WEBVTT - When animals break the law (featuring Mary Roach) 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:10.360 So, Mary, what is the most embarrassing situation you've ever 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:12.520 been in as part of your book research. 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:17.280 That's an easy one. That one, not surprisingly was for Bonk. 0:00:17.440 --> 0:00:19.959 The subtitle of that book is The Curious Coupling of 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:22.640 Science and Sex. So that is a book about the 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:29.000 delightful awkwardness of taking sex, arousal, orgasm, all of that, 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:31.600 all the physiological components of it, and putting it in 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:35.599 a laboratory setting with a couple doing things and then 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:38.960 somebody in a white coat taking notes. So I wanted 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:43.640 to get at that central awkwardness of what I just described. 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:47.240 And I found this researcher in London who's doing something 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:52.440 with four dimensional ultrasounds, so three D movies basically in ultrasound. 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:55.800 It was a diagnostic tool, and he wanted to do 0:00:56.080 --> 0:00:59.880 one It was actually a penis and a vagina interacting, 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:03.200 and I said, well, I would like to be there 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:07.960 when you do that to observe, and he wrote back, well, 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:12.560 if your organization can provide some volunteers, then I'd be 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:18.120 happy to do that. So my organization asked its husband. 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:20.040 If you want to hear the rest of that story, 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:22.000 you'll have to listen to the rest of the podcast. 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:26.280 So on today's episode of Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe, 0:01:26.360 --> 0:01:30.440 we have the amazing Mary Roach on the show. 0:01:42.600 --> 0:01:42.720 Hi. 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:46.759 I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist, and I'm rarely embarrassed 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:47.760 by my own science. 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:50.720 I am Kelly Wiener Smith, and my science has put 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:55.400 me in loads of embarrassing situations or maybe gross and embarrassing. 0:01:57.080 --> 0:01:59.560 All right, tell us quickly, what is the grossest thing 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:01.280 you've done, ever done for science? 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:03.640 Oh? My gosh, all right, hands down. So I hate 0:02:03.640 --> 0:02:06.919 the smell of fish. And I worked on a project 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:08.880 where we were trying to figure out what kind of 0:02:08.919 --> 0:02:11.760 impact the coal powered power plants on Lake Erie we're 0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:14.720 having on the local fish populations. These surveys happen every 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:16.760 twenty years or so, and the way you do it 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:18.880 is you essentially put a net into the water that 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:21.079 gets sucked into these power plants, and the water is 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:24.200 used to like cool things down, generate steam, blah blah blah. 0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:26.400 But the fish gets smushed against the net and as 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:28.480 the temperature of the water heats up, they all die. 0:02:29.200 --> 0:02:31.119 And so not all of them, but many of them. 0:02:31.360 --> 0:02:33.400 Some of the power plants pull the nets out and 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:36.560 dump them into dump trucks which literally fill up halfway 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:39.360 or more with dead fish, and somebody has to go 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:41.800 in there, including in the middle of the summer, with 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:46.320 waiters on, and like subsample and identify what species of 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:48.320 fish are in here? How many are in here? Do 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:50.160 any of them look like they have fungle diseases and 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:53.960 would have died anyway? So I had to like become 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:57.160 very intimate with dump trucks full of dead fish under 0:02:57.160 --> 0:02:59.840 a hot summer sun. And that is the most disgusting 0:02:59.880 --> 0:03:01.160 thing I've done in my whole life. And I hate 0:03:01.160 --> 0:03:02.840 the smell of fish. And I still don't eat fish. 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:04.960 I just can't. I just can't. 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:08.800 Sounds like a good job for your future robot research assistant. 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:10.840 Bringing the robot overlords on. That sounds great. I mean 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:13.640 I learned a lot about fish identification that summer, but 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:16.480 I would maybe give up that knowledge if I could 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:17.440 have avoided that job. 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:21.120 Well, sometimes doing science means getting all mucky and dirty, 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:26.480 and sometimes explaining science requires you to get in weird situations, 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:31.000 sometimes scary, sometimes embarrassing, sometimes just downright on, but. 