Speaker 1: Really now, really, really.
Speaker 2: Now really Hello and welcome to Really No Really with
Speaker 2: Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden. It would be a wonderful
Speaker 2: gift to us if you became one of our subscribers.
Speaker 2: So if you enjoy our show, please subscribe. Take science
Speaker 2: and humor and combine them together and you got a
Speaker 2: Mary Roach book. The author of seven New York Times
Speaker 2: best selling books. She's written about cadavers and the afterlife,
Speaker 2: living life in outer space, and what to do when
Speaker 2: animals break the law. But today we start by finding
Speaker 2: out why and how she convinced her husband to monitor
Speaker 2: and record.
Speaker 3: Their active coitus.
Speaker 2: To completion while in an MRI ultrasound sonogram like device.
Speaker 3: Her science Really no, really Okay now.
Speaker 4: This I know.
Speaker 5: I always say I'm excited. I'm excited to be with you,
Speaker 5: I'm excited to do our show. I'm excited about our guests. Always, always,
Speaker 5: always this. I am so excited. This is one of
Speaker 5: my favorite authors in the world. I don't know why
Speaker 5: she must have nothing going on in her life right
Speaker 5: now to be doing our little show. Because Mary Roach,
Speaker 5: many of you will know who she is. She has
Speaker 5: She has written seven New York Times bestsellers. They're always
Speaker 5: almost always one name books like we have.
Speaker 4: Stiff, we have Spook, we have bonk. Hacking with Mars
Speaker 4: she went all out on that.
Speaker 5: Then we have Gulp, we have Grunt, and we have
Speaker 5: Fuzz and they are a cross between science and comedy
Speaker 5: and they are hysterical books. She has written for The
Speaker 5: National Geographic, Wired, New York Times, magazine, Vogue, GQ. She
Speaker 5: writes a lot and the thing that I think most
Speaker 5: people would know her for if you go online. She
Speaker 5: did a TED talk in two thousand and nine called
Speaker 5: Ten Things You Didn't Know About Orgasm, which is probably
Speaker 5: one of the most popular TED talks of all time,
Speaker 5: and it was focused on a book that is the
Speaker 5: sort of centerpiece of our really for the day. In
Speaker 5: doing the book, Bank, which was about sex research and
Speaker 5: the arousal, sex research and arousal and his roach had
Speaker 5: relations with her husband in some sort of clinical almost
Speaker 5: like an Mrie kind of thing with an ultrasound and
Speaker 5: a thing. And you know that's called getting your hands dirty.
Speaker 5: That's the dictionary definition. Well, an author dirty.
Speaker 6: You like an author who's going to jump in on
Speaker 6: the thing, whatever the thing is.
Speaker 5: I want to know how she did it, Why she
Speaker 5: did it, how she got a husband to do it, how.
Speaker 6: She if she came to me and said, I want
Speaker 6: to have sex and they have to do it in
Speaker 6: front of a researcher.
Speaker 5: Yes, who's gonna's gonna have instruments? The minute I hear
Speaker 5: sex and measuring, I'm out.
Speaker 6: So there's so much, so much to this.
Speaker 5: And so let's just jump in with the author, extraordinary
Speaker 5: Mary Roach.
Speaker 4: Welcome to really no.
Speaker 7: Really, oh, thank you so much, so excited to be here.
Speaker 6: So how how did you when you did this? The
Speaker 6: book bunk okay, yeah, and gives a little bit of
Speaker 6: history and sex research, because that in itself is a
Speaker 6: fascinating feel because a lot of sex researchers are looking
Speaker 6: down upon because it's like the sort of the dark
Speaker 6: you're the g of science. It's like it's it's dirty somehow.
