Speaker 1: I guess what podcast listeners, So Will isn't here today,
Speaker 1: but I did want to tell you a quick story.
Speaker 1: So years ago, we were brainstorming a game show for
Speaker 1: this big production company who wanted to work with us,
Speaker 1: and we came up with this concept called Smartest Person
Speaker 1: in the World. Actually, there's some debate about the title
Speaker 1: because one person in the group thought it should be
Speaker 1: called Smartest Human Being in the World, because he insisted
Speaker 1: human beings were a funnier title. But it was this
Speaker 1: ridiculous quiz show and we were trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what the big challenge would be and we were stumped,
Speaker 1: and finally we thought, what if you took a smart person,
Speaker 1: gave them some materials like a lab or big textbook
Speaker 1: on optometry, and told them, why don't you just make
Speaker 1: a pair of glasses? Like could the smartest person in
Speaker 1: the world or smartest human being in the world just
Speaker 1: forged together some glasses in thirty minutes on this weird
Speaker 1: reality show. And now that I say it out loud,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a terrible idea, or like a more
Speaker 1: ridiculous version of nailed It. But thinking about that show
Speaker 1: idea made us wonder, how hard is it to create
Speaker 1: a civilization from scratch, Like, if we had enough time,
Speaker 1: could we build a bicycle or figure out how to
Speaker 1: spin silk or make those pair of glasses we were
Speaker 1: talking about? And is there a funny instructional book that
Speaker 1: tells you how to do all of this? It turns
Speaker 1: out there is. Let's dig in. Welcome to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 1: I'm together, Tristan's in the booth wearing his I Miss
Speaker 1: Will t shirt, and Will is off officiating a wedding
Speaker 1: for a college friend of ours. Happy wedding day, Joyce.
Speaker 1: But as a side note, if you want Will to
Speaker 1: officiate your wedding and Tristan to DJ the after party,
Speaker 1: you can always hit us up at Part Time Genius
Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com. Tristan, please don't edit
Speaker 1: that part out. So today we've got a very special
Speaker 1: author on the show. He's the brains behind Dinosaur Comics.
Speaker 1: He's one awards for his comic book writing, including Penning
Speaker 1: Adventure Time, the New jug Head. But he's here to
Speaker 1: talk to us about his new book, How to Invent Everything.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the program, Ryan North, Thank you for having
Speaker 1: me so I really loved How to Invent Everything. It's
Speaker 1: this ridiculous and hilarious guide to rebuilding a civilization from scratch.
Speaker 1: But the concept is way more interesting than that, and
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you'd mind telling our listeners a
Speaker 1: little bit about it. Yeah, sure, so. Um, the premise
Speaker 1: of the book, it's sort of a nonfiction core wrapped
Speaker 1: in a fictional candy coding. The premise of the book
Speaker 1: is that this is a it's a found document. It's
Speaker 1: a repair guide for a time machine. If you go
Speaker 1: back in time and your time machine breaks down, this
Speaker 1: is how you fix it. But after the first couple
Speaker 1: of pages of the book admits that, like, look, time
Speaker 1: machines are the most complicated machines humans have ever built.
Speaker 1: There's no use servical parts, and so you're not gonna
Speaker 1: fix it in the year two. You're trapped where you are,
Speaker 1: but we're not gonna leave you stranded. Here's how you
Speaker 1: bring the future back to you by reinventing all the
Speaker 1: basically the low hanging fruit of citialization. Everything you miss
Speaker 1: is in this book from from first principles. And we
Speaker 1: don't assume like what time period you're in or what
Speaker 1: tools you have. It's all like from basics here's how
Speaker 1: it works. So for the stranded time traveler it should
Speaker 1: be legitimately useful in those circumstances, but for the non stranded,
Speaker 1: for us who are just going through time at one
Speaker 1: second per second and only ever forward. It's also like
Speaker 1: an interesting book that makes you feel like a more
Speaker 1: competent person in the world. That I feel a lot
Speaker 1: better having written it. I'd feel a lot more prepared
Speaker 1: to do lots of things, among which is be stranded
Speaker 1: in the past. Yeah, so I guess I was curious
Speaker 1: about that, Like how much were you interested in these
Speaker 1: things before you wrote this book? Like what was the
Speaker 1: motivation for writing this? Yeah? Like age six to sixteen.
Speaker 1: Basically this is all I thought about, cause I saw
Speaker 1: Back to the future and Martin mcflig goes back in time,
Speaker 1: and like, that's amazing. What would I do if I
Speaker 1: was trapped in time and I kept coming back to
Speaker 1: this idea that you know, I'd be saying, oh, it's great.
