← Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More
Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More
Questions and Answers: Volume 25
00:16:50
You have questions and I have answers
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- [00:01]
Gary
December is now upon us, and we should be cognizant of the fact that December is based on the Latin word dechem, meaning tenth. Which is why December is the tenth month of the year, except that it's actually the twelfth month. The reason why the twelfth month is named the tenth month is because the original Roman calendar was perhaps the dumbest calendar ever used in all of human history, where they had two full months that were pretty much unaccounted for. Fast forward over 2,000 years later, and December is just another opportunity for questions and answers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by Butcherbox. If you're a regular listener to this podcast, you are probably well aware that I am a big fan of Butcherbox. I've been using Butcherbox products for quite a while now to make everything from meatloaf to meat cupcakes to the legendary meat donut and my world famous Scotch eggs. The Scotch eggs are the size of a softball and make an entire meal. However, when all is said and done, the things I love the most are steaks. Steaks not only taste great, but are relatively easy to prepare. Regardless if you're cooking out on the grill, in the oven, in an air fryer, or even in a frying pan, you can make great steaks and the best steaks you're going to find are from ButcherBox. 100% of their steaks are grass fed, grass finished. And if you love steaks, then you are in luck because Butcherbox has a special offer for you. Sign up@butcherbox.com daily and get a special deal. New users that sign up for Butcherbox will receive their choice of two 10 ounce ribeyes, two 6 ounce filet mignon or two 10 ounce New York strips free in every box for a year and use code daily at checkout to get an additional $20 off your first box.
- [02:01]
Sponsor
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- [02:33]
Gary
Let's jump right into this month's questions. The first question comes from Eddie Waters, who asks, I need to know about beaches. Who doesn't love a great beach? In your travels, I would love to know which beaches you found the most beautiful relaxing, welcoming, etc. The US beaches are being gobbled up by development and franchise restaurants. Where is the best beach experience in the world? Well, Eddie, you are correct. Lots of people love a great beach. But what makes a great beach? For starters, there's a finite amount of beachfront property in the world. Without getting into the very tricky question of how you measure a coast, which is an introduction to fractal mathematics, they really aren't making any more. Many of the prime beaches in the world have been developed. However, you'll be happy to know that there are a lot of beaches that have almost no development. I remember being on a beach on a small island in Fiji that was about as long as a city block that I had all to myself. There wasn't another person on the beach at all. When I was in the Solomon Islands, I visited an island called Ranelagh. Rennell gets almost no visitors and has a population of maybe 2,000 people. When I was there, they took me to a beach they said that no one had visited in several years. Most beaches, especially in tropical areas, are actually very similar. The sand is usually made out of eroded shells and coral, AKA calcium carbonate. What makes for a great beach isn't necessarily the sand itself. It. It might be the community around it, the people you meet, or the experiences you have. There are some beaches which do have great sand, and there are a couple that come to mind. One is Flamenco beach on the island of Culebra in Puerto Rico, and the other is any one of the amazing beaches on the island of Anguilla. Again, I'm evaluating these just on the basis of the quality of their sand. If you want to find a great beach, just go somewhere that isn't a popular tourist destination. It's usually as simple as that that compromises an enormous part of the world. So it really isn't that hard. You just need to do some research to find these places, and then you can find a perfect beach. Jack Obergfell asks, you mentioned having a degree in mathematics. Do you have any other ones? I think you mentioned some other ones at one point or another. During my original undergraduate tenure, I had a triple major in mathematics, economics and Political science. And this sounds more impressive than it is. Because it was largely a matter of efficient scheduling, I was able to use courses in each department as electives in the other departments to pull it off. My primary focus was actually economics and mathematics, and the political science was mostly to pad my grade point average. On top of all that, I actually spent a lot of my time traveling around the country competing at academic debate tournaments. As I've said many times before, debate probably did more to prepare me for doing this podcast than anything