Speaker 6: And then what got you to the point of, Hey, hobby.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna spend some time in this
Speaker 5: and I'm gonna go we're doing with me?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Okay, this is what happened. I was looking at and
Speaker 7: this is very un characteristic of me. I was looking
Speaker 7: through an issue of Film Quarterly, which makes me seem
Speaker 7: really erudite and and scholarly and anyway, I don't know
Speaker 7: why it wasn't my own copy, but there was a
Speaker 7: reference to the coolpiscopic films of Masters and Johnson, and
Speaker 7: I was like, wait a minute, colposcopy.
Speaker 8: That's when they're taking like a biopsy of the cervix.
Speaker 7: They're in there doing stuff, so on like this means Masters, Johnson,
Speaker 7: the sex researchers that we've all heard of, we're literally
Speaker 7: filming a woman while she responds sexually. It sounded like that.
Speaker 7: So based on that sentence, pretty much, just that sentence
Speaker 7: in Film Quarterly, I I went to my editor, like,
Speaker 7: sex Research next book, right, because okay, this is this
Speaker 7: is science the physiology of intercourse and arousal. And he okay,
Speaker 7: fertility too as part of it. But I'm like, that
Speaker 7: is bringing people into a laboratory setting and having them
Speaker 7: do sexual things while you're like the researcher and the
Speaker 7: white coat with a clipboard. That's just so awkward and surreal.
Speaker 7: And I'm like that there has to be a whole
Speaker 7: world of really incredible material for me to play around with.
Speaker 8: And she's like, go, go, go do it. And in
Speaker 8: fact there was.
Speaker 7: But the thing with my books, I always like to
Speaker 7: put myself into the story a little bit, and in
Speaker 7: this case, I thought, well, that's a little weird. So
Speaker 7: I'll try to find researchers who are doing work in
Speaker 7: a lab with subjects, and I'll just be there, you know,
Speaker 7: with a notepad. And so I would contact these researchers
Speaker 7: and then be like, I'm sorry, you want to be
Speaker 7: in the room with a notebook while somebody else is
Speaker 7: let's say, I don't know, masturbating while hooked up to
Speaker 7: some electro huha device And they're like, no, no, that's
Speaker 7: not going to work. But every now and then they'd go,
Speaker 7: but you can be the subject. How would you like
Speaker 7: to do that? And in particular, well, the answer, the
Speaker 7: short answer is like I would not want to do that.
Speaker 8: Because it's incredibly awkward.
Speaker 7: But I realized I was probably gonna have to do
Speaker 7: that because I wasn't getting access any other way. So
Speaker 7: I found this guy, doctor Dang, who was an imaging
Speaker 7: expert in London, and I came across a paper he
Speaker 7: had done about erections and pay own and he had
Speaker 7: done a three D movie of an erecting penis his
Speaker 7: own by the way, and he said, and this is
Speaker 7: all an email. He's like, yeah, for the next my
Speaker 7: next experiment, I would like to film with ultrasound three
Speaker 7: dimensional sexual congress. And I'm like, great, you know, I'd
Speaker 7: like to be there for that. And he's like, well,
Speaker 7: here's the thing. We're having a little trouble finding volunteers.
Speaker 7: So if your organization can supply a willing couple for study,
Speaker 7: I'd be happy to arrange it. So my organization called
Speaker 7: it's husband and I'm like, honey, you know how he said,
Speaker 7: you haven't been to London in a long time. Well
Speaker 7: we should go and I'll like expense us a really
Speaker 7: nice room.
Speaker 8: We'll go to see a play. Jeremy Irons is in
Speaker 8: something in the West End. It'll be great.
Speaker 7: Also, have to have sex in front of a researcher.
Speaker 7: My husband is he's he's such a first of all,
Speaker 7: he's a man, he's a great guy. And he had
Speaker 7: also said up front when he heard what the book
Speaker 7: was about, he's like, sex research, sign me up.
Speaker 8: Extent on exactly. So so yeah, so.
Speaker 7: We went and did that, and and people think it
Speaker 7: was an mri I tube, which fine, I would I'd
Speaker 7: have sex and an m R two. But you know,
Speaker 7: I said, you have privacy. Right, you're in a little tube.
Speaker 7: It's uncomfortable. You're cramped in there. I don't even know
Speaker 7: if you could fit two people. Well you can't because
Speaker 7: somebody else. Yeah, somebody else did it, those little acrobats,
Speaker 7: people from the Netherlands up his name was jup Jupe
Speaker 7: and his wife or girlfriend or whatever anyway, but you know,
Speaker 7: you have some privacy. But with ultrasound, it's the wand
Speaker 7: And I don't know to go too much into the
Speaker 7: logistics here, but the guy has the wand on my belly,
Speaker 7: which means you know, ED is behind me, but the
Speaker 7: guy's right there.
Speaker 8: You're like arms length and it's it was awkward.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Viagara was used in a magazine. A magazine was
Speaker 6: used because your husband wasn't facing you or something.
Speaker 7: But I can't pure he goes, don't worry. He goes, yeah,
Speaker 7: well we have we have viagra. And he said, and
Speaker 7: I have some like stimulative literature. I think it was
Speaker 7: like a was there a copy of g QQ or something.
Speaker 7: I mean it was something like it wasn't poor and
Speaker 7: it was you know, I think you know how they
Speaker 7: have a pretty woman telling a joke or something at
Speaker 7: Esquire and I was like.
Speaker 8: That's what he like that.
Speaker 5: I probably know this, but both of my children are
Speaker 5: in vitro, so I had to go h and make
Speaker 5: deliveries and the quality of the.
Speaker 4: Stimulating material and they should be top notched.
Speaker 5: They are always like, you know, very scratchy portant films
Speaker 5: from the nineteen seventies or something.
Speaker 8: You got a movie, at least you I.
Speaker 4: Had a video.
Speaker 5: I had a little video, but I didn't have a partner,
Speaker 5: so you know, it was we needed to compensate.
Speaker 4: So wow, wow.
Speaker 7: Yes, it was filmed in It was four D, which
Speaker 7: means three D plus time. I think this is the
Speaker 7: way that anyway, Yes, it was an ultrasound movie. I
Speaker 7: looked him up recently to see if the story ever,
Speaker 7: i mean, the journal paper ever appeared, and it didn't.
Speaker 7: And part of that was that the three D didn't
Speaker 7: come out that well. You could actually the film was
Speaker 7: online of Oh my god.
Speaker 5: So, I mean, I want to talk a little bit
Speaker 5: about about all your books and how you get there,
Speaker 5: but can you talk a little bit about because for
Speaker 5: people that may not be familiar with your work, like
Speaker 5: Gulp is really about what our bodies do with food
Speaker 5: from beginning to end, and where the waste goes, and
Speaker 5: how it's the whole pane of the journey.
Speaker 4: Uh, it's the.
Speaker 7: Tube, yees, the tube us right as this knows to ask, Yeah, how.
Speaker 4: Do you decide? It's exactly what you said?
Speaker 5: You saw you know, you read this one little fact
Speaker 5: to it and you went, I think I want to
Speaker 5: pursue this. You the subjects of your work, as I say,
Speaker 5: are always the crossoad of something scientific and h and
Speaker 5: your extraordinary sense of humor comes into play. But how
Speaker 5: do you how do you go, this is it? I'm
Speaker 5: gonna I found it. I found the next one. I'm
Speaker 5: going to oz what what's is there? A? How do
Speaker 5: if that happens, it flips the switch for you?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 7: I wish it were always as simple as the colposcopic
Speaker 7: films of Masters in Johnson, which was like the thirty
Speaker 7: second I have my next book. Yeah, But more often
Speaker 7: it's sometimes it's something I stumble onto in one book,
Speaker 7: like in Stiff, I came across, uh, some studies that
Speaker 7: the early days of trying to figure out what do
Speaker 7: all these bits and pieces of the human body do?
Speaker 7: Like what is this thing. You know, before people knew
Speaker 7: it's a liver. Are like, maybe this is the seed
Speaker 7: of the soul, right, this is a really handsome organ.
