898. Randall Munroe joined me this week to talk about his language-themed xkcd cartoons, his simple-language project Up Goer V, his biggest pet peeve, his favorite words, and his new book "What If? 2." But I have to confess that my favorite part was his tidbits about the bee laws.
898. Randall Munroe joined me this week to talk about his language-themed xkcd cartoons, his simple-language project Up Goer V, his biggest pet peeve, his favorite words, and his new book "What If? 2." But I have to confess that my favorite part was his tidbits about the bee laws.
| Transcript: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/randall-munroe-of-xkcd
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I produced a list of, you know, the thousand most common words, sort of drawn from a bunch of different sources. And then tried to label all the parts of the rocket using only those words. And so, you know, instead of like "liquid oxygen tank," I had to label it like, you know, "this large bag holds cold air for burning to make it go."
[intro music]
Mignon:
Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff. And today we definitely have cool stuff because I'm talking with Randall Monroe of xkcd fame and "What If?" fame. So Randall has a degree in physics. Before starting xkcd, he worked on robots at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia. He started drawing stick figure comics, that you've probably seen, in his school notebooks and eventually scanned them and put the digital versions on a website. And it took off around 2006, 2007, around the same time Grammar Girl started actually. And I remember putting the "affect-effect" comic on that page on my website way back then because they are generously available with a Creative Commons license. Since then, Randall has written multiple books, including the bestsellers "What If: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions," "How To," which uses math and science to find the worst possible solutions to everyday problems, "Thing Explainer" that only uses the thousand most common words to explain different scientific devices, and now "What If? 2" just in time for the holidays? Thanks so much for being with me here, Randall.
Randall:
Hey, thanks for having me.
Mignon:
You bet. So I'm just so excited, and I'm sure all my listeners are too. We'll start with an absolute softball question. I'm sure you get asked this all the time, but, um, J. McCracken on Twitter wants to know how you pronounce "xkcd" or where it comes from?
Randall:
Mignon:
Yeah, I think you succeeded. And I actually have to say I appreciate at the very bottom of the FAQ on your website, you have like a little style entry. Do you wanna share how to actually write it?
Randall:
Yeah, I say the, the preferred version is all lowercase, but all uppercase is an acceptable alternative because sometimes, like, if you're starting a sentence with it, or you're using it in some publication where you're not assuming that people are gonna know that it's, you know, that it's just a string of letters, sometimes people, they prefer to capitalize it, so that's fine, fine too. And then I add that capital X lowercase, k-c-d is discouraged.
Mignon:
Yeah, I love that. And it was helpful because I actually, I did wonder
Randall:
Yeah. I mean, I like taking away the, you know, not as much being prescriptivist as about it is just trying to take away the stress from people trying to figure out how to write this unusual string.
Mignon:
Yea, that was perfect. And now "What If? 2" answers all these wonderful science and technology questions. And I know that's kind of like your main thing because you were, you know, a techno … scientist yourself, but you also have these language cartoons on your website. And I just, I wanna know, like, which ones do better on your website? Is it the tech ones or the language ones?
Randall:
Oh gosh, I don't know. I feel like there's some of each that seem to be popular with people. Anytime I hit on, you know, something that it's like something we've all been, we've all noticed, but you know, no one had really quite put their finger on. I think language and tech both offer a lot of subjects like that where, like, little features of the world that we all interact with that are sort of annoying or confusing, but you don't really know how to do them better or how to, you know, how to think about them. And so it's sometimes fun to just point those out with comics and be like, "Isn't it funny that English is confusing when it comes to talking this kind of sentence?" And it's sort of feels to me like the same thing is pointing out, isn't it? Isn't it funny how this operating system is confusing when you're trying to do this particular operation?
Mignon:
It is.
Randall:
Like, to me they're sort of, they get grouped together.
Mignon:
They are. And that reminds me of a question Luca Ace asked on YouTube. They were wondering, that they like one of your quite old comics about words that end in "-gry." So it says, "Think of words ending in '-gry': 'angry' and 'hungry' are two of them. There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word?" And, you know, it sort of leads into the philosophy you were just talking about, about language. Do you want to talk a little bit about that particular cartoon and then your sort of philosophy of language?
