Monday, October 21, 2019

Randall Munroe, "How To", video from Politics and Prose bookstore

Randall Munroe, "How To".

Alexandra Petri
Published on Oct 19, 2019

Randall Munroe discusses his book, "How To". Randall Munroe, the brilliant mind behind the wildly popular webcomic xkcd and the #1 New York Times bestsellers What If? and Thing Explainer, brings readers a way to better understand the science and technology behind the things we do every day with How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems. For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole. Munroe teaches you how to tell if you're a baby boomer or a 90's kid by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth, gives instructions on powering your house by destroying the fabric of space-time, and even offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope. By exploring the most complicated ways to do simple tasks, Munroe doesn't just make things difficult for himself and his readers, he invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. Munroe is in conversation with American humorist and Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri.

No comments: