Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Max S from the Discord server asks, Is Spain the only country to have reached out about ads? I always appreciate those episodes as they help build my knowledge about a specific topic. How did that relationship come to be? Is there a country that you’re surprised to have listeners from?

Every advertiser whose ad I read has reached out in some way. However, the relationship with Spain is special. They were the very first advertiser for the show. In fact, they reached out to me very early on in the show to ask how we could work together. My relationship with Spain goes back to 2010. I had been traveling around the world for 3 years and had grown my travel blog to a pretty good size at the time. A representative from the Valencia Tourism board, shout out to Joantxo if you are listening, reached out to me and asked if I would speak at a conference they were holding on tourism and the internet. It was the first time anyone in the tourism industry, anywhere in the world, reached out to me.

Since then, I’ve returned to Spain many, many times. Despite all my contacts in the travel and tourism industry, Spain has been the only destination that has truly grasped the power of podcasting.

As far as a country I’m surprised to have listeners from, that would have to be Eritrea.

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Kelli Kerns Brockington from the Facebook group asks, How do you keep your voice & throat healthy while talking up to 20 – 25 min per episode?

Very easy. I don’t talk for most of the day. It isn’t that I’m trying to protect my voice, its just that I live alone and I’m not talking to anyone most of the time. I will literally go some days without seeing another human and just be working on the next show.

Someone like a teacher who is in front of people talking all day would have far greater issues with their voice than I ever would.

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Barb Grass-Miller from the Facebook group asks, Is there a destination in the U.S. that you haven’t visited but you’ve always wanted to go?

There are many places I haven’t been, but at the top of my list are the remaining national parks I haven’t visited.

I’ve visited the vast majority of US national parks, and I was set to finish visiting them back in 2020, but the pandemic changed that. The remaining parks I have yet to visit are the US Virgin Islands National Park, Big Bend National Park in Texas, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Channel Islands in California, and New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia.

None of these parks is particularly challenging to visit; I just haven’t gotten around to them yet. Thankfully, I’ve already been to the most difficult-to-visit parks in Alaska and American Samoa.

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Deborah Wales on Patreon asks, Which city do you prefer and why: Amsterdam, Paris, or Munich?I have to take Munich off the list because I haven’t really spent any time there. I just drove through it while on a trip visiting UNESCO World Heritage sites in Bavaria. Amsterdam is a much more comfortable place to visit as an English speaker. You can get around Amsterdam, and most of the Netherlands, for that matter, just fine using English. Paris requires a bit more work, not a lot, but there is more to see and explore, I think. If I were to create a list of things I haven’t seen in both cities, my Paris list is probably longer, even though I’ve been to Paris more times than I’ve been to Amsterdam.

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Henry Suski from Patreon asks, How much time did you spend with expats or western tourists (from Aus, NZ, Europe, North America) while traveling? The dirty secret of traveling is that you are going to meet more travelers than locals. If you think about it, this is actually to be expected.

If you are staying at a hotel, a guest house, or a hostel, you are going to interact with other tourists. When you visit tourist sites, it is going to be other tourists who are there.

Depending on where you are traveling, there might be a language issue. Locals who work in a tourist-facing business will see an endless stream of visitors coming and going.

I actually stayed at a hostel once in Minneapolis, which I where I lived for years before I started traveling, and while I was there I mostly interacted with foreign tourists who were staying there…just because they happened to be there.

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Alan Massaro on Facebook asks, What is your Favorite historically based film and one you wish they would make?

That is an easy question. The greatest historical movie, and my favorite movie of all time, is Lawrence of Arabia.

Oddly enough, despite my love of the movie and my several visits to Wadi Rum in Jordan, I have yet to do an episode on either TE Lawrence or the Great Arab Revolt.

A great historical movie doesn’t necessarily mean it was accurate. There is always dramatic license taken when adapting history for the screen. Other favorites of mine include:

Patton

A Man for All Seasons

Cleopatra

A Bridge Too Far

The Passion of Joan of Arc

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

The Last Valley

Kingdom of Heaven (the Director’s Cut)

As far as what I would like to see, I think a film on the Battle of Alesia would be really interesting.

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Matt Moehring from the Facebook group asks, Was there any legal wrangling when the movie ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ was released?

Nope. I have been using Everything Everywhere since 2006, the year I registered the Everything-Everywhere.com domain name. Back in 2010, T-Mobile and Orange Mobile in the UK merged, and their new name was Everything Everywhere. They actually reached out to me because I think they were more worried about me than I was about them. In the end, they were in a different business and a different country, so there were no real issues with the name. The same is true of the movie. If anything, more people have discovered the website and the podcast accidentally in the process of searching for the other brands, so I’d say if anything it was a very small net positive.

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Chris Delloiacono on Facebook asks, What is the most extreme or daring adventure or stunt you did during your travels?