Speaker 1: In the future have computers, and people would say, great,
Speaker 1: how do they work? Can I say, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but you're gonna love them. I have no proof. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to be that person to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: how does it mean to work? No problem. And by
Speaker 1: the way, here's an internal combustion engine, and here's like
Speaker 1: everything else you need. So it was something that I
Speaker 1: sort of fantasized about, and I kept waiting for um
Speaker 1: this book to be written, and finally I wrote up myself,
Speaker 1: which I think is the origin story of a lot
Speaker 1: of books. We all write the books we'd like to read. Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: I mean you know that that was always our goal
Speaker 1: at Metal Fhiss two, was trying to make people interested
Speaker 1: in something they didn't think they could be interested in.
Speaker 1: You know, we used to have these conversations in our
Speaker 1: dorm rooms. Will and I actually about like if we
Speaker 1: went back in time, what we could actually do, like
Speaker 1: how confident would be and really, other than telling people
Speaker 1: to like wash their hands a lot, like, we really
Speaker 1: didn't feel like we had much advice of them. But
Speaker 1: you know, I was there, you need soap, like but
Speaker 1: that that's the thing, like you write about how to
Speaker 1: make soap, like why horses can only use certain type
Speaker 1: of caller. It was like you have this argument between
Speaker 1: like a water wheel enthusiasts and windmill enthusiasts, and like, honestly,
Speaker 1: I had never thought i'd have an opinion on on
Speaker 1: why windmills are better, but it really is terrific, Thank you.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's the way it normally works. As
Speaker 1: you may know, when writing a nonfiction book, He's right
Speaker 1: kind of a proposal. We say, here's the book I
Speaker 1: want to write, and here's a sample chapter, and here's
Speaker 1: the table of contents, and here's what I want to do,
Speaker 1: and you try to get people than that. But for
Speaker 1: this book, I wasn't at all confident that what I
Speaker 1: was trying to do was possible collapsalization into four hundreds
Speaker 1: and odd pages, and I wasn't sure that would work,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't sure if I could do it, if
Speaker 1: it would be useful like I would. I was worried
Speaker 1: about contecting it so much. It would be at level
Speaker 1: of you know, you need food to live, find some
Speaker 1: food and need it, and you wouldn't learn anything. So
Speaker 1: I actually wrote a fifty words for the proposal. I
Speaker 1: cut down into a smaller amount um and then sort
Speaker 1: of point from there. But I wasn't at all confident
Speaker 1: that this book woul actually come together, because it was
Speaker 1: just it seemed like, this is the craziest thing I've
Speaker 1: ever tried to do it is I mean I and
Speaker 1: the fact that like I walk away no ing, what's
Speaker 1: a better like way to harness the horse is amazing
Speaker 1: and it's it's told in like diagrams and just a
Speaker 1: few sentences, you know, and it is it is stunning.
Speaker 1: I do want to talk about some of the specifics
Speaker 1: if you're up for it. You know, fairly early in
Speaker 1: the book you talk about written language and the importance
Speaker 1: of creating a language, and you discuss pictograms, which I
Speaker 1: hadn't really thought about, like those don't really work as
Speaker 1: a language when read, you know, and and and could
Speaker 1: you explain that a little bit because I really found
Speaker 1: that fascinating. Yeah, that's what came out. I was at
Speaker 1: the XO EXO conference last weekend and we're talking about
Speaker 1: emojis a lot there, and it's sort of a similar
Speaker 1: idea where people you can say, oh, emojis are language,
Speaker 1: and I went to school for linguistics from the guy
Speaker 1: being like, I'm actually there's different seeing there's a difference
Speaker 1: between communication and language, right, So, like you can communicate
Speaker 1: with the dog and you know what your dogs feelings
Speaker 1: are communicating with you, and you're exchanging feelings if not
Speaker 1: legitimate commands, right, And there's difference. So you can really
Speaker 1: communicate with animals but you can't really have a language
Speaker 1: with them in the same way we have language right now.
Speaker 1: And one of the main differences between pictograms and words
Speaker 1: is that words have a specific meaning. So I think
Speaker 1: in the Book of example of a picture of a
Speaker 1: woman tossing your hair in the emoji style and a
Speaker 1: peach and sunglasses. I think, and if you know the
Speaker 1: story those emodia you're trying to tell, you can reconstruct
Speaker 1: it from those pictograms. And a cool woman ate a peach.
