Hi listeners, Benjamin here. Earlier in the week, you heard a shortened version of my interview with

XKCD's Randall Munro all about his new book. He told me a lot more stories than I was able to

fit into a regular podcast piece, so here's a longer version of our chat. As much of Randall's work

is very science-based, I began by asking him about his scientific

background. I did a degree, an undergraduate degree in physics, and then I worked for a little while

in a NASA robotics lab. I feel like I have a lot of friends who are scientists, so I'm always

careful, you know, to say that I don't think I really count it as a scientist.

But I do like saying if I have to pick something, I might say roboticist, mostly because that's a really cool title.

And I don't think it means anything officially, but I've always liked that word.

Well, we're here today to talk about your new book, which I have here in front of me.

It's called How to Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real World Problems.

What are some of the things you've looked at?

I took a lot of simple problems that you might encounter in everyday life, like, you know, the hassle of packing to move or how to make friends with people. And I'm one of those people who

will always find a much more complicated way to do things that I have convinced myself is going to be

worth it in the long run. And so I'll say, okay, I know this looks like it's too elaborate or too

complicated, but once it gets going, you'll see what a good idea this was. And inevitably, I'm still trying to get it working when the people who are

solving the problem the normal way are already done. But I find that when I do that, I often

learn something really interesting that might not help me with that problem, but is useful for

something later on.

Yeah, and I would say all of your questions, then I've got some in front of me here,

how to jump really high, how to play football, which works on both sides of the Atlantic, which is great, have to predict the weather.

I mean, they all have sensible starts, and then things quickly veer off into maths and physics

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