May is upon us. It's the month of spring in the Northern Hemisphere and of autumn in the South. It's the month of May Day, Mother's Day, as well as Bicycle Month and Haitian Heritage Month. However, the most important thing about May is that it provides yet another opportunity for your questions and my answers. Stay tuned for this month's questions and answers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
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Did you make a mistake in sending arms to Tehran, sir? No. It became known as the Iran-Contra affair. And I'm not taking any more questions in just a second. I'm Leon Nafok. co-creator of Slow Burn. In my podcast, Fiasco, Iran-Contra, you'll hear all the unbelievable details of a scandal that captivated the nation nearly 40 years ago, but which few of us still remember today. The things that happened were so bizarre and insane, I can't begin to tell you. Please do.
To hear the whole story, listen to Fiasco, Iran-Contra, wherever you get your podcasts. Let's jump right into things with the first question, and it comes from Dan in Australia, who emailed me and asked, Hi Gary, with all the research you've done for your podcast, have you ever thought about going on Jeopardy? Thanks.
Honestly, Dan, I have never given any thought to appearing on Jeopardy! or any game show. Jeopardy! isn't just a matter of knowing stuff. There is a skill involved that involves properly selecting categories, betting, and buzzing in. Could I become a Jeopardy champion? I think so, but then again, I could just as easily fall flat in my face depending on the categories that are available. There are a great many things that I know absolutely nothing about, including most pop culture.
I'm familiar with Jeopardy!, but I'm not a regular watcher. I'll watch it if it's on, but I don't go out of my way. Moreover, if you're successful on Jeopardy!, they record the show several weeks in advance. And if I'm doing a daily podcast and I wasn't updating the episodes, people would know that I was still on Jeopardy, which would cause a lot of problems. So I'm not entirely certain that I could be on Jeopardy.
HC Gamers over on the Discord server asks, Hello Gary from Taiwan. Have you ever gone to Taiwan before? If so, what places do you like? Well, yes, I have been to Taiwan. Twice, in fact. I was there in 1999 on one of my very first visits outside of North America. And I returned there nearing the start of my full-time travels in 2007.
During that eight-year period of time, Taipei changed dramatically. I can only imagine how much it's changed since I was last there. I really didn't get far beyond Taipei in either of my visits. The one place I would recommend people visit is the National Palace Museum. What many people don't know is that many of the greatest works of art from Chinese culture reside in Taiwan, not mainland China. They were taken to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War and still remain there today.
I'd like to go back at some point and see how much of Taipei has changed as well as to see the rest of the island, which I haven't seen yet. Michael Porras from the Facebook group asks, Hi Gary, I'm originally from Costa Rica, and I'm in the process of opening a Completionist Club here. Have you ever traveled to Costa Rica? Do you plan on making an episode about it? I'll look forward to hearing your thoughts. Keep up the great work.
Well, yes, I've been to Costa Rica. I visited there in 2013. And in addition to San Jose, I visited Rincon Volcano National Park and Tepente National Park, both of which are World Heritage Sites. Costa Rica has really been the shining star of Central America over the last century, as it's managed to avoid many of the problems that have plagued its neighbors, such as revolution and civil war.
Costa Rica will be the subject of its own episode in the future, and will certainly get a mention in other episodes. I did an episode on Central America as a region a while back, and I need to revisit the area and do some episodes on individual countries.
McKinney from the Discord server asks, Gary, I've asked before and I will try again because I love food. Since you've traveled plenty and ate many types of food, a hypothetical question. If you were on death row, what would you choose as your last meal? No limit on price. Well, McKinney, I guess I would have to go with fugu, the form of Japanese sashimi that comes from the poisonous puffer fish. If it isn't prepared correctly, it can be highly poisonous and can kill you.
If I'm on death row, there doesn't seem to be much risk in the proposition. Even if the dish isn't prepared correctly, I'll be dead either way, so why not? It's probably the only time you could have the dish in such a way that it would be a no-risk proposition.
Fernando Diaz on the Facebook group asks, With so much knowledge and so many topics, what do you do with your money? Do you save it in a checking account, treasury bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, gold, etc.? Do you have a simple recipe for what to do with extra money? Is this a topic for a future episode?
Well, Fernando, I am not going to get into the business of giving financial advice as that is not my job and there's a whole bunch of legal issues if you do that. And I'm also not going to get into the details of any specific investments that I'm making. That being said, I spend quite a bit of time following economic news at at least the macro level and have a few general rules that I follow. The biggest thing is to determine large-scale macroeconomic, technical, or demographic trends.
Back in the 90s, I had a front row seat to the early internet, and everyone I knew at the time knew it was going to be a really big deal. The trick was finding the right companies to invest in. There were many absurd companies that received funding and some that even went public. The general sentiment about the internet was correct, however, and outperformed even some of the most optimistic estimates. The companies that did well, did extremely well.
There are other trends today that I think are locked in, in particular the demographic decline in most countries. This is something that just can't be avoided at this point. Likewise, there's a vast amount of debt in the world today, both public and private, and that is going to be impacted by the demographic decline that I mentioned. AI is probably going to be a major technology trend, but I'm not sure who the winners will be or how it's going to impact society.