Speaker 1: That's what this is trying to say. But if you
Speaker 1: don't know, the story could also be like, oh, cool
Speaker 1: peach was around a woman, or a woman got transformed
Speaker 1: into a cool peach by aliens, And there's all this
Speaker 1: stuff that you are reading into it. Because it doesn't
Speaker 1: have one specific meaning, it's more like a reminder than
Speaker 1: an actual narrative. With words, the whole point of language
Speaker 1: is to communicate clearly, and so words tending. You can
Speaker 1: still have miscommunications, but we try to minimize those in
Speaker 1: language that we can communicate quickly and acturally and not
Speaker 1: you know, be passing pictures back and forth. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I thought you have this like long sentence there
Speaker 1: about like I forget what it was, exactly like aliens
Speaker 1: being in the glasses or something, you know, in the
Speaker 1: shadow at the glasses of never in reflection, and and
Speaker 1: it was just so perfectly illustrative of the fact that
Speaker 1: these aren't you know, one to one is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: And and also the fact that I didn't realize this,
Speaker 1: but Eastern Island had a script that's never been deciphered, Like,
Speaker 1: oh god, yeah, that's that's I mean, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: communicate in the book. It's terrifying, Aby, the whole thing
Speaker 1: terrifying because um, it's this written script and basically Europeans
Speaker 1: show up and wreck everything in an unprecedented event. It
Speaker 1: will never happen again, and so they bring disease, and
Speaker 1: they bring like slavery raids and all this horrible stuff.
Speaker 1: When they first show up, it's understood that this is writing,
Speaker 1: but only the elites can understand it. And then when
Speaker 1: they come back onto years later in the the island
Speaker 1: is in a horrible condition. There's only a few people left,
Speaker 1: and that knowledge of the script is lost, and so
Speaker 1: you know what had been words is now just squiggles
Speaker 1: that nobody understands, and it it really drove home the
Speaker 1: idea to me that, like, you know, language is a technology,
Speaker 1: it's something we invented and we don't get it for
Speaker 1: and writing downwards something we had to think of and
Speaker 1: then do, and just like any technology, we can lose it.
Speaker 1: An the idea of like losing the written word, it
Speaker 1: feels like you're just cutting the heart out of any civilization,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's such a devastating blow that would be
Speaker 1: so hard to recover from. So I thought it was
Speaker 1: a great example of just like things are more precious
Speaker 1: than we tend to think they are, and pullly, as
Speaker 1: you bick of this, as writing can can still be forgotten.
Speaker 1: Speaking of that, like you do this great section on farming.
Speaker 1: I mean you go through everything from like why you
Speaker 1: leave a field, follow for a while, and like all
Speaker 1: sorts of things. But it's a lot of work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, but it's a small chapter. That's what's amazing
Speaker 1: about it. But you know, you talk about ancient corn
Speaker 1: and peaches and watermelon being completely different, and would you
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about what those were like
Speaker 1: and how they tasted. So we have this idea of
Speaker 1: selective breeding where we basically the right thing about like
Speaker 1: to breeding is this is one of the technologies you
Speaker 1: kind of get without trying because it's just human nature.
Speaker 1: If you have a plant that has you know, larger fruit,
Speaker 1: you plant those seeds next year because it's a better
Speaker 1: plant to be planting. And so you tend to add
Speaker 1: this evolutionary pressure to get the kind of plants you want.
Speaker 1: But um, the results of that are things like peaches
Speaker 1: where these we have these giants sucking with peaches in
Speaker 1: the past, where these like hard sour things no one
Speaker 1: really want to eat, but they're nothing. Corn is it
Speaker 1: comes from this ancient grain that's just like basically grass.
Speaker 1: And the crazy thing about corn is we haven't been
Speaker 1: able to figure out exactly how you get corn out
Speaker 1: of out of this ancient ancestor. It feels like it
Speaker 1: must have been this one in a million, either random
Speaker 1: cross breeding or mutation. But something changed to produce the
Speaker 1: larger heads of corn with these giant kernels. We can
Speaker 1: eat that. Um, it's just we don't know how to
Speaker 1: do it yet. Yeah, I mean, it's not like in
Speaker 1: in your book like you'd only get something like four
Speaker 1: or five kernels of edible corn off a cob, which
Speaker 1: is just crazy to think about. But I mean, if
Speaker 1: that's if that's the state of the art, that's what
Speaker 1: you go with. You don't you don't imagine our modern corn.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculously convenient packaging. We're just throwing the barbecue and
Speaker 1: then peel it off and you've got this de wicious
Speaker 1: corn ready to go, Like it's it's it's the thing
Speaker 1: where you know, you think of the natural world as
Speaker 1: being permanent and unchanging, when we're surrounded by evidence of
Speaker 1: human influence on this natural world, like we've been changing
Speaker 1: it since we've been humane to make it easier first.
