for. So I end up.
(28:56):
You know, at that point, they're just like, all right,
you're done.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
As he walked off the stage, a confusing series of
emotions began to grip him. One of the worst feelings
was that he had let his older brother down, that
he could have potentially paid for his college if the
game hadn't been a mess of leaked information and ambiguous questions.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
He didn't know that at the time, and I'm really
glad that he didn't know that He was there when
we filmed. You know, he was there in the audience
when we filmed the show, and so he saw me
like bomb on stage, and so I'm really glad that
he didn't know at the time, like I was trying
to get money for both of us, because that would
have made me feel a lot worse if, like I
had promised that to him.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
At the taping, Ben was routed to a child psychologist
who asked some perfunctory questions.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
At least that's what she identified herself as. And she
basically looks at me and she goes, yeah, he looks
pretty sad.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
He and his family were then ushered into an suv
and driven back to their hotel.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
We get back into the SUVs and we go back
to the hotel, and I am given a couple of
hours to myself in the hotel room to kind of
come to terms of the th that I blew it.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Heading home, the reality was sinking in. He had failed
to advance, a failure his ten year old self thought
might endanger his chances of pursuing his passion paleontology without
prize money, where would money from college come from. Later
Ben was affected by another realization. He had effectively cheated,
(30:33):
not with any premeditation, not because he wanted an advantage,
but because he had been put in an impossible position.
The question was what was anyone going to do about it?
And what happened with the other kids. The original quiz
(31:01):
show scandal was in November of nineteen fifty six, when
a handsome man named Charles Van Doren stepped down to
the set of twenty one. An English instructor at Columbia University,
Van Doren had been invited to the show at the
behest of producer Albert Friedman. For the next fourteen weeks,
(31:23):
van Doren listened intently to questions, his brow furrowed in
deep concentration. Then he'd emerge with the right answer, enough
of them to dethrone the show's reigning champion, a comparatively
nerdy player named Herbert Stemple. Van Dorn became a national celebrity.
(31:44):
He won one hundred and twenty nine thousand dollars or
the equivalent of one point five million today. He got
a job with NBC, but by summer of nineteen fifty eight,
he was on a different kind of hot seat. Twenty
one had been rigged for Van Doren to win. He
(32:04):
had been given the answers, so had Stemple. Both had
been coached to appear as sympathetic as possible to the
viewing audience. Along with other contestants, Van Doren lied to
a Manhattan grand jury about the allegations before finally coming
clean in nineteen fifty nine. He lost his jobs at
(32:26):
Columbia and NBC and rarely spoke about the scandal.
Speaker 8 (32:31):
When that came to light, Congress actually held an investigation,
They held hearings, and is really the first time in
the nation's history that it became widespread public knowledge that
a lot of what was being presented on TV wasn't
actually real, And what came out of those Congressional investigations
was ultimately a criminal law.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
That's George Bright again. George is the Deputy District Attorney
for Ventura County in California. In twenty nineteen, while he
was still a law student at Chapman Universe City, George
authored a paper where he took a deep dive into
the legal consequences of manipulating televised contests. After the quiz
(33:17):
show scandals, the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC was given
new powers to enforce fairness in game shows, and.
Speaker 8 (33:26):
It actually makes it a federal crime, punishable by up
to a year in prison, to predetermine the outcome of
an intellectual game, game of chance or a game of
intellectual skill with the intent to deceive the viewing public.
So it's actually a crime for producers to rig broadcast
(33:47):
game shows.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Following the quiz show scandals of the nineteen fifties, game
shows cleaned up their act. No one wanted to be
caught feeding answers to contestants and risk their reputations or
their freedom, but there were still controversies. In the nineteen seventies,
a game show producer criticized Hollywood Squares for writing funny
(34:10):
answers for their celebrity panel, even though they still had
to give a proper and unrehearsed response. Later in two
thousand and one, a game show on UPN titled Manhunt
received negative press when a producer revealed certain scenes had
been scripted. The show, about people being hunted by paintballers
(34:32):
on a remote island in Hawaii, actually shot some scenes
at a Los Angeles park. Those were gray areas in
which the lines between entertainment and competition seemed to blur.
Is a competition with physical skill or talent and intellectual contest?
(34:52):
Could you get in trouble for rigging a singing competition
or a stand up comedy game?
Speaker 3 (34:58):
No one is really sure.