Speaker 7: Perhaps the soul is here. So people using science to
Speaker 7: figure out the spirit or the soul. I'm like, that's
Speaker 7: kind of a weird application of science. So for me,
Speaker 7: it's science plus weird or surreal. So I know, I
Speaker 7: know when I see it and Gulp, people think Gulp
Speaker 7: is a book about you know, it's about nutrition or
Speaker 7: digest and I'm like, no, no, no, what I do
Speaker 7: that to my readers?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 7: This is like this is this is the weird tube
Speaker 7: that starts in your nose and mouth runs all the
Speaker 7: way through you full of bacteria. It's like the donut hole.
Speaker 7: I mean, you're the donut. And then there's this weird
Speaker 7: other world that's this tube literally from your mouth to
Speaker 7: your anus, and it's a whole different set of rules
Speaker 7: in there. It's really weird. So so I'm not you know,
Speaker 7: there's I do possibly here and there touch on things
Speaker 7: like digestion, nutrition, but it's that it would be to
Speaker 7: do the Book of the Service Live. There's a chapter
Speaker 7: about you know ken it was got me what got
Speaker 7: me going on. It was the Jonah story, and I'm like,
Speaker 7: is it possible for anybody to survive in anyone else's stomach?
Speaker 7: And we went I went down this rabbit hole that
Speaker 7: that uh, you know, and.
Speaker 8: Then like chewing.
Speaker 7: There's a whole lab in the Netherlands where they study
Speaker 7: the way that you you know, when you chew, you
Speaker 7: break something down and then and then you just you'd
Speaker 7: form it into a bowlus like, so it's it's swallowable.
Speaker 7: It has to be in the swallowable state. And they like,
Speaker 7: do you know video X rays of people chewing and
Speaker 7: forming boluses and just the.
Speaker 8: Whole I don't any any with science.
Speaker 7: So often there's some thing that you've taken for granted
Speaker 7: that all of a sudden you're like, wow, bullus formation
Speaker 7: is really interesting and gross, let's get Mary roach on them.
Speaker 6: I love that you take this out and you're not
Speaker 6: a scientist either, which is lovely that it's out of
Speaker 6: curiosity and you go deep, you go down, you go down.
Speaker 6: Robert Hoiles.
Speaker 5: Yeah, But I also love that where your curiosity goes
Speaker 5: to in science is to the stuff that I guess,
Speaker 5: in some ways might be considered the tabooy stuff, you
Speaker 5: know where people do want to know how does an
Speaker 5: astronaut boop?
Speaker 4: You know how? And you go and you.
Speaker 5: Know most of us would would we mean and we
Speaker 5: had an astronaut on our show, that was the.
Speaker 4: Last question we would ever ask them. But you go
Speaker 4: right to it.
Speaker 8: I have no shame, ye Jason.
Speaker 7: I know, I completely own the fact that my mind is,
Speaker 7: let's say, in the gutter sometimes and and the other
Speaker 7: thing with a taboo with with with taboo topics and books.
Speaker 7: Early on in my career, I know I hadn't written
Speaker 7: I'd written a lot of magazine stuff, but I hadn't
Speaker 7: done a book, and I was thinking, like, what is
Speaker 7: it that hasn't been written about already? Yeah, and the
Speaker 7: taboo things are things that other people might go I
Speaker 7: would never write a book about Kidavers because people would
Speaker 7: think there's something wrong with me. I'm like, I'm bringing you,
Speaker 7: give it to me.
Speaker 4: I'll do it.
Speaker 6: But because I get back to the astronaut thing, you
Speaker 6: did zero gravity, right?
Speaker 8: I did?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I did?
Speaker 4: And did you? So?
Speaker 6: I think you wrote that. The way they had to
Speaker 6: test the toilet stuf because they have to because they're
Speaker 6: sending people up, is they had to have a guy
Speaker 6: try and do it in zero grat I mean, it's.
