It was an exciting few days on Substack last week. One of my favorite Substackers Elena Bridgers wrote an article about feminism that got me thinking, so I wrote a response, that she kindly shared with her audience. Then Substack luminary Cartoons Hate Her weighed in on the conversation, and before I knew it, there was a small flurry of additional responses to the responses, one thoughtful, kind, and interesting. I got a nice little influx of new subscribers, so hello and welcome! An introduction: I’m a clinical psychologist and professor who studies the neurobiology of the transition to parenthood. I look at how men’s brains and bodies change when they become fathers. My first book, Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood, comes out spring 2026 on Flatiron Books. In the meantime, I’m here to write about all kinds of adjacent topics, including the parenting brain, pronatalism, gender, politics, weird animals, housework, indie rock, proportional voting, and higher education. I love writing this newsletter because it takes me down a lot of strange rabbit holes.
I’m tempted to write another response to the responses to the response, but I also suspect that everyone could use a break from The Discourse on Feminism, so today I’m going to pivot away from feminism and tell you about the time I was on the game show Who Wants to Be A Millionaire.
Because of the weird nerd circles I run in, I have six different friends, two of them ex-boyfriends, who have competed on Jeopardy.* These people are trivia geniuses with minds like steel traps, enviable free recall abilities, and a solid base of wide-ranging knowledge. I’m not one of these people. But I am great at taking multiple choice tests. I’m a lucky guesser, and I’m good at narrowing down options and figuring out which one to pick. When the show Who Wants to Be A Millionaire first came on the air in the late ‘90s, I thought to myself, here’s a show I could actually win.
But when I saw on Facebook that a friend-of-a-friend had won boatloads of money on Millionaire, my first thought was, that show is still on? This was in 2017, in between several high-profile reboots, and the show was airing during the day, hosted by Chris Harrison, who was moonlighting from The Bachelor. After getting over my surprise, I immediately googled how to get onto the show, and signed up for an audition near me in Los Angeles. I liked that the show was under-the radar. It seemed like a show that was largely watched by grandparents (I later learned from producers that indeed, the nursing home crowd was their biggest audience), which meant that if I flamed out on TV, most people would never see it.
At the audition, I went through several culling rounds of testing, an on-camera demo with a producer, and then went home to several months of radio silence. By the time I got the call that I’d been picked to be on the show, I’d forgotten all about it. The producers told me to show up in Las Vegas the following week with the person I had selected as my lifeline. My husband wanted to come, but we had elementary-school-aged kids at the time, and it was too short notice to book a sitter. Thankfully, my younger brother Tom, who lived in Seattle, was up for a last minute trip to Vegas. He and my other brother Bo were running a sci-fi/fantasy themed grilled cheese food truck called The Cheese Wizards, and he needed a break from slinging sandwiches.
Ironically, I live about 15 minutes away from Burbank, the city where 99% of the game shows in the world are filmed. Surprisingly, Millionaire had no budget for contestant travel; we had to pay our own airfare and hotel. However, they make the first few questions so easy that you are almost guaranteed to win $1000 right off the bat.
I’d never been to Vegas and it was an even stranger city than I expected, especially in August. It was 106 degrees when we arrived and yet the streets were crammed with tourists. Each hotel is its own city block and filled with restaurants, bars, shops, and casinos, so you can walk for 25 minutes in an air-conditioned underworld without going outside. When you do go outside, there are misters stationed by the food courts that blast you with water. This was good because it was so stupidly hot, but it felt dystopian to waste water in the desert by spraying tourists.
We were due on set on Monday morning. Everything in Las Vegas is vast. I booked a hotel that was just one building away from the studio, but it was a ten minute walk to get there. Although the opening credits of Millionaire said that the show is broadcast from Bally’s Casino, filming actually turned out to be inside an enormous temporary tent. Picture a Murakami-like poufy white marshmallow perched in the middle of a vast parking lot. The tent contains the actual soundstage where the show is shot, a classic, tiny Airstream trailer parked right outside the soundstage (the holding pen for the contestant who is next up), a Star Wagon for the host, and several temporary rooms (literally, temporary dividers defining a room): a hair and makeup room, a few offices for production staff, and the holding pen for the contestants. The holding pen room was bare-bones and had a table with desultory snacks and water and four or five rows of folding chairs. At the beginning of the day there are about 12 contestants, each with their plus one lifeline. It’s cute to see everyone with their lifeline. There’s a father-son pair, a mother-son pair, a few married or dating couples, and a few pairs of friends. I’m the only one there with a sibling. The other contestants are mostly men in blue dress shirts and slacks. There are two pairs of male math teachers.
