there's one of your talks where you describe a common theme of your books that they're all about something anatomical and vaguely gross when you write these books how long does it take you to get used to the aspects of your topics that are gross today I'm thinking
like somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes I'm no IIIi like to I don't I don't want to adjust too quickly actually because something happens when you dive into a topic and you you start out with this sense of wonder and hesitation and curiosity and it's all very electric and
fresh and then after a couple of years like yeah gastrocolic reflex buoy you know you you start to become like the people that you're speaking you know the researchers who for whom it's day-to-day and I don't want things to be day-to-day so I actually like to slow down that
well I'd like if I could to slow down that process of feeling comfortable so in your book gulp which is about the mechanics of eating you draw a distinction between stimulated and unstimulated saliva so when you hear that does it strike you at all as odd or
it's like oh of course here's my unstimulated saliva coming up well right now yes I've got I need more unstimulated saliva right now because otherwise you're getting get those horrible mouth sounds that radio people hate but that was that was that's the kind of thing I get very excited about
the fact that there are two different kinds not only are there two different kinds of saliva but there's two different ways of collecting it so that that's kind of that's kind of exciting for me and we don't need to go in we don't have to go into that but I just
there and the fact that there is this there's the like a little you chew stimulate saliva it's just chewing it doesn't matter what you chew your mouth is like well whatever it is that you've got in there I'm going to help you get it down and so they be actually chewing
on essentially it's like a tampon and you chew on that and you but your body your mouth confusedly generates saliva to help you swallow that tampon unused onions so anyway yeah so I I'm not sure exactly what you wanted me to say about stimulate versa
stimulate saliva but I'm off and running obviously arguably it was Freud's view that disgust is there to act as a kind of barrier to satisfying unconscious desire do you agree ah wow I never really brought Freud into that chapter that's interesting I always
discussed the things that are disgusting are often stinky smelly dangerous bacteria Laden things so it's sort of it makes evolutionary sense that we would want to push it away so what would tell me again Freud what it Freud's one way of reading Freud is that we have these
unconscious desires to do things and we want them very badly but we're not quite aware that we want them and we repress ourselves by erecting obstacles to doing those things and one of the ways we do that is by having evolved this sense of
disgust how what disgusts us is in some way connected to what we deeply desire which were somewhat unaware of right right so you're talking about taboos like incest and things like that right but not so much not so much related and unstimulated saliva and perhaps uh-huh
yeah other right gross yeah right yak to that body's facts about right right dead bodies okay yeah yeah that's that's sure hard that's an interesting theory discussed it but bodily fluids are what I found interesting about the things that disgust us these whether it's
saliva or or urine or whatever it is it's to me interesting that we have that we draw this line what since when it's inside of us we don't have a problem with it but as soon as it leaves the body even if it's our own saliva it becomes disgusting and you can you
can kind of map the boundaries of the self like if there's saliva on your tongue and you stick your tongue outside the body is it gross still I mean that's like you can map the boundaries and and you can extend this is not my Paul rosin writes a lot about disgust and I believe
it was he talked about that but you extend those boundaries to include your loved ones you're not disgusted by your child's diapers you're not disgusted by your lovers saliva so you've extended that the boundary of the self to include these people very close to you so I
found I found bodily fluids interesting in that way it is striking that two of your main topics food and sex are areas that are some of our deepest strongest desires and they're areas where disgust is quite prevalent yes and that's getting I think at Troy point as a
writer how would you think about writer and researcher interviewer how would you describe what is your special talent my special talent by Mary Roach I think that I don't have any I don't have any it's isn't a talent it may be a character flaw I don't have a lot of
hesitation or kind of self censoring when it comes to to asking questions I'm just balls out with my curiosity so and it but it's never and it's never uncomfortable I like this is something we because people sometimes say well is like the questions that you ask people
is it an awkward interview when you say you know when you talk to you went to avan Allstate prison for the rectum chapter of gulp and you were talking to this convicted murderer about using his rectum to smuggle cellphones and other things it was that not a very awkward
conversation to have and a little bit but then you have to keep in mind this is somebody for whom hooping as it's called does everybody does it it's just something that you do and there's no God it's it's it's everyday to him like it for a sex research or talking about
orgasm is like talking about tire rotation for a car mechanic it's not it's not like well you just made me uncomfortable asking me about orgasm it's so it isn't really a talent secretly it's nothing but it's just I don't know if that's my special well I
don't know I guess that that's what I'm going to go with to do a whirlwind tour of some of your books you have a book on corpses if you could chat with the dead what would you ask them oh if I could chat with the dead are we assuming that the the personality or the body well
both the corpse the courts Oh is this a is this a research corpse or just a research course it's a research corpse okay just defining our parameters here you could talk with a with a research corpse okay I know I know what I would ask I would say because this is
my you know as somebody who wrote this book stiff about medical cadaveric research it kind of behooves me to donate myself and yet I still trip over that image instead of having the image of my husband tears coming down scattering ashes over the Pacific which
is quite lovely and romantic I have first-year medical students eating a sandwich and like looking at her skin here it's really you know that so what I'd say to the cadaver is is this all is this embarrassing for you are you okay with this are they treating
you respectfully do you wish you had some clothes on one of my friends Robin Hanson is always trying to talk me into having my head frozen either before I die when I'm dying after I die depends on your view of death and he says the amount of money
I would have to spend on this it might be a small chance of being revived in the distant future but I have no better way to spend the money does this argument convince you or does it disgust you to be just ahead just ahead with the chance resurrection yeah good luck with that
no because not only first of all they've got to solve the whole you know freezing thawing and and that's going to destroy the cells I think right now what can they do like one layer of cells freeze and thaw right you go your basic sperm and egg you get freeze thaw but a whole
head I just don't see that coming anytime soon and then to Rhea tell though reattaching and then like the spark how they gonna like it's not like you pull the cord on the lawnmower thing up again I'm not I'm not sure I think it's and you know what else gets
interesting about cryogenics as I would a cryonics never enough scribe genetics or cryonics a lot of interesting legal issues because if you you put those people who've done that believe they're coming back they don't they feel like they're in suspension then they're not
dead and that one day they will be back and they're going to need their cash to live so they're their heirs there are states like this is my money but the but legally they're they're saying they're not dead so the power of compound interest right why do only 18 percent of
