Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Questions and Answers: Volume 22

Episode Date: September 1, 2024

Thirty days hath September, and on 29 of those days, I’ll run normal episodes. But for one day, I will turn the microphone over to you and answer your questions…..and that day is today.  So stay tuned for another episode of Questions and Answers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Sign up for ButcherBox today by going to Butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily at checkout to get $30 off your first box! Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Ben 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

30 days, half September. And on 29 of those days, I'll run normal episodes. But for one day, I will turn the microphone over to you and answer your questions. And that day is today. So stay tuned for another episode of questions and answers 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 the questions. The first one comes from Patricia Kemmer who asks, why do lithium ion batteries catch fire? Love your

podcast. First, lithium ion batteries catching fire is rare, but it can happen. And it's due to something known as thermal runaway. It starts when there's some sort of damage to the battery. This could be physical damage, such as a cut in the outer skin of the battery, and it also could come from a manufacturing defect or an internal short circuit. These defects can cause a localized temperature increase where the damage occurs. The temperature increase can cause more defects to occur in adjacent parts of the battery, which can then cause more defects, more temperature increases, and so on and so on. This is how it becomes a runaway effect. And this can be made worse if as the temperature increases, the gases which are produced

are trapped inside the enclosed battery, increasing pressure. This is one of the many reasons why researchers are trying to develop solid-state batteries that don't have a liquid or gel electrolyte. And in addition to having higher energy density, they would also be much safer. And this is also why you should never use a damaged lithium-ion battery. Again, this is a pretty rare phenomenon, and for the most part, it's easy to avoid. Davin Wully asks, Hadrian's wall is 73 miles long.

What would that be in Roman miles? What's the difference? A good question, David. A Roman mile is close to the imperial mile that we still use in the United States and the United Kingdom. In fact, the imperial mile was kind of based on the Roman mile. The Roman mile was called a mille. In Latin, mille is just the word for 1,000. The Roman mille came from the fact that it was measured to be 1,000 paces.

The Romans measured a pace by the number of times your left foot was set down. We might measure a pace as one step, but the Romans would have measured it with two steps. As you can probably guess, this was a very inaccurate method of measurement. The length of the mille was based on the length of a pace, which depended on a person's stride. Agrippa, the number two guy to Augustus, whom I've done a previous episode on, standardized the Roman foot to his literal foot. He also defined a pace as five feet, which made the Roman mile an even 5,000 Roman feet. It's believed, based on distances between Roman mile markers,

that the Roman mile was 91.9% of an imperial mile. So Hadrian's wall would be 79.4 Roman miles. In England, the old mile was based on 5,000 feet, but they had a different definition of a foot. Under Queen Elizabeth I, they modified the mile to being eight furlongs, which ended up being 5,280 feet, and the change was mainly made for tax reasons. The origin of Imperial Unit should probably be its own episode, because all of the units have such a bizarre origin. Megan Sandman asks,

I assume tasting the local cuisines and photographing major attractions are of top priority when you're traveling. Is there anything else you prioritize doing at all the locations you visit? Well, Megan, yes. One of the big things I did when I was traveling was visit UNESCO World Heritage Sites. There are currently 1,223 World Heritage Sites, and I've visited 412 of them, so about a third. Some of them are very easy to visit, and some are incredibly hard. Most UNESCO sites have some sort of cultural or natural significance, and that's usually what draws me to visit somewhere. Food isn't nearly as big of an attraction as most people think it is.

You can eat many types of cuisine in many different places, and much of it's quite good. For example, Chinese and Indian restaurants can be found everywhere around the world, as can sushi. That's not to say that you can't have good culinary experiences in certain places, but food is something that can be transported easily. cultural, historic, and natural sites cannot. Susan Emerson writes, Hi Gary, long-time listeners here, Eliza Nellie and Mom. We're wondering if you could go back in time to when you were a kid, what would be the place you would most want to travel and why?

Well, if you were to ask me when I was 8 or 11, I probably would have wanted to go to Disney World. If you asked me when I was 13 or 14, I would definitely have said Cape Cranavarral to go see a space shuttle launch. I should add that my family didn't travel a whole lot, so both of those things were never really options. Now, however, as an adult, if I could retroactively fund some sort of travel for my younger self, I would have tried to go someplace that doesn't exist anymore. Maybe I'd go to visit West Berlin before the wall fell down.

Mike Varas asks, Gary, have you ever visited or crossed the boundary waters connecting Minnesota and Canada? Is there an episode on the area? Your library is getting vast. Is there a better way to search than asking in Q&A? To answer the first part of your question, I have been to the Boundary Waters. I visited Voyager National Park and I did one of their boat tours that goes into the park. There are sections of the tour where you actually, technically, cross into Canada in the middle of the lake, but there's no one around to check. The Kettle Falls Hotel Bar is one of the most interesting places in the park and it's kind of hard to get to because you can only get there by boat or float plane. As for searching past episodes, if you go to my website,

Everything-everwhere.com, I have a page with all 1,500 episodes listed on a single page, so it's really easy to search by title. There's also a search function which lets you search the script of every episode. And I will confess that the search functionality isn't great. I had an AI tool that would read all of my scripts and answer questions on the Discord server, but it no longer works. I'm looking at putting a similar AI search functionality on the website because I too find my current search setup very frustrating when I want to look for something.

Right now there are lots of AI search tools available and I just need to find a good one that works well. Darren Brown asks, how do you combat and filter misinformation, aka fake news? Darren, this is one of the most important skills that someone can learn and it isn't easy to do. It takes constant practice and diligence. The first step is to be skeptical of everything. Don't just blindly accept anything you read or hear. One good way is to start applying Betteridge's Law of Headlines to articles that you read. Betteridge's Law of Headlines states that any headline that is a question can always be answered, no.