Speaker 1: So I was like, it is remarkable. Um So another
Speaker 1: thing that I hadn't really thought about. You feel like
Speaker 1: this whole book is things I hadn't thought about. But
Speaker 1: one of the things I hadn't thought about was, um
Speaker 1: that that you have to test foods for edibility, right,
Speaker 1: like if if you're coming from the future and you
Speaker 1: don't know what you're looking at, that you need water
Speaker 1: and salt water on hand, Like could you talk to
Speaker 1: us through the process and why it might take something
Speaker 1: like seventeen hours to determine whether food is edible or not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's called the universal edibility test. And if you're
Speaker 1: not trapped in the past, it's also useful. If you're, say,
Speaker 1: trapped in the woods, no survivable situation, you know what
Speaker 1: to eat. And so basically you're you're taking a tiny
Speaker 1: bit of this candidate food and you just touch it
Speaker 1: to your skin and then wait fifteen minutes or something
Speaker 1: horrible to happen, for your skin to erupt or bog,
Speaker 1: your crawl out of it, or something that's not gonna happen.
Speaker 1: But then you're looking for a reaction, and then if
Speaker 1: that works, you press it to your lips, then the
Speaker 1: inside of your lips, and then your gum, and then
Speaker 1: you chwold and spit it out. Then you chew it
Speaker 1: and hold in your mouth, and then you chew it
Speaker 1: and s While I'm taking fifteen minutes between each of
Speaker 1: these steps, it takes I think it is it's sixteen hours.
Speaker 1: Remember I forget how Yeah, I want to say it
Speaker 1: was seventeen hours to do this. Yeah, but at the
Speaker 1: end of this, you know it's probably safe to eat.
Speaker 1: But that is pretty remarkable. It was It was fun
Speaker 1: um research in the book because I was reading a
Speaker 1: lot of survival books for the present right, because they're
Speaker 1: not unrelated scenarios. And when thay I discovered is that
Speaker 1: there are some survival books out there they're just completely bonkers.
Speaker 1: I was talking about food spoiling and say, you know,
Speaker 1: when the apocalypse happens, not if, but when you want
Speaker 1: to be eating food that's in tin cans and stuff
Speaker 1: or in fridges. And by the way, don't worry about
Speaker 1: food going bad. That's a that's a myth. Food doesn't
Speaker 1: go bad. You can still eat it just doesn't taste good,
Speaker 1: but it still has nutrition in it. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't that's not That was like a stick to
Speaker 1: the second edition Excellent Fishing, and that's fish can go bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure. You know. There was a time when
Speaker 1: we used to look for funny prizes for UM a
Speaker 1: trivia show. We used to go around doing and and
Speaker 1: I found a survivalist site that produced um peanut butter
Speaker 1: and jelly in a can. And it was just meant
Speaker 1: to be on shelves waiting for you, so that in
Speaker 1: the future you could pull out like a fresh peanut
Speaker 1: butter and jelly sandwich, which is just amazing to me.
Speaker 1: But the word fresh is a very generous used the
Speaker 1: word fresh. I've never made a B and J sandwich.
Speaker 1: So you know what this will. I'll let this cure
Speaker 1: for a couple of weeks before I eat, and then
Speaker 1: it's going to beat the way. So um. You know.
Speaker 1: You also have a great section on plants that are
Speaker 1: useful and and uh, and there's a whole list of them,
Speaker 1: from apples to white mulberries where silkworms can grow, to rubber,
Speaker 1: to sugarcane. But you also include tobacco on this list,
Speaker 1: and I was curious why you chose to do that.
Speaker 1: Was that just for humor or for historical purposes or
Speaker 1: what was it? I mean, it's not a very glowing
Speaker 1: review of tobacco. You should do is smoke this stuff.
Speaker 1: But it's one of the plants that has had this
Speaker 1: huge impact on human history, right, Like, it turns out
Speaker 1: that when humans find tobacco, they eventually try smoking it,
Speaker 1: and so knowing not to do that can save your
Speaker 1: civil your potential future civilization, like millions and millions in
Speaker 1: medical costs and lives cut down too soon. So I
Speaker 1: felt like that was more of a be careful with
Speaker 1: this one than by the way. Yeah. Actually, you know,
Speaker 1: for the listeners, I I will note that I'll read
Speaker 1: the quote you've put in the notes section under tobacco
Speaker 1: avoid introducing tobacco to your civilization. You will save billions
Speaker 1: of dollars, millions of lives and prevent the invention of vaping,
Speaker 1: which I found really funny. Oh man, I just laughed
Speaker 1: at my own joke. How embarrassing. But books you write,
Speaker 1: it takes a year or two and then you forget
Speaker 1: the jokes you put in until you have them played
Speaker 1: back to. That's pretty good past me. So do you
Speaker 1: have any plans that you are particularly partial to on
Speaker 1: on this list of yours. There's a footnote for I
Speaker 1: believe orange plants talking about scurvy and citrus, and it's
Speaker 1: one of the most ridiculous footnotes in the book. So
Speaker 1: it's talking about, you know, citrus prevents scurvy, and scurvy
Speaker 1: is a horrible disease that kills you eventually after making
Speaker 1: you be in pain for a long long time. And
Speaker 1: the British Empire discovered, or like humists in general, discovered
Speaker 1: that vitamin C is an orange juice and that prevents scurvy,
Speaker 1: and then forgot that fact so many times throughout history,
Speaker 1: and it would be funny if people weren't dying every
Speaker 1: time it happened. And the most, the most outbreaking was
Speaker 1: the British discover this not great, we solve scurvy. It's done.
