Everything Everywhere Daily

In the year 52 BC, the Roman General Julius Caesar fought the last major battle in the conquest of Gaul. The implications of the battle have reverberated throughout history and can still be felt in the world today. But the real story isn’t the implications of the battle, but how it was won. It was one of the most audacious gambles in military history, and it worked. Learn more about the Battle of Alesia on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

In 1787, Russian Empress Catherine the Great took a six-month trip to visit her newly acquired territories in the Crimean. Along the way, she sailed down the Dnieper River and saw many of the shiny villages in the new Russian Crimean. However, there was a problem. The villages were all fake. Learn more about Potemkin Villages, and how they still exist in the modern world, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

What do lasers, photovoltaic cells, the transistor, digital cameras, cell phone technology, the communication satellite, computer networking, radio astronomy, and the UNIX operating system have in common? They were all invented or developed at the same place by the greatest collection of scientists and engineers ever assembled. Learn more about Bell Labs, the greatest research laboratory in history, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Every 17 years one of the grandest spectacles in nature takes place. Billions of insects in a seemingly coordinated fashion will emerge from the ground and cover the skies and the trees. This is all part of their extremely unusual life cycle which consists of an extremely long juvenile period and very short adulthood. Learn more about periodic cicadas and their unusual behavior and life cycle on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Have you ever been really full after a meal? Like really really full? Could you imagine eating and never feeling full? Like going to an all you can eat fish restaurant and then getting kicked out for eating too much and going fishing so you can eat more fish? Well, there was one Frenchman who could never be satiated and the results of this condition were….astonishing. Learn more about Tarrare and his medical condition on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Have you ever looked at a map and said to yourself “Wow, Greenland is really big!”, only to then look at a globe and realize, that Greeland wasn’t actually that big? If so, then you have discovered the Mercator Projection. A map that was originally created in 1569 and is still with us today. Learn more about the Mercator Projection, its problems, and its benefits, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

For a professional musician, their instrument is their livelihood. If making music is your career, it isn’t surprising that many top musicians will pay the equivalent of a new car on their instrument. However, there is a class of musician which have instruments which are far more valuable than a car. They are the price of a mansion. Learn more about the world of extremely expensive musical instruments, and why musicians play them, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

When Europeans began sailing the high seas on extended voyages, the most deadly thing they encountered wasn’t enemy navies, starvation, or even shipwrecks. It was a painful disease where your body would literally start falling apart and it killed more than 2,000,000 sailors between the voyage of Columbus to the middle of the 19th century. Learn more about scurvy and how it was eventually conquered on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Comeback stories are some of the best stories in sports. Whether it is coming back from a huge deficit, or being on the brink of elimination in a series, these are often some of the most dramatic moments in sports history. They don’t happen that often because once you are down by a large amount, the odds of a comeback become minuscule. There was one comeback, however, which stands out above all others. Learn more about the 2013 America’s Cup on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

In 1941, a young artistic prodigy released his first motion picture. It had enormous anticipation, received incredible reviews, and earned nine Academy Award nominations. However, the film was a financial failure because the vast majority of theaters refused to show it. In the 80 years since its release, it has been named the greatest film of all time on multiple lists by critics and directors. Learn more about Citizen Kane.

If you’ve done your share of flying, you are probably familiar with the three-letter airport codes which identify every commercial airport in the world. Airports like DFW, LGA, and HOU are easy to figure out. However, why is there an X in LAX? How did Washington Dulles wind up with IAD? And what is the deal with almost every airport code in Canada? Learn more about airport codes and the weird logic behind them on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

In the process of doing research, I often come across various stories which are interesting but might not be worthy of a full episode. They often are more like facts than stories. Every so often I save up those stories for a special episode because I really hate to let things go to waste. So without further ado, here is the Spanish potpourri episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Located in the Tower of London are a collection of objects, some of which date back 800 years, which are the physical symbols of the British Monarchy. These objects have a value that would almost be impossible to measure given both their intrinsic and historical worth. They are the physical embodiment of the British Monarchy. Learn more about the British Crown Jewels and their role in the British monarchy on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five who died of cervical cancer in 1951 at the age of 31. Before she passed, a tissue sample of her cancer cells was taken. Those cells have been the basis for decades of cancer and biological research, and have also been at the center of one of the greatest medical ethics controversies in modern times. Learn more about the immortal Henrietta Lacks on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

I’m guessing that almost everyone listening to this podcast has, within the last day, used a zipper. They are ubiquitous at this point and most people have never given them much thought. Yet, its invention was a rather inspired leap of creativity and required the development of several other technologies before it could even become a thing. Learn more about the zipper, how it was invented and how it is used today, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.