Randall:
Yeah, I feel like that hits on a subject that I've come back to like over and over, you know, throughout my life, which is like puzzles. Like I really love puzzles, you know, and I love like playing games with words and things, but there's like a category of puzzle that you encounter a lot. And I feel like a lot like in school or, you know, with from other students where it's like a puzzle where someone has interpreted words in a, like a surprising way, and they're trying to use it to like catch you as if they've, you know, trapped you by, by saying, "Well, actually if you go back and read carefully, what I meant, what I said was there are three words in the English language. So really the third word is 'language.'" And, and it's sort of like you can see what they're going for there,
But that kind of thing is just, like, not a good way to communicate, you know? It's like, it's like making language really adversarial and be like, "All right, I've caught you in using language badly," except, like, the whole point of language is to try to communicate ideas to other people. And so, you know, choosing to interpret your words in some kind of way that makes logical sense to you, but doesn't communicate ideas clearly, and then trying to use that to make it seem like other people, like aren't smart or aren't good at language. Like all it's doing is showing that you are using language in a weird way that's not effective, you know?
Mignon:
Yeah.
Randall:
So it's like, I feel like bad using bad communication to try to make other people feel like they're not smart, like they don't understand things is sort of a pet peeve of mine.
Mignon:
That's great. And that reminds me another listener asked what is your language pet peeve? Do you have any others besides that?
Randall:
I don't know. There, there's a lot of branches of, you know, I guess prescriptivism or, you know, people really trying to use language to, like, to watching other people for slipups or, like, mistakes. And I feel like that's sort of the same pet peeve in both language and in math and science where there's, like, there's trying to understand how other people use language so that you can communicate better with them, which is good. Like, learning how to speak and how to talk and how to communicate is really good, but using it to try to prove that you're better than someone else is just like such a terrible way to be, you know?
Mignon:
Yeah.
Randall:
Like if that's your goal all the time, and you get the same thing in science and in math where people just, like, they learn about physics and then they watch a movie just to, like, try to pick out all the mistakes. And like, that can be a fun exercise, but it can also get really kind of tedious, you know, like, what are you trying to prove?
Mignon:
Mm-hmm.
Randall:
Yeah.
Mignon:
Um, so Kerry Irish on Twitter asked a question that leads, sort of follows from this. So you have a project called Up Goer V, and I think I'll just let you explain it. I think you'd do a better job than I would.
Randall:
And there, there were parts of the rocket I like, I had seen them, but I had never actually asked, Hey, what's that little thing sticking out over here? What's that for? And so it turned into this really fun exercise and, and after I did the Saturn V or the Up Goer V, I was like, this was fun. I wanna do other stuff. Like I wanna draw diagrams of other things. And so I got a whole bunch of different, you know, complicated objects, like a laptop, a world map, a dishwasher, the earth, you know, and tectonic plates and did this same exercise with them, trying to label them using only this really simplified vocabulary.
Mignon:
Did you find that it always made the item or what you're trying to explain more understandable, or did sometimes it feel more like a barrier to communication?
Randall:
It was a fun mix because in a lot of cases where the thing that I was trying to label is like a very technical thing that people wouldn't necessarily know the words for, then this exercise made it like certainly much easier to understand like the, um, you know, at the top of the rocket, there's little things ticking off the top that, uh, at the top of the Saturn V, right, on top of the crew module, and it looks like a little like antenna or needle shaped thing, and it's called like the launch abort system. And I didn't, I didn't actually know what that was until I started labeling the diagram. And I might, I had probably seen the phrase "launch abort system," so I knew it had something to do with aborting a launch, I guess, but I didn't know what it was.
And so when I was labeling it, I had to learn what it did. And I called it something like, this thing makes the makes the box holding the people go away really fast if there's a problem. And everything is on fire
Mignon:
Randall:
Which was a zebra
Mignon:
uh-huh
Randall:
And, and that's one where you have to think about it for a minute.
Mignon:
Yeah, I was gonna ask, there must be some animal names that are in the top 1000 most used words.
Randall:
Yeah. Yeah. I had, um, I had dog cat, I think, uh, horse and then, and then maybe bear, which if only because that's one of the, there were some words that are more common as, as verbs than as nouns. And if the meanings weren't, and like really just depending case by case, I would like consider like, which version of this is the common one does, is this use in the spirit of the rule or what?