First things first, they take our paperwork and our phones. This is the last I will see my phone for the next nine hours. I have brought several laboriously created cheat sheets with names, dates, and random facts that I planned to study. A chronological list of all the U.S. presidents, elements from the periodic table, Super Bowl winners, Oscar winning movies, whatever miscellany I think I can memorize while I wait around. They take my cheat sheets too. They even take a laminated placemat I had swiped from my kids with a colorful map of the United States. I was going to practice state capitals!
The first few hours of the day are devoted to debriefing the contestants. First, a lawyer in sneakers reminds us not to cheat and not to tell people what we’ve won. Then, a producer comes in with a bunch of questions written on cards that previous contestants have missed. These are easy questions, but previous contestants panicked and missed obvious clues. For example, one question reads, “Sandra Bullock starred in this movie, which describes a basic force of nature.” The options are The Heat, Speed, Gravity, and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisters. The previous person answered Speed because it is an easily recognizable Sandra Bullock film, but of course speed isn’t a basic force of nature; gravity is. You have to slow down and pay attention to the question. There are often clues embedded in the wording of the questions themselves, but there are also red herrings. Another question asked which food was thought to make British fighter pilots see better at night. The answer was carrots, but a previous contestant had picked the answer fish & chips, because they were looking for a “British” food. We are told to answer the first five questions quickly, but the pace will change after the $5K mark: Chris will slow down, give us more time, let us puzzle out our answers more. After the debriefings, it’s time to check out the soundstage. We get to practice walking onto the stage, under the bright lights (that apparently burned a contestant’s pants once, so they tell us to stand back) and take turns answering a question. I am the only person who misses my question, which is about where the two raised dots are on a QWERTY keyboard. I panic and say R and U, when in fact it is F and J. This feels like a bad sign. A stagehand shows us where to stand and tells us not to clap or bang our chest right where the mic is clipped on.
As we wrap up our dress rehearsal, the audience is beginning to filter in for the first taping of the day. We settle back into our holding pen, which is starting to smell like flop sweat and cortisol. I know I’m not going to go within the first few episodes—there are too many holdovers from Friday, and apparently one girl has been there since Thursday—but I still tense up every time a producer pokes their head into our room. We aren’t allowed to watch the taping so we don’t know what’s going on, but we can hear echoey talking from the soundstage, mixed in with intermittent applause and at one point, what sounds like an audible gasp. To entertain us, someone hooks up a laptop that is playing the previous season’s Millionaire episodes. However, most of us contestants have seen all the episodes already—it’s the best way to prep—so our conversation is mostly about what is going to happen next in the taped games we are watching. A person walks on stage and we say, “Oh yeah, she used her lifeline on that question about breakfast cereal.” As a group, we’ve clearly paid more attention to the most recent set of Millionaire episodes than anyone else since 2007, when it went off prime time. We are practically talking along with the TV.
Once the taping starts, our room starts to thin out unnervingly quickly. There’s a pattern: people get pulled out for hair and makeup, then back to the contestant room, until they’re next up and they move to the trailer. So we know who’s going two people ahead but no more. But the turnover is quick, because most people strike out in about 10 or 15 minutes, five to ten questions in.
They tape four episodes in a row in the first half of the day, and then take a “lunch break,” which is really from 3:45-4:45 or so. By 3pm, they’ve already run through all five of the holdovers and I start to feel like I might be next. I fill the time by taking as many bathroom breaks as I can. Although I don’t leave the studio all day, I rack up almost 10,000 steps on my FitBit just by crossing the expanse of the studio a half dozen times. When it’s time for “lunch,” the dad and his son have apparently gotten quite far—up to $100,000, maybe even beyond. They send a few of the contestants home, telling them to come back on Wednesday. Two of the math teachers go in for hair and makeup, then Tom and I finally get called. It seems like we’ll be on, finally. But then the break starts and there’s an extra hour of cooling our heels. We still have a producer babysitting us. The break ends and the two math teachers go to the trailer. Tom and I go back to the makeup room for “touch-ups.” Finally it’s our turn in the trailer. We get miked. A new producer comes in and rehearses all my “story points” with me. These are the interesting things I’ll tell Chris if I make it far enough through the first few questions to get some human interest time. My plan is to talk about how I play guitar in an all-moms New Wave cover band, and how I plan to spend my winnings on a swimming pool. We make awkward small talk while my guts churn, knowing that I’ll be walking on stage in the next five minutes. I can hear loud applause outside, and guess that the math teacher is winning. Suddenly the producer in our trailer gets a message over his headset. He turns to me. “We’re releasing you.” This means that the math teacher is doing well enough that he will change clothes and continue onto another episode, and they won’t have time to start a new contestant. They’re doing a special themed taping on Tuesday, so I have to come back Wednesday.
