Speaker 1: So, Mary, what is the most embarrassing situation you've ever
Speaker 1: been in as part of your book research.
Speaker 2: That's an easy one. That one, not surprisingly was for Bonk.
Speaker 2: The subtitle of that book is The Curious Coupling of
Speaker 2: Science and Sex. So that is a book about the
Speaker 2: delightful awkwardness of taking sex, arousal, orgasm, all of that,
Speaker 2: all the physiological components of it, and putting it in
Speaker 2: a laboratory setting with a couple doing things and then
Speaker 2: somebody in a white coat taking notes. So I wanted
Speaker 2: to get at that central awkwardness of what I just described.
Speaker 2: And I found this researcher in London who's doing something
Speaker 2: with four dimensional ultrasounds, so three D movies basically in ultrasound.
Speaker 2: It was a diagnostic tool, and he wanted to do
Speaker 2: one It was actually a penis and a vagina interacting,
Speaker 2: and I said, well, I would like to be there
Speaker 2: when you do that to observe, and he wrote back, well,
Speaker 2: if your organization can provide some volunteers, then I'd be
Speaker 2: happy to do that. So my organization asked its husband.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear the rest of that story,
Speaker 1: you'll have to listen to the rest of the podcast.
Speaker 1: So on today's episode of Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe,
Speaker 1: we have the amazing Mary Roach on the show.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 3: I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist, and I'm rarely embarrassed
Speaker 3: by my own science.
Speaker 1: I am Kelly Wiener Smith, and my science has put
Speaker 1: me in loads of embarrassing situations or maybe gross and embarrassing.
Speaker 3: All right, tell us quickly, what is the grossest thing
Speaker 3: you've done, ever done for science?
Speaker 1: Oh? My gosh, all right, hands down. So I hate
Speaker 1: the smell of fish. And I worked on a project
Speaker 1: where we were trying to figure out what kind of
Speaker 1: impact the coal powered power plants on Lake Erie we're
Speaker 1: having on the local fish populations. These surveys happen every
Speaker 1: twenty years or so, and the way you do it
Speaker 1: is you essentially put a net into the water that
Speaker 1: gets sucked into these power plants, and the water is
Speaker 1: used to like cool things down, generate steam, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But the fish gets smushed against the net and as
Speaker 1: the temperature of the water heats up, they all die.
Speaker 1: And so not all of them, but many of them.
Speaker 1: Some of the power plants pull the nets out and
Speaker 1: dump them into dump trucks which literally fill up halfway
Speaker 1: or more with dead fish, and somebody has to go
Speaker 1: in there, including in the middle of the summer, with
Speaker 1: waiters on, and like subsample and identify what species of
Speaker 1: fish are in here? How many are in here? Do
Speaker 1: any of them look like they have fungle diseases and
Speaker 1: would have died anyway? So I had to like become
Speaker 1: very intimate with dump trucks full of dead fish under
Speaker 1: a hot summer sun. And that is the most disgusting
Speaker 1: thing I've done in my whole life. And I hate
Speaker 1: the smell of fish. And I still don't eat fish.
Speaker 1: I just can't. I just can't.
Speaker 3: Sounds like a good job for your future robot research assistant.
Speaker 1: Bringing the robot overlords on. That sounds great. I mean
Speaker 1: I learned a lot about fish identification that summer, but
Speaker 1: I would maybe give up that knowledge if I could
Speaker 1: have avoided that job.
Speaker 3: Well, sometimes doing science means getting all mucky and dirty,
Speaker 3: and sometimes explaining science requires you to get in weird situations,
Speaker 3: sometimes scary, sometimes embarrassing, sometimes just downright on, but.
Speaker 1: Always when they're explained by Mary Roach, absolutely hilarious. So
Speaker 1: let's just jump right into the interview. Let's not make
Speaker 1: people wait. On today's show, We're incredibly lucky to have
Speaker 1: Mary Roach. Mary has been my absolute favorite popsey author
Speaker 1: since I picked up Stiff as an undergrad in two
Speaker 1: thousand and three. Stiff, Spook, Bonk, Packing from Mars, Gulp, Grunt,
Speaker 1: and Falls have all been New York Times bestsellers, and
Speaker 1: I have been at the bookstore the day each of
Speaker 1: them have been released so that I could get my
Speaker 1: copy as soon as possible. So if you've ever wondered,
Speaker 1: how many lasers does it take to keep birds away
Speaker 1: from the Vatican's flowers? Can you lower the national debt
Speaker 1: by doing a more thorough job of chewing your food?
Speaker 1: What's it like to go to the bathroom in space?
Speaker 1: What happens at a body farm? Have scientists been able
Speaker 1: to find the soul? Or any other equally weird questions.
Speaker 1: We've got the Gael for you. Her latest book is
Speaker 1: Fuzz When Nature Breaks the Law. Welcome to the.
Speaker 2: Show, Mary, Hey, thanks, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Guys, I'm so excited to have you on the show.
Speaker 1: I got to talk to you once about cosmonauts and
Speaker 1: that was so much fun.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the cosmonauts love those guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're special to start off. So one of the
Speaker 1: things that I love the most about your books is
Speaker 1: that their topics that I didn't know I was dying
Speaker 1: to learn about, and then as soon as I start reading,
Speaker 1: it turns out I was dying to learn about these topics.
Speaker 1: So let's get started with Fuzz. How did you pick
Speaker 1: the topic for the book Fuzz? What was the thought
Speaker 1: process there? And then in general, how do you pick
Speaker 1: your book topics?
Speaker 2: I always wish that I had the really succinct and
Speaker 2: fantastic origin story for a book, you know, like that
Speaker 2: there was something in my past that triggered this passion
Speaker 2: that I had to spend two years down this rabbit
Speaker 2: hole that had meant everything to me. Is that like that?
Speaker 2: It's like I turned in a book and I would
Speaker 2: like to do another one. That means I need an
Speaker 2: idea for another book, and I don't have one. So
Speaker 2: it's this process of just sometimes looking back at things
Speaker 2: that I've covered before or something I heard about. In
Speaker 2: this case, I had heard about lab up in Ashland, Oregon,
Speaker 2: the National Wildlife Forensics Laboratory, and there's a woman there
Speaker 2: who was an expert and published a paper on how
Speaker 2: to tell real versus artificial or counterfeit tiger penis, which
Speaker 2: is that this is used medicinally, sometimes for virility. And
Speaker 2: she wrote this paper on how to tell real versus
Speaker 2: counterfeit tiger penis. And that's the thing I get kind
Speaker 2: of like that there's a scientist out there whose area
Speaker 2: of expertise is detection of counterfeit tiger penis because of course,
Speaker 2: you know, if somebody's smuggling this stuff in, you need
Speaker 2: to prove that it is an endangered species in order
Speaker 2: to arrest the person. So she needs to be able
Speaker 2: to tell is it real or not? And happily, it
Speaker 2: is almost always fake. It's usually cowerd deer penis, which
Speaker 2: is a lot bigger than a tiger penis.
Speaker 1: Anyway, does she do it by morphology or genetics?
Speaker 2: Oh, by morphology it is so easy to tell. Like
Speaker 2: a tiger piece you can't see because this is audio,
Speaker 2: but tiger pens is like it's a little tiny thing,
Speaker 2: you know, what a dear penis is.
Speaker 3: But does either one actually have an effect on you know,
Speaker 3: male performance? Does it really matter if it's counterfeit?
