WEBVTT - How do you Build a Civilization from Scratch? 0:00:02.680 --> 0:00:06.120 I guess what podcast listeners, So Will isn't here today, 0:00:06.160 --> 0:00:08.000 but I did want to tell you a quick story. 0:00:08.280 --> 0:00:11.520 So years ago, we were brainstorming a game show for 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:13.680 this big production company who wanted to work with us, 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:17.120 and we came up with this concept called Smartest Person 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:19.759 in the World. Actually, there's some debate about the title 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:21.439 because one person in the group thought it should be 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:24.840 called Smartest Human Being in the World, because he insisted 0:00:24.880 --> 0:00:27.720 human beings were a funnier title. But it was this 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:30.520 ridiculous quiz show and we were trying to figure out 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:32.280 what the big challenge would be and we were stumped, 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:34.960 and finally we thought, what if you took a smart person, 0:00:35.280 --> 0:00:38.680 gave them some materials like a lab or big textbook 0:00:38.720 --> 0:00:41.120 on optometry, and told them, why don't you just make 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:43.720 a pair of glasses? Like could the smartest person in 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:46.159 the world or smartest human being in the world just 0:00:46.240 --> 0:00:49.000 forged together some glasses in thirty minutes on this weird 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:51.880 reality show. And now that I say it out loud, 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:54.120 it sounds like a terrible idea, or like a more 0:00:54.240 --> 0:00:57.240 ridiculous version of nailed It. But thinking about that show 0:00:57.280 --> 0:00:59.680 idea made us wonder, how hard is it to create 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:02.920 a civilization from scratch, Like, if we had enough time, 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:05.600 could we build a bicycle or figure out how to 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:08.440 spin silk or make those pair of glasses we were 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:11.399 talking about? And is there a funny instructional book that 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:13.640 tells you how to do all of this? It turns 0:01:13.640 --> 0:01:37.680 out there is. Let's dig in. Welcome to Part Time Genius. 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:40.679 I'm together, Tristan's in the booth wearing his I Miss 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:43.919 Will t shirt, and Will is off officiating a wedding 0:01:43.959 --> 0:01:47.840 for a college friend of ours. Happy wedding day, Joyce. 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:51.120 But as a side note, if you want Will to 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:53.559 officiate your wedding and Tristan to DJ the after party, 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:55.279 you can always hit us up at Part Time Genius 0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:58.120 at how stuff Works dot com. Tristan, please don't edit 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:01.160 that part out. So today we've got a very special 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:03.560 author on the show. He's the brains behind Dinosaur Comics. 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:06.720 He's one awards for his comic book writing, including Penning 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:10.040 Adventure Time, the New jug Head. But he's here to 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:12.320 talk to us about his new book, How to Invent Everything. 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:15.400 Welcome to the program, Ryan North, Thank you for having 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:18.880 me so I really loved How to Invent Everything. It's 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:23.360 this ridiculous and hilarious guide to rebuilding a civilization from scratch. 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:26.800 But the concept is way more interesting than that, and 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:29.280 I was wondering if you'd mind telling our listeners a 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:32.720 little bit about it. Yeah, sure, so. Um, the premise 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:35.880 of the book, it's sort of a nonfiction core wrapped 0:02:35.880 --> 0:02:38.400 in a fictional candy coding. The premise of the book 0:02:38.440 --> 0:02:41.359 is that this is a it's a found document. It's 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:43.800 a repair guide for a time machine. If you go 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:45.640 back in time and your time machine breaks down, this 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:48.160 is how you fix it. But after the first couple 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:50.360 of pages of the book admits that, like, look, time 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:52.840 machines are the most complicated machines humans have ever built. 0:02:53.360 --> 0:02:55.240 There's no use servical parts, and so you're not gonna 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:58.160 fix it in the year two. You're trapped where you are, 0:02:58.840 --> 0:03:00.480 but we're not gonna leave you stranded. Here's how you 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:03.280 bring the future back to you by reinventing all the 0:03:03.400 --> 0:03:06.000 basically the low hanging fruit of citialization. Everything you miss 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:09.320 is in this book from from first principles. And we 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:11.400 don't assume like what time period you're in or what 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:13.919 tools you have. It's all like from basics here's how 0:03:14.040 --> 0:03:16.919 it works. So for the stranded time traveler it should 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:20.000 be legitimately useful in those circumstances, but for the non stranded, 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:22.880 for us who are just going through time at one 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:25.920 second per second and only ever forward. It's also like 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:28.480 an interesting book that makes you feel like a more 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:31.440 competent person in the world. That I feel a lot 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:34.679 better having written it. I'd feel a lot more prepared 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:37.480 to do lots of things, among which is be stranded 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:39.840 in the past. Yeah, so I guess I was curious 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:41.600 about that, Like how much were you interested in these 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:44.280 things before you wrote this book? Like what was the 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:48.760 motivation for writing this? Yeah? Like age six to sixteen. 