Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Questions and Answers: Volume 5

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

It is time once again for the monthly Q&A episode! Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   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 Page: https://www.facebook.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

To everything there is a season, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill, a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, and a time for your questions and my 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 get started with some travel-related questions. Glenn Fowlal asks, have you visited the Diomedes or St. Lawrence Island? No, I have not,

and nor are they very high in my list of places to visit. The Diomedes are interesting because they're located so close to Russia and the International Dayline, but other than that, there really isn't much about them that's interesting. Likewise, St. Lawrence Island is interesting in that it's closer to Asia than mainland Alaska, but that's about it. Both of these places are very difficult to get to, and there are other Alaskan islands and parts of Alaska that I think are more interesting. For example, Round Island is a sanctuary for Walruses, which I think would make for great photography and would actually be something interesting to go and see. I have planned a trip to Western Alaska, in my head, which would involve flying into Nome and visiting the Bering Land Bridge National

Preserve and Cape Cruzenstern National Monument. Mark Hyman asks, have you visited North Korea, Bouvay Island, or the Croze Islands? And the answer to this is also no, no, and no. I almost technically set foot in North Korea at the DMZ. If you visit the DMZ, you can technically step inside the building where the ceasefire was signed, and you can actually step over the line into North Korea. However, the day I was scheduled to go, there was a nice storm, and they closed it to tourist access. I've also looked into doing a proper trip to North Korea, but I've just never pulled the trigger on it.

As for Bouvet and the Crozet Islands, they are extremely hard to visit. Extremely. I know some veteran travelers who have tried to visit Beauvais on a ship, a trip that cost well over $10,000 per person, and they weren't able to land because of weather. No one lives there, and there are no regular ships that visit. Crozet is similar, except that there is a small French scientific outpost on one of the islands. These islands, along with Herden-McDonald Islands in the Southern Indian Ocean, are some of the hardest places on Earth to visit. A ship might only visit some of these islands once every five years,

if even that. To visit these islands is an incredible undertaking in both time and money, and not something I currently have any plans to do. Will Murphy asks, Hi, Gary, do you think that Rugby Union is better than American football? and have you ever seen the All Blacks play? As you know, I am an American and a big fan of the Green Bay Packers NFL team. Other than just watching scores online, it's actually difficult to follow rugby from the United States. There is a big streaming service in the U.S. Peacock TV, which now offers rugby league matches

from the English Premier League, as well as some Rugby Sevens tournaments. However, I'm not really sure how to watch rugby union games. It would probably involve a VPN and watching from a game. another country. As for the All Blacks, I have in fact watched the All Blacks. In fact, I was in the stands at Eden Park in 2011 to watch New Zealand beat France in the final game of the World Cup, a fact that makes Kiwis envious every time I mention it. Jason Scott asks, do you really like Scotty vest? The answer is, yeah, I've been wearing Scotty vest gear for years. If you go look at some of my photos, you'll see photos of me in Antarctica in the Arctic Circle wearing.

Scotty vest jackets, and there are lots of other photos of me wearing Scotty vest shirts and Scotty vest pants. I've been wearing their stuff for years before I ever started this podcast. I'm friends with the owner of the company, Scott Jordan, and I've visited their headquarters in Sun Valley, Idaho, and Scott is also a fan of the podcast and is probably listening to this right now. Sergio Ortiz Ordin Dine asks, Hi, Gary Arndt, given your background in math, is there a specific branch in math that you're interested in? If I had continued to pursue mathematics, I probably would have focused on number theory.

I did a project my senior year on Fermat's Little Theorem and Pseudoprimes. This branch of mathematics is not only interesting, but has become relevant with the increased importance of cryptography. But I also don't think I'd make a very good researcher or academic. My interests are too varied to focus on a single subject. Graham McIntosh asks, who in your opinion was the best James Bond? What was the best James Bond tune and your favorite Bond film? I think that you have to go with Sean Connery as the best point.

Bond, but I also think that Daniel Craig is a close second. I think the quality of Bond movies has been a U-shaped curved, with the best movies being the earliest and the most recent. The best song is probably You Only Live Twice by Nancy Sinatra, and as for the best movie, I think that's easy. Goldfinger. I'm not even sure there's any debate on that subject. Barbara Canada, and I hope I got that right, asks, as a Northern American citizen, can you explain why Americans associate leprechauns with the Irish? Our traditions have the little people which are closer to fairies. Leprechauns look more like German traditions.