people who are in the position to have a life after death experience actually have one what's your view on that the trouble seems to be remembering the near-death experience you think most people are all people have it but not all remember I don't know why there most
people do but I know now I know for sure that most people forget everything that happens in the are now because of the Aniston's the for said is is the is one of the drugs that's used and it's people are coming out of surgery it's very very rare now than anybody said darndest
thing I was floating up above and these don't remember anything because there was there was there was this my favorite study from spook my second book was the University of Virginia psychologist who studies near-death experience had this idea because near-death people have had
a near-death experience often report floating in the operating room looking down onto their body on the operating table so in this specifically an operating room where they put in defibrillators which they then test by flatlining you and then making sure the FIB relator
well that works they put a laptop computer open up on top of one of the banks of banks of lamps with a randomly generated simple image so that if the person traveled up there left the body and looked down not only would they see their body but they would
notice huh that's peculiar there's a laptop computer here with a flower or whatever it is and then when they came out of surgery they routinely interview people did you remember anything about your experience and they gave up because nobody remembered anything
why are bedpans dangerous well funny you should ask bedpans are dangerous that's not okay this is going to bring us to defecation okay okay Jonathan Swift all right so okay if you're using a bedpan you're lying flat and that's that's not a natural and facilitative position for
defecation squatting would be great toilet pretty good lying down not good so not good you're gonna have to push harder and if you're in a sea you if you're a heart patient you are at risk of a defecation induced sudden death how did Elvis die defecation and do sudden
death that's what I pushing too hard don't push too hard people they say no there you can induce an arrhythmia that can be fatal so you know very for this is why they put heart patients in the ico on stool softeners this is why so you don't have to push so hard this is a
first for your show defecation induced sudden death that doesn't come up with that tool go well maybe it'll go on Dave Sachs mentioned it in his session The Economist Adam Smith in the 18th century he actually had a view on some of these issues following Lucretius he thought
that we sympathetically or mentally or emotionally we associated ourselves too much with dead corpses and we felt sorry for them and this was a kind of defect of the sympathetic or empathetic imagination and that we would go through life feeling sorry for all kinds of
situations that actually were fully neutral what do you see as some of the biases we have in terms of how we think about the dead and death well we have a tendency because dead people look very much like live people there's a tendency to project the
emotions that we had prettier than somebody that you know who's died it's a tendency to treat them as though they're still people and to Accord them the same sort of courtesies and respect and this this can be problematic for people who do could have a research
because there's a tendency to say that that in to cut this person open and to you know take their pancreas and do one thing and send their arm over to the automotive safety lab and take their brain over here to put them in pieces like that and to do these sort of
seemingly brutal things is disrespectful I mean it would be disrespectful if the person were alive well it would be criminal it would be actionable but what but they're dead they're not they aren't a person anymore they are and that as a cadaver they have this wonderful
superpower and that they don't feel anything and so they you can you they use them to get answers that you couldn't in any other ways you don't want to do that to a live person so we you know we trip over this the fact that they look like people which is why we'd
like a frequently the the faces covered the hands are covered in even in surgical practice labs that there's a lingering tendency to kind of deep personalize and dehumanize the body I'm a fan of this aura ass tree in practice in Mumbai of having my dead corpse
carried away by birds and yeses if I could have my wish at zero cost I think that's what I would opt for but let me give you a general sense I get when reading a lot of your work and you tell me if there's anything to it I think of a lot of the books in a funny way as a
kind of response to actually Catholic philosophy so this notion of the incorrupt ability of the body it's in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theology there's the notion that relics of saints they don't corrupt or you can revisit and it will still be intact in some
manner and that you're writing a kind of scientific polemic against that some different conception of the body coming out of a response to Catholicism is that at all in what you're doing not consciously but I did not I my mother was a very not strict but very Catholic
my mother was was very Catholic and I was I went to Mass I had to go all the way through high school so I was definitely steeped in that and I yeah it wasn't that I decided to take on the church in any way or incorruptibility or I mean I I have a personal fascination
for those relics though and I wanted I my cousin Dominic who grew up in England and he's he's always telling stories I never know if they're true or not and he tried to he tried to he did tell me that there is that he'd met someone who is a forensic rel ecologist whose job was to
figure out okay this saint how many fingers and toes do we have and like keeping track of you're trying to figure out which ones were fraudulent and which ones were you know what where do they when did they did you know carbon dating them or whatever in and exposing the
frauds and I thought oh my god him that's all build a book around that and of course there's no such thing as a forensic real ecologist although I did find the Oxford University does have a there's someone there does carbon dating and who has a specific specific interest
in religious relics and writing so much about bodies and corpses and death and the idea of disgust and also sex do you feel it's helped you come to terms with your own death at all and if so how does it help you or maybe hinder you from processing that fact I still really
don't want to die not even a little not know and I'm not even I haven't even this is embarrassing to admit but I haven't even signed I went so far as to get the forms for donating my body for research either to my two choice would be UCSF and Stanford which are the two
schools near where I live that to take cadavers and I have the forms and I never made the decision and I'm kind of like a high school senior like who's got the better view from the anatomy lab I don't I didn't pull the trigger I don't know so obviously I haven't I
haven't come I talk the talk you know I do I believe it's really important I think and practically speaking I know that I you know and I'm dead I'm not gonna be I'm not gonna feel any pain I won't feel any embarrassment I'm gone so why don't I do it obviously I haven't I
haven't completely I didn't clean anything at all from all but I some I sometimes get a nice note from a reader who who's lost someone recently who found that book stiff helpful in some way I guess maybe demystifying things or making death being dead kind of just the
next phase of life I don't know it didn't help me in that way but it seems to sometimes help other people does that does that count your book on soldiers grunt also I believe your latest book why are zips well a zipper specifically would be a
problem for a sniper who's spending a lot of time lying down on his I'm gonna say his though there may be his or her let's just say his or her belly okay so buttons or a zipper would be uncomfortable and this is the kind of thing Natick labs where they design clothing
and accessories for soldiers the kind of thing they think about there that there while I was there the fashion studio which is manned by staffed by fashion people with fashion degrees they had designed a quite sort of streamlined sniper top with a side closure for that
