Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Questions and Answers: Volume 35

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

October is here. Up here in the northern hemisphere, the leaves are changing color, the air is cooler, and suddenly, pumpkin spice is appearing in everything.  Retailers are putting up Halloween decorations way too early. Desiccated stalks of corn and pumpkins are showing up in places where they have no reason to be. However, one thing that makes sense this month is your questions and my answers.  Stay tuned for the 35th installment of questions and answers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Quince Go to quince.com/daily for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order! Mint Mobile Get your 3-month Unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com/eed Stash Go to get.stash.com/EVERYTHING to see how you can receive $25 towards your first stock purchase. ExpressVPN Go to expressvpn.com/EED to get an extra four months of ExpressVPN for free!w Subscribe to the podcast!  https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Austin Oetken & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere 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/  Disce aliquid novi cotidie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

October is here. Up here in the northern hemisphere, the leaves are changing color. The air is cooler and suddenly pumpkin spice is appearing in everything. Retailers are putting up Halloween decorations way too early. Desiccated stalks of corn and pumpkins are showing up in places where they have no right being. However, there is one thing that makes sense this month. That is your questions and my answers. Stay tuned for the 35th installment of questions and answers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Did you ever hear about the selfie that solved a murder or the jury that used a Ouija board to speak to a victim? If that made you pause, you need to listen to Morning Cup of Murder. I'm Karina B. Minas Durfer, and every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I tell one chilling true crime story tied to that exact day in history. With over 2,500 episodes to binge, you'll never run out of dark stories to start your morning with. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe.

Let's get right into things. He-he-he from the Discord server asks. What are your thoughts on studying abroad? I would guess you're very pro, get out and explore the world. But does that extend to studying abroad? As a university student, I was thinking for a long time that I wanted to do a semester abroad in Greece or Italy. But after playing with my course load,

I found that I could just graduate a semester early and travel the world instead. Do you have any advice, such as, is it better to settle down and try to live there or maybe take your time, explore things more than just one city. Well, he-he-he-he. I personally never studied abroad, but I know a lot of people who have. And my impression is that those who take a semester abroad almost always use it to party and travel.

The classes they take tend to be blow-off classes to facilitate their party and traveling. If you can graduate a semester early, I would do it. There's no reason for you to pay tuition so you can go to Europe and then spend money on top of that. I think your instinct here is correct. I'd graduate early. Not only will you save money, but if you do go to Europe, you'll have much more freedom to do what you want and go where you want without having classes and other obligations hanging over your head.

As for what you do when you are there, that's up to you. Personally, I'd play it by ear. If you want to stay in one place, then you can do that. And if you want to roam around, then you can do that too. You really won't know until you get there and experience things yourself. Richard Shortass Love your episode on Mammals of Australia and all three evolutionary branches of mammals

that are extant there. A semi-related question. If mammals evolve from reptiles, which evolve from amphibians, which evolve from fish, etc., what will evolve after mammals? What will a new class of animalia look like? Well, Richard, it is literally impossible to know this.

Evolution takes place when creatures adapt to their environment, adaptations that are successful get passed on, and those that are not successful die out. Mammals weren't guaranteed to evolve from reptiles. Mammals arose because of the unique set of conditions that existed. Without knowing what conditions might exist in the future, there is no way to know what sort of adaptations might arise. Evolution is not on a set linear path. Many people think that humans are the natural end result of evolution. That's not the case. There were countless improbable things that resulted in the world that we see today. Mammals are also pretty adaptable, so it's possible there isn't anything

strange and new that would come next, but rather we just get better adapted and different types of mammals. And I should also note that mammals didn't replace reptiles. Many reptile species died off, but reptiles as a whole are still with us. Gong King asks, do you think time travel will ever be invented? How will the grandfather paradox be solved if we indeed invent time travel? Well, Gong King, there are all sorts of different theories of time travel that people have thought of via science fiction. If the version of time travel is one that lets you go back to any point in time, I don't think that will ever happen because if it were to happen, we'd already have evidence of it. There could theoretically be a form of time travel where you could go back to a particular point that was established beforehand. So if we made a time travel device, we probably couldn't go back any further than the creation of the creation of,

of the time travel device. That being said, it's entirely possible I'm wrong, and time travelers have already come back under controlled circumstances that we simply can't identify. But if that did happen, the question we then have to ask is, why didn't they kill baby Hitler? Geronimo Richardson asks,

if there was a figure in American political history that you'd most want to meet, who would it be? Conversely, who would you least want to meet? Well, Geronimo, this one is easy for me. The person I would most want to meet is Benjamin Franklin. He was a scientist and a philosopher, and arguably the most interesting of the founding fathers.

Not only that, but he clearly knew how to enjoy himself, and I think he would be very entertaining to hang out with. The person I would least want to meet, that is a very, very, very long list. Abdul Rahman Whale asks, Gary, I've been getting into photography and content creation recently. What are some of the biggest tips that you can give me? Well, content creation generally and photography are two very different things.