Speaker 7: That amazing, you know, it's it's a chamter. I'm glad
Speaker 7: you're asking me, but I love to talk about.
Speaker 6: So how yeah, how they figure out how to do this?
Speaker 8: I'm glad you're asking me, but I love to talk about.
Speaker 6: So how yeah, how they figure out how to do this?
Speaker 7: Oh god, it's so it's so interesting because it's you know,
Speaker 7: you take a toilet, okay, this is a system that
Speaker 7: relies on gravity and water flow, water flowing down and flush.
Speaker 8: There's that keyword, flushing.
Speaker 7: Away and and so you now, when you're talking about
Speaker 7: putting a waste management system in space, you need to
Speaker 7: completely rethink the system, you know. And so in the
Speaker 7: first two space programs, you know, in in actually three
Speaker 7: and Mercury they didn't need it. Gemini and Apollo, there
Speaker 7: was no toilet. There was the fecal bag because there
Speaker 7: was no you know, they hadn't redesigned the system. They
Speaker 7: didn't have enough space. So you were like crapping in
Speaker 7: a in a plastic bag with a little fingercut to
Speaker 7: coach the material because you don't have good separation. The
Speaker 7: gravity is not pulling the poop away from your body,
Speaker 7: so you had to like coax it along. And they
Speaker 7: hated it. They absolutely the morale was like, you know,
Speaker 7: like off the charts negative, like this is this is
Speaker 7: like it smelled like a latrine in there. After two
Speaker 7: weeks and they're like something has to change. And then
Speaker 7: there was like a at one point Nasha's like, yes,
Speaker 7: we have to do better, and they and they, so
Speaker 7: finally we have to do better. And so for this,
Speaker 7: for the Space Shuttle and for the ISS. Now there
Speaker 7: are toilets, but the waste management engineering people, god, those
Speaker 7: are heroes. They figured it out. It's an airflow system.
Speaker 7: You're like in training the here's my favorite youthhemism from
Speaker 7: NASA the material. Right, you're you're in training the material
Speaker 7: or wait, contributions. That's a good one too, contribution.
Speaker 4: On.
Speaker 7: So they had to yes, so they had to completely
Speaker 7: rethink it and now, all right, you're not going to
Speaker 7: put this multi million dollar device up into zero gravity
Speaker 7: without testing it first. Uh So they had to put
Speaker 7: it on the the what used to be called the
Speaker 7: vomit comet, that plane that goes up and down on
Speaker 7: a roller coaster, and you have twenty seconds of weightlessness
Speaker 7: in which to test your new fancy NASA toilet. And
Speaker 7: that means some poor guy from the waste management to
Speaker 7: partment and as twenty seconds to do it, and he
Speaker 7: has to make a contribution on cue. So and I
Speaker 7: talked to a guy was my last was not on
Speaker 7: such a flight. But I talked to an engineer from
Speaker 7: the waste management world who who had who had been
Speaker 7: on there? And he's like, yeah, okay, so they had
Speaker 7: picture they got they got a curtain around him, all right,
Speaker 7: but we can see you know, the bottom of the
Speaker 7: toilet and the feet, okay, and we start to go,
Speaker 7: you know, over over the part where you're weightless. Was like, go, go, go,
Speaker 7: go go the pressure God pressure, and he failed. He
Speaker 7: couldn't do it. Who could?
Speaker 8: You know, It's like who can.
Speaker 7: It's like you could time your yeah, set your watch
Speaker 7: by most people's sphincters, you know.
Speaker 8: You're like, there's a certain time of day you can go.
Speaker 4: And that's it.
Speaker 7: And so they so they're like, what do we do?
Speaker 7: And then so then they hired or they gave the
Speaker 7: assignment to someone at NASA AMES to come up with
Speaker 7: a high fidelity human fecal simulant and I have seen
Speaker 7: the paper and there are recipes and photographs and.
Speaker 4: It was a series.
