How cool is that? Like, it's this van that just drives into like, you know, a McDonald's or whatever,

and they just kind of set up and then they're testing. That one just kind of blew my mind.

And expect to get your mind blown when you read a book on 50 of the world's most fascinating inventions.

It's called the Atlas Obscura Explorerorers Guide to Inventing the World.

And its short, brightly illustrated chapters show how seemingly unrelated discoveries are connected and impacting our lives today.

I'm Tori. And joining me now on Kid News Convo's or authors of this book, Dylan Thuris, the co-founder and creative director of Atlas Obscura, and Jennifer Swanson,

an award-winning children's author of more than 45 books. Thank you both for being here on Kid News

Combos. Thank you for having us, yeah. It's such an interesting book that you have, and it's really

focused on middle grade readers,

you call it.

You focus on 50 of the world's most fascinating inventions.

How do you choose which ones to include?

Well, I am a huge fan of the history of science,

history of invention.

I love learning about it and reading about it. And I wanted this book

to not just, you know, introduce kids to interesting inventions, but to sort of help them

understand this web of invention, this way that all of these inventions actually sort of

interconnect and build on each other. And sometimes something gets invented and then forgotten about

and then rediscovered later.

And so the book, through these 50 inventions, takes kids on a tour all around the world.

Each invention has two places associated with it, sometimes usually a very old place.

So like in the example of fire, we've got the Wonderwork Cave in South Africa, which is the oldest

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