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:50.320 Basically this is all I thought about, cause I saw 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:52.280 Back to the future and Martin mcflig goes back in time, 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:54.800 and like, that's amazing. What would I do if I 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:57.000 was trapped in time and I kept coming back to 0:03:57.040 --> 0:03:59.440 this idea that you know, I'd be saying, oh, it's great. 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:02.400 In the future have computers, and people would say, great, 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:04.360 how do they work? Can I say, I don't know, 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:09.480 but you're gonna love them. I have no proof. And 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:11.520 I wanted to be that person to be like, oh, 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:13.800 how does it mean to work? No problem. And by 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:16.280 the way, here's an internal combustion engine, and here's like 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:18.760 everything else you need. So it was something that I 0:04:18.800 --> 0:04:22.120 sort of fantasized about, and I kept waiting for um 0:04:22.240 --> 0:04:25.600 this book to be written, and finally I wrote up myself, 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:27.000 which I think is the origin story of a lot 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:29.760 of books. We all write the books we'd like to read. Yeah, definitely, 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:31.680 I mean you know that that was always our goal 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:34.040 at Metal Fhiss two, was trying to make people interested 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:36.120 in something they didn't think they could be interested in. 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:38.840 You know, we used to have these conversations in our 0:04:38.880 --> 0:04:40.960 dorm rooms. Will and I actually about like if we 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:43.440 went back in time, what we could actually do, like 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:46.160 how confident would be and really, other than telling people 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:48.400 to like wash their hands a lot, like, we really 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:50.760 didn't feel like we had much advice of them. But 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:54.760 you know, I was there, you need soap, like but 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:56.520 that that's the thing, like you write about how to 0:04:56.560 --> 0:04:59.560 make soap, like why horses can only use certain type 0:04:59.560 --> 0:05:02.159 of caller. It was like you have this argument between 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:05.840 like a water wheel enthusiasts and windmill enthusiasts, and like, honestly, 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:08.520 I had never thought i'd have an opinion on on 0:05:08.640 --> 0:05:11.919 why windmills are better, but it really is terrific, Thank you. 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:14.520 I mean, it's it's the way it normally works. As 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:16.200 you may know, when writing a nonfiction book, He's right 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:17.680 kind of a proposal. We say, here's the book I 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:19.640 want to write, and here's a sample chapter, and here's 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:22.200 the table of contents, and here's what I want to do, 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:24.080 and you try to get people than that. But for 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:26.760 this book, I wasn't at all confident that what I 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:30.920 was trying to do was possible collapsalization into four hundreds 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:33.040 and odd pages, and I wasn't sure that would work, 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:34.240 and I wasn't sure if I could do it, if 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:36.120 it would be useful like I would. I was worried 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:38.480 about contecting it so much. It would be at level 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:40.320 of you know, you need food to live, find some 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:43.359 food and need it, and you wouldn't learn anything. So 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:46.960 I actually wrote a fifty words for the proposal. I 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:49.960 cut down into a smaller amount um and then sort 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:51.680 of point from there. But I wasn't at all confident 0:05:51.720 --> 0:05:53.320 that this book woul actually come together, because it was 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:56.040 just it seemed like, this is the craziest thing I've 0:05:56.040 --> 0:05:58.600 ever tried to do it is I mean I and 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:00.719 the fact that like I walk away no ing, what's 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:03.919 a better like way to harness the horse is amazing 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:06.320 and it's it's told in like diagrams and just a 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:09.320 few sentences, you know, and it is it is stunning. 