Hemidemisemiquaver: A Modern Quiz Show Scandal [Very Special Episodes]

Originals.

This is an iHeart original.

Welcome to Our Little Job.

It's two thousand and nine and Ben Moehler, a ten year old fifth grader from Arizona, should.

Be in school instead.

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, 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.

He's selling the shell right.

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.

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 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.

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.

Until right now. Because something is not right here.

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 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.

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.

Something's not right here, but can they start over?

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 go out.

Yeah, something is afoot.

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.

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?

I mean, Jason, I was on Jeopardy.

I don't want to drag gan ya. Are you kidding me?

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.

Wow.

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.

Ever again, you've done Jeopardy, Celebrity Jeopardy next, Yeah, I.

Could kill Celebrity Jeopardy. Those questions are way easier.

Now.

How was the button pushing? I've always wondered this is it really hard?

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.

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.

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.

Oh yeah, you went up so high in my esteem.

I'm so jealous.

I've always wanted to be on Jeopardy.

Saron, have you ever been on any kind of game show?

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.

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.

What how did I not know this?

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.

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.

Of the four major.

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 and asked them in reacingly personal questions, and The Swan, which crowned a winner based on who got the most

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.

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.

He even got permission.

For Ben to go on a fossil excavation where he looked on in amazement at an actual stegosaurus tooth.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 to attend college.

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.

And I know that in order.

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.

The knowledge that I already had.

So to me, it seemed like, I mean, why not, you know, what's the worst that could happen?

But Ben's parents weren't stage parents. They didn't place any pressure on him.

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 questions correct.

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 said they wanted generic paleontology rather than limiting it to just dinosaurs, which added whole new subjects to cran.

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.

But here's the issue with dinosaur trivia. It's not like math or history where things can be cut and dry.

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.

Ben also did mock appearances for producers, answering questions over the phone and sometimes in front of a camcorder at his house.

A few of them were recorded.

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.

Ben thinks he got about seventy percent of the questions during the practice rounds correct.

That was the one about in the test rounds, I had been asked named the three carnivorous dinosaurs larger than Torontosaurus rex.

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.

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.

In addition, I understand that as a contestant on.

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.

The contract also made a point of the seriousness of trying to cheat.

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 any such act or any other deceptive or dishonest act

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.

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?

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, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

There's a few key names and dates that would come up.

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.

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.

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.

And like you might look stupid if you don't know who that is.

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.

We're going to consult the experts on.

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.

If you cash out now, you'll keep you know whatever.

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.

The first round of questions began. Ben was asked to name the major geological periods of Earth's history in order.

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. Some consider them full period some consider them sub periods, and they're named after places where these major exposures are.

Technically there was more than one correct.

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.

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, it was about dinosaurs.

Like I know, I had a different interest set.

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.

The second round of questions came. This time they were worth five thousand dollars.

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?

Who named them? And what year did he name them?

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 this cheating and.

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.

Ben was also thinking of that contract. Was it too late to disclose? Someone had fed him answers? Had he done something wrong?

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.

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.

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.

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. Kevin Pollack delivered the third round of questions, which were

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.

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, 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.

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 way that humans stand. It's the hip is usually the highest point. So if you're looking for tallest, it's usually

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.

What if it's forty three feet.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

A do over.

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.

Ben made it to the third set of questions. Kevin Pollack wanted to know what family smilod On belongs to.

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. You know, at that point, they're just like, all right, you're done.

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.

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.

At the taping, Ben was routed to a child psychologist who asked some perfunctory questions.

At least that's what she identified herself as. And she basically looks at me and she goes, yeah, he looks pretty sad.

He and his family were then ushered into an suv and driven back to their hotel.

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.

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, 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?

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.

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 show scandals, the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC was given new powers to enforce fairness in game shows, and.

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 game shows.

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 answers for their celebrity panel, even though they still had

No one is really sure.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yeah, So, in the immediate aftermath and in the the time to follow, I honestly did not talk about it very much.

I didn't really want to.

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.

Worse, Ben felt like he had been cheated out of a fair.

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.

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

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.

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 concerns over how the show questions were selected in a meeting with a production lawyer before taping, their child's appearance

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.

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 and fiftieth episode of The Simpsons would air in its place. Eight episodes had been taped, none would ever see the

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, and we are grateful for their participation.

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 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,

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 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

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 credit of Mark Burnett, Mike Darnell, Fox, and everyone else involved. Once suggestions of impropriety were discovered, they yanked the show.

Well, ultimately, it'd be up to a jury about where the line.

Is for all of this.

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 getting these questions for the first time.

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.

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.

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 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

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 the beginning and end of that day.

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.

Didn't believe in them.

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.

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 different my trajectory would have been if I had legitimately

Again, what about the other Little Geniuses?

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 Geniuses had the same experience. As of this recording, Ben is the only contestant from Our Little Genius to come

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.

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.

At the time my response was, you just have to learn more. Knows to the grindstone, take the opportunities as they come.

He had worried about missing out on college. Instead, it was the lass that drove him to work harder than ever.

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.

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 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.

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 every aspect of the Earth.

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 nervous for parents, and it made me anxious for children. This is just a very anxious episod for me.

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

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.

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.

Jason.

See, this is why what you did was okay because your child wasn't under financial pressure. It was just entertainment.

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.

Richard Nixon, who shows up in every one of these episodes.

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 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,

No, wait, I have to know something. What does Charlotte say about this? What does she recall of this moment?

Does she?

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 stage dad, try and make me the bread winner after the two thousand and eight financial crisis.

I'm going to insist that you send me this video.

Yeah, this is gold.

I can't believe I've never seen this.

Maybe we can play a little of it here in the episode.

I would love to.

You may have heard of the term presidential scholar, but the following piece of video, which got very big on the web today, brings.

New meaning to that term.

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.

Hey, what are you doing to your place? Matt? Can you show me where Richard Nixon is?

And what does he say?

And?

Very good, where's Ronald Reagan?

That's right? And what does he say? Mister rocks right?

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 hosted by Danis Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English. Our producer is Josh Fisher. Editing and sound design by Jonathan Washington,