Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Will Murphy asks, “Hi Gary do you think that rugby union is better the American football, and have you ever seen the All Blacks play?”

As all of you know, I am an American and a big fan of the Green Bay Packers NFL team. Other than just watching scores online, it is difficult to follow rugby from the United States.

There is a big streaming service in the US, Peacock TV, which now offers Rugby League matches from English Premier League as well as some rugby sevens tournaments. However, I’m not sure how to watch Rugby Union games. It would probably involve using a VPN to watch it from another country. As for the All Blacks, I have, in fact, watched the All Blacks. In fact, I was in the stands at Eden Park in 2011 to watch New Zealand beat France to win the World Cup.

A fact that makes Kiwis envious every time I mention it ?

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Jason Scott asks, “Do you really love ScotteVest?”

Yeah. I’ve been wearing Scottevest gear for years. If you go look at some of my photos, you’ll see photos of me in Antarctica and the Arctic Circle wearing Scottevest jackets. There are lots of other photos of me wearing Scottevest shirts and pants.

I’ve been wearing their stuff for years before I started this podcast.I’m friends with the owner of the company Scott Jordan, and I’ve visited their headquarters in Sun Valley, Idaho. Scott is also a fan of the podcast and is probably listening to this right now.

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Sergio Ortiz Orendain asks, “Hi Gary Arndt, given your background in math, is there a specific branch in math you are interested in?”

If I had continued to pursue math, I probably would have focused on number theory. I did a project in my senior year of Fermat’s Little Theorem and pseudoprimes.

This branch of mathematics has become relevant with the increased importance of cryptography.

But I also don’t think I’d make a good researcher or academic. My interests are too varied to focus on a single subject.

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Graham McIntosh asks “Who in your opinion was the best James Bond? What was the best James Bond Theme Tune? Your favorite Bond film?”

I think that you have to go with Sean Connery as the best Bond, but I would also think that Daniel Craig is a close second. I think the quality of Bond movies has been a U-shaped curve with the best movies being the earliest and the most recent.

The best song is probably You Only Live Twice by Nacy Sinatra.

As for the best movie, that is easy. Goldfinger. I’m not even sure there is any debate on that subject.

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Bairbre N’Cinneide (kin-ade-ah)asks, “As a Northern American citizen can you explain why Americans associate leprechauns with the Irish. Our traditions have the “little people” which are closer to fairies. Leprechauns look more like German traditions. Love the podcast, and I’m telling all my fellow artists about it ??”

The answer is that leprechauns are Irish, and they were originally considered fairies.

In particular, leprechauns were considered solitary fairies, as opposed to fairies that lived in a fairy tree or a fairy mound. Over time they were ignored in Irish folklore until they were repopularized by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats in the 19th century.

The leprechauns were traditionally portrayed as wearing red clothing.

The portrayal of leprechauns wearing green was a function of the Irish diaspora in the United States. Green was the traditional Irish color, so leprechauns started wearing green.

From there, leprechauns just became a symbol of Ireland, along with shamrocks.

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Ayo Abíólá asks, “Tell us more about EE-Weekly. Why did you decide to do a weekly podcast. Why a different format (has a co-host? How long will it be? Will EED eventually become EEW or will both co-exist. Any overlap????”

For those of you not on the Facebook group, I’m launching a new weekly podcast called Everything Everywhere Weekly, which will be available to supporters over on Patreon.com

The weekly show will be a guest and me talking about the previous week’s episodes in a rapid-fire format, plus a few more from the back catalog.

This show will not change at all, and the weekly show is designed purely as an extra bonus for all the show’s supporters.

I’ve already recorded the first episode with Chris Christensen, the host of the Amateur Traveler Podcast.

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Robyn Lingard asks, “Some time ago, you mentioned attending a podcast conference. Without giving away the secrets for creating your daily magic, what were some tips you picked up?”

Well, I’ve been to lots of conferences over the years, and you learn almost nothing at conferences. Pretty much anything you need to know you can learn quicker, easier, and better, online.

The reason to go to conferences is to meet people and network.

That being said, I can and have talked about the subject of podcasting for hours. Basically, you have to put in the work. Most podcasts never make it to episode seven because they give up.

You can do a podcast for fun. There is nothing wrong with that, but if you want to take it seriously, you need to put in the work and treat it like a business and a media property.

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Kyle Kenyon asks, “Can you recommend any books or resources that give a good (high level) overview of ancient cultures?”

There are a lot of books, but there are two which come to mind off the top of my head that I really like.

