Do you feel you were born at the right time?

This is at heart a silly question, because it implies people are either born at some vaguely defined "right" time or they should have lived in another era altogether.

In my opinion, you get what you get and you live when you live for a reason (even if you don't ever understand what that reason is). There is no "wrong" time for you to be here on this planet.

But...I realize many people are convinced they are better suited for living at a different time in history, so for the sake of this post, we'll run with it.

I will go on record as saying I'm perfectly fine with the age in which I'm living, and I'll tell you why.

I listen to a lot of Conan O'Brien's podcasts, and on one episode he said something that struck a chord. He looked at the things he does well and concluded (probably rightly) that in no other era could his individual talents have made him as rich and successful as he is right now in the 21st century.

I get that.

I am by no means rich, and any success I have is much less tangible than Conan's. But honestly, I can't imagine me living in, say, the 16th century.

For one thing, I would have to have a trade, and most trades involve the type of intelligence and/or mechanical and/or manual labor skills that I lack. Badly.

Oh, I know I probably wouldn't starve if I had been apprenticed to a cobbler or mason or anything like that. I would have managed to get to "semi-proficient" in my trade and found a way to support my wife and our 17 children, all of whom would have been living in a hut just outside of London or some such place.

But I never would have been especially good at it.

My skills and interests lie more in areas (writing, communications, etc.) that were the pursuits of a very small upper class until as recently as a century ago. They would have gotten me nowhere when it comes to putting food on the table.

Only here and now, in this age, are there abundant opportunities to put those types of skills to use and generate an income.

So for that reason, I'm thankful I was born in 1969 and not 1569 or sometime in the Middle Ages when my life expectancy would have been (generously) about 35 years.

If you think about it, there's really only a very narrow window in history when knowing the proper usage of a semicolon could earn you a living.

Now we can all become experts in things no one else cares about

I was kind of late to the podcast game.

I have friends and co-workers who have been regular podcast listeners for years, but my indulgence in the medium really only started about 12 months ago.

For whatever reason, I had always ignored that little Podcasts app on my iPhone. But then I started messing around with it and discovered "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend," a hilarious podcast in which Conan interviews famous people and makes jokes. I loved it, and for a time I listened to every episode.

Later I added "Literally with Rob Lowe," which I also enjoyed, largely because Rob is a fascinating 80s figure to me.

But I didn't fall in love with a podcast until I discovered–and you're going to laugh at this if you don't know me well–the "Battles of the First World War Podcast."

This podcast, which is nearly five years old and still regularly cranking out new material, was conceived and is hosted by a guy named Mike, a social studies teacher in Massachusetts. Like me, Mike has a fascination with World War I (I've written about my intense interest in this conflict several times, including this post and this post, both from 2012).

The BFWWP, as Mike himself calls it, is exactly what you think it is. It's an in-depth look at the battles of the Great War. Like, really in-depth in some cases. I'm 26 episodes in and we still have yet to wrap up the Battle of the Somme. Next is Verdun.

Mike has a dry sense of humor and takes an intensely passionate approach to his narration, which I think is why I love listening to him describe this battalion's attack on a German redoubt or the intricacies of trench warfare or the technological details of the earliest tanks (Mike himself was a tanker when he served in the military).

I have no use at all for this knowledge, you understand, nor will I ever, unless I manage to weasel my way onto a third game show. I listen because I'm enthralled by the war and the men who fought it. I listen because I care about the tactical details that determined its outcome.

I listen because I'm a 51-year-old white male, and that's what many of us do.

That is one of the quirks of the Internet: You can become an authority on almost anything, even if it won't benefit you in any way. Maybe because it won't benefit you in any way.

It is the ultimate proving ground for the idea that a thing worth learning is worth learning well, whether you're talking about beer, crocheting, medieval cooking techniques, or World War I.

I like that.