How cool is that?
Like it's this van that just drives into like, you know, a McDonald's or whatever.
And they just kind of set up and then they're testing.
That one just kind of blew my mind.
And expect to get your mind blown when you read a book on 50 of the world's most fascinating inventions.
It's called the Atlas Obscura Explorer's Guide to Inventing the World.
And its short, brightly illustrated chapters show how seemingly unrelated discoveries are connected and impacting our lives today.
I'm Tori and joining me now on Kid News.
Combos are authors of this book Dylan Thuris, the co-founder and creative director of Atlas Obscura, and Jennifer Swanson, an award-winning children's author of more than 45 books.
Thank you both for being here on Kid News Combos.
Thank you for having us.
Yeah.
It's such an interesting book that you have and it's really focused on middle grade readers.
You call it.
You focus on 50 of the world's most fascinating inventions.
How do you choose which ones to include?
Well, I am a huge fan of the history of science, history of invention.
I love learning about it and reading about it.
And I wanted this book to not just introduce kids to interesting inventions but to sort of help them understand this web of inventions with the way that all of these inventions actually sort of interconnect and build on each other.
And sometimes something gets invented and then forgotten about and then rediscovered later.
And so the book through these 50 inventions It takes kids on a tour all around the world.
Each invention has two places associated with it, sometimes usually a very old place.
So, like in the example of fire, we've got the Wonderwork Cave in South Africa, which is the oldest known example of hominid controlled fire.
A million years ago, our great great great great, great great ancestors were cooking their food over a fire in this cave.
And then we have a laboratory in Maryland run by the ATF, which researchers how fires happen, and they build whole houses inside this warehouse and set them on fire and watch them burn down so they can learn more and solve arson cases sometimes.
You know, how did this fire start?
How did it happen?
So it's got this, you know, a hundred places and then this chain of invention.
So, okay, now you've invented fire.
You can make glass.
Okay glass, we take you to a glass bridge in China, a thousand feet long over a 1200 foot.
You know valley and glass is a construction material.
But once you have glass, what else can you do?
You can make lenses.
And once you have lenses, you can create microscopes. or a telescope.
So we show the Vera Rubin Observatory, which has just come online and creating incredible images.
And through this way, you know, by doing that, it almost forced a certain kind of chain of things, because it was sort of okay, what comes next?
And frankly, what are pivot points where we can go back in history?
Because if you just went in one direction, you finished the book too soon.
We'd be done in in 16 pages and it would be too small.
So we had to reach places like GPS satellites where you can say okay, this is how it knows your position on earth, but it's really only as good as the maps underlying it.
That's what tells you what's actually there.
And maps are an ancient technology.
And so we can pick up at maps and go to seafaring and like that.
So that's sort of how the book structure came together.
Yeah, which I think is fascinating because as being a writer, I love segues.
So I thought it was brilliant to have those segues.
But Jennifer, I'm curious, was it easy figuring out where to segue next?
Or was there like a bit of a fight between the two of you?
Well, I mean, no fights.
We worked very, very well together.
I mean, if anything, most of our time writing this was like, oh, gosh, this cool fact.
I found this cool fact.
Like, you know, we were... coming up with all the different things, but I'll give you an example.
Like, like in the middle of the book, we go from the fusion reactor, which is like a cutaway.
So you can see how this is all put together, which you know some people are like can an eight to 12 year old understand fusion reactor?
Well, sure.
I mean, you just put it in their language.
But then the next spread, we go all the way back to solar power.
And you're like, well, how does that make sense?
Well, what kind of energy occurs in the sun?
Fusion energy.
So that was an easy way.
And then we kind of followed up through renewables.
So there are lots of points where we just went oh wait okay, we're here because we're.
You're kind of at the end.
When you're creating a fusion reactor, you're like what's next?
Yeah, we haven't really created one that works really well, but if you back up, you can go down a different line and and dylan and i were talking about this like we could have like several other books where you pick a different inflection point right, Dylan?
Like, go a different way.
There are so many.
I mean, you could go, you'd still start with fire and instead go to ceramics.
So there are these millions of ways in which you sort of start to go, oh my God, this is.
It's not exactly as if oh, you get this technology and then you automatically do this.
Not like that at all.
It's this crazy open web of sort of exploration.
And we reinvent sort of different ways of doing the same things over and over again.
I mean, fire candles, kerosene lamps, you know, spermaceti lamps before them, electric LEDs.
Like these are all ways of solving this kind of fundamental human problems in sort of ways that fit the moment they're in the other technological web that they kind of live in.
Right.
Now you mentioned, I mean, this book is geared for kids ages nine and up.
What's the biggest challenge for writing for that age?
So I write a lot of books for kids that age.
That's actually my favorite age to write for because, first of all, they're curious.
Oh, my gosh.
When you are that age, you have lots of questions.
You have lots of things that you want to learn.
You want to understand how things work together.
The challenge is you have to take a really complex topic and make it understandable to that age without talking down to them.
You don't agree with that.
You have to meet them at the level where they are.
So you have to be able to understand how to take these concepts.
And the biggest thing to do is analogies.
So you know, give something the size of a baseball, the size of a basketball, the size of an elephant, you know as long as a football field, you know something you can hold in your hand and that immediately gives them an image in their brain.
And honestly, the big thing about this book was the illustrations by Ruby Fressen.
Oh, my gosh.
They were amazing.
They are absolutely gorgeous and add so much, bring this book to a whole nother level.
Yeah.
I was curious about the choice to use illustrations versus photographs.