0:06:09.640 --> 0:06:11.479 I do want to talk about some of the specifics 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:13.400 if you're up for it. You know, fairly early in 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:15.720 the book you talk about written language and the importance 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:18.680 of creating a language, and you discuss pictograms, which I 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:21.839 hadn't really thought about, like those don't really work as 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:24.880 a language when read, you know, and and and could 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:26.440 you explain that a little bit because I really found 0:06:26.440 --> 0:06:28.600 that fascinating. Yeah, that's what came out. I was at 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:31.200 the XO EXO conference last weekend and we're talking about 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:33.919 emojis a lot there, and it's sort of a similar 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:37.320 idea where people you can say, oh, emojis are language, 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:39.760 and I went to school for linguistics from the guy 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:44.320 being like, I'm actually there's different seeing there's a difference 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:47.280 between communication and language, right, So, like you can communicate 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:49.440 with the dog and you know what your dogs feelings 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:52.280 are communicating with you, and you're exchanging feelings if not 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:57.200 legitimate commands, right, And there's difference. So you can really 0:06:57.279 --> 0:06:59.839 communicate with animals but you can't really have a language 0:06:59.839 --> 0:07:02.120 with them in the same way we have language right now. 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:04.600 And one of the main differences between pictograms and words 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:07.960 is that words have a specific meaning. So I think 0:07:07.960 --> 0:07:09.640 in the Book of example of a picture of a 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:12.360 woman tossing your hair in the emoji style and a 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:17.000 peach and sunglasses. I think, and if you know the 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:19.480 story those emodia you're trying to tell, you can reconstruct 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:22.520 it from those pictograms. And a cool woman ate a peach. 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:24.840 That's what this is trying to say. But if you 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:27.720 don't know, the story could also be like, oh, cool 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:31.040 peach was around a woman, or a woman got transformed 0:07:31.080 --> 0:07:33.000 into a cool peach by aliens, And there's all this 0:07:33.040 --> 0:07:35.679 stuff that you are reading into it. Because it doesn't 0:07:35.680 --> 0:07:37.840 have one specific meaning, it's more like a reminder than 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:41.040 an actual narrative. With words, the whole point of language 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:43.760 is to communicate clearly, and so words tending. You can 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:45.960 still have miscommunications, but we try to minimize those in 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:48.640 language that we can communicate quickly and acturally and not 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:51.080 you know, be passing pictures back and forth. Yeah, I 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:54.080 mean I thought you have this like long sentence there 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:57.280 about like I forget what it was, exactly like aliens 0:07:57.320 --> 0:07:59.160 being in the glasses or something, you know, in the 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:01.640 shadow at the glasses of never in reflection, and and 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:04.680 it was just so perfectly illustrative of the fact that 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:07.320 these aren't you know, one to one is pretty amazing. 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:09.480 And and also the fact that I didn't realize this, 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:12.680 but Eastern Island had a script that's never been deciphered, Like, 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:15.560 oh god, yeah, that's that's I mean, I'm trying to 0:08:15.560 --> 0:08:17.440 communicate in the book. It's terrifying, Aby, the whole thing 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:23.160 terrifying because um, it's this written script and basically Europeans 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:28.400 show up and wreck everything in an unprecedented event. It 0:08:28.400 --> 0:08:32.319 will never happen again, and so they bring disease, and 0:08:32.360 --> 0:08:34.760 they bring like slavery raids and all this horrible stuff. 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:37.880 When they first show up, it's understood that this is writing, 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:40.400 but only the elites can understand it. And then when 0:08:40.440 --> 0:08:42.320 they come back onto years later in the the island 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:44.480 is in a horrible condition. There's only a few people left, 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:48.200 and that knowledge of the script is lost, and so 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:52.439 you know what had been words is now just squiggles 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:55.360 that nobody understands, and it it really drove home the 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:57.679 idea to me that, like, you know, language is a technology, 0:08:57.679 --> 0:08:59.839 it's something we invented and we don't get it for 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:03.280 and writing downwards something we had to think of and 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:05.880 then do, and just like any technology, we can lose it. 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:08.440 An the idea of like losing the written word, it 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:11.600 feels like you're just cutting the heart out of any civilization, 0:09:11.640 --> 0:09:14.280 Like it's it's such a devastating blow that would be 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:16.560 so hard to recover from. So I thought it was 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:20.240 a great example of just like things are more precious 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:23.000 than we tend to think they are, and pullly, as 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:25.199 you bick of this, as writing can can still be forgotten. 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:27.800 Speaking of that, like you do this great section on farming. 