Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.