Questions and Answers: Volume 28
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March is upon us. It's a month of madness if you happen to be a basketball fan, a month with celebrations if you happen to be Irish, and a month where we celebrate the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It's also the month of the equinox, where the days start to become longer than the night in the northern hemisphere and vice versa in the south. This balance of day and night is not the only balance, because in March there is also a balance of questions and answers.

Stay tuned for this month's questions and answers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This podcast is brought to you in part by Stash.

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This episode is sponsored by Expedition Unknown. The Expedition Unknown podcast is back for another season. Did you know that 900 manuscripts were found near the Dead Sea containing the earliest known copies of the Old Testament? Or that in 1959, a group of hikers died under mysterious circumstances, which became known as the Datlov Pass Incident?

On the Expedition Unknown podcast from Discovery, Josh Gates travels the world to investigate history's greatest unsolved mysteries. He'll take you to the coast of Florida to chase the long-lost treasure of Jose Gaspar, through California to trace the flight path of a World War II pilot, Gertrude Tompkins, who disappeared and was never seen again, and to Lake Huron to find the final resting place of the Griffin, the very first ship to explore the Great Lakes.

Travel the globe with Josh Gates as he investigates some of humanity's greatest feats and most iconic legends. Listen to Expedition Unknown wherever you get your podcasts. Let's jump right in with the first question. Seth Louvier from the Facebook group asks, Do you have any control over the ads which are shared on the podcast or are they decided by others? There seems to be a lot of interest in this question, so I figure I'll answer it. If I am reading the ad, then I had control over doing it.

These are known as host read ads in the industry. In most cases, unless it's a highly regulated industry, I usually have broad leeway in creating the copy for the ad. So what you're hearing, I wrote. However, there are also ads that some of you hear that are not read by me. These are known as programmatic ads.

I have no clue what programmatic ads are running. If you live outside of the United States, you may hear ads that are not in English. There are a few broad categories like political ads that I ban, but that's about it. The ads you hear might be totally different than those someone else hears depending on your location. Some ads are delivered based on your location.

I will sometimes get people who complain about an ad, but they only tend to generically complain about advertising and I have no clue what to do with that information. So if you ever want to bring something to my attention, be very specific about the ad that you're talking about.

The next question comes from Aiden on the Discord server, who asks, When storing your travel pictures, or frankly any pictures, do you use local storage mediums like hard drives or online backup services like Google Photos? Or do you use other forms of backup? When you record episodes, what type of microphone do you use? Well, Aiden, I have a multi-layered approach to backing up my photos. And it's pretty similar to what I use for my podcast episodes as well.

All of my original raw images are on a RAID array that sits on my desktop, and that is then backed up to the cloud on Backblaze. All of my processed and edited images, which is a much smaller subset, are on SmugMug. And you can view all of these images by just going to my website. As for my microphone, the microphone I use to record this podcast is a Shure SM7B microphone. It's a pretty popular professional microphone with podcasters.

The quality of a laptop or smartphone microphone just isn't good enough to do a serious podcast. And the cost of a microphone and the big scheme of things really isn't that much. Along the same lines, Sparky from the Discord server asks, What equipment and software do you use to record an episode? How much editing do you do to the recording? The software I use for recording is very simple and cheap. I use GarageBand to record the show and do editing.

My editing is very simple because this is a scripted monologue show, which is the easiest type of show to produce. I edit as I record, so it usually takes me about 20 to 30 minutes to record 15 minutes of content. I then run the saved WAV file through a program called Levelator. This ensures that everything is the same volume. And then finally, I convert it to MP3. The total cost of all three programs is zero.

Amy Elizabeth Morrison from the Facebook group asks, Have you ever really despised the subject matter for an episode? Is there any subject you are completely uninterested in and refuse to touch? For instance, I don't recall any episodes about insects. Is that on purpose? Well, Amy, the short answer is no. If I don't like the subject, I just won't do an episode on it. I have no particular aversion to insects. I just haven't done much on them. I have done at least one episode on insects. A while back, I did one on the 17-year cicada.

Similarly, Ryan Brandon from the Facebook group asks, have there been any topics you started to research and then decided not to make an episode about for one reason or another? Well, Ryan, there are two episodes I started to do that I abandoned in the middle of writing them. The first was on the serial killer H.H. Holmes. And the reason I abandoned the episode is because when I started doing research, I found that the real story was so much different from the one that I had originally heard.

I did later return to the subject and have since published an episode on it. The other was about the Gang of Four, the group that tried to take control of China after the death of Chairman Mao. The problem with this episode was that I just couldn't get my head around how to tell the story in a simple way. But I'm going to be returning to this subject in a future episode as well, and I think I have a better handle on it now.

Edimek from the Discord server asks, Hello Gary, what are the odds that I reach the one-year streak in learning Chinese on Duolingo and I'm asking for the keys to the Nigerian Completionist Club on the same day? Your podcast has been my top podcast for two consecutive years on my Spotify wrapped. Keep up the good work, Gary, as I keep telling my friends about your podcast. My question is, what is your Chinese food recommendation, one that is not really common outside of China? Well, first, Edimek, or Edimek, not sure the pronunciation,

I'd like to congratulate you on your entry into the Completionist Club. As far as I know, you might be the first member of the club from Nigeria. That being said, if you know some Chinese, there is something that you can do at most Chinese restaurants, assuming that the owners speak some form of Chinese. Most Chinese restaurants have a secret menu which is available only to Chinese people who speak Chinese.

this usually has more authentic Chinese dishes. And I've been with Chinese speakers who have done this at Chinese restaurants. So if you want to try this, the first time you go, just ask in Chinese if they have the special menu. And if they say yes, then just have them select a dish that they like. This will at least give you a start to know what sort of authentic dishes are available. And yeah, the secret menu really is a thing. And it isn't so much a secret as it's just stuff that they can make that they don't put on the regular menu.

