Here at National Geographic, fans of CBS’s The Amazing Race (and there are many of us) spend Mondays critiquing the cast and admiring how the show takes us around the globe for up-close glimpses of local culture (and crazy cab drivers). So I jumped at the opportunity to interview Phil Keoghan, the charming and wry host, as the show wraps up another season this Sunday night. A native of New Zealand, he shared views on the lessons that his show teaches, the national character of his homeland, and the art of the eyebrow raise.

This week, Jeopardy is hosting a trivia showdown that features a supercomputer, named Watson after former IBM president Thomas J. Watson, trained to answer in the form of a question. We spoke to Stephen Baker, author of Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything, to see if humanity has a chance.

What makes Watson different than a souped-up search engine?

Watson has to understand some very complex English. By contrast, we make life easy for search engines by choosing key words. Humans decide what words will most likely get them the answers they are searching for. A search engine will point you toward a list of pages and turn the work back to you. Watson has to figure out the question by itself and then to develop confidence in its answer and that is an enormously sophisticated operation.

The second season of Glee is upon us. And even though fans may think they know everything about the show, there is a lot they likely do not know about the history of real-life glee clubs.

Surprising Point #1: “Glee” doesn’t mean what you think it does.

Tonight, CBS relaunches the Pacific island cop drama Hawaii Five-0 with a whole new cast and lots and lots of bullets. In addition to one of the greatest theme songs in TV history, the 1968 series also inspired "Five-O" as a slang term for the police. As in, "Oh no, I just ran a red light and Five-O is on my tail." The nickname, of course, comes from Hawaii's status as the 50th state.

Out of curiosity, we put out an APB to the magazine's publishing partners worldwide for their nicknames for the fuzz. Here's what our informants revealed. Let us know in the comments if you can add to our global cop vocabulary.

Or which city is connected to Copenhagen by the Oresund Bridge?

I made my debut as a moderator in a preliminary round of the 2010 National Geographic Bee, which is being televised on PBS stations. I’m a four-decade National Geographic employee, now the managing editor of the magazine, but before that I spent years in the research division, which is responsible for verifying all factual information before publication. You'd think those years of research would make the Bee easy. Yet those questions stumped me. The ability to answer them helped Aadith Moorthy of Florida win the National Geographical Bee and a $25,000 scholarship. The second place winner was Oliver Lucier from Rhode Island. Third place went to Idaho’s Karthik Mouli.

Ten finalists—all boys—competed in the final round of the 22nd Bee. I continue to be amazed, year after year, by how much the geography contestants know, how little attitude they possess, and how casually they appear to accept their elimination if they miss questions, even in the final rounds. Several were here for the second time, having won their state championships twice in a row.

Here’s what I learned as a moderator:

Bee contestants aren’t just geography lovers. Many play musical instruments. Some participate in sports, though not surprisingly they tend to be single-player activities such as tennis and golf. Of course they are also voracious readers.

Pronunciation is hard. I was glad I practiced ahead of time, especially when it came to Sacred Mountains of the World for round 7: Llullaillaco [yoo-yai-YAH-koh], Tehuelche [teh-WHALE-chay] people, Chalkidikí [call-kee-thee-KEE] Peninsula, Ol Doinyo Lengai [ol-doyn-yo len-GAY], and Mount Hikurangi [hee-koo-RANG-ee].

It's not easy emulating Alex Trebek, who hosts the final round of the Bee (as well as a certain other question-answer TV show). I wanted to be as relaxed as Alex is, to call each contestant by name, to express sorrow when an answer was wrong without being too dramatic. I must have succeeded, at least in the mind of one parent, who told me after the contest that my calming voice helped the contestants. I was also told that Alex came into our room several times during the contest, a fact that I'm glad I wasn't aware of at the time.

I wish more girls were there. The diversity of the contestants is inspiring—their families have recent roots in places like India, Iran, Korea, Pakistan, and assorted eastern European nations. Now if we could only find a way to have more girls end up in the finals there would be true diversity. The National Geographic has been trying extremely hard to do this with special studies and outreach, encouraging girls to participate at the local level. But once again the Bee was overwhelmingly male. This year only one of the contestants was female.

And the answers are…Oh, and if you didn’t know the answer to the two questions, they are: Cap-Haïtien and Malmö.

-Lesley Rogers

Two days after the premiere of the new HBO series Treme, Lionel Nelson, 60, sits in Sidney's Saloon (1500 St. Bernard Street) watching a rerun of the first episode. Trumpeter Kermit Ruffins appears on screen to the delight and laughter of Sidney's patrons. One of many locals cast in the show, he plays himself. Ruffins owns Sidney's-home to the regulars who used to drink at Joe's Cozy Corner (1532 Ursuline St.), a legendary Treme bar where the Rebirth Brass Band and Ruffins had a standing gig on Sundays.

See our interactive Treme map and continue reading after the jump.

Angel the schnauzer strolled to the coffee table, stood up on his back legs, and pushed a nose toward the fruit platter. As dogs are known to do when food is left unattended. But this wasn’t just any dog—and his owner wasn’t just any owner. From across the room a sound rose, crisp and familiar to any fan of the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan. PSSHHT. A hand, tensed into a claw, rose in the air. The dog froze. Again: PSSHHT. (A commanding sound! Grabs attention and shows who's the boss!) Slowly, Angel backed down to the floor, walked away from the table, and curled up silently near his master's feet.

Last week on Top Chef, contestants broke out their filleting knives for a Quickfire challenge judged by guest Eric Ripert, chef and part owner of the world famous French seafood restaurant Le Bernardin in New York City.

First up to fillet were sardines—-hard to debone because of their small size but pretty standard fare. Next came arctic char—-much bigger, still fairly familiar. Then came something rarely seen on dinner menus, much less in home kitchens—-freshwater eel.

We at Pop Omnivore wondered why we knew so little about eel as food. So we decided to investigate.

According to Larousse Gastronomique, eels are “snakelike fish with a smooth slippery skin." The culinary encyclopedia then goes on to say, "Eels are sold alive. They are killed and skinned at the last moment as the flesh deteriorates rapidly, and the raw blood is poisonous if it enters a cut – for example, on one’s finger.” Cooking the eel detoxifies its blood.

On the show, Chef Ripert told contestants that the eels had just been killed and were definitely dead, even though they continued to move. Though the movement is strictly nerve-related and not a sign of life, it can be, well, unnerving. Says Ripert, “They will move for hours. Seriously, for hours.” Indeed, many of the chefs looked squeamish as they dealt with the rather gruesome process of peeling and filleting their challenge.

Admit it: You watched the Super Bowl ads—and laughed at the one where a bunch of clothed chimps were working on a car in a suburban guy’s home garage. A neighbor asks the guy, “What’s with the chimps?” The guy replies, “They’re grease monkeys. I love ’em.”

Not everyone loves ‘em.

I spoke with critic Robert Shumaker, director of orangutan research at the Great Ape Trust, a research facility in Des Moines, Iowa, that studies the primates.