Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's last year's calendar. You don't know if
Speaker 1: you should throw away Ali Ward And this is a
Speaker 1: very special episode of ologies that I know so many
Speaker 1: of you right now are losing your damn minds. Friends,
Speaker 1: I'm right there with you.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Over the last twenty years, this guest has written so
Speaker 1: many New York Times bestsellers. It's a labor to list
Speaker 1: them all, but I will because they are glorious books.
Speaker 1: So you may know these titles. Stiff, The Curious Lives
Speaker 1: of Human Cadavers, Spook, Science Tackles the Afterlife, Bonk, The
Speaker 1: Curious coupling of Science and sex, Packing for Mars, The
Speaker 1: Curious Science of Life in the Void, Gulp Adventures on
Speaker 1: the Elementary Canal, Grunt, The Curious Science of Humans at War,
Speaker 1: and Fuzz When Nature Breaks the Law. This guest is
Speaker 1: the Meryl Streep of science writing.
Speaker 2: I looked it up. Meryl Streep has three oscars.
Speaker 1: This person seven New York Times bestsellers, Absolute Goat did eight,
Speaker 1: Brain and a Notepad. This person has changed the way
Speaker 1: the public interfaces with science now because of that.
Speaker 2: In the first half, I just barraged.
Speaker 1: Them with questions about science communication and how they write
Speaker 1: books and their approach to storytelling in conveying science to
Speaker 1: the public, what it's like behind the scenes. And then
Speaker 1: in the second half, we really dive into your questions
Speaker 1: on human technomorphology, which is the topic in their latest book,
Speaker 1: Replaceable You Adventures and Human Anatomy, which comes out today
Speaker 1: September sixteenth. I had to wait to put this up
Speaker 1: until today.
Speaker 2: Get the book.
Speaker 3: Love it.
Speaker 1: I read it in a day and a half. It's
Speaker 1: like a bingeable book, this one. So this interview side
Speaker 1: note had to be rescheduled a few times just because
Speaker 1: of some tech glitches. And right after we did record,
Speaker 1: I close my laptop and I start crying. But you
Speaker 1: will find out why in a bit. But first, thank
Speaker 1: you to patrons of the show who support us for
Speaker 1: as little as a dollar a month and submit questions
Speaker 1: before we record. Thank you to everyone wearing things from ologies.
Speaker 1: Thank you to all the caring souls who leave reviews
Speaker 1: of the show because you know it helps and you
Speaker 1: know I read them, including listener Recommended in Dreams, who
Speaker 1: wrote a review saying seriously, twice now I have recommended
Speaker 1: this podcast two people in a dream Recommended in Dreams.
Speaker 2: I thank you in dreams.
Speaker 1: Also, if you want some G rated family friendly versions
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Speaker 1: possible for us to donate to causes of the ologists
Speaker 1: choosing each week get value.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's get into how and why we modify the
Speaker 1: human body, past, present, and future as we talk to
Speaker 1: this author and journalist who has gone to actual ends
Speaker 1: of the earth to interview the finest experts with the
Speaker 1: best stories. So prep your flesh for figuring out how
Speaker 1: to write a book, getting to fourth base in a lab,
Speaker 1: organs from critters, how to find the best nuggets of
Speaker 1: a conversation, bugs on drugs, bendable genitals, elective amputation, gene
Speaker 1: tweaked pigs, vacuum chambers, beating hearts, leftover tendons, and so
Speaker 1: much more with replaceable you, author, science communicator, lauded journalist,
Speaker 1: my personal career hero. I like them so much it's embarrassing.
Speaker 1: The icon and writer on human technomorphology, mar Roach.
Speaker 3: My name is Mary Roach, and my pronouns are she and.
Speaker 1: Her and Mary Roach, an icon a legend. I've read
Speaker 1: all of your books, including I got an advanced copy
Speaker 1: of book coming out. Your book will come out the
Speaker 1: day this is released. And when it comes to your books,
Speaker 1: does the name come first? Does the subject come first?
Speaker 1: Do you have leftover pieces from another book that you
Speaker 1: realize I'll fit into a new book? How did you
Speaker 1: decide on the topic?
Speaker 3: You know? I wish I had a really cool inspiration
Speaker 3: story because I'm usually not inspired, and it's not like
Speaker 3: there's a moment of inspiration. It's rather like a period
Speaker 3: of random flailing. I was just like, what about this?
Speaker 3: I don't know, I think this might work. Nope, that's
Speaker 3: not going to work. And then I move on to
Speaker 3: something else. But what normally happens is I stumble onto
Speaker 3: something that I think is kind of cool and interesting,
Speaker 3: it would be a good scene in a place to go,
Speaker 3: and then I kind of build. I think, well, what
Speaker 3: would be the book that goes around this nugget, you know?
Speaker 3: Or sometimes there's two nuggets, like for packing for Mars,
Speaker 3: I had years and years ago for Vogue magazine, of
Speaker 3: all places, because look at me. I assurd that I
Speaker 3: wrote for Vogue magazine. I was a contributing editor at
Speaker 3: Vogue Magazine. It was hilarious. I would hide when I
Speaker 3: went to meet my editor, like I was like, don't
Speaker 3: let me run into Anna Wintour. She'll ban me.
Speaker 1: And you have no style or a sense of fashion.
Speaker 3: So anyway, I was doing this story about osteoporosis, you know,
Speaker 3: I was like, this isn't all that interesting. What should
Speaker 3: I do to kind of punch it up, and I thought, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'll talk to an astronaut, because you know, you lose
Speaker 3: bone in space, and it's something that astronauts have to
Speaker 3: deal with and if they discovered how to deal with
Speaker 3: it in space, we old ladies like me who are
Speaker 3: losing their bone could have a cure. And so okay.
Speaker 3: So I'm on the phone with a guy. He's like,
Speaker 3: it's an interesting conversation, but not really that interesting, and
Speaker 3: we get to talking about other things, and inevitably, with space,
Speaker 3: it comes around to what's the toilet scenario. He tells
Speaker 3: me that there's this at NASA, kind of like a
Speaker 3: training potty. It is a toilet with a camera down
Speaker 3: in the bowl facing up nice with a closed circuit
Speaker 3: TV next to the toilet showing you what that video
Speaker 3: camera is seeing. So it's like this view of something
Speaker 3: you know very very intimately, but you've never really seen
Speaker 3: it from that angle.
Speaker 1: Probably hopefully, Yeah, although if dream come true for certain people,
Speaker 1: I'm sure yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Did she write about this for Vogue?
Speaker 1: No? Could she get it out of her mind? Of
Speaker 1: course not.
Speaker 3: So it was kind of a lot in the back
Speaker 3: of my head, and I'm like, someday I will write
Speaker 3: about that video toilet. I will sit on that video toilet.
Speaker 3: Fast forward many years now, I'm writing books. They're looking
Speaker 3: around for an idea, and I'd come across the Bedrest Facility,
Speaker 3: which is a very cool place where people are paid
Speaker 3: to lie in bed for months. It's like an analogue
Speaker 3: for losing muscle and bone in space. You know, you
Speaker 3: kind of create those situations and they can find countermeasures
Speaker 3: and do tests anyway, weird place. So now I have
Speaker 3: two chunks, two chunks nuggets, and I'm like, what the
Speaker 3: book that goes around this? So that's how packing for
Speaker 3: Marspea because I sort of realized that what happens here
Speaker 3: on Earth in terms of NASA is kind of more
Speaker 3: interesting than what happens up in space. But that's usually
Speaker 3: how it happens. You know, it's rare that I have
Speaker 3: a desire to write a book about a certain topic.
Speaker 3: There used to be these ads for cooler faucets. Faucet company.
