This practice became a hobby that ultimately led him to draw up dozens of detailed yet simple drawings of other complicated diagrams. He found an original blueprint of the rocket, and decided to replace all of the jargon written on it with simple words and phrases. Munroe said that his interest in explaining things with simple terms started when he learned about the NASA’s Saturn V rocket. In his hour-long talk, Randall discussed how he came up with the idea to write this book, and he shared some of his favorite passages and diagrams. For instance, he describes the inner workings of those boxes that make your clothes smell better (washing machines) and how the Red World Space Car (the Mars Curiosity Rover) finds rocks and determines what they’re made of. In this book, Munroe describes, in intimate detail, the inner workings of everything from ballpoint pens to the International Space Station using only the 1000 most common words in the English language. While he mostly focuses his humor on physics, chemistry, and computer science, Randall took a new approach to science with Thing Explainer. He worked as a roboticist for NASA, but he ultimately left his job to become a fulltime writer of books and his XKCD comic.

Munroe, a celebrity among scientists and engineers, started writing XKCD in college, where he graduated with a degree in physics. Munroe, the creator of the wildly popular webcomic XKCD, also signed books for over 200 adoring fans. Last week, the ISC and our partner, 1871, welcomed NASA engineer-turned #1 best-selling author Randall Munroe to 1871’s Merchandise Mart office to discuss his latest book, Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words.

Xkcd book thing explainer