Canal Locks with David Macauley

Rob Bell:
Hello, and welcome to Sketchplanations The Podcast, your audio feast of fun, facts and fascination with the world around us, inspired by the ever-growing collection of educational and informative sketches at sketchplanations.com.

I'm engineer and broadcaster, Rob Bell, and with me is designer and creator of Sketchplanations, Jono Hey, entrepreneur and past winner of The Apprentice, Tom Pellereau, and it's our absolute honour to welcome on to this episode a man who's been dubbed America's explainer in chief, David Macaulay.

The brilliant mind who through illustrations, curiosity and wit has inspired generations of kids, and most likely a ton of adults too, to see the world through his inspiring and knowledgeable eyes.

From springs to rotary pumps, from cathedrals to toilets, his work makes the complex not just understandable but unforgettable.

David, Tommy, Jono, hello.

Hello.

David, thank you so much for agreeing to join us on the podcast.

David Macaulay:
My pleasure.

Rob Bell:
I don't know how much of Sketchplanations you've seen, but there is a very strong similarity of purpose in yours and Jono's work, a purpose which we very much love to explore and celebrate on this podcast.

But that is explaining interesting stuff in a way that's hopefully easy to understand and captures others' hearts and minds and curiosity, something you've been doing for a lifetime, David.

David Macaulay:
Yeah, it's learning about interesting stuff that's sucked me in.

I've been at it since, what, 72?

72?

With a degree in architecture to seed the process from the very beginning, that whole idea of being asked to solve problems of an architectural nature, obviously in an architectural school, and realizing just how much fun it was.

To sort of get inside stuff and translate it, interpret it, so that you could actually construct things from it that could be different potentially from anyone else's view.

Rob Bell:
Did you almost stumble into this, should we call it a career in explanations then?

David Macaulay:
Not almost.

No, headlong.

I spent my junior year, my third year of architecture school in an architect's office, working, you know, for those two or three months.

And prior to that, in the middle of junior year, I discovered that I just didn't want to be an architect.

I loved studying and I, you know, I can't emphasize that enough.

It was an exciting place to be, an exciting activity.

I wanted to do something that was more personal from the beginning.

And I could not imagine myself designing a building on my own, you know, do my stuff, whatever that was going to be.

And I didn't know what it was going to be.

But I drew a lot.

I made models a lot.

I did well in school because I found a way of explaining my solution to the problems that we were given in these various assignments and made them my own.

Jono Hey:
I was thinking like we all did an engineering degree.

And I felt like compared to many degrees at the university, the engineers worked quite hard.

And I still remember that actually it was the architects who were the only people who took their sleeping bags to the lectures because they were planning to be there all night.

David Macaulay:
We worked very hard.

I mean, there's no question about it.

I was exhausted by junior year.

And maybe that was part of the rationale behind my reasoning.

I don't want to do this.

But I don't think so because I've never regretted it for a moment.

And I think back often how that education allowed me to even enter the world of bookmaking and illustration and that sort of thing.

Rob Bell:
Well, your oeuvre of work, David, is vast.

And I'm not sure I've even been able to capture it all in my research.

But we're talking over 30 books, years of teaching, live appearances, exhibitions, lectures, multiple TV series, winner of way too many awards to mention.

But probably your most famous book, The Way Things Work, has been enjoyed for almost 40 years by kids all over the world, with, I've read, an estimated sales of over 3 million.

It doesn't really matter, it's very, very big, right?

David Macaulay:
They make it up, they make those numbers up.

Rob Bell:
That's fine.

David Macaulay:
I have no idea.

Rob Bell:
Let them keep making it up, David.

As long as it keeps going up, right?

David Macaulay:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

As long as it stays in print, I mean, that's the thing.

Rob Bell:
If we take that book specifically, David, or maybe in your books generally, in all of your work, where do you feel the joy lies?

What do you personally get out of it?

David Macaulay:
The opportunity to learn stuff I had no idea about.

That's at the bottom of it.

That's at the heart of this whole process.

I love to learn.

I am a student.

