Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Talk Nerdy. Today is Monday,
Speaker 1: September fifteenth, twenty twenty five, and I'm the host of
Speaker 1: the show Doctor Kara Santa Maria. This week's episode is
Speaker 1: episode five hundred sixty eight. We're in our eleventh year,
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Speaker 1: This week's top patrons include Anuvadavaj, Chuck Blell, Daniel Lang,
Speaker 1: David J. E. Smith, Joseph Lemore, Mary Neiva, Brian Holden,
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Speaker 1: and Ulrika Hagman. Thank you all so much. All right,
Speaker 1: so what have we got for you today? Oh it's
Speaker 1: a good one. I had the opportunity once again to
Speaker 1: chat with my favorite living science writer. I say that
Speaker 1: later on the show, but it's true. It's so true.
Speaker 1: She's the author of diff, Spook, Bonk, Packing for Mars, Gulp,
Speaker 1: Grunt and Fuzz, and she has a new book out
Speaker 1: it's called Replaceable You Adventures in Human Anatomy. So, without
Speaker 1: any further ado, here she is Mary Roach. Well, Mary,
Speaker 1: it's always an honor to chat with you. I say
Speaker 1: this honestly that you are my favorite living science writer.
Speaker 2: I love that. I want to know who your favorite
Speaker 2: dead science writer is.
Speaker 1: That would be Oliver Sacks.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, that's stiff competition right there.
Speaker 1: He's brill Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And I will say that
Speaker 1: I know I am not alone in this it's not
Speaker 1: uncommon that I will have folks on the show who
Speaker 1: have a voice that is, you know, really authentic and
Speaker 1: kind of funny or like bitingly funny sometimes yet still
Speaker 1: really respectful and humanistic. And when I say, you know, oh,
Speaker 1: I was reading your book or I was looking at
Speaker 1: this passage and it kind of reminded me of Mary wrote,
Speaker 1: they always like, oh my god, what an honor an Oh,
Speaker 1: that's so nice. And so you've written several books, you
Speaker 1: have a new one out replaceable you what number is this? Now?
Speaker 2: This is number eight?
Speaker 1: Eight? Wow? Okay, I know, and.
Speaker 2: That's not counting. There's a collection of my old humor
Speaker 2: columns and Reader's Digest, which very few people ever see
Speaker 2: because it's only sold by Reader's Digest because they owned
Speaker 2: the right, So that isn't that one doesn't even appear.
Speaker 2: But I guess you could call that a book, but
Speaker 2: mostly eight, let's go with eight.
Speaker 1: Did you also or am I mixing this up? Did
Speaker 1: you also edit like a Best American science writing volume?
Speaker 2: I did? I thought so I did. Yeah, that was
Speaker 2: really fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love those books. They're so great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're so great, and it's just such a joy
Speaker 2: to edit one of those, because you discover these writers
Speaker 2: that have been out there doing their thing for publications
Speaker 2: that you just don't have time to check into, and
Speaker 2: you're like, Wow, this person's really good.
Speaker 1: That's honestly, That's why I love doing a podcast like this,
Speaker 1: because there are so many brilliant writers out there. There's
Speaker 1: so much rich content to get through. We'll never be
Speaker 1: able to read it all right, We'll always have huge
Speaker 1: gaps in our knowledge and our understanding just because there's
Speaker 1: so much to get through, and yet we're living in
Speaker 1: a culture now. I mean, I just covered this on
Speaker 1: the other podcast I work on, where college professors are
Speaker 1: largely reporting that they have students coming into their freshman
Speaker 1: level classes having never read a whole book in high school.
Speaker 2: I've heard that, and I've heard that professors are not
Speaker 2: a sign whole books just for that reason that it's
Speaker 2: more than the attention span can hold. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but that was kind of sad for me to see,
Speaker 2: just because I'm just somebody who loves to sink into
Speaker 2: a book and have that feeling of like, go away,
Speaker 2: don't bother me, I'm reading.
Speaker 1: I'm the same way. I love reading a book and
Speaker 1: really immersing myself in it. What I don't love though,
Speaker 1: and this is something I've been talking to my editor
Speaker 1: about actually even before my editor my agent about lately
Speaker 1: is I have yet to write my book because I
Speaker 1: love to have written, but I really struggle with the
Speaker 1: act of writing. But for somebody who's written as many
Speaker 1: volumes as you have, I'm curious, do you really enjoy
Speaker 1: sitting down and doing the work and writing the book
Speaker 1: or is it also a huge slog for you.
Speaker 2: It completely depends on how well the research has gone.
Speaker 2: If I have gone somewhere and witnessed and experienced really
Speaker 2: interesting fun things, and you know, brought these experiences and
Speaker 2: facts and things back and created this pile of material,
Speaker 2: it's actually very fun for me to get it down
Speaker 2: on the page. On the other hand, if I don't
Speaker 2: have a particularly good experience, or I feel like the
Speaker 2: material is a little flat and I'm kind of flogging
Speaker 2: the dead horse, you know, I don't enjoy that. That's
Speaker 2: a struggle and I have to think, you know, do
Speaker 2: I just skip this chapter, do I try to breathe
Speaker 2: life into it? What do I do? So that's not fun,
Speaker 2: But so really it's just up to me to get
Speaker 2: myself into scenarios and labs and places where I'm going
Speaker 2: to have really interesting material that's going to be fun
Speaker 2: to write up.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, And I can imagine that a fair
Speaker 1: amount of that has to do with the subject matter itself,
Speaker 1: but I can also imagine that a big proportion of
Speaker 1: that is just the I don't know the personalities of
Speaker 1: the people that you have the opportunity to meet when
Speaker 1: you're doing your reporting.
Speaker 2: Oh eight hundred percent, it does. And I don't know
Speaker 2: till I get there what that personality is going to be.
Speaker 2: All I know about this person is based on a
Speaker 2: couple emails back and forth, me going that sounds interesting,
Speaker 2: Could I come to your lab or your facility or
Speaker 2: wherever I'm going? And then I get there and it's
Speaker 2: just sort of luck of the draw. Fortunately. The kind
Speaker 2: of person who says yes to me, like yes, you
Speaker 2: can come, follow me around like a puppy for two days,
Speaker 2: ask me all kinds of simplistic questions, and I'm fine
Speaker 2: with that. That kind of person's usually pretty great to
Speaker 2: hang out with, and you do, I am able to
Speaker 2: get a sense of their work from you know, what
Speaker 2: I can find online and what I what I'm able
Speaker 2: to dig up, so I you know, I have a
Speaker 2: pretty good chance of hitting something that's going to be
Speaker 2: pretty interesting. But the personality is just it's kind of
Speaker 2: a wild card, which I enjoy. I enjoy getting there
Speaker 2: and realizing, oh, this person is And they're all over
Speaker 2: the map. Some of them are deeply immersed in something
Speaker 2: really obscure and not necessarily you know, a charismatic, chatty person,
Speaker 2: but just so lovely because of their passion for this
Speaker 2: very specific Like a guy in the Netherlands who studies
Speaker 2: the mechanics of chewing food, you know, and there's just
Speaker 2: he's studied it for decades and he had all this
Speaker 2: equipment and I was just I was just so delighted
Speaker 2: to spend a day with him. And so it's all
Speaker 2: over the map. But it's really rare that I go
Speaker 2: somewhere and realize, you know, what this is not come
Speaker 2: into life at all. And sometimes, you you know, there
Speaker 2: have been times, mostly working for magazines, where I've just
Speaker 2: had to kind of back out. I just don't have
Speaker 2: anything to work with.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, I'm so curious about your process, and I'm
Speaker 1: probably going to focus on that a little bit here
Speaker 1: at the top but you know, you've been doing this
Speaker 1: for a long time, and you're you are a well
Speaker 1: known science writer. At this point, I can imagine that
Speaker 1: you know scientists, I know them, I love them, I
Speaker 1: am one my friends are scientists. Were a weird bunch.
