Questions and Answers: Volume 29

Podcast Transcript

If you happen to live in the Northern Hemisphere, April is a time when days get longer, the temperature gets warmer, and things start to become green again.

It is also the month of National Unicorn Day, National Superhero Day, National Take A Wild Guess Day, and, of course, National Hairball Awareness Day.

More important than any of these august holidays, it is the month where I answer your question.

Stay tuned for another episode of Questions and Answers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Let’s jump right into the questions this month.

The first one comes from Jordan on the Discord Server, who asks, You’ve been doing this podcast every day for almost five years now, how has your process improved since you first started? Do you have go-to references for your research or a template narrative structure for an episode or something like that? Are there some episodes from early on that you wish you could redo now that you have a reliable system?

My system for writing episodes is much better now than it was when I started. I’d say I can write a full episode in half to a third of the time it took me when I first started, and the episodes are longer than they were.

Much of this has to do with the fact that I’ve done so many of them, before I even start writing, I develop an outline in my head for how the episode is going to be laid out. The arc of the episode will be different depending on the subject, but I’ve done enough of them now to have an idea how most subjects should flow.

Are there early episodes I wish I could redo? The answer is yes. When I do encore episodes, I almost never do any from the first two years of the podcast anymore. I just don’t think those episodes are at the same level of the shows I’m doing today.

I’m actually considering going back and redoing these shows. They wouldn’t be encore episodes, rather theyd be a more fully fleshed-out version. I’d probably label them as redux episodes, as it would include a lot of new content.

The big reason I want to do this is because many of those early episodes were some of my favorite ideas for shows.

Mónica Alequín on the Facebook group asks, I’m curious. Have you ever come across any new information about a topic you’ve already done an episode on and regretted not having included it in the episode?

Given the format of this show, there is always something I have to leave out. I’ve done episodes that some people have spent entire careers studying.

As I’ve mentioned in the previous episode, I’ve done some redux episodes in the past where I’ve revisited a subject, like the James Webb Telescope.

There have been times I wish I had included something I intended to but forgot, but I don’t worry about it as I have another episode to work on the next day.

Jesus Chan asks Hello Gary, greetings from South Texas. Does temperature mean the same thing at different scales? Can a single atom or a tiny system even have a temperature the way a cup of coffee does?

The short answer is not really.

Temperature is a macroscopic property—meaning it’s defined for systems with a large number of particles, like gases, liquids, or solids. In essence, temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of the particles in a system.

A single atom can’t really be a liquid, solid, or gas. These states of matter exist with respect to how they behave with other atoms or molecules. By the same token, the notion of temperature loses meaning when you refer to a single atom or molecule.

That being said, experiments have been done on the laser cooling of individual atoms. This is done to achieve temperatures near absolute zero. Likewise, scientists also talk of the temperature of particles shortly after the Big Bang.

So, A single atom has kinetic energy, but temperature isn’t just about a single particle’s energy—it’s about the distribution of energies across many particles.

So, I’d say no, an atom can’t have a temperature like a cup of coffee, but I’m guessing there are others who would disagree. It really is mostly a matter of definition.

Jerry Gardner asks, Do you have any tattoos? If so do they represent anything, like a country,or a special place or trip? Or was it just something to do?

I do. I have an arm band that I got at the start of my travels on the island of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. The design is in Cook Island Mauri pictograph, and it tells the stories of my travels.

There is a YouTube video of me getting the tattoo as I filmed the entire thing. I’ve occasionally met people from the Cook Islands, and I’ve shown them the tattoo and told them I got it done by Stormy, and they always seem to know who she is. Its a pretty small island.

If I were to get another one, and I don’t know if I would, I’d commission an artist from the Haida Nation in British Columbia or Alaska to do it.

Herb Gately asks, Ruth and I have lived in the Rhineland Pfalz Region of Germany for 3 Years. We have traveled throughout the country. What is your must-visit Hidden Gem in Germany to visit that may not be in the average Tourist Guide? By the way, we have been to 16 Countries and 65 Cities.

Yes, there are a few places I’d recommend in Germany that most people don’t know about.

One is Bergpark Wilhelmshohe. It is a landscape park in the village of Kessel. There is a giant artificial river that flows down a hill, and it’s an incredible sight when it is running. When I was there, I got to see it with the water running. I’d check the times they do this in advance because when I was there, they only did it twice a week.

The other place I’d recommend is the Völklingen Ironworks in the state of Saarland. It is a former pig iron blast furnace that operated from 1882 to 1986. This might not sound like a tourist attraction, but I found it a fascinating place to visit because there are so few sites like this in the world that have been preserved.

Both of these sites are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

GongKing on the Discord server asks, What is the most beautiful airport you saw in your travels?

With respect to airports, beautiful doesn’t necessarily mean good. There are some newer airports in Asia that are architecturally stunning, but they aren’t places I would necessarily want to be stuck on a long layover.

