Questions and Answers: Volume 2
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4.4 billion years ago, the Earth and the Moon split apart. And ever since then, they have lived in a symbiotic relationship. And once every month, the Moon rotates about the Earth, signifying something special. A time for me to answer your questions. Stay tuned for Questions and Answers Volume 2 on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. ♪

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$45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speed slower above 40 gigabits on unlimited plan. Additional tax fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. Let's get started with Questions and Answers Volume 2. All of these questions came from a post I made over on the Facebook group. So if you would like to participate next month, just go to Facebook and search for Everything Everywhere Daily and join the group. We are closing in on 600 members.

So the first question, and there's two of them, are very similar. Connor Rafferty asks, are there any taboo topics you are not willing to approach? Sean Vergoven asks, I'm very curious of episode topics you have wanted to do but can't for some reason. So these are kind of similar, so I'll lump them together.

And the answer is there's nothing that's really taboo. There's nothing that I don't want to talk about or I'm afraid to talk about, but there are things that I don't think fit the show. I know there are a lot of families and classrooms that listen to the show, so I'm not going to do anything on sexuality or the history of swear words, even though both of those topics might be interesting. One thing I've not done that I might do in the future are episodes that talk about what the belief systems are for various religions, what makes them different, and what are the tenets of those faiths.

One of the things I have not done a lot on are individual religions. And the reason for this is that I would be talking about religions of which I am not a member.

Saying that Bill Buckner played for the Cubs when he played for the Red Sox in the World Series is one thing, but attributing something to a religion that they don't believe or explaining it the wrong way is something that I really don't want to do. So if I do do something like this in the future, I'm going to want to write it in advance and possibly run it by someone or some group of people who are in that religion to make sure that it's not insulting and that I got everything right.

Ben Bryan asked a similar question. He asked, do you have any topics or subjects that you keep starting but haven't been able to finish an episode for? And the answer is, sort of. I started an episode on the serial killer H.H. Holmes.

He's a legendary serial killer that supposedly killed up to 100 people. And as I started doing research on it, I realized that most of the things that were attributed to him were probably legends. I mean, he was a serial killer and killed a bunch of people, but not as many as he's usually given credit for because it was embellished in the newspapers. So I gave up on the show and never really returned to it, although I probably will at some point in the future.

There are still dozens of episodes that I put on my original list of 100 ideas when I started the show two and a half years ago that I still haven't done. Some of these include the creation of modern Singapore, the partition of India and Pakistan, when the Philippines was an American colony, the explosion of industrial seed oils, and the year that Babe Ruth hit 104 home runs. Jerry Gardner asks a similar question about episodes. He asks, when researching a topic, do you ever go down a rabbit hole and find another topic that's more interesting than the original topic?

If so, do you ever scratch your original topic and do something else, or do you stick with the original topic and put the new topic in a future idea file?

The answer is yes. Doing episodes now gives me tons of ideas for more episodes. A good example is the recent episode I did on the Red Baron. He was a fighter pilot during the First World War. That could certainly open up another episode about airplanes in World War I generally. I did a little bit on it on that episode, but I could go deeper. But it also brings up the subject of who were the best aces and fighter pilots during World War II.

That then brings you into the subject of the development of fighter aircraft itself and how fighter airplanes right now are so advanced and are so expensive, they're now thinking of creating planes that don't even have pilots in it anymore. They would just be drone aircraft. So, yeah, one topic can then open the door to many, many different topics. And it's just a matter of figuring out what would be the best way to do it and what I could, you know, do a whole show on.

Many times I have a good idea for something, but I feel I should have some introductory episode first that I can always refer people back to. So if you remember a while back, I did one on the entire Mongol Empire. So I like summarize the entirety of the Mongol Empire in 10 minutes. The goal was to do this first, and then I could talk about different subsections of the Mongol Empire, such as the Golden Horde or the Yuan Dynasty in China, that I could then reference that initial episode on the Mongols.

I also did this with the periodic table of the elements. I did an initial episode on the periodic table, and then I've done subsequent episodes on individual elements, stuff like uranium, plutonium, hydrogen, helium, gold, things like that. And I'll probably keep doing more of those until I run out of elements that are kind of obvious and are important to our daily lives.

Eric Dombrowski asks, how do you decide which topic is next? Other than the shows occurring during holiday recent events, i.e. the World Cup, the shows seem pretty random as to what topic will be featured each day. You don't seem to have too many episodes of similar themes, i.e. Roman history right next to each other, which I personally appreciate. I'm imagining you have one of those giant bingo cages filled with various future show topics for which you spin around and randomly choose from. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Well, Eric, I don't have a bingo cage filled with balls, but you are correct that I do try to keep it kind of random. In other words, if I've done a show on ancient history within the last two weeks, I am probably not going to do another show on ancient history. And there is a method to the madness.