reason that that would and a zipper also if you if you have a zipper here and you're lying in the dirt the dirt gets into the teeth of the zipper and then it doesn't work very well and you're a sitting target for flies also right is there anything you can do about that
do the flies just fees if you have a zipper well if you're a sniper fierceknight without a zipper super last night oh yeah is it really a naked sniper even more so but fly flies yes flies are there's a term there is used in agriculture called fly worried and
that is when flies are particularly dense in a desert climate or dry climate whether or not a lot of food and water flies are very aggressive any moisture at all including the eyes so they're going for a cow they're around the eyes so much so that the the fly is so
obsessed with and focused on getting rid of flies that it just doesn't eat and they can die that way they can lose it anyway fly worry is a it's a concern it's a thing anyway but flies weak I have a lot to say about I don't know how much you want to go into flies in the
military I have more to say than the average person who flies flies are both good and bad young flies maggots are can be helpful but but helpful with wounds very helpful with wounds a maggot does a natural form of debridement or debridement I've been corrected in both
directions we eating it could because for maggots as we know they like dead they like dead bodies they like dead tissue they don't want their menu preference is dead tissue so a wound that is infected and this was something was supposed to figured out in World War
one that these soldiers would come in with these kind of horrific wounds they'd been lying in the field they've come in they'd have maggots in the wound and this one surgeon William Baer noticed that when you remove the maggots there was this healthy pink new tissue
growing in and there wasn't infection and it led him he saw it over and over and and realized that maggots were therapeutic and they are used to this day there's a Medicare reimbursement code for Magnus yeah you talked to a lot of soldiers and
doctors to do your book and other experts let's say I'm innocent and naive and I haven't read your books but I've watched plenty of TV and movies about soldiers what's the most likely what conception am I most likely to have that your book would disabuse me of well one
one specific thing that you hear a lot about soldiers that particularly in the most recent conflicts in the Middle East with IEDs there's there's something I heard this a few times like I II D goes off a soldier the first thing that a soldier asks or says when you know when
the bomb goes off and he the medics come over and the first thing he's going to say is is my junk ok because I did a chapter that had to do with injuries to the to the genitals which as the explosions have gotten bigger and the medical care has gotten better you're
seeing more and more more men are surviving to have that kind of injury anyway I interviewed I interviewed somebody who just had surgery to repair his urethra anyway I said tell me the story of how that happened and I was waiting for the point where he said and
I looked around on the medic came over and I said is my junk ok but the the first thing was just so not the first thing he said he he was the head of unit and so when he after the bomb had gone off and he you know saw that and he put on his tourniquet and they all carry
their own too thick to tourniquets fortunately he the first thing he said was who's hit who's hit who you know is everyone ok and he was actually trying to stand up they had to hold him down anyway his junk was not the first thing on his mind
anyway that's yeah and that's the misconception that's the misconception that comes to mind because it's the thing I reported on your book gulp which is about food and eating do you ever think what's the correct way to eat french fries so you could eat them one
at a time or you could push a bunch of them three mouths at the same time there's a lot of different strategies for eating french fries which do you use and do you think about it the French fry to me is a vehicle for mayonnaise so I'm using it just essentially to spoon up small glops
of mayonnaise I'm a 1 I'm a 1 fry one fry at a time gal so a little bit dependent mean if they're those skinny ones there's sometimes the skinny ones those you kind of you need to shove in at least four or five the little skinny ones would we enjoy food more if we
forced ourselves to eat a little more slowly yes I think yes you would enjoy food more yeah mindful eating as they say I think a lot of times you don't even notice it you just I mean I'm speaking personally if I'm I often eat without really thinking but if you think about it and
you chew and also here's it here's a tip this is something I hadn't realized you have two sets of nostrils one in the back up in the back of your mouth and on the exhale you are smelling you know your you're smelling on the inhale you're also smelling on the exhale
you're wafting those vapors those volatile ZUP into the nose so while you're chewing if you exhale or it with wine in your mouth I mean you get this whole disease you're experiencing so much more of the flavor I mean most of what your experience of food is is
flavor which is olfactory so if you slow down and also let it heat up that also releases vapors if you hold it in your mouth and you exhale a little bit you're it's just a completely different experience don't exhale too much because then you have like was it nasal
regurgitation where it comes out the nose so don't do that but holding it in the mouth heating it up and exhaling a bit it's a very this is just so much more going on in there and I that is something from gulp that kind of changed how I eat I do when I think to do it
slow down hold it there I don't like to think - but people do this with chocolate yes they do it just they don't do it very much with french fries so it seems really people love doing it but with french fries it's almost a kind of market failure true but
but but chocolate has I don't know the number of it's the number of different amazing volatile you know little vapors gas is coming up and being really it's a very complicated coffee wine beer chocolate that the reason people do it with those and not french fries not to
belittle the french fries but it's a not quite as complex perhaps you may know that very recently in Oregon they legalized the harvesting of roadkill for food it's the third state in the Union and you're allowed to do this but only if you have a government permit now
would you describe this as an instance of too much government regulation needing the permit or too little government regulation that is they shouldn't allow it at all oh it should definitely allow it but I think that you should I think there might it might be
good to have I'm assuming that the permit you have to take a little test perhaps I don't know I think there should be some basic things that you should you should be able to have read your books yes I've read my books detect fresh roadkill from quite old you know
the kind that you would have to scrape up that's probably not good for dinner I don't know I suppose cooked well enough it would be safe but there probably be some certain guidelines that you might want to share with the new the novice roadkill eater I was in southwest
China lately and they served me bee larvae and I had some and it seemed fine but some people would be disgusted by this what exactly is it about the larvae that's disgusting is that the thought that their larvae that it's a bee and they live or where they did they were
dead okay I've had live octopus and that was disgusting I wouldn't do that again guilt inducing yes yeah so dead bee larvae dead cooked and cooked should it just be a normal thing and we're all weird because we don't eat belonging I think perhaps we need to blame the
maggot because I blame the maggot because the maggot is associated we have terrible associations with men we associate maggots with dead decomposition danger horrible rotting nightmare horror movies we're so silly to confuse larvae and maggots they are the state well maggots are larvae but
bees I mean bee larvae and fly larvae I think the I think just only the the connoisseur of larvae could make that comfortably make that distinction and obviously you are one of them there's a segment in each one of these conversations in the middle it's called
