This premiere episode of Half as Interestingwas made possible by Skillshare. The first 200 people to sign up with the linkin the description can learn for free for two months. So here’s the question: what’s the singlelongest drivable distance between two points on earth, but before you tell me to go drivearound a roundabout infinite times, let me place this caveat: this route has to be theshortest one between two points on earth. Ok, so there are basically four distinct majorroad systems on earth the biggest one being this one, the Eur… EurAf… Eurafrasian one? The one spanning Europe, Asia, and Africa. These three continents are all connected byland so it makes sense that they’re all connected by road, right? Wrong, because I lied. It’s impossible to cross from Africa toAsia fully on land because of this—the Suez canal. This is the canal that makes the trip fromEurope to Asia by boat this instead of this. The only physical connection between the twocontinents is therefore the three bridges spanning the canal, but the road system isstill contiguous so it still counts as one big road system. Speaking of big things, the 6th largest countryin the world and 1st smallest continent, Australia, has its own major road system but there’snot much to say about it other than if you go a little bit this way you get to America—bothof them. Much like Africa and Asia, the Americas technicallyare not connected because of a man-made canal—the Panama canal. But that’s not a problem because there aremultiple bridges spanning the narrow waterway. The problem is this—the Darien gap. Not a single road crosses this desolate swamplandspanning over the Panama-Columbia border. The area is overrun with para-military forcesand drug-lords. There’s just not enough demand to make bravingthe marshy and dangerous area to build a road worth it. So that’s why North America and South Americahave two completely separate, unconnected road systems. So, where could our longest route start? Basically, here, here, here, here, or here. The North American road system goes as farnorth as Prudhoe Bay in Canada’s Canada, Alaska, and as far south as Yaviza in Panamabut this only clocks in 7,500 miles. That is six straight days of driving, butit’s not even close to the longest route. In fact, quite understandably, North America,South America, and Australia all don’t have any of the longest routes. Now, common logic would suggest that the longestcontinuous route would go between somewhere in Southern Africa to somewhere else is easternRussia, but common logic is wrong. There are a few issues. First, almost every direct route heading upthe African continent routes via the west side of the continent which brings a travellerto here: Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Just across the river from Kinshasa is Brazzavillein the Republic of the Congo but no bridge spans between the two country capitals. The fastest routes between Southern Africaand Asia also almost always route through Western Europe rather than the Middle Eastsince the highways are better developed and faster, but this means that a traveller hasto cross the Mediterranean by ferry which disqualifies this route. So we have to originate in Europe. In Europe, the most extreme point on the contiguousroad network is Sagres, Portugal and then you can drive as far east as the banks ofthe Aldan River in Russia. That’s 8,437 total miles, but that’s stillnot quite the farthest you can drive. It’s a even longer distance to drive here—Khasan,Russia. Khasan is the only Russian town to borderNorth Korea and it is also the most extreme point of their road system. With no ferries and only two customs checkpointsthanks to the European Union, you can therefore drive continuously for 8,726 miles in 6 daysand 19 hours from Sagres, Portugal to Khasan, Russia, and that is the longest continuous,direct driving route in the world. If you do decide to drive this route, I suggestsigning up for Skillshare because they let you learn no matter where you are. The good news is that their classes will lastyou the entire drive since they have over 16,000 of them and you can download them offlinewith the iOS and Android apps. A lot of people ask me all the time how toget started with making youtube videos and the first step is to learn how to edit. For that I recommend their “Visual Storytellingwith Final Cut Pro X” class which gives you a great starting point. You can get two free months of learning tocheck out their thousands of courses by being one of the first 200 people to sign up overat skl.sh/hai. They made the start of this series possibleso please show them your appreciation by at least going and checking them out over atthe link below.