Bill Bryson
American journalist and authorWikipedia
64
MENTIONS
47
EPISODES
45
PODCASTS
Search complete. 64 mentions across 47 episodes found for "Bill Bryson".
Sep 27, 2026
Jonn ElledgeGUEST
You just have an open hall.
Jonn ElledgeGUEST
And Bill Bryson's book, At Home, which is one of the things I kind of reread when prepping to research this book, has a lot of stuff about how basically the history of domestic architecture is gradually carving more and more bits of the hall until the hall is literally just your entranceway.
Jonn ElledgeGUEST
In the same way, every department of the British government started off as part of the Home Office or the Foreign Office and gradually kind of get carved off into their own thing.
Jonn ElledgeGUEST
Domestic architecture has followed the same pattern.
Patrick HutchinsonGUEST
And so we all sort of escaped to the woods to learn together, which was often met with a lot of mistakes and hilarity that kind of comes along with them.
Rudy MaxaHOST
One of the folks who gave you a blurb for your book said, and I quote, imagine if Bill Bryson, and you know the comedy, he's not a comedy, he's a travel writer, but very amusing.
Rudy MaxaHOST
Imagine if Bill Bryson had decided to put down stakes during his walk in the woods and asked Charles Bukowski to help him refurbish a derelict shack deep in the forest of the Cascade Mountains, unquote.
Rudy MaxaHOST
I think that's a great description of your book.
Rudy MaxaHOST
But what I noticed and we were talking just before going on the air that I'm reading 80 percent of the way and all these guys are coming to help build.
Morgan HouselHOST
Let me give you a great example here.
Morgan HouselHOST
This book here by Bill Bryson, it's called The Body.
Morgan HouselHOST
It is phenomenal.
Morgan HouselHOST
I think Bill Bryson is one of the greatest nonfiction writers of our time, and his book, The Body, which came out a couple years ago, is like an anatomy textbook.
Morgan HouselHOST
Like, he starts at the hair and goes down to the toes and he says, "This is how your body works." And it is so well-written.
Morgan HouselHOST
You will learn so much about biology and about organ systems and whatnot.
7 MINS LATER
Morgan HouselHOST
How about that as a solution? All right.
Morgan HouselHOST
That's all I got for you this week.
Tom WhippleHOST
I'm Tom Whipple.
Tom WhippleHOST
This week, why is the Earth revolving too fast? Why does that mean that time is ticking for something called the leap second? And why is Bill Bryson using the word debauchery in the context of Britain's most respected scientific institution? Something that never revolves too fast is the return of the not at all debauched Kit Yates to Inside Science.
Tom WhippleHOST
The mathematician has been searching the journals for the best of the other stories.
Tom WhippleHOST
Kit, time is already ticking for us, so get on with it.
19 MINS LATER
Tom WhippleHOST
One of them will go on to join a list of winners that include Stephen Hawking and Stephen Jay Gould, Andrea Wulf, and Caroline Criado Perez.
Tom WhippleHOST
This week, before our final interview, we spoke to another of those past winners and a former judge.
Tom WhippleHOST
We asked Bill Bryson why he holds the prize in such affection.
Bill BrysonSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Yes, I won it, and then since that time, I've judged it twice.
AKCHOST
Like the neurons that let us recognize a face the same way you did as a child, while allowing other regions tied to memory and learning to keep rebuilding themselves as we grow.
AKCHOST
change and take a new experience stability and where stability matters renewal where renewal matters now one rule for the whole brain but two different strategies running side by side right multitasking for two different jobs fascinating right So for this segment, the two books that I have, New York Times bestseller books that I've used as reference are from Bill Bryson's The Body, A Guide for Occupant, a New York Times bestseller.
AKCHOST
and uh the second one is from dr siddharth mukherjee the emperor of our maladies and and a couple of books from dr siddharth mukherjee the sound of the cell All of them are fascinating, interesting books, good references.
AKCHOST
And I'm really glad for these profound individuals to do the research.
AKCHOST
The car really looks beautiful.
AKCHOST
Even the body.
AKCHOST
A guide for occupant by Bill Bryson.
AKCHOST
Beautiful.
Jesse CodyGUEST
I don't blame anybody for thinking that of me, whether it was family and friends at home before I set off or people that saw me early on in the hike.
Jesse CodyGUEST
know i started doing research on the appalachian trail soon after my 40th birthday party or i found my way through bill bryson's book on the walk in the woods which lit this spark in me and i wanted to know everything i could about not just the appalachian trail but the the hiking culture and the hiking community and uh it lit this fire in me that i i never felt in my life like it was just this joy excitement and an opening i felt an opening i'm like i truly truly believe a long walk is what I'm supposed to do.
Jesse CodyGUEST
And I think when you have a few months to prepare for the AT, even without any of the true experience that one believes you need to hike a trail like that, There's not a what if going into it.
Jesse CodyGUEST
There's not a, okay, well, what happens if this doesn't pan out or you don't feel the walk is necessary or, you know, you're just not cut out for it.
26 MINS LATER
Rebecca FitzsimmonsHOST
As I affectionately call it as I hit my microphone here.
Rebecca FitzsimmonsHOST
and yeah it's a magical place and uh but it's not faint of heart um for those that don't like the seasons which my soul craves i need solid seasons and i love animals i love horses i love cattle i love it all and so it's a very special place okay let's talk about your documentary i believe that you have coming out next year an emmy nominated filmmaker tell us all about it
Jesse CodyGUEST
yeah pretty incredible story you know if we go back to the appalachian trail prior to me doing it and i mentioned earlier that bill bryson's book really was like the first step into me understanding that there was this long trail from georgia to maine when i started doing research literally right like a week after i finished a walk in the woods i started getting on youtube to look at videos and um i found this very young filmmaker amateur uh, very amateur filmmaker, Andy Lobb, uh, in his film called as it happens.
Jesse CodyGUEST
And it was about himself and another hiker on the Pacific Crest trail.
Jeremy WellsHOST
Looking up, looking up.
Mikey HavocGUEST
Look, I learned, I learned this from Bill Bryson's book, but, um, th- the Rocky Mountain cicada, at one stage it was the most, um, there was, there was the most of any animal on the planet.
Mikey HavocGUEST
There was so...
Mikey HavocGUEST
Bill used to do these-
Caleb NewquistHOST
Many of you have probably heard of it and maybe even hiked part of it.
Caleb NewquistHOST
There's a well-known book, A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson.
Caleb NewquistHOST
It's very good.
Caleb NewquistHOST
It was published in 1997.
Paul TherouxGUEST
And if to do it right, it's exhausting.
Paul TherouxGUEST
And The only compliment I ever got from Bill Bryson, who's a travel writer, was Paul Theroux talks to strangers.
Paul TherouxGUEST
He talks to strangers.
Paul TherouxGUEST
Like, it's amazing.
Sydnie WellsGUEST
But any non-native animal, they would poison.
SamPANELIST
Yeah, and they do that because I actually just read this book last week by Bill Bryson, and it's fascinating about how the mistakes that were made in Oceania f- between Australia and New Zealand and some of the other islands as well.
SamPANELIST
Like, when the population first started to increase greatly in, like, the 1900s, the only primary mammal that was available for food was kangaroo.
SamPANELIST
Like, that was readily available.
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