November 8, 2025 • 16 mins
Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything has sold millions of copies since its initial publication in 2003, but a lot has changed since then.
Bryson had initially retired, but he's since revised his best known work with updated information - and he's set to do a speaking tour, with Auckland and Wellington events to take place in February.
He says a massive amount has changed in the 22 years since writing the book and updating it was a bigger project than expected.
"It was fun, I enjoyed it a lot - I've been kind of retired for a few years and this is why I came out of retirement, to do this. And I really had a good time doing it, it made me remember the joys of actually working."
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News talks'b Right.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Bill Bryson is the author of the best selling popular
science book of the twenty first century. First printed in
two thousand and three, Short History of Nearly Everything has
sold two million copies worldwide, with Bill being credited for
making complex science accessible. But twenty years is a long
time in science, so Bill decided to jump out of
retirement god studying and revised the book hot off the
(00:35):
heels of its release. Bill is heading here on tour
next February, and he joins me now from the UK.
Bill Bryson, good morning, Good.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
So excited to talk to you the tour which is
coming to New Zealand and February. It's based on you
rewriting and re releasing your original Short History of Nearly
Everything two point zero, which is out now. The original,
of course, published in two thousand and three. Was it
a massive undertaking updating this book?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yep, more than the next. I mean, I know it
would be a big job. The book is you know,
was written more than twenty years ago, as you've just said,
and it's all about science and me trying to understand
everything in the world of science to the whole history
of the universe. So obviously a massive amount has changed
in those twenty years, and I knew that it would
(01:27):
be quite a big job, but it actually turned out
to be even bigger than I expected. It was. It
was fun. I enjoyed it a lot. You know, I've
been kind of retired for a few years and this
so I came out of retirement to do this, and
I really had a good time doing it. It made
me remember, you know, the joys of actually working to
be the writer. But it involved a lot more, you know,
(01:52):
traveling around and interviewing people and trying to bring myself
up to speed than I had that I had quite
bargained for. But on the whole, I'm really glad I
did it, and I really enjoyed doing it.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Was there any difference in the researching and writing of
this book in twenty twenty five compete to twenty twenty three,
because we've had a few sort of technological advances in
that time, haven't we.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Oh? Yes, I mean completely different. I mean when I
did the book, the book came out in two thousand
and three, but I really started doing the research on it,
and you know, around about nineteen ninety eight, ninety nine,
and it was just at the time when the Internet
was coming in, you know, and you couldn't I mean,
there was no kind of like it was just so
much harder to fact check. Back then, if I wanted
(02:38):
to check any kind of fact, I had to get
you know, put on clothes and get in my car
and drive it to the library and try and find
things there. Now, of course, you can fact check anything.
I mean, you know, I could if I needed to
know that I don't know, just sindo Arden's middle name,
I could do it in an instant. But back then
I would have had to go off and you know,
(03:00):
do a lot of digging around, and you know, in
in an American library, I probably wouldn't have been able
to find a fact like that out anyway from the library.
So it's much much easier now to check individual facts.
What is harder, or what I hadn't factored into all
of this, was that so many things have just been revolutionized.
(03:22):
Just to give you just one small example, the number
of moons in our solar system that we know about
has doubled in twenty years, which just astounded me. I thought,
we must know, we must be familiar with all the
moons there are out there, But in fact, we keep
finding more and more moons all the time, partly because
some of them are quite small.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Oh, there's so many questions. Which sections of the book
required the most updating? Is it possible to say?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah? The one that surprised me and I hadn't really
expected was human origins, the whole story of how we
got from being sort of essentially apes to be modern humans.
Because there's lots and lots of species of new ancient
(04:11):
humans are archaic humans that have been discovered in the
last twenty years. One of the most amazing of these ones,
I'm sure you've read about, commonly known as the Hobbits
with homofluoresciences, who were discovered on this on the island
of Floris in Indonesia. And they were little people with
(04:32):
very small brains that somehow got all the way from
Africa to Indonesia, crossed big bodies of water in order
to do so at a time when there was nobody
had mastery of ocean going craft or anything. Somehow got
to Floris and then just stayed there and they were
there for the better part of a million years. Nobody
(04:54):
knows how they did it or even why they did it.
