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Even with the recent success of high-tech, big-money game shows such as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, game show contestants and fans still get excited over winning a new car or a trip to Hawaii. Veteran Price Is Right host Bob Barker recently addressed a forum at Harvard University and talked about the effect game shows have had on popular culture.

"There are some shows that are so mired in pop culture that it is unwise to tamper with them," CAS History Professor Joseph Boskin says in an October 23 Associated Press story. "At the same time, you have to realize that people watching are getting older, and if you don’t appeal to the next generation, you may eventually run out of audience."

The show’s set, games, and rules have barely changed since 1971, but Barker admits that he has begun to daydream about life out of the spotlight after his contract ends in July 2001. But for now, Barker says, he is happy being ringmaster of The Price Is Right, and he still smiles when someone yells at him to "Come on down!" after 29 years.

Archaeologists in Cancun have discovered a nearly intact 170-room palace, one of the largest Maya palaces ever unearthed. The find has led many researchers to reconsider how and why the ancient Maya civilization fell, questioning the theory that the civilization was based on religion and warfare.

"There are as many theories about the Maya collapse as there are Maya archaeologists," says CAS Archaeology Professor Norman Hammond in an October 20 story in The Chronicle of Higher Education. "But we’ve moved away from single-cause explanations. We no longer believe that it was due entirely to warfare or internal revolt or soil exhaustion. Whatever happened was very complex."

The recent discovery, at a site regarded by previous expeditions as merely a great jungle-covered hill, suggests that the city built its fortunes through commerce, rather than conflict.

"In The News" is compiled by Mark Toth in the Office of Public Relations.

4 December 2000
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