Questions and Answers: Volume 42

Podcast Transcript

It is the first of May, which is celebrated around the world as May Day.

In ancient Rome, it was Kalendae Maiae, the date on which a pregnant sow was sacrificed to the goddess Maia, mother of the messenger god Hermes.

Today, we sacrifice questions upon the altar of answers.

Stay tuned for the 42nd installment of questions and answers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Kevin O’Keefe asks How is the book on learning coming along? What’s been the most difficult part of putting it all together? And have you had any lightbulb moments or any nuggets that you could share that would get us excited about the content in the book whenever you are able to finish it? Thanks, Gary!

I’m making progress. Right now, I’m gathering data and doing research. I have a lot of ideas, and now I need to put them into some coherent form.

The biggest thing getting in the way of the book is, not surprisingly, having to do the podcast every day.

I’m getting close to the point where I’ll start writing, but it is going to be a very rough process. I imagine it will take several iterations to get it to a point where I can publish it.

The research on learning is actually remarkable. What makes it remarkable is the strength of the consensus about how effectively a single person can learn and what works.

There are also many things happening on the cutting edge right now, which is why the research can be difficult.

I’m excited to be working on this, and I have absolutely no clue what the business case is for the book or if there is any at all, but that really isn’t my concern at the moment.

Linda Rosholt Hash asks Do you have to buy the rights to broadcast the little clips from movies, songs, or commercials you sometimes have at the ends of episodes? Are there other intellectual property aspects you need to deal with? And for the other angle, how is the content of your podcasts protected?

Let me provide a brief explanation of copyright law.

In the United States, the Copyright Act of 1976 creates exemptions for what is called Fair Use.

Under fair use exemptions, you can use copyrighted material for several reasons. This includes criticism and commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, research, and parody.

The other overriding principle is that you can’t hurt the business of the copyright owner. So you can do something that would discourage people from purchasing or using the original copyrighted material.

With that being said, and I know I’m biased, I think I’ve established a very strong track record over the course of almost six years of this being an educational podcast. No one is coming here to avoid purchasing other content.

I have a strong fair use case for the content I use. In fact, I think you could make the case that a podcast like this falls squarely within the legitimate fair use exemption.

That said, the fact that I can make a solid legal argument for fair use doesn’t mean someone couldn’t make my life a real pain.

Practically, movie studios don’t bother to pursue copyright claims unless someone is trying to copy, sell, or pirate entire movies. You’ve probably seen screenshots or very short video clips of movies that have been turned into memes.

A movie clip is not a substitute for an entire movie. It would be extremely difficult to prove that playing a clip would somehow be taking money away from a studio.

The music industry, on the other hand, will literally check every podcast for the slightest bit of copyrighted content. They are notorious for filing claims for the slightest things, even when they don’t own the copyright.

This is a major problem on YouTube. Channels that explicitly do music education videos often receive strikes from record labels. Go check out Rick Beato’s videos on the subject.

So, if I use music on this show, which I don’t do that often, I’m almost always using music that is in the public domain. This is a pragmatic decision because of how difficult record labels are.

For example, in my episode on extremely large numbers, at the end, I played a short clip of the song “Barney Google,” recorded in 1923 and in the public domain.

As for my content, there isn’t much you can do beyond claiming a copyright. As with fair use, if someone were to use a clip from my show, I wouldn’t really care. I think that is fair use.

However, I’ve had people who tried to copy the entire show wholesale, and that would be violation of copyright.

Ultimately, anything and everything you want to enforce comes down to the law and how much you want to spend trying to enforce it.

Neil Garrett asks What’s the most important lesson you’ve ever learned in life?

The ability to adapt is more important than the ability to plan.

Derrin Brown asks How likely is it for Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to be adopted for longer haul transport?

The odds are very low. Hydrogen is not an energy source per se; it is a method of energy storage. To create hydrogen, you need to split water molecules, which itself requires energy.

There was a brief period several years ago when everyone was talking about hydrogen and the new hydrogen economy. That never happened.

The fact is, hydrogen is dangerous and very difficult to work with. Creating an entire infrastructure around hydrogen would be very difficult and expensive.

We’ve already seen that batteries have been adopted at a much higher rate than hydrogen fuel cells. In fact, there really aren’t any hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on the market today.

terinjokes asks If my count is right, this is the 42nd Q&A, so I must ask: What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything everywhere daily?