And they were on the Florists, an island that's crawling
with Kimodo and dragons. So why they decided to stay
in one of the most dangerous places on Earth thrive
for almost a million years is a question that cannot
be answered. And they're just one of several species of
ancient humans that we knew nothing at all about when
(05:16):
I wrote the book the first time.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Amazing. Have there been questions that people have been asking
you since you released the first book that you thought
I'm going to go back and try and sort this out?
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Oh? Yeah, there was, yes. I mean I got loads
of letters from people from all over the place, but
pointing out mistakes I'd made, or things that I had
got wrong, or that they felt I had got wrong,
or that were incomplete. I mean, one of the one
of the ones that was was kind of embarrassing to
me was but I got it. I got a very
sweet letter from a young student, a girl in India.
(05:53):
This was only a year or so ago, and I
pointed out that whereas I said that the word asteroid
came from a Latin word for star. She pointed out
that actually it was from a Greek word for star,
and that had been in the book for twin the
years with nobody had ever mentioned it, nobody had ever
noticed it, and nobody'd ever drawn that to my attention.
So that was the kind of one of one of
(06:14):
the kinds of things that I was able to correct
as I went along.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
But don't you love that engagement bill. You know, people
people are reading and interested and curious and king to
have a conversation about it. I think that's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Yeah, And they're so helpful, and most people are very
very they're very understanding, you know. I mean, I'm not
saying that the book is riddled with mistakes. You know,
I tried very hard to make it as accurate as
I could. But I'm not a scientist, and so you know,
what I'm doing in the book is trying to explain
to people this is what I understand, this is what
(06:48):
I've learned, this is this is how I understand it.
And of course, you know, there would be things that
I don't grasp adequately or fully or say this is
that I have misunderstood, or just you know, just human
error creeps in from time to time, and what I
found was that most people are very, very very patient
about that, and they are very helpful and want to
(07:11):
help you get it correct. If I, you know, don't
quite understand quantum physics, it's hardly a surprised And I
often get letters from people that are, you know, trying
to put me back on the right track on certain things.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Well, I think we all hugely appreciate the fact that
you have made science more accessible and interesting. I mean,
it's important, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Oh yeah, science is massively important. You know, science tells
us who we are and how we got here and
where we're going. I mean, every single thing that is
vital to you in your life or any life is
science is you know, will sort out that problem if
you have, whether it's health or you know, whatever whatever
(07:53):
it is to do that affects your life, Science is
at the root of it. And and so of course,
and my whole point was that you know, the two
kinds of people in the world that a people who
become scientists, who for whom science is is is you know,
something that they're completely drawn to. And then there's the
rest of us who are never going to be scientists,
and I think very often are left out, We miss
(08:16):
out on appreciating the wonder of the majesty of science.
And my book is really for those people like me
who were never going to be scientists, but but really
ought to understand some of the things that science does
for us.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
What else did you learn from the update and information
in terms of how faur science has come in these
sort of twenty two twenty three years between books.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Well, there were lots of other things that you know,
that I just had, I mean, in almost every page
had some kind of changes on it. Sometimes they were
just fairly small things, just you know, just updating a
number or a date or something. But then there were
other things that kind of revolutionize fields. I mean, one
of them I won't go into any detail heres, but
(09:01):
the Higgs boson. You know, everybody will have heard about
what the discovery that, and also things like the ongoing
question of the mystery of what exactly is dark matter,
which is you know, and dark energy, which make up
the overwhelming majority of all everything that's in the universe,
and we still don't know what they are. There's lots
(09:22):
and lots of different theories, and I spent quite a
lot of time with a wonderful cosmologist named Carlos Frank
from Durham University in England, and he's spent forty years
looking into this and he still doesn't know what dark
matter is. I mean, he has all kinds of theories
and he's one of the smartest people in the world
(09:43):
and one of you know, hundreds of scientists who've looked
into this, and we still don't know the answer to
what exactly dark matter is. So that's the kind of
stuff that I was dealing with. In the updated version
of the book.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
You mentioned before that you had retired and then and
took on this wonderful challenge. And I did have a
little lefe because I had read for that you sort
of were in retirement, and I'm thinking, I'm not so
sure that this is quite you know, retirement. What does
retirement look like to you, Bill Well?
Speaker 3 (10:15):
I I had this idea. I mean, I tried for
a few years to be semi retired, and then it
just goes You can't do that. It just doesn't work.