Mignon:
mm-hmm.
Randall:
But like, um, I think another example, there are a couple animal examples like flies. I think "fly" as a noun is probably not, wouldn't have made the cut, but when it's a verb it does. And so I can use the word "fly" to refer to the animal, even though that's not the meaning of the word that, you know, is technically on the list.
Mignon:
Yeah, I was surprised that the word "thousand" wasn't on the list.
Randall:
Yeah. Yeah. It didn't quite make the cut. So I had to say the ten 100 most common words. My favorite, my favorite numerical quirk of the list though was if you look at how common the words for different numbers are, they like descend in, you know, frequency as the numbers get bigger. So like one is more common than two, two is more common than three, and all of those. And then, and then big round numbers like 10, 20, and 100 are all more common than, you know, 21 or 98. And so on my list, the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, et cetera, those are all, they all make the cut, but they're all getting further and further down the list. And then uh, seven is on the list, eight is on the list, nine was not. Nine was just below a thousand.
Mignon:
Wow.
Randall:
And then, and then 10 made the cut because the round numbers are more common. And so I had every number from one through 10 except for nine,
Mignon:
Randall:
So I would like label the decks on a, you know, I had a diagram of like a cruise ship, and I was like, floor one, floor two, you know, instead of the, you know, deck one, deck two, and then floor eight, and then the floor after eight
Mignon:
That's amazing.
Randall:
Yeah. Yeah. It's, um, uh, I put it online at xkcd.com/simplewriter, uh, and it works like a spell check and it just tells you if the word you're using is on the list or if one of its forms is. And so people can try to, like, it's been fun seeing people will try to like write their, um, you know, PhD thesis. They'll write the abstract out using only those, the most common words. And it's, it's really, it's a tricky exercise to do it clearly. You know, it doesn't make, it doesn't make simple explanations necessarily like easy, but what I found was, cuz often, you know, when you write things that way, you have to write them in convoluted ways that make it harder to understand. But what I found was it was, it was really helpful to have that reminder of which words are common and which ones aren't.
Um, because people, you know, I sort of joked about how when I finished writing the book, I had been writing in this simple language so long that I was now incapable of talking normally
Mignon:
Randall:
Because I just, you know, forget. It's like, oh yeah, that's a common word. Right? You know, that's what you use to refer to that. And so it's nice to remember that like, cuz it's hard to remember what it's like not to know stuff. And so it's helpful to have this sort of objective check to be like, I know you think this is a common word, but remember this might not be for everyone else. And, uh, can you think of a way to say it without it?
Mignon:
Yeah. That's amazing. And, and that's actually not the only thing you've done that people, um, sort of mimic. I saw on your website the rollercoaster thing was really cool. Do you talk about that?
Randall:
Yeah. At, at some point I had the idea that it would be funny to, um, you know, you, when you go over a rollercoaster, there's that part where they take, uh, you go right over the drop and when everyone screams and puts their hands up, they take a picture, and then they'll sell you the picture on the way out.
Mignon:
Mm-hmm.
Randall:
And I was thinking it would be funny to, um, to like try to take a picture that was like, as incongruous as possible. And so I did a comic about someone taking a chessboard onto a rollercoaster where all the pieces glued down and like holding it, pulling it out, you know, out of their coat when they're about to go over the drop and holding it and like thinking like, ah, what move am I gonna make? And so they have the picture of everyone around them screaming, and they're just like, thinking about the chessboard. And I didn't, this was a case where I, I was like, "Oh, that's a funny idea. I don't know if that would really work. You might get in trouble, but it would be, it, it's a funny concept, so I'll do a comic about it, uh, and then I can enjoy it that way at least." And I did not expect how many people would then go and try to pull this off.
Mignon:
Yeah. It's amazing. There's a bunch of really fun pictures,
Randall:
Thank you.
Mignon:
Do you want to tell people about your word?
Randall:
Oh, I feel like that's almost, uh, cheating because it's a word about like coining words improperly. So it's just like bait for language people
Mignon:
True. True.
