My inbox has a habit of collecting questions the way a bathroom shelf collects half-finished products — patiently, and with no respect for my organization. This month, I finally sat down and worked through the pile, and it became the 45th volume of reader questions I’ve ever published.
For the uninitiated: 45 is a number that likes to flex. It’s the sum of every whole number from one to nine, half of a 90-degree angle, and the speed at which vinyl records used to spin. The Colt .45 helped change the American West — and, apparently, the beer industry. But the fact I care about is simpler. Forty-five times, you asked, and I answered. Here’s this month’s batch, in the order the questions landed.
Will you ever dive Monterey Bay?
A reader who goes by Tom on Patreon asked whether I’d finally SCUBA dived Monterey Bay or visited the aquarium there, since I once wrote about my ten favorite dive sites without including it. Fair question. No, I’ve never dived Monterey Bay, and the aquarium is still on the list too.
The truth is, my diving history has a specific shape. When I first started traveling, one of the very first things I did was get SCUBA certified in Lahaina, Maui. From there I did what I estimate to be about 120 dives around the world. I never traveled to a destination with diving as the explicit purpose — but if the opportunity was in front of me, I took it. Eventually that led to advanced open water certification, Nitrox certification, and rescue diver certification.
It’s been years since I’ve been under the water, so I’d need a refresher before I went back in. I figure it will be like riding a bicycle, though we’ll see.
Latin is dead. Is it extinct?
Bill, self-described president of the Cornhusker Completionist Club, wanted me to use Latin in a couple of sentences after I mentioned starting to study it when COVID hit. He was right to ask the obvious follow-up: if it’s a dead language, why do we still keep borrowing from it — carpe diem, veni vidi vici, and the mea culpa I keep using?
Here’s the distinction I’ve actually found useful: Latin is dead, but it is not extinct. No one speaks it as a native language anymore, but there are still Latin speakers out there — you can find plenty of videos of people speaking it fluently. And mea culpa is just Latin for “my fault.” The phrase survived because it kept being useful, and it’s still used in the Catholic Latin Mass.
There’s a story I love from 12th-century Siena: those guilty of murder, as part of their penance, had to throw themselves on the ground three times and say Mea culpa; peccavi; Domine miserere mei — “Through my fault. I have sinned. Lord, have mercy on me.” Next time you bump into someone, skip the “my bad.” Just say mea culpa. You’ll sound like you’ve read something.
I won’t claim to be great at Latin. But the act of learning it taught me more about grammar — including English grammar — than I ever knew before. Sometimes that’s the whole point of a “dead” language.
How many times has Newfoundland and Labrador been on the show?
Krista from Newfoundland and Labrador asked how often her province has come up, and whether I’d ever traveled there. I have — several times, and I’ve been to both halves of it. Gros Morne and Terra Nova National Parks, L’Anse aux Meadows, and in Labrador, both Battle Harbor and Red Bay.
I’ll be honest: it deserves its own episode. Its history is very different from that of any other Canadian province, and I’ve kept meaning to do it justice.
How do you decide who covers what?
Ellen asked how topics get assigned — she knows Joel is a history teacher, but she’s noticed Olivia covers history too, and she likes to guess at the end of each episode who wrote it.
For the most part, episodes aren’t assigned. We have a weekly online meeting where we talk about what topics we’re interested in, and I keep a master list of show ideas that anyone can pick from. Writers can also bring their own ideas to the table. I’ll often point out categories we haven’t covered in a while — a country profile, a WWII episode — and throw out suggestions anyone is welcome to take if they find them interesting.
The reason I don’t assign anything is simple: if the writer doesn’t find it interesting, they won’t be motivated to write it well.
I should also note that even though I don’t credit myself, I’m the editor of every single episode. I change words to sound more natural when spoken, I rewrite the introduction and the concluding paragraph, and I’ll add or reshape sections when something doesn’t make sense out loud. In a few rare cases I’ve had to do major surgery on a script, but that happens much less often now. And once you’ve gotten some episodes under your belt, it becomes dramatically easier — so much so that I’ve stopped accepting one-off script submissions. The format takes time to learn, and that time is worth protecting.
Is there a name for people who’ve listened to every weekly episode?
Kevin told me he’d been binge-listening to the weekly shows backward, from the most recent episode to the first, and asked if we should call that the 100 percenter club. There is a version of it: members of the Completionist Club who have also listened to every episode of the weekly show can add an oak leaf cluster to their membership. Kevin, you’re qualified.