Speaker 1: I can imagine that some of the folks that you
Speaker 1: go interview just never get outside of their own field,
Speaker 1: don't read, you know, trade publications at all, are you know,
Speaker 1: steep just in the literature and maybe haven't read your work,
Speaker 1: but that a fair amount of them probably have. Do
Speaker 1: you think it's been easier or more difficult to get
Speaker 1: into labs having done this for a long time now?
Speaker 1: Because I say this with the caveat that a lot
Speaker 1: of scientists have a fear around talking to journalists, reporters, writers,
Speaker 1: because they have a fear of being misrepresented, taken out
Speaker 1: of contacts, their work being you know, described in a
Speaker 1: way that they don't have control over. And now we're
Speaker 1: living in a you know, society and a culture that's
Speaker 1: like actually, polls tell us it's not that distrustful of scientists,
Speaker 1: but the rhetoric at least coming out of of you know,
Speaker 1: the white houses, that you should be distouchabule of scientists.
Speaker 1: Do you find that things have changed recently?
Speaker 2: Yes, but that has partly to do with the subject
Speaker 2: of this book and the fact that I was approaching
Speaker 2: some a number of biotech companies, and I think in
Speaker 2: general they are very wary and they have a model
Speaker 2: of communications which is essentially one way, like here is
Speaker 2: a prescott, here is video, here's what we're going to
Speaker 2: give you to work with. So they're not, as a rule,
Speaker 2: inviting people to come hang out, which is what I
Speaker 2: always want to die. I want to just hang out.
Speaker 2: I don't know exactly where things are going to go.
Speaker 2: I just want to spend and at least an afternoon there,
Speaker 2: preferably more like a day, and that that is often
Speaker 2: not okay. In this book, I went all the way
Speaker 2: to Chungdu, China to report on zeno transplantation using pig
Speaker 2: organs because two of the two companies here in the
Speaker 2: United States, E Genesis and United Therapeutics, were there were
Speaker 2: very hospitable. Initially, they were familiar with my work and
Speaker 2: they said, yeah, let's get on a zoom, let's bring
Speaker 2: in the CEO, let's talk about it. And I thought
Speaker 2: it went really well, and then one of them ghosted me,
Speaker 2: and the other one just said, you know, sometimes I
Speaker 2: think it's let's you know, they say, let's talk to
Speaker 2: the legal the legal team, and then I just at
Speaker 2: that point, I know where things are heading. And I
Speaker 2: don't blame them. I mean, they, like you said, they
Speaker 2: have no control over what I'm going to say, what
Speaker 2: I'm going to focus on, the tone that I'm going
Speaker 2: to take, what I might see when I'm there, and
Speaker 2: who I might talk to about it. So of course
Speaker 2: there's every reason for them to say no, and I
Speaker 2: get that. But to answer your question, it has in
Speaker 2: that sense become harder. And I think there's just more
Speaker 2: concern in general about what's going to get out on
Speaker 2: social media. What am I exposing myself to, What's going
Speaker 2: to be taken out of context from her book or
Speaker 2: her reporting, and that's going to go online and go viral,
Speaker 2: and why shouldn't we say no? So, yeah, it has
Speaker 2: gotten harder in that sense. I'm happy to fly to Chungdu,
Speaker 2: China and talk to people there, and they were lovely
Speaker 2: and they were willing to host me. So there's always
Speaker 2: there are always workarounds for me. But yes, it's gotten
Speaker 2: in general it. People knowing who I am has made
Speaker 2: it easier. For example, I spent time in Kansas City
Speaker 2: with a man whose wife had been in an iron
Speaker 2: lung and you know, from the polio era, and she
Speaker 2: had recently died, and I actually wanted to try the
Speaker 2: iron lung. It's a working iron lung. Now, if I
Speaker 2: had just contacted him out of the blue and he'd
Speaker 2: never heard of me or known my work, I think
Speaker 2: it would have seemed kind of creepy. But he was
Speaker 2: familiar with my work and he was it was like, absolutely,
Speaker 2: come out here, that'd be great. And so that tends
Speaker 2: to happen, you know. And if somebody's familiar with what
Speaker 2: I do and they like the books, they'll go to
Speaker 2: bat for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And I've had that happened where the researcher has had
Speaker 2: to overrule the public affairs people. That happened in this
Speaker 2: book at the extra corporeal Life support lab where they
Speaker 2: were sort of trying to create long life organs for transplant,
Speaker 2: and the public affairs people eventually just stopped responding to me.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if they said no or they
Speaker 2: just ghosted me. But I contacted the researcher. I'm like,
Speaker 2: what is like, I don't understand what happened here? And
Speaker 2: he said, look, come out here, it's my lab. We'll
Speaker 2: talk in my office and then we'll walk across the
Speaker 2: hall to the lab, and that's what we're going to do.
Speaker 2: And I got there and I said, so what happened?
Speaker 2: Why why did they why did they try to block this?
Speaker 2: And he said, well, because because it's animal research and
Speaker 2: they have this idea that me Mary Roach, I'm an
Speaker 2: animal rights fanatic really because there were animals in my
Speaker 2: last book, there was wildlife and is that why? I mean,
Speaker 2: but anybody who's got a facility with animals that are
Speaker 2: being used in research is going to be very very cautious.
Speaker 2: And I get that, but that was hilarious.
Speaker 1: It's a tough Yeah. I worked in an animal lab
Speaker 1: and my you know, my professor was always very cautious
Speaker 1: about how we spoke and who we spoke to. I've
Speaker 1: interviewed people especially. I think about the times when I've
Speaker 1: interviewed people at like JPL or NASA HQ, where there's
Speaker 1: like a a press person sitting right behind the camp,
Speaker 1: you know, like nodding vigorously or being like we can't
Speaker 1: use that. Yes, it's like oh god, oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. No, the NASA, I know, I did a
Speaker 2: whole packing for Mars was all based on NASA, well
Speaker 2: also Foreign Agent Space agencies. But yeah, every phone call
Speaker 2: and every in person interview there was someone from Public Affairs. Fortunately,
Speaker 2: as far as I could tell, they were sort of
Speaker 2: absorbed in catching up on their email and.
Speaker 1: Texts saying oh that's so funny. Yeah, same thing. They
Speaker 1: were doing ten things at once, so they weren't really
Speaker 1: paying attention.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they weren't particularly worried. I mean, I mean, if
Speaker 2: they're familiar with my work, they they know it's not
Speaker 2: It's not some sort of weird expose that I'm chasing, you.