Speaker 3: There's this ad where this couple comes into an architects
Speaker 3: office with a color faucet and they put it on
Speaker 3: the architects desk, So what can I do for you?
Speaker 3: And they go design a house around this. I'm like,
Speaker 3: what assholes? But anyway, like the toilet was my coler.
Speaker 2: Faucet, it was the seed.
Speaker 3: Build a book around this.
Speaker 2: What was the seed? The germ of the replaceable U?
Speaker 3: The colar fawcet? Yes?
Speaker 2: What was your color faucet for replaceable you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the color faucet for this one. I'd been thinking
Speaker 3: about fat as a topic. I didn't go in that direction,
Speaker 3: but I was speaking to this woman who actually works
Speaker 3: in a stem cell lab. Leahbellas is her name. She was.
Speaker 3: We were just sort of talking and bouncing things around,
Speaker 3: and in the course of this conversation she told me
Speaker 3: about a the surgeon who had taken a man's middle
Speaker 3: finger and constructed a penis using the finger. And I
Speaker 3: of course imagined just the finger being like taken as is,
Speaker 3: you know, and put that like you know, and also
Speaker 3: which is quite anatomically improbable, thinking that it had been
Speaker 3: hooked up and that the man could now kind of
Speaker 3: like beca and come over here, baby. And of course
Speaker 3: that's not true. It was used inside skin is a
Speaker 3: rigidity element. But I'm like, I will meet this man.
Speaker 3: I will go there wherever this is turned out to
Speaker 3: be in Tibelisi, Georgia.
Speaker 1: This was in the nation of Georgia, and your Turkey
Speaker 1: and Armenia. And in Replaceable You, Mary notes that instead
Speaker 1: of commercial penilel implants supporting the rigidity, it's the patient's
Speaker 1: middle finger, and that the digit is skinned but otherwise
Speaker 1: implanted whole, and Mary continues to describing a sort of
Speaker 1: skin log lying in a small surgical basin, and she
Speaker 1: wistfully notes, quote, I'm reminded of a Vienna sausage, a
Speaker 1: canned meat product I enjoyed as a child, the same
Speaker 1: approximant color and circumference, the same blunt ends. And then
Speaker 1: it undergoes a second and more cosmetic follow up surgery,
Speaker 1: and then a life of penal satisfaction and probably a
Speaker 1: lot of boner jokes. But no pinicure, no nail on it, though,
Speaker 1: right they take the nail off.
Speaker 3: No, Well, it seemed to me that the whole fingering
Speaker 3: is that a fulangy.
Speaker 1: Means metatarsal something yet Okay, so the palm bones are
Speaker 1: actually called the metacarpals, but in this case the phalanges,
Speaker 1: and then after the wrist bones area of this gentleman's
Speaker 1: body got a promotion, and they got a job transferred
Speaker 1: to a down South.
Speaker 3: Anyway, the whole thing, not just the bone, you know,
Speaker 3: with skin from often here under side of the forearm
Speaker 3: gets used because it's hair, although this guy's there was
Speaker 3: some hair there. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Speaker 2: We've all been there now, yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: So Yeah, it's basically like finger wrap it up, kind
Speaker 3: of a pig and a blanket scenario. But you know,
Speaker 3: I saw the final product and it was very realistic. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And it could bend up like you could cook your
Speaker 3: you could bend it up. It was like a gumby
Speaker 3: thing that's handy, so he can put on his pants,
Speaker 3: he can sort of bend it, fold it out of
Speaker 3: the wood. It was more of a convenience situation, like.
Speaker 2: Those razor shooters pop in the back back you're out.
Speaker 3: Of there, exactly, or a Murphy bed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, out of sight, out of mind. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing I love about all of your books is
Speaker 1: how much we get to like tag along with you
Speaker 1: and the taxi drivers you talked to, and the receptionists
Speaker 1: that you talk to, and what the lobby looks like.
Speaker 1: And I'm always wondering how you can capture these moments
Speaker 1: with all of these different scientists in labs, and you know,
Speaker 1: smearing pesto on facaca. How are you recalling everything? Do
Speaker 1: you have like a secret those ray band spy cameras,
Speaker 1: Do you have a videographer?
Speaker 2: How are you recalling all of it?
Speaker 3: Well? I am always doing a what is it? The
Speaker 3: Brits say belts and braces, right, so yeah, like a
Speaker 3: belt and suspenders. I have a notebook and I'm writing
Speaker 3: down the things that I see and what's going on.
Speaker 3: But if it's a situation where interesting things are coming
Speaker 3: my way verbally quickly, I turn on a tape recorder,
Speaker 3: and if things kind of wander off in a direction
Speaker 3: that isn't interesting, I sort of subtly turn it off
Speaker 3: because I don't want to transcribe that shit. I still
Speaker 3: transcribe stuff. It's a weird thing. I still want to hear.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know you can do it with transcription stuff,
Speaker 3: but it's the documents too long. I edit as I go,
Speaker 3: and anyway, so i'm recording, I'm turning it off and
Speaker 3: on pausing, on pausing. I tend to forget to take photographs,
Speaker 3: but I've gotten better about that, just so I can
Speaker 3: remember what somebody looks like, but I'm not you know,
Speaker 3: shooting the whole room or anything.
Speaker 1: You don't have a tripod with like an influencer style,
Speaker 1: just video.
Speaker 3: I do you know? I don't if people have said,
Speaker 3: you know, well what why don't you do? You know?
Speaker 3: You could be shooting video as you go and there
Speaker 3: could be a TV show and I'm like, that's no.
Speaker 3: I don't want to be the person going let me
Speaker 3: stop you there. The lighting isn't very good here, and
Speaker 3: can we start over? You know? I can't because the
Speaker 3: moment's gone. Yeah, Like, what if that happened right when
Speaker 3: the woman in the office in Tiblisi had been showing
Speaker 3: me the slide of the penis sort of bent up?
Speaker 3: It was actually holding a ceramic water pitcher, Like what
Speaker 3: if I'd had to go, oh, can we take that?
Speaker 3: Can we do that again? I don't know. It's just
Speaker 3: because it was this moment I was.
Speaker 1: Like, oh wow, look at that so irreplaceable you. Mary
Speaker 1: offers more details, writing that this hand painted picture is
Speaker 1: white with a red and green floral pattern, and she
Speaker 1: envisions the man maybe pouring iced tea for a lover,
Speaker 1: this jug dangling from his member, and she continues, it's
Speaker 1: not full, says the surgeon. He means the picture this
Speaker 1: is just to show the resistance. It's very strong, effectively penetrative.
Speaker 1: She concludes, She's just this is just a day on
Speaker 1: the job for Mary in the Caucus Mountains. You always
Speaker 1: tend to travel for your books, and this one took
Speaker 1: you to Mongolia to talk to ie surgeons. How much
Speaker 1: time are they giving you before they'll let you see
Speaker 1: an you know, orthopedic surgeon hammering into someone's knee or
Speaker 1: jamming a cataract out of an eye, like? Does that
Speaker 1: usually happen on the first day or do you have
Speaker 1: to coax? Do you have to charm your way into that?
Speaker 3: No? I make sure ahead of time to let people
Speaker 3: know that I need to have something to see, you know.
Speaker 3: I just I'm very straightforward. It's almost like I'm scouting
Speaker 3: locations for a documentary. I need place, I need people,
Speaker 3: I need conversation. I need things happening. You know, a
Speaker 3: power point is of no use to me.
Speaker 2: Get it out of here.
Speaker 3: I have a zero tolerance policy for power points. I
Speaker 3: need stuff going on. What do you got, what's coming up?