Speaker 7: The guy would not reply to my emails, so I
Speaker 7: last didn't get to interview this man. But but he
Speaker 7: really took it to heart, like I'm gonna there's the
Speaker 7: exact amount of E. Coli even in here, the reology,
Speaker 7: the viscousness, everything is the same. And so that enabled
Speaker 7: them to test this toilet, uh and subsequent toilets. And
Speaker 7: for me, this is not so much about poop as
Speaker 7: it is about just the surreal wonderfulness of engineering.
Speaker 6: You bought the challenge and about that challenge, how important
Speaker 6: that's a make or break.
Speaker 5: My favorite moment on that one would have been the
Speaker 5: guy outside the curtain twenty seconds later going Houston, we
Speaker 5: have a problem.
Speaker 6: The other part of that is dandriff, All this stuff
Speaker 6: is floating around if you're not careful, yes, and you're
Speaker 6: I mean, so imagine that.
Speaker 4: If they didn't have that, I understand.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they called them they called okay, So yeah, with
Speaker 7: space the shuttle toilet it had a little cap that
Speaker 7: would a little door that would close when you were done. Okay,
Speaker 7: because because the stuff, the contribution is briefly hovering. It's
Speaker 7: floating right, okay. So and if you if you shut
Speaker 7: the door at the wrong time, you would have what
Speaker 7: was called fecal decapitation.
Speaker 8: And this is an actual term. I didn't make it up.
Speaker 7: This is a n acid term. So, but that little beheaded,
Speaker 7: the little head of is now going to float around, yes,
Speaker 7: the space shuttle.
Speaker 8: And it's to you to chase it down.
Speaker 6: How get over here?
Speaker 5: On our first episode we learned about fecal clouds, and
Speaker 5: now here we.
Speaker 6: Are, so let's go so quickly.
Speaker 5: So some of the other Yeah, what I thought would
Speaker 5: be fun and a great way to introduce your work
Speaker 5: to people who may not be familiar with all of
Speaker 5: it is I thought I'd name one book at a
Speaker 5: time and maybe you could share, like the most fascinating
Speaker 5: thing that you thought came out of that book for you,
Speaker 5: like the fun fact that you went, oh, oh.
Speaker 8: My god, this is so hard, this is so hard.
Speaker 4: If you're wrong, we don't know, We have no idea.
Speaker 5: So I think the first one was stiff, right, which
Speaker 5: was the Curious subtitle of The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers,
Speaker 5: which was a yes, really an exploration of what we
Speaker 5: do with dead bodies from the moment of departure till
Speaker 5: they're they're done being used, either interred or eused science.
Speaker 5: What what what was the most fascinating or one of
Speaker 5: the most fascinating revelations came out of that book for you?
Speaker 8: Oh God, that one.
Speaker 7: You know, people are familiar most with with you know,
Speaker 7: only people we donate your body to science. It's often
Speaker 7: you're being used to teach anatomy or to learn some
Speaker 7: surgical technique, or you know, there's some some pretty common things.
Speaker 8: But then there's stuff like there was a.
Speaker 7: Dude in Powersists around the turn of the last century,
Speaker 7: Pierre Barbet, who was investigating the Shroud of turin Uh.
Speaker 7: He had this idea that the nail the blood marks
Speaker 7: where the nails were like that that he could verify
Speaker 7: the the truth of the shroud by erecting across and
Speaker 7: taking cadaver, sometimes arms with a weight, sometimes whole bodies,
Speaker 7: and like putting them on the cross.
Speaker 8: And I was like, that's a.
Speaker 7: Pretty unique and horrifying use of the donated cadaver. Ye
Speaker 7: I don't know whose cadaver it was, but anyway, that
Speaker 7: one kind of took took the cake as as uh,
Speaker 7: most bizarre cadaver.
Speaker 4: I would say, actually conclude anything from it.
Speaker 7: I think that that his conclusion was already in place
Speaker 7: before he started the project.
Speaker 6: Yeah. All right.
Speaker 4: So the book after that was Spook, which and I
Speaker 4: have to say, of.