Speaker 1: Know, right, And I think that's the fear for for
Speaker 1: a lot of these folks, that they're sort of trained
Speaker 1: in a cover of your ass model and you know,
Speaker 1: better safe than sorry. But I can imagine that that
Speaker 1: can be frustrating when you're just trying to get to
Speaker 1: these kernels of I don't know of humanity, and that's
Speaker 1: really the thing that comes through with all of your writing.
Speaker 1: I look back to Stiff, which is the book that
Speaker 1: I recommend to everybody you know who hasn't read your
Speaker 1: work to start with, I myself am a psychologist who
Speaker 1: works an end of life. And I think between Stiff
Speaker 1: and some Oliver Sacks work and then some like a
Speaker 1: Tool Gowandah and a few other writers, I got really
Speaker 1: interested in death and in trying to take away the
Speaker 1: taboo around death, to bring it into the light. And
Speaker 1: I think what you did so brilliantly and Stiff, and
Speaker 1: you've repeated it in every book that you've done, which
Speaker 1: makes me think it's just your personality. Your writing style
Speaker 1: is you get just up to that line of it
Speaker 1: being really caustically funny, but you never are exploitative or offensive.
Speaker 1: It's always still really respectful of the humanity of the
Speaker 1: whether we're talking about cadavers or whether we're talking about
Speaker 1: living people who are working in these fields.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think that comes from the
Speaker 2: terror that I had when I wrote Stiff, of getting
Speaker 2: it right, of being my usual kind of Braddy cavalier
Speaker 2: curious self, but also not offending somebody who might have
Speaker 2: lost a loved one recently, or somebody in the industry,
Speaker 2: somebody who I interviewed. I try to put if I
Speaker 2: make fun of anybody, it should be me because often
Speaker 2: I am the clueless outsider, and so that's a source
Speaker 2: of or can be a source of humor. But that
Speaker 2: was definitely true for Stiff and for Grunt as well
Speaker 2: for some of the folks that I interviewed, you know,
Speaker 2: in the in the military science realm, they do really heroic,
Speaker 2: hard stuff. You know, it was a book about keeping
Speaker 2: people alive, not killing people, and it was and I
Speaker 2: would never want to disrespect or offend those folks. But
Speaker 2: the on the other hand, things happen that are funny
Speaker 2: or weird or surreal, and I want to I want
Speaker 2: to bring that in because it's just it's how it is.
Speaker 2: It's that's life people, absolutely or you know this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, both, Well, you can't have one without the other, kid,
Speaker 1: And I think about your new book, Replaceable you it's
Speaker 1: also about keeping people alive. Really like, isn't that kind
Speaker 1: of one of the core uh sure? Yeah. Thesis statement
Speaker 1: here is I was trying to describe it to some
Speaker 1: of my friends who haven't had the opportunity to read
Speaker 1: it yet. You know, Adventures in Human Anatomy is the subtitle, which, yes,
Speaker 1: the book is all about all these different aspects of
Speaker 1: human anatomy, but and replaceable you I think captures it
Speaker 1: a little bit better. All the different ways that scientists
Speaker 1: and biomedical sciences, like you know, physicians work to extend,
Speaker 1: augment improve the experience for people on this planet who
Speaker 1: either were born with or unfortunately had some sort of
Speaker 1: experience that prevented them from having a I guess fully
Speaker 1: healthy limb or organ or whatever, you know, something that's
Speaker 1: that would have shortened their lives or would have made
Speaker 1: their lives their quality of life go down. We live
Speaker 1: in a very modern time and there are a lot
Speaker 1: of really cool things happening to help us live longer, healthier,
Speaker 1: and more functional. I guess we could say lives. And
Speaker 1: you're you really do your reporting right on that edge, right,
Speaker 1: It's not so much oh, this is all this stuff
Speaker 1: already doing. It's a lot of this is right where
Speaker 1: we're about to be. Right.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating, right exactly. And it's really I'm always interested
Speaker 2: in the human elements of it, you know. You know,
Speaker 2: it's people tend to think, oh, this is a book
Speaker 2: about Oh, it's about prosthetic limbs. It's like, no, it's not.
Speaker 2: I'm not writing about the mechanics and the engineering of
Speaker 2: mechanical body parts. It's more like in the case of
Speaker 2: prosthetic limbs, it's about to chap. The chapter is about
Speaker 2: elective amputation, which is I taught I met this woman
Speaker 2: who she had a foot, that it was a healthy
Speaker 2: foot in the sense of getting a blood supply and
Speaker 2: you know, not being compromised in that way, but it
Speaker 2: was twisted. It didn't enable her to move the way
Speaker 2: she wanted to, to hike or run or jump. And
Speaker 2: she would see people who had a prosthetic foot who
Speaker 2: were able to do these things, and she wanted it off,
Speaker 2: she wanted it cut off, and she couldn't find a
Speaker 2: surgeon to do that, and she It's an elective amputation,
Speaker 2: is what the chapter is about. And it's a really
Speaker 2: it's an interesting conundrum because there is this bias for
Speaker 2: wholeness and for hanging on to the pieces that we
Speaker 2: started out with, even to the point where our lives,
Speaker 2: you know, are could be better with something else. And
Speaker 2: how do you get somebody to that point, or how
Speaker 2: does somebody get a surgeon to that point? How do
Speaker 2: you find a surgeon who's willing to do that given
Speaker 2: the worries about liability or phantom pain or will the
Speaker 2: person get insurance reimbursement for that. You know, there's so
Speaker 2: so it is a book about these technologies, but it's
Speaker 2: very much not about the technology completely, you know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying, it's it's it's the people who are involved
Speaker 2: in it and the challenges because it's not easy. You tend
Speaker 2: to see a lot of hype online about you know, pressroom.
Speaker 2: You know, it partly comes out of you know, startups
Speaker 2: need to get funding, so they tend to kind of
Speaker 2: overstate what they're doing and what they're going to be
Speaker 2: able to do. They have to get the funding and
Speaker 2: then hopefully they can deliver that, but often it turns
Speaker 2: out the body's a little more complicated than they thought,
Speaker 2: or just you know, you can get their part way,
Speaker 2: but technology has shifted and now there's a better option.
Speaker 2: So things are changing all the time, and it makes
Speaker 2: it challenging for the people who do this work, and
Speaker 2: now especially challenging given the cuts to funding and the
Speaker 2: disruption that that causes to someone's career and to the
Speaker 2: functioning of a lab that's depending on a long term
Speaker 2: contract that's already been signed that might be taken away.
Speaker 1: And all of the potential outcomes to the perspective patience
Speaker 1: downstream from that. Yep, it's you know, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of things that I encountered in this book that
Speaker 1: and I consider myself a relatively well informed I'm an
Speaker 1: allied health professional, meaning I'm sort of have one foot
Speaker 1: in this camp. But I'm not myself a biomedical scientist
Speaker 1: or a physician. I'm a psychologist who works in a hospital,
Speaker 1: in a cancer center, and so I am near to
Speaker 1: a lot of medical stuff, and I work with patients
Speaker 1: who are going through a lot of medical stuff, but
Speaker 1: my focus is of course on their psychological well being,
Speaker 1: their quality of life. Things like that, And a couple
Speaker 1: things came up for me as I was reading your book.