Tom and I walk back to the hotel, rebook our flights, and try to add a night to our reservation, but the hotel is sold out so we book at the hotel next door instead. On Tuesday it’s 109 degrees, so hard to work up much enthusiasm for activity. Moving from one hotel to another is the main event of our day. I call my husband and kids, who are excited but a little confused that I’m still in Vegas. Walking through the underground passageway that links our old hotel with our new hotel, I buy a giant alcoholic fruit smoothie in a Styrofoam cup with a straw, and nurse it as I wander into the casino. Vegas starts to make sense when viewed through a haze of mild drunkenness. That night we go see Atomic Blonde, and watching Charlize Theron fight murderous Russian spies in black leather and heels helps put the game show experience in perspective.
On Wednesday we head back to the marshmallow tent. Having had Monday to acclimate, I’m much less nervous today. I talk to the other contestants, hear their stories. One deeply tanned lifeline guy is a real game-show vet. He had played Millionaire himself, winning $100,000 “with Meredith” back in the early aughts. He had been a plus one a few times before, once just a few weeks back. It turns out he didn’t really know the contestant he was playing with; she had gotten the call with less than a week’s notice, just like me, and found him on the game show message boards. I make friends with a game show superfan named Kevin that I still keep up with on Facebook; in addition to Millionaire, he has been on Wheel of Fortune, the $100,000 Pyramid, and The Price is Right. I am starting to realize that there is a whole game show subculture out there, and half of the contestants in the holding pen already know each other.
Given that I was the next in line on Monday, I hoped I might go first on Wednesday, but no such luck. There are four holdovers from Monday and two from the special theme-week taping on Tuesday. They shuffle up the six of us and I’m fifth out of six. There is a celebrity (chef Curtis Stone) going on first. Curtis did NOT bring snacks, and he is not hanging out with us in the holding pen. I start to worry I might miss my 7pm flight. But yet again, the turnover is fast once the taping begins. People drop like flies. I hear later that two of the contestants maxed out at $1,000. Finally, I’m back in hair and makeup, back in the trailer, miked up again, rehearsing my story points again. Perhaps because I’ve done all this once before, I’m feeling less nervous and am starting to feel genuinely excited to get out there and compete.
It’s finally my turn and a producer leads me onto the stage. We get to pick a walk-on song, and of course I ask for Warren G’s Regulate featuring Nate Dogg, so it is blasting as I walk in. I say hi to Chris Harrison. I stand at the podium and look out at the studio audience. And then, everything comes to a screeching halt. A faint, faded grease stain near the collar of my green dress, nearly invisible in normal light, stands out like a big bullseye under the bright lights of the studio. They want me to change clothes. I’m rattled. They take my wrinkly back-up dress to get steam-pressed, and I stand outside the trailer while they lead another contestant onstage. I know this might be the last episode before “lunch,” which will go past 5, and start to worry that I’ll miss my 7 pm flight after all. After what is probably five minutes but feels like twenty, my back-up dress is ready and I go into one of the production offices to change. The TV is on in there, and I watch as the contestant who went on in my stead gets his $10,000 question. It’s a question about Greek mythology, my eight-year-old daughter’s latest obsession, and I know the answer without even looking at the choices. These are my questions, I think. I pull on the dress and walk out of the trailer before the contestant has a chance to answer. But when I do, I hear a groan. He has missed the question. It’s my turn.
Regulate plays again and I walk out, into the bright lights. I could tell you what happened next, but I could also just show you.
Writing this essay is the first time I’ve watched this back in the seven years since it taped! I was too embarrassed to watch it again. Rewatching it, it’s not quite as bad as I remember. I definitely over-explained all my answers and spent too long talking through the first few easy questions, but that’s what the producers told us to do. I am now more charitable towards every game show contestant I have ever watched puzzle over an obvious question. I also smile a lot when I’m nervous, which is why I look like I’ve been hooked up to an MDMA drip.
I know I wasted my first lifeline – asking the audience – for a question I could easily guess, but that’s also what the producers advised us to do. The logic is that asking the audience yields diminishing returns as you go farther up the winnings scale. If you ask the audience for help with a really hard question, it might backfire, because they’ll point you in the wrong direction. (As a producer said, “It’s a Vegas audience. Don’t expect much from them.”). So I planned to use that lifeline the first chance I got.
