September 4, 2025 • 36 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert welcomes bestselling author Mary Roach back to the program to discuss her latest book “Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy.”
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and we have a special treat for
you here today. Mary Roach has a new book that
is about to come out, Replaceable You Adventures in Human Anatomy.
Mary Roach is a multiple times Stuff to Blow your
Mind guest. Anytime she has a new book out, we
(00:33):
always say absolutely, send us an advance copy, let me
get my hands on it, and we would be happy
to have her on the show. So once more, I'm
going to be chatting with Mary Roach again about her
new book, Replaceable You Adventures in Human Anatomy. It's going
to be released September sixteenth, twenty twenty five, and is
currently available for pre order. So without further ado, let's
(00:54):
jump right into the interview. Hi, Mary, welcome back to
the show.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
The new book is Replaceable You, which will be released
September sixteenth, twenty twenty five, and it's currently available for
pre order. As always, it's a tremendous, insightful and humorous read,
and in many ways it feels like a natural follow
up to topics you've explored in previous books, especially two
thousand and three Stiff and twenty sixteen's Grunt. Did it
(01:21):
indeed spring in any way from topics you touched on
in previous books or was there some other sort of
out of the blue inspiration.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Well, I always have the human body kind of the
back of my head as a fertile area to poke
around in. In this case, it didn't really spring from
anything in a past book per se. This the idea
kind of came from a couple of things I encountered
in talking to people. I'm often my way of finding
(01:52):
a new book topic is sometimes just to reach out
to people I've met in the past and kind of
just bitball brainstorm and this but this one was a
reader wrote to me and said for your next for
your next book, you should write about professional football referees,
which was, you know, no disrespect, just a terrible idea
(02:16):
for me. I don't I don't watch football, I don't
know anything about football. And but we had a conversation
on email and she mentioned that she's an elective vamputee
and I had never heard this term, and I asked
her what that means. And she's talking about how she
has a kind of a dysfunctional foot. It's healthy, you know,
(02:37):
it gets blood, it's funk, it's functional, but not in
the way she would like it to be. And she
wanted it cut off and replaced with a prosthetic because
she would see people walking around on prosthetic feet and
they're running and they're hiking, and she couldn't do that stuff.
And so she and it was very hard for her
to find a surgeon willing to cut off a quote
unquote healthy foot, and that frustrated her. And it was
(03:01):
kind of interesting, does this sort of sense of whole,
like this bias for wholeness and this sense of are
we a whole entity? Are we made up of parts?
Can you just swap them in and out? And that
kind of led me along that path. And of course,
you know that there's lots of kind of interesting areas
(03:23):
like iron lungs and nasal mutilation and skin grafting and
the history of skin grafting. There's just a lot of
kind of mary roachy topics under that umbrella of replacing
bits and pieces of the human body.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Was there a particular chapter that kind of solidified first,
or was there some were they just sort of all
sort of come together like, what's your process when it
comes to writing a book.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I knew right off the bat there was something that
there's one thing that I definitely wanted to include. And
this is again it was a conversation. This was a
woman who works in a stem cell lab, but it
oddly had nothing to do with stem cells. She mentioned
I think I had contacted her because I'd been poking
around on the idea of fat as a topic a
(04:12):
book topic fat the substance fat, and I backed off
of that because I don't want to write about weight loss.
So she mentioned, and I don't know how this came up,
don't remember, but she mentioned that there was a surgeon
who had reconstructed a man's penis using his own middle finger,
and that because of the way my brain works, that
(04:34):
just you know, I'm like, oh my god, they just
cut the finger off and like attached it down there
and he could move his finger. And I had this very,
as it turned out, inaccurate impression of what that surgery was.
But I'm like, I'm going there. I'm going to see
this surgeon. It turned out he's in former Soviet Georgia,
and I did go there, and this story is in
(04:55):
the book, But I think that was one of the
first places that I went to report in one of
the first chapter that I wrote, so that that kind
of cemented things I think for me like that I
have to have a book that includes this.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Somehow, it reminds me a little bit of some of
the topics you touched on in Grunt, which made me wonder,
do you revisit what you wrote in previous books when
you cover something like adjacent to it in a later book.
And I ask in part because I know that, like
the history broadly remains the same, and the autobiographical and
(05:28):
personal aspects of the book remains evergreen, but the science
and the way we perceive where we are with the
science can change so rapidly in just a few years.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, I did. I did go back to in Grunt.
As you know, I covered the Department of Defense was
funding some work with penis transplants, in other words, taking
a cadaver penis and hooking it up and replacing whatever
(05:59):
remains of a man's penis who And this was you know,
during Afghanistan and Iraq, when there were lots of IEDs
going off and damaging not just legs but all the
way up to the pelvis so and I'd been in
the lab when they were doing some of the early
work for penis transplants, so I did I called that
(06:20):
surgeon just to see where where things at, what's going
on in the world of transplantation. I don't like to
repeat things that I've covered before. I mean, I was
definitely not going to include that project or kind of
go back and follow up on that patient or anything
(06:41):
like that. So I do make use of the people
that I've met and sort of pick their brains and
get ideas from them, and also referrals to people that
they know. So I do that, but not I don't
really completely step back into the setting of a previous book.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
So the way that we perceive the current trajectory of
science is one of the really fascinating subjects in the
new book. In numerous places. I was really floored by
an early discussion in the book about how people viewed
the promise of denture technology in the forties, fifties, and sixties.
This was just really mind blowing for making. Can you
explain this one for us?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Sure? Yeah, the history of dentures and we're talking here
about not what goes on today, which is implants set
into the bone and then a plate attached to those
talking more about a whole set of teeth that's either
glued or in some cases suspended through piercings. That was unbelievable.
(07:46):
A technology that at its best only gave you about
twenty five percent of your chewing capacity. It was never
a good solution. But what amazed me was this trend
in the period of time that you're talking about for
having all of one's teeth pulled at once and getting
fitted with dentures. And it was this sense of like,
(08:06):
I'll have a marvelous, healthy, white smile, and it was
done as a gift for brides. It called sort of
matrimonial dentures, I think was the term and the people
and I had thought of it as just this is
something that's done in poor communities or people who don't
(08:28):
have access to good dental care, but in fact it
was just kind of a trend. And I could only
explain it to myself by thinking people were just assuming
it's new and it's man made, and it's got to
be better. I mean, Paul McCartney, his dad told him
you should when he turned twenty one, he should go
get all his teeth removed and replaced with dentures and
(08:50):
people and there was this reddit thread. It's no longer
up for some reason, but this reddit thread where someone
mentioned it, and there are a thousand replies people saying
my grand my parent or grandparent, usually a grandparent had
this done and ended up regretting it. Always had difficulty
with the dentures, but it was a It was to
(09:12):
me kind of a good way to open the book
because it was this interest. It's interesting there's this tendency
among humans, particularly you know, starting in the nineteen hundreds
and onward, to just assume if it's if it's technical
and new, it must be better, and to kind of
(09:34):
rush headlong into that technology without really considering how will
it stack up against what I've got going. My dad
lost all of his back teeth he had he had
a few front teeth in the front left and he
was much older, sixty five when I was born. But anyway,
he never got dentures. He never went. He didn't go.