I've been a teacher for many years, but I've been a student even longer.

I worked on The Way Things Work with a guy named Neil Ardley, a composer, brilliant science writer, and a man who knew everything in The Way Things Work.

He knew it.

If he didn't know it, he knew where to find it.

He became my teacher for three or four-year period.

He was the guy, not me, he was the guy who sort of put together the structure of the book.

And I was asked if I would be willing to illustrate a book about machines.

And I said, how long is it?

He said, 400 pages.

And I thought, you've got to be kidding.

I didn't say that out loud, but in my head.

So I declined.

Working on something so vast about machines as part of a team, I always worked on my own stuff.

And I was reluctant to give that up.

I was a little afraid to give that up.

But he asked me again a year later.

Once again, we were having dinner.

Always a dangerous time to be asked those kinds of questions.

And I said, OK, sure, let's do this.

And obviously, I'm very grateful I succumbed the second time around because it has changed everything in my life, really.

And it was this remarkable opportunity to have him guide me through this information so that I could create the most accurate drawings possible.

Then it was up to me to make them playful, to make them fun, to make them entertainment, as well as information.

And that's something that I've been trying to do in all the books I do, even the picture books.

There needs to be some information, there needs to be some substance, but there also needs to be some entertainment.

And that's the thing that keeps me going.

There's always new stuff to talk about.

Rob Bell:
Well, there is always new stuff to talk about, which has played out in the books that have followed on, the new way things work.

The way things work now, I wonder what the next one will be.

David Macaulay:
You know, it's interesting.

People have asked me, and I'm supposed to be working on a book now about the earth.

And the model for this book is to be the way things work.

It's supposed to be 400 pages.

You know, a few years ago, when I thought, well, that sounds like a fine idea, I said, okay, yeah, let's just put it on hold, but let's do that.

And I've come to realize that it would be such a waste of time because the information that you need to know how the Earth works is already available and it keeps changing.

That was not true in 1988 when it came to machines.

So you couldn't go online, first of all.

So my job was made that much easier because there wasn't anything quite like what we were doing.

So I'm working my way around it.

I'm trying to give them what they want without giving them what they asked for.

So we'll see how that goes.

Rob Bell:
Jono, does what David say there about what he enjoys, the joy he gets out from learning, does that resonate with what you do in Sketchplanations?

It's a loaded question because I know the answer.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, it was a really interesting way to frame it for me, actually.

Because I did wonder when I read The Way Things Work so long ago, I thought, how does he know all this stuff?

Because there's so much in there.

It's nice to realize that you were learning at the same time as you were drawing these things.

I remember doing one of those personality assessments, and a learner was absolutely at the top of mine.

Every time I take on a new sketch, usually it's something I think I know.

But then when I start to think, how am I going to explain this?

I realized I don't really know it and I have to go learn it.

But on the other hand, if you can make a living by learning stuff, and drawing it out for people, that's brilliant.

David Macaulay:
Well, if you can make a living by teaching, I mean, the process is so rich and such a give and take experience.

So yeah, I'm a student first and foremost, a teacher secondarily.

And if you go into a class and you're not a student also in spirit, then you probably shouldn't be there.

Rob Bell:
That's a nice way of putting it.

Jono Hey:
David, I'm pretty sure we got the very first edition of your book.

And I remember I was at school in the US., in New York State Elementary, the top year of the elementary.

And we had to do the school science project.

And that's the sort of one where everybody makes the volcano and chemical reaction to spill out the top.

And I made, and it's still in the book now, The Current Editions.

You have an explanation of how a burglar alarm works, which is where you have a circuit, which is with a movable lever, which is held together close to the window by a magnet in the window.

And that keeps the circuit closed.

And as you move the window away, that lever springs back, opens the circuit, and the alarm goes off.

And that was what I made for my science project, absolutely based out of your book.

It was a bit of a flimsy cardboard model, I'm afraid.

David Macaulay:
You're welcome, though.

You're welcome.

If Neil was with us, he'd be very pleased to hear that.