Speaker 3: What can I see? You know? Sometimes that's been difficult,
Speaker 3: you know, for my third book, Bonk, which had to
Speaker 3: do with the study of sexual physiology. People researching sexual physiology, well,
Speaker 3: that means people coming into a lab and you know,
Speaker 3: being aroused and having orgasms and you know, and then
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, I can I be there with my
Speaker 3: notepad and my tape recorder. It's like really awkward.
Speaker 1: Or in your case, can you get in an MRI
Speaker 1: and bone?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, yeah. It was actually ultrasound, which is even worse.
Speaker 3: At least with an MRIU would have some privacy, right, Yes,
Speaker 3: that's like the guy with the white coat with the
Speaker 3: wand the ultrasound wand on my belly and my husband
Speaker 3: is behind me, and really like, I can't even believe
Speaker 3: why did I can't even believe that we did that.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a while ago, that was two thousand
Speaker 3: and eight, but at the time I thought this is
Speaker 3: going to be really fun to write up. And it
Speaker 3: was incredibly awkward and embarrassing and weird. But at the
Speaker 3: same time, I was like, this is going to be
Speaker 3: a fun.
Speaker 1: Chapter and to enjoy that chapter in its fullest. You
Speaker 1: can see her bestseller Bonk, The Curious Coupling of Science
Speaker 1: and Sex, in which she describes a research physician beginning
Speaker 1: with taking still images, for which quote, we must hold
Speaker 1: still for several seconds, like Victorians posing for a tin type,
Speaker 1: only not like Victorian's posing for a tin type. She
Speaker 1: continues that the doctor says, now, please make some sort
Speaker 1: of movement, and then in case it's not clear, in
Speaker 1: case her husband might be contemplating flap an elbow or
Speaker 1: saluting the flag, the doctor adds in and out. The
Speaker 1: doctors pleased with this result. Again, this is from the
Speaker 1: book Bonk. In cases like not already in your shopping cart,
Speaker 1: no one quite hops in as much as you do,
Speaker 1: and you even go in an iron lung in this book,
Speaker 1: which was a really heartwarming story. But what I loved
Speaker 1: about reading this is it runs the gamut from just
Speaker 1: tissue and cells to mechanics and having to rely on
Speaker 1: these machines. When you were writing it, were you trying
Speaker 1: to kind of parse out if this was going to
Speaker 1: be a book more about machines and what they could do,
Speaker 1: or more about cell cultures and what we can do
Speaker 1: on a cellular level, or was it all just sort
Speaker 1: of like, let's try to fix what's wrong.
Speaker 3: It was a situation where I initially really didn't want
Speaker 3: to go into stem cells and bioprinting. It's just it's
Speaker 3: very complic and I don't have a background in genetics,
Speaker 3: even if I'm a Liberal arts major, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: I don't even know if I want to take this off.
Speaker 3: You know, science is like the era of bodies on
Speaker 3: slabs is gone. We're talking protein receptors and genomes and
Speaker 3: things that can't easily be described visually for people in
Speaker 3: the way that I like to do it. But then,
Speaker 3: you know, you immerse yourself in a topic, and very
Speaker 3: quickly I realized that's absurd. You really have to cover
Speaker 3: that to some extent. So initially I'm always more interested
Speaker 3: in the human elements of things. You know, this book.
Speaker 3: In addition to the finger I had also around that time,
Speaker 3: the other cooler faucet was I'd gotten an email from
Speaker 3: a reader, Judy Berna, who said, your next book needs
Speaker 3: to be about professional football referees, which made no sense
Speaker 3: to me at all. I don't watch football, I never
Speaker 3: talked about football anyway. That was what she thought. But
Speaker 3: we started communicating because I wrote back to her because
Speaker 3: I intrigued by why she thought that. Anyway. She hasn't
Speaker 3: to mention that she's an amputee, and I said, oh, well,
Speaker 3: what's new in the world of amputation, and as one does,
Speaker 3: and she said, well, I'm actually I'm an elective amputee.
Speaker 3: Elective amputation meaning somebody who makes a decision or wants
Speaker 3: to have a limb cut off because it's not performing
Speaker 3: its functionality as compromise. But it is a healthy foot
Speaker 3: or hand or whatever it is, and so it's very
Speaker 3: hard for her to find a surgeon willing to take
Speaker 3: off her foot.
Speaker 1: Mary writes that she has found herself at the Amputee
Speaker 1: Coalition National Conference, and she quotes a passage from the
Speaker 1: memoir of Judy Berna, who is an elective amputee born
Speaker 1: with spina bifida and having complications with her foot that
Speaker 1: twisted as it grew. Mary writes that her childhood was
Speaker 1: dense with surgeries and stubborn infections, and then in her
Speaker 1: memoir Just One Foot, Judy wrights my foot had become
Speaker 1: a science experiment, a mess of flesh and bones but
Speaker 1: few working nerves. And Judy told Mary that even though
Speaker 1: this foot exhausted and limited her, she'd watch people with
Speaker 1: prosthetic limbs managing things she struggled with but the surgeon said, like,
Speaker 1: now we want you to keep it.
Speaker 3: Because it's just like this is healthy tissue, you know,
Speaker 3: and it's like there's a finality to amputation. You're not
Speaker 3: going to put that foot back on. And she it's
Speaker 3: spent a long time trying to find somebody who would
Speaker 3: agree to take it off. And I thought that was
Speaker 3: really interesting that we don't have the power over our
Speaker 3: own bodies in that way.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It's also has to do with that bias for wholeness,
Speaker 3: this sense that you're just better off with all your parts,
Speaker 3: especially if we on the outside of all this, if
Speaker 3: we see you, we want you to look hole that
Speaker 3: kind of thing, and it's absurd. You know, she's much
Speaker 3: better off. And there's a lot of people who have
Speaker 3: like foot drop or things that cause them to kind
Speaker 3: of shuffle. They can get around, but they can't run,
Speaker 3: they can't hike, they can't do things that they want
Speaker 3: to do. And particularly with a below the knee amputation,
Speaker 3: the things that you can do. You could get all
Speaker 3: these different attachments for different sports. You know, you can
Speaker 3: pretty much do whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1: And I think that you touched on it really well
Speaker 1: in the book of well, don't you just want to
Speaker 1: print another leg or don't you want to do something
Speaker 1: that looks much more life like rather than what's more functional,
Speaker 1: and how that's much more for the comfort of the
Speaker 1: people around them, Like can you not look different than me?
Speaker 1: Because that freaks me out? And meanwhile it's it's not
Speaker 1: as useful or as hand yeah at all.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean think back to the artificial limbs
Speaker 3: from the earlier half of the nineteen hundreds that just well,
Speaker 3: even probably into the sixties and seventies, those flesh tone,
Speaker 3: stiff kind of mannequin parts that people were using. You know,
Speaker 3: the whole idea was to pass you know that somebody
Speaker 3: couldn't tell. And now people go around wearing shorts with
Speaker 3: a blade, just a tech thing that works. The functionality
Speaker 3: is what matters, So it doesn't matter what materials and
Speaker 3: it Now it's kind of I think developed its own
Speaker 3: cool to look a little bit bionic. I think it's
Speaker 3: much better time to have a prosthetic leg.
Speaker 1: Mary explains that there are rock climbing feet, there are
Speaker 1: blade shaped prosthetics for running, basketball and soccer. There are
Speaker 1: surfing feet, swim fins, pivots for kayaking, handlebar adapters for
Speaker 1: mountain bikes. There are tds for archery, lacrosse, table tennis, basketball, fishing, golf,
Speaker 1: ice hockey, softball, baseball, uneven bars, martial arts, billiards, volleyball, bowling.
Speaker 2: Weightlifting, and cricket.
Speaker 1: And there's many more for artists and other occupations, she writes.