You're either retired or you're not. And I decided, I
announced that in twenty twenty I was going to retire,
flat out retirement, not do anything anymore, no more books,
no more work of any kind, no literary festivals or anything.
(10:36):
And COVID came along and so we all became retired.
It was actually quite easy. And for a few years,
I mean three or four years, I really didn't do
anything in terms of work. I mean, I still have
very active life. I've got a big garden and a
big family, and I have lots of other things I did.
(10:57):
And I love being retired. It was such a joy
to be able to read for pleasure for the first
time in years and years and years, for instance. But
I also missed working and and having, you know, having
kind of a purpose, so having having challenges to deal
with in life. And so I thought, I really must
(11:20):
go back into this book and try and bring it
up to date. I'm glad I did it. But now
I feel as if I'm ready to be retired again.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
And you can be. Isn't it great?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
You can?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
You could.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
It's a job, and it's it's like any job job
is you know, it's work, and it's nice not to
have to work. I mean, this is why we all
enjoy having holidays and time off, and you know, weekends
and things and being retired. I find it very, very agreeable.
But at the same time, I think, as with most
retired people, you missed, you missed the sort of contact
(11:56):
with others. You miss certain aspects of the work. And
I do miss. I really missed doing the research, you know,
interviewing people, going to libraries, doing reading, things like that.
But I don't other parts of being a writer I
don't miss. I don't miss all the emails and the
meetings and having to deal with, you know, being invited
(12:19):
to loads to do loads of things, and having to
you know, the kind of administrative sides of things. I'm
very happy to be free from that.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
So not only is the book being re released and
it's just been released here in New Zealand, but of
course you have the tour as well. Just to keep
you really busy, tell me about the tour. What does
a Bill bryceon live show look like?
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Oh? Well, we're still putting it all together. But part
of the reason I wanted to do it and agreed
to do it is because it's organized by this wonderful
gume from Sydney, Simon Baggs, who's an old friend I've
done tours with him before. And what he does is
he he's very, very thoughtful, but he brings a lot
of kind of I don't know, laser lights and pyrotechnics
(13:04):
and dazzling things. And what it means is that things
that you know, I mean, my specialty is just to
put words on a page, but he brings things to
life by projecting images on the screen. So if I'm
talking about the Big Bang or the birth of the
Universe or something on stage, you know there'll be something
(13:24):
going on on a big screen behind me that will
show you that. And so it makes everything much more
vivid and more like a show. And to me it's
I'm as dazzled as people in the audience are because
because he just puts together these, you know, the kind
of fantastic shows. And at this particular moment, we're still
(13:47):
working on exactly what that will consist of. But what
I can tell you I can absolutely sure it is
that is that you know, you'll be sort of staggered
by how good it is, not not because of me,
not because I make it so good, but because of
the stuff Simon brings to it all, and and it
just makes it a real joy and much more kind
(14:09):
of interactive experience with the audience, So it'll be really
talking partly about my life and times and work, but
also talking about the science and the universe and how
how we came to be the way we are.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Bill, Are you definitely finished with the book now? I mean,
is there a big discovery that would make you revisit
it again?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Well, that's I mean. The problem is, of course, as
soon as you finish a book and he goes, the
world goes on. Yes, things were discovered, and you know,
somebody will will come up with an answer to what
is the you know, what is the cause of dark
energy and dark matter and all of these other things.
(14:50):
Will continually learn more. But in a way, my book
isn't about it isn't about trying to be right up
to the minute. It's not. It's not a guide to
science so much. It's it's more sort of an appreciation
of the universe, living in what science does for us.
So I'm hoping, you know, I've brought a lot of
(15:11):
the facts up to date, but I'm hoping that as
it as time goes on, it will become slightly more dated.
But I'm hoping that it is still the general kind
of thrust of the book will still be okay that
people will still find it valuable. People were still buying
it before I did this updated version and finding it
useful because there's an awful of history in it and
(15:34):
just sort of general generalizing. But you know, the great
thing at the moment is that it's just about its
up to date that could possibly make it.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Bill. Thank you for coming out of retirement to update
the book and for heating to New Zealand. We really appreciate.