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:35.960 Always when they're explained by Mary Roach, absolutely hilarious. So 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:38.200 let's just jump right into the interview. Let's not make 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:46.040 people wait. On today's show, We're incredibly lucky to have 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:49.680 Mary Roach. Mary has been my absolute favorite popsey author 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:52.240 since I picked up Stiff as an undergrad in two 0:03:52.280 --> 0:03:56.400 thousand and three. Stiff, Spook, Bonk, Packing from Mars, Gulp, Grunt, 0:03:56.440 --> 0:03:59.200 and Falls have all been New York Times bestsellers, and 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:01.200 I have been at the bookstore the day each of 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:02.640 them have been released so that I could get my 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:06.200 copy as soon as possible. So if you've ever wondered, 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:08.880 how many lasers does it take to keep birds away 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:12.120 from the Vatican's flowers? Can you lower the national debt 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:14.440 by doing a more thorough job of chewing your food? 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:16.720 What's it like to go to the bathroom in space? 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:19.719 What happens at a body farm? Have scientists been able 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:22.680 to find the soul? Or any other equally weird questions. 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:25.200 We've got the Gael for you. Her latest book is 0:04:25.279 --> 0:04:28.120 Fuzz When Nature Breaks the Law. Welcome to the. 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:30.719 Show, Mary, Hey, thanks, thank you so much. 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:33.119 Guys, I'm so excited to have you on the show. 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:34.880 I got to talk to you once about cosmonauts and 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:35.640 that was so much fun. 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:38.400 Oh yeah, the cosmonauts love those guys. 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:41.440 Yeah, they're special to start off. So one of the 0:04:41.440 --> 0:04:43.159 things that I love the most about your books is 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:45.360 that their topics that I didn't know I was dying 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:47.400 to learn about, and then as soon as I start reading, 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:49.600 it turns out I was dying to learn about these topics. 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:52.120 So let's get started with Fuzz. How did you pick 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:54.200 the topic for the book Fuzz? What was the thought 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:55.880 process there? And then in general, how do you pick 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:56.600 your book topics? 0:04:56.920 --> 0:05:00.960 I always wish that I had the really succinct and 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:04.360 fantastic origin story for a book, you know, like that 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:07.159 there was something in my past that triggered this passion 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:10.200 that I had to spend two years down this rabbit 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:14.159 hole that had meant everything to me. Is that like that? 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:16.200 It's like I turned in a book and I would 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:19.240 like to do another one. That means I need an 0:05:19.279 --> 0:05:24.280 idea for another book, and I don't have one. So 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:29.000 it's this process of just sometimes looking back at things 0:05:29.080 --> 0:05:32.200 that I've covered before or something I heard about. In 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:36.680 this case, I had heard about lab up in Ashland, Oregon, 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:41.680 the National Wildlife Forensics Laboratory, and there's a woman there 0:05:42.160 --> 0:05:44.960 who was an expert and published a paper on how 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:49.520 to tell real versus artificial or counterfeit tiger penis, which 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:53.920 is that this is used medicinally, sometimes for virility. And 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:56.480 she wrote this paper on how to tell real versus 0:05:56.760 --> 0:05:59.680 counterfeit tiger penis. And that's the thing I get kind 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:02.159 of like that there's a scientist out there whose area 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:06.200 of expertise is detection of counterfeit tiger penis because of course, 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:09.440 you know, if somebody's smuggling this stuff in, you need 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:11.920 to prove that it is an endangered species in order 0:06:11.960 --> 0:06:14.040 to arrest the person. So she needs to be able 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:16.719 to tell is it real or not? And happily, it 0:06:16.760 --> 0:06:20.680 is almost always fake. It's usually cowerd deer penis, which 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:22.360 is a lot bigger than a tiger penis. 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:25.640 Anyway, does she do it by morphology or genetics? 0:06:25.800 --> 0:06:27.960 Oh, by morphology it is so easy to tell. Like 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:30.080 a tiger piece you can't see because this is audio, 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:32.280 but tiger pens is like it's a little tiny thing, 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:33.800 you know, what a dear penis is. 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:37.120 But does either one actually have an effect on you know, 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:39.840 male performance? Does it really matter if it's counterfeit? 