Randall:
Yeah. And so it's, that's almost like I feel like fish in a barrel. The hard
Um, I was just trying to make fun of how, there are a few words that Wikipedia just really likes to use, like "portmanteau" and "malapropism," and it will always mention these words in the article about anything, any term that is, that is one of those things. Um, and the word and I, and it's like, those are words that I had like never seen anywhere else except Wikipedia. I mean, they get used to other places, but that's what I associate them with. And so I was like trying to make up a word that would use both of those and then talk about how it could be how they were combined. So it's a malamanteau, is a portmanteau that is incorrectly put together to, uh, which is a … so it's a malapropism that's also a portmanteau. And then the definition for this in the comment gets to use the both of those words a lot
So it's like the ultimate Wikipedia article. And I really was just poking fun at Wikipedia. I did not expect what would happen, which was, in addition to the places you mentioned, someone tried to create a Wikipedia article for the word and then thus began a tremendous like, flame war on the talk pages of people debating whether or not this word should have a Wikipedia entry. And, honestly I thought it shouldn't. Like I was using it in this comic, but that's not, and I, and like defining it in the comic, but in, in a weird way, like that's defining it within the fictional world of the comic. That's not a reliable source for it being used in the real world until other sources use it.
Mignon:
Right.
Randall:
But many people had different opinions on this. You know, I didn't, uh, I think I didn't weigh in, but it turned into this gigantic like back and forth with like so many editors getting involved. Like, I forget if Jimmy Whales finally weighed in. And I don't know, I really love a good Wikipedia edit war cuz they're like, it's just like when you get a bunch of people who are very earnest and like trying to figure out the right way to handle something like this. It's, uh, I don't know. There's, I I I'm, I I have a soft spot for, for the kind of earnest, civic minded enthusiasm of Wikipedia editors.
Mignon:
Yeah, well you were saying it's language person bait. It was also kind of Wikipedia bait because it was about Wikipedia too, right?
Randall:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've done a couple, a couple of comics that have, um, created Wikipedia arguments, although one, uh, another thing that, I guess a word I've coined, um, I talked about how sometimes there will be things mentioned in Wikipedia that, you know, don't have citations and people will tag them with like "citation needed." Um, but I noticed what a thing that would happen sometimes, which is that people, someone would put a fact on Wikipedia and then like someone writing about it, a journalist who's like in a hurry and just needs background information or something would like mention the fact in their article based on just skimming Wikipedia. But then later someone comes along in the Wikipedia and is like, "Hey, this doesn't have a citation." And they'll Google it to find a citation and they find that article and then they're like, "Oh, here's a, here's a published source citing, you know, uh, backing this up."
Mignon:
Yeah.
Randall:
And they'll add a citation to that source. And then once there's one reliable citation, then other sources, you know, journalists are being more careful, we'll be like, "Oh, you know, I found a non Wikipedia source." So, uh, and then they repeat it and then provide more citations. And so I did a little chart that was like how citations form, and I called this, uh," citogenesis," but I just recently found that Wikipedia has been maintaining a list of citogenesis incidents.
Mignon:
Oh, that's cool.
Randall:
Where like, they, they're documenting cases where this has happened and like tracking down who was the first one to mistakenly cite Wikipedia. And, and then like, you know, where are all the places it's been repeated and sort of trying to track down these cases of Wikipedia, uh, sourced misinformation, which is also really cool.
Mignon:
Yeah.
Randall:
And I had no idea that that term had, like, made it out there and, and was being used to like, we were actually tracking down all these cases of it.
Mignon:
Citogenesis. So that's really cool. I, I love that they're tracking it cause it's an important, um, problem in the information, you know, environment. But it's also, it's really neat that they're doing that. Um, Oh, and it reminds me, I loved in "What If 2" how occasionally you had "citation needed" in the text.
Randall:
You know, I never get tired of that. I just love, I love that you can throw that in there to be like, this thing, is it really true? Who knows? You know, maybe someone should go find out. But I like, I like putting it on really obvious facts. You know, like, like, you know, the, the earth is fairly large compared to a person and then like, citation needed, it's like, go find me a paper that, that, uh, proves this
Mignon:
Randall:
Oh man. There, there are all these. Um, that's a really good question. I don't know. Hmm. Um,
Mignon:
Well you're thinking I will. Um, one of my favorites is, um, the X Games. I love the names of the tricks that the skateboarders and skiers do. And I imagine, like, to me the announcers sound like "That was an amazing flippity floor. Bob, what do you think of the double cracker barrel?"
