Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Christian Long on the Facebook Group asks Why can’t we have a metric calendar? Not going to happen, but the seasons and months could make more sense. Maybe 10 months, 36 days each, and an extra 5 days split between the new months Novembicus and Decembicus due to all the holidays.

OK. You aren’t the first person to have thought of this and there have been many proposals to do something like this.

The basic problem with all of the proposals is that days, months, and years do not divide evenly into each other.

Months, days, and years are all natural units of time. Creating a 36-day month would pretty much eliminate any correlation of the month to the natural lunar month.

There have been attempts at trying to decimalize everything, including splitting the day into 10 units, and splitting those into 10 units.

A metric system of units for things like length, weight, and temperature, all make sense because all of those units are arbitrary units. The second, meter, and kilogram are all things we just made up.

The second is somewhat arbitrary, but the day, month, and year are not.

The big reason for not doing this, however, is that there really isn’t any benefit to do so.

We’d have to totally change every history book, every clock, every watch…. everything.

There are enough alternative calendar concepts out there that I could probably do an entire episode on the subject.

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The final question comes from GisselleT over on the Discord Server who asks, You’ve talked a lot about UNESCO World Heritage sites, do they sometimes overlap with popular tourist attractions? Or are they stand alone? Are they as popular, always have lots of people, or are they hidden gems?

I’d say about 10% of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, maybe less, are ones that you have probably heard of. These are things like the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Statue of Liberty, and Angkor, for example.

There are a bunch of cities in Europe where the whole city is just lumped together as a UNESCO site. Venice, Paris, Rome, and others.

The other 90% are more obscure sites that you probably have never heard of and wouldn’t even know about them unless you went out of your way to visit world heritage sites.

That being said, I’d say about 90% of those are worth visiting. There are a few duds, but most of them are pretty interesting.

Most of the obvious attractions have already been put on the list so the new places that have been declared World Heritage Sites tend to be ever more obscure.

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Let’s jump right in with the first question. Dan Banowetz asks, Should we get rid of the US Penny? They cost more than their worth and seem to be unnecessary.

The short answer is yes, we should stop manufacturing them. That doesn’t mean we are getting rid of them, however.

As you mentioned, we lose money on every penny we create because the materials and the pressing cost more than the actual coin. The difference in the value of the money and the cost to make it is known as seinorage. The penny has a negative seignorage, which is a big signal that it is no longer worth making.

This is entirely a function of inflation. You literally can’t buy anything anymore for a penny. Growing up, you could at least put a penny in a gumball machine and get a gumball out. You can’t even do that anymore, assuming you could find a gumball machine.

The penny has been studied extensively and what we’ve found is that most people don’t even use them. They quickly leave circulation as people put them in coffee cans or piggy banks because they don’t want to carry them around. People literally give them away in take-a-penny containers.

This wouldn’t be the first time we got rid of a low-value coin. In the 19th century, the US had a half penny that it eventually stopped making.

The way you do it is you don’t ban the penny, you just stop making new ones. All pennies currently in circulation would still be legal tender. Over time, they will end up at banks and will be retired, but if you have any pennies, you can still use them.

There are other countries that have done this. Canada stopped making pennies a few years ago. Prices are still priced normally and are charged to the nearest cent. If you pay with a credit or debit card, you pay the normal price. If you pay with cash, you just round up or down. The most the price would be adjusted would be 2 cents, which would be a trivial amount for most transactions.

This will probably have to be addressed at some point with nickels, as well, as it currently costs over 10 cents to produce a single nickel. The cost might be lessened by changing the metals used, but it will still be an issue as inflation gets worse.

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Gabriel Cervantes asks, Why is gasoline in the USA priced to the 9/10 cent?

This is a very good question, as nothing else in the economy is regularly priced at a fraction of a cent.

This actually goes back to a law passed in 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression. At the time, the average price for a gallon of gasoline was approximately 18 cents.

Gas stations, rather than rounding up, began adjusting prices in fractions of a cent to stay competitive.

The law was supposed to expire in 1934, but instead, it was extended, and the tax increased. Gas stations began adding the 9/10 to the price per gallon and it became the norm.

This was mainly due to a psychological condition known as the Charm pricing effect. For example, consumers perceive $3.499 as $3.49 rather than rounding up to $3.50.

The practice became an industry standard, and any station choosing to round up might lose customers, especially in the 1930s when that 9/10th of a cent might have amounted to 5% of the total price.

The effect of 9/10th of a cent has become smaller and smaller as gas prices have risen, but stations keep doing it because every little bit helps, especially given the low margins in selling gasoline.

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Penny Jessop asks, Besides your writing and the research that you do for that writing, do you have other artistic sides to your life.? Do you have any hobbies? What do you do to keep yourself busy on long plane rides?

I don’t take too many plane rides anymore. Since the pandemic started and I launched this podcast, my hands have been pretty full.

That being said, as far as artistic endeavors, I’m an accomplished travel photographer. I’ve been named Travel Photographer of the Year by both the North American Travel Journalists Association and the Society of American Travel Writers. I’ve done gallery showings, and my entire apartment has my photos on the walls.