Speaker 1: And there's also engineers working on whatever needs might come up. Also,
Speaker 1: a TD is a terminal device or an end of
Speaker 1: limb prosthetic for limb loss or limb difference. I also
Speaker 1: loved how because you went to that conference, you were
Speaker 1: sort of embedded there and you were able to tell
Speaker 1: your readers this is like the nominal clature they use now,
Speaker 1: this is kind of the vibe like here's questions not
Speaker 1: to ask. You sort of exposed through your own experience
Speaker 1: how people in that community would rather interact with people,
Speaker 1: which I thought was very helpful to someone who wasn't
Speaker 1: familiar with it. You know, you also went to a
Speaker 1: pig hospital, essentially, like in terms of zeno transplantation, was
Speaker 1: there any parts of writing this book, or any parts
Speaker 1: of looking at replacing human parts that really freaked you
Speaker 1: out that you had to get over the ice surgery
Speaker 1: or like a beating heart cradled in your hands.
Speaker 2: What freaked you out?
Speaker 3: It's pretty hard to freak me out. Ali, That's really
Speaker 3: like the freakier it is, the more I'm just wow,
Speaker 3: this is so cool. I guess what was a little
Speaker 3: a little freaky to me was this idea. Okay, you
Speaker 3: mentioned the pigs. You know, zeno transplantation. You know that's
Speaker 3: been a project ongoing for thirty years now, the effort
Speaker 3: to genetically tweak a pig so that it's organs don't
Speaker 3: create a reaction like an immune reaction, a hyperimmune there's
Speaker 3: this hyper immune response where they're like if you were
Speaker 3: just to take an organ from a pig put it
Speaker 3: into a person, the body just goes on the attack,
Speaker 3: like shuts it down, It turns black, it's gone.
Speaker 1: And for some very recent research on this from late August,
Speaker 1: you can see the article in Nature titled Pig to
Speaker 1: human lung zeno transplantation into a brain dead recipient, which
Speaker 1: reports a case of pig to human lung zeno transplantation
Speaker 1: in which alung from a six gene edited pig was
Speaker 1: transplanted into a thirty nine year old brain dead male
Speaker 1: human recipient following a brain hemorrhage, and further studies are necessary,
Speaker 1: but reducing the risk of say endogenous pig retroviruses busting
Speaker 1: into human hosts like Horror movie and her own immune
Speaker 1: systems trying to evict this pressure organ. These tweaked genes
Speaker 1: are the key, you.
Speaker 3: Know, and so they've taken that away. So now there's
Speaker 3: still longer term issues. But the place that we're at
Speaker 3: is you can buy a couple months time. There is
Speaker 3: one man who has got a I think it's a
Speaker 3: kidney and it's it was like five months as of
Speaker 3: June and he's still going. So if that would buy
Speaker 3: you enough time to you know, be eligible for a
Speaker 3: human organ that's pretty cool. Now. What I was gonna
Speaker 3: say it was a little skeevee to me was I
Speaker 3: was talking to someone about, you know, well, what's the
Speaker 3: end point here, and they were talking about chimerism or
Speaker 3: you know, like chimera, chimerism, crimerism, I'm not sure the
Speaker 3: pronunciation camerasm, okay, but it's been done with rodents to
Speaker 3: some extent where you would knock out the genes that
Speaker 3: would create say a kidney, and then you'd put some
Speaker 3: human floripone stem cells in and so now there's this
Speaker 3: empty niche where the human cells would kind of go, oh,
Speaker 3: this is where we're supposed to do our thing. And
Speaker 3: so you'd have a pig growing literally human organ and
Speaker 3: then you could kind of have the term was that
Speaker 3: was used, was your own personal pig reserved, like the
Speaker 3: way people have a car out and back for parts,
Speaker 3: you know, like or Also it's like you know, with pizza,
Speaker 3: it's like the personal pie. And that was like a
Speaker 3: term a few years back, personal pie, like your own
Speaker 3: personal pizza. You'd have your like your personal pig. And
Speaker 3: I'm like, I don't know about that. I mean, I
Speaker 3: feel bad for pigs in general. You know, there's like
Speaker 3: one hundred and sixty thousand pig farms in China.
Speaker 2: Isn't that many?
Speaker 3: Anyway? We are eating just you know, millions of pigs,
Speaker 3: so okay, so a few more to produce organs. Why
Speaker 3: is that such a awful thing. It's not awful, It's
Speaker 3: just it was scheve. It's just very sci fi, very much.
Speaker 3: You know, the matrix kind of the pod people being
Speaker 3: used to create whatever the living people need. You know,
Speaker 3: they're plugged in I don't know.
Speaker 2: Just yeah, just your own pig and goop. You've got
Speaker 2: a pig somewhere waiting for you, waiting for you to fail.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: I am the architect.
Speaker 3: I created the matrix I've been waiting for you.
Speaker 1: Have you given more thought to donating your body? I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously with stiff we know what happens to cadavers and
Speaker 1: donating your body to science, But you also have a
Speaker 1: great chapter about tissue donation, which my husband has some
Speaker 1: donor tissue in his knee going strong for like four years.
Speaker 1: And for more on your garbage knees, you can see
Speaker 1: our tinicular Traumatology episode with doctor Kevin Stone who fixes
Speaker 1: those knees. He ended up getting a completing his black
Speaker 1: belt in jiu jitsu. He never thought he'd get to
Speaker 1: go back. And I'm like, dude, you owe that family
Speaker 1: like a letter for sure, Like you've got to send
Speaker 1: him a letter, like especially now that like you did
Speaker 1: this thing you wanted to do, but you know and
Speaker 1: ethically your kin have to sign off on it. Do
Speaker 1: you think you're going to be donating your body to science?
Speaker 1: What do you think?
Speaker 3: I sure hope, So, I mean that's my intent I
Speaker 3: really believe in organ and tissue donation. The number I
Speaker 3: was given at CORE, the Center for Organ Recovery that
Speaker 3: I visited in Pittsburgh. They said seventy five seventy five
Speaker 3: people can benefit from one organ donors. It's bone, it's skin,
Speaker 3: it's tendon, it's muscle. It's an incredible gift. And the
Speaker 3: follow up question would be, so have you signed the documentation?
Speaker 4: Mary?
Speaker 3: You's signed the papers. Yeah, and I'm really I feel
Speaker 3: terrible I haven't. It has nothing to do with what
Speaker 3: I've seen, having seen organs taken from a body and
Speaker 3: having seen tissue removed. To me, that's just another kind
Speaker 3: of surgery. Surgery is never pretty. You know, it's messy
Speaker 3: and bloody and things are being cut and removed, but
Speaker 3: that's it's being done for really good reason, and good
Speaker 3: things happen. So there's absolutely no reason for me not
Speaker 3: to have signed those papers.
Speaker 1: Mary notes Inreplaceable you that, regardless of a person's wishes
Speaker 1: or the dot on their driver's license, tissue can't be
Speaker 1: recovered until the next of kin has answered the eligibility questions.
Speaker 2: Is it hard to get accepted though? What if they
Speaker 2: get you and they don't want you it is.
Speaker 3: I was told by the folks at Core in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 3: They are, like, I think it was ninety percent of
Speaker 3: people don't make the great It's Yale has a higher
Speaker 3: acceptance rate because it's like, you can't there's so many
Speaker 3: diseases that you might have had. Also lifestyle things. If
Speaker 3: there's any needles, like if you had a tattoo, if
Speaker 3: you use needle drugs, if you had sex, well, let
Speaker 3: you use needles drugs. Have you this of you that
Speaker 3: did you ever have this disease or that disease? So
Speaker 3: they don't want a lot of people.
