Smartest Year Ever

What are the actual odds that a monkey could randomly type Shakespeare?The Infinite Monkey Theorem is one of the most famous thought experiments in mathematics and probability theory. It’s often repeated as a quirky idea about monkeys, typewriters, and infinite time — but rarely explained in a way that makes the math, the scale, or the implications truly sink in.In this episode of Smartest Year...

After 365 consecutive days of posting facts, this is the pause.This bonus episode breaks from the usual Smartest Year Ever format to answer some of the questions I’ve gotten most over the past year: where the idea came from, whether I’m actually good at trivia, what the hardest parts were, how the process worked behind the scenes, and what’s coming next.This wasn’t meant to be a highlight reel or...

After 365 consecutive days of facts, history, science, language, weather, and human strangeness, Gordy ends Smartest Year Ever by zooming all the way out.Astronauts have a name for the cognitive shift that happens when they see Earth from space for the first time. It’s not just awe. It’s not just perspective. It’s a profound psychological reframing that reshapes how they think about borders,...

As New Year’s Eve approaches, millions of people will share a midnight kiss—or strategically avoid one. Kissing feels timeless, intimate, and deeply human. But it isn’t universal. And it isn’t uniquely ours.In this episode of Smartest Year Ever, Gordy explores why kissing exists, what actually qualifies as a “kiss,” and how similar behaviors appear across the animal kingdom. From primate...

After sharing more than 360 daily facts in a single year, Gordy closes out Smartest Year Ever with a deceptively simple question: why do we call it “trivia”?Today, trivia means fun facts, pub quizzes, and knowledge for bragging rights. But historically, the word carried a very different tone. Its roots stretch back through Latin, medieval education, and early academic hierarchies, where certain...

After typing hundreds of thousands of words in a single year, Gordy finally stops to ask a deceptively simple question: why does the QWERTY keyboard look like this?At first glance, the modern keyboard feels arbitrary—almost chaotic. But its strange layout isn’t random, and it wasn’t designed to frustrate or slow anyone down. QWERTY emerged from a very specific moment in technological history,...

For decades, goldfish memory has been treated as a joke. A throwaway line. A cultural shortcut for forgetfulness. But modern animal cognition research paints a very different picture.In this episode of Smartest Year Ever, Gordy digs into the real science behind goldfish learning, memory retention, and behavior, pulling from decades of behavioral psychology, neuroscience, and comparative cognition...

In this episode of Smartest Year Ever, Gordy explores one of biology’s strangest loopholes — parthenogenesis, a rare form of asexual reproduction where an animal can develop from an unfertilized egg.For decades, scientists assumed this phenomenon was mostly limited to insects and invertebrates. But modern genetics has revealed something far stranger: certain vertebrates, including reptiles,...

For centuries, people have argued about what the “X” in Xmas means. Some call it disrespectful. Some insist it removes the meaning of the holiday. But as Gordy explains in today’s episode of Smartest Year Ever, the real story goes back nearly a thousand years—deep into the worlds of Greek manuscripts, ancient Christian symbols, and a writing tradition that shaped how entire cultures recorded...

Why do we hang Christmas stockings by the fireplace, of all things? In this episode, Gordy digs into the surprisingly deep origins of one of the strangest holiday traditions — a tradition that blends medieval folklore, St. Nicholas legends, Dutch holiday customs, Victorian Christmas culture, and the long cultural shadow of ’Twas the Night Before Christmas.This episode explores how European winter...