Speaker 2: Like most of these things, I think, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: kind of psychologically inspiring, but not the tigre penis that'd
Speaker 2: be a little depressing. Yeah. I don't think there's any
Speaker 2: peer reviewed controlled studies suggesting that any of these penises
Speaker 2: have any solid effect on male performance, but regardless, people
Speaker 2: smuggle them in and out of the country. I thought, oh, well,
Speaker 2: that's an interesting line of forensics. Forensics is interesting. Well,
Speaker 2: maybe I'll go up there and I'll talk to her,
Speaker 2: which I did, and it was a wonderful morning. We
Speaker 2: had dried animal penises laid out on the table and
Speaker 2: I took some pictures, which is still on my phone,
Speaker 2: and every now and then the grandkids are like, what's
Speaker 2: on your phone. I'm like, no, no, no, no, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff on my phone we can't look at
Speaker 2: because I'll have to explain. So I thought this is
Speaker 2: going well. And then I went in to talk to
Speaker 2: the director of the lab and I said, well, here's
Speaker 2: what I love to do, or that I need to
Speaker 2: do with the book. I have to be on the scene.
Speaker 2: And I imagined, you know, going in when they rated
Speaker 2: a fake targer penis sweatshop in China, Like you know,
Speaker 2: we'd go in and there'd be these four people and
Speaker 2: they have to do this. They carve little barbs, because
Speaker 2: felines have barbs on there. The penis little sticky eppie things,
Speaker 2: sort of like get the rental car, you know, don't
Speaker 2: back up on this spikes, so somebody has to carve those.
Speaker 2: And I thought we'd be hunched over carving these penises,
Speaker 2: and we'll go and it'll be this incredible scene. I
Speaker 2: had this whole scenario in my head, and then I'd
Speaker 2: find other things to write about. And then the guy goes,
Speaker 2: you know, legally, if it's an open case investigation, you
Speaker 2: can't go along. You just can't. It's the law. No.
Speaker 2: So that just shut me down. And so I went
Speaker 2: home and I was like, ah, damn.
Speaker 4: But then I came across this book, The Criminal Prosecution
Speaker 4: and Capital Punishment of Animals, which made me think, this
Speaker 4: is a historical book, you know, about people used to
Speaker 4: put animals on trial that had misbehaved.
Speaker 2: And I thought, what if the animals were the perpetrators?
Speaker 2: And I say perpetrators in quotes. Obviously animals follow their instinct,
Speaker 2: not laws. So what if we turn it around and
Speaker 2: what if the animals are not the victims but the
Speaker 2: perpetrators And then it turns out there's this whole area
Speaker 2: of science called human wildlife conflict, with conferences and experts
Speaker 2: and textbooks, And I had never heard of human wildlife conflict,
Speaker 2: had no idea people devote their lives to figuring out
Speaker 2: how to coexist with wild animals. So that's a very
Speaker 2: long winded way of saying that's what happened. This is
Speaker 2: how I got my idea for the book.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a great story in general. I'd love
Speaker 3: to hear more about how you got into science writing.
Speaker 3: I mean, how did you identify this sort of opening
Speaker 3: in people's appetite that wasn't being completely served, or you know,
Speaker 3: this itch that people wanted scratching in a certain way.
Speaker 2: Well, again, not through a longstanding passion of mine. I
Speaker 2: was one of those people who thought, in high school
Speaker 2: and in college, oh, science is boring. I want to
Speaker 2: be creative, which is so stupid. There's so much creativity
Speaker 2: in science. It wasn't something that I had thought about
Speaker 2: in college or even when I first graduated. I was
Speaker 2: writing for the magazine of those Sunday paper here in
Speaker 2: the Bay Area San Francisco Chronicle, just general stories, kind
Speaker 2: of a little bit weird Mary Rochie but not science related.
Speaker 2: And my editor went to another publication called Hippocrates, which
Speaker 2: was more focused on health and medicine, but they still
Speaker 2: let me be Mary Roach and do kind of odd
Speaker 2: stories and which was fun. And then from there an
Speaker 2: editor from Discover magazine said, would you like to do
Speaker 2: these weird Mary Roach stories for us? We are a
Speaker 2: science magazine. I know you're not a science writer, but
Speaker 2: why don't you do this? And I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: So I did that and those were the most interesting
Speaker 2: stories I'd done. And I loved writing about science. Since
Speaker 2: I don't have a science background, they tend to be
Speaker 2: not heavy science, you know, they're definitely science for people
Speaker 2: who have mistakenly thought that they don't like science or
Speaker 2: that they don't think science is interesting. I'm kind of
Speaker 2: a gateway drug to science writing. I'm heavy on narrative
Speaker 2: and fun and quirk. For me, the science and the
Speaker 2: discovery of learning about these different fields is tremendous fun
Speaker 2: and really gratifying. But am I really a science writer?
Speaker 2: I guess so I don't know.
Speaker 1: Of course you are.
Speaker 2: You look at real science writers and you know, they
Speaker 2: just I can't understand their books.
Speaker 1: I think you are the kind of science writer where
Speaker 1: people actually learn something because they make it to the
Speaker 1: end of the book, which I think is huge and
Speaker 1: like that's a real skill getting people to stay to
Speaker 1: the end of the book. Thank you, thank you, Yes,
Speaker 1: you're welcome.
Speaker 2: That is my goal, even just to the end of
Speaker 2: the chapter. Man. I am always fighting for that, I
Speaker 2: really am. I'm always sort of policing my words and
Speaker 2: my sentences going in has been it's been a couple
Speaker 2: of pages, but since there's been anything really fun here
Speaker 2: or surprising, like let's punch it up, they're going to
Speaker 2: put the book down. I know they're going to put
Speaker 2: the book down any second.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's an interesting activity when you're writing
Speaker 1: to figure out how long has it been since the
Speaker 1: funny thing that I said, and then trying to not
Speaker 1: like overdo it. Yes, Zach and I had a problem
Speaker 1: where a couple chapters we felt like we had gotten
Speaker 1: corny and we were just overdoing it. But you know,
Speaker 1: you want to make sure they come at a regular pace.
Speaker 2: It's an art, and you guys do it so well,
Speaker 2: some really tough stuff that you're asking people to come
Speaker 2: along with you for and you managed to keep it fun,
Speaker 2: and that is extraordinary. Thank you.
Speaker 3: I think we identified something really important, though, which is
Speaker 3: that a lot of science writing is done in a
Speaker 3: way that isn't actually that understandable, and yet a lot
Speaker 3: of people still love to consume it, which has always
Speaker 3: been something of a mystery to me. Like I read
Speaker 3: Stephen Hawking and I don't understand a lot of his books,
Speaker 3: and then people tell me like I loved A Brief
Speaker 3: History of Time, and I'm like, really, did you actually
Speaker 3: understand it? Did you just appreciate being in the presence
Speaker 3: of what felt like a great mind. So I wonder
Speaker 3: what people are going for sometimes with those books, if
Speaker 3: they actually want to understand, if they just want to
Speaker 3: hang out with Stephen Hawking.
Speaker 2: I do too. I don't have an advanced degree, but
Speaker 2: I don't feel that I'm a moron, you know, I'll
Speaker 2: pick up I don't know, Brian Green, maybe these are
Speaker 2: really gifted, super intelligent, successful writers, but I'm like, I
Speaker 2: don't know, or even like astronomy for people in a
Speaker 2: hurry Neil deGrasse.
Speaker 3: Tyson astrophysics for people in hurry, yeah.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, I don't know. I'm not following along
Speaker 2: I'm falling behind. Help me, I'm falling behind. And I
Speaker 2: know these books are huge sellers, and I'm always curious
Speaker 2: about that. How many people read it all the way
Speaker 2: through and really understand it in the way the author
Speaker 2: means it to be understood. I'd love to know that.
Speaker 2: Can we get Ai to give us an answer on that.
Speaker 1: I actually threw out my copy of Hawkings's book because
Speaker 1: I realized I only had it on my shelf so
Speaker 1: that I could be the kind of person who looked
Speaker 1: like they could read that book. But I gotten through
Speaker 1: ten pages and I was like, this book being on
Speaker 1: my shelf is a lie, and so I kindly got
Speaker 1: rid of it.
Speaker 2: But I'm glad to hear that. I mean no disrespect
Speaker 2: to mister Hawking.