One of the ideas behind the show when I created it was serendipity, coming across things that you didn't know about. And that only happens when you encounter something randomly. Now, I've had a lot of people say, well, Gary, you should quiz your audience and do a poll and find out what they like and then do more of whatever they like. Well, the problem is whenever people tell me what their favorite episode is, it's always something completely different.

So if I started doing a week's worth of episodes on one thing, maybe some people might like that, but maybe some people won't like that. And by doing it random, it always means that if there's one particular topic you're not interested in, it usually means you're only one day away from something else, which you probably will be interested in. So what I like to tell people is that the show is kind of like a box of chocolates. Every day, you never know what you're going to get.

My selection process is actually just looking at the list of show ideas and then just picking one that I think is kind of interesting. There have been stretches where I have planned out what I'm going to do up to two weeks in advance, and to be honest, I probably should be doing that anyhow. But as it is right now, every day I create a brand new show, and it's something completely random that I have on the list. And that's the process.

Evan Byrne writes, as a Canadian, I'm curious, what are some of the hidden gems you as an American have found in our country that you would suggest for people to check out? That's an excellent question, Evan. And I have been all over your great country. I've been to every province three times and I've been to every territory with a big asterisk next to that for none of it.

In your own backyard, one of the places I would recommend that's in your province, there's two of them actually, would be Torngat Mountains National Park, which is at the very tip top of Labrador. And the other one would be Battle Harbor in Labrador, which is a former fishing village that got closed down after the cod moratorium, but now it's actually part of the Heritage Trust and they preserve it. And in the summers, you can go there and actually stay in one of the houses.

A lot of people who visit Labrador, Newfoundland, they only go to Newfoundland and they don't actually go to Labrador. The other thing I would recommend, and this is something I talk about on pretty much every interview that I've ever done on a radio show or a podcast where I talk about my travels, Nahanni National Park. It's located in the Northwest Territories and it is, in my opinion, and this is saying a lot, the greatest national park in the world. And almost no one knows about it. It gets 800 visitors a year.

And it's hard to get to. There are no roads that go into the park, so you have to go in by float plane. And it has a rather short season. Pretty much July and August is when you're going to have to visit. But it's one of the most incredible places in the world with one of the largest waterfalls, fantastic gorges, river canyons, mountains, everything. Nahanni National Park and even most Canadians don't even know about it.

Graham McIntosh asks, what are your personal musical tastes and favorites? Best concert ever seen. So many musical topics you can cover in a podcast. Well, Graham, I think you are 100% correct. There are a lot of music topics that would make for good episodes. And the trick for doing a music episode, I've done a couple of them, is that you really, because this is an audio podcast, want to integrate music. So it would be a matter of finding music that you can use legally, as well as the extra time it would take editing the music.

I have ideas on my show list for the origins of rock and roll, the origins of hip hop, jazz music, ragtime, and a whole host of different music topics. So you are correct. I just haven't done any of them yet.

As far as my personal taste in music, I have a pretty eclectic taste. I don't listen to just one kind. On Spotify, I have this enormous list that I keep adding to, and it has everything. So I'll go through these phases where I'll listen to something, and if I think a song is particularly good, I'll add it to the list. And this includes everything from 60s French pop music to heavy metal to R&B or even disco.

That being said, most of my time is actually spent listening to what I would call contemporary classical music. This is music which is composed primarily by people that are still living. This is Max Richter, Philip Glass, John Adams, people like that. So when I got my thing from Spotify saying what my most listened to artist was, it was actually Max Richter.

Cave and Zainabadi asks, Gary, can you give us an update on how the podcast is doing, i.e. how many daily downloads, Patreon supporters, etc., and what you've learned during the past two plus years of doing this? Also curious, were there any specific times that you almost gave up or conversely, specific times that things happened that gave you hope to continue?

The show's done quite well this year. 2022 was a huge year for the show. In December of 2021, I did about 180,000 downloads of the show. And December of 2022, I'll be doing probably a little under 900,000 downloads just for the month. So the show has grown quite a bit this year.

That being said, I'm still an independent podcaster. I'm a guy who records this by himself with absolutely no help in a basement. So compared to the other big network shows out there or shows that are hosted by celebrities, I'm still one or two orders of magnitude smaller than them in terms of audience size. So there is still plenty of room to grow.

As for getting frustrated and wanting to give up, and the answer is no. And that's because when I started this, I've been doing podcasting actually since 2009, and I've been doing online content creation for over 25 years. I had faith in what I was doing, and I kind of trusted in the system. And I believed that if I just stuck to my guns and kept putting out content and people liked it, that eventually they would share it with other people and it would grow. And that's exactly what happened.