Speaker 5: All of them, I was really intrigued with this book.
Speaker 5: Spook is the science that tackles the afterlife. As you
Speaker 5: were saying, you you bumped into some research during Stiff
Speaker 5: that made you think about Spook.
Speaker 4: So, I mean the one, the thing that I remember.
Speaker 5: Was the the chapter you wrote about whether they're trying
Speaker 5: to weigh the soul.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I thought that was fascinating.
Speaker 8: That was so interesting.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, Spook is a book about people trying
Speaker 7: to use scientific method to prove or disprove the existence
Speaker 7: of a spirit or a soul. And I just love
Speaker 7: the fact that somebody is like, well, you know, you
Speaker 7: can have faith and you could do it that way,
Speaker 7: but I'm going to prove it and I have science.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: So the soul where Yeah, that was Duncan McDougall was this.
Speaker 7: Uh he was a physician around the time of a
Speaker 7: big tuberculosis outbreak. I think we're talking the teens nineteen
Speaker 7: or early twenties, So he worked in a tuberculosis sanitarium
Speaker 7: and so he sadly had a steady supply of people dying.
Speaker 7: And he was fascinated with consciousness theory. You might say,
Speaker 7: it's sort of supernatural type of things. And he's like,
Speaker 7: what if we took He had access to a scale.
Speaker 7: It was an industrial scale used for weighing silk, I think,
Speaker 7: was what I remember reading. So he's like, what if
Speaker 7: we took a person who's moribund, who isn't going to
Speaker 7: be around long, we put them on and he installed
Speaker 7: a bed on the scale, he kind of a bed scale,
Speaker 7: and he sat there sort of waiting for the person
Speaker 7: to pass and watching the scale, the needle on the scale.
Speaker 7: At the moment of death, you know, would would the
Speaker 7: person lose a little weight as the soul departed the body,
Speaker 7: which is kind of hilarious because you know, twenty one
Speaker 7: grams that's where that movie idea twenty one grams is
Speaker 7: from that. I mean, that's pretty heavy for a soul, yea.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: And what I also loved is that I found I
Speaker 7: found a modern day soul where a couple of them,
Speaker 7: but one of them was this guy who he's a.
Speaker 7: He was a sheep farmer, and he got interested in
Speaker 7: Duncan McDougall and the whole notion of can you weigh consciousness?
Speaker 7: And and and so he's like, well, I have to
Speaker 7: I butcher sheep anyway, so why don't I do it
Speaker 7: on a scale? And the scales had become by that
Speaker 7: point more sophisticated, so he's like, maybe I can get
Speaker 7: some data that's a little bit better than the you know,
Speaker 7: circa nineteen twenty material from Duncan McDougall. So he puts
Speaker 7: this sheep on a scale as it's I don't know
Speaker 7: how he killed it, but anyway, the scale went up slightly.
Speaker 7: This is like, so what this is like when when
Speaker 7: humans die their souls go into sheep or something.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 8: Some of the sheep was gaining.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 5: The next one was, of course, Bank is the book
Speaker 5: that we started with. There are so many fascinating things
Speaker 5: and yeah, oh.
Speaker 7: My god, what about the Okay, here's my favorite. I
Speaker 7: think this is my favorite. This is something when I
Speaker 7: when I was working on this book, I would go
Speaker 7: into the UCSF Med School Library and they had a
Speaker 7: whole wall of the Journal of sex research, and I
Speaker 7: would just go through and maybe I'd be like table
Speaker 7: of contents, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring work. Oh, sexual
Speaker 7: intercourse as a potential cure for intractable hiccups, and I'd
Speaker 7: be like running to the copy machine, like this is
Speaker 7: this is something. And and it was a published paper
Speaker 7: that apparently orgasm more specifically, although he sexual intercourse was
Speaker 7: what he used in the in the title, but he
Speaker 7: did have a note saying having some advice for unattached hiccupperson, like.