What was that based on?
I, you know, this is our second kid's book.
The first is The Explorer's Guide for the World's Most Adventurous Kid.
And that's an illustrated book as well.
And I feel like, even for adults, even though there's sort of less of a permission structure to do this, there's something about illustrations that keep you in this world of kind of mystery and magic and wonder.
They're able to present things in a kind of you know, sort of more beautiful, kind of mystical even way.
But you can also do things like a big cutaway where you say let's cut this machine open and have a look inside.
You know, and i think photos sort of pin something down to okay that's, it's a picture of it.
Okay, it's kind of and most of the photos of these things like it's tough to take a cool photo of the world's most powerful laser, even though it's totally awesome.
It's just like, oh, you know, it doesn't always look as amazing as it is.
So I think illustrations gave us a lot of room to just like draw out the what's sort of magical about the thing.
We're going to take a quick break.
When we come back, how families can build on the curiosity sparked by this book.
And what were the author's favorite inventions?
We'll be right back with more Kid News Combos.
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Every penny supports the production of our regular kid-friendly news podcast five days a week, plus these Kid News Convos episodes featuring conversations on a single topic of interest to kids.
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And we're back with authors Dylan Thuris and Jennifer Swanson talking about their latest book, The Atlas Obscura Explorer's Guide to Inventing the World.
Jennifer, any advice for parents to kind of help kids build on that just innate curiosity.
You were talking about that maybe sparked from this book.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, this book has so many things.
You could have discussions around the table, pick your favorite invention.
You know, one of the things that I thought was cool is be like, play a game.
Guess how many inventions it took to get to here.
Like how many things did you have to invent to create a telescope?
And everybody might have different answers, right?
Because they might think of different things in between that they could do with that.
Also, be curious and allow them to be curious and ask you lots of questions.
But don't give them the answers.
Let them look it up themselves.
And also, don't be afraid to say, I don't know.
I've done a lot of school visits with my other books and I've met a lot of teachers and parents who are really afraid of being like.
I don't know the answer.
Well, guess what?
A lot of scientists don't know the answer.
And sometimes the answers aren't what they thought they were, right?
Science changes.
And that's all okay.
Be okay with that.
Yeah.
Kids are very good at asking questions where the real answer is, I don't know.
I'm not sure anybody knows, you know, and that's it.
And so what do you think?
You know, it's it's it's that's like a very I think that's right.
And I think demonstrating your own curiosity is such a powerful thing. way of getting kids excited.
Then they see that you're excited about something and you're kind of nerding out about it.
You know, maybe they won't be interested in the same thing, but I think they will.
That's just, you're teaching them a way of of inquiry, a way of kind of pouring yourself into a subject.
So final question, what I'm curious for each of you what did you learn during your research that surprised you?
Okay, so this one for me was the packet radio van.
So when they were developing the internet it was like the ARPANET.
They were driving around in this van with this wireless equipment, testing the wireless at different areas around in California.
And I mean, also, I think this might have been going on when I was a little kid. how cool is that?
Like it's this van that just drives into like, you know, a McDonald's or whatever.
And they just kind of set up and then they're testing.
And what they're testing is so incredibly technological that you would never expect it's in this van.
I don't know.
That one just kind of blew my mind.
And it was the first.
Some of the very we think about like networks now, like yeah, but like this was them being?
Like can we actually make a network of?
We have these computers, can we network them together?
And this was a very early example of like.
Not only can we do it, but we can do it over radio waves too.
We can do it wirelessly.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's very cool.
Jen turned me onto one that I just wasn't out of connection.
I had realized it was there.
We have a spread in the book on particle accelerators.
We talk about CERN and LHC.
And I thought, what should we do from here?
Where do we go?
And there could be a lot of different things.
But Jen said, what about neuroscience?
Almost all the PET scan, the MRI, even what are called radio tracers, which are sort of the slightly radioactive goo that you swallow when you do certain scans.
Those are made in particle accelerators.
To this day, the particle accelerator in Long Island produces- Brookhaven, yep.
Brookhaven.
Yes.
The material for radio tracers and the PET scan came out of a physics accelerator lab.
MRI was originally a physics experiment trying to understand the spin of atoms.
And so it's like whoa.
Here is two fields that don't necessarily seem intimately connected, and they are smack dab against each other.
And I loved realizing stuff like that.
I love that, too.
I mean, I had a liberal arts education.
I love it when what I was studying in psychology overlap with studying in literature, overlap with history.
And it's like, yes, this is amazing.
Just having that synchronicity.
Where can people find this book or more information on it, or getting more information on you, on you both?
Yeah, it's your local indie bookstore, all of the big online retailers.
Of course, Workman is our publisher, so you can go to their website and order it there.
But yeah, go out and get a copy.
I think if you've got a curious kid in your life, you've got a kid that gets excited when you talk about... lasers or trains or anything like that this book is just gonna light them up that is our our hope yeah it'll be tons of fun and also for the adults in your life too yeah um i mean you know you never know some you might find a lot of adults you know be like hey kid it's i'm reading it first No, I mean, I really enjoyed it because I'm not a science mind.
And so I really felt like I learned a lot as well.
So thank you so much, both Jennifer and Dylan.
It's been great to talk with you.
Thanks for having me.
And thank you for listening to Kid News Convos.
I'm Tori.
If you have any feedback on this episode or suggestions on a future Convos topic, please drop us an email at wehearyou at kidnewsorg.
And tune in on Monday for another regular Kid News episode.
Have a great day.
