Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Two-Year Anniversary Show

Starting point is 00:00:00 On July 1st, 2020, I published the very first episode of this podcast. Since then, it's been quite a journey. Some of you have been along for the entire ride. Some of you found me along the way, and some of you are brand new. I've done some special episodes in the past about how I started this podcast, but in this anniversary episode, I want to do something a bit different. Learn more about why this podcast exists and who was made for on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past?

Starting point is 00:00:41 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 ThruLine podcast from NPR. The short version of why I decided to do this podcast is because this is the podcast I wanted to listen to and nobody else was really doing it. There are other educational podcasts out there, and I don't want to disparage them. They're fine, but it wasn't what I was looking for. I didn't want to hear an overproduced public radio clone podcast with two hosts talking to each other, expressing their fake astonishment after learning some fact they probably knew before they started recording.

Starting point is 00:01:30 I wanted something that was tight and to the point. So I sat down and figured out a format for the show, and so far, 725 episodes in, I haven't changed a thing. creating a show that I wanted to listen to would certainly satisfy myself, but the big question was how many other people were out there. I knew there were others, but I had no clue how many or how to reach them. If there is a central theme to this podcast, a podcast that is literally about everything, it's about having curiosity about a wide range of subjects. Curiosity is really the key. If curiosity is the general theme of the podcast, there are several underlying principles that are behind the podcast, that I'd like to go through. The first is that I am a firm believer that learning is ultimately

Starting point is 00:02:15 up to the learner. If you don't want to learn, you will not learn. You can put someone in a classroom, but if they don't want to be there, being in the presence of learning isn't going to impart knowledge to them. We probably all know people from school who simply didn't want to be there. They didn't care. Maybe it was a particular subject they didn't care about, or maybe it was school in its entirety. They would goof off, not pay attention, and as a result, they usually got pretty bad. grades. Maybe that person was you. Maybe you just didn't care for school or you were bored or you didn't have good teachers. Later on, after you graduated, you began to finger things out in your own. You followed your own interests, whatever that might have been. Even quote unquote good students

Starting point is 00:02:56 often are so driven by seeking accomplishments in good grades that they never let the things they studied actually sink in. I went to a pretty good nationally ranked liberal arts college. I was always stunned at the number of people who didn't know very basic things that they really should have known. The second principle is that when stripped to its essence, learning only requires two things, literacy and curiosity. Now I realize this may be a gross oversimplification, but I also think it's true. If you're curious, there's literally nothing you can't learn on your own, and in a world with the Internet, it's all at your fingertips. You can get the equivalent of a master's degree in almost any subject from the material that is online. Books and research papers are widely available to anyone.

Starting point is 00:03:43 MIT, Stanford, and other colleges literally put their courses online for free that anyone can access. Years ago, I actually binge-watch every lecture from the first three semesters of physics courses at MIT, the exact same lectures that the students at MIT watched in person. And when I say any subject, I do mean any subject. I've gone looking for some of the very esoteric things that were covered in my graduate level of geology courses, and I was able to find every single one of them online. You can go from 2 plus 2 equals 4 all the way through differential equations in free Khan Academy courses.

Starting point is 00:04:21 As a society, we do pretty well with literacy. There is certainly room for improvement, but the vast majority of the people are literate. where we fail completely as a society is in the area of curiosity. We do not encourage curiosity. Young children are naturally curious, but we seem to beat it out of them. Being smart and having intellectual interests is often looked down upon socially. Lowest common denominator entertainment, such as reality TV and social media influencers, tend to dominate our culture.

Starting point is 00:04:50 If you are sufficiently curious, then everything else can sort of take care of itself. You'll learn not because you have to, but because you want to. I've had many people reach out to tell me how after listening to an episode they went down a rabbit hole on a topic, and I think that is great. The third principle is that learning is a lifelong pursuit. It never ends. There is no point in your life where it ever will or should end. Too many people feel that now that they're out of school, they don't have to bother with reading or intellectual pursuits, and nothing could be further from the truth. A person's formal education is only supposed to provide a foundational level of knowledge.

Starting point is 00:05:27 Once you're out of school, however, you might realize a few things. Perhaps you never learned something you should have learned. Maybe you didn't pay attention, or maybe you just put it into your short-term memory long enough to pass a test. Or perhaps you just forgot it. That happens. You also might realize that there are significant gaps in what you know. This happens to everybody. The universe of potential things you could know is enormous, and they will not all be covered during the course of your schooling.

Starting point is 00:05:53 As an adult, it's up to you to fill those gaps. What those gaps are and which are the highest priority to fill, only you know. But we all have them, and they will always exist. The only difference in learning as an adult is that there's no one forcing you to go to school. You don't have to sit in a classroom every day. No one's grading you and no one's looking over your shoulder. How you learn is up to you. You can read a book, watch a documentary TV program, or, of course, listen to podcasts.

