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In 1964, two students at Pomona College in California, Laurie Mets and Bruce Elgin, jokingly attempted to prove that the number 47 appeared in nature more frequently than chance would predict.
They began collecting examples, and statistics professor Donald Bentley contributed a deliberately flawed mathematical proof that all numbers equal 47.
The joke spread throughout campus and eventually developed into a broader fascination with finding the number 47 in everyday life, popular culture, and science fiction.
Writer Joe Menosky, a Pomona College graduate, deliberately inserted references to 47 into Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, and a group created the 47 Society.
I don’t know where these people are today, but they would probably love the 47th installment of questions and answers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Let’s start with a question from Donny Brock, who asks, “Hey Gary, long-time listener, second-time commenter, first-time selectee for questions and answers.”
When did ordinary people actually gain the freedom and ability to travel? For example, at what point could an average person in England simply decide, “I want to move to Italy,” and actually do it? How did we go from medieval people being tied to land, work, and local communities to working- and middle-class people being able to move between countries or travel just for fun?
Leisure travel as we know it is a relatively recent phenomenon. The entire topic could probably be an episode of its own, but suffice it to say that leisure travel didn’t exist outside of a small group of wealthy people before the 20th century. In the 18th and 19th centuries, young aristocratic Europeans would often go on the Grand Tour of European capitals to finish their education.
Nothing allowed regular people to travel. It took a combination of more leisure time, more money, and better transportation technology.
The tourism industry as we know it today didn’t really develop until after World War II. Soldiers coming home had jobs, were given vacation time, and had automobiles that allowed them to travel. Commercial air travel also made it easier to travel further and faster than ever before.
Since the dawn of agriculture, the average person might not have traveled more than 20 miles from where they were born. The average person wouldn’t have had much leisure time, although medieval Europe had many feast and festival days throughout the year.
People spent time with their families and local community because that was their only real option. Something like cooking and animal care weren’t things you could ever really take a day off from.
Kevin O’Keefe asks: Hi again, Gary. Another question, and I would love to hear your thoughts on this. First, what podcast platform do you recommend we use? I’ve heard that you listen to other podcasts as well. Where do you listen to podcasts?. Apple is clearly the market leader, but I don’t think it’s made its own platform any better, and it doesn’t seem to be a priority. The search feature in Apple is horrible. Have you found others better?
I went and checked my analytics, and here is the breakdown of which apps people are using to listen to the podcast over the last month:
| Apple Podcasts | 42% | |
| Spotify | 25% | |
| Overcast | 6% | |
| Pocket Casts | 4% | |
| Castbox | 3% |
Beyond that, 500 different apps are where people listen to the show.
Personally, I do not care what you use to listen to the show. For me, it is all the same. I use Apple Podcasts to listen to podcasts, but not because I think it’s the best; I just started using it when I got an iPhone.
Likewise, some people use Spotify because it is what they use to listen to music.
There are many 3rd-party podcast apps out there, and they depend on your operating system and phone. From reports I’ve heard, many of them, like Overcast, are better than Apple or Spotify.
I will say that even though Apple Podcasts is the most popular app, Apple limits it to 2000 episodes. So, if you are trying to join the completionist club, over 300 episodes, as of the time of this recording, won’t be accessible.
On the website, I’ve been embedding episodes from Spotify for those first 300 episodes so people can access them.
AllzweckAffe on Discord asks Hello Gary! I listen to some history podcasts that are very “up-to-date” in the sense that they refer to things/events that have an anniversary. I think you mentioned a few months ago that you do not care for those “current” events as topics for the podcast. Now you have done two podcasts giving summaries of the current Nobel prizes and the current Ig-Nobel prizes, which I thoroughly enjoyed and found them very informative. What made you change your mind?
Not trying to sync episodes to anniversaries isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. I have done it, especially with holiday episodes, and I’ll do it again. However, I don’t want to be limited to a “what happened in history on this date” format.
I want the flexibility to cover any topic on any date. That doesn’t mean we won’t occasionally tie an episode to a particular date, but I don’t want to be bound to talk only about specific events on certain dates.
I have nothing against podcasts that talk about what happened on a particular date, but I find it limiting. It makes it impossible to discuss bigger issues that span longer periods of time.
Graham McIntosh asks Have you ever visited North East England? Northumberland, Newcastle and Durham. Beautiful part of the UK. So much history to see here. Many castles. Lots of Roman stuff, including Hadrian’s Wall.
The Short answer is no. I used to go to England at least once a year to attend the World Travel Market in London. I used this as an excuse to explore another part of England. I’ve been to most of the south and as far north as Liverpool, but I still have much of northern England to visit.
Since I launched the podcast I haven’t been traveling as much. Had the pandemic never occurred I’m guessing I probably would have been there, but I haven’t been back to England since.
Dave Patterson asks How in the world do you learn to say some of the name of the various characters from history? The recent one on Madagascar really stumped me.