I don't know if he didn't trust dentists. He was British.
(09:56):
I don't know if that had anything to two in it,
but he u but he managed just fine using his
front teeth to chew, and I think, you know, probably
that worked better than had he gotten a couple of
those plates that are you know, glued with polygrip and
got stuff under them. It just sounded it sounded, you know,
like not a great technology, and he did find it.
(10:19):
You know, it was a little weird to watch him
chew his lamb chops, but it seemed to work.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, It's just it just it was so foreign to
imagine like this level of excitement and trust and not
only where the technology was going, but where it presently was.
Because I can I can imagine, I can sort of
put myselves in the shoes of imagining someone saying, Okay,
well I don't have to worry as much about taking
care of my teeth because the technology is coming along
really well and it'll you know, and sort of like
(10:47):
putting that off on your future self. But to go
ahead and have it now, to go ahead and get
the dentures that you know at an early age, Yeah,
it's hard to like, I can't think of anything, and
surely there's something in our world that's that serves as
an analogy for that, But I'm grasping at straws to
think of it.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Yeah, well, what's going on now with intraocular lenses for
cat That's a technology that's for decades been used for
cataract patients in particular, where there's this opacification of the
lens and you just can't focus and things that you
lose color, and the technology is and the surgical procedure
(11:29):
has come so far that there are now people who
are in their twenties who just happen to be very
very near sighted who want to have it done. There's
a term for that that I've forgotten. I think that's
an example, and that's an example where if everything goes well,
which it usually does, it's not analogous to the dentures
in that I think folks would who have that done.
(11:52):
It can be kind of an amazing replacement. You don't
have accommodation, which is the eyes amazing ability to go
from far away to near focus just automatically, you know,
sort of an built in auto focus. So that's not
something that exists yet, So you are accepting a compromise
(12:13):
in that sense. But for somebody who's who's very very
near sighted or I suppose far sighted, it's an appealing option,
you know, to not have to think about glasses, contact lenses,
et cetera. And it's I think, you know, even compared
to lasik, which can have after effects that are unappealing.
But yeah, but to have all one's teeth pulled at
(12:38):
once and there. And I think also people people had
a sense of people don't like to go to the dentists.
They don't like dental procedures. So in areas where dental
care was lacking or wasn't close by, they thought, let's
just get it over with and I'll never have to
go back to a dentist, and I'll have this, you know,
perfect straight smile, I don't have to get fillings, etc.
(13:02):
But in fact, the dentures, you know, the gums start
to receid so that you would have to go back
and get refitted. So it really wasn't you didn't even
deliver that right now.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Later in the book, when you're discussing skin graphs and xenographs,
the skin graphs based on the tissue from other species,
you hit on something similar about how certain headlines about
breakthroughs with xenographs might be considered an unnecessary distraction by
some in the industry, certainly on the research end. Of things.
(13:35):
But do you think these various headlines sometimes and you know,
advancements sometimes help implant the idea that the research is
much further along than it actually is.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Oh yeah, absolutely, press press releases in particular, and a
lot of times newspapers just take information from press releases
without doing additional reporting. So in that sense, yeah, makes
its way into the news. Absolutely. I think that you know,
you see a headline like lab grown penises are on
(14:09):
the horizon, which was an actual press release headline from
some years back, and I don't know, the penises seemed
to still be out on the distant horizon. You know,
you follow up with these things a few years later,
and the company's gone out of business, the researcher has
stopped researching that, and you know, and I think it's
(14:32):
a disservice to the public because you know, I have
a friend who have who has Parkinson's, and he people
are always sending him. Look, I saw this, I saw
this press release online. I heard about this technique. I
heard about same with the woman who the elective amputee said.
I cannot tell you the number of times my friends
have sent me a link to a story that says
(14:55):
twenty dollars. You can buioprint and prosthetic foot. You'll never
have to see prosthetists again. And it's cheap. And she's like,
that's never going to happen, and I want them to stop,
and they mean, well, but stop sending me this stuff
because there's so much of it out there.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
And I suppose that feeds into one of the central
ideas of the book, right that the human body isn't
really replaceable, no matter how far the science has come.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Exactly. It's it's you're talking about, you know, two hundred
or so years of medical science competing with millions of
years of evolutionary tinkering, and and that's a you know,
that's that's tough to compete with, and it's tough to match.
So it's not it's not that the researchers and scientists
(15:42):
aren't doing a good job. They're doing amazing things. It's
just a really the human body is just infinitely complex
in ways that we don't even yet understand. So of
course it's going to take a long time.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, yeah, you cover when you're talking about various transplants,
the unforeseen consequences like the I believe it was the
pig's heart that wasn't supposed to grow but then grew
inside the recipient's chest.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there's and there's also there's there's
just connections between you know, we think of ourselves as
made up of parts and the parts can you know,
you can replace parts, that's what you do on a car.
But there are these kind of invisible links between you know,
the brain and the organs, and the organs themselves and
the There's just a lot going on that is difficult
(16:36):
to anticipate when you talk about creating something to replace
an individual piece, you know, trying to incorporate that piece
into a whole system. I mean, we are a massively
complex system, so it's it's quite a challenge.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Now, the history of our attempts to replace lost limbs, organs,
and tissues, this is as captivating and sometimes more nauseating,
certainly than the current and bleeding edge research into such replacements.
And you can discuss a lot of this in the book.
So I want to start with the history here. What
was your favorite I can't believe they were trying to
do blank back in such and such year, tidbit.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
I think the I can't believe reaction had to do
with the crafting of a vagina from the intestine, and
that is a technique that is sometimes done with trans women.
If there's been problems with the more standard procedure, you
(17:48):
can in fact bring a section of the intestine down
and use it and it works surprisingly well. And it
isn't it's it isn't new. In the eighteen hundreds, there
were surgeons who were doing this, but it's it's for
cancer patients and the set that there was a quote
(18:11):
I wish I had it in front of me, but
the surgeons were all conferring, like, should we do this?