To quote the Houston Astros the first time they won the World Series, trust the process. Colvon Cole asks, have you ever considered having guests or guest hosts? And the answer is no, I will never have a guest on the show because that's just not what the format of the show is. This is not an interview show.

Could I potentially have guest hosts? And the answer is maybe. If I ever need to take an extended break, say a vacation or something, rather than just running reruns, it might be easier for me to actually get someone to be a guest host and read the scripts. I have no plans of ever doing that, but something like that certainly could happen.

As for doing interviews, I'm certainly not against it. It's just not going to be on this particular podcast feed. If I do do that, it'll either be on a brand new show that I start, which would sort of be a compendium to this show, or it's something that I would give to Patreon supporters. Askwith Gibbs asks, what do you do for fun?

I hate to say it, but I actually play a lot of video games. I play World of Warcraft, Rome Total War, Civilization V. I don't like Civilization VI. Games like that. I play Age of Empires II, the remastered edition, if it came out for the Macintosh. And so, yeah, that's one of the big things I do nowadays that I'm doing the podcast. And for the record, I consider doing the podcast fun. This is something I really do enjoy doing, so I don't consider it work.

Amy Elizabeth Morrison asks, would you ever consider being a contestant on Jeopardy? And the answer is, sure, if they came to me and recruited me, but I don't know if I would go out of my way to do it. And if I did do it, to be really completely honest, I would primarily use it as a vehicle to promote the podcast more than actually trying to compete. But that being said, the best way to promote the show would probably be winning.

Darren Brown asks, where do you fear to go? And the answer is, I'm not going to go to an active war zone.

I'm not an adrenaline junkie, and I'm not going to go anywhere where my presence would make me a target. That being said, I've been in some places that were kind of sketchy, but never really that dangerous. And just to sort of put it on a scale, right now, I would actually go to parts of Ukraine. I would have no problem going to Kiev or going to Lviv, but I probably wouldn't go to the Donbass and other places where there's active fighting going on.

Hadley Morrison asks, of all the places you've been, where has the best local food? The place I believe has the best cuisine in the world is Japan. And very close behind that, I would put Argentina and Spain. I think the most overrated cuisine in the world is Italian and the most underrated cuisine in the world is probably Middle Eastern cuisine.

I'll end with a question from Henry Suzuki. He says, I'm 43 years old and I used to be able to remember a really high percentage of things I've learned. I've historically been interested in everything. The past three years, I've noticed that's shifted and I'm not remembering things at such a high rate, nothing medically related. Can you provide a sense of how the experience of retaining information from learning is like for you?

I can only speak for myself, but I've always been able to remember facts really good. That being said, I do have holes in what I'm able to remember, particularly with names, and it can be really embarrassing. If I meet someone for the first time and they tell me where they're from, where they went to school, what their job is, things like that, I can remember all of that stuff. But the next time I meet them, let's say I'm at a conference or something, there's a good chance I can recite all of those things and I won't remember their name, which is really embarrassing.

I remember I went through this phase where I could not remember the name of the actor Edward Norton, and I didn't know why. I just drew a blank when I tried to think of Edward Norton. I could tell you every movie he's been in, think he's a fine actor, but for whatever reason, Edward Norton escaped me. So I have this hole for names somehow.

People tend to remember information of things that they're very interested in and curious about. And you've probably witnessed this with kids. They go through a phase where they learn about dinosaurs or baseball statistics or whatever it is that they're really interested in. They can remember all of this stuff and absorb it like a sponge.

Also, I do think that you have to refresh your knowledge every once in a while. And I've had this happen to me. I've done enough podcast episodes where I will go down the list and sometimes just for a split second, I will not remember the show. And then I click on the link and I look at it and it's like, oh yeah, yeah, okay, now I remember it. But the thing is I needed that prompt for me to remember what it was again.

And so for a lot of things that if it's not something that you encounter on a regular basis, you forget it, which is why people can become fluent in a language and then later forget it if they're not actively using that language. Another thing which has hurt a lot of people is the internet. We have so much information at our fingertips, a lot of times it's easier to just do a quick Google search than it is to actually commit something to memory. While having the internet is great, I don't think it's a substitute for having a core knowledge of how the world works.

That's it for this month's question and answers. If you'd like to ask a question next month, just go to the Facebook group, search for Everything Everywhere Daily on Facebook, or just click on the link in the show notes. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett.

I want to thank everyone, including the show's producers, who support the show over at Patreon. If you'd like to support the show, just head on 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 show episodes, head over to our Facebook group or Discord server, both of which have links in the show notes.