Randall:
Yeah. There were a whole bunch. I was looking at a list of like tests that they used for bicycle helmets. The X Game things reminded me, and I remember all of the terms that they used for how a helmet can rotate on the head looked like terms for skateboard tricks,
But then I also like, like a really good fun to say like technical term, um, maybe my favorite of those was there, I was looking through a list of like medical procedures that involve radiation doses. And the one that, the one that involved like the highest, uh, radiation dose from this list, was had a five-word name that was so much fun to say that it, like, it stuck in my mind and I, I would, so I, and I just like repeating it now. And then it was a transjugular intra hepatic portosystemic shunt placement.
Mignon:
Randall:
You just find it so satisfying, you know? It's a good, it's a good series of words. And "shunt placement" has such good, uh, it's so punchy.
Mignon:
So, um, another, another listener asked, just in general, what is your favorite word right now?
Randall:
I don't know where I hit this word, but I just, just ran across the word "afforestation."
Mignon:
Mm.
Randall:
It's like the opposite of deforestation.
Mignon:
Mm-hmm.
Randall: Afforestation. It's like the, the growth and spread of a forest.
Mignon:
Nice.
Randall:
And, and I like words that have like both a pretty, like they sound cool and they have a, a nice meaning. Um, I've heard "apricity' defined a couple of different ways, but the most poetic definition was, um, the warmth of the sun in winter.
Mignon:
Oh, that is nice.
Randall:
Which, And I think, I think it, it makes sense cause it's not just that, like it's the warmth of the sun, but like separate from the warmth of the air.
Mignon:
mm-hmm.
Randall:
You know, like you can be really cold out but then you put yourself in the direct sun and like you're, you can warm up. So it's like that kind of warmth.
Mignon:
Nice. Something to look forward to in winter. Um, so now we're getting into the, the, I think of like the weirder questions,
Randall:
No, I don't think so. Um, it's more the other way around. There are scenarios I will avoid writing about because they're things that like weird me out too much or because they're the kinds of things I have nightmares about. Um, but it's more that I don't wanna think about them a lot while I'm awake.
Mignon:
Huh.
Randall:
And I'm like, I cover a lot of, like, like one of the ones that that I included in in there was one in the first. What if that was like, "Could you freeze your teeth to a cold enough temperature that when you drank a cup of hot coffee they'd shatter?"
Mignon:
Oh,
Randall:
I know, right? And then, and then in this book someone asked, um, "If your teeth just kept growing, um, and then when they got too long they just fell out and you swallowed them or something and then you grew new ones. Would that cause any problems?" And in both cases I'm like, I don't wanna think about this. I'm not gonna try to research this question cause I don't wanna think about it. Cause that's like, it just me of those dreams when your teeth are falling out or you know, those, uh, I think that's one of those common recurring dreams.
Mignon:
Yeah, that was one of the things I liked about "What If 2" actually is that you had the longer answers and then you broke them up with sections that had shorter answers where you just showed like maybe the alarming questions like that one and then you just answered like, no
Randall:
Yeah. Cuz there are a lot of questions where that people ask, where it's like either the answer is really simple or the, there isn't really an answer, but the question is really funny, and I wanted a way to share those.
Mignon:
And one thing I noticed was that a lot of the questions were from kids. Do you get the majority of your questions from kids or is it sort of a mix?
Randall:
Um, I would say it's a mix. Um, I think in general, kids ask better questions. Um, one thing that happened after I, especially after I published the first "What If" book is that a lot of people who are like my age, you know, have small kids running around and they, uh, you know, kids will, will, you know, stereotypically do the thing where you ask they, you explain something and they ask why, and then you have to explain why that works. And then they ask why about that. And eventually, and it doesn't take long to, you know, you can ask anyone why a couple of times and get to something that stumps them. But what parents started doing is when they got asked a question by their kids that stumped them, they would be like, "Oh, well let's send it to the what if guy and see what he see if he can answer it."
And so I became like the, uh, the answerer of last resort for people's like little kid questions.
Mignon:
Mm-hmm.