Speaker 1: Then, oh yeah, he's clearly way smarter than I will
Speaker 1: ever be.
Speaker 3: Well, when you're writing your books, you dive deep into
Speaker 3: a topic, You talk to the experts. You must at
Speaker 3: some point pass over the threshold where you're something of
Speaker 3: an expert in the topic yourself. How do you keep
Speaker 3: hold of what the reader knows and what they don't understand,
Speaker 3: and what this must feel like to them the first
Speaker 3: time they're hearing about it. That's a real challenge something
Speaker 3: you pull off amazingly in your book.
Speaker 2: That is always a concern that, over the course of
Speaker 2: the two or three years that I work on a book,
Speaker 2: have I actually learned enough that I'm assuming a level
Speaker 2: of knowledge on the part of my reader that doesn't
Speaker 2: exist because we are starting out at the same place,
Speaker 2: the place of just curiosity and near total ignorance. And
Speaker 2: then I'm moving along through speaking to researchers and experts,
Speaker 2: I'm actually getting to the point where I'm understanding things
Speaker 2: in a way that I now think, is it completely
Speaker 2: unclear what I'm saying here? And that's a little stuff
Speaker 2: I do have. My editor at Norton is she's a
Speaker 2: poet and a novelist. She has no background in science.
Speaker 2: She's a good editor for me for that reason because
Speaker 2: she will sometimes just put a note in the margin,
Speaker 2: I Mary, you've lost me here, or I don't know
Speaker 2: what you're talking about. That is helpful. I'm so excited
Speaker 2: to talk to somebody who is an expert in their field,
Speaker 2: and when their field is something you know, it's a
Speaker 2: little complicated, like you know, stem cells say. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm so grateful to find somebody who can explain it
Speaker 2: to me, who has a sense of what I don't know,
Speaker 2: which is almost everything, and can then unpack it in
Speaker 2: a way that I understand. So part of what my
Speaker 2: job is is looking for those people who I'm going
Speaker 2: to then force to be an unpaid tutor for days
Speaker 2: on end and for endless emails. So I'm not entirely
Speaker 2: clear on can you just explain that's so necessary to
Speaker 2: keep in your head where people are at and whether
Speaker 2: you've left them behind, because I get, let's be honest,
Speaker 2: left behind by a lot of science books.
Speaker 3: I have this theory that Agatha Christie would be a
Speaker 3: great science writer because she seems to have this ability
Speaker 3: of like obviously understanding what's actually happening in her story
Speaker 3: and introducing the facts in a way that the reader
Speaker 3: to discovers them and unravels the mystery in an organic way.
Speaker 3: It seems to be sort of the same challenge to
Speaker 3: write a mystery novel and keep in mind what the
Speaker 3: reader knows and doesn't know. I find that impossible. I
Speaker 3: can't imagine writing a murder mystery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is why I never read murder mysteries, or
Speaker 2: even when I see knives out I'm like, wait, wait,
Speaker 2: did she wait a minute? You know? And I'm always
Speaker 2: making my husband stop, we stop, stop, wait a minute?
Speaker 2: Is that? And he hates it. It's like, can't we
Speaker 2: just keep going with it? We just keep this going? No,
Speaker 2: but I don't know who's the guy? Is that the brother? Who?
Speaker 2: Or is that the wait? What? This is the same
Speaker 2: kind of thing you're asking people to keep in their head,
Speaker 2: the facts that you explained three chapters ago. And it's
Speaker 2: easy for you because you learned it as the author
Speaker 2: I have in the book that I just turned in.
Speaker 2: There's a moment where I'm like, as we learned and
Speaker 2: forgot in chapter three, it's nobody remembers.
Speaker 1: How did the conversations with the experts often go and
Speaker 1: has it changed over the like twenty so years that
Speaker 1: you've been writing, because you know, sometimes I'll try to
Speaker 1: interview someone and they'll go right over my and I'm like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: bring it down. And some of them can and some
Speaker 1: of them can't. And I also feel like the relationship
Speaker 1: with some of the experts has changed over time, as
Speaker 1: NSF keeps telling all the scientists that we are also communicators,
Speaker 1: and they feel like but they're not what is that like?
Speaker 2: You get a sense of this in the first five minutes.
Speaker 2: I think of a conversation by phone or on zoom
Speaker 2: of whether a person's going to really be able to
Speaker 2: do that, And sometimes I just in my head, stop
Speaker 2: the ner. You know, I just asked one or two
Speaker 2: more token questions, and I thank the person and says, no,
Speaker 2: it never happened. You know. I will say, can we
Speaker 2: back up and can you explain whatever it is? And
Speaker 2: then the explanation is different but also incomprehensible for me.
Speaker 2: So there isn't much to be done there. And that's
Speaker 2: why I just when I find someone who actually enjoys
Speaker 2: explaining things in an accessible way, I just want to
Speaker 2: You know, I can't kiss them because we are on
Speaker 2: the phone, but I'm just like, Okay, you're now going
Speaker 2: to be my guy for induced pluripotent stem cells. I'm
Speaker 2: going to be pestering you on and off for the
Speaker 2: next six months and not paying you for that. I'll
Speaker 2: send you a book. But what hasn't changed. No, I
Speaker 2: think that's always been there. I mean I once was
Speaker 2: a sign to do a story I wanted to go.
Speaker 2: And you know those planes that fly into hurricanes. I
Speaker 2: had this idea that'd be a fun thing to do.
Speaker 2: And there was a hurricane hunter plane that was going
Speaker 2: into a certain kind of storm, not infect a hurricane.
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, I'm going to do that. And there
Speaker 2: was this meteorologist on board, and it was almost like
Speaker 2: a form of hostility. He would not explain things in
Speaker 2: a way that anybody who's not a meteorologist could understand.
Speaker 2: And I kept trying to well, I what if I'm
Speaker 2: let's pretend I'm a sixth grader at a somebody's barbecue
Speaker 2: party and just talk to me like that, and he wouldn't,
Speaker 2: And so we got down. It was this in Monterey.
Speaker 2: We landed, and I called my editor and just said,
Speaker 2: forget it. You know, maybe you can pay my expenses,
Speaker 2: which aren't a lot from here to Monterey and we're
Speaker 2: done because nothing can't do it.
Speaker 1: What a bummer. Yeah, I know, I love you are
Speaker 1: expecting someone to be a tutor approach. I was in
Speaker 1: trouble figuring out how much research I should do before
Speaker 1: I reach out to someone. And I think that's because
Speaker 1: early on I asked for an interview and they said, well,
Speaker 1: tell me what you want to ask me about and
Speaker 1: I sent them my questions and they said, Nope, these
Speaker 1: are not the most interesting things that I do. I
Speaker 1: will not be interviewed by you, and they like shut
Speaker 1: me down. And I was like, oh, I mean I
Speaker 1: was hoping you'd help me understand this stuff, but okay.
Speaker 1: And so I also feel like some people I talk
Speaker 1: to it's almost like they don't respect the job of
Speaker 1: a popsie author, like NSF keeps telling every when you
Speaker 1: do these broader impacts, scientists can communicate, And I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of scientists I've talked to now feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: if you're a scientist, you also can do science communication
Speaker 1: just as easily, Like you learn that along the way.
Speaker 1: But it's a very different kind of writing. And so
Speaker 1: I feel like I encounter people who are very hostile.
Speaker 1: They don't feel like I've done enough. And then also
Speaker 1: people who are like, well I could do what you do.
Speaker 2: I think to go back to your previous question, but
Speaker 2: not that there's anything wrong with the current question. To
Speaker 2: go back to your previous question. One thing that has
Speaker 2: changed for me over twenty years is that this is
Speaker 2: a wonderful thing when it happens. If I write to
Speaker 2: someone that I've never met, and I say, hey, you know,
Speaker 2: I saw that you're working on such and such. I'm
Speaker 2: working on a book, and I also at a little
Speaker 2: bio at the bottom of my email. And when someone
Speaker 2: writes back and says, oh, I've read one of your books,
Speaker 2: or I'm familiar with what you do. Sure, happy to talk.