Speaker 1: The one was the parallel that I often see because
Speaker 1: I work an end of life quite often between the
Speaker 1: decision to elect, for example, for medical aid and dying
Speaker 1: versus the decision to die quote naturally, which like, what
Speaker 1: does that even mean? And I see a lot of
Speaker 1: parallels with the elective amputation question, this idea of the
Speaker 1: person knowing what's best for themselves, but the entire app
Speaker 1: or saying don't think so we're going to make it
Speaker 1: really difficult for you to have those empowered decisions. And
Speaker 1: I just kept seeing themes over and over when I
Speaker 1: was reading about that woman and the other thing that
Speaker 1: came up for me. Okay, there's two things I learned.
Speaker 1: I learned a lot, but there are two things that
Speaker 1: stick out that I learned that I tell everybody. The
Speaker 1: first one was, I had no idea how quickly an
Speaker 1: individual who has experienced brain death but is on a
Speaker 1: heart lung machine, how quickly things, very bad things start
Speaker 1: to happen to their body, and how minimal the amount
Speaker 1: of time that they can stay on heart lung is
Speaker 1: before those organs have to be transplanted. I guess I
Speaker 1: just always assumed me too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, I assumed that if you had the blood
Speaker 2: pumping through the body to the organs, that you could
Speaker 2: basically keep someone on there indefinitely.
Speaker 1: Because we hear stories about that, right, we hear stories
Speaker 1: about people in comas. I guess, but they're still alive.
Speaker 2: There's still enough functioning, there's still a brain, there's the
Speaker 2: brain stem, right, mm hmm. I mean you're in a coma.
Speaker 2: I mean, once you're dead, you're brain dead, You're dead,
Speaker 2: there's a machine that's taking over the circulation of the blood.
Speaker 2: But you know, for someone in a coma, the brain
Speaker 2: is the brain is still functioning and that and there.
Speaker 2: It was so interesting talking to doctor Bob Bartlett, who's
Speaker 2: the person who pioneered Echmo, which is the heart lung
Speaker 2: machine that keeps people going. You know, in surgery heart surgery,
Speaker 2: you can you know, take to sort of work on
Speaker 2: the heart because you have this machine that's pumping the blood.
Speaker 2: But he told me this about this this fascinating effect
Speaker 2: of essentially organs need a brain, they need a functioning brain.
Speaker 2: So if you know, if you have a fetus, there
Speaker 2: was a he talked about there's you know, an acepholic
Speaker 2: you know, a fetus that doesn't have a brain, but
Speaker 2: the the mother's the or who the mother's brain is,
Speaker 2: is functioning as the brain. And there's something some kind
Speaker 2: of hormone secreted that is keeping that fetus alive. And
Speaker 2: once it's delivered, then it dies and vice versa. They've
Speaker 2: had a brain a pregnant person who is brain dead.
Speaker 2: That that that that the fetus would keep those organs
Speaker 2: viable much longer than they would on a heart lung
Speaker 2: type of you know, a ventilator.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're sort of borrowing each other's by I mean,
Speaker 1: of course we know they do that with nutrition and
Speaker 1: everything else, sure, but even borrowing the biology of the
Speaker 1: brain during that pregnancy is that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he was hypothesizing a hormone that he doesn't
Speaker 2: know what it is. It's a hypothetical hormone. He's given
Speaker 2: it a name, Vitalin and which is in the UK
Speaker 2: a pet food brand, but who cares about that? Well, so, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a hypothetical hormone. It hasn't been discovered, but he
Speaker 2: believes there's something in that the brain is secreting and
Speaker 2: the organs need that, like the heart needs a brain,
Speaker 2: which was fascinating, especially when you're talking about this concept
Speaker 2: of replacing individual parts, that the human body is a system.
Speaker 2: It's a machine, and a lot of interconnections that might
Speaker 2: not be that well understood that complicate things when your
Speaker 2: goal is to just replace one part. This idea of
Speaker 2: the body having these sort of invisible threads kind of
Speaker 2: linking things and depending on things complicates matters.
Speaker 1: And that's such an important visualization because yes, you can't
Speaker 1: just take out a piece and plug in a new
Speaker 1: piece and hope, Like, there are situations where the body
Speaker 1: just sort of makes up for it, and there are
Speaker 1: other situations where there's like a catastrophic downstream problem from that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we were talking about what happens when somebody's
Speaker 1: brain is no longer functioning, but even when their brains
Speaker 1: are functioning on echmo. I remember seeing a patient in
Speaker 1: the hospital where I work who had pretty traumatic injuries
Speaker 1: was on echmo for an extended period of time. He
Speaker 1: had ultimately lost all of his fingers, and it's because
Speaker 1: just the way that the echmo machine was working to
Speaker 1: perfuse all his tissues to make sure that the blood
Speaker 1: flow was there. It's just not as good as if
Speaker 1: your heart and your lungs are working with all the
Speaker 1: feedback mechanisms that your brain is telling them to do.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah yeah. And in his lab, they were
Speaker 2: looking at ways to keep organs alive or usable for
Speaker 2: transplantation longer. And you know, he's talking about those heart
Speaker 2: in a box systems where you're not just putting the
Speaker 2: heart on ice, you're perfusing it with blood, you're keeping
Speaker 2: it nourished. But he said, you know, even then, you know,
Speaker 2: you get eight twelve hours, because what happens they pushed
Speaker 2: the blood flow through at a pretty high rate and
Speaker 2: it starts to damage the valves and then the valves
Speaker 2: get leaky and this whole kind of cascade of deterioration happens.
Speaker 2: So they were looking at, can we lower the blood
Speaker 2: flow or use slightly different fluids to protect the valves,
Speaker 2: keep it, you know, keep the heart nourished, but extend
Speaker 2: it to twenty four or forty eight hours, which would
Speaker 2: mean now you can test that heart, you might be
Speaker 2: able to fix it if there's something wrong there. So
Speaker 2: that would you know, increase the number of organs available
Speaker 2: for transplant. So it's pretty cool what they were doing.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you just think, well, you've got a blood supply,
Speaker 2: your good. It's like, well, what's the flow rate and
Speaker 2: what's that doing to the walls of the vessels and
Speaker 2: the valves, And you know, it's just never simple.
Speaker 1: No, it's definitely never simple, And I think it is
Speaker 1: hard to understand that until you've either had a loved
Speaker 1: one who is under on an extreme transplantation like heart
Speaker 1: is probably the most extreme. It's why, again, working in
Speaker 1: a hospital, the highest sort of standards for whether or
Speaker 1: not somebody is like I guess approved to be on
Speaker 1: the transplant list exists for heart because somebody has to
Speaker 1: die in order for a heart to be present, right,
Speaker 1: It's different with kidney, even liver sometimes it's different and
Speaker 1: so that the barriers are much lower for those. But
Speaker 1: with a heart, like, it's a really big deal, and
Speaker 1: it's horrifying when you've been working with somebody who's been
Speaker 1: awaiting a heart and they finally are told that the
Speaker 1: heart's coming and then for whatever reason they don't get
Speaker 1: it that day, or for whatever reason they do get
Speaker 1: it and then they've reject it or there's some sort
Speaker 1: of problem.