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:29.680 I mean you go through everything from like why you 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:32.160 leave a field, follow for a while, and like all 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:34.840 sorts of things. But it's a lot of work. Yeah, 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:36.720 I mean, but it's a small chapter. That's what's amazing 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:39.320 about it. But you know, you talk about ancient corn 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:43.360 and peaches and watermelon being completely different, and would you 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:45.080 tell us a little bit about what those were like 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:47.520 and how they tasted. So we have this idea of 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:50.079 selective breeding where we basically the right thing about like 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:51.840 to breeding is this is one of the technologies you 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:55.000 kind of get without trying because it's just human nature. 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:57.280 If you have a plant that has you know, larger fruit, 0:09:57.640 --> 0:09:59.760 you plant those seeds next year because it's a better 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:01.920 plant to be planting. And so you tend to add 0:10:01.960 --> 0:10:05.320 this evolutionary pressure to get the kind of plants you want. 0:10:06.120 --> 0:10:08.920 But um, the results of that are things like peaches 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:11.160 where these we have these giants sucking with peaches in 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:13.880 the past, where these like hard sour things no one 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:17.960 really want to eat, but they're nothing. Corn is it 0:10:18.000 --> 0:10:22.040 comes from this ancient grain that's just like basically grass. 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:25.280 And the crazy thing about corn is we haven't been 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:30.040 able to figure out exactly how you get corn out 0:10:30.080 --> 0:10:32.560 of out of this ancient ancestor. It feels like it 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:34.760 must have been this one in a million, either random 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:39.320 cross breeding or mutation. But something changed to produce the 0:10:39.400 --> 0:10:41.640 larger heads of corn with these giant kernels. We can 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:46.600 eat that. Um, it's just we don't know how to 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:49.240 do it yet. Yeah, I mean, it's not like in 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:51.800 in your book like you'd only get something like four 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:55.160 or five kernels of edible corn off a cob, which 0:10:55.240 --> 0:10:58.040 is just crazy to think about. But I mean, if 0:10:58.040 --> 0:10:59.400 that's if that's the state of the art, that's what 0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:01.600 you go with. You don't you don't imagine our modern corn. 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:05.040 It's ridiculously convenient packaging. We're just throwing the barbecue and 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:06.920 then peel it off and you've got this de wicious 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:09.960 corn ready to go, Like it's it's it's the thing 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:12.160 where you know, you think of the natural world as 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:16.160 being permanent and unchanging, when we're surrounded by evidence of 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:19.280 human influence on this natural world, like we've been changing 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:22.200 it since we've been humane to make it easier first. 0:11:22.240 --> 0:11:26.640 So I was like, it is remarkable. Um So another 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:29.160 thing that I hadn't really thought about. You feel like 0:11:29.200 --> 0:11:31.080 this whole book is things I hadn't thought about. But 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:37.960 one of the things I hadn't thought about was, um 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:41.319 that that you have to test foods for edibility, right, 0:11:41.360 --> 0:11:43.120 like if if you're coming from the future and you 0:11:43.120 --> 0:11:45.400 don't know what you're looking at, that you need water 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:47.520 and salt water on hand, Like could you talk to 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:49.640 us through the process and why it might take something 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:53.160 like seventeen hours to determine whether food is edible or not. Yeah, 0:11:53.240 --> 0:11:56.160 it's it's called the universal edibility test. And if you're 0:11:56.160 --> 0:11:58.400 not trapped in the past, it's also useful. If you're, say, 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:01.560 trapped in the woods, no survivable situation, you know what 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:04.320 to eat. And so basically you're you're taking a tiny 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:07.000 bit of this candidate food and you just touch it 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:09.240 to your skin and then wait fifteen minutes or something 0:12:09.280 --> 0:12:12.160 horrible to happen, for your skin to erupt or bog, 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:13.960 your crawl out of it, or something that's not gonna happen. 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:16.920 But then you're looking for a reaction, and then if 0:12:16.960 --> 0:12:18.840 that works, you press it to your lips, then the 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:20.640 inside of your lips, and then your gum, and then 0:12:20.640 --> 0:12:22.160 you chwold and spit it out. Then you chew it 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:23.560 and hold in your mouth, and then you chew it 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:25.520 and s While I'm taking fifteen minutes between each of 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:28.280 these steps, it takes I think it is it's sixteen hours. 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:30.400 Remember I forget how Yeah, I want to say it 0:12:30.400 --> 0:12:33.640 was seventeen hours to do this. Yeah, but at the 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:36.160 end of this, you know it's probably safe to eat. 