Speaker 8 (35:00):
So I mean, I think it's debatable whether or not
comedy is an intellectual exercise, or whether or not something
like singing would be an intellectual exercise. But yeah, I
mean it's fairly broad what intellectual even means.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
What's more, the FCC rule only applies to over the
air broadcast networks. Something on Netflix wouldn't be of concern,
but Fox was and is a broadcaster on public airwaves.
If Our Little Genius was indeed tainted by improper disclosure
of information, then USC five oh nine would certainly apply.
Speaker 8 (35:37):
Uh, show like Our Little Genius, I don't think there'd
be any doubt that it would come within the purview
of the statute. I mean, that's the very quis essential
type of quiz show that the statute was designed for.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
In order for that to happen, the FCC would have
to learn about it in the first place. But back
home in Arizona, Ben was having trouble coming to terms
with the Our Little Genius debacle.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
Yeah, So, in the immediate aftermath and in the the
time to follow, I honestly did not talk about it
very much.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
I didn't really want to.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
I felt embarrassed about the fact that I had wasted
I felt like I had wasted so much of their time,
my father's time, and my mom and my brother and
my grandfather's time, because they all got flown out with me,
you know, to la to do this.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Worse, Ben felt like he had been cheated out of
a fair.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
Shot, and so yeah, in the immediate aftermath, I'm feeling frustrated.
I'm feeling cheated of an opportunity to have actually earned
my way. I'm feeling ashamed of myself for cheating, for
knowing that they had given me an answer, and for
bowing to the pressure to go forward with it.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Finally, his father, Sherman, decided to sit down and pen
a letter to Mark Burnett Productions. In it, he detailed
what he felt was in propriety on the part of
the production of Our Little Genius. He wasn't the only one.
In a separate letter said in December two thousand and
nine to the FCC, the parent of another contestant detailed
(37:12):
a surprisingly similar story. The parent alleged that a producer
had phoned with a list of categories that might be
in the show to assess whether their child was well
versed in them. Here's George bridegim again.
Speaker 8 (37:29):
And your son needs to know the Italian names of
the piano pedals, and were getting so hyper specific that
this parent was convinced that the producer was essentially feeding
him what the questions were going to be in advance
of the taping.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
The parent stated they suspected the producer had given them
four specific answers to questions because the child was coming
on as a music prodigy. The parents were told they
should brush up on the names of musical notes, and
that it was very important the child knew the sixty
fourth note pemi demi semiquaver. When the parent broached their
(38:11):
concerns over how the show questions were selected in a
meeting with a production lawyer before taping, their child's appearance
was abruptly canceled. Whether they actually got the relevant answers
remained unclear, since the child never appeared on the show,
but it was enough for the FCC to take action
(38:32):
and launch an investigation, and that may have made some
kind of history.
Speaker 8 (38:39):
So interestingly enough, from the time the statute was created
in the nineteen fifties all the way to the present time,
I believe Our Little Genius is the only show that
the FCC actually seriously investigated for violating the statute.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Soon Our Little Genius was becoming Our Little Scandal. In
January twenty ten, just a week before the series was
scheduled to premiere, The New York Times reported that Fox
was pulling the show, which was supposed to air directly
after American Idol. Instead, a rerun of the four hundred
(39:16):
and fiftieth episode of The Simpsons would air in its place.
Eight episodes had been taped, none would ever see the
light of day. According to co creator Mike Darnell, Burnett
had found quote certain information that was relayed in a
way Mark found worrisome and offered to reshoot the show
(39:38):
by paying for production costs out of his own pocket.
According to the Los Angeles Times, it was Burnett who
informed Fox there was an issue. In his own statement,
Mark Burnett said that some concerns had surfaced about contestants
being given more information than needed, and that the company
(40:00):
was no longer comfortable moving forward with the show. Burnett
said the following, I recently discovered that there was an
issue with how some information was relayed to contestants during
the pre production of Our Little Genius. As a result,
I am not comfortable delivering the episodes without reshooting them.
(40:20):
I believe my series must always be beyond reproach, so
I have requested that Fox not air these episodes.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Mark Burnett is one of the pre eminent producers of
unscripted programming on television. Even though we were incredibly pleased
with the quality of Our Little Genius, we respect and
appreciate its due diligence and the decision to pull these episodes.