It's kind of risky. I don't know, it hasn't been done,
but they said, if the home life and matrimonial harmony
depends on it, it is mandatory. I'm like, hello, maybe
want to check with that woman before you do that. Yeah,
(18:32):
But it's an it's a I spent some time with
the surgeon who who from time to time does that technique,
and it is a kind of an incredible I just
I just love the idea of like recruiting parts of
the body that evolved for one thing and using them
for something else. And the body is surprisingly adaptable, you know, agreeable, like, yeah,
(18:55):
I can be a vagina. I think I can do that,
you know, moist tubular secretion. Yeah, I got it.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
And then of course early on in the book you
walk us through the history of just replacing the nose,
and there's so many interesting details there with like the
marching of the skin up from the forearm and so forth.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Oh yeah, yeah, and this goes back to like fifteen
hundred BC. This is a technique because nasal mutilation was
a pretty common you know, globally and throughout history. If
to punish a group of people or an individual, to
cut off the nose was popular because not only is
it humiliating and awful for the person, but it serves
(19:35):
as a kind of a deterrent, like, look, what will
happen to you if you steal, if you're supporting the
wrong leader, whatever whatever it is. So there was this
demand for rebuilding the nose, and over the course of
time some very ingenious techniques, you know, taking a piece
(19:58):
of the forehead or a piece of the cheek, taking
that skin, loosening it, leaving it attached so it still
has a blood supply, and then turning it over and
putting it in place on what's left of the nose
and building a nose that way, and that and the
fact that I mean plastic, that's the dawn of plastic
surgery right there. That's really where it began with the nose.
(20:19):
And then of course that leaves scarring, or it can
leave you know, if you put a graft on the
place where you took the skin. Now you've got skin
that doesn't match. You know, it's not seamless. So they
started using the underside of the arm the fifteen hundreds
in Italy, just having you know, and then then you
of course to have the arm underside of the arm
(20:40):
close to the nose, you had to have the arm
up over the head with a harness. I mean, it
was quite an elaborate setup to for a few weeks
to keep that piece of the underside of the upper
arm attached to the nose. He kind of looked like
he was you know, I've seen a etching of that
and the guy looks like he's checking for bo kind
(21:01):
of a you know, head close to the underarm pose.
But just amazing the ingenuity that went into it. And
then once you know, you had more options with different
materials and adhesives. There were noses made of celluloid, noses
made of brass or other metal composits. There were noses
(21:25):
hanging off glasses frames, kind of a grouseiow Marx thing
because they even had a little mustache to cover up
the boundary below the lower boundary, So it was kind
of a medical Gaucho Marx glasses.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
The flammable celluloid nose that you mentioned that was rather
horrifying to imagine.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Well, yes, it could only carry the Groucho Marx comparison,
so far, you definitely not want the cigar.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
One example you brought up that really floored me too
was the idea of polyester hair implants. I no idea
this was ever a thing.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Oh me, neither me neither, Thank you for asking. Nobody
has asked about that, but there was in the nineteen seventies.
It was possible if you were losing hair, either you know,
a bald spot or just sort of all over.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
You could have.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Essentially doll hair inserted with a kind of surgical crochet
hook kind of hooked into the scalp. And it was
a terrible idea for a number of reasons. First of all,
if you start to go gray. It's not going to
go gray. You can't style it the same way you
can style it. You can barely style it at all,
(22:41):
not to mention infections and all these horrible kind of
lumps that would appear, and it was it's illegal now,
but for a while, I think in Turkey you could
still get it done and you had to space them
out such that you kind of looked like a doll,
you know, how dolls have? You know?
Speaker 2 (23:00):
The barb.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Far apart. It didn't look natural, it looked like dull hair,
but it was something and it was not cheap.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Wow. Yeah, Now I have to ask of which of
the following did you find more horrifying, goat milk transfusions
or goat milk based breast implants. I was surprised at
how how many different uses we had for goat and
cow milk.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Yeah, goat milk in particularly, I guess because there's less
of a market for drinking goat milk. They're like, what
can we do with this, but goat milk. I think
that the transfusions shocked me more partly, but they shocked me,
But on the other hand, it's kind of you know,
(23:49):
they often worked pretty well if someone was hemorrhaging and
losing a lot of blood, and you needed to keep
the volume up. Obviously you don't have red blood cells
to carry oxygen. But if what you're talking about is
preventing somebody going into what is it hypovolemic like shock
from just not enough blood, the blood vessels are going
to collapse, and you want to get something in there.
I mean, you could use saline. That's you know, what
(24:11):
is done now. But so goat milk was kind of that.
Without knowing why, I think that the medical folks had
stumbled on and they were talking eighteen seventy eight, I
think it was, and there's kind of a flurry of
journal articles about goat milk and cow milk transfusions. They
assumed there was something in the milk that was a benefit,
(24:33):
but in fact it was just getting something in there
to keep the blood pressure up. But they were talking.
They would talk about, you know, a cow was brought
into the room because it was done. You know, they
had to be fresh and had to be fresh from
the teeth. They weren't storing the milk. It was so there.
You know, there was this wonderfully strange couple of years
in medical history where cows and goats are being brought
(24:56):
into the surgical facilities or the patient home, and people
are being transfused, and and the the articles were tremendously
enthusiastic in the medical journals, and you know, mainstream medical journals,
saying I would be remiss if I did not predict
great things for goat milk transfusions in the future.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, I think you. It was an article in the
New York Times, the site that was hyping it up.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So uh And in terms of oh,
you know, breast implants, what wasn't tried. You know, it
was just anything kind of remotely injectable. Some surgeon tried
putting it in there. So that's just one of many
unwise decisions that were made for the goal of making
(25:48):
tits bigger.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Now, I want to come back around to the field
work for this particular book. You mentioned a little bit
about this already, but let's see, you traveled to China
and Mongolia, as well as some rather challenging domestic locations
as well.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
I did, Oh, wherever I can. Whenever I have a
chance to go somewhere interesting, I jump on it, you know.
I mean, my last book was about human wildlife conflict,
and I found a way to go to the Vatican
for that one. That's right, there's no need to go
(26:33):
to the Vatican for a book about human wildlife conflict.