Speaker 2: It's never easy, Yeah, and it's frustrating for you know,
Speaker 2: the people who've been doing work with Zeno transplantation using
Speaker 2: gene edited pigs pig hearts. The people that have received
Speaker 2: one so far, they've been in a position where they're
Speaker 2: only going to likely live a few more weeks. So
Speaker 2: they're kind of the last person you'd want to be
Speaker 2: experimenting trying out this new transplant technique. But because of
Speaker 2: the you know, because this hasn't been the hearts haven't
Speaker 2: been approved. It's done on a compassionate care exemption, so
Speaker 2: and they live like two months and that sounds horrible,
Speaker 2: but they were in pretty bad shape to start out with.
Speaker 2: So now there is a guy I think Tim Andrews
Speaker 2: is his name, and I think he's coming up on
Speaker 2: eight months with a Oh maybe it's a kidney not
Speaker 2: a heart, but anyway.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's incredible, but it also, yeah, it
Speaker 1: goes to show that sort of human I think it's
Speaker 1: twofold really, because I see this a lot with cancer
Speaker 1: patients that are nearing end of life. There's the one
Speaker 1: thing that's like, Okay, if there's an option available, I'm
Speaker 1: going to do it for my family, for myself, for whatever,
Speaker 1: especially those who still have the energy and who have
Speaker 1: not grown as weary of all of the treatments. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try. But I think there's this secondary
Speaker 1: thing And I saw this when I was doing my
Speaker 1: dissertation where I interviewed I interviewed one person on the
Speaker 1: last day of his life before he took the made drugs,
Speaker 1: where there's this deep passion for if I can help somebody.
Speaker 1: I know that I'm going to die of this disease.
Speaker 1: I know that this heart or kidney is only going
Speaker 1: to give me a few extra months, but maybe this
Speaker 1: research will help somebody else live a lot longer, right,
Speaker 1: And what a beautiful thing to do in your last days, weeks, months.
Speaker 2: Right, exactly. And that may have been part of why
Speaker 2: these folks agreed to receive that Zeno transplant.
Speaker 1: You know they must have undergoing major surgery is intense
Speaker 1: in your last.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there was a hope, of course, there's
Speaker 2: a hope that in the two months that they give them,
Speaker 2: or whatever they expected it to give them, they might
Speaker 2: make their way up the list. I mean unlikely, and
Speaker 2: I think those folks are pretty far gone seems like
Speaker 2: the wrong way to say it, but near to death
Speaker 2: that it probably wasn't a realistic likelihood. But you never know.
Speaker 2: I mean, at that point, no one knew how long
Speaker 2: these pig organs would keep working. You know, they started
Speaker 2: out working pretty well well.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing too. There will be a point
Speaker 1: in time where we get there and where people can
Speaker 1: live with these with these animal organs, with these you know,
Speaker 1: transplants in a reasonable way, and who knows who's going
Speaker 1: to be the person who is living at that moment
Speaker 1: when we switch over from rejection to non rejection, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, we make a huge leap right, and people
Speaker 2: have been living with pig valves for decades, you know.
Speaker 2: That is to say, the technology and the availability has
Speaker 2: been there for I don't know how many decades. But
Speaker 2: so it's not inconceivable that the gene but it will
Speaker 2: create a heart that won't just be a bridge. It'll
Speaker 2: actually be a functioning, long lasting replacement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, not to do a complete left turn.
Speaker 1: But I mentioned that there are two things that I
Speaker 1: often bring up to people where I'm like, I had
Speaker 1: no idea. I mean, there's I learned so much, but
Speaker 1: these two are I just tell them to everybody who
Speaker 1: will listen. The first one was you know what we
Speaker 1: just talked about, And the second I think it's because
Speaker 1: we love confirmation bias, and we love things that reinforce,
Speaker 1: like ideologies and ways of thinking that have already been
Speaker 1: developed or that continue to develop in our lives. But
Speaker 1: when I read the chapter where you talk about trans
Speaker 1: affirming surgery, which this is also just like deeply relevant
Speaker 1: right now, I mean, our local children's hospital just lost
Speaker 1: all of their funding here in LA for their trans
Speaker 1: affirming you know division, because whatever, well we're going to
Speaker 1: put that on the shelf. But the thing that really
Speaker 1: stuck with me was this deeply patriarchal male bias where
Speaker 1: male surgeons were giving trans men penises that were too big. Yeah,
Speaker 1: penises that they don't like. Not only do I not
Speaker 1: want to deal with this thing like wielding it around,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, difficult, but also now when I
Speaker 1: engage in any sort of sexual relations, my partners aren't comfortable.
Speaker 1: I'm not comfortable, and it's like ask any woman and
Speaker 1: they would have been like, uh huh.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly exactly. And and the surgeon who I had
Speaker 2: dinner with, who's the director of the Cedar Sinai Transgender
Speaker 2: Surgery and Health Clinic, Uh, he's a he's a hetero male,
Speaker 2: but he's he was he was saying. He said, you know,
Speaker 2: it's he gets pushback from other surgeons and he gets
Speaker 2: patients who come to him saying, look, uh like what
Speaker 2: you just described this thing is is two big to use.
Speaker 2: And I didn't ask for it, he said, sometimes there
Speaker 2: is a tendency for trans men to ask for something
Speaker 2: bigger initially. Well, and he said, so he said, you know,
Speaker 2: we always try to involve the partner if there's a
Speaker 2: long term partner that we also we encourage them to
Speaker 2: include this person in the decision. But but yeah, he's like,
Speaker 2: they've I've had patients. I mean, I don't know how many.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's widespread, but he's had patients come
Speaker 2: to him say this thing's too big. You know that
Speaker 2: the surgeon did this, you know, And he said, there
Speaker 2: was the sense of the surgeon kind of you know,
Speaker 2: patting himself on the bag. Look what I'm made.
Speaker 1: And the thing is that just like it does not
Speaker 1: surprise me in the.
Speaker 2: Least, no, I know. Also and also talking about trans women,
Speaker 2: you know, he's he was saying, there's two surgeries. There's
Speaker 2: vaginoplasty and involve a plasty. And he's like, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're going to have problems, it's going to be
Speaker 2: with the vaginoplasty. So if you're not if you're not
Speaker 2: interested in penetration, if you're not that interested in sex
Speaker 2: at all, if you you know, there may be it
Speaker 2: may be just evolve a plasty is fine. He said.
Speaker 2: You know, people want to look normal when they look
Speaker 2: down there. They don't want to look at a penis.
Speaker 2: They want they want to look the way they want
Speaker 2: to look and we can do that really well. And
Speaker 2: you know, so let me know, do you want do
Speaker 2: you need a vagina? Are you okay with anal sex?
Speaker 2: Do you tell me what you your life is like
Speaker 2: and what you want, because that's going to be a
Speaker 2: little trickier to do, so you know, you've got to
Speaker 2: be dilating it. And in the case of the procedure
Speaker 2: he was talking about, there's some we don't need to
Speaker 2: get into that, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in fiction, risks and things right like a lot.
Speaker 2: Well in a need, well he's talking about it's sort
Speaker 2: of a secondary procedure if the first operation didn't work, well,
Speaker 2: they can use a sex one of the of the
Speaker 2: intestine with its blood supply intact. So there's various things
Speaker 2: that are related to that that can be a little challenging.
Speaker 1: But anyway, yeah, let's not assume that that's what everybody,
Speaker 1: that every trans woman is interested in having a sort
Speaker 1: of like near two cis presentation, like that's not like
Speaker 1: there's not one way to be trans.