Jono Hey:
He wouldn't be pleased to hear that one of the volcanoes won.

David Macaulay:
Well, you have to be open-minded about these things.

Rob Bell:
Well, listen, for this podcast series, David, we usually pick one of Jono's sketches to focus on and broaden our conversation out from there.

And with you as our guest this time, as someone who's explained a lot of the physical and engineering world in your celebrated illustrations, I thought we should start with a physical item, a physical mechanism.

I thought we go with Canal Locks, this big physical engineering mechanism.

So that's the sketch that's depicted as the artwork for this episode.

But dear listeners, if you'd like to see the sketch in more detail, you should head to sketchplanations.com.

I'm not sure you've ever illustrated a canal lock in your books, have you, David?

I may be wrong.

David Macaulay:
No.

Jono Hey:
Not yet.

There can't be many things to say that for, I always thought.

David Macaulay:
Well, when I thought that this is what was going to happen, I thought, well, it's interesting because I've never done it.

So I will be learning about it.

Good.

Along with everyone else.

I looked at the sequence of sketches and I thought, okay, that makes it really clear.

This trade-off in water height, I mean, it's so logical.

And that's the great thing about this.

The best stuff is just logical, it's almost common sense.

But you have to think of the questions to start with.

Yes.

You know, good design doesn't come from bad problems.

It comes from creating good problems and analyzing those problems until you get to a point where you can respond to it in a way that's, you know, meaningful and with any luck at all, successful.

So the one thing that I missed in the sketches, because they're cross-sections, was the way the doors work, it's three-dimensionally.

You talk about them, you have to go to the words for that.

And I say that like it's a bad thing.

It's not a bad thing to have to go to the words.

The whole, to me, the part of the joy of bookmaking is that you are trying to create this interwoven fabric of visual images and verbal images.

And you are inviting somebody into a drawing, and they will be pulled into the point where they have a question that the drawing doesn't answer.

That's when you go to the words.

Or if you're a more verbal person, you'll start with the words, and there will be things that seem a little complicated.

And theoretically, you should be able to move right into the visual material.

And together, those two things create a full picture of the questions that the images encourage.

I think my job is to encourage questioning, not to provide answers.

Jono Hey:
I mean, you're absolutely right that I'm...

I feel like if I'd have made it a nice spread in your book, I would have had a beautiful bird's-eye shot of a canal at an angle with the whole thing going on and all the scene, and a boat coming up, and a boat coming down, and people doing it, and probably a mammoth pulling one along.

They used to be pulled by horses, I think.

It's interesting you say about the words, because sometimes I think that when I'm trying to explain things, I'm trying to be as conservative with words as I can be.

Yet, if you look at them compared to a normal drawing, they're full of words.

But I guess when you look at the page of The Way Things Work, or many ones in your books, it really is, it's that mix of, there's a drawing, there's captions, there's labels.

Sometimes you can just look at the drawing and get what's going on with the arrows and things.

And other times you want to go to this bit of text here, or your eyes drawn up here, and then you read this bit of text that explains that, or you have a box.

It's like the whole picture that people are, I don't know, you open a page and you're like, where do people start?

Where do people go?

Where are you drawn to?

And maybe that's the questions people start asking.

David Macaulay:
You weave them together really well, you know.

And it was fun to read what you said.

You're always playing with it.

And the illustrations, easily accessible.

And the fact is that you've created a kind of structure for this book, where you use this device.

And it reminds me of the 1960-something edition that came out in Germany, of The Way Things Work.

And it's this thick, two inches thick, two, three.

It was a two-volume set.

They were all cross-sections, but not playful cross-sections.

Oh, they were killer cross-sections, as one might expect from German engineers.

But yet, it sold incredibly well, because people want to know.

And if they don't really know, they want to know they have the answers somewhere on a shelf, like me.

So, you know, it's like it's a tradition.

And to me, you're continuing that tradition, but not in a German way.

There's play, there's a really light touch, and really solid art to go with it.

But, you know, enough about you.