The first book is 1491 by Charles Mann. The book covers the latest research on what we know about native peoples who lived in the Americas before European contact. My of my episode on the Great Dying of the Americas was based on his book.

The second is SPQR by Mary Beard. In it, she gives a good overview of the rise of the Roman Republic from a single city to the leading force in the Mediterranean.

Even though I have a pretty good basic understanding, I’m personally looking for recommendations for books about Carthage and Phoenicians, and Ancient China. Feel free to leave them in the Facebook group if you have any.

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Dave Bitschy asks, “Do you listen to podcasts? I’ve always wondered if podcasters listen to others. Maybe they are too busy producing their own they have no time. My other favourite is Dan Carlins hardcore history. It’s the complete opposite format to yours.”

I certainly do listen to podcasts. I’ve listened to Hardcore History since it first came out. In fact, when I came up with the idea for the format for this show, I purposely did the opposite of what most other podcasts were doing with long-format shows.

There are a lot of shows which go in-depth on single topics, and I figured there was room for a show which was more frequent, covering a wider variety of topics.

I don’t listen to as many podcasts as I used to because I can’t listen to podcasts while I’m working on a show.

I do listen to podcasts when I’m doing other things.

Most of what I listen to nowadays are either history podcasts or podcasts about podcasting.

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The last question comes from Evan Byrne. He asks, “Out of all the places you have been in the world, if you had to choose one place to “retire” for the rest of your days, where would you choose and why?”

I get this question a lot. The truth is that there are a lot of great cities in the world. Places like Vancouver, Singapore, London, and Rome are all great places that I enjoy visiting.

Narrowing things down to a single city is difficult because it depends on where you live in any particular city. There are also many cities which are nice but are incredibly expensive.

So, I don’t know if I have an answer to that question.

There are certain spots I’ve found around the world which I felt would be a great places to build a house. There is one spot I found in Montenegro near Lake Skadar that has an incredible view.

There is another spot I found on a rather remote corner of a remote island in the Pacific. I visited a beach that had close to no visitors, even locals, in the last ten years because you had to walk down a long flight of stairs down a cliff to get to the beach.

Getting shipments of anything there would be difficult, but it is an amazing place.

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Let’s get right into it. The first question comes from Shelby Frizzo. They asks, “Of all the cultural & religious celebrations that you have been to across the globe, what has been your favorite and why?!”

I haven’t really been to a lot of religious celebrations, and it isn’t something that I go out of my way to experience. That being said, I have found myself at the right time and place and have experienced a few.

I was in Singapore exploring the city when I came across a Hindu Holi celebration. I didn’t really know anything about it, and I had no idea what to expect. I ended up spending several hours there photographing everyone, and it was extremely messy. If you haven’t seen a Holi celebration, it is basically a giant fight with colored powder. The powder gets into everything. My hair was pastel colors for a week, my clothes were basically permanently dyed, and I had to spend a whole lot of time cleaning my camera.

I also happened to have been in Jerusalem during Holy Week. Again, I didn’t plan it, but I was there before Holy Week was starting, so I just extended my stay there to experience it.I got to experience Passover in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. I also visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on Easter Sunday for western Christians and Palm Sunday for Orthodox Christians.

I could probably spend an episode talking about everything I learned and experienced that week, but those two would definitely be the highlights.

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Kevin Hultgren asks,

Was your interest with Rome and The Roman Empire brought on by your travels or were they the reason for your travels? My suspicion? You’ve always been interested and traveling it gave a much better base of knowledge.

It was definitely something that was developed while I was traveling. I had read several general books about ancient Rome before I started traveling, but it was definitely something that piqued my interest while I was on the road. There are simply a LOT of Roman ruins around the Mediterranean, many of which are in pretty good shape for being 2000 years old. Many of them can be found in places that you don’t think of as being Roman, like the city of Jerash in Jordan, Caesarea in Israel, Merida in Spain, and a whole host of what are some of the best sites in the world in North Africa, most of which I have yet to visit.

We simply know more about the Romans than we do about the Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Sumerians, etc., because they left behind far more written material. Most of what we have from other Ancient cultures consists of stone engravings or archeological finds.

In comparison, we have Julius Caesar’s first-hand written account of his campaign in Gaul.

Also, as you probably might have seen from the various episodes I’ve done, the western world is still profoundly influenced by ancient Rome, down to our calendar and alphabet.

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Joey Warren asks,“With all of your travels is there one thing or place here in the states that you find particularly interesting?”

Absolutely. I’ve been to every US state twice, and I’ve visited half of the 426 sites in the National Park Service.