The rough rule of thumb for content creation is that the more of it you do, the better you get. And this is something that I've experienced firsthand both with this podcast and with my photography. I did hundreds of podcast episodes and took tens of thousands of photos to get to a point of competence. As for photography, the main thing I would recommend at a metal level is to practice using all of the buttons and dials on your camera and get to know what they do. Know how to adjust your aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, and know how each one of those will affect your image. Depending on what camera you own, there might be certain settings that you can set to automatic, or at least let the camera determine within certain parameters. Beyond that, you just have to practice. When I was traveling, I had the good fortune

to be able to take thousands of images by visiting photogenic places around the world. Ultimately, you just need to get out and shoot, and to do so in a very deliberate fashion where you are identifying your weaknesses and trying to improve on them. Walt from the Discord server asks, Hi, Gary, my wife wants to know, what is your opinion on astrology and how it has evolved over time? Thoughts on the 13th zodiac sign. Well, Walt, I don't think too much about astrology.

As pseudosciences go, it isn't even a very good one. There is no mechanism by which the stars can guide our fortunes. All the horoscopes are different, and astrologers can't even seem to agree on the same predictions or even set of principles. Astrology would be very easy to test and run experiments for, and yet after thousands of years, no validation for it has ever been shown. Astrology was developed from ancient astronomy. The signs of the zodiac were simply a way to divide the heavens into roughly 12 equal parts,

which correspond to the 12 months of the year. As the zodiac is an entirely arbitrary construction, so would a 13th sign of the zodiac. As far as I can tell, the idea of a 13th zodiac sign is one that was developed in the 1970s. And if you can just invent a new zodiac sign, it kind of goes to show how arbitrary astrology is. Laura Harrison asks,

I'm curious about Olivia Ash. How did she come to work on everything everywhere? daily. She's done an amazing job and I'm looking forward to hearing more of her work. Well, Laura, I know a history professor who works at the local university. I told him that I was looking for some help and if he knew any history graduates just to let them know that there was a job opening. He spread the word and Olivia was interested. We met, talked about it, and the rest is history. Curtis Poole asks, I love your podcast, Gary. It truly helped me to fill the time during my commute to and from work. My son even asked to put on an episode on our never-ending rides to various practices.

I'm curious, what are your top three empires of all time? Well, Curtis, that's easy. Empire strikes back, Empire the Sun, and the Last Emperor. Honorable mention goes to Age of Empires 2 and Empire Earth. Jerry Gardner asks, I know you have people from all over the world who listen to your podcast. I'm curious, is your podcast just distributed in the English language? Or is there an app or people that translate the podcast?

into different languages. Well, Jerry, the podcast is only distributed in English. Overwhelmingly, the people who listen to the podcast live in English-speaking countries. United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Publishing the show in another language is possible, but it would require a lot of work, and the business case for it is not very good. There are AI tools that will automatically translate the show, but I have absolutely no interest in using them.

hiring someone to do a native translation probably wouldn't be economical given how non-English podcast advertising works. I have heard of some podcasts that do translations, but there aren't that many, and I haven't heard that they've had much success. Glenn Fow asks, I was watching a major league baseball game on YouTube, and there was an infield fly, and the team in the field purposely let the ball drop. It created all sorts of confusion. Not only were the players confused, it appears that the umpires and commentators were confused. The runner on third strolled across the home plate, only to be called back to third, and then subsequently awarded the run, which understandably caused a brouhaha between the manager and his players and the empire.

Could you shed some light on this most confusing of rules? Glenn, you are not alone in being confused by the infield fly rule. Most baseball fans don't really understand it. The premise behind the rule is simple. Runners on base can't leave the base until a ball is caught. They have to wait until the ball is caught and then they can run. If a ball is caught in the outfield, the base runner might have time to advance a base. However, if the ball is caught in the infield, an infielder has an incentive to drop the ball rather than catch it.

The runner has to assume that the infielder is going to catch it, but if he doesn't catch it, they can actually get a double play or a triple play because the runners are then forced to advance. The infield fly rule takes care of this. If there's an infield fly and there are runners on first and second base or the bases are loaded, the umpire can just declare an infield fly, in which case the batter is automatically out. It's the equivalent to the ball being caught, and it doesn't give the infielder the option of dropping the ball on purpose. When the infield fly rule is evoked, the runners are then not forced to advance. This is uncommon, but not rare. There are about 2,400 major league baseball games played over a year,

and it's estimated that the infield fly rule is evoked about 300 times per season on average. The final question comes from Kevin O'Keefe, who asks, and I have edited the question down for length. I know you'll be addressing a lot of this in your book, but to me, you are the ultimate example of someone who loves to learn. I'm not sure if you've ever commented on this, but could you let us all know where this foundation of curiosity came from in you and how you ended up continuing to be a lifelong learner. I think this could be instructive for so many young people. They have enthusiastic parents and teachers out there, but how can the average person stay invested and continue to love learning when there's always another paycheck and another

job and another course to get a good grade in? Well, Kevin, I wish I could tell you that there's some formula or secret, but there isn't. I think that everyone is at least initially a curious person. Children incessantly ask questions about the world. Most kids go through a phase where they're into dinosaurs or astronauts or other such things. The key is to let them explore wherever their curiosity takes them and nurture it. Curiosity is usually stifled in kids in school. They have to do what they're told, not what they're interested in.

The problem is you can't quantify curiosity. It isn't something that shows up in test scores, which is all that. really matters for most schools. Curiosity isn't a result. It's the motivating force that leads to results. Because of this, we have a world of people who are not in the slightest bit curious about the world. And thankfully, if you're listening to this podcast, that is probably not you.

This audience is rather self-selecting in that regard, and it's one of the things that I really like about doing it. That concludes this month's Q&A episode. If you want to leave a question for next month's show, you have to join the Facebook group or the Discord server because that is where I will 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. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you too can have it read in the show.