overrated versus underrated and I'll toss something out and you tell me if it's overrated or underrated okay and of course you're free to pass if you could taking a trip to Mars oh gosh overrated and underrated tell us why okay overrated because just a lot of drive
time just a lot okay you know it's speeded up yes and then underrated because I think people go my Blake my ate when I began to work on the book I send my agent this photograph like it's just Mars he goes looks like the outskirts of Las Vegas like like some people think he's like
looks like a cat litter box I don't know it doesn't but it's just it's it's another planet and the Moon or Mars either one just just just the fact that you're on another planet that should be just it can't be rated highly enough but the getting there you've been four times
to Antarctica overrated or underrated underrated why just it's it's a place of light and sky and ice and snow and all of these things interplay in a way that three or four times a day the same place looks magically different and just the light
again this guy play somebody might go why would you want to go there it's just a bunch of snow but just the amazing stunning beautiful just ice there's uses 17 different kinds there's brash ice and I can't remember the other 16 but just more varied and spectacular than you
would think the word baron gets used a lot that should be retired from descriptions of Antarctica the genre of horror movies oh do they explore the notions of disgust and bodies and severability in interesting ways you know I don't go to or I don't go to war
movies I know are you under aiding them probably under rating and probably under rating them horror movies yeah I'm for underrated I'm probably under rating them what is it that you personally find especially scary other than maybe horror movies what do I find
scary Oh getting old which is a kind of horror movie unto itself traveling to Mozambique overrated or underrated underrated why well when I went I haven't been lately but when I went well there was it was right after the peace treaty with Oren amo there was the note
no tourism so it was it was a fascinating place because there wasn't that high come by my wares people looked at me there was an honesty and a realness to two people's interactions with you and I just I had what I was there doing research I was so I have
kind of a funny take on it I was there to interview the president about Transcendental Meditation and he taught me how to alternate nostril breathe [Laughter] on the rug in the anyway it was it was I had a Mele interesting so now you were born in New Hampshire and last week the
Census Bureau are released and I was quite surprised to see that over the 50 states in the United States New Hampshire now apparently has the highest measured per capita income I don't mean this as a rude question but how did you all possibly manage this New
Hampshire New Hampshire it used to be Connecticut I don't believe that I didn't either Wow now what industry is there's no in New Hampshire Wow well I know for a long time there was no income tax there was no state income tax so perhaps people have been compound savings over the
years and New Hampshire overrated or underrated it's just rated just about right just about right your book on sex William Miller he wrote a book on disgust that's very interesting and he said the following and I quote desire requires that we suppress entirely thoughts of beginnings
and endings agree or disagree desire requires suspending thoughts of beginnings and I think he meant birth and death by that yeah yeah yes yes I think that I think we all do a really good job of putting the the icky things out of our heads because everything that
comes in between is kind of miraculous yeah I think I think there's a lot to be yeah you know you you'll getting pregnant and giving you know bringing life into the world as this you know emotionally exciting and amazing an uplifting thing and you try not to think
about the you know the afterbirth and the labor and all that yeah well sure so Freud of course had the view that a lot of our repression and suppression is socially valuable probably necessary there's another set of views like Medusa where it's simply restrictive and it
makes us feel alienated or makes us unhappy erich fromm which of those two approaches are you closer to I mean how useful is repression and you're in the Mary Roach worldview I I you know taboos you know we're talking about taboos the things that we the
things that we tend to shy away from and I think as a I think there's a reason that cultures do that but I think you can do it I think it can take it to an extreme I think it is unhealthy I mean if you think of the way that we as a culture used to deal with the death of a
family there was a process of you know laying the the body out in the parlor I think it was and and dressing and cleaning the body and having people in and there was a level of comfort with the body that I think made people a little more comfortable with death and
at a certain point the the mortuary business kind of took that away and put it behind a curtain and I think that we all became more uncomfortable in general with death in a way that wasn't helpful or healthy I think it's the pendulum has swung back so I think some calm you know
some medium you've reported having sex with your husband in an ultrasound for research purposes did this push you closer to the Freudian view it pushed me toward not saying yes so readily to things because while it was wonderful for the book one of those things that as
it's happening it's tremendously awkward but but I knew that it would be really fun to write up as a writer it was going to be it was a very were really fun but yeah I don't want I don't want society to reach a point where we're all casually having sex in front of someone
like doctor dang as lovely as he was as a person to be there in the room I I think that I think we're all better off with some sense of quiet reluctance what's the main technological barrier hindering the further spread of sex robots and what will the world be like
when that barrier goes away what's the barrier to the further spread maybe they're not that good right I think that they're I think that maybe they're not as fun as they think people think they're going to be but for what reason is it actually that it's simply not
enough I think that yes I think that yes I think it were Moore's law again and in five years it would be 1/5 of the market no I know I think I know I think because it's not it's not an another person and there isn't any emotional connection
there's not any exchange of intensity energy all the things that maybe that's pretty popular right I'm not sure what how much the emotional connection is with tinder but but tinder is just the first you know tinder is the same as it for my generation walking into the party
and going he's cute he's cute all right I'm gonna those are the three I'm gonna go talk to that's all tinder is a certain point you have to actually touch each other and make a connection and have a conversation and write that so I tender isn't replacing anything but that
initial write and after you wrote your book on sex did you conclude that people really know what they want or the contrary I think that people may know what they want but they are sometimes reluctant to go for it because there's a tendency to do things that they think
are expected of them particularly with the pornography and it being quite ubiquitous I think there's a sense of performance whereas before you you know if you lose yourself in the moment and you are just gone in that wonderful place you go when sex is great you're not
thinking about what part of my body am i showing or what position or what you know or what's expected of me or what was done in that film one of your famous early articles from the 90s I don't even remember what the question no idea was about earthquake proof bamboo structures
oh yes a high point in the do poorer countries need more of these and if so why aren't they doing it yes bamboo bamboo ISM it's the marvelous structure it's kind of like a very very lightweight reinforced - concrete so it's in an earthquake you want something
a kind of light that can ride the waves and all the band the other thing with bamboo is that it's it grows quickly it's sustainable it's renewable so it's it's great for building houses in earthquake prone areas and I don't know how much progress has been made since I
