Alex Trebek Appears on Former Jeopardy! Contestant Austin Rogers' Podcast — to Talk Carpentry!

Those who know Alex Trebek well know this one thing is true: The man likes to tinker and fix things, and he knows his way around a woodworking shop, too.

“I like to fix things,” he told PEOPLE during an interview at home last December. Even after announcing he was fighting stage 4 pancreatic cancer in March, Trebek continued indulging his love of home repair. “My wife’s bathroom has a leak, so I need to figure out where that’s coming from,” he told PEOPLE later in the year of how he was spending his time.

On Oct. 17, the longtime Jeopardy! host, 79, appeared on former Jeopardy! contestant Austin Rogers’ podcast A Lot to Learn with Austin Rogers to discuss his love of home improvement. (The second part of the interview will air on Oct. 24, when Trebek will also discuss his love of the Yorkshire English countryside, where he recently visited, and the world of the Bronte sisters.)

“All of my mother’s brothers were involved one way or another in the construction industry,” Trebek told Rogers, 39, of how he learned to do repairs. “Either in carpentry, painting, manufacturing, windows, doors, things like that. And so I watched them as I was growing up.”

Trebek added that his father wasn’t much of a handyman himself. “But I paid attention to mom’s brothers, my uncles,” he said

On the podcast, Trebek also chatted with Rogers (who many will remember from Jeopardy! as the humorous bartender from New York whose earnings totaled $466K, and who lost a 12-game winning streak by just $51) about fast cars and Los Angeles weather patterns.

In Rogers’ podcast, the former contestant likes to “dive into the arcane and unheralded to find the thing behind the thing. The stories, interests, careers and disciplines that exist just behind the obvious and the personalities associated with them,” according to a description for the show.