Speaker 2: I'd love to talk. I know that that's going to
Speaker 2: go well because they know the kind of weirdo that
Speaker 2: I am and the level at which I'm writing, and
Speaker 2: their enthusiasm suggests this is going to be just what
Speaker 2: I need. Another thing that's changed is a lot of
Speaker 2: times when you reach out by email, you just don't
Speaker 2: get a reply. And I don't know if that's one
Speaker 2: of those people who hates science communicators, or it's somebody
Speaker 2: who doesn't check their email, or it's not a useful
Speaker 2: I don't know what it is. But there's a lot
Speaker 2: more of just never hearing back through, whether it's LinkedIn
Speaker 2: or a university email address. I think it's easier now
Speaker 2: for people to feel okay ignoring you because no one
Speaker 2: who checks their email. Nobody checks their email anymore. You know,
Speaker 2: you got to text me, well, I don't have your number,
Speaker 2: so that's different.
Speaker 3: There's a gentleman in my department who I often go
Speaker 3: to with really hardcore questions about like general relativity, and
Speaker 3: his attitude is, you're wasting your time. There's no way
Speaker 3: you could ever explain these topics to the general public.
Speaker 3: And then he gives me a really excellent explanation, which
Speaker 3: I rely on for the podcast, and he keeps doing it.
Speaker 3: So he's quite grumpy about it sometimes, but he's also
Speaker 3: excellent at it. And it seems to me that there's
Speaker 3: this sort of conflict in a lot of scientists. They
Speaker 3: feel like, I just want to be left alone to
Speaker 3: do my science, but they also feel like, hey, the
Speaker 3: public should support us, and this is important, and I
Speaker 3: think it's vital that people do the kind of work
Speaker 3: you do, because not every scientist can be out there
Speaker 3: explaining it to sixth graders. And I'm wondering, like, if
Speaker 3: you feel sort of any hostility from scientists or any
Speaker 3: sort of like, you know, weirdness that you're telling their
Speaker 3: story instead of them, What do you feel like is
Speaker 3: your relationship with the science community.
Speaker 2: There, I do feel hostility from the people who respond
Speaker 2: to me and agree to talk. I think that usually
Speaker 2: goes well. There was a woman who on Amazon was
Speaker 2: very put off by Gulp, which is Adventures on the
Speaker 2: Alimentary Canal. It's you know, the tube between nose and
Speaker 2: apple and all the weird things that go on in there.
Speaker 2: And she was very, very angry that I hadn't mentioned
Speaker 2: the mucus layer in the stomach. Basically, her feeling was
Speaker 2: that people like me are stealing science, making money off
Speaker 2: of it, cheapening it, dumbing it down. I looked her
Speaker 2: up onpe my professor, and she had It was very mixed.
Speaker 2: There were people who are like, she's a really great
Speaker 2: professor and I learned a lot, and then there are
Speaker 2: people like, she's such a hater. I do not deserve that.
Speaker 2: D These are people who aren't reaching out to me.
Speaker 2: They're obviously talking about for the most part, behind my back.
Speaker 2: I'm sure that that's out there. I don't get a
Speaker 2: lot of it directed at me through email or I
Speaker 2: don't read my Amazon review reviews anymore, and as I
Speaker 2: hope that you don't either. No, there was a reviewer
Speaker 2: who said the same kind of thing that making science successible,
Speaker 2: I was disrespecting it, or you know, that kind of
Speaker 2: reaction exists out there for sure. For sure, probably far
Speaker 2: more people than I want to believe feel that way
Speaker 2: about me, but they're nice enough to keep it to themselves.
Speaker 1: I bet that's the minority opinion. But let's take a
Speaker 1: break and then when we come back, we will talk
Speaker 1: about animals getting in troule. So Daniel and I have
Speaker 1: this long running debate about whether or not Virginia or
Speaker 1: California is better, and oh, irobably going to fall on
Speaker 1: the California side, but I think Virginya is clearly better.
Speaker 1: But we were going to each ask a question about
Speaker 1: animal problems that are in our area. And I have
Speaker 1: tons of trouble with deer. We have like forty deer
Speaker 1: in our hay fields last night I counted. And they
Speaker 1: are also in the roads, yes, and why don't they
Speaker 1: get out of the way what I'm driving towards them? So, yeah,
Speaker 1: what's going on with the deer and how do we
Speaker 1: get them out of the roads.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the deer in the headlights phenomenon. When you think
Speaker 2: about animals not getting out of the way, an animal
Speaker 2: in the road sees a car coming at it and
Speaker 2: it perceives it as a predator, which makes sense, Like
Speaker 2: this thing is coming at me, I don't know. And
Speaker 2: so there's this thing flight initiation distance, which is how
Speaker 2: long can I stay where I am? Maybe if I'm
Speaker 2: eating something delicious, how long can I stay here before
Speaker 2: I actually really need to get out of the way
Speaker 2: because I'm going to be hit or grabbed or eaten
Speaker 2: or whatever it is. But in general, the car hasn't
Speaker 2: been around that long the automobile, so the evolution hasn't
Speaker 2: kind of incorporated you know what, There's things going sixty
Speaker 2: miles per hour, so you need to update your sense
Speaker 2: of how quickly do I need to run? How quickly
Speaker 2: do I need to get out of the way. So
Speaker 2: there's some confusion with that. I mean, pigeons are obviously
Speaker 2: really good at it. You can never hit a pigeon
Speaker 2: with your car, and I'm not saying that I try
Speaker 2: to do that. But the other thing going on is
Speaker 2: one of the ways that an animal can detect or
Speaker 2: a person for them, and the way we can tell
Speaker 2: how quickly something's coming at us is looming like it's
Speaker 2: getting bigger and bigger, Like how quickly is it getting
Speaker 2: bigger and bigger? That kind of tells us how quickly
Speaker 2: it's coming at us, and animals are not with cars
Speaker 2: again because they are very fast pedestrians too. You know,
Speaker 2: the faster the car, the harder it is to judge.
Speaker 2: You know, how quickly is it coming at us? Deer active,
Speaker 2: you know, it's dusk and night, and when what's coming
Speaker 2: at you is just two pinpoints of light, all you
Speaker 2: can see is these two pinpoints of light. It's very
Speaker 2: hard to see is that looming? Is it getting bigger?
Speaker 2: It just may look like two points of light, not chain.
Speaker 2: So you can imagine the deer looking at that, these
Speaker 2: two points of light going huh A couple points of
Speaker 2: light huh boo. By the time they figure out that
Speaker 2: there's a car attached, it's too late, and that is
Speaker 2: really bad for deer but also really bad for people
Speaker 2: because you know, if people often say, oh, what's the
Speaker 2: most danger people ask me, what are these the most
Speaker 2: dangerous animal of all the animals that you wrote about. Well,
Speaker 2: first of all, I would say, you know, bacteria or
Speaker 2: virus is, but they're not really animals. So deer in
Speaker 2: terms of the number of people not because you hit
Speaker 2: the deer, but you swerved to not hit the deer
Speaker 2: and you hit a tree where you went off on cliff.
Speaker 2: So deer are very very dangerous in that way. The
Speaker 2: other thing that happens is a deer's running across the
Speaker 2: road in front of you, and your eye is on
Speaker 2: that deer, and deer there's usually more than one, so
Speaker 2: you are looking at that deer, you hit the brakes,
Speaker 2: and then what you end up hitting is the deer
Speaker 2: behind that one that's also crossing at the same time.
Speaker 3: That exact thing happened to me as a teenager.
Speaker 1: Did you hit the second one?
Speaker 3: I hit the second one, Yeah, exactly, went through the windshield.