Look forward to the INGU in February.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
I can't wait to get it. Honestly cannot wait to
be back there. But thank you very much for having
me on tonight.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
That was Bill Bryson. As he said, he is heading
to Auckland and Wellington in February for his The Beast
of Bill Bryson Live on Stage tour. Tickets are on
sell now. It's through Ticketmaster.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks a B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News talks'b Right.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Bill Bryson is the author of the best selling popular
science book of the twenty first century. First printed in
two thousand and three, Short History of Nearly Everything has
sold two million copies worldwide, with Bill being credited for
making complex science accessible. But twenty years is a long
time in science, so Bill decided to jump out of
retirement god studying and revised the book hot off the
(00:35):
heels of its release. Bill is heading here on tour
next February, and he joins me now from the UK.
Bill Bryson, good morning, Good.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
So excited to talk to you the tour which is
coming to New Zealand and February. It's based on you
rewriting and re releasing your original Short History of Nearly
Everything two point zero, which is out now. The original,
of course, published in two thousand and three. Was it
a massive undertaking updating this book?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yep, more than the next. I mean, I know it
would be a big job. The book is you know,
was written more than twenty years ago, as you've just said,
and it's all about science and me trying to understand
everything in the world of science to the whole history
of the universe. So obviously a massive amount has changed
in those twenty years, and I knew that it would
(01:27):
be quite a big job, but it actually turned out
to be even bigger than I expected. It was. It
was fun. I enjoyed it a lot. You know, I've
been kind of retired for a few years and this
so I came out of retirement to do this, and
I really had a good time doing it. It made
me remember, you know, the joys of actually working to
be the writer. But it involved a lot more, you know,
(01:52):
traveling around and interviewing people and trying to bring myself
up to speed than I had that I had quite
bargained for. But on the whole, I'm really glad I
did it, and I really enjoyed doing it.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Was there any difference in the researching and writing of
this book in twenty twenty five compete to twenty twenty three,
because we've had a few sort of technological advances in
that time, haven't we.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Oh? Yes, I mean completely different. I mean when I
did the book, the book came out in two thousand
and three, but I really started doing the research on it,
and you know, around about nineteen ninety eight, ninety nine,
and it was just at the time when the Internet
was coming in, you know, and you couldn't I mean,
there was no kind of like it was just so
much harder to fact check. Back then, if I wanted
(02:38):
to check any kind of fact, I had to get
you know, put on clothes and get in my car
and drive it to the library and try and find
things there. Now, of course, you can fact check anything.
I mean, you know, I could if I needed to
know that I don't know, just sindo Arden's middle name,
I could do it in an instant. But back then
I would have had to go off and you know,
(03:00):
do a lot of digging around, and you know, in
in an American library, I probably wouldn't have been able
to find a fact like that out anyway from the library.
So it's much much easier now to check individual facts.
What is harder, or what I hadn't factored into all
of this, was that so many things have just been revolutionized.
(03:22):
Just to give you just one small example, the number
of moons in our solar system that we know about
has doubled in twenty years, which just astounded me. I thought,
we must know, we must be familiar with all the
moons there are out there, But in fact, we keep
finding more and more moons all the time, partly because
some of them are quite small.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Oh, there's so many questions. Which sections of the book
required the most updating? Is it possible to say?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah? The one that surprised me and I hadn't really
expected was human origins, the whole story of how we
got from being sort of essentially apes to be modern humans.
Because there's lots and lots of species of new ancient
(04:11):
humans are archaic humans that have been discovered in the
last twenty years. One of the most amazing of these ones,
I'm sure you've read about, commonly known as the Hobbits
with homofluoresciences, who were discovered on this on the island
of Floris in Indonesia. And they were little people with
(04:32):
very small brains that somehow got all the way from
Africa to Indonesia, crossed big bodies of water in order
to do so at a time when there was nobody
had mastery of ocean going craft or anything. Somehow got
to Floris and then just stayed there and they were
there for the better part of a million years. Nobody
(04:54):
knows how they did it or even why they did it.
And they were on the Florists, an island that's crawling
with Kimodo and dragons. So why they decided to stay
in one of the most dangerous places on Earth thrive
for almost a million years is a question that cannot
be answered. And they're just one of several species of
ancient humans that we knew nothing at all about when
(05:16):
I wrote the book the first time.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Amazing. Have there been questions that people have been asking
you since you released the first book that you thought
I'm going to go back and try and sort this out?
