Episode 352 - "How To" author and xkcd creator Randall Munroe
Probably Science
Andy Wood, Matt Kirshen
4.8 • 707 Ratings
🗓️ 5 September 2019
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Cartoonist/author/engineer Randall Munroe of the Hugo Award-winning webcomic xkcd joins Matt and Andy to talk about his new book How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems, in which he gives novel, ridiculous and technically correct tips on doing everything from digging a hole to winning an election. You can catch Randall in person on his book tour running through September 19th.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Probably Science |
| 0:02.0 | Hello and welcome to Probably Science. I'm Andy Wood. |
| 0:13.3 | I'm Matt Kirsh and are you? You're sitting up straight, you're smiling. |
| 0:16.8 | I am. I got my surgery. |
| 0:18.8 | Look at you. |
| 0:20.2 | A little slice in my back. |
| 0:22.4 | And I'm 12 days out and pretty far along in the recovery. |
| 0:27.6 | Yeah, it was harder than I thought for my first ever surgery. |
| 0:31.5 | Surgery always kind of hurts, lesson learned. |
| 0:34.5 | But no, it went well. |
| 0:35.6 | Thank you, everybody, for the well wishes. |
| 0:36.7 | And thank you, Jake Swenson, who wrote in with some more information about anesthesia, |
| 0:42.0 | because I think I was wondering about eating and drinking times before surgery, which I think |
| 0:47.5 | I messed up because I wasn't supposed to eat after midnight, but I didn't realize I could, |
| 0:52.7 | I think I could have drank water in the morning |
| 0:55.0 | or maybe I stopped drinking water too early than night before because I was so dehydrated |
| 0:59.1 | when I came to from the surgery. And that was almost the worst thing about that day |
| 1:05.0 | because they kept me in the hospital extra time until I could pee. Because they were |
| 1:09.7 | convinced that I had pee that I couldn't |
| 1:11.8 | get out because general anesthesia messes with your ability to empty your bladder for some reason. |
| 1:16.7 | So I kept, I had to give them 100 milligrams, 100 mililiters of pee before I could leave. And I couldn't |
| 1:22.0 | do it. And I'm like, I'm dehydrated. Give me some water or give me an IV drip. And they're like, no, you got to pee. I'm like, no, I literally can't. |
... |
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