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:42.000 But that is pretty remarkable. It was It was fun 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:44.199 um research in the book because I was reading a 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:46.600 lot of survival books for the present right, because they're 0:12:46.600 --> 0:12:49.880 not unrelated scenarios. And when thay I discovered is that 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:52.760 there are some survival books out there they're just completely bonkers. 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:55.600 I was talking about food spoiling and say, you know, 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:58.560 when the apocalypse happens, not if, but when you want 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:01.440 to be eating food that's in tin cans and stuff 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:03.840 or in fridges. And by the way, don't worry about 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:06.640 food going bad. That's a that's a myth. Food doesn't 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:09.040 go bad. You can still eat it just doesn't taste good, 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:10.480 but it still has nutrition in it. And I'm like, 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:13.839 I don't that's not That was like a stick to 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:19.840 the second edition Excellent Fishing, and that's fish can go bad. Yeah, 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:22.600 I'm pretty sure. You know. There was a time when 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:25.360 we used to look for funny prizes for UM a 0:13:25.400 --> 0:13:27.600 trivia show. We used to go around doing and and 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:31.160 I found a survivalist site that produced um peanut butter 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:33.640 and jelly in a can. And it was just meant 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:35.840 to be on shelves waiting for you, so that in 0:13:35.880 --> 0:13:38.480 the future you could pull out like a fresh peanut 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:41.599 butter and jelly sandwich, which is just amazing to me. 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:44.600 But the word fresh is a very generous used the 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:49.360 word fresh. I've never made a B and J sandwich. 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:51.120 So you know what this will. I'll let this cure 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:52.600 for a couple of weeks before I eat, and then 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:57.440 it's going to beat the way. So um. You know. 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:00.319 You also have a great section on plants that are 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:03.400 useful and and uh, and there's a whole list of them, 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:08.080 from apples to white mulberries where silkworms can grow, to rubber, 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:11.560 to sugarcane. But you also include tobacco on this list, 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:13.680 and I was curious why you chose to do that. 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:16.560 Was that just for humor or for historical purposes or 0:14:16.600 --> 0:14:18.880 what was it? I mean, it's not a very glowing 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:22.400 review of tobacco. You should do is smoke this stuff. 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:24.880 But it's one of the plants that has had this 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:28.600 huge impact on human history, right, Like, it turns out 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:31.760 that when humans find tobacco, they eventually try smoking it, 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:35.320 and so knowing not to do that can save your 0:14:35.320 --> 0:14:38.160 civil your potential future civilization, like millions and millions in 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:42.360 medical costs and lives cut down too soon. So I 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:44.920 felt like that was more of a be careful with 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:48.160 this one than by the way. Yeah. Actually, you know, 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:51.520 for the listeners, I I will note that I'll read 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:53.840 the quote you've put in the notes section under tobacco 0:14:54.360 --> 0:14:57.600 avoid introducing tobacco to your civilization. You will save billions 0:14:57.600 --> 0:15:00.560 of dollars, millions of lives and prevent the invention of vaping, 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:04.920 which I found really funny. Oh man, I just laughed 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:08.520 at my own joke. How embarrassing. But books you write, 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:10.000 it takes a year or two and then you forget 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:11.760 the jokes you put in until you have them played 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:14.760 back to. That's pretty good past me. So do you 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:16.880 have any plans that you are particularly partial to on 0:15:16.880 --> 0:15:19.960 on this list of yours. There's a footnote for I 0:15:20.000 --> 0:15:24.280 believe orange plants talking about scurvy and citrus, and it's 0:15:24.320 --> 0:15:26.680 one of the most ridiculous footnotes in the book. So 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:29.600 it's talking about, you know, citrus prevents scurvy, and scurvy 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:32.320 is a horrible disease that kills you eventually after making 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:34.600 you be in pain for a long long time. And 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:39.240 the British Empire discovered, or like humists in general, discovered 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:43.320 that vitamin C is an orange juice and that prevents scurvy, 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:47.040 and then forgot that fact so many times throughout history, 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:49.200 and it would be funny if people weren't dying every 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:52.360 time it happened. And the most, the most outbreaking was 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:55.760 the British discover this not great, we solve scurvy. It's done. 0:15:56.400 --> 0:15:59.960 And then you know, fifty years go by, they invent steamships, 