Speaker 3: I like looked at it deep in the eyes forward
Speaker 3: bounced off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my god. Yeah. And it's terrifying, really dangerous when
Speaker 2: it's a tall animal like a moose or an elk,
Speaker 2: because you're just hitting the legs and you're knocking the
Speaker 2: legs out from under and the whole body and the
Speaker 2: antlers come crashing down on the roof and the windshield.
Speaker 2: So camels are a problem in the Middle East. A
Speaker 2: lot of broken necks. It's bad. It's bad stuff.
Speaker 1: I was interested in the various ways that people have
Speaker 1: come up with to try to keep the deer off
Speaker 1: the road. Some of them were fairly hilarious, and I
Speaker 1: love that you introduced this topic with the woman who
Speaker 1: called into the radio show. Would you share that story.
Speaker 2: With us, Yeah, Donna. Donna called it was I forget
Speaker 2: where this was a call in radio program and this
Speaker 2: woman called in and said, I have a pet pee.
Speaker 2: Why do they put deer crossing signs in these areas
Speaker 2: of high traffic? Why would you put it there that
Speaker 2: The guy's like, there's a silence, he goes. It sounds
Speaker 2: like you think that they're placing the signs. So it's
Speaker 2: like you shouldn't understand that you put the signs where
Speaker 2: the deer are crossing. It nothing. You don't just choose
Speaker 2: where you're going to tell the deers. Exactly the tone
Speaker 2: of the DJs, there's a mix of incredulity and kindness. Donna,
Speaker 2: it sounds as though.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the kindness though, I feel like that's part
Speaker 1: of what made it such a charming, funny story.
Speaker 2: They put the sign right here, Let's like right before
Speaker 2: there's a curve, and it's a terrible place to tell
Speaker 2: the deer to cross.
Speaker 3: If only we could tell the deer what to do. Well,
Speaker 3: these stories of like human animal interactions human wildlife interactions
Speaker 3: I think are really fascinating from like a public health
Speaker 3: point of view and in forest management point view and
Speaker 3: out here in the wonderful state of California. As of course,
Speaker 3: you know, we deal a lot with bears. My family
Speaker 3: goes camping a lot. Recently we had this experience where
Speaker 3: we went camping, and of course we had a bear bag.
Speaker 3: We made a mistake of leaving one can of Seltzer
Speaker 3: in the backseat of the car, and there was a
Speaker 3: bear and it came in. It opened the car door
Speaker 3: and got the seltzer, crunched the seltzer, drank all of it,
Speaker 3: and didn't harm the car at all. It was incredible,
Speaker 3: like it used its snout to like open the door somehow. Anyway,
Speaker 3: bears are very very smart, and I often wonder like
Speaker 3: it must be very challenging to design bear proof trash
Speaker 3: cans that are complex enough for bear to not be
Speaker 3: able to figure them out, but simple enough for humans
Speaker 3: to be able to do.
Speaker 2: This is the problem. This is the problem if you
Speaker 2: go as I did. I was in Colorado, actually not
Speaker 2: California for this chapter, but at one point the researcher
Speaker 2: and I were walking down this alley where behind all
Speaker 2: the restaurants in downtown Aspen, these bear proof containers were
Speaker 2: either broken or not being used hardly because it's difficult.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like reading a Stephen Hawking book. It's like,
Speaker 2: you know, harder than one of those you know press
Speaker 2: while turning aspirin bottles. It was it required two hands.
Speaker 2: And you could imagine if you're some restaurant worker who's
Speaker 2: poorly paid, was middle of a shift running out with
Speaker 2: a bag of garbage, you know, not bothering to lock
Speaker 2: it again. And also one of the things that was
Speaker 2: being done well in an area near Aspen, not Aspen itself,
Speaker 2: was that they were holding educational talks for the people
Speaker 2: who worked in the kitchen. The patrons and the restaurant
Speaker 2: owners have been educated. You know, okay, fed bear is
Speaker 2: a dead bear. Like this is what happens. The bears
Speaker 2: get used to being fed, they keep coming here. There's
Speaker 2: going to be a conflict and then the bear will
Speaker 2: be killed. But the people who worked in the kitchen,
Speaker 2: some of them didn't speak English. They hadn't been told
Speaker 2: why it's important to lock this container. So they were
Speaker 2: doing outreach in Spanish in this community, just so that
Speaker 2: people got it like, oh, this is why we do it,
Speaker 2: and it's a nice thing to do for the bears.
Speaker 2: But yeah, they're very smart. The guy that I spent
Speaker 2: time with had done a study on bears breaking into
Speaker 2: minivans in Yosemite. They would break into other cars, but
Speaker 2: for some reason it was so they all knew there's
Speaker 2: a certain minivan and he wasn't sure, Like I said,
Speaker 2: is it the fault of the minivan maker? Are they not?
Speaker 2: Is there something about the doors that are easy to
Speaker 2: pop open? He said, it might be that, but I
Speaker 2: think it's more that a mini van is a place
Speaker 2: with lots of children and lots of spilled food and
Speaker 2: crumbs and soda and a lot of nice smells. And
Speaker 2: the bears are like, that's the place for me, mm, the.
Speaker 3: Same reason dogs like babies. Yeah, exactly. Well, you know,
Speaker 3: I've been to Aspen Center for Physics. Of course, is
Speaker 3: there an Aspen, And many times I've seen a genius
Speaker 3: theoretical physicist standing in front of one of those things
Speaker 3: and like unevil, you know, And it's like when you
Speaker 3: stand in a shower in a new hotel and you're like,
Speaker 3: how you turned this thing on? And what's hot and
Speaker 3: what's cold. It's like a new puzzle everything.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, the number of times I called the
Speaker 2: fronts like I'm standing here naked, I can't take a
Speaker 2: shower because I'm too stupid to figure out your shower
Speaker 2: system exactly.
Speaker 1: And the fancy or the hotel, the more obscure the
Speaker 1: system is. Let's look that they are have coffee, which sucks.
Speaker 3: Probably bears could figure it out, though they'd be happily
Speaker 3: taking showers.
Speaker 2: Pars could figure it out. The bears could figure out
Speaker 2: there also. And there was a guy from Colorado Fish
Speaker 2: and Wildlife or fish and Game, I forget what they
Speaker 2: call themselves there, but he was describing how, you know,
Speaker 2: up in the hills where there's a lot of delicious
Speaker 2: food for bears, natural and man made, they got a
Speaker 2: lot of break ins. And he was describing how he
Speaker 2: came to this one place where the bear had literally
Speaker 2: just pulled the door out of the frame, just like
Speaker 2: like you know, incredible hulk style pulled it off, but
Speaker 2: then carefully just set it aside and leaned it against
Speaker 2: the wall, not like threw it over the deck or
Speaker 2: knocked it down, just sort of carefully laid it aside.
Speaker 2: I just I love that. I love bears.
Speaker 3: I love megafauna in general. I wish we had more
Speaker 3: megafauna still in North America, you know, like.
Speaker 1: The Giant's loss.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Giant's loss. Giant anything would be great. I
Speaker 2: once did a story on the Gippsland giant earthworm, which
Speaker 2: is this worm that is so this is the size
Speaker 2: of a forty five record around big. And I was like,
Speaker 2: I'm going to interview this woman who studies the Gippsland
Speaker 2: giant earthworm.
Speaker 3: You're saying, this is an earthworm like the size of
Speaker 3: a fire hose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh my god, it is definitely at least that big.
Speaker 2: And you can hear them moving underground. She goes stomping
Speaker 2: around on the field and you hear this this sort
Speaker 2: of gurgling sound as they moved through their tunnels. And
Speaker 2: she was able to pinpoint where it was dig with
Speaker 2: the shovel, and like we saw this glimpse of the
Speaker 2: giant earthworm like going away down the tunnel, and happily
Speaker 2: she didn't cut it in half. But anyway, any giant thing.