Starting point is 00:06:20 Also, most adults will be surprised by what they can learn when they put their minds to it. Many of you might say that you aren't good at math. What you're really saying is that you weren't good at math when you were in school before you were an adult, and you have worn that label of not being good at math around with you ever since. You'd probably be shocked at how easy you could pick it up now that you're an adult. You can watch videos online that are usually no more than 10 minutes long, and just rewatch them until you understand the concept. Moreover, I think everybody should always be in the middle of learning something.

Starting point is 00:06:53 something new that they knew nothing about when they started, something where you are a complete novice. It could be anything from learning a language to archery or photography to calculus. The fourth principle is that it's important to have a broad knowledge base. One of the things that angers me more than anything else is when I hear people say you don't need to know facts because you can just look up anything you need to online. This is Balderdash.

Starting point is 00:07:20 If you don't know anything, to begin with, you'll probably never look anything up in the first place. And if you do, you will have no clue how to put it in any sort of context. I heard some online guru say this once, and he does nothing but talk about business and making money. Despite his success, I have a feeling this guy would be a terrible bore to talk to. There isn't anything wrong with trying to make money, but to have no other interests in life other than just business seems like a horrible waste. A broad knowledge base covers the basics of physics, chemistry, mathematics, history, economics, astronomy, art, music, literature, and geography. It isn't just academic subjects, however, but practical skills as well. A reasonably well-rounded person should be able to cook a meal, jumpstart a car, start a fire, sharpen a knife, set up a home network, and use a map and a compass.

Starting point is 00:08:10 I feel in many ways the average person living in the 19th century probably had more practical skills than a person living today does, because there was no way to get around not having them back then. Personally, I have a ham radio license, became a certified rescue scuba diver, learn CPR, and I spent a little bit of time every day working on learning Latin. There's no particular reason I just enjoy doing it. Having a broad knowledge base gives you the starting point

Starting point is 00:08:35 for other subjects and interests that you might want to learn about in the future. The fifth principle is that sometimes you need to hear something in a different way to finally have it click. Many of the topics I've done episodes on are things that you might have heard about before or maybe it was covered in school. For whatever reason, maybe it just didn't sink in, or maybe you forgot it. I took an entire trigonometry course in high school, and the way it was presented was such that you had to memorize all the triangle ratios to know the trig functions. I did fine in the course, but it wasn't until several years later when someone explained trigonometry using the unit circle that everything just clicked. When I saw it that way, everything instantly made sense.

Starting point is 00:09:13 I figured out an entire semester of trigonometry in a matter of minutes by just seeing it in a different way. Now I don't need to bother memorizing trick functions. I can just visualize the unit circle and deduce everything from that. For me, it was trigonometry, but maybe for you it was something else. You might know it, but maybe you don't know it well. You just need someone else to explain it in a slightly different way for it to finally click and to sink in. So how does this podcast fit into such a worldview and these five principles I've listened? This show is designed to give you a brief overview of many different topics every day in a short, concise format.

Starting point is 00:09:50 It's meant to be a starting point for the investigation of topics that you're interested in, not the final word. And after all, there's only so much you can do in 10 minutes. I know that many of you listen in all sorts of ways. Sometimes when you go to bed, sometimes when you wake up in the morning. I've had parents tell me they listen with their kids during breakfast or when they drive them to school. It's my hope that you'll listen to all the episodes, even and especially those, where you don't know anything about the topic. It's only by being exposed to topics that you're unaware of

Starting point is 00:10:19 that you can actually broaden your knowledge base. As for me, this is something I really enjoy doing. I am totally in my element doing this show, and I hope to continue doing it into the foreseeable future. I know that if you are listening to these words right now, you are one of the curious people. Otherwise, you would not be listening to this podcast. So a lot of this episode was really just preaching to the converted.

Starting point is 00:10:42 But I want to thank everyone who listens every day and has told their friends about the show. The more curious and inquisitive people that listen, the greater will be my ability to continue producing the podcast. And with that, I will resume regular programming, starting with the next episode. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Ones K Week over at Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write,

Starting point is 00:11:16 You're amazing. Other than brush my teeth, I don't do anything every day. Certainly not research topics in depth and find a way to distill that information into something easy to listen to and understand. Bravo, sir. Thanks, once-k week. I do hope there are some things that you do every day beyond just brushing your teeth. As for doing an episode every day, I pretty much have it down to a science now. Once you do it 700 times, it becomes easy.

Starting point is 00:11:41 Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostogram, you two can have it read on the show. show. Nobody's going to go out with me. Have you asked anybody yet? No, but who would? I don't even have any good skills. What do you mean? You know, like, numtruck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills, girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Two-Year Anniversary Show

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