Speaker 1: And then you know, fifty years go by, they invent steamships,
Speaker 1: so people are traveling faster at sea. And also this
Speaker 1: very nutrition shorts people better vitamin C reserves, and so
Speaker 1: nobody notices that when the British Army shifts from fresh
Speaker 1: juice to this stored lime juice that they run through
Speaker 1: copper pipes, which kills a vitamin seeing it that they're
Speaker 1: scurvy cure no longer works because's being masked by the
Speaker 1: fact that people are at sea for longer. And then
Speaker 1: you hit this great age of exploration in Antarctica and
Speaker 1: people start getting a scurvey again and they're well, our
Speaker 1: cure is clearly not working, so we're out of ideas.
Speaker 1: Be bad morale causes the scurvy, and you're like back
Speaker 1: at square one again. You're like, why how do we
Speaker 1: keep forgetting this information? It's a disease that you can
Speaker 1: cure by eating an orange. The medicine is the same
Speaker 1: as the cure. It's it's heartbreaking but also hilarious, but
Speaker 1: also not funny at all because all these people are
Speaker 1: dying from just the stupidest reasons. Yeah, when we UH
Speaker 1: used to put out t shirts that Menophaus, one of
Speaker 1: the first jokes I'd written for that was shirt with
Speaker 1: a pirate on it and said, when life gives you scurvy,
Speaker 1: make lemonade. And it's very divisive because people didn't like
Speaker 1: the idea of a scurvy joke on a shirt, but
Speaker 1: it's legitimate advice though. Well, we're going to be back
Speaker 1: with Ryan North right after a little break. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Part Time Genius. But we're talking with Ryan North,
Speaker 1: the author of How To Invent Everything. So we're just
Speaker 1: talking about plants. But I do want to get into
Speaker 1: animal husbandry because you have a section on that and
Speaker 1: uh it is really fun as well. I'm curious what
Speaker 1: animal did you like riding up the most. There's this
Speaker 1: whole thing in medicine. I'm talking Western medicine, but it
Speaker 1: applies a lot of them where we are operating under
Speaker 1: the wrong idea of what medicine is for thousands of years,
Speaker 1: and in Western indsineces idea of the four humors that
Speaker 1: are in imbalance, and because of that, you might have
Speaker 1: too much blood, and that's the reason you know you
Speaker 1: have cancer, not for another medical reason. You have too
Speaker 1: much blood, We'll suck it up with the leech. And
Speaker 1: so the leech was a way to talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: how bad ideas of what diseases can cause bad treatments,
Speaker 1: and how there is no medical use for a leech
Speaker 1: at any point in history. Then a footnote saying, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: there's a tiny medical use in the eighties we realize
Speaker 1: that leech has had this one drug that was useful
Speaker 1: in cosmetic surgery. Then we synthesize it five years later.
Speaker 1: So in this narrow window, you can use leeches, but
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be used anywhere else in time like, it's
Speaker 1: just this idea that humans have, where I say humans like,
Speaker 1: I'm not one of them. This idea we have when
Speaker 1: we want onto this bad conception of what something is
Speaker 1: and not examine it for literally thousands of years. It
Speaker 1: makes the point of view of a time traveler saying
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things you can fix here, like
Speaker 1: there's there's ways for humanity to improve our history simply
Speaker 1: by not treating diseases with leeches for a thousands of years,
Speaker 1: that'll that'll be a lot better. And you mentioned silkworms
Speaker 1: as well, what you talk a little bit about that. Yeah, silkworms, Um,
Speaker 1: they're there, I believe, the only domesticated insect we have.
Speaker 1: And it has not worked out too well for silkworms
Speaker 1: because they used to, you know, just feed on these
Speaker 1: leaves of this white mulberry plant and then spin this
Speaker 1: cocoon of a single piece of silk and then emerges
Speaker 1: these new animals. And now since we've domesticated them, they
Speaker 1: spin this cocoon of silk and those that do emerge
Speaker 1: only live for a couple of days. They can't eat
Speaker 1: unless they're force fed, they can't fly, they're blind, and
Speaker 1: they're just like these unhappy little beasts. And most of
Speaker 1: them we stick in boiling water to kill them and
Speaker 1: harvest their silk. So they're the only dovestigated insect, but
Speaker 1: hasn't been a real success story from the silkworm's point
Speaker 1: of view. That's definitely just knowing, you know, where silk
Speaker 1: comes from, could make you millions of dollars at certain
Speaker 1: point in history, cause it was it was this big secret,
Speaker 1: and they're all these ideas like where the silk come from?