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:42.360 Like most of these things, I think, you know, maybe 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:46.360 kind of psychologically inspiring, but not the tigre penis that'd 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:49.560 be a little depressing. Yeah. I don't think there's any 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:53.919 peer reviewed controlled studies suggesting that any of these penises 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:58.119 have any solid effect on male performance, but regardless, people 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:01.320 smuggle them in and out of the country. I thought, oh, well, 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:04.360 that's an interesting line of forensics. Forensics is interesting. Well, 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:06.760 maybe I'll go up there and I'll talk to her, 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:09.440 which I did, and it was a wonderful morning. We 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:14.160 had dried animal penises laid out on the table and 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:16.160 I took some pictures, which is still on my phone, 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:17.840 and every now and then the grandkids are like, what's 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:20.280 on your phone. I'm like, no, no, no, no, there's a 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:22.040 lot of stuff on my phone we can't look at 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:25.520 because I'll have to explain. So I thought this is 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:28.160 going well. And then I went in to talk to 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:30.160 the director of the lab and I said, well, here's 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:32.840 what I love to do, or that I need to 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:35.360 do with the book. I have to be on the scene. 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:38.480 And I imagined, you know, going in when they rated 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:42.000 a fake targer penis sweatshop in China, Like you know, 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:43.800 we'd go in and there'd be these four people and 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:45.920 they have to do this. They carve little barbs, because 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:50.440 felines have barbs on there. The penis little sticky eppie things, 0:07:50.480 --> 0:07:52.760 sort of like get the rental car, you know, don't 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:56.600 back up on this spikes, so somebody has to carve those. 0:07:56.640 --> 0:07:59.080 And I thought we'd be hunched over carving these penises, 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:02.360 and we'll go and it'll be this incredible scene. I 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:05.960 had this whole scenario in my head, and then I'd 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:08.200 find other things to write about. And then the guy goes, 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:12.400 you know, legally, if it's an open case investigation, you 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:16.400 can't go along. You just can't. It's the law. No. 0:08:16.520 --> 0:08:19.440 So that just shut me down. And so I went 0:08:19.480 --> 0:08:21.200 home and I was like, ah, damn. 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:26.760 But then I came across this book, The Criminal Prosecution 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:31.680 and Capital Punishment of Animals, which made me think, this 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:34.640 is a historical book, you know, about people used to 0:08:34.920 --> 0:08:37.120 put animals on trial that had misbehaved. 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:39.920 And I thought, what if the animals were the perpetrators? 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:43.760 And I say perpetrators in quotes. Obviously animals follow their instinct, 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:46.560 not laws. So what if we turn it around and 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:48.920 what if the animals are not the victims but the 0:08:48.920 --> 0:08:52.000 perpetrators And then it turns out there's this whole area 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:56.800 of science called human wildlife conflict, with conferences and experts 0:08:56.840 --> 0:09:00.559 and textbooks, And I had never heard of human wildlife conflict, 0:09:00.760 --> 0:09:04.079 had no idea people devote their lives to figuring out 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:08.080 how to coexist with wild animals. So that's a very 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:11.960 long winded way of saying that's what happened. This is 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:13.360 how I got my idea for the book. 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:15.920 I mean, it's a great story in general. I'd love 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:18.439 to hear more about how you got into science writing. 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:21.520 I mean, how did you identify this sort of opening 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:24.840 in people's appetite that wasn't being completely served, or you know, 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:27.320 this itch that people wanted scratching in a certain way. 0:09:27.600 --> 0:09:32.120 Well, again, not through a longstanding passion of mine. I 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:34.920 was one of those people who thought, in high school 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:38.839 and in college, oh, science is boring. I want to 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:43.600 be creative, which is so stupid. There's so much creativity 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:46.600 in science. It wasn't something that I had thought about 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.520 in college or even when I first graduated. I was 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:54.280 writing for the magazine of those Sunday paper here in 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:57.959 the Bay Area San Francisco Chronicle, just general stories, kind 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:01.199 of a little bit weird Mary Rochie but not science related. 