The month of June was originally called Unias by the Romans. Back then, it had 29 days and was the fourth month of the year. Today, it now has 30 days, and it's the sixth month of the year. It used to be a bad omen to be married in June, and now it's the most popular month to be married in. However, despite all the changes in the month, there is one thing that has remained constant: questions and answers. Stay tuned for the 19th installment of Questions and Answers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Hey, everyone. This is Gary. If you're listening to this podcast, you clearly are someone who likes to learn every day. And if you want to add a little more learning into your everyday routine, check out Ted Talks Daily, the podcast that brings you a new Ted Talk every weekday. In less than 15 minutes a day, you'll hear about some of the big ideas shaping our world. This includes everything from artificial intelligence to the search for dark matter and more. Listen to Ted Talks Daily wherever you get your podcast.

When you listen to Nobody listens to Paula Poundstone, the Comedy Podcast, you get a belly full of laughs and a head full of real information. Our gallimauphri of expert guests answer questions on stuff adults need to know. I have mold in my dwelling. What do I do? What's gerrymandering? What happens chemically when I fall in love? How do I handle a parent-teacher conference? What are microbes? Listen to Nobody listens to Paula Poundstone. Solve problems, get laughs.

Let's start with the first question, and it comes from Timothy Johnson who asks, I'm curious about Harry's Razors. You mentioned that you heard about them on a podcast. Is that podcast our fake history? More seriously, if you had to pick your five favorite castles in Europe, what would they be? Thanks. The podcast where I first heard about Harry's Razors was the Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan. As for the top castles in Europe, in no particular order, I would say, Neusjöhnstein in Bavaria, Prag Castle, Wartberg Castle in Eisennack, Germany, Braun Castle, a. K. A. Dracula's Castle in Romania, and Pena Palace in Sintra, Portugal. These are places that would be fortified, not just palaces. If it included palaces, it would be a very different list. Kevin Hultgren asks, Why do all the Scandinavian flags have the same design? Finnish names seem to have different conventions than do Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish. Mine did have something to do with the Vikings. As for the language, Finnish is a completely different beast from all the other languages in Nordic countries. Finland is basically the difference between Nordic countries and Scandinavian countries. Finland is not a Scandinavian country because Finnish is not a Scandinavian language.

Village. As far as the flags are concerned, you are correct that all five of the Nordic countries have very similar flags. They all have what is known as a Nordic or Scandinavian cross. And it all started with the Danes. The oldest of the flags is the flag of Denmark, which dates back to the year 1219. It's actually considered to be the oldest national flag in the world. The Danes were the most powerful country in the region for centuries. They ruled Norway, and Norway eventually adopted adopted a flag based on the Danish flag, say for a blue cross in the middle of the white cross. The Danes also controlled Iceland, and when Iceland became independent in 1918, they adopted a flag based on the Danish flag. Actually, it's simply the Norwegian flag with the red and blue colors switched. Sweden was controlled by Norway and adopted the current flag in the early 20th century, again, based on the same design, but with the Swedish national colors. Finland selected their flag from a contest in 1917, and the design selected happened to be the same as the other countries in the region. Associate producer Cameron Kiefer asks, Gary, not sure if you've read the three body problem, but Netflix did an adaptation to the book.

My question is, if there is intelligent life in the universe should humans actively try to find and communicate with it? Personally, I think if SETI could transmit your episodes daily, we'd find the only life worth finding. If you remember back, I did an episode on the Fermi paradox. The Fermi paradox Doc simply asked the question, if there are advanced civilizations, where are they? The three body problems approach to the question is what is known as the Dark Forest Hypothesis. In fact, the dark forest hypothesis is based on something that came out of the three body problem books. The Dark Forest Hypothesis proposes that the reason why we can't see alien civilizations is that everyone is hiding from each other. If they make themselves known, they run the risk of destruction. Likewise, if you were to find another civilization, then you should want to destroy it before they do the same to you. I think the dark forest hypothesis is highly, highly unlikely. I don't think there will ever be a technology that makes interstellar travel easy. There's no need to attack another civilization for resources. There are ample resources in pretty much any solar system, and the cost of going to another star system to steal another civilization's resources is just way too high.