Speaker 2: Right, Penetration isn't everything. So if you know, it's kind
Speaker 2: of similar to the way that for many decades women
Speaker 2: who had masdectomies I don't think we're regularly told, you know,
Speaker 2: you could just go flat far far It's far simpler,
Speaker 2: fewer complications. It's your choice. But this is an option,
Speaker 2: and you just I mean that is now I think
Speaker 2: what I mean, I don't know because I haven't talked
Speaker 2: to patients or dark about that, but my sense is
Speaker 2: there's been enough talk about it online. And also tig
Speaker 2: Nataro did that famous monologue one person show with her
Speaker 2: top off anyway, Yeah she's a comedian, but it was
Speaker 2: a brilliant and sort of very courageous yeah monologue. So
Speaker 2: but yeah, I don't get the sense that it was
Speaker 2: sort of presented as an option for a long time.
Speaker 1: It wasn't. And I remembered just recently reading because these
Speaker 1: are the patients that I work with regularly, so I'm
Speaker 1: always trying to read things from the perspective of individuals
Speaker 1: who have sort of been there before. Reading Audrey Lord's
Speaker 1: book about how traumatic her experience was, where they just
Speaker 1: sort of came in her room with the full assumption
Speaker 1: that she was going to want to have surgery, or
Speaker 1: that she needed to wear a prosthesis, or here are
Speaker 1: the pads to make them look even here all that
Speaker 1: she's like, would you want to ask me what I
Speaker 1: want to do? Like, maybe I want to wear this
Speaker 1: as a badge of like having gone through this. Maybe
Speaker 1: I exactly one breast, you know, maybe I don't want
Speaker 1: to pros thesis. Yeah, And you don't know until you
Speaker 1: really talk to somebody. And I think as a as
Speaker 1: a mental health professional, I see the outcomes very often
Speaker 1: of the lack of those kinds of I mean that
Speaker 1: goes back to the medical aid and dying thing too.
Speaker 1: Even to this day, I see people who never even
Speaker 1: know that that's an option for them. Yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: just too I guess taboo, or it's the practitioners themselves
Speaker 1: haven't worked with their own comfort level about these things. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I in general, our medical system doesn't prioritize community
Speaker 2: good communication, not just about options, but about the realities
Speaker 2: of what this is going to be like to recover
Speaker 2: from a say, a double mess. Deec to me, well,
Speaker 2: it just just tell me the facts and let me
Speaker 2: my get my mind, let me let me decide what
Speaker 2: I want.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I see I see all the time with patients
Speaker 1: who when I ask them, well, what's your prognosis? You know,
Speaker 1: they'll say I'm stage four. I'm at this place in
Speaker 1: my treatment. You know, I've had three chemos that failed
Speaker 1: and now I'm on a trial and I'll say, do
Speaker 1: you know what your prognosis is? And they'll say, oh,
Speaker 1: my doctor tells me that they don't have a crystal ball,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, no, no, no, no, they have prognostic tools. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have the right and they don't have a crystal ball,
Speaker 1: but they can plug a bunch of stuff into a
Speaker 1: calculator and tell you that other people with these different
Speaker 1: you know, variables live on average from this time until
Speaker 1: this time with and without treatment. But yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 1: It's a hard thing to talk about. And you do
Speaker 1: that in your work across your books, as you talk
Speaker 1: about hard things, and as you kind of mentioned before,
Speaker 1: there's sort of a selection bias in that there's you.
Speaker 1: You tend to find people who are willing to talk
Speaker 1: about those hard things with you, which I absolutely love.
Speaker 1: Do you find sometimes that you have to break them
Speaker 1: open a little bit, or or do you tend to
Speaker 1: connect with people who are just like I think to.
Speaker 2: Show I think that the process kind of self selects
Speaker 2: that kind of person, because the con person who doesn't
Speaker 2: want to talk openly about what they do with an
Speaker 2: outsider is probably just not going to answer my email.
Speaker 2: And I get a fair number of emails. I would
Speaker 2: say forty percent of the emails I send out don't
Speaker 2: get a reply. Yeah, and part of that is that
Speaker 2: people don't look at email all the time anymore. But
Speaker 2: I think it's often that the people who do reply
Speaker 2: are open and confident and comfortable about what they do
Speaker 2: and the realities and of it. So, yeah, breaking somebody open,
Speaker 2: that's rare. A part of it, too, is I spend
Speaker 2: I try to spend at least half a day, preferably
Speaker 2: one or two days with somebody, and I think that
Speaker 2: they get a feeling for what I'm trying to do
Speaker 2: and who I am and what you know. And the
Speaker 2: other thing that I do is I always send a
Speaker 2: book to someone initially so they have a sense of
Speaker 2: what I do. So if they're uncomfortable with the tone
Speaker 2: and they want to say no, that's fine. But usually
Speaker 2: I think it is reassuring, like they see it and
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, well, this is I could see myself
Speaker 2: profiled in this book and that could be fun, good, whatever.
Speaker 2: So I don't think it's usually not necessary. You know
Speaker 2: that over the course of an afternoon or a day
Speaker 2: or even two days, people are fine talking about the
Speaker 2: nuances and some of the less comfortable aspects of it,
Speaker 2: I think, And also I just I don't know. If
Speaker 2: you ask somebody in a straightforward way, they tend to
Speaker 2: answer in a pretty straightforward way, unless, of course, they're
Speaker 2: in the public affairs office.
Speaker 1: What about the flip side of that question, have you
Speaker 1: found because you, yes, you interview professionals within their fields.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're you know, maybe let's say a little on
Speaker 1: the spectrum or or you know, in just very like
Speaker 1: deeply narrowly focused on, as you mentioned before, one really
Speaker 1: interesting but kind of obscure thing. But you also very
Speaker 1: often will profile and interview the people who have the
Speaker 1: lived experiences, you know, sort of the applied side of
Speaker 1: the research, like the man whose wife died and who
Speaker 1: had the iron lung. Has anybody ever opened you up
Speaker 1: in a way that you didn't expect?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, Every now and then I go to talk
Speaker 2: to someone and the example that you give an example
Speaker 2: from this book, which is the man whose wife had
Speaker 2: been using an iron lung to sleep in for many
Speaker 2: years and who had recently died, and I was you know,
Speaker 2: I was porting about the science was negative pressure breathing
Speaker 2: versus positive pressure breathing. You know, the kind of ventilators
Speaker 2: that are in ICUs now versus iron lungs, which is
Speaker 2: a gentler form of ventilation. It's actually akin to what
Speaker 2: our bodies do. So I'm kind of caught up in
Speaker 2: like the like the iron, like how iron lungs work,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And I show up and here's this man
Speaker 2: who is still very much grieving the loss of his
Speaker 2: wife and really wanted to tell her story in a
Speaker 2: lot of detail, and actually gave me a print out
Speaker 2: of some ten pages about her life and how they met,
Speaker 2: and so I, you know, what I thought I was doing,
Speaker 2: had to kind of scoot over and make room for
Speaker 2: his story. And I think it makes that made the
Speaker 2: chapter better, you know, I mean it still is. You know.