Speaker 2: But I was going to say, getting back to you,
Speaker 2: you're talking about how it had broke in without to
Speaker 2: get the seltzer water without causing damage. And there are
Speaker 2: bears that kind of get a reputation. And again this
Speaker 2: was in Colorado. There's this one bear. It was breaking
Speaker 2: into cabins and going in and people would be like,
Speaker 2: you know what, he didn't touch anything. He just went
Speaker 2: to the fridge. He took out the honey and the
Speaker 2: yogurt and the beer and shut the door on the
Speaker 2: left and everything was fo Yeah, And because of that,
Speaker 2: no one wanted to call him in. And so there
Speaker 2: was this thought that maybe, you know, that these are
Speaker 2: the bears that don't get killed by fish and wildlife,
Speaker 2: and that maybe over time will select for bears that
Speaker 2: are mellower and better mannered, and that maybe one day
Speaker 2: bears will just be like you know, big raccoons, you know,
Speaker 2: just kind of bumbling around getting into the garbage.
Speaker 1: Are they checking to see if someone is home first?
Speaker 1: I feel like I'd feel different if I came home
Speaker 1: and was like, oh, my yogurt is on the counter,
Speaker 1: a bear must have been here, or if I was like, there, well,
Speaker 1: it was eating my yogurt.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. They prefer to come in when no one's there,
Speaker 2: but sometimes they don't know there are stories of a
Speaker 2: bear coming in grabbing a chicken off the dining table
Speaker 2: while people are eating, or somebody like they're sitting at
Speaker 2: home and a bear comes through the door and they
Speaker 2: run and lock themselves in the bathroom. They are sometimes
Speaker 2: coming in when you're there, and when it's dangerous is
Speaker 2: often if the person has a dog and the dog
Speaker 2: is you know, of course, freaked out, and the dog's
Speaker 2: going after the bear and the bear is in freak
Speaker 2: out defensive mode, and if the person tries to come
Speaker 2: between the dog and the bear, and they can redirect
Speaker 2: the attack onto the person, So that's a bad schoys.
Speaker 3: Well, what do you think more broadly about this interaction
Speaker 3: between humans and wildlife. A lot of people feel like, oh,
Speaker 3: we have to protect the humans. We should get rid
Speaker 3: of the bear. It's like, this is why we hunted
Speaker 3: a lot of megafauna to extinction. But you know, the
Speaker 3: bears were there first. Right in my neighborhood. People worry
Speaker 3: about their cats because there's coyotes in the neighborhood and
Speaker 3: I'm like, well, you know, coyotes live here. We moved
Speaker 3: in and brought our cats.
Speaker 2: People are funny about it. Oh, it's so cruel to
Speaker 2: keep a cat inside. I've had cats as indoor cats.
Speaker 2: They're fine with it. You're just projecting on your cat.
Speaker 2: A cat doesn't give it. It wants food.
Speaker 3: And a lap, and the birds are happy if your
Speaker 3: cat stays.
Speaker 2: Inside exactly, the birds are happier. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of the cats, I've talked to a couple
Speaker 1: different people who do animal control work, and nobody wants
Speaker 1: to see someone out there like shooting the feral cats,
Speaker 1: because we all like have warm and fuzzy feelings about
Speaker 1: the cats, even though they're killing the birds, they're killing
Speaker 1: the rodents, and so there are a lot of popular
Speaker 1: programs where the cats are captured, spaine or neutered and
Speaker 1: then released again, where they're still of course being ecological menaces,
Speaker 1: but you hope that the numbers don't grow. And it
Speaker 1: seems like they were doing something similar with the monkeys
Speaker 1: that you studied in one of the chapters. Can you
Speaker 1: tell us about the monkeys and also what it was
Speaker 1: like to get rubbed by a monkey?
Speaker 2: Sure? But I did one on the topic of cats
Speaker 2: first here. The program in New Zealand is really interesting
Speaker 2: Predator Free New Zealand twenty thirty, which is an attempt
Speaker 2: to rid the island of stoats rats. What's it's like
Speaker 2: a weasel, a long, tubular, fierce, vicious thing. So cute
Speaker 2: possums that's the other one. So they're non native species
Speaker 2: and you know New Zealand has flightless birds, so that's
Speaker 2: like easy pickens if you're a stout. And the possums,
Speaker 2: you know, strip the trees and do other things. So
Speaker 2: there's this desire in order to preserve the native species.
Speaker 2: Is there's a program by using poisons to eliminate predators,
Speaker 2: but there were also and again these were brought in.
Speaker 2: The cats were not native, and there's a ton of
Speaker 2: feral cats in New Zealand. They brought them in thinking
Speaker 2: they can get rid of the rats. I think it was. Anyway,
Speaker 2: if you're going to do predator free New Zealand, you
Speaker 2: rationally should also be getting rid of the feral cats.
Speaker 2: But that is a flashpoint and you can't do that.
Speaker 2: So that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Culture, it's so interesting how you know, human emotions
Speaker 1: sort of make all of this much more complicated. Like
Speaker 1: I think the macaques, they're in a culture where you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to kill animals, and.
Speaker 2: So well, the macacus. Yeah, I mean in India, not
Speaker 2: just macacs, but elephants as well. Some of the nuisance
Speaker 2: quote nuisance animals are also representations of gods hanuman Is
Speaker 2: and the monkey gods. So if you go to a
Speaker 2: honumon temple in India, there's monkeys everywhere and people are
Speaker 2: on the one hand fed up with macaques because they
Speaker 2: break into houses and they steal things and they're very aggressive.
Speaker 2: But on the other people are feeding them. It's like
Speaker 2: making an offering. So they hang around urban areas and
Speaker 2: temples and are fed. At the same time, they are
Speaker 2: despised and the poor people who are the animal control
Speaker 2: types are completely fed up. It's an intractable problem because
Speaker 2: people are encouraging them. Also, there's not reliable garbage pickup.
Speaker 2: I was in Delhi, but also in other cities. It's
Speaker 2: so there's a lot of food for them and they're
Speaker 2: very smart, you know, like bears. I was staying at
Speaker 2: this hotel in Jaipor and around dusk you look at
Speaker 2: the rooftops and all of a sudden, the monkeys are
Speaker 2: coming out and the monkeys. You know, we were in
Speaker 2: a restaurant and this monkey just all of a sudden
Speaker 2: is on the rafters and is dropping down onto tables,
Speaker 2: and the waiters have you know, a stick handy to
Speaker 2: just threaten the monkey and get to leave. They're everywhere.
Speaker 2: It's hard to get approval for any kind of control
Speaker 2: because of the religious overtones of a monkey. To hire
Speaker 2: monkey catchers. I mean what's done is to capture them
Speaker 2: and take them to this big area south in the
Speaker 2: southern part of Delhi used to be a quarry, this
Speaker 2: big chunk of land, and so they're captured and brought there.
Speaker 2: But it's very hard to get somebody to take the
Speaker 2: job of monkey catcher because you're harassing a monkey, and
Speaker 2: that's people are not comfortable with that. They're not comfortable
Speaker 2: with killing them. They're not even comfortable with birth control
Speaker 2: efforts which have been going on just because it's a god.
Speaker 2: I mean it's not literally a god, but it's too
Speaker 2: close for comfort, and so it's a big problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what's going on in this region where it's
Speaker 3: all just the monkeys, Like the monkeys are in charge.
Speaker 3: It's like some monkey kingdom.