Randall:
And that's really fun because yeah, I, I think kids questions, they tend to be like less, less trying to cram in a bunch of science concepts to make a question cool and impressive and more just asking simple questions that they don't know the answers to. And those are the questions that often turn out to be like the most fun and sometimes like really complicated. You know, like adults will ask questions about "What if you had a train going near the speed of light and you put a nuclear bomb on it and then it was gonna detonate while a rocket goes past in the other direction. This whole thing's happening on a volcano?" and they're like trying to add in exciting elements.
Mignon:
Yeah, that's the first one in the book.
Randall:
Yeah, it's, it, it's a and that's a more fun question. And it's also like, it's like more interesting scientifically and more fun and ultimately like actually way more destructive than the nuclear-bomb-volcano-train question could possibly be.
Mignon:
Yea, yeah. That was fun. Let's see, the Grackle King wants to know, this is just random. What is your favorite thing about bees?
Randall:
Yeah. Uh, yeah, I think my very favorite thing about bees is the, the weird laws covering them. Like they, if like a swarm of bees is flying around, like people keep bees. Um, and so they're property when you have them in a hive, but when they leave the hive, you can't like constrain them on your property like you can with other farm animals. And so they, um, you know, they wander all over the place. And so the question is like, who, whose bees are they when they're like in your neighbor's yard? Uh, and the law has had to like deal with this cuz there have been a bunch of, you know, bee-related … there's been all kinds of litigation. Germany in particular has really complicated bee-specific law. Um, and, and there's this general idea that like a bee and a hive belongs to the beekeeper, but a flying bee belongs to God is what the saying is
Mignon:
That is the best thing about bees.
Randall:
I really, yeah, I like, I like weird specific bee law.
Mignon:
That's wild. And you had a thing about, um, weird specific egg laws in your book too, how that made me laugh. California's egg laws.
Randall:
Yeah. Yeah. There's a regulation of, um, barring people from making false or misleading statements about eggs, which is in, you know, poultry regulations. And it's clearly intended to refer to anyone who's like selling eggs. But I, I was like, what if I'm just out here like explaining my theories about eggs, Uh, you know, can I just say anything I want? You know, like, like eggs are solid all the way through. Birds don't come out of them. They're uh, they're just these weird rocks birds. Just no one knows where birds come from
Mignon:
Randall:
Gosh, I don't know. Um, I don't know. That feels like reflect on all reflect on your successes, Which one's the best? And I'm like, oh
Mignon:
Man, I'm sorry. If you don't wanna answer it,
Randall:
That's fine. No. Um, there was, there was a comic I did that I spent like two years on, um, that was a history of earth's temperature over time. And as you scrolled down the map, it showed like how things have warmed up from the ice ages until, you know, now from the, the last glacial maximum until the present. Because people talk about how, you know, when you talk about climate change, they say, Well, you know, the climate has changed before and that's true. And I wanted to sort of illustrate what that change looked like and how the current change is really different. And so I made, and I, and I spent forever on this trying to figure out the best way to show it and ended up making this graph that when you scroll down it, you see the temperature slowly creeping up as like human history goes by and then at the very end you see the current warming, which is a real sharp departure.
And I did this comic and I, you know, got help from scientists. I went, I went over all the details, I went through the research, um, because I wanted to get it right, you know, cuz it's such an important topic. Um, and then I was really gratified by the number of people, like the amount that it got shared around it ended up being one of my most viewed, you know, things I've ever made. And I felt so happy that the, that it was something that I was like getting across an important message that got shared around so much and, and you know, hearing from people who are like, "Oh whoa, I did not realize this." You know, cuz that's what I was going for.
Mignon:
That's wonderful. Oh, that's great. Well, the new book is called "What If? 2" And you know, I think my dad would actually love it. I probably, he doesn't watch my show, so I'm gonna get it for him
Randall:
Perfect. Don't ... no one tell,
Mignon:
Not ruining the surprise here,
Randall:
Just between you and me and all the, all your listeners.
Mignon:
Randall:
Oh, well, I mean, my, my website is xkcd.com and then I'm on various social media platforms as xkcd uh, which it's uh, a little bit annoying to remember, but also it's very short, easy to type, and it's the same everywhere.
Mignon:
Randall:
Oh, thank you. No, it was great chatting with you.