Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Questions and Answers: Volume 19

Starting point is 00:00:00 The month of June was originally called Eunius by the Romans. Back then, it had 29 days and was the fourth month of the year. Today it now has 30 days, and it's the sixth month of the year. It used to be a bad omen to be married in June, and now it's the most popular month to be married in. However, despite all the changes in the month, there is one thing that has remained constant. Questions and Answers. Stay tuned for the 19th installment of Questions and Answers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

Starting point is 00:00:45 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 start with the first question and it comes from Timothy Johnson who asks, I'm curious about Harry's Razors. You mentioned that you heard about them on a podcast. Is that podcast our fake history? More seriously, if you had to pick your five favorite castles in Europe, what would they be?

Starting point is 00:01:23 Thanks. The podcast where I first heard about Harry's Razors was the Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan. As for the top castles in Europe, in no particular order, I would say, Noishwanstein in Bavaria, Prague Castle, Wartberg Castle in Eisenach, Germany, Braun Castle, aka Dracula's Castle in Romania, and Pena Palace in Centra, Portugal. These are places that would be fortified, not just palaces. If it included palaces, it would be a very different list. Kevin Holtgren asks, why do all the Scandinavian flags have the same design?

Starting point is 00:01:59 Finnish names seem to have different conventions than do Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish. Mine did have something to do with the Vikings. As for the language, Finnish is a completely different beast from all the other languages in Nordic countries. Finland is basically the difference between Nordic countries and Scandinavian countries. Finland is not a Scandinavian country because Finnish is not a Scandinavian language. As far as the flags are concerned, you are correct that all five of the Nordic countries have very similar flags. They all have what is known as a Nordic or Scandinavian cross. And it all started with the Danes. The oldest of the flags is the flag of Denmark, which dates back to the year

Starting point is 00:02:40 It's actually considered to be the oldest national flag in the world. The Danes were the most powerful country in the region for centuries. They ruled Norway, and Norway eventually adopted a flag based on the Danish flag, save for a blue cross in the middle of the white cross. The Danes also controlled Iceland, and when Iceland became independent in 1918, they adopted a flag based on the Danish flag. Actually, it's simply the Norwegian flag with the red and blue color switched. Sweden was controlled by Norway and adopted the current flag in the early 20th century,

Starting point is 00:03:15 again based on the same design but with the Swedish national colors. Finland selected their flag from a contest in 1917 and the design selected happened to be the same as the other countries in the region. Associate producer Cameron Kiefer asks, Gary, not sure if you've read the three-body problem, but Netflix didn't add a patient to the book. My question is, if there is intelligent life in the universe, should humans actively try to find and communicate with it.

Starting point is 00:03:42 Personally, I think if SETI could transmit your episodes daily, we'd find the only life worth finding. If you remember back, I did an episode on the Fermi paradox. The Fermi paradox simply asked the question, if there are advanced civilizations, where are they? The three body problems approach to the question is what is known as the Dark Forest Hypothesis. In fact, the Dark Forest Hypothesis is based on something that came out of the three body problem books.

Starting point is 00:04:08 The dark forest hypothesis proposes that the reason why we can't see alien civilizations is that everyone is hiding from each other. If they make themselves known, they run the risk of destruction. Likewise, if you were to find another civilization, then you should want to destroy it before they do the same to you. I think the dark forest hypothesis is highly, highly unlikely. I don't think there will ever be a technology that makes interstellar travel easy. There's no need to attack another civilization for resources. There are ample resources in pretty much any solar system, and the cost of going to another star system to steal another civilization's resources is just way too high.