wrote that piece I don't know how wide spread out of bamboo I suspect not as many as optimally would be sure but as you say in the article bamboo can burn very easily so do you think people are properly rang weighing the risk of fire versus the risk of earthquake or there's
some kind of institutional failure I don't know I don't know what is getting in the way of the vast spread of bamboo housing construction in earthquake prone areas I wish that I had that answer your book on astronauts I forgot about the
fire thing you just you've got your by the fourth person on this planet that read that story and I want to tell you that piece I won the what is it the American Association of engineering societies has a journalism prize and that piece won and I went and I
collected the award and I at dinner I said to the president so just how many people in the general interest magazine category did you have this year and he said just the one you're reading that shucks your book on space travel how would you describe thinking like an astronaut Oh
thinking like an astronaut here's my example of thinking like an astronaut or just being like an astronaut this is what you need to do this is how you need to be and think and respond this was commander peggy whitson I was watching NASA TV I stood when I worked
on this book I'd watched NASA TV which I don't know what it is now but for a while it's just raw feed of you know of the earth going by or Mission Control or the ISS and anyway I was in the ISS and and and commander wits and IQ could hear the communications and someone said yeah
those photographs you took earlier apparently she took some photographs of I don't know what it was but a whole series of photographs she because they said you know we wouldn't we can't find those and if I were commander whitson I would've gone like well look again lamb
chop because I don't have time to take those pictures over again and you must I sent them and here's the email where I said she just went that's not a problem we'll redo them just that's how to think I don't think but that's to me the essence of an astronaut in today's
astronaut corps not necessarily back in the glory days of I'm the first person to the moon then there was some other elements but the modern astronaut long missions long days getting along with other people that kind of amazing placid accepting patient about me that person
that that so you would say not thrill-seekers what do you think there's some subtler level at which that's how they seek their thrills I really placidity the thrill the agony of defeats the thrill of passivity I don't think that now I don't know that
thrill-seeking has is so much a component anymore I mean that the the original astronauts were test pilots and they were the ultimate thrill seekers these folks now they're top of their class in the engineering department or the you know or they you know top of
their class at West Point what they're they're they're high achievers and they're motivated and determined and driven not necessarily Wow not like not that kind of person is it disgusting to eat in space oh that depends on what era we're talking about it was really
disgusting to eat in space back well back in the Gemini Apollo mercury do you weren't up there long enough to really need to eat anything but Gemini Apollo the food tended to be highly highly processed because the the food was solving the problem of there's no toilet
there's only a bag and no one wanted to use the bag the fecal bag nobody for reasons we don't you can imagine let your imaginations run wild zero-gravity so the food was the food was low residue meaning low fiber just nothing nothing nothing left you just absorb it it's
highly processed very dry and it tended to be little tiny little tiny cute like toast cubes and and little that because the crumbs were a problem you didn't want crumbs floating around getting into the equipment so they were little pop pop it in your mouth bacon cubes which
were awful and they were they were designed some of the stuff was designed by the veterinary Corps it's kind of like and and similar concerns because pet food you may or may not know that one of the concerns with designing pet food is again residue that you don't you
the owner the pet owner wants something that's easy to pick up so that's that is part of the design of the food is what kind of poop will it create in the dog but now astronaut food is french fries in mayonnaise no now astronaut food has gotten a lot it's a lot
better it tends to be bland because anything sort of spicy and exciting you get tired of so there there's lots of condiment bottles up on the ISS like hot sauce and Sri Racha and pesto tubes that kind of thing but but it's it's it is better the one that was most popular was
shrimp cocktail that seemed to be shrimp cocktail in space was almost exactly the same as it was on earth there was one astronaut story Musgrave with I believe is his name and he went you got a menu when you're going up into space and you check off what you want breakfast lunch
and dinner he just went shrimp cocktail shrimp cocktail cocktail but coca-cola is different in space right yeah coca-cola anything carbonated you know a lot of money went into trying to get carbonated beverages in space the problem is in the stomach because the
bubbles don't rise to the top I mean in a stomach on earth the bubbles rise to the top they're lighter the end they end up at the top and that's where the exit valve is where you end you burp them out so if you swallow air it doesn't it
comes out it comes back up and in zero gravity the bubbles just they didn't go then rise to the top so there wasn't it you couldn't you couldn't belch so you was very uncomfortable they the carbonated beverages made the astronauts feel bloated and uncomfortable they couldn't
burp so it was it just an expensive fiasco Chris Hadfield in his book on space he says this I'll quote a lot of what happens to the human body in space is really similar to what happens during the aging process agree oh well well one of the one of the things that or if
there's a there's a collection of things that happen in zero-gravity that actually has been referred to as the zero-gravity beauty treatment and that is because more fluid in the upper half of the body because you don't have gravity you know bringing it down to the
lower half so your wrinkles sort of plump up and your hair is fuller your breasts are perkier you know more buoyant mm-hmm and your organs migrate up a little bit so your waist is tinier so yeah I don't know the aging yeah I'm not I don't know what what specifically he's referring to
that well your butt well okay you're I don't know your body your body organs less effective yeah because they're designed to operate with normal levels of gravity now early in your career you spent quite a few years writing for Reader's Digest what did you do for them
three and how was that a formative experience for what you did later in your books I wrote I wrote a I wrote a humor called my my plan and I didn't name it but that was the name of it and it was I was a short just fun column about just random day-to-day things it
wasn't reported so it was the the only the only writing that I've done for the most part that didn't involve being a parasite on somebody else's world it was well I was with my husband and I wrote a lot about Edie's very entertaining so m'as just purely fun it was just fun
and it was I wrote that right around the time right up through the release of my first book which was the cadaver book so there was a period of time where the two overlapped Reader's Digest and cadavers and that was confusing for some people [Laughter]
now you have six main books out and they've all been very successful forgetting about you know what might be your central talent intellectually but just in terms of your work habits or schedule or how you organize what it is you do you know I would call it the Mary
Roach production function how would you describe to us the Mary Roach production function what is it you do that you think other people maybe could learn from I am essentially a massive filtration system so when I begin a project I don't know where I'm going I
don't know what will be into the book I know that my job is you just cherry-pick the most interesting surprising funny bizarre material within this quite broad topic that I've selected and so there may be mornings like when I for a bunk I recall going to the basement of UCSF Medical