But I always enjoy setting a chapter somewhere I know
nothing about. So in this case, yeah, Mongolia. There's no
need for a Cataract chapter to go to Mongolia, but
I chose to and it was incredibly interesting. And I
(26:55):
was in China the China trip. In that case, both
of the companies here that create pigs for zeno transplantation,
in other words, pigs that are genetically edited such that
their organs don't create as intense a rejection in the
human body. There are two companies here that have pig
(27:16):
farms that and I wanted to visit one of the
pig farms pig facilities, I should say, the designated pathogen
free facility, and they both very politely said no. So
I contacted someone who's worked on zeno transplantation for thirty
years and who happens to be in Sichuan, China, Chengdu,
(27:39):
and they were very welcoming and they said, come on over,
you're welcome to visit the facility. As it turned out,
I couldn't go inside a facility. I could get close
to it and watch it from the control room, because
of course I'm a walking pile of bacteria and other
(28:00):
horrible things that if you have a designated pathoge and
free facility, nobody comes in. I mean, the staff are
quarantined and they stay there for three months. So I
didn't actually get to go in, but I got close.
But in that case, the travel was warranted by my
inability to get access here, and that was a challenge
(28:20):
with this book. Biotech companies are notoriously wary of having outsiders, journalists,
writers come in for various reasons. They have things that
are secret that they don't want to risk somebody getting
access to. And they also just I mean that there's
(28:41):
a a process that a lot about tech tech firms,
public relations firms adhere to, which is just to say,
here's a press kit, here's a video, this is what
we're going to share with you. Take it or leave it,
(29:01):
And that's not what you know. I as a reporter
grew up with a lot more openness, like, yes, you
can come here and spend a couple of days and
we'll show you around and it's not like that anymore.
So if I have to go to China, I go
to China. So sometimes that's what's at play.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Because that's one of the great things about all your
books is they're not just about the subject. They're about
the places, and they're about the people. It's about you
getting out in the field and visiting places and meeting people,
and we get to know them through your write.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Right exactly, I can't do what I do without going somewhere.
If if I can't get in anywhere, I just don't
do that chapter. You know, there have been books where
I should have included a topic because it was relevant
and important. I'm thinking of packing from Mars. I don't
have a specific chapter devoted to radiation. Cosmic radiation and
(29:54):
solar radiation are two pretty significant physical challenges when you
talk about living off planet. I couldn't find a setting
for it. I couldn't find there. You know, there was
a Brookhaven was doing something with irradiating some animals. I'm like,
I don't want it. That's not the scene that I want.
So I didn't do a chapter. And and but if
(30:16):
you take that to its endpoint, I just can't do books.
If people because people, and I understand that, like my
agent said, kind of don't blame them, Mary, do you
you know what's in it for them? They're not being paid,
there's they don't have any control over what I say,
what I choose to represent, how I say it, how
I portray them. So it's a huge in some ways,
(30:39):
a big risk to say to me, Mary Roach, Yeah,
come on down for a couple of days and do
what you want to do.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
So of course, if you do mention, you know, a
particular topic or particular company in your book, they could
always put that on the products as featured in Mary
Roach's Gulp or Mary Roach is Replaceable You.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Yes, that is the small gift I give to them,
and they, by and large they take it. They take
it well given that they're not able to say it
the way they want or highlight the things that they want,
and I'm sure most of what they'd like to say
(31:17):
doesn't end up in the chapter. But it certainly is
exposure for a company. You know, I don't write expose
a's I'm not out to get anybody, but by the
same token, I'm not sugarcoating things or writing puff pieces.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Broadly speaking, what do you feel like you learned about
the human experience writing Replaceable You, and what do you
hope that the reader takes away from the book.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
It's kind of an interesting mix. I want people to
be impressed and kind of amazed at what has been done,
is being done, might be done in the future, but
at the same time to understand how difficult it is
to make something that is a true replacement. And also
(32:10):
there's so many times where something is done in a lab,
something is created, but then you have to figure out
how do you get that into a body or even
onto a body. I spend a couple of days with
a biotech firm, Stems and Therapeutics, who no longer exist.
They were trying to grow follicles and then implant those
(32:34):
from induced pluripotent stem cells like a person's own cells
regress to plury potency, encouraged, instructed to become follicle cells,
and then incorporated into the person's head. And I thought, Okay,
the follicle pretty simple, how hard could it be? But
the challenges were so interesting and so immense. I kind
(32:56):
of want people to understand why it's taking so long,
and not to be disappointed by science. I mean but
just to understand what a tremendous challenge it is when
you get down to the cellular level to create something
that you can incorporate into a complicated system and have
it work in the way you want it to work.
(33:17):
So it's just a kind of a glimpse of how
that's done, what's going on, what's taking so long? And
you know what, we could hopefully expect a couple decades
down the line, but just expect miracles, but don't expect
them quickly.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Well put, I'll see. Finally, you have some author appearances
coming up. Correct, I think you're going to do the
Decatur Book Festival, which is right down the road from me.
So where can folks see you and where can they
check out all your dates?
Speaker 3 (33:50):
I have on Instagram author Mary Roach, there is a
visual of all of the book tour appearances and the dates. Yes,
I will be at the Decatur Book Festival. I'm looking
forward to that. And I remember, yeah, I remember like
one of the best fish tacos I ever had was Indicatur.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Oh nice.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
So yeah, and Maryoach dot Net there's I think they're
putting that up this week, the list of where I'm
going everywhere.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
I'm going well, Mary, thanks once more for coming on
the podcast. It's always a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Oh, thank you so much, Robert. I really had a
great time. Thank you for such a smart and insightful interview.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Thanks once more to Mary Road for taking time out
of her day to chat with me here again. That
book is replaceable, you Adventures in Human Anatomy. Go ahead
and pre order it now. I guarantee you you're going
to have a blast with it. As always will remind
you that stuff to Blow your Mind is primarily a
science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
(34:53):
but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Getticks.
I did because next week is Star Trek Week. The
whole week is going to be Star Trek themes. That
means Star Trek core episodes, a Star Trek monster factor
most likely, and yes we will cover one of the
Star Trek motion pictures for Weird House Cinema. You'll have
to tune in to find out which one. Sometimes you
(35:16):
can peek ahead by going to our account at Letterbox.
We are Weird House on letterbox, and we have a
nice list of all the films we've covered over the
years and sometimes a peek ahead of what comes next.
And as far as social media accounts elsewhere, we'll let's see,
we're on Instagram, STBYM podcast, and we are also on Facebook.
We are on Twitter. We may be some other places,
(35:38):
but those are the well ones that I really can
immediately remember. So if you use any of those platforms,
follow us, keep up with the show. Wherever you get
the show, just make sure that you rate, review, and subscribe.
