On October 31 every year, we celebrate Halloween. It is especially popular in the United States where we use the holiday as an excuse for kids to dress up and ask for candy, and for adults to dress up and drink. But why do we dress up, and what’s the deal with pumpkins, how does this have anything to do with monsters and bats? Learn more about the history of Halloween and how so many unrelated things got lumped together on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily Learn more about your ad choi...
Oct 30, 2021•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Casinos are fascinating places. They can make tons of money, but they don’t really have a product. While it is often called entertainment, unlike other forms of entertainment, no one is entertaining you. In fact, the entire business is really nothing more than applied mathematics. With the proper application of mathematics and a liberal dose of high-tech security and proper management, a casino can become a cash machine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 29, 2021•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast One of the rarest and most expensive substances in the world is actually pretty disgusting. The way it is created is pretty gross, it looks pretty gross, and smells even worse. Despite how disgusting it is, there are people who will pay as much for it on a per gram basis as gold, yet when you get right down to it, no one really needs it. Learn more about ambergris, the treasure of the sea, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoi...
Oct 28, 2021•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast I’ve had many episodes where I talked about a country being a “republic”. In fact, we often use the word but many people have a mistaken idea about what exactly a republic is. So what exactly is a republic, and how does it differ from a monarchy or other forms of government? What many people think a republic is isn’t necessarily wrong, but it also isn’t exactly right. Learn more about monarchies and republics and the differences between them on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn ...
Oct 27, 2021•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Located in the heart of Paris, along the banks of the River Seine, lies the Louvre. It has over 750,000 square feet of gallery space, it has over 615,000 items in its collection, and in a non-pandemic year, gets over 10 million annual visitors. Yet, it wasn’t always a museum, and the way it acquired its collection wasn’t always above board. Learn more about the Louvre, the world’s greatest museum, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.f...
Oct 26, 2021•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Weddings are full of traditions. Almost every aspect of a traditional western wedding involves customs that may date back hundreds or thousands of years. However, most people have no idea where these customs or traditions come from. They simply do them because that’s what you do when you have a wedding. Learn more about wedding traditions and learn where they came from, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 25, 2021•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Have you ever filled out a form online where you had to select a country and you noticed that one of the country options was the “United States Minor Outlying Islands”? If you have you might have wondered, what are these island? Who lives there? And why are these islands considered minor? Learn more about the United States Minor Outlying Islands and how they ended up on almost every drop down list of countries on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...
Oct 24, 2021•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast The year 1972 saw two epic contests between the United States and the Soviet Union. The first was American Bobby Fischer defeating Soviet Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov for the world chess championship. The other took place on a basketball court in Munich in the gold medal game of the Olympics. It was one of the most controversial moments in Olympic history, and the ramifications of that game are still reverberating today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 23, 2021•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast 1902, the French governor of Indochina faced a huge problem in the city of Hanoi. They were suffering from a massive infestation of rats and the rats could carry diseases, including the plague. The governor implemented a plan to get rid of the rats. Thousands of people were recruited in the effort. However, the program had a serious flaw. Not only didn’t it solve the problem, but it made things worse. Learn more about The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre of 1902/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ...
Oct 22, 2021•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Located on the French Riveria, just a few kilometers from the border of Italy, sandwiched between the mountains and the sea, is the tiny country of Monaco. Monaco has several distinctions among the countries in the world, not just for its size, but for its population and its history. Learn more about Monaco, the smallest and wealthiest principality in the world, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 21, 2021•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast Secrecy is a huge part of military success. You want to be able to communicate with your own forces without the enemy finding out what your plans are. As America entered World War II, they were in need of a method of communication that couldn’t be cracked by Germany or Japan. They found the answer they were looking for in the languages of Native Americans. Learn more about Navajo Code Talkers and the other Native American languages used in World War II Learn more about your ad choices. Visit meg...
Oct 20, 2021•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast To explore the universe humans have made any manner of telescopes. These telescopes can observe visible light, infrared light, radio waves, and even x-rays. One of the most important forces in shaping the universe is gravity. How can astronomers observe gravity? In 2002, the National Science Foundation, Caltech, and MIT managed to build a gravitational observatory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 19, 2021•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Weather systems on Earth aren’t stable. There are cycles that weather patterns go through which can have enormous effects around the globe. There is probably no more important weather cycle than the one meteorologists called the Southern Oscillation. This cycle can have dramatic implications for temperatures and rainfall all over the world. Learn more about El Nino and La Nina and the Southern Oscillation on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit meg...
Oct 18, 2021•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the Dialogues written by Plato in the year 360 BC, he wrote of a place called Atlantis. Atlantis was a place where the citizens were half-gods and half-men, yet it was destroyed in a cataclysmic event. Ever since then people have been speculating about where Atlantis was and who the Atlantians were. Learn more about the history of Atlantis and the various theories of where it was and if it even existed, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit me...