Speaker 1: But if you get rejected, your feelings at that point
Speaker 1: can't be heard. This is true, Yes, but I wonder
Speaker 1: if your family stands by a computer waiting to see
Speaker 1: if you got into it, into Core like they do
Speaker 1: with Harvard.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, she got here.
Speaker 1: She got into seventy five more people, seventy.
Speaker 2: We're gonna get so many letters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love it. Like CORP. They give the person
Speaker 3: who's getting the body part, the bit of bone or
Speaker 3: whatever it is they're getting, they give them the option
Speaker 3: to write a letter to the family. And I read
Speaker 3: some of those letters and they're so nice. They're so lovely.
Speaker 3: You know, you've made this huge difference in the life
Speaker 3: of you know, my husband or me or whatever, and
Speaker 3: that goes to the family of the donor, which is lovely.
Speaker 3: And I hope that they all do that, because what
Speaker 3: a great thing to hear from, you know, the person
Speaker 3: who got your achilles heel or whatever. Yeah, tend not
Speaker 3: your achilles, your achilles. I don't want anybody else's achilles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got someone else's vice. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If my achilles heel, I cannot say no to tin
Speaker 1: fish it is my new Achilles here.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know where it came from. God.
Speaker 2: I also enjoyed.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have chapters on asses boobs so much.
Speaker 1: I did not know breathing intubation. You intubated a dummy
Speaker 1: for this. What does it sound like when you're in
Speaker 1: the operating room? Is it real squishy sounding?
Speaker 3: Well, the operating room that I was in for this
Speaker 3: book was an orthopedic operating room, so it sounded like
Speaker 3: a wood shop. Nope, don't like it. They're literally power
Speaker 3: saws going a reamer. There was a reamer going uh nope, nope, nope,
Speaker 3: does like reaming out, you know, to get rid of
Speaker 3: the damaged cartilage and kind of prepare the surface where
Speaker 3: you're going to put the socket for the ball of
Speaker 3: the ball and socket joint. And then there's there's a
Speaker 3: surgical mallet which is a metal and it it sounds
Speaker 3: exactly like putting in a tense steak. Oh yeah, So
Speaker 3: those are the sounds that you hear. I'm I don't
Speaker 3: think I heard anything squishy. Sometimes if they're doing the
Speaker 3: laser cauterizing wand there's kind of a cooked flesh smell.
Speaker 2: That smell like barbecue, little barbee a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I remember saying the first time I smelled that
Speaker 3: to the surgeon, do you find that smell a little
Speaker 3: bit pleasant?
Speaker 2: What they say?
Speaker 3: He said, that's really morbid, And I'm like, I don't
Speaker 3: really think morbid is the right adjective for that. Impertinent,
Speaker 3: maybe inappropriate.
Speaker 1: Wrong, I would say that it's very honest and thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 2: Can I ask you some questions from listeners?
Speaker 3: Yes, of course, Okay, of course.
Speaker 1: And before we get into human technomorphology questions With Mary,
Speaker 1: we're going to donate to a cause of her choosing,
Speaker 1: and this week we're doing a double donation. The first
Speaker 1: is to the Amputee Coalition, which is a community, a
Speaker 1: lifeline and a source of strength for over five point
Speaker 1: six million Americans with limb loss and limb difference. So
Speaker 1: whether you're newly navigating this journey, supporting a loved one,
Speaker 1: or looking for ways to give back, this is your space.
Speaker 1: The Amputee Coalition builds a future where individuals can live
Speaker 1: fully and without limitations. You can learn more and donate
Speaker 1: at Amputee Coalition dot org. And we're also supporting the
Speaker 1: United Ostome Associations of America, which empowers and advocates for
Speaker 1: people who have had or will have an ostome or
Speaker 1: continent diversion surgery. And their mission is to promote quality
Speaker 1: of life for people with ostomes and continent diversions through information, support, advocacy,
Speaker 1: and collaboration. You can find out more and donate at
Speaker 1: ostome dot org. So thank you to the sponsors Apologies
Speaker 1: who make those donations possible.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so we've asked Mary about writing replaceable you, But
Speaker 1: now fancy Nana asked what materials would be used in
Speaker 1: three D printing for prosthetics. I assume you can't use
Speaker 1: PLA or resin Fancy Nana ads definitely not thinking of
Speaker 1: self printing and replacing my arthritic joints. And Turner Pierce
Speaker 1: wanted to know printed organs and bones. What's going on
Speaker 1: with that? They said, when I was applying to grad
Speaker 1: school a decade ago, they were using medical imaging to
Speaker 1: scan and three D print bones for anthropology research, and
Speaker 1: they said they thought it would be so cool to
Speaker 1: look at a printed version of my bones or organs.
Speaker 2: But are they.
Speaker 1: Printing anyone's bones up to replace your own bones? Did
Speaker 1: you see a lot of three D printers.
Speaker 3: I spent a day and a half in a Carnegie
Speaker 3: Mellon has a three D bio printing lab. No, it's
Speaker 3: super interesting. They were not printing bone, but in general
Speaker 3: extracellular material like collagen and things that don't need to
Speaker 3: be fed, you know, like if you're printing an organ
Speaker 3: or you're printing skin, you need to feed it. And
Speaker 3: it's like, what does that mean. You're going to print
Speaker 3: the capillaries. You're going to hope that the thing grows
Speaker 3: its own capillaries, which the body is really great at
Speaker 3: doing up to a point. So that's kind of what
Speaker 3: they're trying to tease out. How much do we have
Speaker 3: to print versus how much can we let leave to
Speaker 3: the body to do to kind of like create on
Speaker 3: its own. There are three D printed probably titanium bits
Speaker 3: and pieces of bone that take the person's MRI and
Speaker 3: match that way. But those sorts of things for sure
Speaker 3: are being used in addition to bits and pieces of
Speaker 3: cadaver donor bone. So they are doing some amazing stuff
Speaker 3: with artificial materials for broken, bashed up joints bones.
Speaker 1: It's funny to think that somewhere right now, there's someplace
Speaker 1: going gout and you know what I mean, and there's
Speaker 1: just a broone coming rising from the plastic or whatever.
Speaker 3: So if you're not using plastic like that, if you're
Speaker 3: using squishy material, that whole process of doesn't work well
Speaker 3: because it's squishy. You need a solid base that you
Speaker 3: know you're building from the bottom up, so you really
Speaker 3: can't do it. It would be like building a cathedral out
Speaker 3: of tofu.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't.
Speaker 3: You can't do it. So the researcher Adam Feinberg had
Speaker 3: patented this method where they'd have a support gel. You've
Speaker 3: got this gel that you're printing it inside of, and
Speaker 3: that is supporting the stuff that you're printing so it
Speaker 3: doesn't go all woodie wumpus and wiggly, and then you
Speaker 3: heat it up and then the support beth melts away.
Speaker 3: It's not printing a Broucher, you know. I mean, it's similar,
Speaker 3: and like you know, you've got different extruder heads and
Speaker 3: there are different kinds of bioprinting. I know. I was
Speaker 3: just looking at this one extrusion method which kind of
Speaker 3: you know, is similar to ee eat the kind of
Speaker 3: you're getting described, but.
Speaker 1: Like frosting of different viscosities kind of this is how
Speaker 1: prop this up and feed this and that goes away,
Speaker 1: but this stays right right exactly Plazitron a bit sci fi.
Speaker 1: But do you think big brands will start producing body
Speaker 1: parts where you can get like the latest installation, so
Speaker 1: it becomes like a fashion statement to have the latest
Speaker 1: update like our iPhones. Essentially, do people working in this
Speaker 1: sphere are they looking that far in the future or
Speaker 1: are they really just looking like, can we get this
Speaker 1: thing to market?