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:05.960 And my editor went to another publication called Hippocrates, which 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:08.520 was more focused on health and medicine, but they still 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:12.760 let me be Mary Roach and do kind of odd 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:15.200 stories and which was fun. And then from there an 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:18.160 editor from Discover magazine said, would you like to do 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:21.720 these weird Mary Roach stories for us? We are a 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:23.960 science magazine. I know you're not a science writer, but 0:10:24.800 --> 0:10:26.959 why don't you do this? And I was like, okay, 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:30.119 So I did that and those were the most interesting 0:10:30.559 --> 0:10:35.800 stories I'd done. And I loved writing about science. Since 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:38.720 I don't have a science background, they tend to be 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:42.079 not heavy science, you know, they're definitely science for people 0:10:42.120 --> 0:10:45.320 who have mistakenly thought that they don't like science or 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:47.320 that they don't think science is interesting. I'm kind of 0:10:47.320 --> 0:10:51.440 a gateway drug to science writing. I'm heavy on narrative 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:54.520 and fun and quirk. For me, the science and the 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:57.800 discovery of learning about these different fields is tremendous fun 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:01.440 and really gratifying. But am I really a science writer? 0:11:01.880 --> 0:11:03.640 I guess so I don't know. 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:05.080 Of course you are. 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:07.720 You look at real science writers and you know, they 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:09.440 just I can't understand their books. 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:12.640 I think you are the kind of science writer where 0:11:12.640 --> 0:11:14.480 people actually learn something because they make it to the 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:16.640 end of the book, which I think is huge and 0:11:16.720 --> 0:11:18.560 like that's a real skill getting people to stay to 0:11:18.600 --> 0:11:21.200 the end of the book. Thank you, thank you, Yes, 0:11:21.280 --> 0:11:21.840 you're welcome. 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:23.920 That is my goal, even just to the end of 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:26.200 the chapter. Man. I am always fighting for that, I 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:30.120 really am. I'm always sort of policing my words and 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:33.040 my sentences going in has been it's been a couple 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:35.760 of pages, but since there's been anything really fun here 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:38.400 or surprising, like let's punch it up, they're going to 0:11:38.440 --> 0:11:39.840 put the book down. I know they're going to put 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:41.000 the book down any second. 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:44.959 I feel like it's an interesting activity when you're writing 0:11:44.960 --> 0:11:46.680 to figure out how long has it been since the 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:48.840 funny thing that I said, and then trying to not 0:11:48.920 --> 0:11:51.000 like overdo it. Yes, Zach and I had a problem 0:11:51.000 --> 0:11:52.560 where a couple chapters we felt like we had gotten 0:11:52.600 --> 0:11:54.560 corny and we were just overdoing it. But you know, 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:56.200 you want to make sure they come at a regular pace. 0:11:56.240 --> 0:11:59.280 It's an art, and you guys do it so well, 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:03.439 some really tough stuff that you're asking people to come 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:06.600 along with you for and you managed to keep it fun, 0:12:06.640 --> 0:12:08.600 and that is extraordinary. Thank you. 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:11.520 I think we identified something really important, though, which is 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:14.240 that a lot of science writing is done in a 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:17.760 way that isn't actually that understandable, and yet a lot 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:20.040 of people still love to consume it, which has always 0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:22.440 been something of a mystery to me. Like I read 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:25.160 Stephen Hawking and I don't understand a lot of his books, 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:27.880 and then people tell me like I loved A Brief 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:30.040 History of Time, and I'm like, really, did you actually 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:33.160 understand it? Did you just appreciate being in the presence 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:35.520 of what felt like a great mind. So I wonder 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:37.640 what people are going for sometimes with those books, if 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:39.960 they actually want to understand, if they just want to 0:12:39.960 --> 0:12:41.080 hang out with Stephen Hawking. 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:43.760 I do too. I don't have an advanced degree, but 0:12:43.800 --> 0:12:46.199 I don't feel that I'm a moron, you know, I'll 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:48.600 pick up I don't know, Brian Green, maybe these are 0:12:48.640 --> 0:12:53.800 really gifted, super intelligent, successful writers, but I'm like, I 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:56.480 don't know, or even like astronomy for people in a 0:12:56.559 --> 0:12:58.240 hurry Neil deGrasse. 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:00.959 Tyson astrophysics for people in hurry, yeah. 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:02.800 And I'm like, I don't know. I'm not following along 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:06.560 I'm falling behind. Help me, I'm falling behind. And I 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:09.720 know these books are huge sellers, and I'm always curious 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:12.959 about that. How many people read it all the way 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:15.880 through and really understand it in the way the author 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:18.240 means it to be understood. I'd love to know that. 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:21.040 Can we get Ai to give us an answer on that. 