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Speaker 1: Hello, and good morning you too. How are you doing today?

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Speaker 2: Good?

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Speaker 3: Yes, doing great?

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, you guys have put together a book

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here that I can't keep my eyes out of it.

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I mean really, there's so much information and what it

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does it creates conversation.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the idea, hopefully.

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Speaker 2: Well.

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Speaker 1: Being a boy, of course, where did I go with it?

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Inside the book? I had to check out the fire section,

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oh man, especially reading the fire research laboratory.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

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Speaker 3: I'm gonna say that's a that's a fun place to

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start because who doesn't, you know, like to play with

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fire and learn all about it?

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Speaker 1: What did you learn about things like this? Because I mean,

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I mean this had to have been a great exploration

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for the two of you.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, and you know, yeah, the book goes through this

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interconnected web of inventions, starting as you mentioned with fire.

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We talk about a cave in South Africa where first

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evidence of even controlled fire a million years ago, and

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then a lab in Maryland where they build entire houses

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and then burn them down on the inside of this

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laboratory to understand, okay, how this fire spread, what burns

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more quickly? And then you know, once you've got fire,

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you can make glass, and so we take you to

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a glass bridge in China where glass is used as

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a construction material and you can, you know, walk this

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glass bridge looking straight down twelve hundred feet below you.

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And once you have glass, next you can make lenses

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and so you go to you know, vera Ruben telescope.

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So it was really fun to make this book and

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kind of follow this chain of technology and invention and

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some of the some of the connections were super surprising,

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like like article accelerators to neuroscience is my favorite surprise.

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I did not know that there was this big connection,

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and at some point Jen said, hey, I think this

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could be a really good one. So the great example

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of one that that definitely took me by surprise.

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Speaker 1: Well, the one thing that you're proving in this book

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is something that I learned as a martial artist becoming

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a third Dawn, and that is is that before you

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are in this moment of now, something happened before you

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got here.

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Speaker 2: And now.

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Speaker 1: I think that's what this book is all about. There

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are so many things that had to take place before

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we get what we've got today.

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Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, and you know the inventors, I mean, there's

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an invention usually it's like by a single person, but

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that's not exactly true, right, because they've looked at maybe

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they've they've built upon research or something that someone has

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done previously to get to that point, or there's a

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collection of people. It's built upon necessity. So sometimes inventions

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are invented at the same time because people look around

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and they are like, hey, we all need this, Let's

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see what we can come up with. But hopefully kids

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will see this as a collaboration, which is the best

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science that you can make is something that is collaborated

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upon because you have a lot that's the different ideas

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and experiences that I'll come together to create something.

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Speaker 1: That's interesting that you bring that up because one of

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my good friends back in the eighties and early nineties,

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she would sit there and she would talk about how

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they were they were bringing together this new thing called

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fiber optic, and I said, well, are you going to

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get credit for that? And she says, I'm just doing

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my job. I'm doing my job right, And that's me

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right away said teamwork.

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Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, And a good example of the many

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different ways we could have done this book. You could

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have gone. I mean, it's a big jump in time,

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but you could go straight from glass to fiber optics

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because you don't do fiber optics without all the work

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in glass, and then the corning lab basically figuring out, oh,

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there's a way to pull a perfectly fure rod of glass,

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a flexible you know, wire of glass, and then that

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opens up an entirely new type of communication and sort

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of technological creation.

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Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with Dylan's and Jennifer

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Swanson coming up next. Hey, we're back with Dylan Thurson

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and Jennifer Swanson. The Da Vinci Robotic Surgical System. As

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a guy, of course, I'm looking at this thing and

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I'm breaking it down inside my imagination. But man, to

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what went into this product has changed people's lives.

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Speaker 3: Oh absolutely. I mean it's made surgery so much faster, easier,

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and recovery most importantly, because recovery can be you know,

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within days or they'll send you home the same day.

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I mean, it's all of these things that again was

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created because we needed this or it improved upon something

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that we were doing before to make life better for humans.