Probably the one thing that really stands out is the trips I’ve taken in Alaska. In particular, the lesser visited parks such has Katmai National Park, Wrangel-St. Elias National Park, and parks above the Arctic Circle,

Some of these, like Wrangle-St. Elias, aren’t particularly difficult to visit, it’s just that Denali and Glacier Bay get all of the attention and are even easier to visit.

I could talk for hours about all the great attractions which can be found in the United States. There are a few places that get most of the visitors, like Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon, but there is plenty of great stuff beyond that.

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Amy Elizabeth Morrison asks, “Will Thor Thompson be running in the 2024 presidential election?”

No Amy. Thor does not run for president. Countries run to led by Thor Thomsen.

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Chris Gordon asks, “While you were away did you record new episodes or did you double up before left? Taking time off can be exhausting.”I did not. I produce and record all the episodes of the podcast just before they are released.

I was attending a podcast conference, which forced me to adopt a slightly more normal schedule. Instead of staying up really late, I started waking up really early.

I’ve kept to that schedule since I’ve gotten back, and I’m working on trying to get ahead of things a bit.

However, until I can hire someone to help out, I assumed I’ll always be producing the shows at least the day before.

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Jeff Loftus asks, “I assume you track listens on individual episodes. Can you name 1 episode where you’re surprised at the lack of listens and one episode where you’re surprised how many listens it received?”

While I do know the stats for each episode, there isn’t a whole lot of variation in downloads. The growth of the show tends to overwhelm any individual variation in episode topics, so it is hard to separate that from the data. There have only been a few cases where an episode was shared on Reddit or something, and that resulted in a sort term spike, but it is impossible to predict those. One was the episode on Alan Francis, the world’s greatest horseshoe pitcher, and another was the episode on morse code.

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Mallory Moyer asks, “Did you know there are volcanoes on Io the moon?” – Luke Who is someone from history you’d like to get a cup of coffee or a beer with?

Luke, I did know that. There have been photos taken of the volcanoes erupting by probes sent to jupiter. You can clearly see the plume of the volcano against the backdrop of space.

As for who I’d like to have a drink with, I actually have an answer to that: Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was a very smart guy with a wide range of interests who lived just before the scientific and industrial revolutions of the 19th century.

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Trina Wellington DeAnda asks, “Did you find your passport?”

No, I did not, but I also haven’t really looked. I’m going to be moving within a month and when I do I’ll have an opportunity to go through all my boxes.

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Millie Shaw, asks, “As a public speaking teacher, I so deeply appreciate your well-crafted messages with a clear thesis and structure. Each podcast is a beautiful example of an engaging informative speech. How do you manage the gargantuan task of sifting through the available information and narrowing your focus to fit a roughly 10-minute episode? I find that this is often the biggest challenge for my students. Do you start with a really strong thesis and work from there? What advice would you give a novice speech builder on how to choose the best/most relevant info?”

First, Millie, let me say that I competed in academic speech and debate for years, and was also a coach for about ten years as well. I competed in Expemoranesou Speech in high school and was one spot away from making the final round at the national tournament.

My background in competitive speech was, far and away, the most important thing I’ve done in terms of my ability to do this podcast.

Most of what I do nowadays is pretty intuitive. I don’t start with a thesis so much as just something which is interesting. That has to be the kernel of any episode. There has to be an interesting story behind whatever the episode is about.

This podcast usually isn’t about crafting an argument or defending a thesis. My episodes are usually not trying to persuade anyone. I’m just trying to tell an interesting story about some person, place, or thing that most listeners might not be familiar with.

Filtering out the unnecessary information is more of an art than a science. I’m often trying to condense something very complex, something which someone probably wrote an entire book or did an entire doctoral dissertation about.

In trying to explain something in a short amount of time, the most important thing is that people walk away with the gist of the story. The thing you have to ask yourself is does this support the core of the story, or does it detract from the story.

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Michael Miller, asks “What are your thoughts on the in-depth tours now that things are getting back to “normal”?

I absolutely still want to do it and I’m talking to a company about planning the tours.

The problem is that when I first floated the idea, the show was about 10% the size of what it is now, and I still got a ton of interest. Now, I assume it would be even greater.

I really don’t want to run a large tour that has to move around by bus. However, if it is a small tour, it becomes difficult to justify taking so much time away from the podcast.

One possibility I’ve considered is something like a river cruise, where we could, in theory, take over an entire boat. It would much simpler for me to organize as I wouldn’t have to deal with hotels, it could support a larger group, and we could do special events on the ship each night, including special lectures.

Not exactly what I was originally thinking, but probably much more feasible.