← Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More
Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More
Questions and Answers: Volume 36
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November, the ninth month of the Roman calendar and the 11th month in our calendar, is now upon us. It's the month when we think of turkeys, pilgrims and when weather gets colder. It's also the month where people will fight each other to the death for discount television sets on Black Friday. But most importantly, it's the month where you ask questions and I answer them. Stay tuned for the 36th installment of Questions and Answers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by Quint's. The holiday season is upon us and that means buying gifts for friends and family. So why not get something that's top tier but affordable? That's where Quince comes in. Quince has great items like $50 Mongolian cashmere sweaters that feel like an everyday luxury and wool coats that are equal part stylish and dur. And you'll pay a fraction of what you would from other retailers and their prices are literally listed on the Quint's website. I just got an Australian merino wool sweater that looks great and cost only half of what it would have if I had bought it somewhere else. By partnering directly with ethical factories and top artisans, Quince cuts out the middleman to deliver premium quality at half the cost of similar brands and often even bigger discounts. Give and get timeless quality staples that last this season with quince. Go to quince.com daily for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com daily free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com daily. This episode is sponsored by Mint Mobile. The reality is that smartphones and their associated mobile plans have become an indispensable part of the modern world. You almost can't get by without one. So if you have to have a monthly plan, why spend any more than you need to? That's why I recommend Mint Mobile. All their plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your current phone, current phone number and keep all of your current contacts. Nothing has to change except the amount you pay. At Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no. No contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees and no bs. Ready to say yes to saying no? Make the switch@mintmobile.comeed that's mintmobile.comeed upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month limited time. New customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabits on unlimited plan, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Let's jump right in. The first question comes from Soren Landblom on the Discord server, who asks, what's your dream car? And what's your dream place to live? Well, honestly, this might be hard to believe, but I don't really have a dream car. I have no fantasies about sports cars. I think that sports cars are incredibly impractical. Even if I won the lottery, I don't think I'd ever buy a car like a Lamborghini. They're expensive, fragile, and you can't even use them anywhere close to their potential given speed limits. Even cars like BMW or Mercedes and I can recognize that they are quality cars, but I don't think I'd ever buy one. They seem to be more for impressing other people, which I have no desire to do. My dream car is what I drive, a Jeep Wrangler. I've had nothing but jeeps since about 1997. They have excellent resale value, are extremely customizable, can go anywhere, and there's a community of people surrounding the vehicles. Almost everyone who has a Wrangler will wave to anyone else who drives past them on the road. As for where I would live, I've been to cities all over the world. Many of them are great places to visit, but that doesn't mean that I would want to spend the rest of my life there. At this point, I'd rather find a place to build something, maybe out in the woods, rather than just move to some city. Makay from the Discord server asks. I've recently started listening to the first tranche of episodes you released, and they're seemingly much shorter, but nonetheless still very enjoyable and informative. What would you say is the biggest improvement you've made over the years to the podcast content or production that we may not have noticed? Well, I think you've actually noticed the biggest change. The length of an average episode has increased significantly since I first launched the show. The average length of a script is 2,000 words, and that's the metric that I use when I write scripts. How long that translates to to time depends on how fast I talk and other factors. I think there was an early episode that was only 1200 words long, which I look back on in horror today. The longest episode I think, was about 2,700 words long. The sound quality of the early episodes wasn't very good either, and that was because I was recording in a horrible location with hardwood floors and a refrigerator running just 10ft away. From where I was recording. The biggest thing is that having done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of episodes, I'm just much better at the process of writing and researching episodes. Now. The time it takes to get an episode out on average is much less than what it took when I first started, even though the episodes are now longer. PT from the Discord server asks, have you ever thought about ending the podcast or only releasing weekly? Nope. This show will remain with this format. If I were to change the format, I would just launch a brand new show. Max S from the Discord server asks, how many takes does the usual podcast take? Well, I don't do takes, as you're probably thinking of it. I only read through a script once, but I might reread a particular paragraph or sentence multiple times. There have been occasions where I have had to reread certain passages maybe a dozen times, especially if there are difficult to pronounce foreign words. If I had to guess, the longest I've done one interrupted take was only for about five minutes in length. The benefit of the system is that by the time I'm done reading the script, I'm done recording the podcast. Turnaround time is actually one of the biggest things I prioritize because I'm doing a daily show. You can't deny me Gary asks, hey Gary, have you ever been to Tokyo and if so, what was your experience like? Love the show. Yes, I have been to Tokyo. I've spent several weeks there back in 2007 near the start of my travels. It's a great city and I would love to go back to spend more time there and visit many of the places that I didn't get to visit on my first trip. The Line Cafe is a place I'd really like to visit, as it's one of the original listening bars in Tokyo and I've heard so much about it. Also, just for everyone's reference, if you want to know if I've ever been to a place, you can just go to my website and do a search. You can also browse my photos, of which I have many tens of thousands of them available online. Jim Cohn asks, why do you think it took until the late 19th and 20th centuries for medical care to advance, when many other areas of science advanced, even in the ancient world? Well, Jim, for starters, I don't think there really was a whole lot of scientific advancement in the ancient world. Even if they got something right about how something worked, they almost always got it wrong when explaining why it worked. The 17th and 18th centuries really began seeing advances in the systematic understanding of physics. Likewise, if you remember back to my episode on John Snow, there was some progress in medical matters in the early 19th century as well. What often results in big advances is a theory that explains how everything works within a field. Natural selection did that in biology, Plate