School library where they had the Journal of sex research which started sometime in the late 50s I believe in just goods going through every table of contests and going to contents and going boring boring boring Oh masturbation is a potential treatment
for intractable hiccups and then we're running off to the Xerox machine or these days taking a picture but that so just you know 99% I suppose of what I come across just I'm jettisoning I'm not I'm isn't making the cut and and that whole process helps me just figure out
what it is that this book is about I don't know for the first few months really even six months I don't really know what the what this book should contain what fits and what doesn't fit and then and that's not very good advice to give anybody just just to feel
comfortable with with randomness and chaos because I think that is the healthy first stages of a book well for me anyway so if you had to name two or three other writers or other books that were influences and what you've ended up doing what would those be the Bill Bill
Bryson's writing not a specific book of his although in a sunburnt country is a wonderful mix of just everything that you would want to know about Australia and I was this book came out as I was on my way to Australia for the first time I found it in the bookstore there's just
that's just a perfect moment as a reader here's my favorite writer and he's written a book about this place that I'm going but anyway the just the the the the way that Bill Bryson is able to mix information sometimes complex not always but information and
a tone that's that's engaging and funny m'as including myself you can get lazy and when you're going into explanation mode you drop your charming funny witty self and you just you just gotta explain it in a way that's clear but the tone needs to flow it needs to be even it
needs to be that what's that osmosis thing equilibrium finding the balance it shouldn't it shouldn't lurch no lurching no lurching people what did you learn working as PR director for the San Francisco Zoo I learned that I'm not well-suited for a job in public
relations and why that I would I would answer the phones when the press would call and sometimes the press would call with a question like this this happened someone called and said I heard a rumor that the cheetah was sucked dry by fleas and the proper response for a public
relations professional is to say no that's to deny if it's not true or to do damage control somehow spin it in a way I don't know how you spin the cheetah was sucked dry by fleas but I didn't my response was wow how many fleas how much blood in a flea how many how
much blood in a cheetah how many bites is this even possible wow you know and I got in this conference I was having a great time talking to the reporter about like the you know then my boss was like oh storified to learn that this is what
I was doing and with that your first job my first job was a copy editor at a legal publishing company mm-hmm and our lawyers good writers it's not really writing it's it's a a and excrete ringing for excretion and bringing forth of multi syllabic words that are in a
very important order that I'm getting wrong all the time yeah that didn't last long and if there's someone out there and they want to be you know some version of the next generations Mary Roach of course not not exactly what you do but following on it and they
were to come to you and ask you for advice what would you tell them don't try to be me don't try to don't try to be anyone because the reason I'm successful is that I didn't I didn't show this weird kind of funny book about dead people which sounds like a bad bad idea as a
book really I'm gonna write a funny kind of funny book about things that are done with dead bodies I mean any any sensible person would have said that sounds ill-advised but so not only did I not ask anyone going into it I didn't show it to anyone until I turned it into my
editor and I shown it to people I think they would have sadena this whole humor dead person's I don't know I'm uncomfortable with it I think it's inappropriate I would have gone you're right and I would have stripped a lot of it out I would have backed off I would
have made it more or center of the road I think and I think that's um I think it's a mistake you want a book that people are going to talk about I think the reason that that book succeeded I mean I might publisher did a lovely job with the release but it wasn't a big you
know it was my first book I think just it was kind of a surprising book that people talked about I think word of mouth is so important with with books with with book sales and and finding finding something they is both interesting to you and that will be
interesting and surprising to readers so last question before I turn it over to the audience to write that book and the others what is it you did or what was done to you to get the sensibleness out of your system I don't know how else to put it but I don't you have a very
sensible non sensibility right which works right and that scares so how did you get that way I lucked out with the I lucked out in that the editor that I was gay I assumed when I wrote I said I'm just gonna I'm just gonna write this I'm gonna have as much I'm just gonna have
fun and follow my curiosity and my sense of humor and I'm not gonna worry I'm not going to second-guess because I have an editor and her job is to go in and strip out things are over-the-top too disgusting immature stupid not funny and she didn't do a lot
of stripping out and that made us both very nervous but we put that book out there having no idea what would happen so I I was very lucky in that she was kind of courageous and just said let's let's throw it out there to the wolves and see what happens Mary Roach thank you very much thank you
[Applause] we have two mics for questions I will call upon you in alternating fashion please these are questions for Mary Roach they are not statements from you if you go on and on and on I will interrupt you and say question question question our first question on this side
please hello ah thanks for the great talk so I recently read gulp and I could barely barely get through the saliva chapter oh my god but I really you know struggle through it but made it it was great is there something that actually disgusts you
where you just can't like I can barely say the word saliva like is there anything yeah actually it's disgusting stomach I'm with you actually of all the things in that quite I mean from here to here there's a lot of disgusting terrain but saliva was
absolutely the toughest one and even as you remember from the book the woman that saliva researcher herself she we know we collected this stimulate saliva which is just water really it's just it's clean and pure and she wouldn't like this woman who boughs down to
saliva she wouldn't even drink her own saliva so you're not alone so yeah unstimulated saliva is pretty tough for me but but what's even tougher weirdly is the thing in in the plant world that resembles unstimulated saliva and that is if you don't cook okra properly that
Musil ah Janice strand that I call okra snot i I just put down my spoon I'm done that's that's pretty tough also I'm friends with the Alameda County Medical Examiner and I've I've been to a couple of autopsies where I had to leave the room gagging so it can be done
mary-rose you can make her gag thank you next question hi there I'm a fifth grade science teacher and what I really love about your books is that you make like the most detailed science topics really interesting and inspiring and it makes you want to learn more and I share a lot
of stories about things I've read in your books with my kids have you ever thought about going into like young adults or children's writing I have yeah you know but it was interesting thank you very much for saying that there's a magazine called Muse which this at the
Smithsonian I don't know if I think news is still around it's a science magazine for middle schoolers and that magazine ran an excerpt from stiff and I remember saying to them do you need me to make the word smaller and the writing more simple and she said no we're good I
think I may be already writing for each group and internally am that age group but I no have thought about it my publisher is WW Norton and they don't have a they don't have that segment of the market so I'd have to go to a different publisher and that was not
