Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Questions and Answers: Volume 16

Episode Date: March 2, 2024

Several centuries ago, many places celebrated the start of the new year in March, not January.  March was originally the first month of the year, according to the Romans, which is why the Latin numbers for seven, eight, nine, and ten all appear in the months of September, October, November, and December.  That, however, is no longer the case. Now March is the third month and it means the end of the first fiscal quarter, the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere, and of course questions and answers.  So join me today as I march into your questions on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors BetterHelp Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month ButcherBox Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free steak for a year and get $20 off."  Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Several centuries ago, many places celebrated the start of the new year in March, not January. March was originally the first month of the year, according to the Romans, which is why the Latin numbers for 7, 8, 9, and 10 all appear in the months of September, October, November, and December. That, however, is no longer the case. March is now the third month, and it means the end of the first fiscal quarter, the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and of course, questions and answers. So join me today as I march into your questions on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now.

Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Let's get right into things. The first question comes from Michelle Jacques, who asks, What is your favorite topic to learn about? Well, there isn't one single topic, and I think you can probably gather from the nature of this podcast that my interests are all over the place. What I'm interested in is going to change all the time. I've gone through different phases of what I've been interested in throughout my whole life. When I was in junior high school, I read voraciously about the space program. When I was younger than that, I memorized statistics about baseball. Before I started traveling, I had a large coral reef aquarium where I learned about

marine biology and the behavior of corals and anemones. When the pandemic started, I started to teach Latin, a subject for which I still have a long way to go. I think this is really the best way to become an autodidact, or a self-learner. You have to follow whatever your interests are and be willing to move on to something new when your interest change. Jeremy Sparks asks, how did you fund your decade of travel? I don't mean to delve into your personal finance. but it's so expensive to go to the places that are so distant and non-touristy. Jeremy, it's not a problem, as I have gotten this question many, many times. The initial answer is that I sold a business and I sold my house before I started traveling,

so I had savings that I could use for the first several years that I was on the road. Later, my travel blog became popular and my social media accounts gained large followings, and I was able to make money from doing brand ambassadorships and photography projects for travel brands. However, one of the big things that most people don't realize is that if you travel full-time, it's far cheaper than most people think. When most people think of the cost of traveling, they are doing so as an expense added on top of all the other expenses they already have. However, if you travel full-time, you forego many of the expenses you have from daily life.

No rent or mortgage, no utility bills, no property taxes, no miscellaneous repair expenses. Moreover, you almost never stay at expensive hotels and, depend on. depending on what part of the world you travel to, it can be extremely affordable. I've met people who are able to get by on just a few hundred dollars a month, although I admit that level of spending isn't for everybody. Next, I have two questions that are very similar, so I'll just lump them together. Alex Miserro asks, Gary, congratulations on your success, wondering if you know anything about who's listening, age, sex, country.

Likewise, Kyle Dunham asks, what are the demographics of your listeners? Do they tend to be older or younger? are they primarily in the U.S. or other countries? Do your analytics affect your podcast topics? I should note that there's only so much you can really know about a podcast listener. Some data you can be quite certain of, and other data is more speculative, and you have to extrapolate. What I know with a high degree of confidence is the data that comes from IP addresses. IP addresses are roughly assigned by geography, so you have an idea of where people are downloading the show from.

As of the day, I am recording this. My audience is 73% in the United States, 8% in Canada, 3% in United Kingdom, 3% in Australia, and then 1% in Germany, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Ireland, South Africa, and France. This has changed dramatically over the last few months, however. Back in just December, the audience was only about 60% American, and the growth in the show since then has almost been entirely in the U.S. The top cities over the last 30 days are Chicago, Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Sydney, Portland, Atlanta, Denver, and Melbourne.

As far as demographic information, such as sex, age, or income, it's impossible to decipher that information from simple Internet data. However, some listening platforms have that data and share it in the aggregate. In particular, Spotify has demographic data. Spotify only accounts for 16% of my total downloads, but it's the only data I have. and I have no clue if the demographics on Spotify are representative of every other platform. According to Spotify, the audience is 70% male and skews older, with 31% being between 45 and 49, 28% between 35 and 44, and 18% between 28 and 34.

I have a suspicion, but cannot prove, that the audience on Apple Podcasts, which is where the majority of the downloads come from, would not skew as male or old simply given the nature of iPhone owners. Matt Goulet asks, being unfamiliar with how debate competitions work, is there ever a case where you had to defend a subject from the side you don't agree with? And if so, how hard is it to put aside your personal beliefs to debate the other side? That is an excellent question, Matt.

There are several different types of debate. The type I did in high school and college and what I coached after college is known as policy debate. In policy debate, you debate on a team with a partner. A typical debate tournament would have six or eight preliminary rounds to determine seating, followed by elimination rounds to determine the champion. In the preliminary rounds, you will have to debate an even number of debates on the affirmative and negative of whatever the resolution is. In the elimination rounds, you would flip a coin unless you previously debated the team, in which case you would just switch sides. So the answer is, yes, you are debating something you don't believe all the time. and that's one of the benefits of the activity.