Rob Bell:
I have really enjoyed watching Jono's face, as his work has been appraised by America's explainer in chief.

That was marvellous.

Tom Pellereau:
He's going to ask if he can put that on the front of the book for the next edition.

David Macaulay:
I don't know where explainer in chief came from.

I don't remember.

It makes me uncomfortable because give me some questions.

Give me a pad.

Give me a pencil.

And together we will figure out the answer to the questions.

Rob Bell:
That's lovely.

Yes.

David Macaulay:
Or we'll redefine the questions so that we have a better chance of coming up with an answer.

Rob Bell:
You know, that's how I love to problem solve and to learn as well, is doing it with somebody else where the question that you're trying to answer does change as you think it through and as you get that opportunity to think aloud.

That's what works for me.

David Macaulay:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
Maybe your sketches, David, if there isn't a physical person there with you, are your sketches another means for you thinking aloud?

David Macaulay:
They are why I sketch.

I mean, I sketch to understand what it is I'm trying to say, what I'm looking for.

Teaching a class now at Dartmouth, it's called The Way Things Work, a Visual Introduction to Engineering.

It has very little to do with engineering.

If anybody at Dartmouth or at the Publishers in New York is listening to this podcast, I was kidding.

But, you know, we give the students each a sketchbook.

Many of them have never had a sketchbook.

Give them a sketchbook, two pencils, an eraser, and a small pencil sharpener, so there are no excuses.

But it's the whole process of being encouraged to ask questions, to be curious.

If my books do anything for younger readers, for instance, I hope it is that they encourage curiosity.

I won't pretend to offer all the answers.

I will pretend to want to encourage curiosity above all else.

Jono Hey:
David, I think I heard you say once encouraging people to open their eyes to the ordinary.

And I guess that's the starting asking questions.

I was going to ask briefly what role you feel drawing plays in this, because you can just walk down the street and look at stuff and start asking questions, right?

But for you, when you sit down with a pencil and paper, does it change it compared to just wandering along asking those questions?

David Macaulay:
Well, I think it encourages you to really look at them, to go beyond looking and actually see what's in front of you.

If you have to sketch it, if you've just got an impression of it, or if you've just taken a picture of it, you may or may not remember anything about it.

But if you've tried to sketch it, you've had to walk around it, you've had to look at the back as well as the front, look at it from the top, whatever it is.

And you wouldn't be doing those things if you weren't trying to sketch it, because the fact is you can't see it all at once.

Because other questions come up.

We had a bird's nest built last year in the umbrella over the table, on the patio in the back of the house.

These two Robins set up shop.

I couldn't believe this was grass hanging from the arms of the umbrella.

And I thought, where did that come from?

And I realized they've been at work.

I had no idea.

But that was such an invitation to watch a process up close and personal-like, maybe too personal for the Robins.

But I worked really hard to maintain my distance.

But just my admiration for what those two creatures did and then raise two little guys and they're all gone.

I just opened the umbrella a couple of days ago, hoping, hoping that the Robins will come back and show me how they built the nest, because I missed the building of it.

It was there.

And I know they're not flown in mass-produced from some bird central.

So, you know, I'm hoping that they'll come back this summer and do it again.

But I took the nest out when the birds had gone and the little guys were gone and all that sort of stuff.

And I waited a respectable amount of time just in case they were going to come back and do it again.

But I took the nest off, peeled it off the umbrella, and I cut it in half as carefully as I could so that I could see a clean cross-section of the shape of the inside of the nest and the body of the bird, basically shaping that form for the eggs.

It is just such a beautiful piece of architecture, beautiful piece of engineering, beautiful piece of sculpture.

It's just extraordinary.

Rob Bell:
And what you've described there is a curious mind that needs to know the answers to that, doesn't it?

David Macaulay:
To say the least, yeah, curious.

Curious is a very nice way of putting it.

Rob Bell:
It's a good word, isn't it?

David Macaulay:
This man is nuts.

But it was such a gift, it was such a gift.

In terms of the Earth Book and so on, what could be more compelling than a structure built as a home, a temporary home for bringing up youngsters made of grass and some sticks and some mud and so on and so forth?