welcomed but anyway I I do think about it and I think it would be fun I would I think I would enjoy it because as I said I'm I kind of relate to that the question from the iPad when interviewing people about sensitive or private topics what are strategies you use to get them
to open up well frequently I'm interviewing someone for whom that's their their day-to-day and it's fair and and the problem is getting them to shut down because they're so excited that someone wants to hear about their work and their spouse
doesn't want to hear about it and nobody disgusting well I know cuz they're just tired of it it's like yeah or because it's disgusting but no just to be direct I mean I think if you're if you convey a sense of awkwardness and shame and and tension then that will be reflected back
I think you just have to say like if you're in the operating room and then the surgeon is using the laser incision thing and it smells like cooked meat and you just have to say do you kind of find does that smell do you like that smell like just say it I don't know just say I
think just yeah see it next question you sort of touched on this towards the end of the conversation but I was just wondering if there was anything that your editor had cut that you really wish had made it into one of your books in print ha ha that's a great question my
editor when my editor cuts something I'm always almost always grateful because it tends to be I don't even know if I should even it's rare that she will cut something and and initially my initial response will be you know it's my favorite part but you know fast forward
when the book comes out I'm you know I'm quite relieved that she took it out I don't think we have probably time for me to tell the story of when I was working bonk there's a researcher in Egypt dr. Shafiq who one of the things he looks at is reflexes during sexual
intercourse and he said to me I can demonstrate some of these for you if you come to the lab and I thought I don't know what that's gonna look like the sign me up I went to Cairo and I'm like oh this is gonna be a really epic afternoon and I get there and he said
well the volunteer has left okay he said but I've arranged to show you some other reflexes so he had this nurse there this male nurse and and the reflex that he had arranged to show me was called the anal wink which is essentially if you scratch next to the anus it kind of
winks it goes like that and so this poor guy had a like drop his scrub he's standing on the bed so it's kind of I level and and I describe all this in a scene and then I further went on to talk about how I've had this flashback to my as a child you know on Easter those
little glass eggs that you look through the hole like a little opening and there's a little scene of bunnies and she looks inside and I am my editor just put a line whole thing and wrote know and initially hey I really like that scene but anyway I I'm very grateful to
her but she crossed that out there'll be a director's cut sunday is actually the director's cut next question yeah several years ago I remember trying to spit shine a car window during a snowstorm and the slava changed color and I was just wondering I don't I'm not
trying to stump you're just wondering why that might be when it froze it changed color that's what had you been eating I'm guessing maybe something that you were eating the salt what color did it become black this is alive it turned black
yes ah I don't know why the saliva would turn hmm you don't have any kind of mouth fungus or any because there is something called it's like black tongue or something that you I don't think that you have that though I don't know I've now I really need to that's you stumped
the jump I don't know next question how do you choose your topics you spoke about the chaos of gathering your information and not knowing where you're going but yeah you have to gather it on the topic yes that is always a difficult phase for me sometimes I could sometimes
it's I read a sentence somewhere that sparked an idea bonk came from reading a sentence that described the it said the copis Copic films of Masters and Johnson and I went call this Copic films does that mean cervix thought it sounds like someone was filming a woman from the
inside during sex is that what was happening in the yes indeed there was a penis camera a contraption that they had built there still have 50s Wow that was his mullah where I thought sex research that's just incredibly brave and awkward and interesting and that'll
be my next book so that's that was I wish it were always that much of a sudden flash sometimes it's packing for Mars was I've got I've been to Johnson Space Center for a discover story and that was really interesting and I know someone works at the bedrest facility in
Galveston where they simulate zero gravity and that's interesting and in the back of my mind is this years and years and years ago I interviewed an astronaut about bone loss but we went off on a topic that had to do with the toilet training that is given to
astronauts and this video camera that you have to talk with basically and it's a closed-circuit TV and you're watching your butt and yeah it was and I remember thinking I can't fit this into the vogue story on osteoporosis but one day I will write about the video toilet and I so
the combination of the video toilet the trip to Johnson Space Center for discover and the bedrest facility I thought you know I'll build a book around that like there's there's got to be another 10 chat chapters that are interesting that have to do with the
yeah you know the astronaut existence you know because it seemed to me that the things that happened to astronauts in training were sometimes more interesting than what happened in orbit which could be quite mundane so anyway it's a it's a hodgepodge and I wish it
came more frequently and promptly this sense of what I'm what makes a good topic I pad question if you had the opportunity opportunity to eat penguin would you to eat a penguin penguin I don't think you have to eat the whole penguin Oh Oh is it endangered no I
don't want to eat an endangered but just I would I I'm very busy in penguin okay yes no I like to try new food I would especially an egg penguin egg would be interesting another iPad question is there a visceral difference between viewing the body of someone who died traumatically
versus the body of someone who died of natural causes oh sure someone who died traumatically I think it's it's very upsetting to see first of all the knowledge of what happened and you're imagining what much that must have happened and the violence
of it and the suddenness of it and the and often these people are you know they're they're people in car motorcycle crashes they're quite young so it's a combination of the those three things adds up to it being much more upsetting than to see someone who's lived a long
life died of natural causes for sure what is your favorite food that you were slightly ashamed to admit to Pringles more than slightly ashamed also from the iPad what is the topic you've rejected for a book that you wish you could make work I had wanted to write a book that
had to do with natural disasters and like the human elements of you know preparing for them and also how do you rescue how do you take someone from rubble there's all kinds of very specific medical things that happen when someone is crushed and how do you or
Avalanche how do you find someone in avalanche and and then there's things that happen after the before and after and I spent some time on on this thinking that I might do that the being on the scene is very difficult because you don't know where the next where it's
going to happen and that determines which organization will be sending in teams and you kind of have to set that up ahead of time otherwise you're just in a press pool so I anyway that that was a challenge that I failed to master I've heard the Department of Defense has
a 26-page specification for preparing brownies do you know any more about this well heck there's a 22-page specification for button so I'm surprised the brownies is more like a hundred and twelve page yes there are very very specific specific specifications very they're
wordy you know it sounds like more than it is because they're very specific but yes question over here following up on the natural disaster kind of that's an idea that you didn't end up pursuing do you have kind of a folder of like oh man I really want to write about that