Love the podcast and I'm telling all my fellow artists about it. The answer is that leprechauns are Irish and they were originally considered fairies. In particular, leprechauns were considered solitary fairies as opposed to fairies that live in a fairy tree or a fairy mound. Over time, they were kind of ignored in Irish folklore until they were re-popularized by the Irish poet William Butler Yates in the 19th century. The leprechauns were traditionally portrayed wearing red clothing. The portrayal of leprechauns wearing green was a function of the Irish diaspora in the United States. Green was the traditional Irish color, so leprechaun started wearing green. From there, leprechauns just became a symbol of Ireland, along with shamrocks. Iyo Abiola asks,

Tell us more about everything everywhere weekly. Why did you decide to do a weekly podcast? Why a different form? has a co-host and how long will it be? Will Everything Everywhere Daily eventually become Everything Everywhere Weekly or will both coexist? Any overlap? Well, for those of you not on the Facebook group, I am launching a new weekly podcast called Everything Everywhere Weekly, which will be available to supporters over on patreon.com. The weekly show will be a guest and me talking about the previous week's episodes on Everything Everywhere Daily in a rapid fire format, plus a few more episodes from the back catalog. This show that you're currently listening to

will not change at all, and the weekly show is designed purely as an extra bonus for the show's supporters. I've already recorded the first episode with Chris Christensen, the host of the Amateur Traveler podcast. Robin Lindgard asks, some time ago you mentioned attending a podcast conference.

Without giving away the secrets for creating your daily magic, what are some of the tips you picked up? Well, I have been to a lot of conferences about different things over the first. the years, and you learn almost nothing at conferences. Pretty much anything you need to know can be learned quicker, easier, and better online. The reason to go to conferences is to meet people and network. That being said, I can and have talked about the subject of podcasting for hours. Basically, you have to put in the work. The vast majority of podcasts never make it to episode seven

because they give up. You can do a podcast for fun. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you want to take it seriously, you need to put in the work and treat it like a business and a media property. Kyle Kenyon asks, can you recommend any books or resources that give a good, high-level overview of ancient cultures? There are a lot of books, but there are two which come to mind off the top of my head that I really like. The first book is 1491 by Charles Mann. The book covers the latest research on what we know about Native peoples who lived in the Americas before European contact. Much of my episode on the Great Dying of the Americas was based on this. book. The second is SPQR by Mary Beard. In it, she gives a good overview of the rise of the Roman

Republic from a single city to becoming the leading force in the Mediterranean. And even though I have a pretty good understanding, I'm personally looking for recommendations for books about Carthage and Phoenicians, as well as ancient China. If any of you have any recommendations for books, feel free to leave them in the Facebook group. Dave Byshe asks, do you listen to podcasts? I've always wondered if podcasters listen to others. Maybe they're too busy producing their own and they have no time. My favorite is Dan Carlin's hardcore history. It is the complete opposite format to yours. I certainly do listen to podcasts. I've listened to hardcore history since it first came out. In fact, when I came up with the idea for the format of this show, I purposefully did the opposite

of what most other podcasts were doing, like hardcore history, with long format shows. There are a lot of shows which go in-depth on single topics, and I figured there was room for a show that was more frequent, covering a wider variety of topics. I don't listen to as many podcasts as I used to, simply because I can't listen to podcasts while I'm working on a show. I do listen to podcasts when I'm doing other things, however, and most of what I listen to nowadays are either history podcasts or podcasts about podcasting. The last question comes from Evan Byrne. He asks, out of all the places you've been in the world, if you had to choose, one place to retire for the rest of your days, where would you choose and why? I get this question a lot, and the truth is that there are a lot of great cities in the world. Places like Vancouver, Singapore, London, and Rome are all great places that I enjoy visiting. Narrowing things down to a single

city is difficult because it depends on where you live in any particular city. There are also many cities which are nice, but they're incredibly expensive. So I honestly don't know if I have an answer to that question. That being said, there are certain spots I found around the world which I felt would be great places to build a house. There's one spot I found in Montenegro near Lake Skodar that has an incredible view and there's almost nothing there. There's another spot I found on a rather remote corner of a remote island in the Pacific that I'm not going to name. While I was there, I visited a beach that had close to no visitors, even locals in the last 10 years, because he had to walk down a long flight of stairs to get down a cliff to get to the beach.

Getting shipments of anything there would be extremely difficult, but it was an amazing place and as close to a virgin beach as you're ever going to find. Well, that's it for this installment of questions and answers. If you want to ask a question next month, or if I didn't get to your question this month, just join the Facebook group. I'll put up a call for questions a day or two before the six of the month, which is the day I do the Q&A shows. And we're getting close to a thousand and members in the group, so do make sure to check it out. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett.

I just want to thank everyone, including the show's producers, who support the show over on Patreon. If you'd like to support the show, just head over to patreon.com, which is currently the only place where you can get show merchandise. Also, if you want to talk to other listeners about the show, head over to our Facebook group or Discord server, both of which have links in the show notes.