I wouldn’t call it a stunt per se, but I did go bungee jumping twice in New Zealand. I did a jump in Queenstown and once off the Auckland Harbor Bridge.I haven’t been skydiving, and I have no desire to do so.I’ve been in the water with great white sharks in South Africa, but I was in a cage, and it sounds far more dangerous than it actually was.

I’m not sure I can say I’ve really done anything else I’d call extreme. I’ve done a lot of fun things, but I’m really not an adrenaline junkie.

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Tracy Swanson Romig on Facebook asks, You have traveled so much but now you stay home to work on this wonderful podcast. Have you ever thought about a pet? If so, what kind would you want?

Unfortunately, the building I live in doesn’t allow cats or dogs. The closest I’ve ever come to pets was a huge 175 gallon saltwater coral reef aquarium I had before I started traveling. It was beautiful and really stood out, but it was also a lot of work.I’ve considered getting a nano reef aquarium, something around 20 gallons or smaller, but haven’t made it a priority.

Currently, the only thing I have are houseplants.

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Daniel Thomaschek asks Do you have a favorite metal band to listen to?

I would not say that I’m a heavy metal fan per se. I listened to Metallica and Black Sabbath in high school, but I actually listened to Black Sabbath coming from a blues direction, not a metal direction.

There are two bands I have a soft spot for, and again, I wouldn’t say I’m a fan of them per se.

The first is Rhapsody of Fire. Wikipedia calls them an Italian symphonic power metal band.

I discovered them in the weirdest way possible. Sometime, about 20 years ago, I fell asleep on the couch watching TV. When I woke up, I don’t even remember the channel it was on, I remember seeing a flaming skull on the screen.

It was a music video that also had Christopher Lee in it, who played Saruman in The Lord of the Rings movies. The song was Unholy Warcry, and the Band was Rhapsody, now known as Rhapsody of Fire due to a trademark conflict.

The other band is the Japanese band Baby Metal. It is a cross between a cutsie Japanese Kawaii band and heavy metal. It sounds ridiculous at first, but it actually works.

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Markus Brütsch asks , Gary, when you set out to travel the world (like a high-class bum ? ), what logic did you use for your destination countries and places? Alphabetical? Bucketlist? Ranking World Heritage ranking? Throw of a dice? Thank you for your good work! When I first started, my plan was pretty simple. I went west. I crossed the Pacific Ocean and jumped from island to island as best I could. I never really planned more than a week or two ahead of time.

It took me most of 2007 to cross the Pacific. When I got to South Korea I began going south until I got to Australia.

After a few years, my travels became more opportunistic. I’d go places where I was invited, or I’d manage to go somewhere for a conference and then take side trips in the region.

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The final question comes from Richard Short who asks When did North American people begin to speak in a distinctly North American accent. In other words, Gary, when did your voice, that we all know and love, historically evolve into how we hear you now.

Basically, the evolution of the North American English accent began almost immediately once people arrived and were separated from England.

I should note that there isn’t one single accent. There are multiple accents that can be found across the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. That being said, for the most part, there has been less diversity in accents in North America than there has been in the UK, where towns just 20 miles apart might speak with very different accents.

Many of the North American accent features are actually elements of 17th and 18th-century accents from England, which died out over there, but remained here. In particular, the pronunciation of the letter ‘r’.

This is probably a subject for a full episode, but there are some places, like Smith Island, Maryland, which speak an accent that is considered to be the closest accent to what might have been spoken in Elizabethan England.

This is not just an English thing. Once populations are separated, changes start to occur. That is why French spoken in Quebec is spoken with a very different accent from French spoken in France, and why there are so many different Spanish accents in the Americas.

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Let’s get started. Alan Massaro on Facebook asks Gary, You have to pronounce many foreign names and places. What do you do to make sure you’re getting them right? Love the show!

Alan, you get a special sticker on your homework because this is the one question I have been waiting for someone to ask.

This is actually one of the most difficult things I do, and it is something that I have to go through at least once per episode, if not multiple times.

So, for starters, I’m not sure I always get it right. That being said, I do try very hard to get it right, at least as well as I can, given that I speak English. If the word comes from a very common language, such as Arabic, Spanish, or Chinese, the simplest and easiest thing to do is to put the word in Google Translate and let it pronounce it. I’ll also usually see what it sounds like in English. Google Translate is not always correct. The next option, if available, is to check the IPA pronunciation. IPA stands for International Phonetic Alphabet, and you might have seen this at the beginning of some Wikipedia entries. If the article has the IPA pronunciation, I can cut and paste it and put it into a site called IPA-reader.com. If Google Translate and the IPA pronunciation agree, then I’ll usually go with that.

However, sometimes, there is no IPA pronunciation available. In those cases, I’ll try to find another source. This will often mean finding a YouTube video where someone uses the word.

Some online dictionaries provide pronunciations as well.