someday but not yet do you have kind of a folder of things and what are some of those things that you may want to write I would kill to have that folder to have that folder especially right now I'm trying things on and rejecting them they're not quite working No yeah
because most of science doesn't work for me science most of science now is is is protein receptors and genomes and you know it's gone it's gone very very tiny and invisible it's not I'm a body's on the slab kind of gal and that's that that's an anachronism there's not a lot
of science that has people kind of doing things that you can describe and and talk to them about as its as it's happening which is what I like to do so and I especially you know as relates to the human body I've I've I've done all the done all the bodily fluids I've done
all I've done the you know and there's certain parts of the body that are that belong to other people the brain that will bill you know Oliver Sacks David Eagleman you know there's the people who are well educated in these parts of the body and they have patients
and cases like these are the people that should write those books not me you know I'm the I'm the rectum gal you know I felt like there's the so yeah I'd love to have that folder I really would I pad question why our bodily functions so stigmatized like flatulence when
everyone does them and this they were afraid to ask in person it's it's funny that why are they stick Mathai z'd yeah i mean it's it's it's funny we have shame and I mean the idea of you know anybody seeing you having sex is of course unless you know you're in dr. Dan's
office yeah you're like unless you're into that that's kind of a like a who likes to be really awkward and weird but having written having had the doctor dang experience and having written gulp with the chewing chapter of gulp chewing
and saliva and bolus formation where you break down this thing in your mouth and then you do intraoral bolus rolling and you form the bolus and you use saliva to stick it together and you I started watching people in restaurants eating and I thought god people should have sex
in restaurants and and chew in behind closed doors it's disgusting so I don't I didn't answer it didn't answer the question that's an iPad question I didn't or it's somebody here next question here well it's not really a question it's just a thought could you please explain current
politics oh gosh yeah no I just know things are in the restaurant yeah right behind yeah I I don't I can't I'm more flummoxed and confused by this situation and I I can I've ever been about anything I don't get it how this happened how come in since what is what
yeah question this might be an easier question what's your answer that one you're obviously a very outgoing person and I could say your work is quite rebellious were you always that way like what's the most rebellious thing you did in high school in high school I was very
in as a kid and all the way through high school I was pretty shy and boring I high school just did my homework got good grades watched a ton of TV then I got to Wesleyan realized I'm not gonna go to graduate school I don't care what my grades aren't I'm
just gonna have fun and then I wanted and then I began traveling and then is I kind of like I had a very it kind of went like this kind of a freeing and then you know just but as a kid knowing as a kid I don't I don't remember myself although there's certain things and I
remember I had a friend named Mary Hewitt who gave me a Barbie doll and I didn't collect I didn't like dolls particularly and what I would do is I would pull the head off and I'd say you have five seconds to put the head back on or she dies and that's kind of
accurate if you could put the head back on that quickly that would you the brain would probably be okay and you'd be in she probably would live so I don't know I have to read a lot into these Maltese very specific moments or when I used to play with my dinosaurs in the cat litter
box so there were some elements the origins are becoming more clear yes yeah yeah and my dad was a real eccentric character he was 65 and I was born and he was the kind of guy he liked my favorite animal was an elephant so he painted a life-size elephant on the
basement floor but he was definitely a bit of a rebel and I guess maybe it comes from him I pad question was there ever an experience where you felt very uncomfortable or afraid during your interviews I was a little apprehensive oh you know what okay I scratched that I
was here's where I was nervous I was very nervous grunt I had a chapter that had to do with diarrhea specifically in Special Operations teams and these are these these are the guys they're eating in little villages in Yemen or Somalia they're out eating off the economy as
they say and the food isn't necessarily refrigerated the water may not be treated they get really bad food poisoning all the time and if you get food poisoning and you've got say a mission to go like into Osama bin Laden's compound and you've got to go
you just go in your paint I mean so so I wanted to talk to I was in I went to Djibouti which is way over in North Africa and specifically to talk to these to someone in the special operations I didn't know they had their own compound which was off-limits to me they only
came at dinner so and just as the PR guy said Huntress steel or women so there's these and they're very imposing they're like the guys with the beards and they're they're they're they don't mix a lot and they keep to themselves and basically my
only chance was to accost one of them in the dining facility this big huge dining facility and so I and the Public Affairs guys like Mary there's your guy over there very imposing guy like shaved head beard eating by himself and I remember crossing the dining facility feeling
like you know like a fifth grader at the dance just going this is I don't want to do this I mean as it turned out I mean it was a very awkward overture to make you know to go up to a stranger and somehow explain why you want to ask him about diarrhea and also like he doesn't
know why I've chosen him and as it turned out he later he thought he thought I was NCIS Naval Criminal Investigation service so he was very you know I I came up when way I approached him yeah he said I'm done I'm leaving he started to get up to leave and I had to
go into this sort of you know song and dance of like well I'm writing a book actually you know I mean it sounds like a really trivial topic but I wanted to talk to you about diarrhea he actually cut me off and he said it's not silly you're welcome to sit down and it was a
really interesting conversation but that was I was really nervous it was kind of dumb but I was nervous question on line have you considered writing and exploring the effects and habits of technology and artificial technology i I thought about robots as a
topic but I feel that my complete and utter ignorance in the world of coding and artificial intelligence I don't think I could get up to speed to the point where I could do that topic justice does your humor come naturally or do you have a method behind it I have
the only method I have is to to self-police I think especially with written humor if you're reading it over 20 time going 20 times going I think it's funny right I think that's funny yeah it's funny if I read it again it'll be funny to get rid of it just it's probably not funny
my editor helps with that too that's the only and being funny in person what's your method don't know what's the most mind-blowing fact you learned in all of your research that's a terrible question because whatever I say it's not my glowing enough we're gonna go whoa
that's the most that means everything else is less mind-blowing I'm gonna cross her off my to-do read list last question you've travelled quite a bit from the iPad how is it you think that other people are doing travel wrong or could improve how they travel well when
I travel I'm often enough and traveling in the context of research which is my favorite way to travel because it's a way in so anytime you can find a way into a country or a culture or a home just you know beyond the sightseeing I think it always makes the trip so much
more interesting and there are various ways to do that you can you can volunteer you can go to places where you know someone I just anywhere where you have a personal connection that takes you beyond the surface let's have a big round of applause from Mary Rhodes