Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Questions and Answers: Volume 33

Starting point is 00:00:00 The month of August was named in honor of the Emperor Augustus by the Roman Senate. Initially called Sextilius, the sixth month in the early Roman calendar, it was renamed in 8 BC to recognize Augustus's achievements, particularly his victories in consolidation of power. According to Roman tradition, this month was chosen because of several of his significant accomplishments occurred in the month of Sextilius. In reality, the Senate was really just trying to suck up to Augustus. Instead, they should have probably asked him,

Starting point is 00:00:30 some questions. Stay tuned for the 33rd installment 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 ThruLine podcast from NPR. Let's get started with the first question. It comes from Stephen Kletke, who asks, In an earlier episode, you made mention of a time when you were launched off an aircraft carrier. Are you able to elaborate with the full story? Or is it one of those, if I tell you,

Starting point is 00:01:30 I have to kill you kind of things? Well, Stephen, no, I don't have to kill anyone. It's a very straightforward story. The U.S. Navy has a program where they invite journalists and other notable people to visit their aircraft carriers when they're in port or when they're doing training exercises is just off the coast. My friend Jen Leo, who used to be the co-host with me on This Week and Travel, and who also lives in San Diego, was once asked to visit. And after the visit, they asked her if she had any recommendations for people they should invite, and she gave them my name. In 2015, they contacted me and asked if I would like to visit the USS Harry S. Truman when it was conducting exercises off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia. So I drove down to Norfolk,

Starting point is 00:02:12 stopping in Shenandoah National Park along the way. It was a reasonably small group of us. In addition to myself, there was the head coach of the Navy Football Program, a former Admiral, and a writer for Soldier of Fortune magazine. We flew to the carrier on a Grumman C2 Greyhound, which is a smaller propeller plane which is designed for delivering supplies to aircraft carriers. We did a tailhook landing and got a tour of the ship and even got to stay overnight and had all of our meals in the galley.

Starting point is 00:02:40 The next day, we left and were launched off the ship on the same plane. It was really an incredible experience. Few people, including the crew of aircraft carriers, ever get to do a carrier landing and catapult launch. And I have photos from the visit on my website. Eric Dombrowski asks, a very important question here, is it Austin Oakden or Austin Octon? I've heard both pronunciations in multiple episodes.

Starting point is 00:03:07 Well, Eric, yeah. When Austin became an associate producer on Patreon, I had no idea. how to pronounce his name. I looked around, gave it some AI tools to try to get the correct pronunciation, and went with Oakden. What I should have done is just asked him, because despite the research I put into it, I got it wrong. He then sent me a message on Patreon, a couple months later, telling me the correct pronunciation was Otkin. I had a pre-recorded outro with the wrong pronunciation and just never updated it, which I have actually done for this episode. When I read a review and do a custom outro, I've been using the correct pronunciation ever since.

Starting point is 00:03:48 Chris Armstrong asks, Gary, you strike me as an avid reader. I read many books, but I have switched to an e-reader simply because my wife didn't like books piling up. It's great, but I do buy books every now and then just to enjoy the paper, the feel, the smell, the classic experience. Do you have a preference for old school paper versus e-books? Why or why not?

Starting point is 00:04:07 Love the podcast. Chris, this is an excellent question. and I have a little bit of a story behind it. When I started traveling full-time in 2007, there wasn't much in the way of e-readers. The first Kindle was technically launched in 2007, but that generation wasn't great. I would read a lot while I was traveling because you got a lot of spare time in your hands, but there was a problem. Books are heavy, and English-language books can be extremely expensive in non-English-speaking countries.

Starting point is 00:04:38 I also hated to throw books away or leave them at some hostile. so I usually carried them around for far too long and eventually shipped them back home, which was also really expensive. I eventually broke down and purchased a Kindle, and it was a truly game-changing device for travel. It was lightweight, and I had the world's biggest English language bookstore sitting in my pocket. And just to show how good it was for traveling, in 2014, I was in Cape Town, South Africa to board a ship that would take me to the island of St. Helena. The ship took five days to get there, five days to get back, with eight days on the island.

Starting point is 00:05:16 And the island didn't really have internet access at that time. I was on the ship just as it was starting to pull out a port when I realized I had nothing to read on my Kindle. So I would be bored for almost three weeks. I ran up to the top deck of the ship, got a 3G signal, and downloaded the entire Game of Thrones series in just a few minutes. More than enough reading to keep me busy for three weeks. Since I've stopped traveling full-time, I will still buy e-books. But what bothers me is the fact that you don't really own an e-book. Amazon and other book providers can and have removed access for books that people have, quote-unquote, purchased.