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Oh? Yeah, there was, yes. I mean I got loads
of letters from people from all over the place, but
pointing out mistakes I'd made, or things that I had
got wrong, or that they felt I had got wrong,
or that were incomplete. I mean, one of the one
of the ones that was was kind of embarrassing to
me was but I got it. I got a very
sweet letter from a young student, a girl in India.
(05:53):
This was only a year or so ago, and I
pointed out that whereas I said that the word asteroid
came from a Latin word for star. She pointed out
that actually it was from a Greek word for star,
and that had been in the book for twin the
years with nobody had ever mentioned it, nobody had ever
noticed it, and nobody'd ever drawn that to my attention.
So that was the kind of one of one of
(06:14):
the kinds of things that I was able to correct
as I went along.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
But don't you love that engagement bill. You know, people
people are reading and interested and curious and king to
have a conversation about it. I think that's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Yeah, And they're so helpful, and most people are very
very they're very understanding, you know. I mean, I'm not
saying that the book is riddled with mistakes. You know,
I tried very hard to make it as accurate as
I could. But I'm not a scientist, and so you know,
what I'm doing in the book is trying to explain
to people this is what I understand, this is what
(06:48):
I've learned, this is this is how I understand it.
And of course, you know, there would be things that
I don't grasp adequately or fully or say this is
that I have misunderstood, or just you know, just human
error creeps in from time to time, and what I
found was that most people are very, very very patient
about that, and they are very helpful and want to
(07:11):
help you get it correct. If I, you know, don't
quite understand quantum physics, it's hardly a surprised And I
often get letters from people that are, you know, trying
to put me back on the right track on certain things.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Well, I think we all hugely appreciate the fact that
you have made science more accessible and interesting. I mean,
it's important, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Oh yeah, science is massively important. You know, science tells
us who we are and how we got here and
where we're going. I mean, every single thing that is
vital to you in your life or any life is
science is you know, will sort out that problem if
you have, whether it's health or you know, whatever whatever
(07:53):
it is to do that affects your life, Science is
at the root of it. And and so of course,
and my whole point was that you know, the two
kinds of people in the world that a people who
become scientists, who for whom science is is is you know,
something that they're completely drawn to. And then there's the
rest of us who are never going to be scientists,
and I think very often are left out, We miss
(08:16):
out on appreciating the wonder of the majesty of science.
And my book is really for those people like me
who were never going to be scientists, but but really
ought to understand some of the things that science does
for us.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
What else did you learn from the update and information
in terms of how faur science has come in these
sort of twenty two twenty three years between books.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Well, there were lots of other things that you know,
that I just had, I mean, in almost every page
had some kind of changes on it. Sometimes they were
just fairly small things, just you know, just updating a
number or a date or something. But then there were
other things that kind of revolutionize fields. I mean, one
of them I won't go into any detail heres, but
(09:01):
the Higgs boson. You know, everybody will have heard about
what the discovery that, and also things like the ongoing
question of the mystery of what exactly is dark matter,
which is you know, and dark energy, which make up
the overwhelming majority of all everything that's in the universe,
and we still don't know what they are. There's lots
(09:22):
and lots of different theories, and I spent quite a
lot of time with a wonderful cosmologist named Carlos Frank
from Durham University in England, and he's spent forty years
looking into this and he still doesn't know what dark
matter is. I mean, he has all kinds of theories
and he's one of the smartest people in the world
(09:43):
and one of you know, hundreds of scientists who've looked
into this, and we still don't know the answer to
what exactly dark matter is. So that's the kind of
stuff that I was dealing with. In the updated version
of the book.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
You mentioned before that you had retired and then and
took on this wonderful challenge. And I did have a
little lefe because I had read for that you sort
of were in retirement, and I'm thinking, I'm not so
sure that this is quite you know, retirement. What does
retirement look like to you, Bill Well?
Speaker 3 (10:15):
I I had this idea. I mean, I tried for
a few years to be semi retired, and then it
just goes You can't do that. It just doesn't work.
You're either retired or you're not. And I decided, I
announced that in twenty twenty I was going to retire,
flat out retirement, not do anything anymore, no more books,
no more work of any kind, no literary festivals or anything.