And that's because if it were true, they wouldn't need to phrase it as a question. Don't assume that someone you agree with generally is always right, and that, that someone you disagree with is always wrong. They might be wrong for reasons that are true, but then they draw the wrong conclusions. By the same token, they might be right for the wrong reasons. Sometimes it can be hard to know if something is right. Even if you think something is right, I would never accept it as 100%. I'd always accept the possibility, even if it's remote, that it could be wrong. One of the things I try to do is to have a working hypothesis rather than an opinion. Once people develop an opinion, they have a natural tendency to stick to it and defend it

even in the face of evidence which might be to the contrary. However, if you hold something as a hypothesis, then you're much more likely to be willing to modify your position and would be less willing to defend it to the death. Finally, subtlety and nuance is important. There's always a desire to make things black and white, but the truth is usually not so simple. Randy Ryan asks, What motivates you to keep pumping the fantastic podcasts out day after day? Can't be the money, or can it? Well, the podcast is my livelihood at this point, and that certainly is a motivation. However, I'm in the fortunate position to be doing something that I think I'm well suited for,

and it's something I enjoy. And that is something that few people can say. It is a lot of work. I can't deny that, but there are a lot of people out there who go to work every day and put in just as much time under much worse conditions than me. Angela Akuna asks, do you play any video games? If so, what do you play? The game I spend the most time playing by far is World of Warcraft Classic.

I'm in the top Horde Rating Guild on the Mancric server, and my primary character is an undead priest. I also play turn-based or real-time strategy games, Age of Empires 2, Rome Total War, and Civilization 5. All those games are pretty old, I realize, but they are also, I think, the best versions of those games. Jesus Chan asks, Gary, greetings from Laredo, Texas,

the once capital of the Republic of the Rio Grande. With all the excitement around human space exploration and the prospects of traveling to the moon and Mars, what do you believe is the most critical issue we must address to ensure success? Is it a medical advancement to protect the human body in space, the development of a revolutionary propulsion system, the creation of artificial gravity,

or something else entirely different? Well, Jesus, that's a pretty good question. There is a lot that we don't know about making such a trip. For starters, we have only sent 18 humans beyond low Earth orbit. All 18 were part of the Apollo program, and they spent a very limited amount of time beyond low Earth orbit. And this is because the further away you get from our Earth and our protective magnetic field, the more radiation you will experience in the form of solar wind and cosmic rays.

We have zero experience of human beings in interplanetary space. The second problem is gravity. We've had many people now who have spent extended periods in zero gravity. And while they can survive in that environment, it isn't ideal. Extended time in zero gravity results in bone loss, muscle atropy, and a host of other problems. Artificial gravity seems like an easy solution, but we've never actually tried it before. At some point, we're going to need some sort of revolving space station with artificial gravity, if nothing more than as a proof of concept.

Finally, in terms of propulsion, if you remember back to my episode on the subject, nuclear rockets could dramatically reduce the time it takes to get to Mars. If we had a nuclear rocket, the first trip we make there might be a quick there and back to plant the flag and declare victory, and it could be done with a nuclear rocket. However, in the long run, you'd probably need to send up supplies beforehand for an extended stay base. Something close to the movie The Martian with Mad Damon, although the dust storms in the movie were highly exaggerated.

Air pressure is too low to do that much damage. In terms of the moon, because it has no atmosphere, you'd probably want to put a base either in a lava tube or at least cover it with lunar soil to protect it from radiation. Stephen Holtgren asked, what are the most interesting? or unique sporting events that you've seen while traveling. That is an easy question. I got to witness a Buzkashi game on the shores of Songkul up in the Tien-Shen Mountains of Kyrgyzstan. Buzkashi is a traditional Central Asian sport where horse-mounted players compete to grab and place a goat

or sheep carcass into a goal. And I've also watched people playing Sepak to Kraw in Bangkok. Sepok to Kraw is basically like volleyball, except you can't. use your hands. My last question comes from Abdul Rahman Weil, who asks, Hey, Gary, love the show. I have two questions. Why do you make more episodes on ancient Rome than on ancient Greece?

And who do you think was more influential in the history of human civilization? Well, there are more episodes about Rome than Greece, simply because there is more writing that has been preserved, and there's more drama in stories that come from Rome. Rome was a unified empire with powerful rulers that lasted centuries. Greece was, say, for a very short period of Macedonian rule, a collection of smaller city-states. Rome was heavily influenced by Greece, but it was mostly cultural. Wealthy Romans had Greek tutors for their children, and it was something to be proud of.

Most of the influence that ancient Greek had in the world was through and because of the Romans who they influenced. Also, Christianity arose during the Roman period, and that alone had a lasting legacy that we often forget. Latin was the lingua franca for centuries in Europe in a way that Greek never quite was. That concludes this month's questions and answers, and I want to notify everyone that for the first time since I've started this podcast, I'm going to go on an actual vacation. I'm taking a week off and I'm going to get in my car and travel somewhere up in the North Woods. I'm not attending a conference or anything else work-related that I normally do when I take a week off. My goal is to catch up on sleep, which I have been seriously lacking, as well as explore some places that I haven't been to in a long time. So with that, the next week will be all encore episodes.

I've taken a poll over on the Facebook group, and I'll be running some of the episodes that people there have suggested. I will be back with brand new episodes on September 9th. 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

or 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.