else I've ever done. Years later, after I sold a business, I went back to school to study geology and geophysics. Technically. I'm a few credits shy of actually getting a degree in these subjects because I had a case of vertigo that prevented me from attending classes my last semester, and by that time I realized I wasn't going to pursue a career in academia and I came up with a plan to travel around the world. I have no desire to go back and get the final few credits in geology because I really don't care too much about the credentials. I care more about learning than I do the piece of paper. And quite frankly, I already have a piece of paper on top of that via self study, I've probably easily gotten the equivalent of a bachelor's degree in history just from all the writing and research I had to do for this podcast. Granted, what I write isn't the equivalent of an academic research paper, but I've also written vastly more than your average undergraduate would ever have to write. I'd call it a wash, but I'm sure there's some history professor out there that would probably disagree. Barton Brierly asks, in many of your episodes, you mention a subject and then say, and that will be the subject of a future episode. Do you keep track of all these loose ends? If so, is the list shrinking over time or diverging into infinity? On a related note, Steve Augustino asks, at what point will your topics list become too unwieldy to be useful to you? Do you trim the list of related topics when you post a new episode? And have you considered licensing spinoffs as a way to address all the topics? For example, Everything Everywhere Roman History Daily When I started this podcast, I created a list of 100 episodes just to get me started, and I created the list in a Google Doc file. Since then, I have added to the list whenever I have new ideas for episodes, and I delete from the list when I do an episode. The current list has 935 show ideas. The list remains somewhat steady, but it will grow in spurts and then slowly fall back as I do new episodes. If I was more aggressive about coming up and documenting show ideas, I could probably double or triple the size of the list. What episodes I select is often nothing more than what I feel like doing on a particular day. I try to mix it up so the same general subjects aren't done in the same week. As for spinning off a new show, that is theoretically possible, but I have absolutely no plans to do so anytime soon. I have my hands full just keeping up with this show. And if I were to spin off a new show like a Roman history show, for example, it would have to be in a different format. I'm not sure bouncing around topics would work for a show like that. A more linear format would work better for a single topic show. Abdulrahman Ghail asks, hey Gary, I have to choose between going to Athens or Istanbul. Which would you say is worth visiting more? Well, if it were up to me, I would go to Istanbul. That isn't to say Athens isn't worth visiting, but Istanbul used to be the capital of two different empires and there's just so much to see in the old city of Constantinople. Brent for Liberty asks, what is your take on cold weather? Cold is a function of adaptation and let me give a few examples to illustrate the point. I was once in the Kingdom of Tonga when temperatures dipped to a very unusual 68 degrees Fahrenheit or 20 degrees Celsius. Not unheard of, but colder than normal and people there claimed to be freezing because they just weren't used to it. I was in Key West, Florida once where temperatures dipped into the upper 40s Fahrenheit or about 8 to 9 degrees Celsius. Again, people were flipping out about how cold it was as it was nearing a record low temperature. On the flip side of that, I was in Whitehorse, Yukon in the winter once when temperatures reached about -50 degrees Fahrenheit or negative 45 degrees Celsius. It was cold, but people went about their lives. They wore jackets, but many of them would walk from their cars to whatever building they were going to with it unzipped. I was in Antarctica on a ship and when I was out on the deck I wore a sweater and a hat but no jacket. Temperatures were a few degrees above freezing, which I would call chilly. However, other passengers from Australia were completely bundled up for the same temperature because they weren't used to it. So I think cold is mostly an issue of adaptation, acceptance and dressing appropriately. Theresa Black asks, what is your favorite Wisconsin cheese? Teresa that is easy. Fresh cheese curds from the dupont Cheese Company in Marion, Wisconsin. They must be eaten at room temperature, which is how you normally purchase them. I am not sure that you can even find them all over the state of Wisconsin as it's a rather small company, but they sell them around where I live. Robert Allen Nassiff Jr. Asks what custom, habit, regulation or law have you encountered abroad that seemed odd, arbitrary or absurd? Well, Robert, the dumbest law I encountered was on the island of Barbados. When you fly into many countries, especially island countries, they often