Speaker 2: Can we like prove that it works.
Speaker 3: I you know, when I was in China, I was
Speaker 3: talking to the guy who's been working for thirty years
Speaker 3: one you know, transplantation, you know, having these organs available.
Speaker 3: And while I was there, before I left, rather I
Speaker 3: was on this there's some pig news website and they.
Speaker 2: Of course what's it called.
Speaker 3: I can't remember. It's got a great name like pig Progress.
Speaker 3: It's big Progress, so pig I was like going through
Speaker 3: back issues of pig Progress and I came across there's
Speaker 3: a twenty six story piggery in China, twenty six stories
Speaker 3: to vertical farming, and there's you know, this elevator that
Speaker 3: can lift like twenty six tons and there's big facial
Speaker 3: recognition and it's just kind of an amazing thing. So
Speaker 3: having a conversation with Shaopingong anyway, I was having a
Speaker 3: conversation with him and I said, this is you know,
Speaker 3: right now, we're talking about trying to get one organ
Speaker 3: in one person to last six months. But I was like,
Speaker 3: what's this going to be? Like We're going to have
Speaker 3: like twenty six story piggeries that are like churning out
Speaker 3: organ They're going to be for organs. And he goes, yes,
Speaker 3: that is the future. You know, that was he was
Speaker 3: very enthusiastic. But then, you know, I the other side
Speaker 3: of that is I spent some time at a stem
Speaker 3: cell biotech company, you know, and I was like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, how far in the future where we can
Speaker 3: grow from scratch just grow organs. It's like, that is
Speaker 3: that's science fiction right now. So the other thing is
Speaker 3: that things are changing so fast that the future that
Speaker 3: you would have predicted two years ago has changed direction.
Speaker 3: You know, there's ways now where you can take somebody,
Speaker 3: say blood cells, and regress them to plury potency where
Speaker 3: they're kind of like that they've got the potential to
Speaker 3: become anything, and you can instruct them to become a
Speaker 3: different kind of cell. And the hope is that one
Speaker 3: day we could grow whole organs. But right now, you know,
Speaker 3: you're just talking about clusters and patches. You know, you
Speaker 3: could create some dopamine producing neuron cells that would help
Speaker 3: someone with Parkinson's, but creating a whole, say, liver, is
Speaker 3: way off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a big job.
Speaker 3: Printing it or growing it from scratch, it's a ways.
Speaker 3: But what I'm saying is, Okay, the plury potent stems
Speaker 3: scene sort of you take one person's and you regress them,
Speaker 3: and then you train them, and then you put that
Speaker 3: into one person. It's a bespoke process. It's very expensive.
Speaker 3: It's not going to be covered by insurance anytime soon.
Speaker 3: But what the hope is is that there could be
Speaker 3: kind of off the shelf, pre regressed pluripotent stem cells
Speaker 3: that evade the immune system. They're called stealth cells.
Speaker 1: Ooh, so pluripotent side note means that a cell is
Speaker 1: kind of a blank canvas. It's down to become a
Speaker 1: lot of different kinds of cells and tissues. And scientists
Speaker 1: are working on making these pluripotent cells for the people
Speaker 1: off the shelf options instead of custom, So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like preda porte instead of cature.
Speaker 3: And in that case, you wouldn't have to take each
Speaker 3: individual patient. You know, take some blood cells, regress them,
Speaker 3: train them to become something else, and then put them in.
Speaker 3: You know, you would skip the regression, so you'd be
Speaker 3: ready to go with these, you know, off the shelf
Speaker 3: pluripotent stem cells. So everything is changing so fast that
Speaker 3: predicting what's going to be out there is really hard.
Speaker 1: What's not changing fast is history, and Mary covers the
Speaker 1: first silicone breasts like syringes just willing nilly, raw dogged
Speaker 1: straight into the flesh, and also looks at techniques that
Speaker 1: have been used for years. As she chats with a
Speaker 1: cedar sign i roologist about vaginas over Italian food. Mackenzie
Speaker 1: w first time question asker wanted to know in what
Speaker 1: ways can this field provide gender affirming care and are
Speaker 1: there applications for technology that can help trans folks? And
Speaker 1: I feel like you did touch on that in the book,
Speaker 1: and you know, was a lot of that surprising to
Speaker 1: you or was there something from that that surprised you
Speaker 1: or that left you thinking differently?
Speaker 3: You know, I just covered one particular procedure which isn't
Speaker 3: It isn't very commonly done. I had dinner with the
Speaker 3: director of the Cedar Sinai Transgender Surgery and Health Center.
Speaker 3: He's a urologist surgeon, and we met an Italian restaurant
Speaker 3: across the street from the urology tower, and he was
Speaker 3: explaining this procedure which is done sometimes if the more
Speaker 3: typical operation for a trans woman doesn't work out, and
Speaker 3: the more typical operation is to kind of invert the penis,
Speaker 3: you know, to do it that way. But if that
Speaker 3: hasn't worked, you can actually take a stretch of the
Speaker 3: colon and use that. And I was just fascinated by
Speaker 3: just kind of the surgical creativity. You know that somebody
Speaker 3: would go, well, I don't know a colon, it's a tube,
Speaker 3: it's stretchy, it's moist, I don't know, maybe that would work.
Speaker 2: Let's give a shot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's actually not that new. Vaginoplasty using the
Speaker 3: intestinal tract has been done for I think the earliest
Speaker 3: one was in the late eighteen hundreds. Maybe it was
Speaker 3: the early nineteen hundreds, but anyway, it's been around a while,
Speaker 3: but it's been finessed quite a bit. I was fascinated
Speaker 3: in kind of the amazing flexibility of the human body.
Speaker 3: You know, you could take this organ that evolved as
Speaker 3: a digestive organ and turn it into a sexual organ
Speaker 3: and it works well with surgery if you don't have
Speaker 3: an FDA clearance procedure. It's sort of like, well, if
Speaker 3: you've done something similar and you have I have an
Speaker 3: idea to kind of change it a little bit, to
Speaker 3: modify it, and you explain it to the patient and
Speaker 3: you just do it. I was just kind of just
Speaker 3: kind of blown away by kind of the resourcefulness, you know,
Speaker 3: and let's say, well, what do we got in there?
Speaker 3: We got to say, well, hey, oh, here's this kind
Speaker 3: of tubular thing that could be a vagina. And I
Speaker 3: was like, whoa does that? You know peristalsis, you know,
Speaker 3: the muscle the contractions that move food along. I thought, well,
Speaker 3: that could be kind of sexually exciting. And He's like, Mary, no,
Speaker 3: that's a subtle contraction that does not not part of
Speaker 3: the advantages of was.
Speaker 2: He like good thinking? Though?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I was. Also, I said, you know, when you're
Speaker 3: doing a volvaplasty, say with a vaginal plasty, I said,
Speaker 3: so the placement of the clitorist. You know, I know
Speaker 3: from a previous book there's a fair amount of variation
Speaker 3: in how far the clitterorist is from the vagina, and
Speaker 3: there's been greater orgasmicity with a closer it's located. I said,
Speaker 3: have you ever thought of just putting it really close?
Speaker 3: Is there some animals where it's almost like inside and
Speaker 3: the vagina? And I was like, well, that could be
Speaker 3: kind of great, and he's like, you know, he was,
Speaker 3: he was very nice. He was a good idea. Mary,
Speaker 3: I like that idea, but no, he said, for one thing,
Speaker 3: you know, trans women often they want to look normal,
Speaker 3: you know, they want it to look the way it
Speaker 3: should look. And there is a certain amount of variation
Speaker 3: with the placement of the clitorist, but not so much
Speaker 3: that it's like inside that. And he said, also with
Speaker 3: a neo vagina, there's a certain amount of dilation that
Speaker 3: has to happen after surgery and some douching. There's to
Speaker 3: have a clitteriss right there would be uncomfortable. What's the answer.