We agree there can be no question about the integrity
of our shows. While these episodes will not air, the
families who participated in the show will receive their winnings,
(40:50):
and we are grateful for their participation.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
This decision triggered an intriguing dilemma. The FCC rule prohibiting
the orchestration of game shows applies to shows that, per
the rule, are intended to mislead the public. But how
can you mislead the public if your show is never
seen by the public. What jurisdiction does the FCC have
(41:15):
over a show alleged to be improper when it never airs.
That question was never really put to the test. While
the FCC reportedly opened an investigation into Our Little Genius,
they never arrived at any conclusion. Since it was never broadcast.
It would be hard for anyone the FCC included to
(41:38):
argue viewers had been misled. It just disappeared, and even
if it had aired, the FCC's purview would probably have
been limited to the broadcaster, Fox, not the production company.
According to George Bridegan, once the decision was made not
to air the show, the FCC abandoned its investigation.
Speaker 8 (42:01):
There's a legitimate question about whether or not a crime
even occurred. A good analogy would be if a cop
were to sit in a bar and see a guy
get absolutely drunk, go and grab his car keys and
start to walk out towards his car, stop him before
he even gets into the car, and says, hey, we're
going to conduct a dui investigation. And it's clear that
(42:23):
this guy is completely drunk, but he never actually drives
the car. Did he commit a UI have no, of
course not. It's sort of the same thing that Fox
did here. The show is never actually broadcast across the air,
and the statute is designed to protect the viewing public.
So if the viewing public isn't ever being deceived with anything,
there's really no reason for the FCC to continue pursuing
(42:45):
the investigation.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Naturally, we wanted to get the other party side of
the story. We requested a comment from Fox, but didn't
receive a reply. Mark Burnette was not able to be
reached for comment, and Mike Darnell's representatives did not respond
to a request for comment. To be clear, the FCC
never disclosed or alleged any evidence of wrongdoing to the
(43:09):
credit of Mark Burnett, Mike Darnell, Fox, and everyone else involved.
Once suggestions of impropriety were discovered, they yanked the show.
But was it improper? Asked about the controversy later in
twenty ten, Kevin Pollack said, quote, there were some questions
along the way as to how do you find out
(43:32):
what a little genius actually does or does not know
prior to the quiz end quote where's the line between
assessing a kid's knowledge and giving them knowledge, between seeing
if a kid knows about dinosauria and if he knows
the name Harry Seeley, between knowing musical notes and specifically
(43:54):
knowing about the Hemi demi semiquaver.
Speaker 8 (43:58):
Well, ultimately, it'd be up to a jury about where
the line.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Is for all of this.
Speaker 8 (44:04):
Could you meet with a contestant ahead of time and say, hey,
we want to make sure your child is at least
somewhat familiar with these topics. I think you probably could,
But where the clear line is is you definitely can't
be telling them what the questions are in advance and
then presenting it to the viewing public as if the
contestants hearing this information for the first time or they're
(44:25):
getting these questions for the first time.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
But it does leave a pretty big unanswered question, what
would be the reason for slipping crucial trivia to the kids?
Why not just let them answer and let the chips
fall where they may. George Bridigham has a theory.
Speaker 8 (44:45):
And then it's from the parents FCC complaint. They gave
answers to probably about three or four questions, and it
seemed kind of apparent that the production wanted the children
to be able to get at least through three or
four questions. They didn't want them all to be getting
knocked out of the very first question, because that just
doesn't make very interesting TV.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Perhaps producers had realized they had concocted a show that
was too difficult for kids to excel in that watching
children fail over and over again wasn't going to be
palatable to audiences, and so some steps needed to be
taken to better their chances. That could be the reason
(45:28):
the show also elected to institute the do over, where
kids who missed out on the first four questions got
a second chance, a change made later on and just
before episodes were being taped. But if this was about
making the audience feel good and the kids feel good,
it did a lousy job of it. Ben Mueller didn't
(45:50):
feel anything but resentment. He had come to play an
honest game, and in his view, that opportunity never came,
and it affected him deeply.
Speaker 4 (46:02):
Now here's another kind of darkly humorous aspect to the
story is that after a couple of hours alone in
the hotel room, that little boy perished in that hotel room.
