Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Questions & Answers: Volume 4

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

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Every February, podcasters will come out of their hole in the ground. If they find listener questions, it means there will be six more weeks of winter. As I peeked my head out of the ground this month, I found a plethora of questions, which means that spring is right around the corner. If you're in the Northern Hemisphere, if you're in the Southern Hemisphere, say goodbye to summer. Prepare yourself for the fourth installment of listener questions and answers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? throughline 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 Thurline podcast from NPR. Okay, let's get right into it. The first question comes from Shelby Frizzo. They ask, of all the cultural and religious celebrations you've been to across the globe,

What has been your favorite and why? Well, I haven't really been to a lot of religious celebrations. It isn't something that I go out of my way to experience. But that being said, I have found myself at the right place and time and have experienced a few. I was in Singapore exploring the city when I came across a Hindu holy festival. That's H-O-L-I, not H-O-L-Y. I didn't really know anything about it, and I had no idea what to expect. I ended up spending several hours there photographing everyone, and it was extremely messy.

If you haven't seen a holy celebration, it's basically a giant fight with colored powder. The powder gets into everything. My hair was pastel colors for a week. My clothes were basically permanently dyed. And I had to spend a whole lot of time cleaning my camera. I also happened to have been in Jerusalem during Holy Week. Again, I didn't really plan it, but I was there a little bit before Holy Week was starting, so I just extended my stay to experience it.

I got to see Passover in Jerusalem in Tel Aviv, and I also visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Easter Sunday for Western Christians and Palm Sunday for Orthodox Christians. I could probably spend an entire episode talking about everything I learned and experienced that week, but those two things would definitely be the highlights. Kevin Holtgren asks, Was your interest with Rome and the Roman Empire brought on by your travels, or were they the reason for your travels?

My suspicion, you've always been interested, and traveling gave it a much better sense of knowledge. Actually, it was definitely something that developed while I was trying to, traveling. I had read several books about ancient Rome before I started traveling, but it was definitely something that piqued my interest while I was on the road. There are simply a lot of Roman ruins around the Mediterranean, many of which are in pretty good shape for being 2,000 years old. Many of the ruins can be found in places that you don't think of as being Roman, like the city of Jerash and Jordan, Caesarea in Israel, Merida in Spain, and a whole host of what are really

some of the best sites in the world in North Africa, most of which I have yet to visit. We simply know more about the Romans than we do about the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Samarians, et cetera, because the Romans left behind far more written material. Most of what we have from other ancient cultures consists of stone engravings or archaeological finds. In comparison, we have Julius Caesar's firsthand written account of his campaign in Gaul. Also, as you probably might have seen from the various episodes I've done, the Western world is still profoundly influenced by ancient Rome, right down to our calendar and alphabet.

Joey Warren asks, with all your travels, is there one thing or place here in the states that you find particularly interesting? Absolutely. I've been to every U.S. state twice, and I visited half of the 426 sites in the National Park Service. Probably the one thing that really stands out are the trips I've taken to Alaska. In particular, the lesser visited parks such as Catmine National Park, Rangel St. Elias National Park, and the parks above the Arctic Circle. Some of these like Rangel St. Elias aren't even particularly difficult to visit. It's just that Denali and Glacier Bay get all the attention and are even easier to visit. I could talk for hours about all the great attractions which can be found in the United States. There are a few places that get most of the visitors like Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon, but there are

plenty of interesting places beyond that. Amy Elizabeth Morrison asks, will Thor Thompson be running in the 2024 presidential election? No, Amy. Thor does not run for president. Countries run to be led by Thor Thompson. Chris Gordon asks, while you were away, did you record new episodes or did you double up before you left? Taking time off can be exhausting. And the answer is, I did not. I produce and record all of the episodes of the podcast just before they're released. I was attending a podcasting conference in Florida, which forced me to adopt a slightly more normal schedule. Instead of staying up really late finishing the show, I started waking up really early. I've kept to that schedule since I've gotten back, and I'm now working on

trying to get ahead of things a little bit. However, until I can hire someone to help out, I assume I will always be producing the shows at least the day beforehand. Jeff Loftus asks, I assume you track listens on individual episodes. Can you name one episode where you're surprised at the lack of listens and one episode where you're surprised at how many listens it received? While I do know the stats for each episode, there isn't a whole lot of variation in downloads. The growth of the show tends to overwhelm any individual variation in episode topics, so it's hard to separate them out from the data. There have only been a few cases where an episode was shared on Reddit or something, and that resulted in a short-term spike for one episode, but it's impossible to predict those. One was the episode on Alan Francis, the world's greatest horseshoe pitcher, and another was on Morris Code, which was shared by ham radio operators.