Speaker 3: I thought it was a good idea, yeah, but that's
Speaker 3: very creative.
Speaker 1: Alex Miner wanted to know in all your deep dives
Speaker 1: into the strange corners of science. What is a bizarre
Speaker 1: factor moment that didn't make it into a book but
Speaker 1: still lives kind of rent free in your brain. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's NDAs that are involved here,
Speaker 1: but if you can spill whatever you spill, I'm all yours.
Speaker 3: Okay, I love this question because there is a fact
Speaker 3: that I learned not that long ago that isn't in
Speaker 3: any of my books. And here is the fact. Okay, okay,
Speaker 3: when you have a murder victim and you're trying to
Speaker 3: determine the time of death, and you're looking at the
Speaker 3: insects right like how how far has the body degraded?
Speaker 3: And you're looking at the insect life and the maggots,
Speaker 3: et cetera. If the person had been on cocaine, you
Speaker 3: have to adjust your timeline because the insects feed really fast. No,
Speaker 3: that's what I was told.
Speaker 2: They're like, let's get this done, Let's get this new.
Speaker 3: You know, like, this is really good, this is really good.
Speaker 3: Isn't really good? Let's keep eating.
Speaker 2: I'm just not even tired. I'm just not even tired
Speaker 2: right now at all.
Speaker 3: That's isn't that amazing?
Speaker 2: That's bonkers, but anyway, good for them.
Speaker 3: So I don't even remember where I learned that or
Speaker 3: who told me, but it was a science person. Of
Speaker 3: course it was an ologist.
Speaker 1: So I invite you to see the twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: paper effects of cocaine and heroin and their combination on
Speaker 1: the development rate of Califora vomitoria, which tossed some fly
Speaker 1: eggs into pots of minced pork and then just watched
Speaker 1: them grow up into maggots. So these lab coded drug
Speaker 1: lords found that maggots seem to favor the effects of
Speaker 1: the cocaine. But yeah, this is all important because if
Speaker 1: you're trying to date a body, time wise, how fast
Speaker 1: and how much these maggots develop could be affected by
Speaker 1: what kind of final weekend the corpse had had. And
Speaker 1: if you're wondering how the flesh loving bottle fly got
Speaker 1: the name Califora vomitoria, I look this up and it
Speaker 1: seems that the sight of maggots all over butcher's meat
Speaker 1: pre refrigeration was just enough to make people straight up pearl.
Speaker 1: So they named the fly Califora vomitoria. And we do
Speaker 1: have a fly episode for you with Fly Enthusiast and dipterologist,
Speaker 1: doctor Brian Lasard. And if that is not creepy enough,
Speaker 1: we have an osteology one about bones and body farms.
Speaker 1: And if that is not creepy enough for you, our
Speaker 1: October Spootober series kicks off with an episode in a
Speaker 1: few weeks all about creepiness from a psychologist who studies creepiness.
Speaker 1: And not to suggest that Mary eats cocaine pork to
Speaker 1: work faster.
Speaker 2: But are you already working on another book?
Speaker 1: Because I feel like it's I can't even imagine when
Speaker 1: a book comes out, you must be so exhausted. But
Speaker 1: do you have like four other books just in the wings?
Speaker 3: No, I wish I did. I don't have another book idea,
Speaker 3: And I'm always open to ideas if anybody listening wants
Speaker 3: to share an idea of And it doesn't even have
Speaker 3: to be this kind of you know, the kind of
Speaker 3: book that I do is a little exhausting. It's like
Speaker 3: seventeen rabbit holes. I'd love to go down one long
Speaker 3: rabbit hole. It doesn't even have to be science. So
Speaker 3: you know, if you have, if you've got an idea
Speaker 3: something in your life that you think God Mary Roach
Speaker 3: should write about this, let me know good. No, I
Speaker 3: don't know what's next. I don't That's the hardest part
Speaker 3: for me.
Speaker 2: I have a pitch, Yeah, what about what about? Have
Speaker 2: you ever thought of football referees? Share me out?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Oh, Friendredy and I that is brilliant.
Speaker 3: That is so me.
Speaker 1: You never know where it could take you. No matter
Speaker 1: what you write, I'll read it. Obviously. I have a
Speaker 1: section on my bookshelf. It's just Mary Roach in my library.
Speaker 1: Of course, the last questions I always ask. I usually
Speaker 1: ask what sucks about people's jobs? Any rants you have
Speaker 1: about this book, about writing this book, anyone give you
Speaker 1: an interview and then say you couldn't.
Speaker 2: Use it, or it was anyone on an asshole. You
Speaker 2: don't have to name them.
Speaker 3: With each book that I do, it gets a little
Speaker 3: harder to get access because people have liability concerns. I
Speaker 3: think for this one, I was turned down initially. I
Speaker 3: ended up going to the extra corporeal life support laboratory,
Speaker 3: which is they look at devices that support the body
Speaker 3: outside the body, like ekmo Ekmo.
Speaker 1: Side note, I had to look this up stands for
Speaker 1: extra corporeal membrane oxygenation and I should not Also while
Speaker 1: looking up what ekmo stands for. I happened to be
Speaker 1: listening to an old playlist that included the nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: two Gothy synth track This Chauffeur, and I was looking
Speaker 1: this up right as Duran Duran deliver the lyric and
Speaker 1: the droning engine throbs in time with your beating heart.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Mary gets to meet people who save all kinds
Speaker 1: of lives, human ones.
Speaker 3: Like the guy who invented ekmo. Bob Bartlett runs the
Speaker 3: lab and initially the public affairs office. They answered my
Speaker 3: email and then they just ghosted me, and I was
Speaker 3: like what. I kept writing to them. Finally I called
Speaker 3: Bob Bartlett and I'm like, what's the deal. He said,
Speaker 3: you know what, it's my lab. You just come here
Speaker 3: and we'll let you in. So I go there and
Speaker 3: I said, what the heck happened? And he said, oh,
Speaker 3: they're public affairs people were really concerned that you're an
Speaker 3: animal rights fanatic anyway. So there's a lot of wariness
Speaker 3: and nervousness, and I get that people are worried about lawsuits,
Speaker 3: they're worried about social media, they're worried about everything. It's
Speaker 3: a time of being worried. So I think that being
Speaker 3: allowed to go, I mean I went to Cheungdu, China
Speaker 3: because I couldn't go to United Therapeutics or Egenesis, the
Speaker 3: two companies here that are creating pigs that have more
Speaker 3: acceptable organs to humans. So yeah, I mean thank you
Speaker 3: to both of them because I had a great time
Speaker 3: in Shangdu. But that can be very frustrating, and I
Speaker 3: don't blame them, like as my agent said, Mary, can
Speaker 3: you blame them? I mean, who wants Mary Roach sort
Speaker 3: of mucking around and who knows what she's going to say?
Speaker 3: Who knows what she's gonna do?
Speaker 1: You know what about your favorite aspect of writing this
Speaker 1: book in terms of places it took you or people
Speaker 1: that you met. I interviewed a rat expert about sewer
Speaker 1: rats once and I had one of those moments where
Speaker 1: it was just like, I can't believe that I get
Speaker 1: to do this as a job. Do you ever have
Speaker 1: those moments when you're working on something or oh yeah,
Speaker 1: go wow, lucky me.
Speaker 3: Oh for sure, yeah, for sure. So many of those moments.
Speaker 3: I remember when I was reporting for packing for Mars.