The adolescent who emerged afterwards was a little bit older,
a little bit smarter, and wiser about how the world
really works, you know, but not the same person at
(46:22):
the beginning and end of that day.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
There were consequences that went well beyond preparing contestants for
a game. Kids as young as six were being put
in positions of feeling inadequate in front of an audience,
of letting their parents down, or if a parent should
decide their child couldn't answer a question, feeling their parents.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
Didn't believe in them.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
It was bumpy psychological territory. The cardinal sin of Our
Little Genius may not have been that it divulged some
information to the kids. It was that kids should never
be signing contracts warning them that a TV show could
cause severe emotional distress.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
No, I didn't think that this was going to be
anything controversial, right. I really took at face value that
this was I was being given a chance to answer
questions using the knowledge that I had to potentially win
my way to be able to not worry about college tuition,
And like, what a huge relief that would have been,
Like what it is hard not to think about how
(47:28):
different my trajectory would have been if I had legitimately
been given that chance. My understanding was that this would
be a legit chance, and so I studied, you know,
I put my back into it with the understanding that,
like this is the opportunity, You're never going to get
an opportunity like this.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
Again, what about the other Little Geniuses?
Speaker 2 (47:46):
The show's publicity material didn't use last names, which makes
locating them difficult. We approached one other player we could identify,
but because he was just six at the time, it
couldn't recall a whole lot. The person's parent, while not
consenting to an interview, told us they were never given
information by the show's producers, meaning that not all Little
(48:10):
Geniuses had the same experience. As of this recording, Ben
is the only contestant from Our Little Genius to come
forward publicly. In twenty twenty one, he decided to speak
to reporter John Deanna of the Arizona Public and detail
his experiences. It was difficult then and it's difficult now.
(48:32):
He wasn't sure he wanted to revisit the story for
this podcast, but ultimately he decided to move forward.
Speaker 4 (48:40):
So I didn't talk about it much with my parents.
I didn't want to. I didn't talk about it at
all really to my friends for many years afterwards, because
I just didn't know how to tell the story.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
This story has mostly been about Ben Mohler as a
ten year old, as though he were frozen in time.
But Our Little Genius was fifteen years ago. There's another
Ben Mohler story to tell, the one where bendes there's
a lot of learning left to do, But.
Speaker 4 (49:10):
At the time my response was, you just have to
learn more. Knows to the grindstone, take the opportunities as
they come.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
He had worried about missing out on college. Instead, it
was the lass that drove him to work harder than ever.
Speaker 4 (49:24):
I made the choice the same day to double down
on paleontology. I blamed myself for not knowing enough. Even
if I disagreed with the questions that I had been given,
I still felt that I felt that I had been right,
but that if I had still known more, I would
have done better.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Ben attended the University of Arizona and earned two degrees,
one in ecology and evolutionary biology and one in the geosciences.
He digs up dinosaur bones with an adult knowledge and
a ten year old's curiosity. He pursues his passion as
a researcher and educator even after the quiz show experience
(50:05):
threatened to contin emanated, and he's found some measure of
peace in realizing his younger self isn't to blame. His
love of science is intact.
Speaker 4 (50:17):
I would say, what from the beginning really hooked me
about paleentology and has continued to keep me in this
space even now at age twenty five, is just the
fact that there's really no limit to the number of
questions you can ask paleontology. The purview of this of
this field of study is all of earth history and
(50:38):
every aspect of the Earth.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
Now Ben Mahler can be the one asking all the
questions he wants, and he relishes not always knowing the answer.
This whole episode made me just stressed out in general.
It made me nervous for Quisho producers, It made me
(51:02):
nervous for parents, and it made me anxious for children.
This is just a very anxious episod for me.
Speaker 6 (51:08):
Oh my god. It was so surprisingly moving, like when
he says the line about the hotel room, like he
relish is not always knowing the answer at the very end.
But before that, when he's talking about the little boy
who perished symbolically in that hotel room, broke my heart.
I was like, oh my god, I'm not a parent,
Thank God, because I think I would make terrible decisions
and put my children in these places where they would
have these stories and I'd have to hear them on
(51:29):
a podcast and go, oh man, I messed up. But
that little boy broke my heart. And then I was
so glad that he made it and became a palaeontologist.
This is the whole story was a roller coaster.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Kids should never, though, feel like financial responsibility for their family.
That's what stressed me out the most. But thought that
these kids knew that, like the money mattered, and like
what they did had like real world implications, like that
broke my heart.