Where it really gets confusing is that sometimes there are different pronunciations floating around.I think I’ve gotten better at it over time, but even if I can get the correct pronunciation, I still have to actually say it, which is often the sticking point because some sounds are just hard to say in some languages. In such cases, I just sort of do the best I can.

The point is, there is a lot more that goes into getting a correct pronunciation than most people realize. There have been rare cases where I have spent the better part of an hour trying to find someone saying a word

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Thomas Nicolaysen on Patreon asks, With the holiday season upon us, I was wondering about gifts. What is a meaningful or useful gift you have received? Maybe something that you use when you travel, do photography, or record your podcasts?

Generally, I don’t like technical gifts. This is mainly because if I need something for photography or podcasting, I want something very specific, and unless you happen to know a lot about those subjects, and most people I know don’t, then you aren’t going to get the right thing.I usually get stuff like clothing or household items because I usually forget to buy that sort of stuff for myself.

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Jordan from the Discord server asks, I have an inside baseball question; do you record different ads for different localities? For example, are there ad reads you do for ads that will only air for listeners in the US, and others only for listeners in the UK, and so on, or is every sponsor the same globally?

The answer is no. This is because almost every advertiser is just looking to advertise in one country. About 80% of this podcast’s audience is in the United States, which is the market that almost every advertiser is targeting. If it is a digital product that can be downloaded, there’s no real need to run different ad reads.

If you are listening in a different country, the ads you hear will be very different. Some listeners outside of the United States and Canada will hear mostly inserted ads that are not read by me. If you are in the US and Canada, you might hear mostly ads read by me.

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Dog on a Swing on the Discord Server asks a similar question, Hey Gary, do advertisers have any say In what type of episodes their ads will appear in? I imagine some companies wouldn’t want to see their products associated with the Bataan Death March, but would be happy to be in front of an episode on Roller Coaster or Pumpkins. The answer is no, and in fact, the subject has never even been brought up. I think most advertisers know what they are getting themselves into when they advertise on this podcast and they realize that even if the subject isn’t a cheery one, it will at least be handled in a responsible way.

Also, even if they wanted to just appear on certain episodes, I couldn’t really do that because I often don’t know what I’m going to be doing on an episode on till a day or two in advance.

The only exception to this is if someone is doing a baked-in ad on a fully sponsored episode. I’ve only done a handful of these since the show began.

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Carl Freuden from Facebook asks, We’re on a one-day cruise stop at Villefranche-sur-Mer, halfway between Monte Carlo and Nice. Given such a short stop, which city would you choose to visit and why?

Carl, the good news is that you can’t really make a bad decision here. Both Nice and Monaco would be good options. If I were you, I’d go to Monaco, if for no other reason than you can say you visited Monaco, which is an independent country. Monaco is really small, and you can literally walk across the country in about an hour. You can also see all the luxury yachts that are there, check out the Monte Carlo Casino, and pretend you are a high roller for at least a few hours. If you do go to Nice, I’d suggest visiting the Matisse and the Chagall museums.

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Tom Allen from Patreon asks, What is your rule-of-thumb for how “stable” a topic needs to be before you make an episode? Historical stuff is pretty stable — interpretations change slowly, but technology topics that are very important to our lives may evolve quickly. I’m thinking of energy, EVs, AI, humanoid robotics…

It isn’t an issue of stability. There needs to be something to actually talk about. Of the topics you’ve listed, I’ve actually done episodes on most of them, including electric cars and most forms of energy.I’ve seen lots of theoretical technologies that have been talked about that never really pan out. So, until something has actually been developed, I don’t think there is much to talk about.I have done episodes on the James Webb Telescope and Starship, both of which were in its early stages when I did the episode, and I’ve done follow up episodes since. That said, I’ve been researching topics like Artificial Intelligence and quantum computers, but I’m not really sure I’m ready to do an episode that makes sense given the show’s time constraints.

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heyfaulk from Patreon asks, I love to hear about the many UNESCO sites, and how many you have visited – please keep it up! As you do so many WWI & WWII episodes, what was the most interesting or moving site you have visited during your travels? Cheers from the Vancouver completionist club!

You can see the complete list of UNESCO sites I’ve been to on my website. As of this recording, I have been to 414 sites around the world. As far as moving sites related to WWI and WWII, it would have to be either Auschwitz or the American Cemetery at Normandy in France. That being said, there are a lot of interesting WWII-related sites in Belgium and the Netherlands as well. The museums in Bastone, Eindhoven, Nijmegen, and others are among the best war museums.

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Karl Williams on Facebook asks, With Olivia doing the research for some of the episodes, do you let her choose from the list, or is the episode choice solely yours?

She actually has quite a bit of leeway in what ideas she wants to pursue. I do have a master list of show ideas, and some of those do come from that list, but she has also come up with her own ideas. We meet once a week to go over which episodes will be worked on, so I have an idea of what she’ll be working on and can approve it before she puts in the work researching and writing. It is a lot easier to write and research an episode if you are interested in the topic, not just doing something because you are told to do it.