The only thing of value you could get from an intelligent civilization is information. Information can be shared, and it's far more valuable than any physical resource and much easier to trade than trying to physically travel. So if you wanted a movie that would accurately depict what would happen if we found an intelligent civilization, I think it would probably be Contact. Elizabeth Keukendall asks, How about the information Terrence Howard is coming out saying, Changing the way we look at the periodic table and whatnot? The things he's stating are super intriguing, especially if he is onto something. Elizabeth, I am going to put this as bluntly as I can, so there is absolutely no misunderstanding. Terrence Howard is insane. I don't even mean that as an insult or a pejorative. I think he actually is suffering from a mental illness. His statements are so crazy and delusional, I don't know what else you could conclude other than he suffers from severe narcissistic personality disorder. The foundation of his beliefs is that one times one equals two. Yes, you heard that right. When you hear his explanation, he clearly doesn't know the difference between addition and multiplication, which is what most people learn in the first or second grade.

He also thinks that the square root of two is one, and that one cube somehow equals Pi. He claims to have discovered a grand unified theory of everything thing at the age of seven. He wrote it down and then lost it when his dog ate it. He uses fancy-sounding words that he does not know the meaning of, and the context in which he uses them doesn't even make sense. Like most people with narcissistic personality disorder, he believes that he is persecuted by some conspiracy. They, whoever they are, are trying to hide the fact that one times one equals two from the world. It is all a conspiracy of big math. He claims to have developed a new form of flight, which he can't prove. His ideas of the periodic table are based on something developed by an artist in the early 20th century named Walter Russell. Famous scientists often receive rants from people in the mail who claim to have single-handedly reinvented all of science. Somehow, for every single one of them, unnamed forces are preventing the world from finding out about their discovery. The only difference between Terence Howard's ranting about how he has rediscovered all of math and science and someone shouting on a street corner is that he's a celebrity, and so talk show hosts humor him.

Ten-year-old completionist club member, Spencer, asks, Do you remember your first trip to another country? Where was it and what did you do? The first trip I took to another country was when my family went on a road trip to Niagara Falls when I was 10 years old. We crossed into Ontario and then drove to the Canadian side of the Falls. After that, I never left the United States again until I was in college, and the national debate tournament was in Bellingham, Washington, just over the border from British Columbia. The first trip I took outside of North America was in 1999, when I did an around the world trip for work that took me to Tokyo, Taipei, Singapore, Frankfurt, Paris, Brussels, and London. Emu King on the Discord server asks, What's the topic that's been on your list the longest, and why haven't you covered it yet? The running list I keep of potential show ideas currently has 921 items. When I I had something new, I put it at the bottom of the list, and when I do an episode, I take it off the list. The idea which is currently sitting at the top of the list is the US occupation of the Philippines.

The reason I haven't done it, there's no particular reason other than I wanted to do several episodes first, which I've already done, including the Spanish-American War and a general history of the Philippines. Vlad Sander asks, Of all the topics you have ever covered or want to cover, which has been the hardest to separate fiction from reality? Well, there's actually one episode I had to abandon in the middle of writing it. It was the episode on the first American serial killer, H. H. Holmes. The reason I had to abandon it is because so many of the stories I read about him turned out to have been false. The newspapers of the time greatly exaggerated the crimes he committed, and when I began to research it, I had to put it on hold because the reality was so different from the story that I thought I was going to be telling. I did eventually do the episode episode, but it was very different from what I thought it would originally be. Wayne Roth asks, I'm Canadian. Years ago, I met an older man at a military museum in Boston who insisted that the US has never lost a war.