Speaker 6 (51:51):
His brother's future is hanging on how well he does
his a ten year old on a crazy set and
he's being told to have it was crazy for me,
just like also two thousand and nine, what a wild
time in reality TV. They were just throwing everything at
the wall. I'd forgotten how crazy it was.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
Jason.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
See, this is why what you did was okay because
your child wasn't under financial pressure. It was just entertainment.
Speaker 5 (52:12):
Well, so I'll tell you the story here. When she
was two, we had a series of place mats. They
were like two dollars place mats I'd gotten from Kmart,
and one of them had all the pictures of the presidents.
And she's learning to talk. She'd like point and say
who's this, who's this? And so I would say that's
Richard Nixon.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
Richard Nixon, who shows up in every one of these episodes.
Speaker 5 (52:36):
And then she would ask, what does he say, and
I just thought it was a funny thing. So we
filmed a little video and so I'd ask her what
does Ronald Reagan say? And she'd say, mister Gorbachev, tear
down that wall. Oh. So we posted that on YouTube
and Gawker picked it up. At the time, very influential
(52:56):
Ryan Williams, producer called and asked if they could run
the video on the nightly news. I was like, sure,
Good Morning America played it the next day. Wow, you know,
millions views. And then Rachel Ray's team called and said,
would you guys want to come on and talk about
the making of this video? And we're like, okay, well
(53:16):
come on. And we get there and they've recreated like
a giant version of this place map and put it
in the middle of the set and they have us
come out and little Charlotte gets to ask questions and
has to go and point at the board and do
her little impressions. And it was incredibly stressful in the
moment of like, oh my god, what are we doing?
(53:39):
And that Rachel Ray's staff was great. They're like, look,
if it doesn't work, like, we just won't run it.
It's fine. Like they had the dogs from the dog
show there that day, and so that was like a
fun thing. Backstage, we have good photos with Rachel Ray.
Oh that's awesome. But there was no money or no scandal.
I had given her the answers, drilled the answers into
(53:59):
her over our place, map learnings.
Speaker 6 (54:02):
No, wait, I have to know something. What does Charlotte
say about this? What does she recall of this moment?
Speaker 3 (54:07):
Does she?
Speaker 5 (54:07):
Yeah, doesn't recall it at all. But we have the
Brian Williams video and the Rachel Ray video, which we
will occasionally pop out when her friends come over and
she'll act embarrassed, but I think she thinks it's pretty cool.
Now we're in college essay season where she can take this.
Oh yeah, like any direction. It can be like my
(54:28):
stage dad, try and make me the bread winner after
the two thousand and eight financial crisis.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
I'm going to insist that you send me this video.
Speaker 5 (54:37):
Yeah, this is gold.
Speaker 2 (54:38):
I can't believe I've never seen this.
Speaker 5 (54:40):
Maybe we can play a little of it here in
the episode.
Speaker 3 (54:43):
I would love to.
Speaker 9 (54:44):
You may have heard of the term presidential scholar, but
the following piece of video, which got very big on
the web today, brings.
Speaker 5 (54:51):
New meaning to that term.
Speaker 9 (54:53):
Two year old Charlotte English of Wayne, New Jersey got
a place Matt showing the US presidents on it as
a gift from her trivia above dad, who bought it
for a kmart. Check out her knowledge.
Speaker 5 (55:07):
Hey, what are you doing to your place? Matt? Can
you show me where Richard Nixon is?
Speaker 3 (55:14):
And what does he say?
Speaker 7 (55:16):
And?
Speaker 5 (55:18):
Very good, where's Ronald Reagan?
Speaker 3 (55:25):
That's right? And what does he say? Mister rocks right?
Speaker 5 (55:36):
Very special episodes is made by some very special people.
Today's episode was written by Jake Rosson. He's one of
our most prolific contributors. His last episode was the one
about the time the Harlem Globetrotters actually lost. He's written
about stolen moon Rocks, the kid inside the et costume,
and many more and more to come. Our show is
(55:57):
hosted by Danis Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English. Our
producer is Josh Fisher. Editing and sound design by Jonathan Washington,
Mixing and mastering by Beheid Fraser. Additional editing by Mary Doo,
Original music by Elise McCoy, Show logo by Lucy Quintania.
Our executive producer is Jason English. If you ever want
(56:18):
to email the show, hit us up at Very Special
Episodes at gmail dot com. Very Special Episodes is a
production of iHeart Podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Dana Schwartz
Jason English
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