And it's solid as can be.

And it's also just as solid as it needs to be and no more.

I mean, it's just a brilliant, brilliant thing.

And, you know, I think, how about that last sketch you did, Macaulay?

That wasn't so great.

You kind of rushed it and, yeah, perspective is really crappy on it.

What happened?

And if I can get the students that I get to work with to just do that, to open their eyes and really notice how much wonderful stuff there is to take in.

And as I said, it doesn't cost anything.

Just do it.

And the sketching is a way of encouraging that process.

You do have to really look hard at things if you're going to sketch them in a meaningful way.

I don't mean rendering.

I mean just capturing the essence of this thing.

To figure out what that means, you have to ask questions about them.

Tom Pellereau:
Can I ask something?

I read a brilliant quote of yours as to why the mammoths are part of there.

And your answer was about the fact that you said, to help people learn, the best way is to put a smile on their face first.

And I was wondering if that was something you were told, if that was something that you saw from an early age that helped, or where did that, because that's an incredible observation in itself.

David Macaulay:
As someone who grew up in England, I have that British sense of humour.

And I got that from my parents, I got that from my father particularly, although they both had it.

So looking for humour, being playful when possible.

And when I started to making books, after the first few books, I began to realize that if you opened the book and it looked like it was going to be hard work, you already kind of done yourself a disservice, never mind the material.

So how do you make it?

You don't want to undermine the information, because these are supposed to be information books.

But that requires carefully thought through humor.

Sometimes it starts just spontaneously.

But the idea is that you're always looking to say, relax, you know, this is not rocket science, even though there may be some rocket science in this.

This is going to be stuff that you can, in fact, understand if you give it a little time, if you ask some questions, if you look beyond the surface, it's all there for you.

And if you don't get it, there are people you can ask.

There are places you can go.

Jono Hey:
David, I think one of the things I really like about the humour that you use in the books and the scenarios that you...

Maybe there's little people in the toaster watching the toast go down.

It's a giant piece of toast.

And it helps you put yourself in there.

But also, I think the humour sort of tells you that natural curiosity, that learning doesn't have to be just work.

We can all learn and it's fun and it's interesting.

I've realised over many years that I've stolen so much I've learned from you about how do you take something and not make it like a dry textbook but make people want to learn this thing.

I mean, I was looking through some of the books we have, we have the old maths book as well.

And actually, I did a sketch on parts of a circle, which is, you know, like the radius and the diameter and that kind of thing.

And I noticed you did one as well and it's way better than mine.

But it's a ferris wheel and there's lots of like rats in the ferris wheel and obviously all of the things are labelled on the picture.

And here I am learning about a circle, but it's just such a much more approachable, interesting way of learning.

And I think that's what I really like about the humour.

It makes it not seem like work, it just makes it seem like fun.

David Macaulay:
But you come at the problem from the right point of view, which is you're enjoying this.

You've enjoyed learning whatever it is you want to learn.

And it's natural to want to share that.

The fact that you've enjoyed learning it means that you've had that smile on your face.

And that's the sense of satisfaction that you want to communicate.

I think it sounds to me like it's just natural for you.

I think it's natural for me.

I don't know how to do it without.

And I consider myself so really lucky to be able to do this because it makes me happy.

Rob Bell:
David, even you talking about it now, I can feel how happy it makes you, which in turn makes me very happy.

I mean, I absolutely love the Witton Humour in your work.

Jono, I love the Witton Humour in your work.

And whenever I see it, I hope I always point it out to you because I do enjoy it.

Again, I'm very comfortable in that environment.

If something makes me giggle, even if it's nothing to do with the explanation, it's just a little character looking on, I absolutely love it.

It makes me want to see more.

David Macaulay:
Those are the rewards to the reader, a younger old who comes back a second time or a third time or a fourth time, and they think they've seen it all, but they haven't seen it all.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, they miss the guy.

David Macaulay:
There's something waiting, you know, there's some little thing waiting.