It helps us out in the long run. Thanks as
always to the excellent JJ Possway for producing this show,
and if you would like to get in touch with
Joe and myself, email us at contact stuff to Blow
(36:00):
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Step to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and we have a special treat for
you here today. Mary Roach has a new book that
is about to come out, Replaceable You Adventures in Human Anatomy.
Mary Roach is a multiple times Stuff to Blow your
Mind guest. Anytime she has a new book out, we
(00:33):
always say absolutely, send us an advance copy, let me
get my hands on it, and we would be happy
to have her on the show. So once more, I'm
going to be chatting with Mary Roach again about her
new book, Replaceable You Adventures in Human Anatomy. It's going
to be released September sixteenth, twenty twenty five, and is
currently available for pre order. So without further ado, let's
(00:54):
jump right into the interview. Hi, Mary, welcome back to
the show.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
The new book is Replaceable You, which will be released
September sixteenth, twenty twenty five, and it's currently available for
pre order. As always, it's a tremendous, insightful and humorous read,
and in many ways it feels like a natural follow
up to topics you've explored in previous books, especially two
thousand and three Stiff and twenty sixteen's Grunt. Did it
(01:21):
indeed spring in any way from topics you touched on
in previous books or was there some other sort of
out of the blue inspiration.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Well, I always have the human body kind of the
back of my head as a fertile area to poke
around in. In this case, it didn't really spring from
anything in a past book per se. This the idea
kind of came from a couple of things I encountered
in talking to people. I'm often my way of finding
(01:52):
a new book topic is sometimes just to reach out
to people I've met in the past and kind of
just bitball brainstorm and this but this one was a
reader wrote to me and said for your next for
your next book, you should write about professional football referees,
which was, you know, no disrespect, just a terrible idea
(02:16):
for me. I don't I don't watch football, I don't
know anything about football. And but we had a conversation
on email and she mentioned that she's an elective vamputee
and I had never heard this term, and I asked
her what that means. And she's talking about how she
has a kind of a dysfunctional foot. It's healthy, you know,
(02:37):
it gets blood, it's funk, it's functional, but not in
the way she would like it to be. And she
wanted it cut off and replaced with a prosthetic because
she would see people walking around on prosthetic feet and
they're running and they're hiking, and she couldn't do that stuff.
And so she and it was very hard for her
to find a surgeon willing to cut off a quote
unquote healthy foot, and that frustrated her. And it was
(03:01):
kind of interesting, does this sort of sense of whole,
like this bias for wholeness and this sense of are
we a whole entity? Are we made up of parts?
Can you just swap them in and out? And that
kind of led me along that path. And of course,
you know that there's lots of kind of interesting areas
(03:23):
like iron lungs and nasal mutilation and skin grafting and
the history of skin grafting. There's just a lot of
kind of mary roachy topics under that umbrella of replacing
bits and pieces of the human body.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Was there a particular chapter that kind of solidified first,
or was there some were they just sort of all
sort of come together like, what's your process when it
comes to writing a book.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I knew right off the bat there was something that
there's one thing that I definitely wanted to include. And
this is again it was a conversation. This was a
woman who works in a stem cell lab, but it
oddly had nothing to do with stem cells. She mentioned
I think I had contacted her because I'd been poking
around on the idea of fat as a topic a
(04:12):
book topic fat the substance fat, and I backed off
of that because I don't want to write about weight loss.
So she mentioned, and I don't know how this came up,
don't remember, but she mentioned that there was a surgeon
who had reconstructed a man's penis using his own middle finger,
and that because of the way my brain works, that
(04:34):
just you know, I'm like, oh my god, they just
cut the finger off and like attached it down there
and he could move his finger. And I had this very,
as it turned out, inaccurate impression of what that surgery was.
But I'm like, I'm going there. I'm going to see
this surgeon. It turned out he's in former Soviet Georgia,
and I did go there, and this story is in
(04:55):
the book, But I think that was one of the
first places that I went to report in one of
the first chapter that I wrote, so that that kind
of cemented things I think for me like that I
have to have a book that includes this.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Somehow, it reminds me a little bit of some of
the topics you touched on in Grunt, which made me wonder,
do you revisit what you wrote in previous books when
you cover something like adjacent to it in a later book.
And I ask in part because I know that, like
the history broadly remains the same, and the autobiographical and
(05:28):
personal aspects of the book remains evergreen, but the science
and the way we perceive where we are with the
science can change so rapidly in just a few years.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, I did. I did go back to in Grunt.
As you know, I covered the Department of Defense was
funding some work with penis transplants, in other words, taking
a cadaver penis and hooking it up and replacing whatever
(05:59):
remains of a man's penis who And this was you know,
during Afghanistan and Iraq, when there were lots of IEDs
going off and damaging not just legs but all the
way up to the pelvis so and I'd been in
the lab when they were doing some of the early
work for penis transplants, so I did I called that
(06:20):
surgeon just to see where where things at, what's going
on in the world of transplantation. I don't like to
repeat things that I've covered before. I mean, I was
definitely not going to include that project or kind of
go back and follow up on that patient or anything
(06:41):
like that. So I do make use of the people
that I've met and sort of pick their brains and
get ideas from them, and also referrals to people that
they know. So I do that, but not I don't
really completely step back into the setting of a previous book.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
So the way that we perceive the current trajectory of
science is one of the really fascinating subjects in the
new book. In numerous places. I was really floored by
an early discussion in the book about how people viewed
the promise of denture technology in the forties, fifties, and sixties.
This was just really mind blowing for making. Can you
explain this one for us?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Sure? Yeah, the history of dentures and we're talking here
about not what goes on today, which is implants set
into the bone and then a plate attached to those
talking more about a whole set of teeth that's either
glued or in some cases suspended through piercings. That was unbelievable.
(07:46):
A technology that at its best only gave you about
twenty five percent of your chewing capacity. It was never
a good solution. But what amazed me was this trend
in the period of time that you're talking about for
having all of one's teeth pulled at once and getting
fitted with dentures. And it was this sense of like,
(08:06):
I'll have a marvelous, healthy, white smile, and it was
done as a gift for brides. It called sort of
matrimonial dentures, I think was the term and the people
and I had thought of it as just this is
something that's done in poor communities or people who don't
(08:28):
have access to good dental care, but in fact it
was just kind of a trend. And I could only
explain it to myself by thinking people were just assuming
it's new and it's man made, and it's got to
be better. I mean, Paul McCartney, his dad told him
you should when he turned twenty one, he should go
get all his teeth removed and replaced with dentures and
(08:50):
people and there was this reddit thread. It's no longer
up for some reason, but this reddit thread where someone
mentioned it, and there are a thousand replies people saying
my grand my parent or grandparent, usually a grandparent had
this done and ended up regretting it. Always had difficulty
with the dentures, but it was a It was to
(09:12):
me kind of a good way to open the book
because it was this interest. It's interesting there's this tendency
among humans, particularly you know, starting in the nineteen hundreds
and onward, to just assume if it's if it's technical
and new, it must be better, and to kind of
(09:34):
rush headlong into that technology without really considering how will
it stack up against what I've got going. My dad
lost all of his back teeth he had he had
a few front teeth in the front left and he
was much older, sixty five when I was born. But anyway,
he never got dentures. He never went. He didn't go.