Speaker 1: You know, I heard it's when this is one insect
Speaker 1: that if you eat too much, the bloads in this
Speaker 1: explosion of silk. But yeah, sort of like it's a
Speaker 1: telephone in a game, like someone who came from an
Speaker 1: insect but didn't know how the silk happened, and you
Speaker 1: sort of get this result down the road, and that's
Speaker 1: pretty impressive. So one of the things I also really
Speaker 1: liked in the section was about goats. And I'm a
Speaker 1: fan of goats anyway, because they helped us discover coffee.
Speaker 1: But you also write that they're a great way to
Speaker 1: get rid of poison ivy. Why is that so? Poison
Speaker 1: ivy is fascinating because, um, it has a horrible effect
Speaker 1: on humans, and it's probably an accident. There's no evolutionary
Speaker 1: reason for this to affect only humans and one other
Speaker 1: ape and that's it. So it seems to be an accident.
Speaker 1: Poison ivy is even poisoned in the first place and
Speaker 1: doesn't affect goats, but goats love to eat it, and
Speaker 1: so if you have poison ivy, you can rent a
Speaker 1: goat and just put it on your land and then
Speaker 1: we'll eat up all the poison I belong with your
Speaker 1: other stuff. And I have to do is be careful
Speaker 1: not to pet the goat or drink the goat's milk
Speaker 1: by accident over the next couple of days, and your
Speaker 1: problem is solved. That's remarkable to the kind of person
Speaker 1: who sort of ends up accidentally drinking goat milk the time.
Speaker 1: Here we go again, So this is back to an
Speaker 1: earlier question, But like, I feel like you've written a
Speaker 1: bunch of these, um, really unusual books or the concepts
Speaker 1: for the books are really unusual. And you've also written
Speaker 1: these books that tackles Shakespeare but treat them almost like
Speaker 1: choose your own adventure books. What was your inspiration for
Speaker 1: writing this style of book? Like, were there models of
Speaker 1: these books or tones that you sort of were drawn
Speaker 1: to when you're growing up. No, Um, I'm I'm actually
Speaker 1: hoping there's more books like this. I hadn't read a
Speaker 1: book before that had, um a fictional conceit around a
Speaker 1: nonfiction core, And I know my publishers were works are like, well,
Speaker 1: people think this is all fake information. We had this
Speaker 1: huge babilyogrey with all the sources I referenced, so you
Speaker 1: know that there this is all real, except for the
Speaker 1: time travel parts, which is not real. But it was.
Speaker 1: It was less of books I read and more movies
Speaker 1: I saw to Time Travel Adventures, where usually pretty much
Speaker 1: every time travel movie I've seen, there's not a person
Speaker 1: who's like, I'm prepared for this scenario for I have
Speaker 1: research just the information I had to her in this book.
Speaker 1: So I just like the idea of someone who you know,
Speaker 1: wakes up in the year negative and says, great, I
Speaker 1: know exactly what to do today. Well, I feel like
Speaker 1: that in in the beginning, Like I feel like one
Speaker 1: of the things about time travel movies as people are
Speaker 1: always disputing whether or not time travel can work, or
Speaker 1: like the laws of time traveler or whatever, and I
Speaker 1: like that you address them right up front. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: sort of had to, because I the whole premise is
Speaker 1: it's a rental time machine, right, And I feel like
Speaker 1: if you can go back and step on a butterfly
Speaker 1: and destroy the universe, it's wildly irresponsible in the rental
Speaker 1: time machines, but it builds this model of time travel
Speaker 1: whenever you go back in time, you create a new
Speaker 1: parallel timeline where everything is the same except you're there,
Speaker 1: and so you can't mess up the world you're from,
Speaker 1: which works for a time travel adventure, but it's also
Speaker 1: like has huge ethical implications of just creating at a
Speaker 1: parallel war world for tourism purposes. There's no consequences, but
Speaker 1: it's filled with living, breathing people. It's like a nightmare holidack,
Speaker 1: but works really good for this the purposes of this book.
