Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Questions and Answers: Volume 17

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

You have questions and I have answers Sponsors Available nationally, look for a bottle of Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond at your local store. Find out more at heavenhilldistillery.com/hh-bottled-in-bond.php Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free offer and get $20 off. Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month. Use the code EverythingEverywhere for a 20% discount on a subscription at Newspapers.com. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Benji Long & 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

There is an old saying that April showers bring May flowers. However, that doesn't really address where the April showers came from in the first place. I believe that they come from the questions of curious people. And when they're answered, they bring tears of joy which manifest in the form of rain. So join me today as I shower you with answers to 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 Thuline podcast from NPR. Let's jump right into our questions for this month. We'll start with Mike Candelaria who asks, do you plan on doing episodes that are music-centric, whether the evolution of specific instruments or music types like blues, hip-hop, or as. Well, Mike, I've done some music-related episodes before. I've done an episode on the history

of the piano, and I've done episodes on particular pieces of classical music, like the 1812 overture and Beethoven's 9th Symphony. You'll note that all of these have to do with classical music. One of the problems with doing episodes on music is that it really helps to play music during the episode. For certain old pieces of music that are over 100 years old, this isn't a problem. However, for newer music, it becomes a big problem. If I put even a short clip from anything recorded in the last 60 years, I'll probably get a copyright notice. Some of you who are familiar with copyright law may be saying that there is a fair use exemption, and an educational podcast such as mine would be a clear case of fair use. And I agree with you 100%. However, that doesn't

really matter. The fact that I would have a valid fair use claim doesn't mean that I still won't get a take down notice from the owners of the rights to the music. Once I get that, it is an enormous hassle that I would have to deal with even if I was legally in the right. That being said, I would love to do some episodes on the origins of contemporary music. I was listening to an interview with the record producer Rick Rubin several months ago when he talked about the origins of hip-hop. Because hip-hop is relatively new, we know it's history. We know it's history. history in greater detail than we do for other older forms of music. It's a fascinating story that starts in the Bronx in the early 1970s, and one way or another, I will do an episode on it

someday. The next question is from Neficia Scott, who asks, I'm still making my way through the podcast, and I don't know if these have been answered, but two questions I had were, one, what's your process when getting information for the podcast? Where are some of your go-to sources you started from? Do you add citations in your notes? Two, why do you choose the major you did in college? Do you think your studies have benefited you in what you did slash do now? Well, Mephisha, there's no process per se. How I get information will differ from episode to episode. Ideas for episodes can come from literally anywhere. It may come from a book I read a long time ago, a movie I just watched, an article I read, or something I visited

in the course of my travels. Once I get an idea for an episode, I usually have a rough idea of what the story is and what I'm going to say. Much of the research at that point is just filling in facts and details. Given that I have to produce a show almost every day, and because the episodes are relatively short, most of the research has to be done online. I do not publish citations or footnotes because I'm not trying to produce an academic paper. I'm just trying to tell a story in an audio format. Doing full citations would significantly add to the amount of time required to produce each

episode, and that's not the business I'm in. In college, I received a triple major in mathematics, economics, and political science. However, most of my time was actually spent on the academic debate team, which required me to research and understand a wide variety of topics. My goal initially was to win the Nobel Prize in economics. After selling a business, I went back to school in my 30s and pursued majors in geology and geophysics. Given what I do now, I'd say my majors gave me a very broad,

foundation to do a show like this. I certainly never planned to do this that many years ago, but everything has worked out pretty well. Chris Fagg asked, had you ever been to Bermuda? And if so, thoughts. Well, Chris, I have been to Bermuda. I visited Bermuda in 2014. I was in New York and I had a little under a week to kill before an event I had to attend and I really didn't want to stay in New York that entire time. So I got a ticket to Bermuda and hung up there for about four or five days. Bermuda, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, is actually not in the Caribbean. It's out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. There's a lot of history on the island, and it's technically still a British territory.

Bermuda is expensive, and I'm not going to lie. I did enjoy it, and the place that it reminded me the most was Barbados, which has a similar history to Bermuda. I'd love to go back to Bermuda at some point in the future to explore it more. The next question is from Munen-Merkvi-Ua-Aimer, who asks, Are you planning on doing an episode on Bhutan? Fascinating place. I don't have any immediate plans, but you are correct that Bhutan is a very fascinating and unique place. Given the episodes I've done on individual countries, Bhutan would make for a very great fit and a very good episode.

Michaela Clark asks, when traveling do you try to adopt the local lingo for things, like chips instead of fries, take away instead of takeout? Have there been certain local terms you just feel silly saying in your American accent while abroad? Well, Michaela, I'm a big believer in the saying when in Rome do as the Romans do. So if I'm in a Commonwealth country, it's far easier to just use the local words rather than using my Americanisms. So, yes, I will say chips, lift, bonnet, aubergine torch, and whatever other words the locals use, including referring to soccer as football.