Speaker 2: I knew that I wanted to try this iron lung
Speaker 2: and that that would be an interesting and surreal experience,
Speaker 2: but I wanted to incorporate Mark and Mona into that
Speaker 2: chapter two, So I think it's great when that happens.
Speaker 2: There was another time I was reporting for packing for Mars.
Speaker 2: I was up on Devon Island, which is up in
Speaker 2: the near the above the Arctic Circle. It's a place
Speaker 2: where NASA tests suits and vehicles because it's very similar.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a lunar landscape and one part in
Speaker 2: Martian looking in another part, and so they can do
Speaker 2: these simulations. And I was reporting there for a week
Speaker 2: and I just was sort of nosing around and I
Speaker 2: talked to this man who works on suit design and
Speaker 2: I said, Oh, what are you up to and he said, well,
Speaker 2: I design space suits for escape at different altitudes and velocities.
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting. And
Speaker 2: I sat there thinking, well, maybe maybe I'll do something
Speaker 2: with this. And then he you know, he gave me this.
Speaker 2: He had given me a mission patch, which is anytime
Speaker 2: the shuttle would go up, there'd be a mission patch
Speaker 2: with all the names of the astronauts. He had given
Speaker 2: me one for the Columbia. I didn't really think much
Speaker 2: about it. I said no, thank you. And while we
Speaker 2: were talking, I looked at the patch and I saw
Speaker 2: the last name Clark, and his name was Clark, and
Speaker 2: I realized that his wife had been on the Columbia
Speaker 2: when it exploded, and that that's why he was so
Speaker 2: passionate about designing a suit that would enable you to
Speaker 2: survive if you know, the if the capsule or the
Speaker 2: shuttle or whatever it is is it's coming down, and
Speaker 2: there's a lot of variables that you have to deal with.
Speaker 2: The atmosphere is very thin, so a parachute would have
Speaker 2: no air, and you know you're going super fast, and
Speaker 2: if there's enough friction, you know you might burn up,
Speaker 2: and the suit has to be protective against that. So
Speaker 2: it's a really tricky thing to do. But now I
Speaker 2: understand why. And it was very moving, and he didn't
Speaker 2: say anything. He just the fact that he gave me
Speaker 2: that patch, like was his way of saying it without
Speaker 2: saying it. And I had to decide at that moment
Speaker 2: do I how much do I ask him about it?
Speaker 2: And anyway, So the whole tenor of the conversation shifted,
Speaker 2: And that's the kind of thing that I I think.
Speaker 2: It's always it's always helpful and always interesting, and I'm
Speaker 2: always grateful for those moments. I can't make them happen,
Speaker 2: they just sometimes happen, and.
Speaker 1: They really do make the writing that much richer, and
Speaker 1: I can imagine that it's actually I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think about all of my colleagues and all of the
Speaker 1: people I've met throughout my career in psychom and now
Speaker 1: in psychology, who they sort of I feel like, you've
Speaker 1: got these two extremes and then everything in between where
Speaker 1: you meet somebody and you're like, how'd you get into this?
Speaker 1: And they're like, oh, my professor was working on it
Speaker 1: and it kind of seemed interesting, and I did this
Speaker 1: project and that's how I got hooked, or you write.
Speaker 1: People were like, you know, my mom had schizophrenia and
Speaker 1: she did this and that's why I got really yeah,
Speaker 1: I personally had this like tragedy. And so sometimes they're
Speaker 1: very close to the work in a way that they
Speaker 1: don't always describe right away.
Speaker 2: Way, yes, yes, And I think that's that's true for
Speaker 2: authors and books as well. And so people always ask
Speaker 2: and how did you get into this? And I always
Speaker 2: feel bad because I don't have a good inspiration story,
Speaker 2: you know, like well, I was born without a kidney
Speaker 2: and I ended or you know, I mean I don't
Speaker 2: have I don't have a good body replacement part story
Speaker 2: that inspired the book, and I and people all, yeah,
Speaker 2: people invariably expect that an author's coming from a place
Speaker 2: of personal experience, and often it's.
Speaker 1: Really it's just interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just what what's a what a what would
Speaker 2: I find interesting for two years of my life to
Speaker 2: step in, you know, to step what world would I do?
Speaker 2: I want to step into that will hold my interest
Speaker 2: and you know, keep me curious, And that's usually what
Speaker 2: That's usually just how it goes. But but yeah, it's
Speaker 2: always interesting to meet somebody who's has that personal connection.
Speaker 1: Well, so I think that's a good segue for my
Speaker 1: last two questions that I really are like burning a
Speaker 1: hole in my pocket. I think the first one has
Speaker 1: specifically to do with that, and it's you know, when
Speaker 1: you are coming up with these stories, As you are
Speaker 1: engaging with these stories, how do you decide sort of
Speaker 1: what is too deep, what's too wonky, what's too in
Speaker 1: the weeds, what's more palatable? And I guess it's kind
Speaker 1: of the same question. Like I think about this show
Speaker 1: talk Nerdy, and I made a decision early on, I'm
Speaker 1: just going to do what's interesting to me and hope
Speaker 1: that other people find it interesting too. Yes, But the
Speaker 1: minute that I start trying to like present the show
Speaker 1: for the audience, and I'm just afraid I'm going to
Speaker 1: lose my voice. I think about an audience and I
Speaker 1: know that they're there, but there are definitely times when
Speaker 1: I get in the weeds about things that nobody cares
Speaker 1: about except for me, and I'm like, well, deal with it. Okay,
Speaker 1: That's what I was. How much do you write with
Speaker 1: the reader? How much do you write for yourself?
Speaker 2: I exactly the same as you, as you what you
Speaker 2: just said. I can only just go by what I'm
Speaker 2: curious about and hope that other people will be uh
Speaker 2: interested in it too. So I write for an audience
Speaker 2: that is like a room full of mary roaches. It's
Speaker 2: like that scene in Being John Malkovich where everybody in
Speaker 2: the restaurant is John Malkovich. That's my audience. I can't
Speaker 2: do anything else. And but for this book, you know,
Speaker 2: the two chapters that I included that that didn't initially
Speaker 2: scream Mary roach chapter had to do with induced plury
Speaker 2: potent stem cells, so you know, growing things from scratch basically,
Speaker 2: and also bioprinting because they're pretty technical and I don't
Speaker 2: have a background and I didn't really know how to
Speaker 2: get into it, and so those I put off I
Speaker 2: put off till the end because and they're in there,
Speaker 2: and what it's like once I started to learn about them,
Speaker 2: They are in fact really interesting. But I had a
Speaker 2: lot of kind of reluctance because it is something I
Speaker 2: don't know. It's a little technical. Uh and uh it was, yeah,
Speaker 2: but I knew that this book really i'd be remiss
Speaker 2: to not include those chapters.
Speaker 1: And that's book. That's what sometimes it really is. Why
Speaker 1: I asked the question was those two chapters, because as
Speaker 1: I'm reading it as somebody who has knowledge in this
Speaker 1: area but also somebody who has done zycom, I remember
Speaker 1: thinking like this, there's parts of this that are dense,
Speaker 1: and I wonder what the experience was like for you
Speaker 1: slogging through that and being like, Okay, the only way
Speaker 1: to really understand this is to get this background. I
Speaker 1: think back to Oliver Sacks. You know, he has books
Speaker 1: like Migrain which are like unreadable, like I loved it,
Speaker 1: but like it's a really intense book. And then he
Speaker 1: has books like The Man who Mistook his Wife or
Speaker 1: a Cat. But in all of his books he has
Speaker 1: to explain like kind of some really complicated science to
Speaker 1: get to the good stuffs. Yeah, and.
