210 | Randall Munroe on Imagining What If...?

<p>What’s the fastest way to get a human being around a racetrack, if we ignore all the rules of racing? How many pages would you have to read to absorb all of the government laws that apply to you? It’s hard to imagine a better person to tackle these kinds of slightly-askew questions than Randall Munroe, creator of the&nbsp;<a href="https://xkcd.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">xkcd</a>&nbsp;webcomic. He collected some answers in his book&nbsp;<a href="https://xkcd.com/what-if/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>What If?</em></a>, and has released a sequel,&nbsp;<a href="https://xkcd.com/what-if-2/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>What If? 2</em></a>. We dive into how one goes about choosing the right questions and answering them, and how to make it funny along the way.</p><p><em>Support Mindscape on&nbsp;</em><a href="https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Patreon</em></a><em>.</em></p><p>Randall Munroe received a degree in physics from Christopher Newport University, before working for a while at NASA’s Langley Research Center. He is now the creator of xkcd and the author of several books.&nbsp;<em>What If?</em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>What If? 2</em>&nbsp;are based on&nbsp;<a href="https://what-if.xkcd.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a regular feature</a>&nbsp;in which he tackles questions asked by readers.</p><ul><li><a href="https://xkcd.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Web site</a></li><li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Randall-Munroe/e/B004H66444" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Amazon author page</a></li><li><a href="https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Explain xkcd</a></li><li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Munroe" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/xkcd" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Twitter</a></li></ul><p><br></p><p>See Privacy P