Starting point is 00:05:57 Moreover, e-book prices have risen dramatically for some books, and they now cost almost as much as some print books. I've started buying printbooks again. Ideally, I would like to buy an All-access book where you can get a print version, a digital version, and an audio version. But the publishing industry still seems stuck in the 20th century. Gregory Languas asks, I think that's the pronunciation. Hi, Gary, you've mentioned you spent a fair bit of time in Australia, in particularly Melbourne, or Melbourne, as the locals would say. Did you happen to visit the Melbourne Cricket grounds and watch any AFL games? If so, what did you think of the stadium and did you adopt a team to football?

Starting point is 00:06:37 follow, hoping to hear an episode about AFL and how unique the game is. Best game in the world. Well, Gregory, I did not visit the cricket ground, but I did go past it. I also didn't get to see any AFL games in person. Normally, my support for non-North American teams is based on people I meet or places I've visited. I'll often do a swap with someone I met on my travels where I'll agree to support their team if they agree in theory to support the Packers as their NFL team. For example, I met a guy while I was photographing polar bears in Manitoba several years ago from Sydney. He was a huge, and I do mean huge, roosters fan. So I agreed to have the roosters as my NRL team.

Starting point is 00:07:20 But I can't say that I follow them closely. Likewise, my English Premier League team is Liverpool. My La L'Aiga team is Bill Bough, because I visited their team headquarters and stadium, and my CFL team is Edmonton. I also support Wiggin in theory, but they're not going to be. in the Premier League anytime soon. The position of my AFL team, however, is still open. I'm seriously considering going to Australia for a month or two in January or February

Starting point is 00:07:47 to escape the winter in the north, so I'll miss the AFL season, but I might get to finally select a team. I would currently lean towards St. Kilda, just because I stayed in that area when I was in Melbourne, and that's about as sophisticated as my choices get. Apex Potato on the Discord server asks, Gary, much like you, I have a background in geology. What would you say are the most geologically interesting places you would recommend visiting? Thanks for being such a nice guy.

Starting point is 00:08:16 I lava your show. A good question, even if you have very bad puns. In no particular order, based on places that I have actually visited, I would say the following. The Black Hills of South Dakota. You can find some of the best samples of metamorphic minerals there, and it's some of the best that I have ever seen. They also have some great rock and mineral stores that you can visit as well. And I would also suggest nearby Devil's Tower in Wyoming and also in Wyoming, the Wynn River Gorge. In Arizona, I'd have to put obviously the Grand Canyon and Meteor Crater.

Starting point is 00:08:50 The Big Island of Hawaii has tons of interesting volcanism all over the place. The Verford Dome in South Africa, Pernanulu National Park in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, the Danicill Depression in Ethiopia, the Dead Sea, Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland, the Sonotes in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, Mount Bromo Indonesia, Dean's Blue Hole in the Bahamas, and Plitvise National Park in Croatia.

Starting point is 00:09:18 Geronimo Richardson asks, which do you prefer more, Star Wars, Star Trek, or something else and why? Well, Geronimo, I'm not a huge fan of either Star Wars or Star Trek. I think both of the franchises have been extended far beyond what they should have been, and it's ruined both of them. I am a big Dune guy. I have read all the Dune books, including the prequels written by Frank Herbert's son,

Starting point is 00:09:44 which are not as good as the originals. I own every version of Dune that has been filmed, including the David Lynch version and the Science Fiction Channel miniseries, as well as the recent movies by Denny Villeneuve. I'm also a big fan of the Foundation books by Isaac Asimov. I think the current Apple TV series is fine, but it is the least true adaptation of any science fiction book ever. It's so different from the books that they could have just saved money by giving it a different name and changing the plot a little bit, and no one would have noticed. Graybeard on the Discord server asks, yes, you are certainly an expert purveyor of knowledge, and it saddens me that humans make too little use of the human race's knowledge.

Starting point is 00:10:27 I feel there are some books everyone should read. I favor such books as those by George Orwell and Daniel Conman. What books do you feel would be most good if everyone read? Well, Greybeard, if you like Orwell, there is a book that I would recommend. It's one of the best books of the 20th century, in my opinion, and one that is still very applicable to the world today. It's titled The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. Hoffer published the book in 1951 in the wake of the Second World War.