I don't know if he didn't trust dentists. He was British.
(09:56):
I don't know if that had anything to two in it,
but he u but he managed just fine using his
front teeth to chew, and I think, you know, probably
that worked better than had he gotten a couple of
those plates that are you know, glued with polygrip and
got stuff under them. It just sounded it sounded, you know,
like not a great technology, and he did find it.
(10:19):
You know, it was a little weird to watch him
chew his lamb chops, but it seemed to work.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, It's just it just it was so foreign to
imagine like this level of excitement and trust and not
only where the technology was going, but where it presently was.
Because I can I can imagine, I can sort of
put myselves in the shoes of imagining someone saying, Okay,
well I don't have to worry as much about taking
care of my teeth because the technology is coming along
really well and it'll you know, and sort of like
(10:47):
putting that off on your future self. But to go
ahead and have it now, to go ahead and get
the dentures that you know at an early age, Yeah,
it's hard to like, I can't think of anything, and
surely there's something in our world that's that serves as
an analogy for that, But I'm grasping at straws to
think of it.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Yeah, well, what's going on now with intraocular lenses for
cat That's a technology that's for decades been used for
cataract patients in particular, where there's this opacification of the
lens and you just can't focus and things that you
lose color, and the technology is and the surgical procedure
(11:29):
has come so far that there are now people who
are in their twenties who just happen to be very
very near sighted who want to have it done. There's
a term for that that I've forgotten. I think that's
an example, and that's an example where if everything goes well,
which it usually does, it's not analogous to the dentures
in that I think folks would who have that done.
(11:52):
It can be kind of an amazing replacement. You don't
have accommodation, which is the eyes amazing ability to go
from far away to near focus just automatically, you know,
sort of an built in auto focus. So that's not
something that exists yet, So you are accepting a compromise
(12:13):
in that sense. But for somebody who's who's very very
near sighted or I suppose far sighted, it's an appealing option,
you know, to not have to think about glasses, contact lenses,
et cetera. And it's I think, you know, even compared
to lasik, which can have after effects that are unappealing.
But yeah, but to have all one's teeth pulled at
(12:38):
once and there. And I think also people people had
a sense of people don't like to go to the dentists.
They don't like dental procedures. So in areas where dental
care was lacking or wasn't close by, they thought, let's
just get it over with and I'll never have to
go back to a dentist, and I'll have this, you know,
perfect straight smile, I don't have to get fillings, etc.
(13:02):
But in fact, the dentures, you know, the gums start
to receid so that you would have to go back
and get refitted. So it really wasn't you didn't even
deliver that right now.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Later in the book, when you're discussing skin graphs and xenographs,
the skin graphs based on the tissue from other species,
you hit on something similar about how certain headlines about
breakthroughs with xenographs might be considered an unnecessary distraction by
some in the industry, certainly on the research end. Of things.
(13:35):
But do you think these various headlines sometimes and you know,
advancements sometimes help implant the idea that the research is
much further along than it actually is.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Oh yeah, absolutely, press press releases in particular, and a
lot of times newspapers just take information from press releases
without doing additional reporting. So in that sense, yeah, makes
its way into the news. Absolutely. I think that you know,
you see a headline like lab grown penises are on
(14:09):
the horizon, which was an actual press release headline from
some years back, and I don't know, the penises seemed
to still be out on the distant horizon. You know,
you follow up with these things a few years later,
and the company's gone out of business, the researcher has
stopped researching that, and you know, and I think it's
(14:32):
a disservice to the public because you know, I have
a friend who have who has Parkinson's, and he people
are always sending him. Look, I saw this, I saw
this press release online. I heard about this technique. I
heard about same with the woman who the elective amputee said.
I cannot tell you the number of times my friends
have sent me a link to a story that says
(14:55):
twenty dollars. You can buioprint and prosthetic foot. You'll never
have to see prosthetists again. And it's cheap. And she's like,
that's never going to happen, and I want them to stop,
and they mean, well, but stop sending me this stuff
because there's so much of it out there.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
And I suppose that feeds into one of the central
ideas of the book, right that the human body isn't
really replaceable, no matter how far the science has come.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Exactly. It's it's you're talking about, you know, two hundred
or so years of medical science competing with millions of
years of evolutionary tinkering, and and that's a you know,
that's that's tough to compete with, and it's tough to match.
So it's not it's not that the researchers and scientists
(15:42):
aren't doing a good job. They're doing amazing things. It's
just a really the human body is just infinitely complex
in ways that we don't even yet understand. So of
course it's going to take a long time.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, yeah, you cover when you're talking about various transplants,
the unforeseen consequences like the I believe it was the
pig's heart that wasn't supposed to grow but then grew
inside the recipient's chest.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there's and there's also there's there's
just connections between you know, we think of ourselves as
made up of parts and the parts can you know,
you can replace parts, that's what you do on a car.
But there are these kind of invisible links between you know,
the brain and the organs, and the organs themselves and
the There's just a lot going on that is difficult
(16:36):
to anticipate when you talk about creating something to replace
an individual piece, you know, trying to incorporate that piece
into a whole system. I mean, we are a massively
complex system, so it's it's quite a challenge.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Now, the history of our attempts to replace lost limbs, organs,
and tissues, this is as captivating and sometimes more nauseating,
certainly than the current and bleeding edge research into such replacements.
And you can discuss a lot of this in the book.
So I want to start with the history here. What
was your favorite I can't believe they were trying to
do blank back in such and such year, tidbit.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
I think the I can't believe reaction had to do
with the crafting of a vagina from the intestine, and
that is a technique that is sometimes done with trans women.
If there's been problems with the more standard procedure, you
(17:48):
can in fact bring a section of the intestine down
and use it and it works surprisingly well. And it
isn't it's it isn't new. In the eighteen hundreds, there
were surgeons who were doing this, but it's it's for
cancer patients and the set that there was a quote
(18:11):
I wish I had it in front of me, but
the surgeons were all conferring, like, should we do this?
