Explaining Avery Brooks's joke on "The Captains" with William Shatner

There's a scene in The Captains that a lot of fans, and even Shatner, didn't get which has earned Brooks an unfair reputation as a kind of loopy eccentric, but he was actually just making a musical joke.

[The scene:](https://youtu.be/z2MEYMMDhKk?t=48)

Shatner: What happens when you die?

Brooks: Tell me.

Shatner: I wish I knew.

Brooks: [*Plays the piano for 1 minute.*] I wish I knew.

The song he played on the piano was a jazz standard called [I wish I knew.](https://youtu.be/T06fMkPkFYw) That was his response to the question.

I had to have this explained to me a few years ago, because I don't know jazz and it does seem weird if you didn't know that that was the name of a song. But upon learning that, it changed my entire perception of the interview. So I thought I'd share it with the community.