Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More

Located in the South Atlantic Ocean, situated between South America and Africa, lies the most remote human settlement on Earth. There, a community of a little over 250 people eke out a living over 1,500 miles from the next closest humans.  Getting there is difficult, and living there is probably even harder.  Learn more about Tristian da Cuhna and how such an isolated community manages to survive...

When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he declared his new regime to be The Third Reich and that it would last 1,000 years. It turned out he was off by 988 years.  The big question for many people outside of Germany was and still is, if that was the third Reich, what were the first two Reichs?  ..and for non-German speakers, what exactly is a Reich? Learn more about the first and second Reichs a...

In the year 79, Mount Vesuvius, a volcano located east of the modern-day city of Naples, erupted.  Vesuvius had erupted before, but this eruption was different. It ejected an enormous amount of ash which completely buried several towns and cities below the mountain. Almost 2,000 years later, the largest of those cities, Pompeii, was rediscovered, and what archeologists found revolutionized our und...

Early in the morning of August 21, 1986, in a valley near Lake Nyos, Cameroon, something horrible happened.  1,746 people were killed, as were over 3,500 cattle and almost every other animal that breathed air.  There were no signs of violence or destruction. Everyone and everything seemed to have simply died.   They were the victims of one of Earth's rarest and most frightening disasters.  Learn m...

In September 1944, despite over half a year remaining in World War II, the Allies began preparing for an eventual post-war world. One of the biggest questions being discussed was what to do with Germany. After two world wars with Germany in just a quarter century, no one wanted a third. One American official developed a plan which would basically destroy Germany as a modern country to prevent them...

In the year 1900, a crew of sponge divers was looking for sponges off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera. While they were searching, they found the remains of an ancient shipwreck. The wreck contained over 30 marble statues, pieces of glasswork, and one corroded metal object that no one could identify. 75 years later, using new technology, they discovered what that hunk of metal was designe...

Every form of life which has ever been discovered, regardless of its size or how it metabolizes energy, has one thing in common.  They are based on the element carbon.  Carbon is the most important building block for life. It holds a unique place on the periodic table, and it can combine with itself and other elements in so many different ways that there is an entire branch of chemistry devoted to...

Ladies and Gentlemen of the podcast audience, I would like you to consider Chewbacca.  Chewbacca is an 8-foot-tall Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the moon of Endor. Why would a Wookiee, an 8-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks? It makes no sense.  Why am I talking about Chewbacca in the introduction of this podcast? It makes no sense...

The United States Congres is divided into two houses. The larger of the two houses, the House of Representatives, is led by a single representative known as the Speaker of the House. The duties and powers of the Speaker of the House have changed since the office was established in 1789 as they are entirely determined by the members of the House of Representatives itself. Learn more about the Speak...

Sometime about 3,200 years ago, one of the most famous wars in ancient history took place.  Maybe. It has been the subject of some of the greatest works of western literature, and it has given us some of the most enduring cultural references.  It was also the subject of one of the greatest archeological finds of the 19th century. Learn more about the city of Troy and the Trojan War on this episode...

What if I told you there is a place within the borders of the United States where, theoretically, you could get away with murder scot-free? No matter what you did, a jury of your peer wouldn’t convict you because you could never convene a jury. According to at least one legal scholar, such a place does exist, and it is due to a loophole in the US Constitution. Learn more about the zone of death an...

When airplanes were developed in the early 20th century, the technology developed rapidly.  Within a matter of a couple of decades, aviation had become a norm for transporting people and delivering mail.  As flight technology kept improving, people assumed that it would keep improving to the point where everyone would own their own personal airplanes. …except that never happened.  Learn more about...

Every year, people around the world ring in the New Year.  How they do this, however, can differ radically from place to place. New Year’s traditions tend to be even more varied than Christmas celebrations. As with Christmas, traditions involve drinks, food, and rituals, but usually with a lot more noise and staying up later.  Learn more about traditions surrounding how we ring in the New Year on...

New Year’s Day is not only the day we turn over a new year on the calendar, but also a day where people start resolutions, companies begin new budgets, and everyone screws up writing checks.  While documenting our trips around the sun makes perfect sense, why do we use this day, January 1, as the starting point for our calendar years? Why not some other date? Learn more about how January 1st becam...

What is the greatest movie ever made? It seems like a highly subjective question that is impossible to answer. However, in 1952 the magazine of the British Film Institute took it upon itself to come up with an answer to the question.  They surveyed an international group of film professionals to ask them what they thought the greatest films of all time were. They have conducted the survey every de...

Divided between Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian West Bank lies the lowest point on the surface of the Earth: The Dead Sea. Not only is it the lowest point on Earth, but the sea is one of the saltiest bodies of water on the planet.  But how did this place come to exist, and is it true that it will completely disappear at some point? Learn more about the Dead Sea and how it came to be, on this e...

Abram Petrovich Gannibal was one of the most notable Russians of the 18th century.  He was the godson of Peter the Great.  He was among the most educated men and best engineers in the Russian Empire.  He served as a general to Catherine the Great.  ..and one of his great-grandsons was the greatest poet in the history of the Russian Language.  There was, however, one thing that set him apart from a...

Approximately 700 years ago, something happened to the Earth’s climate.  The world started to cool down. It wasn’t dramatic enough to cause another ice age and cause ice caps to cover the poles of the Earth, but it did result in significant changes.  In fact, many historians think for a period of about 500 years, this shift in the climate dramatically influenced human history.  Learn more about th...

Every year, primarily in Commonwealth countries, the day after Christmas is a legal holiday.  It is a rather odd holiday in that it doesn’t celebrate anything or anyone in particular. Most people who celebrate the day have no clue what the origins of the holiday are, and many of the people who think they know the origins of the day are wrong. Learn more about Boxing Day and how the day after Chris...

In the very early morning of Christmas Day, 1914, something remarkable happened on the western front during the First World War.  Soldiers in the trenches on both sides of no man’s land ceased fighting. Not only did they stop fighting, but they came out of their trenches to meet each other to celebrate Christmas.  It has become one of the most mythologized events of the war and one of the oddest e...

Of the many traditions associated with the Christmas season, one of the biggest is food. Foods that are often eaten only at this time of the year and seldom outside of the season.  Unlike other Christmas traditions, food can vary greatly in different places, as well as through time. Many Christmas foods eaten in the past can’t even be found today.  Learn more about Christmas food and how these tra...

Every year, sometime around the end of summer, it seems, you start hearing the very familiar songs of Christmas.  Every year, we hear the exact same songs, many of which have been passed down for centuries.  Where did these songs come from, and why do we call Christmas songs “carols”?  Learn more about Christmas carols and Christmas music and the origin of these songs on this episode of Everything...

Twice a year, the sun reaches an extreme point in the sky. It is the day with the least amount of sunlight or the most amount of sunlight, depending on where in the world you happen to be.  It is a day that almost every early culture around the world recognized because it was the one day a year they could document by following the path of the sun.  Learn more about the solstice, how it works and h...

In northern Greece, lying off the larger Chalkidiki peninsula is a place that is unique on planet Earth.  It only has a population of about 2,400 people scattered across 20 settlements and some random people living by themselves.   What makes this area unique is that all 2,400 of its citizens are monks and all are men….and women are not allowed to even enter.  Learn more about the Monastic Republi...

Today computers are ubiquitous. You are listening to this podcast right now on some sort of computing device.  However, before computers were machines, the name computer was given to people. Computers were people who computed.  In fact, the early days of NASA and the space program relied upon these human computers, most of whom were women.  Learn more about NASA’s human computers and the role they...