(10:36):
And COVID came along and so we all became retired.
It was actually quite easy. And for a few years,
I mean three or four years, I really didn't do
anything in terms of work. I mean, I still have
very active life. I've got a big garden and a
big family, and I have lots of other things I did.
(10:57):
And I love being retired. It was such a joy
to be able to read for pleasure for the first
time in years and years and years, for instance. But
I also missed working and and having, you know, having
kind of a purpose, so having having challenges to deal
with in life. And so I thought, I really must
(11:20):
go back into this book and try and bring it
up to date. I'm glad I did it. But now
I feel as if I'm ready to be retired again.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
And you can be. Isn't it great?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
You can?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
You could.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
It's a job, and it's it's like any job job
is you know, it's work, and it's nice not to
have to work. I mean, this is why we all
enjoy having holidays and time off, and you know, weekends
and things and being retired. I find it very, very agreeable.
But at the same time, I think, as with most
retired people, you missed, you missed the sort of contact
(11:56):
with others. You miss certain aspects of the work. And
I do miss. I really missed doing the research, you know,
interviewing people, going to libraries, doing reading, things like that.
But I don't other parts of being a writer I
don't miss. I don't miss all the emails and the
meetings and having to deal with, you know, being invited
(12:19):
to loads to do loads of things, and having to
you know, the kind of administrative sides of things. I'm
very happy to be free from that.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
So not only is the book being re released and
it's just been released here in New Zealand, but of
course you have the tour as well. Just to keep
you really busy, tell me about the tour. What does
a Bill bryceon live show look like?
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Oh? Well, we're still putting it all together. But part
of the reason I wanted to do it and agreed
to do it is because it's organized by this wonderful
gume from Sydney, Simon Baggs, who's an old friend I've
done tours with him before. And what he does is
he he's very, very thoughtful, but he brings a lot
of kind of I don't know, laser lights and pyrotechnics
(13:04):
and dazzling things. And what it means is that things
that you know, I mean, my specialty is just to
put words on a page, but he brings things to
life by projecting images on the screen. So if I'm
talking about the Big Bang or the birth of the
Universe or something on stage, you know there'll be something
(13:24):
going on on a big screen behind me that will
show you that. And so it makes everything much more
vivid and more like a show. And to me it's
I'm as dazzled as people in the audience are because
because he just puts together these, you know, the kind
of fantastic shows. And at this particular moment, we're still
(13:47):
working on exactly what that will consist of. But what
I can tell you I can absolutely sure it is
that is that you know, you'll be sort of staggered
by how good it is, not not because of me,
not because I make it so good, but because of
the stuff Simon brings to it all, and and it
just makes it a real joy and much more kind
(14:09):
of interactive experience with the audience, So it'll be really
talking partly about my life and times and work, but
also talking about the science and the universe and how
how we came to be the way we are.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Bill, Are you definitely finished with the book now? I mean,
is there a big discovery that would make you revisit
it again?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Well, that's I mean. The problem is, of course, as
soon as you finish a book and he goes, the
world goes on. Yes, things were discovered, and you know,
somebody will will come up with an answer to what
is the you know, what is the cause of dark
energy and dark matter and all of these other things.
(14:50):
Will continually learn more. But in a way, my book
isn't about it isn't about trying to be right up
to the minute. It's not. It's not a guide to
science so much. It's it's more sort of an appreciation
of the universe, living in what science does for us.
So I'm hoping, you know, I've brought a lot of
(15:11):
the facts up to date, but I'm hoping that as
it as time goes on, it will become slightly more dated.
But I'm hoping that it is still the general kind
of thrust of the book will still be okay that
people will still find it valuable. People were still buying
it before I did this updated version and finding it
useful because there's an awful of history in it and
(15:34):
just sort of general generalizing. But you know, the great
thing at the moment is that it's just about its
up to date that could possibly make it.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Bill. Thank you for coming out of retirement to update
the book and for heating to New Zealand. We really appreciate.
Look forward to the INGU in February.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
I can't wait to get it. Honestly cannot wait to
be back there. But thank you very much for having
me on tonight.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
That was Bill Bryson. As he said, he is heading
to Auckland and Wellington in February for his The Beast
of Bill Bryson Live on Stage tour. Tickets are on
sell now. It's through Ticketmaster.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks a B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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