Oct 17, 2021•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Brooklyn wasn’t always a part of New York City. It used to be a separate city located across the East River from New York, which at the time was only on the island of Manhattan. For decades, people talked about a bridge to connect New York and the growing city of Brooklyn to facilitate travel and commerce. In 1883, that bridge finally opened. Learn more about the Brooklyn Bridge on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 16, 2021•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast You are probably familiar with the term decimation. The word is usually used in English to mean “to cause great destruction or harm”. However, to ancient Rome, the word had a very different and very specific meaning. It was one of the most devastating and brutal forms of punishment that the military could inflict. Learn more about Decimation, the ultimate collective punishment, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 15, 2021•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast In 1965, the director of research at Fairchild Semiconductor, Gordon Moore, made a prediction about the future of semiconductors. He said that over the next ten years, the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every two years. His prediction didn’t just hold true for the next 10 years, but it has held true for almost 60 years, and it had driven the global computer industry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 14, 2021•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast I’ve done episodes before about people who have saved a large number of human lives. Mostly, these people have done so through inventions or innovations in fields like agriculture or medicine. What about people who prevented an impending disaster? Like when Superman stops an asteroid from hitting the Earth. Well, there was such a case, and thanks to the actions of a single man, millions of lives might have been saved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 13, 2021•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast In 1555, a French physician and astrologer named Michel de Nostredame published a book of poems titled Les Prophéties. Ever since people have been trying to interpret world events through his writings. Was Nostradamus a prophet? Was he a fraud? Or are people just reading way too much into a bunch of vague, random statements? Learn more about Nostradamus and how his writings have been interpreted, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm...
Oct 12, 2021•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast On March 27, 1794, the United States Congress passed the Naval Act. The Naval Act authorized funding for six frigates which would become the basis for the new US Navy. One of those six ships, and the third one built, was the USS Constitution. It was launched in 1797 and saw service in multiple conflicts all around the world. That ship which first set sail 225 years ago, is still in service and operational today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 11, 2021•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast People who love to dance are said to have dancing fever. Dancing fever is just a phrase and not something meant to be taken literally. However, could there really be an actual dancing fever? Could there be a disease that caused people, many people, to dance until they fell from exhaustion? Well, maybe. Learn more about the Straussberg Dancing Plague of 1518 on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 10, 2021•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast The rise of agriculture has been pointed to as being responsible for the rise of civilization as we know it. However, that raises the question, what was responsible for the rise of agriculture? In particular, at least in the Middle East with the cultivation of grain, the debate has always been which came first: Beer or Bread? Learn more about the great beer vs bread debate, and which was responsible for the rise of civilization, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about yo...
Oct 09, 2021•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast William Shakespeare is widely considered one of the greatest poets and playwrights in the history of the English language. However, over the last two centuries many people have begun to wonder if William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon, England was indeed the person who wrote the works which have been attributed to him. If you look at the evidence or the lack thereof, they aren’t necessarily crazy for thinking it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 08, 2021•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast Copyright is what protects creators from having someone copy and make money off of their work without compensation. However, there are some things like directories or maps which have information that can be difficult to copyright. It’s just presenting information or data which exists out in the real world. Such creators of maps and directories have found unique ways around this problem. Learn more about copyright traps, aka Mountweazels, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more...
Oct 07, 2021•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast On May 19, 1946, André René Roussimoff was born into the world in Coulommiers, France. At birth, he weighed 13 pounds or 6 kilograms...and from there, he only got bigger. He eventually topped out at 7 feet, four inches tall, weighed 520 pounds, and became a worldwide phenomenon as a professional wrestler and actor. He is one of the few humans to whom the adjective “legendary” can truly be ascribed. Today people still speak of his incredible feats in awe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit m...
Oct 06, 2021•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you think of Spain as the country on the Iberian Peninsula which is sandwiched between France and Portugal, you are not wrong, but you are also not totally right. There is also a significant part of the country which is located in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Morocco: The Canary Islands. Here you will find things that you aren’t going to find in mainland Spain or even the rest of Europe. Learn more about the Canary Islands on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more abo...
Oct 05, 2021•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Navigation on the open ocean is extremely difficult. It is a skill that takes years to master. Even with years of skill, an experienced mariner was still able to ground their ship on an unseen reef, underwater rocks, or a sandbar, because they didn’t know their precise location. The main problem, which was unsolved for centuries, was determining your longitude. Learn more about the longitude problem, and how it was eventually solved, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more abo...
Oct 04, 2021•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast As I have mentioned in many episodes of this podcast, there are a great many things that were originally invented in Ancient China. There are literally hundreds of inventions that were developed in China before they were introduced anywhere else. However, there are four inventions in particular which stand out as having revolutionized not just Chinese civilization, but the entire world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 03, 2021•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the early 1950s, war ravaged the Korean peninsula. However, the fighting ceased on July 27, 1953. Both sides of the conflict pulled back from the front and created a buffer zone 4 kilometers or 2.5 miles wide. That buffer zone still exists today. Learn more about the Korean Demilitarized Zone, its past and present, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 02, 2021•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast You probably heard the expression that something is “the greatest thing since sliced bread”. Well did you ever wonder what the greatest thing was before sliced bread? Or why we measure greatness in terms of sliced bread? Well, there’s an answer to these questions. Learn more about why sliced bread is so freaking amazing on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 01, 2021•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
