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"It's cool writing a book and then getting to talk to people who, who do cool science stuff," he says. "I completely agree. Like now I have a little license to talk to whoever I want to know all this cool stuff" He tries not to turn the interview around and be like, okay, but listen, tell me more about the early universe. But first, there's a certain skill set in picking out the questions that are asked.

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 xkcd webcomic. He collected some answers in his book What If?, and has released a sequel, What If? 2. We dive into how one goes about choosing the right questions and answering them, and how to make it funny along the way.

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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. What If? and What If? 2 are based on a regular feature in which he tackles questions asked by readers.

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