Questions & Answers: Volume 8

Podcast Transcript

3,110,400 seconds ago, you, the listeners of this podcast, asked me questions, and I, in turn, provided you with answers.

Now 3,110,400 seconds later, we find ourselves again in a similar palace. You have questions, and I, too, have answers.

…and once again, the endless dance of questions and answers continues.

Stay tuned for Questions & Answers: Volume 8 on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Let’s jump right in with the first question.

The first question comes from Bob Green, who asks:

Which meaning of Grand Slam came first, baseball or winning a series of tournaments? Certainly not breakfast at Denny’s.

Bob, this is a great question, and before diving in to find the answer, my instinct said that the baseball reference came first. However, I was wrong.

It took me a good two hours to get an answer to my satisfaction.

The origin of “Grand Slam” actually comes from card games. In the early 19th century, the first use of the term ‘grad slam’ was used in conjunction with the game of whist in July 1800.

A grand slam was if someone were to take every trick in a single hand.

The game of bridge then adopted the use of grand slam in the late 19th century for similar use.

The definition at this point was simply to convey something that was a complete success.

The first use outside of the world of card games was in 1930 when Golfer Bobby Jones won the American Amateur, the British Amateur, the US Open, and the British Open in a single year.

At the time, those four were considered the major tournaments.

His complete success in winning every major tournament was dubbed the grand slam.

Jones’ accomplishment was all over the news, and it brought the term ‘grand slam’ into widespread use.

In 1933, the first use of ‘grand slam’ with respect to the four major tournaments in tennis was used when Australian Jack Crawford won the Australian Open, French Open, and Wimbledon in a single year. He was runner-up at the US Open that year, losing in the final by a single set.

The first use of the term to describe a home run with the bases loaded only occurred in 1935. As early as 1920, there were interviews with Babe Ruth where he used the term ‘grand slam’ to describe simple home runs.

Both the golf, tennis, and baseball grand slams involved the number four and the definition of a grand slam changed slightly from ‘a complete success’ to ‘winning four of something.’

For those of you outside the United States, Denny’s is a national diner chain that is famous for its breakfasts. In 1977, Denny’s in Atlanta, Georgia, offered up a meal deal called the ‘grand slam’ in honor of the great Hank Aaron, who played for the Atlanta Braves.

The original Denny’s Grand Slam consisted of two buttermilk pancakes, two eggs, two bacon strips, and two sausage links.

There are now grand slams in many different sports and activities, usually revolving around winning four of something.

Of course, Operation Grand Slam was the plot hatched by Auric Goldfinger in the James Bond movie of the same name.

Sylvain Charbonneau asks,

Hey Gary! Is there a subject you know you will never talk about in the show?

There are a whole bunch of subjects that I have no desire to talk about. I don’t really want to get into current events. I don’t want to do shows on divisive topics.

If there is one show from history I’m probably not going to do an episode on, it would probably be the Kennedy Assassination.

I’ve actually read quite a bit about the Kennedy Assassination. Probably close to a dozen books in my life. I’ve been to Daily Plaza and been up in the Texas Schoolbook Depository.

The reason why I wouldn’t do an episode on it is that no matter what I say, people would come out of the woodwork who have never listened to the show before to criticize it.

It is a no-win situation. To use a Star Trek reference, it is the Kobayashi Maru of episodes.

Even though it took place sixty years ago, there are still people who are very passionate about it.

Bertram Atleo asks:

Have you ever been to Port Alberni, BC, on Vancouver Island?

No, I have not.

And follow-up question, if the answer is no, have you been to Tofino or Ucluelet on the west coast of Vancouver Island,

Yes, I have been to Tofino. I drove there while visiting Pacific Rim National Park.

If yes, then you’ve been through Port Alberni, as it is (on) the only highway to Tofino and Ucluelet.

Very well, I would like to amend my original answer and say, yes, I have been through Port Alberni.

Kelvin Cook asks

? ?? ??????? ?? ?? ??? ?????? ?? ???????? ??? ??????? ???? ?????????, ?? ??? ???? ??? ??? ???? ?? ??? ??? ?????? ???? 1?? ????????

That is a very easy question to answer, Kelvin. I had one show. I recorded it and released it and then began working on the next show after that.

Fast forward three years later, and that is still pretty much my system.

Most people I meet, especially other podcasters, assume that I have a buffer of shows ready to go. That is not the case. If I were doing an interview show, I could probably do that because interviews are relatively easy.

The time-consuming part of doing this show is the writing and research. Doing more than one a day is difficult if I want to do anything else with my day.

Trina Wellington DeAnda asks,

Now that you have found your passport, where are you going first?

Just a bit of background to the question, I moved back in September 2020, and when I moved, I was in a bit of a rush. I literally packed up everything I had in a single day.

In the process of moving, I thought that I had packed my passport in a box, and I even wrote “passport” on the box so I would know where it was.

When I later checked the box marked “passport,” I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find it in any of my boxes, almost all of which remained packed up.

It wasn’t until April of this year, when I moved again, that I went through the process of unpacking everything I had originally packed back in 2020 and most of the stuff that I had put in storage back in 2007.

I did eventually find my passport. It was in a plastic bag with my other old, expired passports.

So with that, where will I go first? As of right now, I have no set plans to go anywhere other than Puerto Rico in September, and I don’t actually need a passport to travel there.

If I go anywhere, it will probably be to one of the few countries in the region that I haven’t been to yet. Jamaica, Cuba, Colombia, or Nicaragua. Jamaica or Colombia would be the easiest to get to by far, and both would be a nice break in the winter.