Starting point is 00:04:51 The only thing of value you could get from an intelligent civilization is information. Information can be shared, and it's far more valuable than any physical resource, and much easier to trade than trying to physically travel. So if you wanted a movie that would accurately depict what would happen if we found an intelligent civilization, I think it would probably be contact. Elizabeth Koikendahl asks, how about the information Terence Howard is coming out saying, changing the way we look at the periodic table and whatnot? The things he's stating are super intriguing, especially if he is on to something. Elizabeth, I am going to put this as bluntly as I can so there is absolutely no misunderstanding. standing. Terrence Howard is insane. I don't even mean that as an insult or a pejorative. I think

Starting point is 00:05:40 he actually is suffering from a mental illness. His statements are so crazy and delusional, I don't know what else you could conclude other than he suffers from severe narcissistic personality disorder. The foundation of his beliefs is that one times one equals two. Yes, you heard that right. When you hear his explanation, he clearly doesn't know the difference between addition and multiplication, which is what most people learn in the first or second grade. He also thinks that the square root of two is one, and that one cubed somehow equals pi. He claims to have discovered a grand unified theory of everything at the age of seven.

Starting point is 00:06:24 He wrote it down and then lost it when his dog ate it. He uses fancy sounding words that he does not know the meaning of, and the context in which he uses them doesn't even make sense. Like most people with narcissistic personality disorder, he believes that he is persecuted by some conspiracy. They, whoever they are, are trying to hide the fact that one times one equals two from the world. It is all a conspiracy of big math. He claims to have developed a new form of flight, which he can't prove.

Starting point is 00:06:58 His ideas of the periodic table are based on something developed by an, artist in the early 20th century named Walter Russell. Famous scientists often receive rants from people in the mail who claim to have single-handedly reinvented all of science. Somehow, for every single one of them, unnamed forces are preventing the world from finding out about their discovery. The only difference between Terence Howard's rantings about how he has rediscovered all of math and science and someone's shouting on a street corner is that he's a celebrity and so talk show hosts humor him. 10-year-old completionist club member Spencer asks,

Starting point is 00:07:35 Do you remember your first trip to another country? Where was it? And what did you do? The first trip I took to another country was when my family went on a road trip to Niagara Falls when I was 10 years old. We crossed into Ontario and then drove to the Canadian side of the falls. After that, I never left the United States again until I was in college, and the national debate tournament was in Bellingham, Washington, just over the border from British Columbia. The first trip I took outside of North America was in 19,

Starting point is 00:08:01 1999 when I did an around-the-world trip for work that took me to Tokyo, Taipei, Singapore, Frankfurt, Paris, Brussels, and London. Emu King on the Discord server asks, What's the topic that's been on your list the longest, and why haven't you covered it yet? The running list I keep of potential show ideas currently has 921 items. When I add something new, I put it at the bottom of the list, and when I do an episode, I take it off the list. The idea which is currently sitting at the top of the list is the U.S. occupations.

Starting point is 00:08:31 of the Philippines. The reason I haven't done it, well, there's no particular reason other than I wanted to do several episodes first, which I've already done, including the Spanish-American War and a general history of the Philippines. Vlad Sander asks, of all the topics you have ever covered or want to cover, which has been the hardest to separate fiction from reality. Well, there's actually one episode I had to abandon in the middle of writing it. It was the episode on the first American serial killer, H. H. Holmes. The reason I had to abandon it is because so many of the stories I read about him turned out to have been false. The newspapers of the time greatly exaggerated the crimes he committed, and when I began to research it, I had to put her on hold because the reality was so different

Starting point is 00:09:18 from the story that I thought I was going to be telling. I did eventually do the episode, but it was very different from what I thought it would originally be. Wayne Roth asks, I'm Canadian. Years ago, I met an older man at a military museum in Boston who insisted that the U.S. has never lost a war. I mentioned Vietnam and left it at that. You could also make a case for the losses in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the War of 1812. Do you think the U.S. has lost any wars? Well, Wayne, it depends on what you mean by winning and losing. There is losing on the battlefield, and then there is failure to achieve objectives. I'm not sure anyone won anything in the war of 1812. No territory changed hands. Neither side was definitive.