Again, I don’t do much photography anymore, but I’ve done quite a bit.

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Chloe Boyer, asks, I have been involved in scouts as a leader for over 11 years along with my son. Fingers crossed he gets Eagle but it’s his journey and only he can do it. Do you have any interesting stories about your time in Boy Scouts?

Yes, I have one really interesting one. Back in 1983, my local council was celebrating its 10th anniversary and was having a big jamboree to celebrate. The big guest of honor for the event was Bill Hillcourt, aka Green Bar Bill, the man who wrote the Boy Scout Handbook.

By this time, he was well in his 80s.

When I heard about this, I took the initiative and wrote him a letter inviting him to have lunch with our troop. He accepted and I got to meet him and get my photo taken with him and had him sign my handbook.

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John Higham asks, Did you ever suffer from travel burnout? If so, what did you do to mix things up?

Absolutely. Traveling extensively can be very tiring. What I’d usually do it just go on what I’d call an anti-vacation. I’d hole up in a place and just stay there for a few weeks playing video games.

I stayed in Saigon for a month, just hanging out and working. I did the same thing in Melbourne, Bangkok, and several other places around the world.

Everyone I know who traveled full-time eventually gets burned out. Its pretty unavoidable if you travel long enough.

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Derek Alberts asks, I would imagine you must be a sensation in a pub-quiz team? Are you a fan, how in-demand are you and how do you generally fare? In addition – what are your favourite quiz questions of all time?

The truth is I’ve never been asked to be on a team, although I have run some quiz nights at a local pub. I had a reputation, not surprisingly, of having the hardest trivia questions in the area.

Most pub quizzes tend to be orientated toward pop culture questions, for which I’d probably do horribly. I do much better on the type of topics you’d here on this podcast.

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Steve Gulliver asks, Given your extensive travels have you seen or been affected by any big storms or natural phenomena that have left you awestruck??

I was in Maui during the 2011 Japan Tsunami. We had plenty of advance warning and knew exactly when it was going to hit. It turned out not to be a very big deal, but the lead-up to the tsunami hitting was really interesting.

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Kevin Carden asks, What are the hottest and coldest temperatures you’ve ever experienced during your travels, and where were they? How brutal did they feel? I have experienced -30° F wind chill in Alaska and 117° F air temp in Indio, California, but I imagine you’ve likely been in greater extremes.

The hottest I’ve ever seen was in the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia. The temperature in the exterior thermometer in the car I was in read 50C, which is 122F. I also experienced very close to the same temperature when I visited Uluru in Australia in the summer.

The coldest I’ve experienced was somewhere around -40 to -45F, which is close to the same in Celsius. That doesn’t include any wind chill, just raw temperature. I experienced that is Whitehorse, Yukon in the winter.

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Kevin O’Keefe asks, Who was your favorite teacher and why?

In high school, I have to go with my debate coach Mrs. Hoechrel. If it wasn’t for debate, I would have had a very different life.

In college, I’d have to go with several different professors. I had an economics professor, Vassant Sukhatme, who was great and taught microeconomics.I had a mathematics professor, Stan Wagon, who I took a senior seminar with on number theory. I know he sometimes. listens to the show.

I had a political science professor, Chuck Green who was a real stand out in the department.

I also had a great debate coach and argumentation professor, Scott Nobles, who was also the very first winner of the National Debate Tournament in 1947.

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OctoberSky asks, Hi Gary, I am glad to know that my favorite podcaster is a fellow Packer fan. Anyways, you have mentioned that you prefer Civilization V over Civilization VI. (I formally disagree with your opinion.) Are you looking forward to Civilization VII, or do you expect to keep playing old reliable Civilization V?

I’m certainly going to try Civilization VII when it comes out in about a week. I’m holding off any judgment until I play it. There are some things about it that I saw in the trailers that seem interesting, and there are other parts that seem sort of dumb. Picking a totally new civilization in each era seems….odd.

Given how the time between each version of Civilization gets longer and longer, it will probably be 20 years until Civ VIII is released.

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Geronimo Ritcheson asks, Have you ever met Mike Duncan of the Revolutions podcast? If so, what do you think about him and his works?

I never met him. Despite what many people think, podcasters do not all know each other.

That being said, I’ve listened to every episode of both the History of Rome and the Revolutions podcast.

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Jana Elsea asks, Do you play a musical instrument and if so, what do you play?

I do not play any musical instrument. I tried playing trumpet in grade school, and I was truly horrible at it. I was really, really bad.

I gave it up and have never attempted to play an instrument since.

I like to think that if I really applied myself, I could learn how to do most things. However, the exception to that is playing an instrument. I have no aptitude for it whatsoever.

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The last question comes from JimmyAK, who asks, When you write your episodes, do you go completely old-school and just open up the word processor and start typing? Or do you use any sort of AI tools to either “simply help” with completing sentences and grammar more quickly (Grammarly, or something similar), or full-blown AI MMLs that help generate the outline and content, where you then do some cleanup and editing?

All of my scripts are written in Google Docs. Every single one since the first episode has been written this way. This allows me to switch between my laptop and desktop computers without having to worry about version control.