require you to have an outbound ticket already booked. That is reasonable and I am used to that. However, when I first landed in Barbados, I was asked by the person at immigration control if I had a ticket out of the country and I said yes, I had a ticket to the island of St. Vincent in just a few days. However, she then kept prying and she insisted that it wasn't enough that I had a ticket out of Barbados. I had to have a ticket booked to my home country, which I didn't have. I was detained at the airport for two hours while they debated letting me in the country. Years later, I met a representative from Barbados and they said that they had never heard of the law and had never heard of such a thing happening before. I spent hours after this searching for the law online after I left Barbados and I eventually did find something. However, it was very obscure and it was never enforced. I just happened to be the wrong person in the wrong line with the wrong immigration officer at Passport Control. Ajayi Samuel asks, hey Gary, what are your favorite books? Likewise, Attack Lumo on the Discord server asks, do you have any literary must reads that you would recommend to your fans? What are your favorite books? My favorite book is Frank Herbert's Dune. I have read Dune many times and every time I get something new from it. I've also read all of the Dune Universe books written by Frank Herbert and almost all of the Extended Universe books that were written by his son. I even have all of the adaptations of the book for both film and tv. I'm also a big fan of Isaac Asimov's foundation trilogy. I'm less a fan of the current Apple TV series called the foundation, which seems to only share a title and some character names with the books. I'm going to end with a question from Jesus Chan, who asks, why has no one since Ted Williams been able to hit over.400 in major league Baseball? Jesus, this is a very good question and one that I could probably talk about for an entire episode. For those of you outside the United States who don't follow baseball, a batting average is the percentage of times you get a hit based on your number of at bats, which does not include base on balls. If you get a hit two out of every 10 times, you're probably going to be released or demoted to the minor leagues. If you hit.200 and remain on the team, you must be pretty good at something else. If you get a hit three out of every 10 times, then you're one of the best players in the league. Hitting.400 means getting a hit 4 out of every 10 at bats. Or to look at it a different way, it means failing 60% of the time. Hitting.400 is extremely rare, and if someone could do it, it means that they're having one of the best seasons in baseball history. A.400 batting average has always been a major accomplishment, but it was more common before the Second World War. The last player to hit.400 was Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox, who hit.406 in 1941. No one else has done it in over 80 years. The closest anyone has come was Tony Gwynn, who hit.394 in 1994. And that was a strike shortened year. So why has no one been able to do this for the better part of a century? And why is it so hard? There are a host of reasons, but basically the game isn't played the same way it used to be. And this mainly has to do with better analytics and statistics. For starters, batting average isn't as highly valued anymore as are home runs and total bases. Through analytics, people eventually realized that a.250 hitter with power was often more valuable than a.300 hitter without power. Pitchers have become more specialized. They throw harder and are replaced more often. Which means that pitchers can throw their best stuff more often than they would if they had to pitch a full nine innings. Also, every.400 hitter ever played under a 154 game schedule. Eight fewer games means more opportunities to fail and regress to the mean. Finally, anyone who were to flirt with hitting.400 nowadays would be the center of a media storm. Not only that, but every team would try to get this guy out at every game they played against him. All of these things together have conspired to work against having another.400 hitters. That being said, could it happen? Yeah, I think it could, but the odds are obviously slim. There are things that happen in baseball every year that are unprecedented or that haven't happened in decades. I think the most likely scenario would be for baseball to implement some sort of rule change that would make it easier for hitters. Something like limiting the number of pitching substitutions in a game. So it is possible that someone could just put together an amazing season. But I wouldn't bet on it. That concludes this month's question and answers. If you want to ask a question for next month's episode. Make sure to join the Facebook group and or the Discord Server, links to both of which can be found in the show notes. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Keever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day, and also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.