Thanks for asking, Dave, because this is one of the most difficult things I have to do. For the recent episode on Queen Ranavalona, it probably took me a full 10 minutes to record the first sentence of that episode. It was probably one of the most difficult episodes I ever had to record.
I talked about this on Everything Everywhere Weekly, where Joel Hermansen and I go over the week’s previous episodes.
Suffice it to say, it isn’t easy, and I often have to repeat a word multiple times before trying to record it to make sure I get it right.
Megan Sandmann asks: Your episode on tennis left me with a question. Why do multiple sports use the word “Open” in their competitions? I know that at the basic level, the tournaments are open to all players. Those players must go through multiple rounds to prove they have the skills to play in the finals. So technically the actual final tournament is not “open” to everyone. Any insight?
The term “open” originally meant that it was open to both amateur and professional players. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it is open to anyone.
In a tournament like the US Open in tennis, you have to be ranked to be invited. Because everything is match play, the number of spots is limited.
In the US Open in golf, qualifying tournaments allow amateurs to qualify. In theory, someone could come out of nowhere and win the US Open as an amateur, although that never happens.
The term ‘open’ doesn’t have the same meaning it did in decades past when there was a greater distinction between professional and amateur.
Kelvin Cook asks: Considering the assistance of Olivia Ashe and Joel Hermansen, how have you managed to maintain your voice and personal style within the show’s presentation?
While Joel and Oliva have been a huge help in producing the show, ultimately everything goes through me. Even though I don’t credit myself as such, I edit every show, and every script goes through my editing process.
Sometimes my editing is very light, and sometimes I make massive changes to the script. I prefer it when I have to do very little editing because it makes my life easier. Sometimes I think certain sections are irrelevant, or that others need to be added. I also have to edit for length if the script is too long.
Of course, I’m also the one who reads the script, so how I read it and where I put emphasis will always be unique to me.
Joshua Felty asks Hi Gary! Proud member of the Dallas completionist club. Do you have a favorite person or event from history that deserves to have a movie or TV show about it but currently doesn’t?
I would have to go with Robert Smalls, on whom I’ve previously done an episode very early in the show’s history. He was the slave who stole a ship, sailed it to Union lines during the Civil War, and became the first black captain in the American Navy and one of the first black members of Congress.
Chris Smith asks: I am a collector of National Geographic’s, like I have heard you mention before. Now my question is: do you view the library-bound issues from the early 1900s as valid, or do you want the standard individual issues?
Personally, I try to get loose, individual issues. That being said, that is very hard to do. I don’t currently have any bound volumes in my collection, but that doesn’t mean I won’t have any in the future. The 19th-century issues are very, very hard to get as loose individual issues. Really, anything pre-1910 is hard to get in loose issues.
Richard Welsher asks, What is the most foreign currency you ever got ‘stuck with’ and ended up bringing home?
I’m not sure what the answer to that is, but I do have an interesting story about it. When I came home from a trip to Ethiopia, I arrived at the Minneapolis airport and got a taxi. My taxi driver was Ethiopian, and I started a discussion with him about where I had just been.
I had a bunch of leftover Ethiopian birr, their currency. I asked him when he was next going to Ethiopia. He said about six months, so I gave him all my leftover birr as a tip for his next trip.
I figured it was a pretty efficient exchange. I couldn’t use it, he could, and the value was more than what he otherwise would have gotten for a tip.
The last question comes from Brian Dougherty asks: The LA Rams-SF 49ers game in Melbourne and their different approaches to handling jet lag had me wondering about your experience in how to best handle jet lag. What worked and what didn’t work?
Some people really overthink jet lag. You are trying to adjust your sleep schedule, which means either staying up late or going to bed early, depending on where you are going and in what direction.
The worst jet lag I ever experienced was flying from LA to London. The flight left in the afternoon and landed in London in the early morning, just when you would have been going to bed back in LA.
I landed early enough that I couldn’t check into my hotel to take a nap. My only option was to power through the day with Red Bull.
On the other hand, I’ve also flown to London for a very short trip where I never even tried to adjust. I’d just wake up at noon and stay up late because everything I had to do was in the afternoon or evening.
Here are my tips:
1) Fly west if possible. Jet lag to the west is generally easier to deal with than flying east because you just have to stay up a bit later.
2) Figure out if it is even necessary to adjust your sleep schedule
3) You have to decide if you want to sleep on the flight or just stay up through it. I almost always found it easier to stay up.
4) Take the shortest flight possible or have a layover. For example, if I have to fly to Australia, I prefer to stop in Hawaii or Fiji for a few days to adjust.
In summary, I don’t think there are any jet lag secrets. You just have to power through it.
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 where I get my questions from.
I also want to remind everyone about the Everything Everywhere Weekly podcast. It is a weekly recap of Everything Everywhere Daily episodes that Joel Hermansen and I record every week. It is available to all paid membership tiers on Patreon.