The answer to life, the universe, and everything everywhere daily is to get out the next day’s episode.

Swimming_ants What got you into podcasting, and have you ever thought about doing a monthly theme for episodes?

I’ve talked about the podcast’s origin several times in previous episodes, so I’m not going to repeat it here.

As for doing monthly themes, that will never happen. The entire point of this show is to provide something different every day. If you aren’t interested in today’s topic, you might be interested in tomorrow’s.

My goal is to create an antidote to the content algorithms you experience online. Algorithms will feed you what you think you want to see based on your previous consumption.

This show is human-based serendipity, where you might hear something that you didn’t even know you didn’t know about.

So, there will be no month-long themes.

Sylia Gray asks, ” Do you have plans to do an episode on Korean culture and history, like Hangul (Korean alphabet)? Or how about the Battle of Myeongyang (which was like Korea’s own Battle of Thermopylae, against Japan), which Korea won despite their massive numeric disadvantage thanks to their legendary admiral Yi Sun Shin?

The writers and I have a weekly meeting where we cover what episodes we will be writing over the next week.

One of the things I brought it was covering areas that have been undercovered in previous episodes, and one of the topics that suggested was Korea.

So the short answer is yes, we will have some more Korean-themed episodes coming up.

BAM asks Is there anything on your list for possible future episodes that was an idea sparked by watching a Ken Burns PBS documentary?

I can’t say that I have ever done an episode based on a Ken Burns documentary. That being said, there have been many episodes that I’ve done that have shared topics with Ken Burns documentaries.

The biggest topic Ken Burns has done a series on that I want to cover in a future episode is the history of jazz.

I’ve tried to do an episode on jazz before, but I found the subject too vast. There isn’t just a single thing called jazz that I could narrow it down to.

I’m sure I’ll try to tackle the subject again in the future, or at least put some parameters around it to make it doable.

Drew “Dr.C” Clinkenbeard asks If you could get an answer to one (or two) questions from any of your episodes, what would it be? in other words, what is one unsolved mystery you’d crack? (The Everest episode made me think about this)

The question I would be interested in resolving is the authorship of Shakespeare’s works.

I’ve read more on the subject since I recorded the episode, and it is shocking just how little evidence there is that the man from Stratford-on-Avon wrote the works that we attribute to him.

Almost everything we think we know about Shakespeare has no evidence to support it. Almost all of it is based on supposition.

This isn’t a conspiracy. There wasn’t anyone trying to cover up the truth.

I think it is the greatest case of misattribution because someone used a pen name and wanted to keep their identity secret.

Bananaman5000 asks What is your favorite hot springs? Love the podcast, keep it up :)

My favorite hot springs are the Takhini Hot Springs, outside Whitehorse, Yukon. They are about a 30-minute drive outside Whitehorse and are especially great places to visit in the winter.

A very honorable mention has to go to Hot Springs Island in the Haida Gwaii Islands off the coast of British Columbia. I say it gets an honorable mention because the hot spring was turned off after an earthquake in 2012.

I have heard reports that the hot water has started slowly trickling back, but I haven’t had it confirmed.

Eric Dombrowsky asks Hey Gary, I know that ever since you started this podcast, you’ve been very focused on churning out a new episode each and every day (much appreciated by the way). However, I also understand you haven’t traveled much during this time. Do you ever miss the travel photography days when you were constantly traveling the globe and going to far-flung places? Do you have any international travel plans for the future, if so where?

I haven’t been out of the country since I started doing this podcast. Having to post a show every day has made traveling very difficult.

That being said, I don’t miss it as much as most people think I do. It isn’t that I don’t like traveling, so much as I really got my fill from being on the road for so long.

I’ve traveled more by an order of magnitude than most people ever do in an entire lifetime.

That doesn’t mean I’ll never travel again. I’m very certain that I will. It’s just that I don’t have some desperate yearning to fulfill my bucket list, as I’ve done most of that already.

It is sort of like asking someone who was just at a buffet if they are hungry. Just because they are full at the moment doesn’t mean that they will never eat again.

That concludes this month’s Q&A episode. If you want to leave a question for next month’s show, you have to join the Facebook group or Discord.

I should also let everyone know that I’ve been recording Everything Everywhere Weekly with Joel Hermansen, one of the show writers, where were cover the episodes of the last week, give our thoughts on them, and go over things that didn’t make the cut.

This is available exclusively to supporters of the show on Patreon.