Starting point is 00:10:57 He tried to explain why people join mass movements. In particular, he explains why people became fanatical communists and fascists. Hoffer was a philosopher, but he didn't have the background of a philosopher. He was not a professor or an academic. He was a child of immigrant parents from Germany and worked as a longshoreman, a vagabond, and a migrant worker. His insights into the mass movements of the 20th century are still applicable to the mass movements of the early 21st century. Chloe Boyer asks,

Starting point is 00:11:28 Have you tried out for Jeopardy? If not, would you consider it? Big fan, waiting for my top fan badge. Well, Chloe, to be completely honest, I have never seriously considered it, and I have no real desire to do so. I'm also not sure I'd be very good, because there would be some questions

Starting point is 00:11:46 with popular cultural references, like Nikki Minaj or Taylor Swift, and I wouldn't know what they're talking about. I know that Nikki Minaj and Taylor Swift are real people who are famous, but I don't know much about them beyond their existence. I mean, I know they're singers, and I've probably heard their songs by Asmosis, but I couldn't identify them. I'm also not a regular Jeopardy watcher. I mean, I'm familiar with the show, but I can't remember the last time I saw it. This is primarily because I don't watch

Starting point is 00:12:15 traditional TV. Everything I watch is either on a disc or streaming. The final question comes from David Day, who asks, you are given exactly one year to spend at any point in history. Your objective is to make 2025 Gary the most powerful person in the world. We're talking political power, economic power, cultural influence, military might, etc. Your basic necessities are covered so you can focus on your objective. Where and when do you go and what's your plan? Okay, David, if you go back too far, I'm not sure that it will do anything for you. If I want power in the year 2025, going back to a period where nobody today was alive wouldn't really do anything. The last two presidents of the United States were public figures in the 1970s, so I figure I couldn't

Starting point is 00:13:02 go back further than that. The only thing I think going back in time would help with is money. Military and political power are intertwined today, and in any democracy, any elected position is always going to be temporary. So the only thing that I think traveling back in time would do is allow me to make a ton of money. But how would I do that with just one year? With the power of hindsight, you can do quite a bit. The big question is, what resources do I have if I go back in time? So let's assume for the sake of argument I have nothing, but I can beg, work, or scrounge my way to a thousand dollars in just a few weeks. I would travel back to the year 2015, and in particular, June 1st, 2015. And there's a reason for this. I take the $1,000 embedded on various trifectas or exactas

Starting point is 00:13:57 at horse tracks. And I assume I'm going back in time without any books, so I only have what I can store in my head. I can remember a handful of horse bets, so I should be able to turn a thousand dollars into a million dollars on one, two, or three of those long-shot bets. I would then take the one million dollars I made and bet it on Leicester City to win the English Premier League. And that is why the date is important. Leicester City were 5,000 to one odds to win at the start of the season. I don't know of any major sports champions in recent history who were such long shots. A million dollar bet on a major sports league is uncommon, but it's not all that crazy,

Starting point is 00:14:40 and I'm guessing that plenty of people would take that bet. And if not, I could just split it up between different sports books and places like London and Las Vegas. That $1 million, given 5,000 to one odds would be turned into $5 billion on May 7, 2016. I would then take the $5 billion and put it into Bitcoin, which was priced at $458 on that date. Today, that Bitcoin would have increased 251 fold, it would now have a value of $1.2 trillion, making me the richest person on that. earth. The only problem with this plan is that I might be completely disrupting the Bitcoin market by putting that much into it at that time. And if that was the case, I would scale down

Starting point is 00:15:29 the investment and put the rest into Nvidia stock, which has gone up about 180-fold since May 2016. It is certainly possible to make investments that would do better if you do tons of short-term trades, but that would require volumes of knowledge that I probably couldn't take back in history with me. This would be the simplest strategy that could be easily memorized that I could go back in time with that would make me the richest person in the world. When I was then teleported back to the present date on May 31st, I would have all my wealth waiting for me. And with that, I could in theory then fund armies by politicians or do whatever I want. That concludes this month's question and answer episode. If you want to leave a question for next month's show, you have to

Starting point is 00:16:13 join the Facebook group or the Discord server because that is where I announce it. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast. And links to those are available in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:16:42 As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you two can have it read in the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Questions and Answers: Volume 33

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