The weekly show is where the thought process happens — we cover the previous week’s episodes, talk about things that didn’t make the cut, and go off-topic into whatever direction the conversation wants to go. It’s on Patreon, and it’s available to all tiers of supporters starting at just $2/month. If you want to understand how episodes get born, that’s where to listen.
He also asked which episode spawned the most others. I have no clue. It would have to be something very broad — maybe the episode I did summarizing the Mongol Empire. But the weekly show is where you’ll hear that reasoning in real time, so I’d rather point you there than guess wrong.
What’s changed about the show since 2020?
Chuck asked a deceptively simple question: what have you changed, technically and in format, since the first episode in 2020? Almost nothing, to my surprise. The biggest change is the sound effect before the outro — people complained it was too jarring, and they were right. Before I launched the show I developed a simple format, and I’ve stuck with it. I use the exact same tools as I did on episode one. I’ve gotten a new microphone and recorded in different spaces as I’ve moved, but the software — GarageBand — hasn’t changed.
What does UNESCO status actually mean for Okefenokee?
Ken asked for an update after the Okefenokee Refuge was added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and whether there were steps people needed to take. The short answer: there is absolutely nothing you need to do. It was added to a list. That’s it.
It’s basically like being elected to the Hall of Fame for parks and heritage sites. Nothing changes — same management as before, except they might now put up a plaque. I’ve been to over 400 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and they’re all operated and managed differently depending on their location. The list is a recognition, not a renovation.
Will you expand the AP course support?
Mae asked whether the AP course support on the website will extend beyond history. The thing with AP courses is that there’s a set curriculum teachers have to follow to prepare for the test, so it’s pretty easy to slot episodes I’ve already done into it. Right now there are pages for AP World History and AP US History. Many other AP courses exist, but they don’t necessarily lend themselves to a history podcast — a few episodes might be applicable, but only a few.
That said, any teacher is free to use whatever episodes they want, in whatever course they’re teaching. I created a Facebook group for teachers who want to use the podcast as a resource, and Joel has said he plans to assign an episode a day in his class. Listening is optional, but it gives students a deeper explanation of some topics and covers things the class runs out of time for. If you’re a teacher planning to incorporate the podcast, I’ll even record a custom message for your students.
What about post-WWII history — McCarthy, Watergate?
BAM asked whether I’d cover more post–World War II history that was only mentioned in passing before, like Joe McCarthy and Watergate. I’ve actually done quite a few episodes on post-WWII history — the Vietnam War, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and a long stretch of Cold War topics. And a Watergate episode is already written and will be released very soon. So the backlog is real, and it’s shrinking.
Religion and philosophy — more to come?
Joshua noticed the recent episode on Confucianism and asked whether I was open to delving into religion and philosophy more — fact-based episodes on belief systems, or something like the making and influence of the King James Bible. Yes. I’ve done a few before, and I’ll be doing more. I’ve considered episodes on the King James Bible and the origins of the Bible itself, including the Council of Hippo, St. Jerome, and how the books of the Bible were selected — several apocryphal books didn’t make the cut. For several hundred years there was no “Bible” per se; it was a collection of letters and books. The hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, has an interesting history worth an episode of its own. Joel has floated an episode on the early 19th-century Great Awakening, and I’ve been thinking about 19th-century utopian communities.
Philosophy episodes are harder to write, though. The boundaries of what belongs in one are more ambiguous than in a straight history episode. But the difficulty is part of why they’re worth doing.
The Edit
If one thing from this batch is worth taking away, it’s the Latin one. You don’t need a course. You need one phrase you actually use. Mea culpa — next time you bump into someone, that’s your whole lesson.
FAQ
How do I submit a question for next month?
Join the Facebook group or the Discord — that’s where I pull questions from. If it’s not in one of those two places, I probably haven’t seen it.
How often do these Q&A volumes come out?
Roughly once a month, when the pile gets big enough to be worth sitting down for. This one is volume 45, so the habit is holding.
Where can I find the weekly show that’s referenced here?
It’s on Patreon, available to all tiers of supporters starting at $2/month. It’s the weekly recap show where we go through the previous week’s episodes and go off-topic — the closest thing to hearing the thought process in real time.
A note from the editor: I keep expecting question month to get old by volume 45. It hasn’t. There’s still something disarming about a stranger’s curiosity landing in my inbox at 2 a.m. — the Latin one this month in particular. I’ve been saying mea culpa in my head all week. It works. It always works.
Less shelf, more glow.