And I think it's natural for us to want to do that.

And you don't expect to communicate on the first reading, everything that this illustration is about, or these words are about, or this spread is about.

You have to, it has to be rich enough and deep enough, and subtle enough in some cases, to reward those return trips.

Rob Bell:
And so that's some of the more subtle humour.

But for any listeners who haven't seen any of David's work, and I will include lots of links, and I urge you to look it up as you're listening to this, Woolly Mammoths, they're a recurring theme within The Explanations, and they're not so subtle, they are there.

But it's lovely, and it makes you think, oh, what are they going to be up to on the next page?

Why Woolly Mammoths, David?

What was it about Woolly Mammoths that you thought, yeah, this is going to do the job for me?

David Macaulay:
I was trying to figure out how to explain levers and simple machines, basically.

I'd made all these diagrams with the pages who are kind of neatly organized, and there's a first-class lever and a second and a third and so on and so forth.

And it's all been done, it had all been done that way many times, and here I was trying to draw it a little differently or something, and I was just about ready to shoot myself.

And I thought, okay, wait a minute, wait a minute, levers and ramps and things have been around for a long time.

I think we can assume that is true.

And so what does that mean?

Cave people?

Okay, cave people.

Let's give cave people some rocks, a big rock for a fulcrum and a log.

And they could play on the log.

In fact, they could weigh each other.

But in the background of one of the sketches, really early on, I drew some trees and head of a mammoth sticking out between the trees.

And maybe a saber-toothed tiger, whatever.

I just scribbled it in and thinking, okay, I need to create this environment here.

And when I had that, when I looked at that drawing and saw those people, I thought, wait a minute, they could weigh the mammoth.

So to answer the question, the mammoth came out of the woods in the background.

And once that started to click, then I realized, wait a minute, these guys could do all sorts of things.

Rob Bell:
Almost 40 years on from that book first being published, David, do you still get feedback that almost universally, people have this curiosity and love for your woolly mammoths?

David Macaulay:
Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

The mammoth is a star.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Tommy, you design products and with those products, often, I'm sure probably actually with every product, there's an instruction manual that comes with it and I'm assuming within that, you have diagrams, how to explain how to use this.

Do you ever consider using wit and humour within that woolly mammoth?

Tom Pellereau:
I have not and I think I need to rethink that.

We work in the beauty quite close to the medical sector, so we have to be a little bit careful, but I think there is more scope for humour.

And certainly, my kids love anything that is funny, and I know that that converts so well with them.

David Macaulay:
It's tricky, isn't it?

Balancing, walking that line, because you don't want to undermine the importance of the information or the accuracy.

It requires a really gentle hand.

That is not the mammoth.

The mammoth is not a gentle hand.

I think humour is really incredibly important, especially about learning things, being introduced to things that you may not have thought about or that might seem frightening at first.

It might seem intimidating.

You just have to touch on the human side of it to sort of break that initial barrier, to break the ice in a way.

Jono Hey:
It would be nice to see an architecture sketch.

I literally have never seen an architecture sketch for a building with some funny thing going on.

Some people playing on the wall or something like that.

No, they're always walking hand in hand with the coffee.

David Macaulay:
Do you know Great Moments in Architecture?

Jono Hey:
No.

David Macaulay:
Okay, that's a book from 1977.

And I made a series of fake classical plates, Piranesi kinds of plates.

One example, an upside down drawing of L'Arc de Triomphe called The Arch of Defeat.

And it is the legs, the legs are kind of drooping outward.

Yeah.

But it's drawn pen and ink, you know, carefully, the details and so on and so forth.

I'm not Piranesi, but I mimicked Piranesi, you know, the trees and the clouds, and it has a kind of grandeur to it, but the absurd title.

So I have played with architecture just in that.

Rob Bell:
That's fun.

David Macaulay:
Yeah, that was going on vacation, actually.

Jono Hey:
One of the things I found with Sketchplanations is probably some of the more popular ones, more abstract concepts like models and frameworks and things like that, because, I don't know, there must be thousands of people who have drawn diagrams of Explaining Canal Locks.