I have also used Grammarly since the very first episode. It does a pretty good job of doing copy editing on the fly as I’m writing which allows me to write faster.

I’ve been playing around with AI tools, but its still pretty limited with what I can do.

You can’t just say, “Write 2000 words on this subject,” and then have it give you a full script. What it will come up with is very boring and never what I’m looking for.

I have a very specific story arc for each episode, and an AI tool can’t really give me what I’m looking for. By definition, a large language model will give you something average.

The one area I have used AI in writing is when I have a very broad subject, and I need to figure out how to narrow it down or determine what the most important points are.

For example, I’ve been working on an episode on the religions of ancient civilizations. There are an enormous number of major and minor gods, festivals, and practices that could be covered.AI can usually do a good job of providing an outline of what the important things to cover are, although it will almost always skip smaller things that are still quite interesting.

So, the vast majority of what I do is still old fashioned writing in a word processor.

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The first question comes from Christian Long who asks, Ok, this question has been bugging me for a long time now… Why WWE??? I mean, but, it is just, but why?

First, I should correct you. It isn’t just the WWE. WWE is the largest wrestling promotion. There are many other smaller promotions, including AEW, TNA, and a host of smaller regional promotions around the world.

Second, the premise of your question, I’m guessing, comes from the fact that you consider professional wrestling to be low-brow. You are probably thinking that as someone who covers so many high-brow subjects on this podcast, how could I possibly be interested in so mundane as wrestling?

The answer is that your assumption is wrong. Wrestling isn’t low-brow entertainment. In fact, I would go so far as to say it is the greatest performance art in the world today.

A top-tier professional wrestler goes to school to learn their craft and might spend years honing it by performing in front of small crowds in bingo halls.

Those who make it to the big time are not only performing on television to an audience of millions of people every week, but they are also performing 3-4 times a week in front of live crowds with as many as ten or fifteen thousand people in an arena.

Professional wrestling involves a level of improvisation that most professional actors can’t copy, and of course, the physical requirements are on par with that of a professional athlete.

So, if you look down on professional wrestling, and I know a lot of people do, I would suggest you just reconsider it. When it’s bad, it can be pretty bad, but when it’s good, it can be great.

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Amy Elizabeth Morrison asks, Besides Piltdown Man, what were other great hoaxes from history? How far back are there examples of people trying to fool the masses?

Absolutely. What was unique about Pitldown Man was that it was a scientific hoax. There weren’t a lot of them before, simply because science wasn’t that big of a deal.

However, there was an enormous amount of religious fraud. I haven’t done an episode on it yet, but many people peddled fake holy relics throughout the Middle Ages.

There was an obvious incentive for people to sell them, and there was an incentive for people to buy them. A church with a significant relic could draw pilgrims from far and wide to come and venerate them.

Of course, there isn’t a way to verify a relic unless it happens to have come from a local saint who had some association with the church.

On top of that, there are tons of stories and fables that were undoubtedly made up by people, that later became legends.

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Kyle Kenyon asks What are some fun rabbit holes to go down? Historical mysteries, etc.

It is impossible to answer that question because there are so many. Literally, every episode of this podcast can lead you down a rabbit hole if it is something that you are interested in.

Just as an example, last night, I found myself reading about jerry cans. These are square fuel cans that were debuted during the Second World War.

I don’t know if I’ll ever devote an entire episode to the jerry can, but there is a whole lot more to them than I ever realized. They are incredibly well-designed and engineered. You could fill an entire ship with jerry cans filled with fuel and then deliver them to individual vehicles immediately off the ship.

The jerry can is just an example, but I go down rabbit holes like this all the time, which I suppose is why I do this podcast.

Everyone has their own interests, and what we are interested in at any given moment will also depend on chance based on what we encounter.

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Jesus Chan asks, Hello Gary. I’ve always wondered – does ‘cold’ actually exist as a separate phenomenon/distinct physical entity, or is it just the absence of heat? Could we ever design an instrument to measure ‘cold’ directly, or would it just end up measuring the lack of heat like a thermometer does?

Jesus, you will be pleased to note that you are not the first person to ask this question. In fact, ancient philosophers were asking this same question over 2000 years ago.

The answer to your question is really straightforward. Cold is just the absence of heat. Full stop.

That is why there is an absolute zero, but there isn’t really an absolute hot. There sort of is, but it is a theoretical limit so far beyond what we could measure or experience that, for all practical purposes, is meaningless.

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Jason Tripp asks, As a devoted Packers fan, where is the most unique place you’ve tuned in to watch a game. Do you have any funny stories of trying to watch a game while traveling the world?

I have one good one. In January 2012, I was on a ship off the coast of Antarctica. The Packers were the defending Super Bowl Champions and had gone 15-1 during the regular season.

On January 15, they were playing the New York Giants in their first round of the playoffs. Watching and listening to the game wasn’t an option given where I was, but they did have a computer on board with a very poor yet expensive internet connection.

Several times during the course of the game, I went to get score updates while the game was in progress.

They ended up losing an embarrassing 37 to 20 upset.