tectonics did that in geology, the structure of the atom and Newton's laws did that in physics. A similar revolution in genetics took place with the discovery of the structure of DNA. Germ theory was the key that unlocked the big improvements in medicine. Improvements in sanitation, antibiotics, and vaccines all came about from an understanding of germ theory. Kyle McLay asks, Do you have any science questions you'd like to tackle on the show but don't think you'd be able to just because getting enough background to discuss the topic would take too long? Well, the easy answer to that is yes. I've been thinking about doing an episode on the Standard Model for a long time, and also one on the Millennium Prize problems in mathematics. Both are very difficult to explain without oversimplifying them, and doing so in the amount of time allotted for this podcast is very, very difficult. There are many other science and math related topics that I'm thinking about, and I'm sure I'll eventually get around to doing some of them. But I also think that some of them are simply going to be impossible given the format of the show. Cliff King asks, since you also host the Respecting the Beer podcast and seem to enjoy a 547 once in a while, what is the most interesting beer or alcoholic bever you've had on your travels? So for those of you who don't know, I am also the host of another podcast called Respecting the Beer, which covers the science, history, culture, and economics of beer and brewing. Some of my co hosts are former NASA physicists, chemistry professors, and history teachers. And for those of you who attended my fifth anniversary party, you know that the answer to this question is Basque seider. Basque cider is very hard to find outside of Spain. I had to make a special order in order to get some here. I have seen it in a few specialty liquor stores, but it's not something that you're going to find in most places. My favorite red wine is Argentine Malbec. My favorite white wines are Vinho Verde from Portugal and Chocoli from Spain. I'm really not much of an IPA guy, so I don't have 547s that often. I prefer lagers, pilsners and Belgian sours for beer. My test for a bartender is always to have them make a Bloody Mary, and the reason is that there's no set recipe for a Bloody Mary. They can be very, very good or truly awful. It depends on the bartender Michelle Herbert asks, why have there been relatively few episodes about Australia? Is it because the flights are so blasted long? Well, Michelle, there's no particular reason. I've done some and I'll be doing more. It is a long flight to Australia, but I've learned to break up the flight there by stopping along the way, either in Hawaii or Fiji. I've personally spent over six months in Australia and I've been to every state and capital city, and I've even been to Lord Howe island, which is something that most Australians can't say. There are some more Australia themed episodes on the list, and I might just be getting to some of them kind of soonish Jeram Nelson asks hey Gary, I drive my daughter to school every weekday and we listen to everything everywhere, daily on the way. She loves your podcast. Her questions are who decides how much a dollar is worth in China and why is school so early? Jerem and Amy from Livermore, California first let me say that school starting early is a holdover from when most people lived on farms. Everybody got up early. There's actually a fair amount of research that shows that students perform better when school starts later, and kids stay out of trouble when the gap between school ending and parents getting home from work is smaller. So I have no idea why schools still start so early. As for your other question, depending on how you define it, There are over 150 different currencies in the world. Most of them have a floating exchange rate, meaning that how much you can get for it for another currency depends on what the market will bear. Some countries have a peg, usually to the US Dollar because of its status as the world's reserve currency. They will set an exact amount of dollars that somebody can convert their currency for, and they need to have that many dollars in reserve to make sure to cover it. What China does is somewhere in between. They have what's called a managed float, which means that they will let the market determine the exchange rate, but only within certain limited parameters. Once the exchange rate goes outside of those boundaries, the Central bank of China will step in and sell or buy Chinese Yuan to keep the exchange rate within those parameters. I actually might do a full episode on the subject of exchange rates and foreign currencies at a later date. Elizabeth Nobles asks, why do we have different names for foreign cities other than what the country calls itself. For example, Rome versus Roma or Moscow. Moskva like why did English speakers meet people from a foreign city called Frienza and say, nah, I'm going to tell people you're from Florence? Elizabeth this is a very good question and there is no simple answer. It doesn't apply to every city. For example, Berlin is just Berlin, but Paris is Paris, Roma is Rome and Moskva is Moscow. There really is no rhyme or reason to it. It's just a function of tradition and history. And this isn't just a thing in English. Other countries do the exact same thing with cities in English speaking countries. In Spanish, New York and London is Nueva York and Londres, but Milwaukee is just Milwaukee. There's no simple or universal answer I can give you because the etymology of each city is going to be totally different. Gareth Morgan asks, what's the deal with the Hawaiian Forbidden island and how do American laws and rights apply? Well, the island you're referring to is Nihihau. Nihihau is a privately owned Hawaiian island purchased by the sinclair family in 1864 and is still controlled by their descendants who are now the Robinsons family. It's often called the Forbidden island because access is strictly limited. Only native Hawaiian residents, invited guests, and the owners of the island are allowed. The restriction is meant to preserve traditional Hawaiian culture, language and way of life, which is still actively practiced. There is it is a part of the United States and the state of Hawaii. All of the laws apply. It's simply just private property that happens to be an island. No different than your house being forbidden to anyone who might want to walk inside. The last question for the month comes from Joshua Felty, who asks, are you a bookworm? Do you like browsing libraries and bookstores? Do you manage to find time to read what you're interested in? Well, from middle school through college back in the pre Internet days, I spent a lot of time in libraries. After college I'd go to Barnes and Noble at least once a week just to browse around the books. With the arrival of the Internet, much of what I was looking for now could be found online. When I was traveling, I purchased a Kindle that allowed me to have access to the world's largest bookstore from almost anywhere on earth. Nowadays I'm shifting back to physical books and physical media in general. I've been trying to read and not be in front of a monitor for at least one hour every day. I found that taking that time every day to read and write and not be online is really important and it also gives me an opportunity to help me learn Latin, which I've been trying to do since the pandemic. That'll conclude this month's Q and A episode. If you want to leave a question for next month's show, you'll have to join the Facebook group or the Discord server because those are the places where I announce it. Links to both of these can be found in the Show Notes. 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 on the show.