With production on Jeopardy! effectively shuttered until the COVID-19 pandemic is at bay, it’s only a matter of time until fans of the show are faced with a long period of reruns. Once the backlog of filmed episodes run out we won’t see a lot from Alex Trebek and company, which is why any good news from the 79-year-old host of the beloved trivia show is encouraged.

That news came on Tuesday, as we learned that Trebek wrote a book that’s coming out later this summer. According to the Associated Press, Trebek will release a memoir on July 21, shortly before his 80th birthday. Entitled “The Answer Is…: Reflections on My Life,” the book will be published by Simon and Schuster and features “illuminating personal anecdotes” among other thoughts about Jeopardy!, life and, hopefully, Lizzo.

According to the publisher, the longtime “Jeopardy!” host will share “Illuminating personal anecdotes” along with thoughts on everything from his favorite guests to spirituality and philanthropy.

“I want people to know a little more about the person they have been cheering on for the past year,” Trebek writes in his book.

It’s welcome news for Jeopardy! fans who may want anything Jeopardy!-related while they self-quarantine. And that Trebek has been busy despite batteling Stage IV pancreatic cancer is a hopeful sign that things are going well and he’s finding success with treatment.

Trebek is one of the most beloved game show hosts of all time, and his involvement on the show is tantamount to its success. There’s certainly a market for hearing what he has to say about pretty much anything, and we all need some good news to look forward to this summer.

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Austin Monfort was hanging out at Gilley’s — a famous country music bar — in Las Vegas, Nevada on September 30, 2017, when he saw Chantal Melanson on the dance floor. He approached her and she made fun of him for not wearing cowboy boots.

Both were in Vegas for the Route 91 Harvest, a three-day country music festival from September 29 to October 1, 2017.

The two began chatting and realized there was some chemistry. “It just felt like we knew each other forever. We went to grab a bite after the bar and exchanged numbers,” Chantal told Metro.

The next day, Chantal texted Austin and they met up at the festival. The two found a spot near the stage and danced the day away with Austin’s friends.

At 10 pm, as Jason Aldean performed on stage, Stephen Paddock opened fire on the concert from his hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel.

“We thought it was fireworks at the beginning since all big concerts usually have some kind of fireworks, however when it wasn’t stopping, everyone dropped to the ground,” Chantal told Metro.

“We were on the ground across from each other so we both were looking at each other. We stayed on the ground for a while and the shots were not stopping,” she said.

“Everyone ran in different directions but Austin stayed with me and we ran together. We ran across the entire festival grounds stopping a few times to get shelter,” she added.

Fifty-nine of the festival-goers died in the shooting and 869 of the 22,000 attendees were injured. Paddock died by suicide in his hotel room.

Chantal and Austin jumped in a taxi to get to safety and saw a woman limping towards them who had been shot in the leg and the stomach. So they drove with her to the hospital.

“We stayed in the hospital overnight due to lockdown and Austin never left my side,” Chantal said. “He held me throughout the night and kept me safe. After what we had just gone through, he was my safe place.”

After the tragedy, Austin returned to his home in California and Chantal flew back to Canada, but they talked with each other every day through Facetime and quickly fell in love.

Their relationship helped them get through the trauma of living through the shooting. “We’ve dealt with everything by focusing on the positive,” Chantal said. “There was a reason we met when we did. We needed each other in this chaos.”

Six weeks later, Austin flew up to Canada to see Chantal. “And we never spent more than six weeks apart either me going to California or him Canada,” she said.

After eighteen months together Austin proposed to Chantal in Laguna Beach, California.

“He brought me to our favorite beach and there was no one around. It was perfect,” Chantal said. “His heart was beating out of his chest when he gave me a hug and he got down on one knee and proposed, followed by a beautiful three-course meal.”

Austin wore cowboy boots for the occasion as a nod to their first conversation.

For immigration reasons, Austin and Chantal had a quick courthouse wedding on November 1, 2019, but they plan to have a big celebration for both of their families soon. The couple hoped to get married in Vegas on May 8, but that’s been postponed due to coronavirus.

“It’s been a bit stressful as so much planning has gone into it with my whole family living in Canada and his California,” Chantal said.

“Okay, but hear me out: Ew.” —Me trying to reason with the directors of these films.

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It’s basically the “feels so good to be bad” starter kit. 😈👑🍎🐚

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“Normal it will not be, at least until we have herd immunity and we have a vaccine,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday.

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One major question that exists regarding the COVID-19 pandemic is how many people have actually been impacted by the virus. Whether it be individuals who fell ill but never got their case confirmed or were asymptomatic carriers, scientists are still trying their best to get as much information as possible to map out the best possible plan for combatting this novel coronavirus.

Major League Baseball wants to play a role in helping this question get answered. According to Jeff Passan of ESPN, the league will participate in a study Stanford University, USC, and the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory will run in the coming days. As Passan explained, these researchers are looking for a pair of antibodies that form after someone has COVID-19 in their system — one is produced early on in the process of combatting the virus, while the other stays in a person’s body after they have recovered.

Those involved with the study stressed that this is not happening as part of a plan to fast-track MLB’s hopes of playing game as soon as possible. Via ESPN:

The goal of the study is to get a better sense of the virus’ true infection rate by utilizing a nationwide sample. The speed with which MLB coordinated logistics and ensured participation from a wide range of people, including players, front-office staff, concession workers and others, made it the right choice for the study, according to doctors running it.

An important thing to note here is that these — which are done via a finger prick and take a sample of a person’s blood — are different from the ones needed to diagnose the virus. Molly Knight of The Athletic reported that three unspecified teams will not participate in the study, while one of the doctors at the helm of all this praised MLB for its willingness to hop on board and speed up a process that would normally take a long, long time.

“This will be the first time we will be able to see how truly prevalent COVID-19 has spread throughout the United States,” Dr. Jar Bhattacharya said. “And instead of it taking years to pull together a study of this scope, especially with stay-at-home orders, MLB has helped us turn it around in a matter of weeks.”

This is not the only similar study occurring to try and get some insight into the scope of the virus, as the National Institute of Health announced its desire to find 10,000 volunteers to get a sense of how many Americans have built up antibodies to COVID-19. As for when games can resume, that is still a big unknown, as there has been no update on whether or not MLB will be able to move forward with its proposed plan for a bubble league in Arizona.

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Hey all you cool cats and kittens out there. It’s hard to remember the last time a documentary became such a global phenomenon that it dominated the conversation for weeks after it was released and infiltrated nearly every aspect of our culture. Yet here we are, and the world still can’t seem to get enough of the completely batsh*t crazy Netflix sensation Tiger King.

And there’s good reason for that. Not only is it one of the strangest and most relentlessly entertaining spectacles in recent memory, it came into our lives at the perfect cultural moment as the world went on lock-down amid the coronavirus pandemic, trapping us in our homes and making us desperate for a distraction.

Just when you thought the craze might be slowing down a bit, your favorite characters are up to their old tricks again, this time in the form of an NBA 2K simulation courtesy of YouTube user 2K Toro.

Joe Exotic, Jeff Lowe, Doc Antle, and of course, the inimitable Carole Baskin are all featured here in a matchup between, naturally, Team Exotic and Team Baskin.

The documentary has been such a phenomenon that it actually prompted officials to reopen the investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Baskin’s husband, Don Lewis. There is also reportedly a film or television series in the works based on these characters and events. The main takeaway is that we haven’t heard the last of this. Not by a long shot.

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