Mallory Moyer asks, did you know there are volcanoes on the moon Io from Luke, who I assume is her son? And she then asks, who is someone from history you'd like to get a cup of coffee or a beer with? Well, Luke, I did know that. There have been photos taken of the volcanoes erupting by probe sent to Jupiter, and you can clearly see the plume of the volcano up against the backdrop of space. As for who I'd have a drink with, I actually have an answer to that. And the answer is Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was a pretty smart guy with a while, range of interest who lived just before the scientific and industrial revolutions of the 19th century. I think he would be an interesting person to talk to, and I think he would be interested to talk

to anybody from the future. Trina Wellington DeAnda asks, did you find your passport? No, I did not, but I also haven't really looked. I'm going to be moving within a month, and when I do I'll have an opportunity to go through all my boxes, and hopefully I'll find it there. Millie Shaw asks, As a public speaking teacher, I so deeply appreciate your well-crafted messages with a clear thesis and structure. Each podcast is a beautiful example of an engaging informative speech. How do you manage the gargantuan task of sifting through the available information and narrowing your focus to fit a roughly 10-minute episode? I find this is often the biggest challenge for my students. Do you start with a really strong thesis and work from there?

What advice would you give novice speech builders on how to choose the best most relevant information? First, really, let me say that I competed in academic speech and debate for years, and I was also a coach for about 10 years as well. I competed in extemporaneous speech in high school and was one spot away from making the final round of the national tournament. My background in competitive speech was far and away the most important thing I have done in terms of my ability to do this podcast. Most of what I do nowadays is pretty intuitive. I don't start with a thesis per se so much as just something which is interesting. That has to be the kernel of any episode. There has to be an interesting story behind whatever the episode is about.

This podcast usually isn't about crafting an argument or defending a thesis. My episodes are usually not trying to persuade anyone. I'm just trying to tell an interesting story about some person, place, or thing that most listeners might not be familiar with. Filtering out unnecessary information is more of an art than a science. I'm often trying to condense something very complex, something which probably someone wrote a book, or did an entire doctoral dissertation about. And in trying to explain something in a short amount of time, the most important thing is that people have to walk away with the gist of the story.

So the thing that you or any speech student has to ask themselves is, does a piece of information support the core of the story, or does it detract from the story? And if it detracts from the story, then you're probably best to just leave it out. Michael Miller asks, what are your thoughts on the in-depth tours now that things are getting back to normal? Well, I absolutely still want to do it, and I'm talking to a company about planning the tours. The problem is that when I first floated the idea, the show was about 10% the size of what it is now,

and I still got a ton of interest back then. Now I assume it would be even greater. I really don't want to run a large tour that has to move around by bus. However, if it's a small tour, and then it becomes difficult to justify taking so much time away from the podcast. One possibility I've considered is something like a river cruise where we could, in theory, take over an entire boat. It would be much simpler for me to organize as I wouldn't have to deal with hotels. It could support a larger group, and we could do special events on the ship each night, including special lectures. Not exactly what I was originally thinking, but it's probably much more feasible. Catherine Friedman asks, what are some of your favorite books?

My favorite book series, by far, are the Dune Books by Frank Herbert. There's lots of the original Dune book that people miss, and when you read the later books, you realize that the hero of the story is in fact not the hero at all. I'm also a big fan of the foundation books by Isaac Asimov. Most of what I read is, not surprisingly, nonfiction. The list of great nonfiction books I've read is pretty long. Two good ones I've read recently include 1491 by Charles Mann. This was the inspiration behind my episode on the Great Dying of the Americas.

It tries to condense all of the latest research on what is. exactly life was like in the Americas before Europeans arrived. The other book is The Second World Wars by Victor David Hanson. He looks at the Second World War in a larger framework, looking at economic and industrial policies that all but guaranteed the outcome. Doug Lorry McDonald asks, are there any show ideas that while researching, unexpectedly took you down rabbit holes leading to a multitude of new show ideas? Absolutely. It happens all the time. Take the subject of volcanoes. I initially

did one on the Mount Tambora eruption of 1815. That opened the door to Vesuvius and Paracutin and general episode on volcanoes. However, there are tons more volcano-related topics, including big eruptions like Mount Zanhellen's and Crackatoa, as well as culturally significant ones like Mount Fuji. I've done or am in the middle of similar series on the planets, the elements, rivers, and small countries. So, yeah, almost every episode spawns at least one episode idea. Graham McIntosh asks, have you ever been to Northumberland and Northern England? Many castles, Roman walls, and forts, wonderful coastline. Well, Graham, I have not.

Unlike many countries, my exploration of England has mostly been piecemeal. I used to visit London every year for a conference, and then I would take a week afterwards to explore a different part of the country. But I have yet to get north of the Midlands. I'm aware that there's a lot of great stuff up there, but I just haven't gotten there yet. And our last question comes from Benjamin. Mr. Pister. He asks, are there any topics you've decided to avoid because they would potentially be too controversial or political? I try to stay away from any and all current events. And the reason

for it is that there's a lot of content on the internet that deals with those topics already. I'm not really sure if there's anything I can contribute, which isn't already being done by someone else. It isn't so much trying to stay away from politics or controversy as it is just trying to find a niche that I think is underserved. I think that there is a huge need for, general knowledge about the world. If people have a better understanding of the world and its history, then they can better understand and process the information they get from the news. 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 about a day or two before the sixth of the month, which is the day I do the Q&A shows. And we are getting close to 900 members in the Facebook group, so do take the opportunity to join. 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.