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:25.720 I actually threw out my copy of Hawkings's book because 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:28.040 I realized I only had it on my shelf so 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:29.800 that I could be the kind of person who looked 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:32.520 like they could read that book. But I gotten through 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:34.400 ten pages and I was like, this book being on 0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:36.439 my shelf is a lie, and so I kindly got 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:36.920 rid of it. 0:13:36.920 --> 0:13:40.800 But I'm glad to hear that. I mean no disrespect 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:41.520 to mister Hawking. 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:43.559 Then, oh yeah, he's clearly way smarter than I will 0:13:43.559 --> 0:13:43.840 ever be. 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:46.719 Well, when you're writing your books, you dive deep into 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:48.800 a topic, You talk to the experts. You must at 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:52.040 some point pass over the threshold where you're something of 0:13:52.080 --> 0:13:54.360 an expert in the topic yourself. How do you keep 0:13:54.400 --> 0:13:58.080 hold of what the reader knows and what they don't understand, 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:00.360 and what this must feel like to them the first 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:02.640 time they're hearing about it. That's a real challenge something 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:04.080 you pull off amazingly in your book. 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:08.600 That is always a concern that, over the course of 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:10.680 the two or three years that I work on a book, 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:15.800 have I actually learned enough that I'm assuming a level 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:18.400 of knowledge on the part of my reader that doesn't 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:21.720 exist because we are starting out at the same place, 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:26.680 the place of just curiosity and near total ignorance. And 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:30.920 then I'm moving along through speaking to researchers and experts, 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:34.560 I'm actually getting to the point where I'm understanding things 0:14:34.600 --> 0:14:37.760 in a way that I now think, is it completely 0:14:37.840 --> 0:14:40.240 unclear what I'm saying here? And that's a little stuff 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:43.760 I do have. My editor at Norton is she's a 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:46.840 poet and a novelist. She has no background in science. 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:49.320 She's a good editor for me for that reason because 0:14:49.360 --> 0:14:52.360 she will sometimes just put a note in the margin, 0:14:52.520 --> 0:14:56.080 I Mary, you've lost me here, or I don't know 0:14:56.120 --> 0:15:01.240 what you're talking about. That is helpful. I'm so excited 0:15:01.280 --> 0:15:03.440 to talk to somebody who is an expert in their field, 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:05.720 and when their field is something you know, it's a 0:15:05.720 --> 0:15:09.440 little complicated, like you know, stem cells say. I mean, 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:13.320 I'm so grateful to find somebody who can explain it 0:15:13.360 --> 0:15:15.760 to me, who has a sense of what I don't know, 0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:19.840 which is almost everything, and can then unpack it in 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:22.640 a way that I understand. So part of what my 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:25.960 job is is looking for those people who I'm going 0:15:26.000 --> 0:15:32.160 to then force to be an unpaid tutor for days 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:35.200 on end and for endless emails. So I'm not entirely 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:39.080 clear on can you just explain that's so necessary to 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:42.360 keep in your head where people are at and whether 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:45.440 you've left them behind, because I get, let's be honest, 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:47.640 left behind by a lot of science books. 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:50.400 I have this theory that Agatha Christie would be a 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:53.800 great science writer because she seems to have this ability 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:56.840 of like obviously understanding what's actually happening in her story 0:15:57.240 --> 0:15:59.640 and introducing the facts in a way that the reader 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:03.080 to discovers them and unravels the mystery in an organic way. 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:04.960 It seems to be sort of the same challenge to 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:07.120 write a mystery novel and keep in mind what the 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:09.760 reader knows and doesn't know. I find that impossible. I 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:11.480 can't imagine writing a murder mystery. 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:15.160 Yeah, this is why I never read murder mysteries, or 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:17.360 even when I see knives out I'm like, wait, wait, 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:19.560 did she wait a minute? You know? And I'm always 0:16:19.600 --> 0:16:22.480 making my husband stop, we stop, stop, wait a minute? 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:23.920 Is that? And he hates it. It's like, can't we 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:27.200 just keep going with it? We just keep this going? No, 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:29.520 but I don't know who's the guy? Is that the brother? Who? 0:16:30.160 --> 0:16:33.000 Or is that the wait? What? This is the same 0:16:33.120 --> 0:16:35.520 kind of thing you're asking people to keep in their head, 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:38.160 the facts that you explained three chapters ago. And it's 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:40.760 easy for you because you learned it as the author 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:42.760 I have in the book that I just turned in. 