Speaker 1: I agree. So you have a section on medicine and
Speaker 1: how to invent it where you talking about things like
Speaker 1: germ theory and and baselines for normal humans, but you
Speaker 1: also have the sidebar on a rehydration drink, and I
Speaker 1: was curious why you included that. Yeah, so this rehydration
Speaker 1: drink is it's like everything else, it's a real drink,
Speaker 1: and um, like everything else in the book, I should
Speaker 1: say it's real, but um, the reason I included it
Speaker 1: is because there's tons of diseases that don't technically kill
Speaker 1: you from the disease. They kill you from diarrhea, from
Speaker 1: just dehydration of pooping so much, and it's such an
Speaker 1: unfair way to die. Plus it can be treated. If
Speaker 1: you're just drinking this rehydration rink even though your vomity,
Speaker 1: drink it between the vomits, you'll be fine. And the
Speaker 1: trick is it's got some solvent so lets your body
Speaker 1: absorbed water slightly faster. And it's just a it's a
Speaker 1: really easy and really easy to make medicine you can
Speaker 1: make out of water and salt at any time period
Speaker 1: that can literally save lives if someone is having a
Speaker 1: disease that makes them poper vomit too much as dehydrating them. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I mean it's incredible that dehydration is one of the
Speaker 1: biggest causes of depth through human history. I mean that
Speaker 1: is something I just had never thought about. Yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: I was worried. There a lot of sections that worried
Speaker 1: me at the start. In medicine was one of them
Speaker 1: because I was thinking, you know, what can I tell
Speaker 1: you that's usable, it's practical, like if you're years ago,
Speaker 1: what can I tell you it's going to be valuable?
Speaker 1: But even just that is insanely valuable, Like you can
Speaker 1: save so many lives without just knowing how to make
Speaker 1: it and went to administer it also had the benefit
Speaker 1: that you know, killers like heart disease and cancer aren't
Speaker 1: going to be a big concern if you're in the
Speaker 1: distant past because you have to live a long time
Speaker 1: usually for those who have an effect on you. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. So I do want to go back to
Speaker 1: one of the things I have referenced in the beginning,
Speaker 1: which was the discussion of water wheels versus windmills, And
Speaker 1: I was curious if you could talk about the benefits
Speaker 1: of both of those and why a windmill might be superior. Oh,
Speaker 1: you're on team and mill interesting. So basically what you
Speaker 1: want with either a water mill or windmill is to
Speaker 1: turn a wheel, because a wheel can power machinery which
Speaker 1: can grind your grain and do all sorts of saw
Speaker 1: your would, all sorts of interesting things, hammer your iron.
Speaker 1: It's basically a machine doing the work for you. And
Speaker 1: water wheels are great because water carries more force when
Speaker 1: it moves, but you need water moving water to do that. Well.
Speaker 1: Windmills you just need the air and you can place
Speaker 1: them anywhere. Um So the windmill you have the advantage
Speaker 1: of you can move it more easily to target the wind,
Speaker 1: and you can place some in areas where you can
Speaker 1: place a water wheel, but at the disadvantage that wind
Speaker 1: doesn't carry as much work, so you're you're limited sorts
Speaker 1: of things you can do. And this that the talent
Speaker 1: type of the book is that, um, the fun of
Speaker 1: it really was that some of the stuff you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this sounds boring, like why do why do I care
Speaker 1: about this? But if you present it in a fun
Speaker 1: sort of time traveling way, it becomes a you know what,
Speaker 1: team where you hunting water wheel or team windmill. It
Speaker 1: didn't even feel like there was an argument there. And
Speaker 1: then once I read from Chomsky you, I think with
Speaker 1: the partner debating you, I didn't think I'd think about
Speaker 1: the benefits between the two, but it was really engaging.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I mean, that's that's That's what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to do. And I think the fun of a book
Speaker 1: like this because normally, if you're running nonfiction, you're always worried,
Speaker 1: you know, is this boring? And how can I make
Speaker 1: it not boring? But doing it in this time travel way.
Speaker 1: Whenever I was like, oh, I wonder if this is boring,
Speaker 1: I could just go back to the time travel thing
Speaker 1: and put in the time travel joker have some some
Speaker 1: fun with the conceit. So it gave me an easy
Speaker 1: way to make it um an engaging book and not
Speaker 1: just here's the list of facts that are useful. Did
Speaker 1: you know water boils at a hundred degrees? Now you do? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, and you also like those little jokes are
Speaker 1: so funny, Like you have that section on famous songs
Speaker 1: that you can plagiarize, and it's got sheet music to
Speaker 1: like owe to joy and uh and talk about Cannona
Speaker 1: or whatever. Like, I just thought that was such a
Speaker 1: wonderful relief from from the rest of the tech. But
Speaker 1: I'm curious, like what ended up on the cutting room floor, Like,
Speaker 1: what what is stuff that you thought about tackling but
Speaker 1: but found too hard to condense? Yeah, there was gonna
Speaker 1: be a section on weapons, and by the time I've
Speaker 1: written most of the book, I I started thinking, I
Speaker 1: don't want a section of how to kill people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just feels the whole book is about building civilizations
Speaker 1: and building like literally building a world around yourself. You know.