As you said, there probably doesn't, there probably didn't need to be a new one, except that I found it fascinating.

And maybe people who I'm sending these to have not looked in depth at canal locks, but there are already loads of those.

But there are not always lots of diagrams or visuals for more abstract things.

And I was wondering if you've tackled more abstract concepts or you tend to stay in the physical realm.

David Macaulay:
Well, I haven't run out of stuff yet in the physical realm.

Somehow I'm not sure I will.

But I think what you're describing is so important.

I mean, the stuff that is impossible to visualize for most people, they need help to visualize it.

So if you're doing that, I think that's terrific.

Old drawings, comic book things put out for school kids by the local electric company.

And the electrons are all wearing sneakers and they're running along.

You know, that sort of stuff.

Now, I'm not a big fan of the sneaker electrons.

But the fact is, you know, making electricity come to life for people, I mean, how do you do it?

And maybe that's the best way.

I don't really know.

Otherwise, it's abstract shapes and so on and so forth.

I mean, that's where some humour, some wit, some real invention is required.

And some real imagination because that stuff does not explain itself.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
David, I absolutely share your passion with trying to encourage people to sketch.

And my wife, who's a structural engineer and an architect as well, she says she's finding it quite tricky with the younger graduates who come through because they don't really want to sketch.

They just want to start with the computer.

They want to start by creating the CAD rather than just doing, okay, what's the 2D model kind of saying?

Let's just sketch it.

Where are the forces?

But a lot of people, I think, might say that, oh, but I can't draw.

So I suppose I have two questions.

Firstly, when you draw, do you already see it on the paper, as it were, and you are kind of almost following an outline that your brain has already put on the paper?

And then the second part is, I believe everyone can draw.

It's just a case of practicing, really.

Like the more you draw, the better you get at it.

So, how do you kind of encourage people to start or hints and tips?

David Macaulay:
The first one about what I sort of see when I sit down to sketch.

I don't have a view in mind.

I don't have an image in mind.

I have questions in mind.

My hand has to keep moving until things start to connect, until I begin to see possibilities.

It's the way the mammoth grew out of nothing to become the star of The Way Things Work.

I mean, I wasn't trying to do mammoths.

And it's true, whatever I'm drawing, whatever, you know, I have a vague sense of what I need to explain.

The more I work at it, the more questions I have.

So they sort of, they are pulled out of me by the sketching process.

But the other thing about encouraging people, you know, I hear that all the time, I can't draw.

I'm terrible at this and so on and so forth.

And basically, they've never tried.

What they tried at some point, you know, they held a pencil or a pen or a ballpoint pen or crayon or something like that.

And it was, it didn't turn out like they wanted.

So, now, maybe this is not, you know, I'll do something else.

I'll play sports.

Maybe I'll write.

The creative process requires some real discipline and repetition.

And it's boring at times to do some of this stuff.

Very boring.

And so, I just say, no, no, you can do it.

I'm going to show you how.

And so, you know, in class sometimes I will draw for them, but they will draw along with me.

So in their sketchbooks, they're literally making the lines I'm making.

And then we could talk about it.

I make them curious and show them that there are answers to these things.

And in the drawing class, in the sketching class, it's really a lot of encouragement.

You see, a lot of sloppy stuff, but it's sloppy stuff.

It's not necessarily an indication of a lack of ability.

I just hope that from the experience I'm having with the students now, that this notion of sketching, you don't have to have a book because that's a little bit intimidating, a sketchbook, but you could scribble on anything.

And it should be a response to something that you suddenly realize you don't know, but it would be fun to know.

Jono Hey:
Have you tried using AI for generating images?

Rob Bell:
Jono, that was a disgusting question.

How dare you?

David Macaulay:
No, I haven't.

I keep seeing it when I look things up and I see the little AI introduction.

Anyway, I haven't, and I can see it's creeping in.

I have friends who are beginning to use it in their work.

Rob Bell:
Guys, I'm very conscious of their time.

I am going to do my best to try and bring this round.