The point of identifying these big picture long-term trends is that it helps narrow down the pool of what to invest in and what to avoid. I'm not a big believer in constantly trading. Successful investors like Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett have done extremely well with the buy and hold strategy. If you don't want to put that much work into identifying these trends and their implications, you can always just stick your money into an index fund, which is the sort of baseline for investing.
Barbara N. Kennedy from the Facebook group asks, My father took a barge off the bottom of a lake in Ireland many years ago. He was sure it would float because rust needed moisture and oxygen. How long would a metal boat survive underwater? Had there been cases of boats being salvaged years after sinking? The lake in question was in Ireland. For starters, there is dissolved oxygen in water, so things can absolutely rust at the bottom of a lake.
That being said, there are some lakes that have an anoxic environment, meaning they have no oxygen, but those tend to be rare. How long a metal boat could last after sinking would depend on the metal in the boat and the type of water it was in. The deep ocean has less dissolved oxygen than the surface. The further down you go, the more difficult it is for water to be replenished. Small organic particles will sink to the bottom and oxidize, removing dissolved oxygen from the water.
For the average lake, it isn't deep enough to have anoxic conditions at the bottom. Some bodies of water like the Black Sea are very anoxic and are able to preserve shipwrecks for thousands of years. Likewise, if it's an aluminum boat, it's going to be far more resistant to corrosion than if it's made out of iron or steel. So without knowing the boat or the lake, it would really be impossible to say.
Jerry Gardner from the Facebook group asks, Since the NFL draft was in your home state of Wisconsin, did you get to go? Maybe a good topic for a future episode would be the history of the NFL draft. I had a bunch of people basically ask the same question about the draft, so I'm going to try to lump them all together and answer them here.
I have no idea how to evaluate a draft before anyone has actually played a down. I hope the Packers would draft a wide receiver, and they did in the first round, but beyond that, we'll have to wait and see. I think there's far too much time and energy put into analyzing football drafts. The majority of draft picks never amount to much, and some are outright horrible.
The Packers probably had the worst draft pick in NFL history when they selected Tony Mandrich in the second round of the 1989 draft. The fact that Madrich was a total bust wasn't the bad part, so much as the fact that the Packers passed up Barry Sanders, Deion Sanders, and Derek Thomas, all of whom were Hall of Fame players, just to get Tony Madrich. Green Bay hosted the draft this year because the town is too small to host anything else.
While a Super Bowl at Lambeau Field would be amazing, it's too cold for the NFL ever to do it, and more importantly, there aren't enough hotel rooms in the community to host everyone. I and everyone I know avoided Green Bay while the draft was being held because it was just too busy.
Peter Ertl from the Facebook group asks, Alternative history is fraught with difficulty, exceeding predicting the future. However, if Caesar hadn't become dictator for life, any guesses how Roe might have evolved from there? Well, Peter, my guess, and it's nothing more than a guess, is that Rome would have eventually wound up with some sort of imperial looking system of government at some point.
The Republic was on thin ice when Caesar won the Civil War. If it wasn't him, within the next century, someone would have probably made a move to consolidate power. The legions had shifted their loyalty from the Republic to the generals at this point. And this is one of the reasons why another civil war happened after Caesar was assassinated. In such an environment, I think it would have just been a matter of time before somebody took their army and tried to take control of everything.
Jordan from the Discord server asks, when you're making episodes, you start from a clean slate every day, i.e. pick a topic at the start of the day, research, write, record, and publish that night, or do you constantly have several episodes at various states of completion at any given time? Well, Jordan, the answer is it depends. Ideally, I know what episodes I'll be doing days or weeks in advance. Just knowing what the episode will be is a huge part of the battle.
The actual writing and recording are always done the day before an episode airs. But before I start writing, I need to have an idea of what the episode is going to be about and the arc that the episode is going to take. After 1400 unique episodes, I've gotten to a point where once I know what the episode is going to be, the actual writing and recording can be done relatively quickly in just a few hours.
There's always a bunch of episodes I'm thinking about and some that I want to do at some point, but I just haven't figured out how to make the episode make sense yet. The last question comes from the Wyandotte on the Discord server, who asks, Would you travel to space if space tourism actually becomes a thing?
Well, it depends on what it entails and how much it costs. I can't see spending my life savings on a 15-minute suborbital flight for a few minutes of weightlessness. That's pretty much the current state of space tourism. the cost would need to decrease by one or two orders of magnitude in order to be worth it. That being said it is possible that such a thing might happen over the next decade or two.
If Starship can fly on a regular basis, and it proves to be totally reusable, there is a planned configuration where it could take about 100 people at a time on brief orbital flight. This would still probably be expensive, but not spend everything you have expensive. Under that sort of scenario, it would be something I'd at least consider. That is, of course, assuming that they've proved the safety of the ship at that point with dozens or if not hundreds of flights.
That wraps up this month's question and answer episode. If you'd like to ask a question for next month's show, please join the Facebook group or the Discord server. If you want to know what the next episode is always going to be, I usually post it in both forums the day before or at least a few hours before. Links to both of which can be found in the show notes. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Oakden and Cameron Kiefer.
I want to thank everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. I'd also like to thank all the members of the Everything Everywhere community who are active on the Facebook group and the Discord server. If you'd like to join in the discussion, there are links to both in the show notes. And as always, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you too can have it right on the show.