Speaker 1: I'm actually I'm actually glad you didn't because I felt
Speaker 1: like one of the brightest things about this book was
Speaker 1: you were filled with news that's so distracting and irritating
Speaker 1: and upsetting. And this book really felt, even though it's
Speaker 1: kind of a survivalist book, just felt so optimistic. You know,
Speaker 1: it is a very optimistic book. I mean you have
Speaker 1: to be optimistic too to be you know, two years
Speaker 1: in the past and thinking I alone can rebuild civilization,
Speaker 1: do it. But yes, so I didn't want to put
Speaker 1: any any weaponry stuff. And honestly, if you want to
Speaker 1: kill someone, like, there's probably fair in a way to
Speaker 1: do it with what's in the book already, you know,
Speaker 1: hurt their feelings with the written word. Uh. There was
Speaker 1: a section It's funny in the music section. So the
Speaker 1: gig of that section is you have like some classics,
Speaker 1: pack of bells, cannon and oh to Joy, and then
Speaker 1: you've got the Tetris theme songs, folk tongue. I resually
Speaker 1: wanted to have Salt and Pepper's Shop there, but I
Speaker 1: could not, for the life of me, get the rights
Speaker 1: holders to understand what I was trying to do with
Speaker 1: this book. It's like, hey, can I want to see
Speaker 1: music and I know it doesn't exist, but I'll make it.
Speaker 1: And they're like, is this for a textbook? I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: it's not a textbook. It's like nonfiction but fiction and
Speaker 1: it's general information, like it's not a textbook. And they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: so it's for school, it's a textbook, Like, no, one's
Speaker 1: not a textbook. They finally suffered funding to my emails,
Speaker 1: and I was like, fine, who would have thought the
Speaker 1: problem is that, like I don't, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: money in sheet music licensing, and so there's no motivation
Speaker 1: to put a square peg in a round hole there.
Speaker 1: They were like, this is already waste enough time emailing
Speaker 1: this guy. Forget that is a great story, and and honestly,
Speaker 1: Shoop is such a great punchline there for for some reason,
Speaker 1: it's really wonderful. And the other thing I ended up
Speaker 1: cutting was at the end there was a kind of
Speaker 1: a victory lap chapter with a recipe and how to
Speaker 1: make apple pie and ice cream from scratch, and sort
Speaker 1: of riffed off it old Carl Sagan quote where he says, like,
Speaker 1: to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first
Speaker 1: create the universe. And in my verse, like, well you've
Speaker 1: created a civilization, now here's how you make apple pie
Speaker 1: and all the all the ingredients you could build off
Speaker 1: what you've already learned in the book, but there's already
Speaker 1: a pretty long book, and I felt like this is
Speaker 1: just like a loop of things people already know. Well,
Speaker 1: I understand why you didn't put it in, but it
Speaker 1: would have been a great addition. I think we're gonna
Speaker 1: pause for a quick ad break, but we'll be back
Speaker 1: with Ryan North in just a minute. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: part times where we're talking to their Ryan North. So
Speaker 1: I do want to read the last few sentences of
Speaker 1: the book, and I promise it is a spoiler, and
Speaker 1: I was curious if you'd let us do that on
Speaker 1: the program. Yeah, I really like those last few sentences,
Speaker 1: so go for it. So it goes. Reading this book
Speaker 1: is transferred knowledge of humanity's greatest achievements from the palm
Speaker 1: of your hand to the interior of your mind. Earlier,
Speaker 1: we remarked that this text, once stranded in the past,
Speaker 1: was the single most powerful and dangerous thing on the planet.
Speaker 1: That is no longer true. You are go get him Tiger,
Speaker 1: which I just thought it was such a wonderful way
Speaker 1: to close this book. Thank you. No, I love it
Speaker 1: of drama that gave it. But also you know you're
Speaker 1: you're about to do something crazy. You're about to try
Speaker 1: to rebuild civilizations, so give you the pep talk at
Speaker 1: the end. Go do it. You got every vantage in
Speaker 1: the world that we didn't have because we didn't know
Speaker 1: about it at the time, So you can do this.
Speaker 1: You know, there are really so many things we didn't
Speaker 1: get to, from how to invent a bicycle to how
Speaker 1: to understand all of modern philosophy and religion through high fives.
Speaker 1: That might be the most valuable two pages in here,
Speaker 1: but it's really been such a pleasure. Our guest is
Speaker 1: Ryan North. The book is how to Invent Everything, and
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having me. It was great. Thanks again for listening.
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius is a production of how stuff works
Speaker 1: and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do
Speaker 1: the important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan
Speaker 1: McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme
Speaker 1: song and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland
Speaker 1: does the exact producer thing. Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher,
Speaker 1: with support from the Research Army, including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Speaker 1: Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the
Speaker 1: show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
Speaker 1: what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you
Speaker 1: really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave
Speaker 1: a good review for us. We do. We forget Jason. Jason,
Speaker 1: who was the best po