Jono, Tommy, do you have any quick burning questions you'd like to ask?

Or indeed David, if there's anything you'd like to ask of us that you haven't yet.

Tom Pellereau:
David, you mentioned two pencils, a rubber and a pencil sharpener.

What type of pencils as in 3H, 3B?

What type?

Is it HB?

David Macaulay:
This is an HB.

Tom Pellereau:
Do you just use normal HBs?

David Macaulay:
Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
Brilliant.

I love that answer.

David Macaulay:
Tracing paper is so great because it's so forgiving and it's so cheap.

You know, it's the perfect combination, forgiving and cheap.

Rob Bell:
That's a great tip.

Jono, anything you'd like to ask David?

Jono Hey:
My question, which maybe is for you guys as well, because I asked, I said we're going to speak with David.

We've got any questions that you would ask him.

One of them was, what's something fairly every day that you just can't get your head around how it works or that's just still remarkable to you?

David Macaulay:
Oh, okay.

It doesn't have to be, to me, the refrigerator.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, good one, yeah.

David Macaulay:
Just that whole process of suddenly, it's hot, it's cold, and it works.

So somebody had to, over time, realize that getting ice delivered was just not going to get us very far.

It's that sort of stuff.

I mean, the computer, obviously, it's too much.

Radio waves, I just don't understand it.

So I tried to draw it and I find myself making the same sort of radiating lines and waves and stuff like that.

But I don't believe it because...

Tom Pellereau:
I can't see it.

David Macaulay:
I guess it works.

I can't see it.

And so, but I make the same drawings because I know that this is a language.

People will understand, oh, that's radio waves.

What is that radio waves?

It's just, it's just, it's like...

Tom Pellereau:
That's just how the BBC first advertised it, wasn't it, with the kind of things coming out.

So that must be how it works.

No one really...

Rob Bell:
It's very funny you mentioned the fridge, David.

And again, this is another insight to my world.

I got myself into a kind of fantasy panic the other day, imagining that somebody was about to ask me how a fridge works.

I know how a fridge works, you know, it's a heat engine, but I've got myself into a panic there and then going, I don't think I could do it justice now without actually sitting down and thinking this out and sketching out what else can I say.

No one was asking me that question.

I just got myself into that panic for no reason.

Jono Hey:
How a fridge works.

David Macaulay:
Yeah, but it was.

It's good to be ready, though.

I mean, be prepared.

Rob Bell:
You're right.

And if I've learned anything from my dad as a scout leader, always be prepared.

David Macaulay:
Absolutely.

Rob Bell:
David, have you got any projects underway at the moment that we should be aware of, that something that we should be looking out for in the future?

David Macaulay:
I love to teach.

I really do.

And it keeps me on my toes.

It's a challenge every day, but in a good way.

And I just want to open their eyes to stuff before they leave.

And I want them to realize that there's so much more than whatever happens at Dartmouth.

My belief, central belief, is that you're not here to pick up information.

You're here to learn how to observe, to see, to ask questions and to begin to develop an appreciation for that.

Act and relax because it will be rewarding.

Hear, hear.

Thank you.

Rob Bell:
David, listen, thank you once again for giving up your time to come and speak with us.

As a trio, I know that we were all fans of your books from a very early age.

We all went on to study and develop a fascination for science and engineering, and we continue to be fans to this data.

Thank you so much.

We're very, very grateful to you.

David Macaulay:
My pleasure.

Thank you all.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, thanks so much.

Rob Bell:
Thank you all for listening.

If you didn't know any of David's work before, I urge you to check it out.

As always, I'll include links in the episode notes down below to help you discover it.

If you have kids of a certain age, I can guarantee you they will also love it.

So until next time, oh my gosh, did you guys just see that?

I think a woody mammoth just walked past my third story window.

Well, I guess in the wonderful world of David Macaulay, that's not impossible.

Thanks for listening.

Go well, stay well.

Goodbye.

All music on this podcast series is provided by the very talented Franc Cinelli.

And you can find many more tracks at franccinelli.com.