Starting point is 00:10:01 definitively defeated. Both sides can claim that there were defensive reasons as to why they could claim some sort of success. In Vietnam, the United States clearly did not achieve its objectives. The communists took over the whole country, and so I think you would have to chalk that up as a loss. In Iraq, the objective of the first war was the liberation of Kuwait, and in the second war was the removal of Saddam Hussein, both of which were successful. Both conflicts also had lopsided victories on the battlefield for the Americans. In Afghanistan, the initial objective was the removal of al-Qaeda training camps from Afghanistan, which was successful. However, the Americans then stuck around for 20 years and then eventually just left. With the Taliban, the group they were

Starting point is 00:10:46 initially fighting back in power. When you get down to it, very few wars result in unconditional surrender or a complete one-sided victory. So I would say there's definitely one conflict the Americans lost and then there's a whole bunch that are kind of toss-ups that I'm not sure if it's a win or a loss. Connie Carroll asks, have you ever been on a river cruise? If so, which river? If not, which river would you choose first? I would choose the Nile, submitted from a sixth grade social studies teacher.

Starting point is 00:11:18 Well, Connie, I have been on a river cruise, but I've only done one, and that was on the Nile River. I went by train from Cairo to Luxor and then back up via riverboat, which took several several days. Along the way, we stopped at some of the smaller temples that most people never get to visit, in particular the Ed Fu and Ka-ombo temples. I've never done a river cruise in Europe, but I've been to many cities where riverboats can dock in the middle of town. M. Fine from the Discord server asks, who is your favorite Wisconsin Badger of all time, football, basketball, or otherwise? In football, it has to be Ron Dane, the NCAA all-time

Starting point is 00:11:55 leading rusher, if you include bowl games. On defense, I'd have to go, with JJ Watt. In basketball, I have to go with Frank Kaminsky, who led the Badgers to the finals of the NCAA tournament. Jesus Chan asked, Gary, good morning from Laredo, Texas. If humans have been around for approximately 190,000 years and we live on a planet covered by 70% seawater, why haven't we been able to find an efficient method of desalinization for seawater? Well, for starters, Jesus, the fact that humans have been around in some form for hundreds of thousands of years really doesn't explain why something hasn't been discovered. In reality, we are only one to three centuries into the scientific revolution, depending on how you define when it started, and maybe a bit

Starting point is 00:12:38 over 100 years from having a detailed understanding of the structure of the atom. That being said, the problem of desalien is trickier than it seems. Ions of sodium and chlorine float around in water at the atomic level. Removing the sodium and chlorine atoms from water is difficult given their size. There are two basic ways that you can do it. One option is to boil the water, which takes energy. You can increase the temperature of the water, reduce the pressure surrounding the water, or some combination of both. Regardless of how you do it, it requires an input of energy.

Starting point is 00:13:14 Assuming you have enough energy, desalinization is actually quite easy. The other option is to use some sort of filter. If you had a filter that could filter out the ions, you still have a problem. If ions can pass through the filter, then they end up piling up on one side, making it difficult for the filter to work. Filters can also wear out and get clogged up over time requiring replacements. Absent any sort of miracle technology, which would come in the form of a membrane, desalimalsation will always require a great deal of energy or expensive filters.

Starting point is 00:13:48 That does it for this month. Again, there were far more questions submitted than I could possibly answer. If you would like to have your question read on next month's Q&A episode, please join the show's Facebook group or Discord server. Links to both of which can be found in the show notes. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Ben Long and Cameron Kiefer. I want to use this opportunity to remind everyone of a new podcast that I'm a part of. The show is called Respecting the Beer.

Starting point is 00:14:19 Each week I sit down with expert brewer and former NASA astrophysicist Bobby Fleshman, and we talk about the science, history, culture, and economics of beer and brewing. So if you're interested in beer, home brewing, or any other aspect of the art, please check out respecting the beer. You can find it wherever you listen to this podcast, or you can click on the link in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Questions and Answers: Volume 19

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