Speaker 2: I went there, I got in there. It is. It's
Speaker 2: monkey central. They feed them. It's concentrated in certain areas
Speaker 2: it's an old quarry, but it is all overgrown. It's
Speaker 2: actually a lovely place to be a monkey. It's just
Speaker 2: a wild space, but there are villages close by, and
Speaker 2: the monkeys are really good at climbing right up over
Speaker 2: the wall and harassing people in the village. There was
Speaker 2: a guy there is like, you cannot even eat a
Speaker 2: ROTI there's a monkey wall that's coming to you. They're
Speaker 2: not being kept in very well.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of things that we do
Speaker 1: when it comes to animal control that makes us feel good,
Speaker 1: but isn't actually changing anything. I think when you move
Speaker 1: animals from one place to another, so you know you yes,
Speaker 1: you mentioned that the monkeys get out. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of times you move an animal and they've spent
Speaker 1: their whole life getting used to an area they know
Speaker 1: where the food is, and now you've dropped them as
Speaker 1: an adult into an area they don't know. And it
Speaker 1: seems like in the book you discovered that that's a problem.
Speaker 2: Well, it may be effective for the town from which
Speaker 2: you removed them, but you've now put them in an
Speaker 2: area where they're going to figure out where's say it's
Speaker 2: a bear, where's the closest town that has a restaurant
Speaker 2: or that has houses with cat food or just attractants,
Speaker 2: as they say, and they're going to start doing the
Speaker 2: same thing there. So you've just kind of moved the problem.
Speaker 2: That's an issue for the control agency or the wildlife
Speaker 2: folks who decided to do the relocation. If that bear
Speaker 2: gets into any kind of situation where it's becoming aggressive
Speaker 2: and it hurts or kills somebody in that new town,
Speaker 2: Now you the wildlife agency that moved the bear, that
Speaker 2: translocated the bear, now you are liable, so you're open
Speaker 2: to a lawsuit. And that has happened. There have been
Speaker 2: some big payouts in situations where that bear that they
Speaker 2: know is got habituated to food, they know that's a
Speaker 2: high risk bear, and they've moved it and something happened,
Speaker 2: So that's also a consideration. It works a little better
Speaker 2: in a younger bear that hasn't gotten set in its ways,
Speaker 2: but it's very expensive also to do, and the sense
Speaker 2: is among some of the wildlife control people that it's
Speaker 2: done in cases where there's a lot of publicity. In
Speaker 2: other words, you're not going to kill that bear because
Speaker 2: you're going to get a lot of heat and anger
Speaker 2: from the public. So it looks good to do that,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't always work in terms of what the
Speaker 2: bear's behavior is in the new place. And it's also
Speaker 2: not necessarily a nice thing to do. As you mentioned,
Speaker 2: this is an animal that knows food sources, knows the
Speaker 2: terrain in the place that it is, so you're now
Speaker 2: taking it and putting it somewhere else. There were researchers
Speaker 2: that looked at the survival of it was either raccoons
Speaker 2: or squirrels that had been trends. I think it was
Speaker 2: squirrels that had been translocated, and very few of them survived.
Speaker 2: They put radio collars on them. They'd find like a
Speaker 2: piece of radio color. All that remained of squirrel sixty.
Speaker 3: Seven, probably torn apart by the local squirrel gangs. Right,
Speaker 3: it's not happy exactly the person come eating their exactly.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know we feel that way. Whenever Virginians
Speaker 3: moved to California. We're like, hey, you know, that's why
Speaker 3: I left.
Speaker 1: That's why I left.
Speaker 2: Stop eating my nuts exactly.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's take a break, and when we
Speaker 1: get back, we're going to ask Mary about some of
Speaker 1: the most extreme situations that her work has put her in, So, Mary,
Speaker 1: what is the most embarrassing situation you've ever been in
Speaker 1: as part of your book research?
Speaker 2: That's an easy one. That one, not surprisingly was for Bonk.
Speaker 2: The subtitle of that book is The Curious Coupling of
Speaker 2: Science and Sex. So that is a book about the
Speaker 2: delightful awkwardness of taking sex, arousal orgasm, all of that,
Speaker 2: all the physiological components of it, and putting it in
Speaker 2: a laboratory setting with you a couple doing things and
Speaker 2: then somebody in a white coat taking notes. So I
Speaker 2: wanted to get at that central awkwardness of what I
Speaker 2: just described. And I found this researcher in London who's
Speaker 2: doing something with four dimensional ultrasound, so three D movies
Speaker 2: basically in ultrasound, which is something that surgeons could use,
Speaker 2: say if you were working on a cleft lip and
Speaker 2: you wanted to get a sense of how that lip
Speaker 2: is moving before you did the surgery. And he had
Speaker 2: I think there was a Pearne study that he had
Speaker 2: done with an erecting penis and looking at before surgery.
Speaker 2: What am I dealing with? It was a diagnostic tool
Speaker 2: and he wanted to do when it was actually a
Speaker 2: penis and a vagina interacting, and I said, well, I
Speaker 2: would like to be there when you do that to observe,
Speaker 2: and he wrote back, well, if your organization can provide
Speaker 2: some volunteers, then I'd be happy to do that. So
Speaker 2: my organization asked its husband, and my husband is such
Speaker 2: a good sport, you know, he had said, oh, sex research,
Speaker 2: sign me up. You know. He was like, well, I
Speaker 2: don't know whatever. I really put the emphasis on, Let's
Speaker 2: go to London and I'll pay for a nice hotel
Speaker 2: and we'll, you know, we'll go to see some plays.
Speaker 2: I think Jeremy Irons is in something right now, and
Speaker 2: it'll be really fun and we have to, you know,
Speaker 2: have sex in front of a guy. I look back
Speaker 2: now on that and I think, how did that even?
Speaker 2: I guess I'm just really committed to getting good material.
Speaker 2: Material would be fun to write up, fun for the reader.
Speaker 2: I knew that that was going to be really fun
Speaker 2: to write and also really not fun to do.
Speaker 3: So you went through with it?
Speaker 2: Oh yes, oh yes, yes I did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and your marriage survived.
Speaker 2: It's a very fun scene. It's only a couple of pages.
Speaker 2: It's only a couple of pages. It's funny because my
Speaker 2: editor goes, Mary, I don't you know, she has a
Speaker 2: thing about what people need to take you seriously as
Speaker 2: a science writer. You know, this is science writing. It's
Speaker 2: just for people to respect you. And so she was like,
Speaker 2: I don't know if this scene should really be in here,
Speaker 2: And then my agent read it and goes, Mary, you
Speaker 2: need more detail in this scene. So I think I
Speaker 2: hit it just about right. We're going to leave that
Speaker 2: as is.
Speaker 1: I think that's why we take you seriously, because it's
Speaker 1: like she is actually willing to like get involved in
Speaker 1: this stuff and be a data point in a study.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, physics is so much less embarrassing and relieved.
Speaker 1: How about scary? Have you ever signed up for something
Speaker 1: thought this is a great idea, and then when you
Speaker 1: were in the moment, thought this was a bad idea.
Speaker 2: There were things that I did and that I didn't
Speaker 2: really think about it till later that it was probably
Speaker 2: a stupid thing to do. For example, and the leopard
Speaker 2: chapter in the book, this is a section of the
Speaker 2: Middle Himalayas where leopards actually do prey on people, children,
Speaker 2: old people, easy targets. And as we'd come into this area,
Speaker 2: the researcher had sort of done this death tour of
Speaker 2: see this bus stop. An old gentleman was taken waiting
Speaker 2: sitting there, see this field. So it was like this
Speaker 2: tour of maulings. And so I at one point it
Speaker 2: was a nice evening and I said I'm going to
Speaker 2: go out for a walk, and nobody wanted to come
Speaker 2: with me. So I went out for a walk and
Speaker 2: then the sun went down more quickly than I thought,
Speaker 2: and that's the hour at which all these attacks happened.
