I'm Caleb Bissinger and this is the next big idea. Today, as close to time travel as we will ever get. I'm We have an unwritten rule here on the show.

It says that in the summertime, we have permission to make episodes that are on the quirky side.

This is one of those episodes.

A few weeks ago, I got my hands on an early copy of a new book by Sam Keane.

Sam is a science writer whose other books include The Disappearing Spoon, which is about the periodic table, and the violinist's thumbs,

which is about DNA, seemingly dull topics, but that Sam manages to make funny, entertaining,

in the words of the New York Times, ebullient. His new book is no exception. It's called

Dinner with King Tut, how rogue archaeologists are recreating the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of lost civilizations.

As soon as I read that title, I knew I wanted to apply the summer rule and get Sam on the show.

To write the book, he traveled all over the world,

hanging out with experimental archaeologists.

I'd never heard of this field before,

but picture a merry, if slightly unhinged band

of academics and amateurs who aren't content

to just dig up artifacts and theorize about them.

These experimental archaeologists are doers.

They brew ancient beer, make mummies, build catapults,

all in an effort to resurrect the past

so that they might learn in a sensory rich way

new things about how our ancestors lived, and also about our own humanity.

Artifacts sitting on a shelf, Sam says, can only take us so far into the minds of other people.

To reach them on that deeper level, he writes, we need to inhabit their world,

...