Being forced to debate both sides of an issue makes you take perspective on something that you otherwise wouldn't. Kevin Hulkren asks, why is Christopher Columbus credited with discovering the Americas when the Vikings had a settlement in Newfoundland centuries earlier? Or did they? First, let's get the obvious out of the way. Neither Columbus nor the Vikings discovered the Americas.

The discovery was probably made by some unknown person walking across the Bering Land Bridge about 20,000 years ago. That being said, in a previous episode, I covered the Viking settlement at La Anxon Meadow in Newfoundland. There is ample evidence that there was a Viking settlement in North America centuries before Columbus arrived in the new world. Putting aside the issue and term discovery,

why was Columbus given so much more credit and attention than the Vikings when the Vikings were there first? Well, for starters, nobody knew that the Vikings had arrived until a team of archaeologists discovered their settlement in the 1960s. Second, and most importantly, nothing ever became of the Viking settlement. There are a great many things for whom credit is given not to the person who does it first, but the person who does it first the best. It was the voyage of Columbus, for better or worse,

that led to the exchange between the new and old worlds and the creation of the world as we know it today. The Viking settlements were the equivalent of the world, an evolutionary dead end. The settlement ended, and no follow-up was ever made. This isn't the only case like this where someone technically might have come first, but isn't given credit. The electric incandescent light bulb is often credited to Thomas Edison. Getting an electrical current to incandesce is not particularly hard, just run enough current through a wire, and it'll start to glow. Many people created bulbs that could create light

from electricity, but their systems weren't practical. Edison, however, created a practical system that could be used anywhere. The same is true with the printing press. The first printing press was developed in China. However, this technology was highly controlled, and the system they used was difficult. Gutenberg's printing press unleashed a revolution, which is why he's usually given credit. It was his system, which came later, which was the foundation of modern printing, not the Chinese system. In fact, in almost every episode I've done on inventions, there's usually some early inventor

who created some impractical version of something who usually doesn't get the credit. And the same is true with the Vikings and Columbus. Jateng asks, what type of travel is your favorite? For example, backpacking on foot, cruising down a river, bus, train, plane, or something else I can't think of. Well, Jatang, I don't think there is really a type of travel. All the things you listed are modes of transit. transportation. Depending on where you want to go, you might have to take different modes of transportation.

For example, when I was in Egypt, I went from Cairo to Luxor by train, but then I went back by taking a riverboat up the Nile that stopped at various temples along the way. And in between, I took a bus to get to Abu Simble, which is in the desert. Different modes of transportation for all pretty much the same purpose, visiting stuff in Egypt. If you wanted to visit Antarctica, for example, you're probably going to have to get on a ship. There are flights to Antarctica, but they usually involve landing on a glacier and not being able to see much beyond ice. I took the blue train in South Africa, which was a totally different experience from the one I had on a road trip around South Africa.

If there is a type of travel, I would say it has more to do with your budget and the accommodations you stay in, not your modes of transportation. Jordan from the Discord server asks, and yes, I do have a Discord server, in your travels, what is your favorite place you spent less than 48 hours in? What's your favorite place you spent at least two weeks in? For a place I've spent less than 48 hours, I'll probably have to go with Macau. I visited Macau on Christmas Day 2007. I took a very early ferry from Hong Kong and spent the entire day exploring Macau.

Macau wasn't very big, and I visited most of the major attractions while I was there. I ended up taking the last ferry back to Hong Kong, which made for an extremely full day, but it was still only one day. There are several places where I've spent more than two weeks. By that, I'm only counting locations where I've stayed at the same accommodations in the same city for at least two weeks straight. And that would include Melbourne, Bangkok, Saigon, and Apia, Samoa. However, I'd have to say my favorite place was Gerona in Catalonia, Spain. Gerona is about an hour north of Barcelona, and I spent three months there.

Gerona was used as one of the shooting locations for Game of Thrones, and it's a very overlooked city, mostly because of its proximity to Barcelona. I was able to get to know the city quite well and was there long enough to become a regular at some of the pubs and restaurants. So if you're in Catalonia, I highly recommend visiting Gerona. My last question comes from Fat Yankee also on the Discord server. He asks, Gary, I lived the first 29 years of my life like I wasn't going to see 30. Now I've just turned 40, and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to revel and delve into whatever it is young adults are doing like pickleball and TikTok,

or just accept it and start yelling at kids to get off my lawn. Any suggestions? My suggestion is to not worry about it. You get old and things change. By all means, I would not suggest trying to act like you're in your 20s when you're in your 40s because then you'll just be the creepy old guy. Pursue your interests and don't worry about what you should be doing. Also, I think we've lived with social media long enough now that we can see that it isn't

all it's cracked up to be. It's largely a waste of time. And I think everyone's time would be better off spent on longer form content where you can actually learn something, not tiny bits of tech. or video that offer nothing more than opinions or fads. And while I do not play pickleball, I know some people who do, and I'm pretty sure that it's not something that the kids play. It mostly attracts adults because it's easier and less stressful than tennis.

That wraps up for this month. I know there were a lot of questions I didn't get to this time, but if you'd like to have your question answered next month, just join the Facebook group or the Discord server, the links to which are in the show notes. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiever. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon.

Your support helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in Everything Everywhere daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available. And if you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and get notified to future episodes and projects, please join my Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.