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:03.040 so people are traveling faster at sea. And also this 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:06.680 very nutrition shorts people better vitamin C reserves, and so 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:10.560 nobody notices that when the British Army shifts from fresh 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:13.120 juice to this stored lime juice that they run through 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:15.520 copper pipes, which kills a vitamin seeing it that they're 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:18.520 scurvy cure no longer works because's being masked by the 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:20.440 fact that people are at sea for longer. And then 0:16:20.440 --> 0:16:22.960 you hit this great age of exploration in Antarctica and 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:24.800 people start getting a scurvey again and they're well, our 0:16:24.800 --> 0:16:27.840 cure is clearly not working, so we're out of ideas. 0:16:28.360 --> 0:16:30.920 Be bad morale causes the scurvy, and you're like back 0:16:30.920 --> 0:16:33.400 at square one again. You're like, why how do we 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:35.480 keep forgetting this information? It's a disease that you can 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:39.640 cure by eating an orange. The medicine is the same 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:44.000 as the cure. It's it's heartbreaking but also hilarious, but 0:16:44.040 --> 0:16:46.120 also not funny at all because all these people are 0:16:46.200 --> 0:16:50.080 dying from just the stupidest reasons. Yeah, when we UH 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:52.680 used to put out t shirts that Menophaus, one of 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:55.840 the first jokes I'd written for that was shirt with 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:58.040 a pirate on it and said, when life gives you scurvy, 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:02.240 make lemonade. And it's very divisive because people didn't like 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:04.880 the idea of a scurvy joke on a shirt, but 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:10.160 it's legitimate advice though. Well, we're going to be back 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:26.040 with Ryan North right after a little break. Welcome back 0:17:26.040 --> 0:17:28.200 to Part Time Genius. But we're talking with Ryan North, 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:31.000 the author of How To Invent Everything. So we're just 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:32.640 talking about plants. But I do want to get into 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:35.159 animal husbandry because you have a section on that and 0:17:35.440 --> 0:17:38.159 uh it is really fun as well. I'm curious what 0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:42.879 animal did you like riding up the most. There's this 0:17:42.920 --> 0:17:46.359 whole thing in medicine. I'm talking Western medicine, but it 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:49.399 applies a lot of them where we are operating under 0:17:49.720 --> 0:17:52.560 the wrong idea of what medicine is for thousands of years, 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:56.119 and in Western indsineces idea of the four humors that 0:17:56.119 --> 0:17:58.480 are in imbalance, and because of that, you might have 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:01.080 too much blood, and that's the reason you know you 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:03.840 have cancer, not for another medical reason. You have too 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:06.040 much blood, We'll suck it up with the leech. And 0:18:06.040 --> 0:18:07.679 so the leech was a way to talk about, you know, 0:18:08.359 --> 0:18:12.359 how bad ideas of what diseases can cause bad treatments, 0:18:12.359 --> 0:18:14.840 and how there is no medical use for a leech 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:17.920 at any point in history. Then a footnote saying, okay, fine, 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:21.800 there's a tiny medical use in the eighties we realize 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:24.160 that leech has had this one drug that was useful 0:18:24.160 --> 0:18:26.800 in cosmetic surgery. Then we synthesize it five years later. 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:28.960 So in this narrow window, you can use leeches, but 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:32.640 you shouldn't be used anywhere else in time like, it's 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:35.600 just this idea that humans have, where I say humans like, 0:18:35.640 --> 0:18:37.200 I'm not one of them. This idea we have when 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:41.040 we want onto this bad conception of what something is 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:44.359 and not examine it for literally thousands of years. It 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:46.880 makes the point of view of a time traveler saying 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:48.639 there's a lot of things you can fix here, like 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:52.280 there's there's ways for humanity to improve our history simply 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:55.480 by not treating diseases with leeches for a thousands of years, 0:18:55.480 --> 0:18:58.920 that'll that'll be a lot better. And you mentioned silkworms 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:02.800 as well, what you talk a little bit about that. Yeah, silkworms, Um, 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:06.119 they're there, I believe, the only domesticated insect we have. 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:09.840 And it has not worked out too well for silkworms 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:13.600 because they used to, you know, just feed on these 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:16.480 leaves of this white mulberry plant and then spin this 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:18.719 cocoon of a single piece of silk and then emerges 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:22.239 these new animals. And now since we've domesticated them, they 0:19:22.320 --> 0:19:25.639 spin this cocoon of silk and those that do emerge 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:27.480 only live for a couple of days. They can't eat 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:30.639 unless they're force fed, they can't fly, they're blind, and 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:35.240 they're just like these unhappy little beasts. And most of 0:19:35.280 --> 0:19:37.240