Dale McKenzie from the Facebook group asks, Hi Gary, you cover a lot of ground with the variety of topics you cover and present your subject matter with confidence and authority. How often do you tack a subject matter on which you have no working knowledge? How do you research it and is the time invested in research variable depending on the subject base and your particular interest in it? Well, Dale, I never record an episode without knowing a fair amount on the topic before starting it.

There are some topics I can do off the top of my head, like the recent episode I did on economic statistics. Others take more time and research. There are some episodes that have taken years between putting it on the list before I actually end up recording it. I'll usually do some low-level research on a topic, like reading articles to get an overall idea of the story, and then try to get more specific data the closer I get to recording.

Josu from the Discord server asks, Hi Gary, I'm from India. Have you ever been to India? Which parts? Well, yes, I have been to India. I've been to Kerala in the south, Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh. While I have been to India, there is a whole lot I have yet to do and see in the country.

As you are very well aware, India is a pretty big country, and the different regions are very different from each other. So I would like to go down to the far south, as well as in the far north in Kashmir, as well as possibly visiting the Bengal.

Geronimo Richeson from the Facebook group asks, I know that there is an official Instagram account for Everything Everywhere Daily and I'm following it. However, I want to ask if you have plans on posting on it more frequently, if not expanding your activities on the platform, such as utilizing polls, featuring episodes on Instagram stories, etc. Well, Geronimo, the short answer to that question is no.

The Instagram account was created when I was traveling extensively and doing travel photography. It was pretty popular at its peak. I had 182,000 followers at one point. However, with my shift to the podcast, I've pretty much ceased posting on social media outside of the Facebook group. The truth is, it really doesn't do anything for me anymore. Getting likes on social media is meaningless. More importantly, people on Instagram and TikTok just don't convert to podcast listeners.

I have tried and tried and it just doesn't do anything. And I'm not the only podcaster that has come to this conclusion. The reason why I have no desire to post on Instagram on a regular basis is because it would take time away that I could be spending on getting the next episode out the door, which I'm sure you will all agree is a much higher priority. Debbie Barton Thompson on the Facebook group asks, Have you researched your own genealogy? If so, any surprises?

Yes, I am the 20th great-grandson of King Robert II of Scotland. And just to give you an idea of how meaningless that is, there are over a million people in your 20th generation of ancestors. And that does not include all the people in the generations closer than that. I literally only had one great-great-grandmother that this lineage all comes from. And she was the only ancestor that I had that had any ancestry from outside of continental Europe.

I've been able to trace other branches of the family tree back to the 19th or sometimes even the 17th century, but it becomes very hard to do genealogy in Germany once you get to the Thirty Years' War because so much was destroyed.

Christian Long on the Facebook group asks, Why can't we have a metric calendar? Not going to happen, but the seasons and months could make more sense. Maybe 10 months, 36 days each with an extra 5 day split between the new months. November and December due to the new holidays. Okay, you aren't the first person to have thought of this and there have been many proposals to do something like this.

The basic problem with all of these proposals is that days, months, and years do not divide evenly into each other. Months, days, and years are all natural units of time. Creating a 36-day month would pretty much eliminate any correlation of the month to the natural lunar month. There have been attempts at trying to decimalize everything, including splitting the day into 10 units and then splitting those into a further 10 units.

The metric system for units for things like length, weight, and temperature all makes sense because all of those units are arbitrary units. The second meter and kilogram are just things that we made up. The second is somewhat arbitrary, but days, weeks, and months are not. They're based on natural phenomenon. The big reason for not changing the calendar like this, however, is that there really isn't any benefit to doing so.

we'd have to totally change every history book, every clock, every watch, and everything. There are actually enough alternative calendar systems out there that I could probably do an entire episode on the subject. Our final question comes from Giselle T. over on the Discord server who asks, You've talked a lot about UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Do they sometimes overlap with popular tourist attractions? Or are they standalone? Are they as popular, always have lots of people, or are they hidden gems?

I would say about 10% of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, maybe more or less, are ones that you've probably heard of. These are things like the pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Statue of Liberty, Angkor, and others, for example. There are also a bunch of cities in Europe where the whole city is just lumped together as a UNESCO site. Venice, Paris, Rome, etc.,

The other 90% of sites are more obscure sites that you have probably never heard of and wouldn't even know about them unless you went out of your way to visit World Heritage sites. That being said, I would say about 90% of those are worth visiting. There are a few duds, but most of them are pretty interesting. Most of the obvious attractions have already been put on the list, so the new places that are currently being declared UNESCO World Heritage sites tend to be ever more obscure.

Well, that is a wrap for this month's question and answer episode. If you would like to ask a question for next month's show, please join the Facebook group or the Discord server. We currently have over 2,500 people in the Facebook group and almost 600 on 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 Austin Okun and Cameron Kiefer.

Today's review comes from listener Sebi12STS over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, The best show. Dear Gary, you read my review in the Cambridge Five episode and my family is so proud. I'm about to turn 13 on February 28th, so thank you for the info. I am listening when I get home from school, so thank you so much. P.S. Can you read this on my birthday?

Thanks, Debbie. I'm sorry I missed your birthday by a day, but given that it's a global show, when this comes out, it will be your birthday somewhere on Earth. So I'll call it a win. And happy birthday. You are now officially a teenager. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you too can have it right on the show.