Speaker 2: And I was walking back thinking, this is really stupid
Speaker 2: of me, and it was spooky because of what I
Speaker 2: knew as I was doing it, but then sort of
Speaker 2: looking back just like that was really stupid of me,
Speaker 2: but not terrifying. I sometimes put myself in a situation
Speaker 2: that my husband will go like, well you did what
Speaker 2: I did. The story before it's on. This is years ago,
Speaker 2: and I wrote for Salon dot com and I did
Speaker 2: a story about bashful bladder paruresis, which is a condition
Speaker 2: you know men at the urinal they can't start to pee,
Speaker 2: and it can be extreme. There are people who bring
Speaker 2: a self catheterization kit when they travel just because they
Speaker 2: just if anybody's close, they can't I don't think this
Speaker 2: is a woman problem much. But anyway, the way that
Speaker 2: these folks get help is similar to if you're afraid
Speaker 2: of spiders. You know, it's a progressive the spiders closer,
Speaker 2: it's in the room, and eventually it's you know, two
Speaker 2: inches away. So there's a treatment that is where you're
Speaker 2: somebody's pea buddy, where you know, they drink a lot
Speaker 2: of water and then you're like out in the living
Speaker 2: room and they're like, okay, I'm gonna pee. Now I'm
Speaker 2: in the bathroom. You're like, okay, I'm in the living room,
Speaker 2: and then you get sort of closer to them and
Speaker 2: to the point where you or I was outside the
Speaker 2: bathroom door and I'm like outside the bathroom door and
Speaker 2: the guy's like, okay, I'm doing and I'm peeing. So anyway,
Speaker 2: I was like, wow, I really helped this guy and
Speaker 2: this is great and it's an interesting story. And my
Speaker 2: husband's like, where were you this afternoon some rando guy's
Speaker 2: house who's peeing and I'm standing outside the door and
Speaker 2: he's like, did you know this person? No? I don't know.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a Google group whatever it was back
Speaker 2: then where I just posted something and somebody said, yes,
Speaker 2: you can help me and be my pea buddy. So
Speaker 2: I'm just always like, ah, that sounds great, that'll be
Speaker 2: really interesting.
Speaker 1: Is there data to suggest that this sort of like
Speaker 1: protocol works in the long term?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does it. I forget the term in psychology
Speaker 2: for phobias. You start small. He just kind of incrementally
Speaker 2: increase somebody's exposure and so like I'm the spider. He
Speaker 2: wrote to me later and he said he was very grateful.
Speaker 2: He said, you know, I have a girlfriend now and
Speaker 2: I'm able to go to the bathroom off the bedroom
Speaker 2: and pee in the middle of the night. I could
Speaker 2: never do that before. I'm like good, Oh yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: Imagine having Mary Roach be your like pe that's in
Speaker 1: the bar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was something good that came from my writing
Speaker 2: or my research. Anyway.
Speaker 3: Well, you mentioned that you sometimes have people who don't
Speaker 3: respond to interview requests. I wonder if there's ever an
Speaker 3: interview you really really wanted, that you pushed for, that
Speaker 3: you were persistent in going after until you got it.
Speaker 3: How do you convince somebody to talk to you if
Speaker 3: they're not sure about it.
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, First of all, I just feel that enthusiasm
Speaker 2: helps a lot, and sometimes enthusiasm takes the form of
Speaker 2: sending a second and even a third email. It doesn't
Speaker 2: always work, but people respond, I think to you know,
Speaker 2: if you're that curious and interested and enthusiastic about their research,
Speaker 2: and that is appealing for people. And I think people
Speaker 2: like to talk about their work. You know, maybe their
Speaker 2: family doesn't want to hear about it anymore. And to
Speaker 2: have somebody say I'm super interested in what you do
Speaker 2: and I want to see and observe and learn about it,
Speaker 2: I think that that goes a long way. Also, I
Speaker 2: think people don't like to say no three times, so
Speaker 2: you know, persistence pays off. Also, it just wear them
Speaker 2: down to a stub. Just keep at them. I've done
Speaker 2: all's work. I mean, they're definitely people who and it's
Speaker 2: often something but the nature of their work, they don't
Speaker 2: want any attention in the media. They don't want to
Speaker 2: And I think more so now with you know, with
Speaker 2: social media, and if just one person twists what they
Speaker 2: do and gets on social media and everybody piles on,
Speaker 2: I totally understand why that's a scary thing and why
Speaker 2: you want to avoid that. So that's become harder for me.
Speaker 2: Any lab where work is done with animals, that's very
Speaker 2: hard to get in. I had a situation with my
Speaker 2: last book where the university said no. They didn't really
Speaker 2: say why, they just said no. And then the guy
Speaker 2: who runs the lab said, it's my lab. You're going
Speaker 2: to come to my office and we're going to talk,
Speaker 2: and then we're going to walk across the hall and
Speaker 2: we're not going to go to the animal lab. But yes,
Speaker 2: you can come, and they can't tell me what to do.
Speaker 2: But you know, he was familiar with my work, and
Speaker 2: that was he's been there long enough that he didn't
Speaker 2: give it what the people in the public affairs office
Speaker 2: had to say. But often there's reasons why people are
Speaker 2: wary about an outsider coming in and writing about what
Speaker 2: they're doing. And I completely understand that.
Speaker 3: I have friends who are climate science researchers and they're
Speaker 3: very concerned about how they're portrayed, and you know, the
Speaker 3: nuances are crucial in that field.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the other thing that I do, as I will
Speaker 2: tell them you can fact check this to make sure
Speaker 2: I have it right, and I will never send the
Speaker 2: material to the person, but I will get on the
Speaker 2: phone and read it and I'll say stop me if
Speaker 2: something's wrong, And that works really well. If you give
Speaker 2: it to them, they'll go in and rewrite it.
Speaker 1: I made that the same you.
Speaker 2: No, so that doesn't happen. But just reading it to people,
Speaker 2: I'm always very nervous to do that. That's always a
Speaker 2: scary thing to do. But when it goes well and
Speaker 2: somebody actually likes the way you've portrayed their work, and
Speaker 2: then that's very gratifying. That's a good day.
Speaker 3: It's terrifying to write about somebody else's expertise and then
Speaker 3: send it to them for review and you're like waiting
Speaker 3: to hear back. I know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that's why I do it on the phone.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's smarter. Yeah, that's I think what I'll do
Speaker 1: in the future. So we are just about out of time,
Speaker 1: and I want to respect your time. Are you allowed
Speaker 1: to tell us what your next book is going to
Speaker 1: be about? Or is that top secret until it comes out?
Speaker 2: Oh? No, I can tell you. It's called Replaceable you.
Speaker 2: So it's all kinds of bits and pieces of the
Speaker 2: human body and replacement elements. Some of it's historical, some
Speaker 2: of it's current. You know, it's my usual Mary Roach
Speaker 2: wandering ding that approach.
Speaker 1: I cannot wait? Is it coming out soon?
Speaker 2: September? So almost a year. The lead time is quite
Speaker 2: long these days for books.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's painful suppending a manuscript and waiting a
Speaker 1: whole year, I know.
Speaker 2: And I have the sense that everything is out of date.
Speaker 2: You know, I've already done one round of Has anything changed? Surprisingly?
Speaker 2: Things change slowly, you know. You have this sense that
Speaker 2: their new discoveries every month, and it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's probably not gonna happen for another five to ten years,
Speaker 2: you know. So it's okay, but it does feel like
Speaker 2: it's hard to be up to date in anything when
Speaker 2: you're turning it in.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't write about AI right now because I feel
Speaker 1: like that year would be a huge cheerfook would be
Speaker 1: out of date. The second hit the shelves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, how does anybody write about AI? I don't know.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thank you so much, Mary, This was
Speaker 1: so much fun. I will be a little bit more
Speaker 1: careful with the deer and Daniel. You need to not
Speaker 1: talk with Seltzer water anymore.
Speaker 2: Was it even flavored Seltzer water?
Speaker 3: It was, yes, watermelon?
Speaker 1: Yeah, are you sure it wasn't stuff that the kids
Speaker 1: had like ground into the rug beforehand. Seltzer, Why would
Speaker 1: they go for that?
Speaker 2: I think the Seltzer water was a read Harry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, we'll be more careful, Daniel.
Speaker 2: Thanks you guys. I was so much fun.
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