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:45.160 There's a moment where I'm like, as we learned and 0:16:45.280 --> 0:16:50.840 forgot in chapter three, it's nobody remembers. 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:54.600 How did the conversations with the experts often go and 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:56.840 has it changed over the like twenty so years that 0:16:56.880 --> 0:16:58.640 you've been writing, because you know, sometimes I'll try to 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:01.080 interview someone and they'll go right over my and I'm like, no, no, no, 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:03.040 bring it down. And some of them can and some 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:06.000 of them can't. And I also feel like the relationship 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:08.080 with some of the experts has changed over time, as 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:12.000 NSF keeps telling all the scientists that we are also communicators, 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:14.520 and they feel like but they're not what is that like? 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:17.399 You get a sense of this in the first five minutes. 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:19.840 I think of a conversation by phone or on zoom 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:24.239 of whether a person's going to really be able to 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:26.800 do that, And sometimes I just in my head, stop 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:29.200 the ner. You know, I just asked one or two 0:17:29.240 --> 0:17:31.879 more token questions, and I thank the person and says, no, 0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:35.639 it never happened. You know. I will say, can we 0:17:35.720 --> 0:17:38.720 back up and can you explain whatever it is? And 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:43.439 then the explanation is different but also incomprehensible for me. 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:47.120 So there isn't much to be done there. And that's 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:50.040 why I just when I find someone who actually enjoys 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:53.960 explaining things in an accessible way, I just want to 0:17:54.000 --> 0:17:56.199 You know, I can't kiss them because we are on 0:17:56.280 --> 0:17:59.240 the phone, but I'm just like, Okay, you're now going 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:02.440 to be my guy for induced pluripotent stem cells. I'm 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:04.639 going to be pestering you on and off for the 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:08.400 next six months and not paying you for that. I'll 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:12.480 send you a book. But what hasn't changed. No, I 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:14.760 think that's always been there. I mean I once was 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:16.800 a sign to do a story I wanted to go. 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:20.080 And you know those planes that fly into hurricanes. I 0:18:20.119 --> 0:18:21.840 had this idea that'd be a fun thing to do. 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:24.760 And there was a hurricane hunter plane that was going 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:27.840 into a certain kind of storm, not infect a hurricane. 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:29.399 I'm like, okay, I'm going to do that. And there 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:31.919 was this meteorologist on board, and it was almost like 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:35.240 a form of hostility. He would not explain things in 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:39.080 a way that anybody who's not a meteorologist could understand. 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:40.960 And I kept trying to well, I what if I'm 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:44.240 let's pretend I'm a sixth grader at a somebody's barbecue 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:47.800 party and just talk to me like that, and he wouldn't, 0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:50.280 And so we got down. It was this in Monterey. 0:18:50.320 --> 0:18:52.920 We landed, and I called my editor and just said, 0:18:52.960 --> 0:18:56.240 forget it. You know, maybe you can pay my expenses, 0:18:56.359 --> 0:18:58.720 which aren't a lot from here to Monterey and we're 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:02.000 done because nothing can't do it. 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:05.080 What a bummer. Yeah, I know, I love you are 0:19:05.240 --> 0:19:07.760 expecting someone to be a tutor approach. I was in 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:09.920 trouble figuring out how much research I should do before 0:19:09.960 --> 0:19:12.040 I reach out to someone. And I think that's because 0:19:12.040 --> 0:19:13.800 early on I asked for an interview and they said, well, 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:15.080 tell me what you want to ask me about and 0:19:15.119 --> 0:19:17.159 I sent them my questions and they said, Nope, these 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:18.879 are not the most interesting things that I do. I 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:20.680 will not be interviewed by you, and they like shut 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:23.080 me down. And I was like, oh, I mean I 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:25.159 was hoping you'd help me understand this stuff, but okay. 0:19:25.200 --> 0:19:27.680 And so I also feel like some people I talk 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:30.639 to it's almost like they don't respect the job of 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:33.000 a popsie author, like NSF keeps telling every when you 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:35.840 do these broader impacts, scientists can communicate, And I feel 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:37.960 like a lot of scientists I've talked to now feel like, oh, 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:41.199 if you're a scientist, you also can do science communication 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:43.760 just as easily, Like you learn that along the way. 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:45.320 But it's a very different kind of writing. And so 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:47.280 I feel like I encounter people who are very hostile. 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:48.920