Dan Last asks,

You have unlimited time and an unlimited budget – where would you go and why?

If money were no object, I would do a couple of things. One would be visiting the South Pole. It is doable but expensive. The same is true with the North Pole.

What I would really want to do is hire a ship and sail around the South Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic Ocean and visit many of the islands that basically get zero visitors. Herd and McDonald Islands, Bouvet Island, the Kerguelen Islands, and Tristian da Cunha.

Maybe even sail up and visit one of the islands in the British Indian Ocean Territory.

Sam Garrett asks

If you could only travel to one country per continent, which countries would you choose?

That is easy. I’d choose places on each continent I haven’t been to before. North America would be Nicaragua, South America would be Peru, Europe would be Moldova, Africa would be Kenya, Asia would be Bhutan, and in Australia, I’d go to Christmas Island.

Lores Tyler Steury asks

Do you have a favorite photo you’ve taken on a trip?

I don’t know how many photos I’ve taken, but just counting every time I clicked the shutter, it has to be a couple hundred thousand.

Of those, there are a few tens of thousands that I’ve uploaded and are available publicly.

Of those, there are probably a few hundred that I think are actually decent.

It is hard to pick just one, but it might be a photo I took on the island of Dominica. It was of a woman, who I don’t know who she is, standing up with her arms outstretched with her back turned to the camera in front of a waterfall. She couldn’t have posed better if I had planned it.

Kyle Dunham asks

Are there any updates on an Everything-Everywhere cruise or tour in the future?

Sadly, no. I’ve reached out to several river cruise companies, and I haven’t even got so much as a reply back from anyone.

I’m still interested in doing it. I think the next step might just be to get a list of people who would be tentatively interested in attending an Everything Everywhere river cruise.

If there are enough people interested, then economics might just compel getting an answer from someone.

Andrew Reck asks

If you were to quit EED and start a new podcast, what type of program would you do?

I would most probably do some sort of deep dive history podcast. Probably something that combined a linear narrative story with some expert interviews.

I’ve also thought about doing a limited series, which is something I could probably do while still doing this show. The problem is that limited series, from a business standpoint, are very difficult to do because, by the time you build up interest in the show, it’s over.

I’ve been interested in doing a rewatching podcast of the 1976s BBC series “I, Claudius.” It is a 12-episode series based on the 1934 novel of the same name, and it tells the story of the Roman emperor from Augustus through Claudius through the eyes of Claudius.

In addition to commentary on the episodes, it would be possible to interview some of the cast who are still around, and I think it would be a lot of fun.

Fabio Fidanza asks

What is the most welcoming place you’ve ever visited?

That is difficult to say because people can be welcoming in different ways. I found places like Samoa and Fiji to be very warm and welcoming.

In Arab countries, people maybe aren’t as warm, but they can be extremely hospitable. They will take you into their homes and feed you. I had a stranger in Oman give a ride of over 100 kilometers and refused any payment.

If you go to a pub in England or Ireland and people hear my American accent, I can be guaranteed to have an interesting conversation.

Evan Byrne asks

In your opinion, what is the busiest “tourist spot” that you’ve been to? And while there, what did you avoid due to the amount of people that were there that you would have otherwise liked to have seen?

Because I usually travel solo, I tend to avoid busy places during peak tourist seasons. If a palace is busy, it usually means high hotel prices, and I just go somewhere else.

There have been a very small number of times when I have been on a cruise ship. I’m not talking about expedition ships that go to remote areas with a relatively small number of people or river cruises, but the really big cruise ships that have thousands of people.

I’ve never actually paid to do such a cruise, but I was invited to attend by some cruise lines. For the most part, I didn’t mind the cruise experience, and being on the ship was better than I thought it would be.

However, on one of the cruises, we made a stop in Sicily. I went on an excursion to the town of Taormina.

It turned out that there were five cruise ships all in port that day, and the small town of Taormina was just crushed with tourists. There was a flood of people who all hit the same place at the same time. It was far more people than a town like that could reasonably expect to host.

The thing was, it was over soon after it began. By 5 pm, the town was probably empty because everyone had to be back on the ship.

The problem with overtourism isn’t too many tourists per se. The problem is too many tourists at the same palace at the same time. There are lots of great places that people just don’t know about. Most overtouristed places are so because they have an international airport and/or a terminal for cruise ships.

People go there because it’s easy to get there.

That concludes this month’s Q&A. If I didn’t get to your question, I’d be happy to answer it on the Facebook group or on the Discord server. There are links to both of them in the show notes.

If you have a question you’d like to ask next month, I usually do the Q&A show on the first Saturday of the month.

The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel.

The associate producers are Thor Thomsen and Peter Bennett.

Today’s review comes from listener mosestaff from Apple Podcasts in the Untied States. They write:

Great travel podcast

Riding down the road with Everything Everywhere Daily makes the mile pass on by—so many things to learn and enjoy. My wife and I listened all the way from Wausau, WI, to St. Louis, MO. 8 hours there and back. This podcast never fails to hook me in. I will check back in when I join the completion club. Thanks from the north woods of Wisconsin

Thank you, mosestaff! I have been to Wausau many, many times, and my brother lives not too far away in Antigo. Always nice to hear from listeners in Wisconsin.

Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you too can have it read on the show. A note to everyone listening on Podcasting 2.0 apps, I am still working on getting my Umbrel server back up and running.