It's kind of risky. I don't know, it hasn't been done,
but they said, if the home life and matrimonial harmony
depends on it, it is mandatory. I'm like, hello, maybe
want to check with that woman before you do that. Yeah,
(18:32):
But it's an it's a I spent some time with
the surgeon who who from time to time does that technique,
and it is a kind of an incredible I just
I just love the idea of like recruiting parts of
the body that evolved for one thing and using them
for something else. And the body is surprisingly adaptable, you know, agreeable, like, yeah,
(18:55):
I can be a vagina. I think I can do that,
you know, moist tubular secretion. Yeah, I got it.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
And then of course early on in the book you
walk us through the history of just replacing the nose,
and there's so many interesting details there with like the
marching of the skin up from the forearm and so forth.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Oh yeah, yeah, and this goes back to like fifteen
hundred BC. This is a technique because nasal mutilation was
a pretty common you know, globally and throughout history. If
to punish a group of people or an individual, to
cut off the nose was popular because not only is
it humiliating and awful for the person, but it serves
(19:35):
as a kind of a deterrent, like, look, what will
happen to you if you steal, if you're supporting the
wrong leader, whatever whatever it is. So there was this
demand for rebuilding the nose, and over the course of
time some very ingenious techniques, you know, taking a piece
(19:58):
of the forehead or a piece of the cheek, taking
that skin, loosening it, leaving it attached so it still
has a blood supply, and then turning it over and
putting it in place on what's left of the nose
and building a nose that way, and that and the
fact that I mean plastic, that's the dawn of plastic
surgery right there. That's really where it began with the nose.
(20:19):
And then of course that leaves scarring, or it can
leave you know, if you put a graft on the
place where you took the skin. Now you've got skin
that doesn't match. You know, it's not seamless. So they
started using the underside of the arm the fifteen hundreds
in Italy, just having you know, and then then you
of course to have the arm underside of the arm
(20:40):
close to the nose, you had to have the arm
up over the head with a harness. I mean, it
was quite an elaborate setup to for a few weeks
to keep that piece of the underside of the upper
arm attached to the nose. He kind of looked like
he was you know, I've seen a etching of that
and the guy looks like he's checking for bo kind
(21:01):
of a you know, head close to the underarm pose.
But just amazing the ingenuity that went into it. And
then once you know, you had more options with different
materials and adhesives. There were noses made of celluloid, noses
made of brass or other metal composits. There were noses
(21:25):
hanging off glasses frames, kind of a grouseiow Marx thing
because they even had a little mustache to cover up
the boundary below the lower boundary, So it was kind
of a medical Gaucho Marx glasses.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
The flammable celluloid nose that you mentioned that was rather
horrifying to imagine.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Well, yes, it could only carry the Groucho Marx comparison,
so far, you definitely not want the cigar.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
One example you brought up that really floored me too
was the idea of polyester hair implants. I no idea
this was ever a thing.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Oh me, neither me neither, Thank you for asking. Nobody
has asked about that, but there was in the nineteen seventies.
It was possible if you were losing hair, either you know,
a bald spot or just sort of all over.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
You could have.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Essentially doll hair inserted with a kind of surgical crochet
hook kind of hooked into the scalp. And it was
a terrible idea for a number of reasons. First of all,
if you start to go gray. It's not going to
go gray. You can't style it the same way you
can style it. You can barely style it at all,
(22:41):
not to mention infections and all these horrible kind of
lumps that would appear, and it was it's illegal now,
but for a while, I think in Turkey you could
still get it done and you had to space them
out such that you kind of looked like a doll,
you know, how dolls have? You know?
Speaker 2 (23:00):
The barb.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Far apart. It didn't look natural, it looked like dull hair,
but it was something and it was not cheap.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Wow. Yeah, Now I have to ask of which of
the following did you find more horrifying, goat milk transfusions
or goat milk based breast implants. I was surprised at
how how many different uses we had for goat and
cow milk.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Yeah, goat milk in particularly, I guess because there's less
of a market for drinking goat milk. They're like, what
can we do with this, but goat milk. I think
that the transfusions shocked me more partly, but they shocked me,
But on the other hand, it's kind of you know,
(23:49):
they often worked pretty well if someone was hemorrhaging and
losing a lot of blood, and you needed to keep
the volume up. Obviously you don't have red blood cells
to carry oxygen. But if what you're talking about is
preventing somebody going into what is it hypovolemic like shock
from just not enough blood, the blood vessels are going
to collapse, and you want to get something in there.
I mean, you could use saline. That's you know, what
(24:11):
is done now. But so goat milk was kind of that.
Without knowing why, I think that the medical folks had
stumbled on and they were talking eighteen seventy eight, I
think it was, and there's kind of a flurry of
journal articles about goat milk and cow milk transfusions. They
assumed there was something in the milk that was a benefit,
(24:33):
but in fact it was just getting something in there
to keep the blood pressure up. But they were talking.
They would talk about, you know, a cow was brought
into the room because it was done. You know, they
had to be fresh and had to be fresh from
the teeth. They weren't storing the milk. It was so there.
You know, there was this wonderfully strange couple of years
in medical history where cows and goats are being brought
(24:56):
into the surgical facilities or the patient home, and people
are being transfused, and and the the articles were tremendously
enthusiastic in the medical journals, and you know, mainstream medical journals,
saying I would be remiss if I did not predict
great things for goat milk transfusions in the future.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, I think you. It was an article in the
New York Times, the site that was hyping it up.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So uh And in terms of oh,
you know, breast implants, what wasn't tried. You know, it
was just anything kind of remotely injectable. Some surgeon tried
putting it in there. So that's just one of many
unwise decisions that were made for the goal of making
(25:48):
tits bigger.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Now, I want to come back around to the field
work for this particular book. You mentioned a little bit
about this already, but let's see, you traveled to China
and Mongolia, as well as some rather challenging domestic locations
as well.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
I did, Oh, wherever I can. Whenever I have a
chance to go somewhere interesting, I jump on it, you know.
I mean, my last book was about human wildlife conflict,
and I found a way to go to the Vatican
for that one. That's right, there's no need to go
(26:33):
to the Vatican for a book about human wildlife conflict.