Speaker 2: You know, for stem cells, I thought, choosing a lab
Speaker 2: that was trying to grow hair essentially create vollicles from scratch,
Speaker 2: you know, taking blood cells, regressing them to plury potency,
Speaker 2: and then instructing them to become the kind of building
Speaker 2: blocks of a follicle. I thought, you know, hair, hair
Speaker 2: is pretty merry roach, you know, try a hair farm that.
Speaker 2: So for me, it was a it had to. It
Speaker 2: depended on finding the setting and it took a while
Speaker 2: because a lot of places didn't write back. The folks
Speaker 2: at stems and Therapeutics may they may their company rest
Speaker 2: in peace?
Speaker 1: Uh remember that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I know they were great. They were so patient
Speaker 2: and so enthusiastic, and it was so interesting. It is
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's one of the more complicated chapters.
Speaker 2: And there is a mistake in there that hads to
Speaker 2: do with transcription factors, and those paragraphs are taken out
Speaker 2: of the ebook, but they're still in the hard back,
Speaker 2: which kills me because I don't, you know, I'm like transcription,
Speaker 2: I don't have the fuck transcription like oh factor, duh.
Speaker 2: That should have been a clue. It's not a genet
Speaker 2: it you idiot. So anyway, I'm sure I'll take grief
Speaker 2: for that, but from.
Speaker 1: Like from like point one percent reader.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but enough of them so but I yeah, I uh,
Speaker 2: I ended up really enjoying that chapter and I and
Speaker 2: I feel like it's it was important to have it
Speaker 2: in because there's so much confusion and so much misinformation
Speaker 2: about stem cells. People you know, getting fat extracted and
Speaker 2: fractionated and then just like put back in their knee
Speaker 2: or whatever. There's a lot of.
Speaker 1: God yeah, people getting a lot of these answer.
Speaker 2: Stem bucks is what one researcher called them. Stem bucks.
Speaker 2: They're like Starbucks, these clinics, and they're and that's completely
Speaker 2: different from what's going on in a place like stems
Speaker 2: and therapeutics or some of these verns that are working
Speaker 2: on creating dopamine producing neurons for Parkinson's, say, or islands
Speaker 2: islet cells for diabetics. So there's really good work and
Speaker 2: very promising and far along work that will be helpful
Speaker 2: for Parkinson's patients and diabetics diabetes patients. But that's different
Speaker 2: than all of the kind of like we're just going
Speaker 2: to inject these stem cells in here and see what happens.
Speaker 1: Hope for the best, hope for the best.
Speaker 2: And that'll be five thousand dollars or what you know.
Speaker 2: So I thought it was important to help people make
Speaker 2: that distinction because I had no idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, and it is super I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: a public service announcement, to be honest, because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of yeah, danger around these sort of quote unquote clinics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm curious here right at the end. You know,
Speaker 1: I've sort of I say, I've checked off all the
Speaker 1: questions that I had. I didn't write anything, but like
Speaker 1: all the questions that came up for me, I feel
Speaker 1: like I've hit them. There's always a million more things
Speaker 1: to ask. But when it comes specifically to replaceable you
Speaker 1: or just to kind of where you are in your
Speaker 1: career in your writing, is there anything that we didn't
Speaker 1: touch on? Like, is there anything that you want sort
Speaker 1: of the listeners to know about the book that we
Speaker 1: didn't get to?
Speaker 2: No, I guess I would just want people to know
Speaker 2: that it's, you know, the same. I'm very, very dedicated
Speaker 2: to keeping the books fun to read. I want them
Speaker 2: to be entertaining. They still have all the absurd footnotes
Speaker 2: and you know, it's it's another Mary Roach escapade, even
Speaker 2: though occasionally gets a little technical.
Speaker 1: I have to say I love like so I love
Speaker 1: reading out loud. My partner and I will read to
Speaker 1: each other at night before we go to sleep, and
Speaker 1: often will read out loud, especially when a book is
Speaker 1: really compelling. And one of my favorite things when I
Speaker 1: was reading this book out loud was kind of being like, okay, wait,
Speaker 1: there's another footnote. Hang out, I have to tell you
Speaker 1: this little like this little random aside. It's so much fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had completely forgotten how great your footnot your footnotes are,
Speaker 1: so thanks for reminding me.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, sure, yeah yeah, there are a lot of
Speaker 2: fun for me too.
Speaker 1: And your voice is so easy to read out loud too.
Speaker 1: Some books flow, some books do not. I've always found
Speaker 1: that your books are just as alive when I read
Speaker 1: them in my own internal voice as they are when
Speaker 1: I read them out loud, and so it's just so
Speaker 1: fun to engage like everyone listening. I highly recommend, if
Speaker 1: you haven't read any Mary Roach, get the whole catalog,
Speaker 1: but you can start with Replaceable. You do a book
Speaker 1: club around this. I think it's it's great book club
Speaker 1: material because each chapter really is its own story and
Speaker 1: that's pretty typical with your books. There's there's an anthology feel,
Speaker 1: but they all connect to one another. So you can
Speaker 1: at night before you go to sleep, read it chapter
Speaker 1: and literally put it down until the next night when
Speaker 1: you pick it up for a new chapter. You'll be
Speaker 1: excited to keep going, but you'll also feel like you
Speaker 1: sort of you'll feel accomplished because you completed, you know,
Speaker 1: an entire idea within that chapter, and that's a good
Speaker 1: feeling to feel accomplished about your reading.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, for sure, thank you so much. That's like,
Speaker 2: well said, thanks. I did not provide that script people.
Speaker 1: No, no, it's true. I'm speaking from the heart, I promise. Well, Mary,
Speaker 1: I can't thank you enough, not just for you know,
Speaker 1: taking an hour out of your day to chat with us,
Speaker 1: but also just for taking all the time out of
Speaker 1: your busy life to do the incredible work that you
Speaker 1: do to share these really important stories not just of
Speaker 1: the outcomes of this research, but also the stories of
Speaker 1: the people who are tirelessly working on the front lines,
Speaker 1: very often with little funding and with a lack of
Speaker 1: public understanding of the work that they do. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of scientists are working in a very thankless way lately,
Speaker 1: and I think that you continue to do such a
Speaker 1: beautiful job of humanizing these people and their work and
Speaker 1: bringing it into the light and into the public consciousness.
Speaker 1: And so I'm just really grateful for all that you do.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you, well you as well. You do a
Speaker 2: lot of that yourself, and you know, podcasts are a
Speaker 2: way that people really love to take in information now,
Speaker 2: So it's so it's so important to have smart, experienced
Speaker 2: but also super engaging providers like yourself. So you know,
Speaker 2: pat yourself on.
Speaker 1: The back to stop. So everybody listening the book is
Speaker 1: replaceable you Adventures in Human Anatomy by Mary Roach And
Speaker 1: thank you for coming back everybody week after week. I'm
Speaker 1: really looking forward to the next time we all get
Speaker 1: together to talk nerdy