Author: Gary Arndt

One of the rarest and most expensive substances in the world is actually pretty disgusting. The way it is created is pretty gross, it looks pretty gross, and smells even worse. Despite how disgusting it is, there are people who will pay as much for it on a per gram basis as gold, yet when you get right down to it, no one really needs it. Learn more about ambergris, the treasure of the sea, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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I’ve had many episodes where I talked about a country being a “republic”. In fact, we often use the word but many people have a mistaken idea about what exactly a republic is. So what exactly is a republic, and how does it differ from a monarchy or other forms of government? What many people think a republic is isn’t necessarily wrong, but it also isn’t exactly right. Learn more about monarchies and republics and the differences between them on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Located in the heart of Paris, along the banks of the River Seine, lies the Louvre. It has over 750,000 square feet of gallery space, it has over 615,000 items in its collection, and in a non-pandemic year, gets over 10 million annual visitors. Yet, it wasn’t always a museum, and the way it acquired its collection wasn’t always above board. Learn more about the Louvre, the world’s greatest museum, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Weddings are full of traditions. Almost every aspect of a traditional western wedding involves customs that may date back hundreds or thousands of years. However, most people have no idea where these customs or traditions come from. They simply do them because that’s what you do when you have a wedding. Learn more about wedding traditions and learn where they came from, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Have you ever filled out a form online where you had to select a country and you noticed that one of the country options was the “United States Minor Outlying Islands”? If you have you might have wondered, what are these island? Who lives there? And why are these islands considered minor? Learn more about the United States Minor Outlying Islands and how they ended up on almost every drop down list of countries on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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The year 1972 saw two epic contests between the United States and the Soviet Union. The first was American Bobby Fischer defeating Soviet Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov for the world chess championship. The other took place on a basketball court in Munich in the gold medal game of the Olympics. It was one of the most controversial moments in Olympic history, and the ramifications of that game are still reverberating today.

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1902, the French governor of Indochina faced a huge problem in the city of Hanoi. They were suffering from a massive infestation of rats and the rats could carry diseases, including the plague. The governor implemented a plan to get rid of the rats. Thousands of people were recruited in the effort. However, the program had a serious flaw. Not only didn’t it solve the problem, but it made things worse. Learn more about The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre of 1902/

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Located on the French Riveria, just a few kilometers from the border of Italy, sandwiched between the mountains and the sea, is the tiny country of Monaco. Monaco has several distinctions among the countries in the world, not just for its size, but for its population and its history. Learn more about Monaco, the smallest and wealthiest principality in the world, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Secrecy is a huge part of military success. You want to be able to communicate with your own forces without the enemy finding out what your plans are. As America entered World War II, they were in need of a method of communication that couldn’t be cracked by Germany or Japan. They found the answer they were looking for in the languages of Native Americans. Learn more about Navajo Code Talkers and the other Native American languages used in World War II

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To explore the universe humans have made any manner of telescopes. These telescopes can observe visible light, infrared light, radio waves, and even x-rays. One of the most important forces in shaping the universe is gravity. How can astronomers observe gravity? In 2002, the National Science Foundation, Caltech, and MIT managed to build a gravitational observatory.

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