So you’ve stumbled across Everything Everywhere Daily, the podcast hosted by Gary Arndt that operates on the deeply unhinged premise that you should learn something new every single day, as if the world isn’t already overwhelming enough, thank you very much.
For the blissfully uninitiated, each episode is a compact, well-researched deep dive into a random corner of human knowledge, history, science, or culture, clocking in at just long enough to make you feel smart but short enough that you have absolutely no excuse not to listen. One day you’re learning about the history of the paper clip, the next you’re knee-deep in the geopolitics of 14th century Byzantium. With over two thousand episodes in the catalog, though, figuring out where to start is its own special kind of paralysis. So to save you from yourself, here are the best episodes of Everything Everywhere Daily to add to your queue immediately.
Snake Oil
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Calling someone a snake oil salesman is a well recognized way of suggesting they are trying to deceive people, particularly by making false medical claims. But the phrase raises some interesting questions: what exactly is snake oil, how did it earn such a notorious reputation, and why did it become the go-to metaphor for fraud and deception? This episode of Everything Everywhere Daily digs into the surprisingly complex history of snake oil and explains why the term still finds its way into everyday language today.
Lend Lease
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Before officially entering World War Two, the United States was far from a passive bystander. In December 1940, following the Nazi invasion of France, President Franklin Roosevelt launched a program to support the beleaguered British, comparing it to lending a neighbor a hose when their house is on fire. That program would last throughout the war and fundamentally alter its outcome. This episode of Everything Everywhere Daily explores Lend Lease and how America’s industrial might helped shape World War Two.
LEDs: Light Emitting Diodes
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Artificial lighting ranks among the most transformative inventions in human history, and the electric lightbulb changed the world by pushing back the night and extending the hours people could work and live productively. But for all its impact, the incandescent bulb was never particularly efficient. It would take several more decades before a dramatically better solution emerged. This episode of Everything Everywhere Daily breaks down how LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, work and why they represented such a revolutionary leap forward.
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
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No matter where anyone stands on Earth, roughly 6,400 kilometers of rock lies beneath their feet. But that rock is far from uniform, made up of distinct layers with different properties and compositions, including one near the planet’s core where the material is not solid at all but liquid. The fact that scientists have managed to figure all of this out without ever seeing it directly is one of the great achievements of human knowledge. This episode of Everything Everywhere Daily explores what lies beneath the surface of the Earth and how we came to understand it.
The Berlin Airlift
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On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union cut off all access to the American, British, and French occupied zones of Berlin, leaving West Berlin without food, fuel, or supplies. Most believed the only options were surrender or armed conflict, but the Americans and British found a third way. This episode of Everything Everywhere Daily covers the Berlin Airlift and the lasting impact it had on post-war Europe.
536: The Worst Year in History
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History has seen its share of catastrophic years, from World Wars to the Black Death. But many historians have landed on a perhaps surprising candidate for the single worst year in human history, one that was devastating on its own and also triggered an entire decade of misery that affected not just one region or continent, but the entire planet. This episode of Everything Everywhere Daily makes the case for why the year 536 may have been the worst year humanity has ever endured.
The Voynich Manuscript
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In 1912, a Polish rare book dealer acquired an ancient codex filled with an entirely unknown system of writing. In the century since, the greatest minds in cryptography, linguistics, and artificial intelligence have all tried and failed to decode it, though that has never stopped people from claiming they finally cracked it. This episode of Everything Everywhere Daily explores the enduring mystery of the Voynich Manuscript.
The Fermi Paradox
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In a previous episode, the Drake equation was explored alongside the odds of intelligent extraterrestrial life existing elsewhere in the universe. Many have used it to argue that intelligent life beyond Earth is virtually inevitable. But in the summer of 1950, physicist Enrico Fermi challenged that thinking with a deceptively simple question: if there are so many intelligent civilizations out there, why has none of them been found? This episode digs into the Fermi Paradox.
Gerrymandering
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Winston Churchill once remarked that democracy is the worst form of government except for every other form ever tried. He had a point. While most people support democracy in principle, the way it gets implemented can make all the difference. Change the rules, and the outcome can shift dramatically even when voters cast the exact same ballots. Nowhere is this more apparent than with geographical representation. This episode of Everything Everywhere Daily explores gerrymandering, how it works, its history, and the efforts to put an end to it.
The Gold Standard
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For roughly 200 years, with its most intense period lasting less than half a century, the world’s monetary system ran on a gold standard, effectively giving the world something close to a single global currency for the first time. Economists have been arguing about its merits ever since. This episode of Everything Everywhere Daily covers how the gold standard came to be and how it ultimately came apart.
Insanely Ridiculously Absurdly Large Numbers
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One of the first mathematical concepts most children come to understand is that there is no such thing as the biggest number. No matter how large a number gets, one can always be added to it. Simple as that idea sounds, its implications in mathematics run surprisingly deep. In fact, mathematicians have developed numbers so incomprehensibly large that entirely new forms of notation had to be invented just to write them down.
Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
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Situated in the South Pacific Ocean lies one of the most remote islands on the face of the earth, more than a thousand miles from the nearest human settlement. There, a civilization unlike any other rose to remarkable heights before ultimately collapsing. Though the island’s story did not end with that collapse, the physical remnants of that society have endured for centuries, captivating the imaginations of people ever since.
All About the Sun
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Roughly 93 million miles from Earth sits humanity’s nearest star, the Sun. Responsible for life as we know it and for holding the entire solar system together, the Sun does far more than simply provide light and heat, constantly shaping the planets and surrounding space in ways most people never consider. This episode of Everything Everywhere Daily explores the Sun’s past, present, and future.
The SR-71 Blackbird
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The Lockheed SR-71, known by its nickname the Blackbird, holds the record for the fastest airplane ever flown, a record it set in 1976 and has maintained for 44 years. It also claimed the record for the highest altitude ever achieved in sustained flight. Despite the fact that the aircraft has not taken to the skies in over two decades, it remains deeply embedded in the hearts and minds of aviation enthusiasts around the world.
Beavers
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When thinking of animals that shaped history, dogs, horses, and cattle might come to mind first. But one wild and never domesticated animal had an outsized influence on the course of human events: the beaver. Prized for their remarkably durable and luxurious pelts, beavers became the driving force behind one of the most significant economic industries in history, helped fuel the fur trade, and even sparked a war.
The Cultural Revolution
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In 1966, China was plunged into one of the most turbulent periods in its history. Driven largely by students, a wave of revolutionary violence swept the country, making virtually everyone a potential target for public humiliation, denunciation, torture, and forced labor, including high-ranking Communist officials. An entire generation lost their education and careers to the chaos, and many vowed never to allow that kind of political extremism to run unchecked again.