I mentioned Vietnam and left it at that. You could also make a case for the losses in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the War of 1812. Do you think the US has lost any wars? Well, Wayne, it depends on what you mean by winning and losing. There's losing on the battlefield, and then there is failure to achieve objectives. I'm not sure anyone won anything in the War of 1812. No territory changed hands. Neither side was definitively defeated. Both sides can claim that there were defensive reasons as to why they could claim some success. In Vietnam, the United States clearly did not achieve its objectives. The communists took over the whole country, and so I think you would have to chalk that up as a loss. In Iraq, the objective of the first war was the liberation of Kuwait, and in the second war was the removal of Saddam Hussein, both of which were successful. Both conflicts also had lopsided victories on the battlefield for the Americans. In Afghanistan, the initial objective was the removal of Al Qaeda training camps from Afghanistan, which was successful. However, the Americans then stuck around for 20 years and then eventually just left, with the Taliban, the group they were initially fighting, back in power.

When you get down to it, very few wars result an unconditional surrender or a complete one-sided victory. So I would say there's definitely one conflict the Americans lost, and then there's a whole bunch that are toss-ups that I'm not sure if it's a win or a loss. Connie Carroll asked, Have Have you ever been on a river cruise? If so, which river? If not, which river would you choose first? I would choose the Nile, submitted from a sixth grade social studies teacher. Well, Connie, I have been on a river cruise, but I've only done one, and that was on the Nile River. I went by train from Cairo to Luxor and then back up via riverboat, which took several days. Along the way, we stopped at some of the smaller temples that most people never get to visit, in particular, the Edfu and Kaaombo temples. I've never done a river cruise in Europe, but I've been to many cities where riverboats can dock in the middle of town. M Fine, from the Discord server, asks, Who is your favorite Wisconsin Badger of all time? Football, basketball, or otherwise. In football, it has to be Ron Dane, the NCAA all-time leading rusher, if you include bowl games.

On defense, I'd have to go with JJ Watt. In basketball, I have to go with Frank Kaminski, who led the Badgers to the finals of the NCAA tournament. Jesús Chan asked, Gary, good morning from Laredo, Texas. If humans have been around for approximately 190,000 years and we live on a planet covered by 70% sea water, why haven't we been able to find an efficient method of desalination for sea water? Well, for starters, As said by Jesús, the fact that humans have been around in some form for hundreds of thousands of years really doesn't explain why something hasn't been discovered. In reality, we are only one to three centuries into the scientific revolution, depending on how you define when it started. And maybe a bit over 100 years from having a detailed understanding of the structure of the atom. That being said, the problem of desalination is trickier than it seems. Ions of sodium and chlorine float around in water at the atomic level. Removing the sodium and chlorine atoms from water is difficult given their size. There are two basic ways that you can do it. One option is to boil the water, which takes energy.

You can increase the temperature of the water, reduce the pressure surrounding the water, or some combination of both. Regardless of how you do it, it requires an input of energy. Assuming you have enough energy, desalination is actually quite easy. The other option is to use some filter. If you had a filter that could filter out the ions, you still have a problem. If ions can pass through the filter, then they end up piling up on one side, making it difficult for the filter to work. Filters can also wear out and get clogged up over time, requiring replacements. If it hasn't any miracle technology, which would come in the form of a membrane, desalimization will always require a great deal of energy or expensive filters. That does it for this month. Again, there were far more questions submitted than I could possibly answer. If you would like to have your question read on next month's Q&A episode, please join the show's Facebook group or Discord server. Links to both of which can be found in the show notes. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Ben Long and Cameron Kiefer.

I want to use this opportunity to remind everyone of a new podcast that I'm a part of. The show is called Respecting the Bier. Each week, I sit down with expert brewer and former NASA astrophysicist, Bobby Fleschman, and we talk about the science, history, culture, and economics of beer and brewing. So if you're interested in beer, home brewing, or any other aspect of the art, please check out Respecting the Bier. You can find it wherever you listen to this podcast, or you can click on the link in the show notes.