Speaker 3: I was up in the Arctic on Devon Island, which
Speaker 3: NASA uses as an analog for the Moon and Mars,
Speaker 3: and I had a week there when I didn't really
Speaker 3: need the whole week, so I just talked to a
Speaker 3: lot of people, thinking, I don't know, see what they do,
Speaker 3: these researchers. And there was like a who studied He
Speaker 3: was a suit guy, and he was working on creating
Speaker 3: an escape suit. So this would be a suit where
Speaker 3: if something goes wrong, either as the spaceship is going
Speaker 3: up or the capsule is coming down at any different altitude.
Speaker 3: And it's really tricky because spending on how much atmosphere
Speaker 3: you have, you know your parachute has no air to
Speaker 3: unfold or you're gonna burn up. So it's a very
Speaker 3: tricky suit to create and system to create. Anyway, he's
Speaker 3: explaining it all to me, and I'm like, maybe I'll
Speaker 3: write something about this. I don't know. And he had
Speaker 3: given me a mission patch. Okay, that's a patch that
Speaker 3: has the name of the mission, the number, and all
Speaker 3: the crew members' names around it. And I didn't really greg, oh,
Speaker 3: thank you. And it was for Columbia. And one of
Speaker 3: the names on the patch is Clark, Laurel Clark, and
Speaker 3: I realized in the middle of his explaining things that
Speaker 3: his name is Clark, like that was his wife. Wow,
Speaker 3: so his wife had died, and that was what was
Speaker 3: motivating him. You know, he believed that it can be survivable,
Speaker 3: that you can create a survival suit for surviving an
Speaker 3: explosion at altitude or you know, a breakup. Maybe not
Speaker 3: depending on the type of explosion. But that just changed
Speaker 3: the whole tenor of the conversation. And it was, you know,
Speaker 3: you have those moments where you know, like Mark Randolph,
Speaker 3: the guy who's iron lung I had spent time in.
Speaker 3: You know, I went there thinking, this is a chapter
Speaker 3: about negative and positive pressure breathing and about iron lungs
Speaker 3: and what is that like? And you know, and all
Speaker 3: of a sudden he was talking about his marriage to
Speaker 3: Mona and how hard, you know, everything that he'd done
Speaker 3: for her. And he was reciting when she wakes up
Speaker 3: in the morning and I take her from the iron
Speaker 3: lung to put her in the hospital bed, I use
Speaker 3: a pulley and he just recited all the steps like
Speaker 3: it was like a prayer, you know, like an incantation.
Speaker 3: And I realized, sometimes what you think the chapter is
Speaker 3: about needs to scooch over and you need to give
Speaker 3: this person room to talk about what it was like
Speaker 3: to be with her, and like you don't always anticipate
Speaker 3: the emotional moments because I'm kind of a goober, you know.
Speaker 3: I'm just kind of like, well, out there to have
Speaker 3: fun and kind of find cool, interesting things that I
Speaker 3: can bring to readers. And all of a sudden, I
Speaker 3: realize I'm stepped into somebody's world and there's more to
Speaker 3: it than that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that part of the book too, was beautifully written
Speaker 1: and touching. How later he was incorporated into the book
Speaker 1: and I won't spoil it for anyone, but really was touching.
Speaker 1: And I've always thought that the fact that you're a
Speaker 1: character in the book and your reaction is both delightful
Speaker 1: and also a proxy for anyone who can imagine themselves
Speaker 1: as you. But anything you're write, I'll read it, so
Speaker 1: I need no pressure on the next one. But I
Speaker 1: already this book isn't even out, and I tore through
Speaker 1: it in like a day and a half.
Speaker 2: It's such a good book.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. That is so nice to hear,
Speaker 3: because you're like the goddess of science communication and not true, no,
Speaker 3: but you find these people who have this passion for
Speaker 3: what they do, and they're good at explaining it, and
Speaker 3: they're charismatic and they're interesting and fun, and you just
Speaker 3: bring that out in people, and you get people to
Speaker 3: see what science is and it's not you know, the
Speaker 3: slog that you thought it was when you were in
Speaker 3: high school. You know that it's so interesting and that
Speaker 3: takes people places and I don't know, you do that
Speaker 3: like no one else.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm just copying you. Really, I just learned from
Speaker 1: the best you ran so that I could stumble behind you.
Speaker 1: And I really really so appreciate getting to interview you,
Speaker 1: even though it took three times. And I'm so sorry
Speaker 1: about technical issue, no no, but you are the best.
Speaker 3: I got all teared up talking about you. That's how much.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I respect you.
Speaker 2: I'm holding back to yours. You've no ideas.
Speaker 1: And as I close this laptop, it's fucking over for
Speaker 1: my mess care, it's over.
Speaker 2: Really, just keep doing what you're doing. You're the best,
Speaker 2: And everyone buy this book if that's a.
Speaker 3: Good book for you too. Thank you so much, Elli.
Speaker 1: So ask idols questions of idiocy. I love Mary Roach.
Speaker 1: I love her work. There would be no ologies without her.
Speaker 1: An icon so thank you so much Mary for being
Speaker 1: on the show, and do pick up any of her books,
Speaker 1: including Replaceable You Adventures in Human Anatomy, which comes out
Speaker 1: today September sixteenth, twenty twenty five, and then collect them
Speaker 1: all stiff Spook bonk, packing for Mars, Gulp, grunt fuzz.
Speaker 3: They're all good.
Speaker 2: Also, don't get.
Speaker 1: Her confused with the Mary Roach who was on American Idol,
Speaker 1: but we will link this Mary Roach's books in the
Speaker 1: show notes. You can find them literally wherever books are sold.
Speaker 1: Every single one is phenomenal. Donations again went to Amputee
Speaker 1: Coalition and ostome dot org. And if you don't want
Speaker 1: to hear about having sex under the prying eyes of
Speaker 1: an ultrasound, we have Smologies episodes which are shorter their
Speaker 1: kid friendly editisologies. You can find those wherever you get
Speaker 1: podcasts or linked in the show notes. Join Patreon at
Speaker 1: patreon dot com slash Ologies where we are posting social
Speaker 1: content there called quips, including an exclusive tour of the
Speaker 1: bugs that I keep in my freezer. We are at
Speaker 1: Ologies on Blue Sky and Instagram. I'm at Ali Ward
Speaker 1: on both. Thank you Aaron Talbert, who admins Theologies podcast
Speaker 1: Facebook group Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Scheduling producer
Speaker 1: Noel Delaware scheduled this a few times. Thank you, Noel.
Speaker 1: Susan Hale is the irreplaceable managing director. Our mechanical breath
Speaker 1: of fresh air is Jake Chafe and bleeding beating heart.
Speaker 1: Mercedes Maitland is our lead editor. Nick Thorburn wrote the
Speaker 1: theme music. And if you stick around until the end
Speaker 1: of the episode, I burden you with a secret from
Speaker 1: my life. And this week it's that when I wrote
Speaker 1: an article for the Only Times in twenty ten covering
Speaker 1: packing for Mars, and I got a chance to interview Mary.
Speaker 1: Then I had a devil of a time turning the
Speaker 1: copy in.
Speaker 2: I was just in knots.
Speaker 1: I was terrified that someone I respected so much would
Speaker 1: read it and it would be trash. And after it
Speaker 1: was published, who wrote me a really nice note afterward?
Speaker 1: And I printed up that note and I kept it
Speaker 1: on my desk for my more anxious days. If you
Speaker 1: even remotely tolerate me, and you're not already in love
Speaker 1: with Mary Roach, you will be after one paragraph in
Speaker 1: one of her books, So enjoy okay for Pacadermatology Homeology
Speaker 1: R doo, zoology, lithology, technology, meteorology, paratology, apology, seriology.
Speaker 2: Selenology and gin drops into with your beating get value.
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