It would only sound odd to another American, not to the person I'm talking to. Doing otherwise would just add needless complications to communication. Youron DeBur asks, Hey, Gary, being a teacher, I sometimes use the information in your podcast to give a general overview of a topic and get the children interested and excited before they dive in deeper. Have you ever considered teaching? Yaronne, the answer is no, at least not in the way that you're probably asking me about. I used to be an academic debate coach in which I worked in schools and had an upfront exposure

to the educational system. The one thing I came away from it with was an absolute lack of desire to ever be a classroom teacher. I saw the bureaucracy that teachers had to deal with, and I didn't want anything to do with that. That being said, between coaching and this podcast, I'd say I am a teacher. The difference is that I don't lecture in a classroom

and I have a whole lot more students. Ellen Massaro asks, as a season traveler, what's your go-to items you always bring with you no matter where you go. Backpack versus luggage. Always carry on rather than check bags. Thanks Gary, huge fan of the show. What I use as luggage has changed over time. When I started, I literally had a cheap backpack. However, over time, I switched to a soft-sided bag with wheels that I would check on flights. The bag was rather lengthy, and the main reason why I used this bag was because it could fit my camera tripod, which was rather long, and because I was living out of a bag, and I

had more stuff than most people did when they travel. My camera bag was my carry-on, and in it I had almost all of my electronics. However, when I stopped traveling full-time and just did extended trips, then I moved to just traveling with a carry-on bag that held everything. I also travel with a small backpack that I keep with me in my seat, and that holds my camera and my electronics now. There are a host of things I always travel with, including my laptop, an external battery, and a travel power strip. Frank Solano asks, has China ever invaded another country, at least in the last 100 years? The answer is, yes, China invaded Vietnam in 1979.

The Sino-Vietnamese war was a response to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia to oust the Khmer Rouge government, which was backed by China. And the story of the Khmer Rouge is most definitely going to be a future episode. Josh Crawford asks, during your travels, have you ever been ever been? stranded by or experienced any extreme weather or geological events, such as earthquakes, typhoons, volcanic eruptions, etc. Yeah, in 2010, my father was hospitalized, and I was stuck in Spain because the volcano in Iceland was erupting. It canceled all the transatlantic flights for about a week.

I was also in Maui in 2011 when the tsunami hit, which originated off the coast of Japan. It ended up not being that big of a deal, but nobody knew it at the time. The tsunami warnings went out and everybody panicked, but in the end it ended up being very minimal. Nick Beebe asks, you must have such a routine with the podcast being able to research and record on an almost daily basis. Due to the limited time, do you cook your own food or have you ever gone back to your travel days and gotten food almost every day? If you do cook, what does your typical lunch look like? Well, Nick, I do cook most of my own meals nowadays. However, I do try to get out of the house every day, otherwise I'll go stir crazy working in the same place where I live.

A couple of days a week, I'll take my laptop to a restaurant to go work over lunch. Other times, I'll just go to a grocery store to go buy something to make for dinner. I don't really have a typical lunch. I may cook a steak if I'm making something at home, but some days I'll go out for sushi, to a barbecue joint, or maybe to an Indian restaurant. Sam Robinson asks, how many countries have you actually driven in? Sam, that's a really good question and one that I had to sit down and think about. So as far as I can tell, I have driven a car in 43 countries. The United States, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Costa Rica, Ireland, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Czechia, Austria,

Slovakia, Hungary, Czechia, Austria, France, Spain, Andorra, Portugal, Greece, Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Cyprus, Montenegro, Albania, Fiji, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Guam, St. Vincent, South Africa, Botswana, Zwasiland, Oman, Jordan, and Trinidad. And I'm probably missing a few, but I can't think of them off the top of my head. The next question comes from Fritzel-Seli Patrick Brendan, who asks, You got me through the hell that is factory third shift. Bless you for that. My question is, why do you think there are so few movies in art forms that deal with factory work?

I have my answer and love to hear yours. Well, my guess, and this is totally a guess, having done zero research on the subject, is that writers don't tend to work factory jobs. It isn't their world, and they don't know much about it. So you don't see many works about factory life. And by the same token, not many factory workers set out to write books and screenplays. And it isn't just factory work. New York and Los Angeles are vastly overrepresented in movies and television by an amazing amount,

far more than their populations alone would merit. Basically, writers and other artists are limited by what they know. It's difficult to create something about what you don't know, and most people wouldn't ever think to do it because they don't know anything about it. Turin Turumbar asks, What is your favorite civilization to play in Age of Empires, too? I would probably have to say the Byzantines just because of their bonus to walls and buildings. However, I do like the Britons and their Longbow bonus, as well as the Turks and their gunpowder bonus.

David Lillienstein asks, how much of what you discuss do you retain? At a party are you a wealth of knowledge on almost any subject? Or is it more you recalling talking about a topic once but can't remember the details? Well, David, I don't have perfect memory, but I can speak extemporaneously on a great many subjects that I've covered in podcast episodes. In fact, just this week, I went into a rant at a local tavern about the origin of the Julian and Gregorian calendars, talking about cisogynes of Alexandria. Believe it or not, I have actually demonstrated Cantnor's diagonal proof to show that there are infinities larger than other infinities on the back of a cocktail napkin, which is always a big hit at parties. And I also have a trick where I can list every country in the world off the top of my head. There are some things that require a bit of a refresher, however.

Even just 15 to 30 seconds of looking over a show script will often bring everything flooding back to my memory. As with anything, the more you go over a topic and the more you read about it, the more you're going to retain. The final question this month comes from Tracy Cameron Baker, who asks, The polymath in you is strong. Is there any single subject that draws you back to it over and over to learn more? Well, Tracy, my interests are always changing based on whatever I'm interested in at the moment. The one thing that always ties everything together, however, no matter what this subject, is history. Science, mathematics, economics, and even current events are all tightly intertwined with history.

I think it's difficult to understand the world or even individual subjects without understanding the history behind it. To me, understanding how certain ideas were developed helps to understand the ideas themselves. That wraps up for this month. I know there were a lot of questions I didn't get to, as there were more questions submitted this month than ever before. 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 Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers.

Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.