But I always enjoy setting a chapter somewhere I know
nothing about. So in this case, yeah, Mongolia. There's no
need for a Cataract chapter to go to Mongolia, but
I chose to and it was incredibly interesting. And I
(26:55):
was in China the China trip. In that case, both
of the companies here that create pigs for zeno transplantation,
in other words, pigs that are genetically edited such that
their organs don't create as intense a rejection in the
human body. There are two companies here that have pig
(27:16):
farms that and I wanted to visit one of the
pig farms pig facilities, I should say, the designated pathogen
free facility, and they both very politely said no. So
I contacted someone who's worked on zeno transplantation for thirty
years and who happens to be in Sichuan, China, Chengdu,
(27:39):
and they were very welcoming and they said, come on over,
you're welcome to visit the facility. As it turned out,
I couldn't go inside a facility. I could get close
to it and watch it from the control room, because
of course I'm a walking pile of bacteria and other
(28:00):
horrible things that if you have a designated pathoge and
free facility, nobody comes in. I mean, the staff are
quarantined and they stay there for three months. So I
didn't actually get to go in, but I got close.
But in that case, the travel was warranted by my
inability to get access here, and that was a challenge
(28:20):
with this book. Biotech companies are notoriously wary of having outsiders, journalists,
writers come in for various reasons. They have things that
are secret that they don't want to risk somebody getting
access to. And they also just I mean that there's
(28:41):
a a process that a lot about tech tech firms,
public relations firms adhere to, which is just to say,
here's a press kit, here's a video, this is what
we're going to share with you. Take it or leave it,
(29:01):
And that's not what you know. I as a reporter
grew up with a lot more openness, like, yes, you
can come here and spend a couple of days and
we'll show you around and it's not like that anymore.
So if I have to go to China, I go
to China. So sometimes that's what's at play.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Because that's one of the great things about all your
books is they're not just about the subject. They're about
the places, and they're about the people. It's about you
getting out in the field and visiting places and meeting people,
and we get to know them through your write.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Right exactly, I can't do what I do without going somewhere.
If if I can't get in anywhere, I just don't
do that chapter. You know, there have been books where
I should have included a topic because it was relevant
and important. I'm thinking of packing from Mars. I don't
have a specific chapter devoted to radiation. Cosmic radiation and
(29:54):
solar radiation are two pretty significant physical challenges when you
talk about living off planet. I couldn't find a setting
for it. I couldn't find there. You know, there was
a Brookhaven was doing something with irradiating some animals. I'm like,
I don't want it. That's not the scene that I want.
So I didn't do a chapter. And and but if
(30:16):
you take that to its endpoint, I just can't do books.
If people because people, and I understand that, like my
agent said, kind of don't blame them, Mary, do you
you know what's in it for them? They're not being paid,
there's they don't have any control over what I say,
what I choose to represent, how I say it, how
I portray them. So it's a huge in some ways,
(30:39):
a big risk to say to me, Mary Roach, Yeah,
come on down for a couple of days and do
what you want to do.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
So of course, if you do mention, you know, a
particular topic or particular company in your book, they could
always put that on the products as featured in Mary
Roach's Gulp or Mary Roach is Replaceable You.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Yes, that is the small gift I give to them,
and they, by and large they take it. They take
it well given that they're not able to say it
the way they want or highlight the things that they want,
and I'm sure most of what they'd like to say
(31:17):
doesn't end up in the chapter. But it certainly is
exposure for a company. You know, I don't write expose
a's I'm not out to get anybody, but by the
same token, I'm not sugarcoating things or writing puff pieces.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Broadly speaking, what do you feel like you learned about
the human experience writing Replaceable You, and what do you
hope that the reader takes away from the book.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
It's kind of an interesting mix. I want people to
be impressed and kind of amazed at what has been done,
is being done, might be done in the future, but
at the same time to understand how difficult it is
to make something that is a true replacement. And also
(32:10):
there's so many times where something is done in a lab,
something is created, but then you have to figure out
how do you get that into a body or even
onto a body. I spend a couple of days with
a biotech firm, Stems and Therapeutics, who no longer exist.
They were trying to grow follicles and then implant those
(32:34):
from induced pluripotent stem cells like a person's own cells
regress to plury potency, encouraged, instructed to become follicle cells,
and then incorporated into the person's head. And I thought, Okay,
the follicle pretty simple, how hard could it be? But
the challenges were so interesting and so immense. I kind
(32:56):
of want people to understand why it's taking so long,
and not to be disappointed by science. I mean but
just to understand what a tremendous challenge it is when
you get down to the cellular level to create something
that you can incorporate into a complicated system and have
it work in the way you want it to work.
(33:17):
So it's just a kind of a glimpse of how
that's done, what's going on, what's taking so long? And
you know what, we could hopefully expect a couple decades
down the line, but just expect miracles, but don't expect
them quickly.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Well put, I'll see. Finally, you have some author appearances
coming up. Correct, I think you're going to do the
Decatur Book Festival, which is right down the road from me.
So where can folks see you and where can they
check out all your dates?
Speaker 3 (33:50):
I have on Instagram author Mary Roach, there is a
visual of all of the book tour appearances and the dates. Yes,
I will be at the Decatur Book Festival. I'm looking
forward to that. And I remember, yeah, I remember like
one of the best fish tacos I ever had was Indicatur.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Oh nice.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
So yeah, and Maryoach dot Net there's I think they're
putting that up this week, the list of where I'm
going everywhere.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
I'm going well, Mary, thanks once more for coming on
the podcast. It's always a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Oh, thank you so much, Robert. I really had a
great time. Thank you for such a smart and insightful interview.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Thanks once more to Mary Road for taking time out
of her day to chat with me here again. That
book is replaceable, you Adventures in Human Anatomy. Go ahead
and pre order it now. I guarantee you you're going
to have a blast with it. As always will remind
you that stuff to Blow your Mind is primarily a
science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
(34:53):
but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Getticks.
I did because next week is Star Trek Week. The
whole week is going to be Star Trek themes. That
means Star Trek core episodes, a Star Trek monster factor
most likely, and yes we will cover one of the
Star Trek motion pictures for Weird House Cinema. You'll have
to tune in to find out which one. Sometimes you
(35:16):
can peek ahead by going to our account at Letterbox.
We are Weird House on letterbox, and we have a
nice list of all the films we've covered over the
years and sometimes a peek ahead of what comes next.
And as far as social media accounts elsewhere, we'll let's see,
we're on Instagram, STBYM podcast, and we are also on Facebook.
We are on Twitter. We may be some other places,
(35:38):
but those are the well ones that I really can
immediately remember. So if you use any of those platforms,
follow us, keep up with the show. Wherever you get
the show, just make sure that you rate, review, and subscribe.
It helps us out in the long run. Thanks as
always to the excellent JJ Possway for producing this show,
and if you would like to get in touch with
Joe and myself, email us at contact stuff to Blow
(36:00):
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Step to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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