Subscribe
Apple | Spotify | Amazon | iHeart Radio | Castbox | Podcast Republic | RSS | Patreon
Podcast Transcript
March is upon us. It is a month of madness if you happen to be a basketball fan, a month with celebrations if you happen to be Irish, and the month where we celebrate the ratio of the circumference to its diameter.
It is also the month of the equinox. Where the days become longer than night in the northern hemisphere and vice versa in the southern.
This balance of night and day isn’t 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.
Let’s jump right in with the first question
Seth Louviere from the Facebook group asks, Do you have control over which ads 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 most cases, unless it is a highly regulated industry, I often have broad leeway in creating the copy for the ad.
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 the United States, you might 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 generically complain about advertising, and I have no clue what to do with that information.
Aidenn from the Discord server asks, When storing your travel pictures, or frankly any pictures, do you use local storage mediums (hard drives, etc) 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?
I have a multi-layered approach to backing up my photos, and it is pretty similar to what I use for my podcast episodes.
All my original RAW images are on a RAID array on my desktop. That is backed up to the cloud on Backblaze.
All of my process and edited images, which is a much smaller subset, are on Smugmug. You can view all of those images by going to my website.
The microphone I use to record the podcast is a Sure SM7B microphone. It is a pretty popular professional microphone.
The quality of a laptop or smartphone microphone isn’t good enough to do a serious podcast, and the cost of a microphone 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 a 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.
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?
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 at least done 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 decided to NOT make an episode about for one reason or another?
There are two episodes I started to do that I abandoned in the middle of writing them.
The first was on the serial killer HH Holmes. The reason I abandoned the episode is because when I started doing research, I found the real story was so much different from the one I originally heard.
I later returned to the subject and published an episode on it.
The other was on the Gang of Four, the group that tried to take control of China after the death of Chairman Mao.
My problem with this episode was that I just couldn’t get my head around how to tell the story in a simple way.
I’m going to be returning to this subject in a future episode as well as I think I have a better handle on it now.
Edimek from the Discord Server asks, Hello Gary! What are the odds that I reached a one year streak in learning Chinese (in 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?
First, Edimek, 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 Chinese.
Most Chinese restaurants have a secret menu which is available to Chinese people who speak Chinese. This usually has more authentic Chinese dishes. I’ve been with Chinese speakers who have done this.
If you want to try this, the first time you go, just ask in Chinese if they have a special menu. If they say yes, then have them select a dish that they like.
That will at least give you a start to know sort of authentic dishes you like.
Dayle MacKenzie 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 attack 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 base subject and your particular interest in it?
Well Dayle, 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 took years between being put on the list before I actually ended up recording it.
I’ll 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 been to India? Which parts?
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 still a whole lot that I have yet to do and see in the country. As you know, India is a very big country and the different regions are very different from each other. I’d like to go as far south as well as the far north in Kashmir, and the Bengal.
Geronimo Ritcheson from the Facebook group asks, I know that there is an official Instagram account for EED, and I am 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 (utilizing polls, featuring episodes on IG Stories, etc.).
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 on it at one point.
However, with the 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 don’t convert to podcast listeners. I have tried and tried it just doesn’t do anything.
I’m not the only podcaster who 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 away time 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.
Debi 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. Just to give you an idea how meaningless that is, there are over a million people in your 20th generation of ancestors, not including all the people in the subsequent generations.
I literally have one great-grandparent that this lineage comes from. She was the only ancestor I had that had any ancestry from continental Europe.
I’ve been able to trace other branches of the family tree from the 19th to the 17th centuries. It becomes very hard to do genealogy in Germany once you get to the 30 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, and an extra 5 days split between the new months Novembicus and Decembicus due to all the holidays.
OK. 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 the 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 splitting those into 10 units.
A metric system of units for things like length, weight, and temperature, all make sense because all of those units are arbitrary units. The second, meter, and kilogram are all things we just made up.
The second is somewhat arbitrary, but the day, month, and year are not.
The big reason for not doing this, however, is that there really isn’t any benefit to do so.
We’d have to totally change every history book, every clock, every watch…. everything.
There are enough alternative calendar concepts out there that I could probably do an entire episode on the subject.
The final question comes from GisselleT 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 stand alone? Are they as popular, always have lots of people, or are they hidden gems?
I’d say about 10% of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, maybe less, are ones that you have probably heard of. These are things like the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Statue of Liberty, and Angkor, for example.
There are a bunch of cities in Europe where the whole city is just lumped together as a UNESCO site. Venice, Paris, Rome, and others.
The other 90% are more obscure sites that you probably have 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’d 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 have been declared World Heritage Sites tend to be ever more obscure.
That wraps up 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 are in the show notes.
The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.
Today’s review comes from listener Seby12STS over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write.
The best show
Dear Gary, you read my review in the Cambridge 5 episode and my family is so proud. I’m about to turn 13 on Feb 28, 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 bday)
Thanks, Seby! 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.
Happy Birthday. Now you are officially a teenager.
Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you too can have it read on the show.