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Speaker 2: One of the things we try to do in the

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book is, you know, not just tell you about the inventions,

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but it's all about that sort of the places too,

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where you can actually go and interact with this stuff,

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so that in that example, you can go to a

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museum in Scotland, Yes, and you can operate the surge machine,

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this giant you know, twelve hundred pound giant surgery machine.

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You can like move its arms around and figure out, okay,

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this is how it's actually used.

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Speaker 1: I see it, and right away I'm thinking about, you know,

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with those gigantic robotic arms that there's nothing more steady.

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I mean because a human hand shakes.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I can.

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Speaker 1: Who is Ruby Frassan and what's going on here that

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we're going to.

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Speaker 2: Learn that she is the illustrator of this book. And

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Ruby's illustrations are what bring this thing to life. Yeah,

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she so good and space in the UK. Her style

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is a little bit reminiscent of you know, sort of

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a mid century style, almost like a Tintin style, but

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she puts her own spin on it and it is

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so beautiful. She has these you know, cutaway illustrations where

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you get to look inside what a fusion reactor looks like.

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He filled the book with these little sort of tiny details.

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So the longer you kind of look at these spreads,

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the more you see. I just cannot speak highly enough

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this book. I'm biased, but I just think it is

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absolutely beautiful.

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Speaker 3: It's absolutely gorgeous. I still remember the first time we

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saw the first spreads and we were just like thrown away.

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We were like, this is so amazing.

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Speaker 1: You talk about little, tiny things that are in detail.

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One of the things that readers need to understand is

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that I love the EEDBD globe there where you're showing

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us as the reader where this actually took price. That

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is so important to me because there's a lot of

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people that don't talk about the globe.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we wanted to show that. You know, when you

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look at the big picture of technology a it takes

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you all over the world. There are some, you know,

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really surprising places. I mean, we have a spread on

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smelting metal and one of the pages there is, you know,

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two thousand years ago in Tanzania, folks had figured out

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how to use the material of a termite mound to

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create a steel smelting process. The oldest some of the

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oldest steel probably came in very small batches from these

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basically termite based kilns, and I drink. It's school. I

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think people don't know about sort of some of these

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deep and interesting connections.

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Speaker 1: One of the things I've been a daily writer for

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since nineteen ninety four. Every single day I've relied on writing.

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You've got a chapter in here on writing, and once again,

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it's going all the way back.

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Speaker 3: Well, I mean writing. You know, people don't think about

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writing as a technology, but it is. Yeah, I mean

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it's how you defined you know, something like it moved

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us forward because once we could write things down, and

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then we could create paper and we could pass them around,

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and then people could make books and read and think

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about where we would be if we didn't start with writing.

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Speaker 2: One of the most to your point earlier, Jen about

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multiple inventions, writing was invented independently four times all around

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the world. It basically, once you achieved a certain agricultural base,

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and then you started to build cities around that agricultural base,

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life got complicated enough and you needed to keep track

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of the grain and who owed who what, and maybe

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a recipe, you know, for how to make beer. Like

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then the need, right, you need writing. And so it's

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really fascinating to see some of the ways in which

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some of these inventions and discoveries, you know, really discoveries.

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In that case, they emerge almost out of the conditions.

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You know. It's sort of like, if you have this, this,

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and this, you end up with writing. And I love

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that about sort of exploring the world in this way.

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Speaker 1: Well, you talk about writing, that also means the internet,

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and that also means you guys have to have a

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website or something where people can learn more, and that's

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all connected to writing too.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Sure, absolutely, you can go to Atlas Obscura dot

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com if you want to learn more about the book,

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and obviously it is Workman is our publisher. They have

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great material on the book as well. And of course

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you should go and check out Jen's website.

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Speaker 3: John, Yeah, my website is Jenniferswonson books dot com. And

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again you can get the book at your local indie

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bookstore or you know, any of your online retailers.

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Speaker 1: Hex Sol Well, please come back to the show anytime

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in the future. The door is always going to be

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open for you. Well, thank you having us be brilliant today. Okay, yeah,

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I love that.

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Speaker 3: Be brilliant