Randall Munroe answers your wildest questions

The TED Interview

TED

Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2022

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

How many soulmates do you think people have? What if you tried to funnel all the water from Niagara falls through a straw? Do you think it’s possible? if you sold the whole planet for scrap–what parts would be most valuable? You might think these absurd questions are unanswerable, or even pointless, but these are the kind of questions Randall Munroe can’t stop thinking about. Randall is the bestselling author of the books “What If” and “What If 2” which provide serious, scientific answers to absurd questions. He’s also the Hugo-award winning cartoonist behind the popular xkcd webcomics. In this episode, Randall talks through the most intriguing scenarios from his new volume, and shares why absurdist thought experiments actually help us understand the world–and each other–a bit better.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Have you listened to Talk Radio recently?
0:03.0	Let's talk about this war on white people.
0:05.0	That's a pro-quiling, it's good for you.
0:07.0	Bill the Keystone pipeline, deport illegals, build the wall.
0:10.0	I'm Katie Thornton, host of the divided dial,
0:13.0	a new five-part series from WNMC's On the Media,
0:17.0	about how the American right came to dominate Talk Radio
0:21.0	and how one company is launching a conservative media empire
0:25.0	from the airwaves.
0:26.0	Listen every Tuesday and on the media feed.
0:33.0	Welcome to the TED interview.
0:35.0	I'm your host, Stephen Johnson.
0:37.0	This is a show where we wrestle with big, profound questions.
0:42.0	Like, where is the artificial intelligence revolution going to take us?
0:46.0	Or how can we reinvent our work routines in the post-COVID age?
0:51.0	This week's guest happens to be a world-renowned expert
0:55.0	in answering questions.
0:57.0	Questions that revolve around the fundamental laws of physics
1:00.0	and the nature of reality itself.
1:03.0	In fact, his question answering skill is so celebrated
1:06.0	that people all over the world have been sending him questions
1:09.0	over the internet for more than a decade now.
	...

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