The airports that I think are the best airports that I’ve been to are Singapore, Vancouver, and Minneapolis.

Vancouver and Minneapolis are standouts in North America. I’m not even sure which airport I’d put third. Maybe Denver, but it would be a distant third.

Singapore is often called the best airport in the world, and I agree with that assessment.

Other airports I like include Doha, Frankfurt, and Barcelona.

One of my least favorite airports is Charles de Gaulle in Paris.

MiloDude on the Discord server asks, What’s a country you haven’t been to that you want to visit?

There are a lot of countries that I haven’t been to yet that I would love to visit.

At the top of my list would be Peru, Kenya, Tanzania, Nepal, and Bhutan.

There is no particular reason I haven’t been to these countries; I just never got around to it, and the world is a really big place.

Mark Flynn asks One of the most fascinating and surprisingly beautiful cities I have ever visited has been St Petersburg in Russia. Its history, culture, and landmarks were hidden behind the Iron Curtain from most of the world for a long time, and the present political situation makes it difficult to visit, but would you consider doing a show on it? Heck, the Peterhof and Hermitage might need a show of their own.

Mark, you are absolutely correct. The creation of St Petersburg, Peter the Great, and the Hermitage would all make for great episodes.

I visited Saint Petersburg very briefly. I went there by ferry from Helsinki and took advantage of their visa waiver, which allows for a 72-hour visa if you arrive by ship in St. Petersburg.

I spent about 10 hours there and I wasn’t even able to go into the Hermitage.

One thing I would highly recommend to everyone if you are interested in this subject is the 2002 film titled Russian Ark.

It was shot in the Hermitage with a cast of over 2000 people. The remarkable thing about the film is that it was shot in one continuous 90-minute take, going through 33 rooms of the museum. The documentary about the making of the film is almost as interesting.

NuMetal Cub asks on the Discord server, What, in your opinion, are the most reliable places for an up-and-coming photographer to send in photos to be added to a magazine, book, journal, or website? I’m just asking because I’ve been at it for years now and never really cared to get published in that way but I do think it would be nice to add to my portfolio. Have you ever considered starting a photo magazine?

Ok, a couple of things you need to know….

Print publications are not all they are cracked up to be anymore. Back in the day, that was a primary means for photographers to make money. I personally know many photographers who made a career out of selling images to publications.

Today, print publications don’t pay very much, if anything. Their budgets for photography have dried up, so it is very difficult to make money that way. The same is true for websites. They don’t have money for photography, so many of them just use stock photography services.

If you are interested in just getting your stuff to appear in publications so you can say your work has appeared in publications, then I would just start sending emails with links to a portfolio of your work.

There really isn’t much more to it than that. Identify who you’d like to work with and start from there. I wouldn’t start with something like National Geographic. Start with smaller publications or websites.

Findaer from the Discord server asks, If you could send a message back in time to your 15-year-old self, what would you say knowing all you know now?

Buy Amazon stock.

Elizabeth Mrazek Nobles asks So this was bouncing around in my head last night at 2 am… when such thoughts often appear. We often refer to North America as the west. Asia is the east, and we have those countries in the middle east. What about the rest of the world? Is South America the Western world as well? What about Australia, they live a western culture lifestyle, but are in the east. Then Africa, is it just Africa?

The terms east and west, as you are describing them, primarily refer to culture.

The terms originally stemmed from the location of the cultures on the Eurasian continent.

“The West” referred broadly to European culture and “The East” referred broadly to Asian culture.

Asia was defined in the ancient world as that which was east of the Bosporus. Because Asia is so large, the part around the Eastern Mediterranean was known as the Near East, and the parts bordering the Pacific Ocean were the Far East.

In the early 20th century, the term Middle East replaced the term Near East. The term Middle East mostly refers to the Arab and Persian Islamic World in Asia.

When Europeans sailed west to the New World, they took their culture with them, which is why the United States and Canada are considered to be “western” countries.

For the same reasons, Australia and New Zealand are culturally considered to be “the West”, even though they would geographically be in the Far East.

Now, with respect to Africa and South America, they never really fit into the East/West dichotomy.

In the mid-20th century, a new metaphor for grouping countries was established, this time using North and South. These groupings weren’t based on culture so much as economics.

The global north was considered rich, and the global south was considered poorer.

Under this, North America north of Mexico, Europe, Australia/NZ, and the richer nations in East Asia were considered to be the “north”, and everything else, in particular Africa, South America, and the Middle East, were considered to be in the South.

Just as East and West weren’t strictly about geography, neither is North and South.

Australia is considered part of the West even though it is in the east, and it is considered part of the North, even though it is in the South.

Got that?

That wraps up this month’s question and answer episode. If you would like to ask a question about next month’s show, please join the Facebook group or the Discord server.

If you want to know what the next episode will be, I post it in both forums the day before.

Links to both of which are in the show notes.