I am really glad I used my second lifeline when I did. How cute is my brother!? He was the perfect person to pull into this question. That said, he also would have gotten the question that knocked me out, so if I could do it all over again, I would have waited to call him in for that one. However, I’m glad I didn’t wait too long, because it would have been a huge bummer to fly him out and waste a bunch of his time and not get to have him on the show at all.
The reason it was so dumb that I missed the last question is that I TEACH AT A UNIVERSITY. Not just that, but I teach at a university with a very high percentage of international students. This was the single stupidest question I ever could have missed. Every time I tell someone this question, they immediately blurt out the right answer before I have even given them the choices. In my sad little defense, I decided that the question was too easy for a $20,000 question. I had watched so many Millionaire episodes at that point that I had a mental taxonomy of difficulty assigned to each level and I had decided that $20,000 questions were generally pretty hard. So I overthought the question and picked what I thought was the less obvious answer.
After I miss my question, Chris gives me a sympathetic look and repeats “The logic was there.” I’m whisked offstage pretty fast. My brother and I say goodbye and I make it to the airport in time for my 7pm flight. When I get back to L.A., I’m not allowed to tell anyone what happened, but I heavily imply that I didn’t win. I also don’t tell anyone when the show will be on, so it’s not until Kevin, my game show friend, messages me with the YouTube link that I realize it’s aired. About six months after the taping, I get my check.
Now that the dust has settled, I’m glad I did the show. It was a weird and interesting experience, good exposure therapy, I got some time to hang with my brother, it was definitely the most well-groomed I’m ever going to be on national TV, and I made enough money to cover our travel and have some left over. However, there is another timeline in which my first dress did not have a stain and I got the questions that the universe intended for me. In that timeline, I win a million dollars and I’m too busy traveling the world on my yacht to write this newsletter.
Next week I’ll probably go back to writing about feminism.
*My friend Brian Levinson won almost $75,000 on Jeopardy back in 2008, did a hilarious Sean Connery impression on air, became the reigning champion, went back a few months later to defend his title, lost, and then went to airport jail the next day for insulting a toddler who was kicking his seat on his flight home. The mom snapped at him, “Next time why don’t you fly first class?” and Brian snapped back “Next time why don’t you use a condom?” Ouch. My sympathies are with the mom on this one, but Brian has reformed. He now has a YouTube channel where he opens packs of baseball cards from the 1980s.
MUSIC RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK
This week I want to talk about my favorite band of the last 10 years. (No one asked, but my favorite band of the last 100 years is The Beatles, and my favorite band of the last 40 years is probably a tie between Guided by Voices and Pavement). Since the 2010s, my heart has belonged with Alvvays. They’re a Canadian band that plays dreampop anthems that juxtapose floaty, crystalline vocals with noisy, distorted guitars and a Korg-y wash of keyboard sweetness. The bandleader is Molly Rankin, the scion of a traditional folk music family, who has a clear soprano and a knack for writing hooky, dynamic songs.
They are absolutely impeccable live. I caught them last year in Los Angeles and the whole band was wearing ZZ Top beards for some reason. We got to the venue late and squeezed into a spot in the back of the room, usually a bummer position for a short person like me, but they sounded so good that I didn’t even need to see them. Basically, they are my Platonic form of a perfect band.
I randomly watched a mood board video that taught me a lot about this band. Specifically, that they are influenced by the sound of bagpipes (which makes sense; it’s a keening, plaintive, resonant, and slightly discordant sound) and by large bodies of water (which also makes sense since they are from the Canadian coast). Also, their taste in records is esoteric and amazing. I am tempted to move to Cape Breton so that I can be more like Alvvays.
Easy on Your Own is probably my favorite Alvvays song, and here’s them playing it at the Pitchfork Music Festival. She is so active on the whammy bar!
In Undertow is the first Alvvays song I ever heard and is possibly their best song. Here’s the KEXP live version from 2017. I am in awe that she can sing like this live.
Finally, Marry Me, Archie was their first minor hit, and it’s super catchy with a cute maritime video.
I should note, since I’m sharing all these videos, that YouTube is terrible for artists, so if you like any of these tunes, please consider buying one of their albums. Their last three albums are all fantastic —as the kids say, all bangers, no skips.
also that jeopardy anecdote...will treasure that story forever
This is a very cool behind the scenes look at games shows. The amount of pressure you're under while making your answers would trip anyone up.
Also, aren't F & J the keys with raised bumps? At least that's how my keyboard is!