Talking 'Gulp' With Mary Roach

Mary Roach Interview: We all love Mary Roach, so in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind Robert and Julie invite the "Stiff" author on the show to chat about her latest book "Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal." Plus she'll answer listener questions and discuss how to eat with your butt.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas, and
we have another treat for you here as we are
about to interview science author Mary Roach, one of one

(00:23):
of our favorite authors, one of our writing heroes, and
she has a fascinating new book called Gulp and it
is all about the adventures of the digestive system. Yes,
you'll recognize it in stores are online because it has
a big mouth on the front, opening up telling lolling
out um esophagus, waiting for that food to begin this

(00:44):
epic journey through the body and uh. And it is
if you If you've never read Mary Roach before, I
just will remind you that she's the author of Stiff,
which is the book about the life of human goodavers,
about about how we relate to dead bodies, how science
has studied dead bodies. Um. She also wrote Bunk, which
is about sex. She wrote Spook, which is about scientific

(01:06):
investigations of the afterlife, and more recently she wrote Packing
for Mars, which is about about human space exploration and
a lot about the scientific research that has gone into
making it possible for humans to travel to Mars and
even return. And she brings that same level of research
and humor and inquisition into this topic, which I think

(01:29):
is a wonderful topic really, from from mouth to sincter. Yeah,
I mean, she brings so much humor to it, but
but not in a way that which she's belittling the
subject matter, like she dynystifies the subject matter, has a
few laughs with you, but you never feel like she's
exploiting the topic or anyone. I mean, it's just her
books are great from from start to finish. Indeed, So, um,

(01:51):
let's go ahead and get into it. Well, welcome to
our podcast, Stuff to blow your mind. Thanks for taking
the time out of day to chat with us about
your excellent new book Goal. Thanks for having me. Yeah,
we were so excited. Um. In our podcast we try
to cover a range of topics, whether or not we're
talking about cloeca or um the role of regurgitation with

(02:13):
vulters um. So the book is right up our alley.
I love the house, the forks. It's really great. Thank you,
Thank you so much. It's really nice to hear that
I have the whole Oh you do Yeah, very cool.
It would be an honor to say we've been helpful
with Yeah. Yeah, that was my training. That's where I

(02:34):
started out with my all right, familiarized myself with because
it's the whole tube, the whole tube. Yeah, well, thank
you so much. Well, I guess we should just go
ahead and launch into this. We wanted to know from you.
There's so much researching here and so many wonderful little
nooks and crannies. Was there anything that really surprised you, um,

(02:56):
any sort of discovery during your research period that you
were you have the big moment of like, wow, I
didn't see it in that context before. It was completely
new to you. The entire trip down the food shoot,
every every turn, I mean even just like even just
in the mouse. The saliva is something that I just assumed,

(03:17):
like most people, that it was for moistening the food
that you need to swallow to make the bowlers. But
I was completely blown away by the fact that it's, uh,
it's got like five other functions including I love this
the enzymes and not just in saliva, but in some
of the other digestive enzymes further on down the line there.

(03:38):
But these are the enzymes when you hear about laundry
detergent that says new new improved biz with stain fighting enzymes.
These are digestive enzymes, so you know the stuff that
you spill when you spill your food that is meant
to be in your mouth onto your clothes. Um, those
enzymes are you know, amalas lipase protein as these are
digestive enzymes. That just don't know that I found that

(04:01):
kind of the whole uh laundry detergence like a digestive
tract in a box. I mean there's obviously other if
there's your basic soap type products as well, but I
just the fact that these were salivary enzymes and that
art conservators use use their own saliva to clean because
of the enzymes. Again, they need a delicate something to
break down, maybe the egg wash or something like that. Uh,

(04:23):
that they've been known to to use their own saliva.
So obviously you're hitting up a lot of different places
talking to a lot of people about the book right now.
What's your favorite part of goal that no one's asking
you about? Um, Well, John Stewart was the only one
to bring up rectal alimentation rectal feeding, so that's a

(04:46):
that's an interesting I had a whole chapter and he's
the only one that's brought that up a whole chapter
on and we didn't have time, of course to get
into it in any detail. So um, and I don't
know if you want to get into it in in
a detail, but I I just I have a chapter
called eating Backward uh is the digestive track to two
Way Street. And this was fascinating to me that you can,

(05:07):
I mean the small intestines where most of the absorption
goes on, like eight percent of what you know absorption
of nutrients. But the rectum does absorb. You can absorb
you know, glucose and salt and some short change fatty acids.
There's some absorption that can go on. Also drugs. It's
a it's a very effective drug delivery system if you

(05:27):
for some reason you can't swallow them like the ancient
Maya used to use the rectum because he doesn't have
to do. The drug goes straight into the bloodstream, doesn't
have to be processed by the stomach or the liver.
It's just like booms into the into the blood. Then
then you don't if it's one of those hallucinogens that
would make you throw up. You don't have that problem either.
So it's so people had some creative uses for the rectum.

(05:50):
Uh I don't know.