Speaker 8: If you weren't married, uh huh.
Speaker 6: Way, oh my gosh.
Speaker 7: But I like that there's a demographic unattached pickuppers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but there were two things in that book that
Speaker 4: got me. Also.
Speaker 5: One was, and I think you talk about her in
Speaker 5: the in the Ted talk, the woman who would brush
Speaker 5: her teeth to orgasm. Yeah, yeah, very little time is
Speaker 5: what you described, you know.
Speaker 8: Yes, yes, you know.
Speaker 7: Orgasm is a uh it's a reflex and it is
Speaker 7: triggered in some quite atypical, let's say ways, one of
Speaker 7: them being this woman who, when she brushed her teeth
Speaker 7: would have an orgasm. And you'd think she'd have like
Speaker 7: amazing oral hygiene and she'd be like really excited, like
Speaker 7: I have very clean teeth and I'm really happy all
Speaker 7: the time.
Speaker 8: But she she didn't, she didn't like it at all.
Speaker 7: She yeah, And there was another there's some people have
Speaker 7: spontaneous orgasms, and that you could imagine depending on the
Speaker 7: situation where it happens. You know, you're like, I don't know,
Speaker 7: your child's first communion or something. I think could be
Speaker 7: kind of awkward depending on where where it happens. Uh
Speaker 7: So some pits so people people want to be in
Speaker 7: control of somewhat of where they where and when they
Speaker 7: have an orgasm.
Speaker 5: I'm sure this one, I'm this one had many Packing
Speaker 5: from Mars?
Speaker 4: What was what was the blow away? Oh?
Speaker 8: Packing from Mars.
Speaker 7: I really enjoyed my time with the two retired cosmonauts
Speaker 7: because they were because you know, when you try to
Speaker 7: ask an active astronaut in NASA, uh, you know, does
Speaker 7: okay up on the shuttle, you get co Ed Cruz.
Speaker 7: Come on, somebody in the airlock has to have had sex, right,
Speaker 7: They're not gonna they're never gonna say As a matter
Speaker 7: of fact, on my flight, we were balking in there. No,
Speaker 7: they're not going to say it because that's the they'll
Speaker 7: never fly again. I mean, it's now is it's a
Speaker 7: taxpayer funded organization. They're very cautious.
Speaker 4: So yeah.
Speaker 7: But the cosmonauts, on the other hand, they were First
Speaker 7: of all, I met them in the Museum of Cosmonautics,
Speaker 7: where they are now the directors of it. And it
Speaker 7: was ten in the morning, and and I brought this up.
Speaker 7: And well, first first I'd said, like, I wanted one
Speaker 7: of them to sing a song he'd written. He goes,
Speaker 7: I would need to have whiskey, and the other one goes,
Speaker 7: I have it.
Speaker 8: So we go into the office.
Speaker 7: We're drinking whiskey at ten in the morning, and so
Speaker 7: I thought this might be a good time to bring up.
Speaker 4: This space SpaceX.
Speaker 7: So So yeah, one of them, Sasha was his nickname.
Speaker 7: He's like, yeah, people are always saying to me, Sasha, Sasha,
Speaker 7: what about sex in space?
Speaker 8: Do you have sex in space?
Speaker 7: And he's like, of course, by hand, you know, it's
Speaker 7: like yeah, okay. So he and there was some sort
Speaker 7: of you know, uh, there were rumors about a particular couple.
Speaker 7: Ever was able to pin them down on that, but
Speaker 7: they but they did say that there was discussion at
Speaker 7: roast Cosmos, which is the Russian space agency. Some discussion
Speaker 7: about when weather to send up a doll like a
Speaker 7: sex doll, and and yeah, I know, can you imagine.
Speaker 6: They would do it as an experiment how sex thoughts
Speaker 6: perform in space? Did? I mean? I just make it
Speaker 6: another part of the program. Do you have one last?
Speaker 6: The one with animals. It's fascinating to me too, where
Speaker 6: animals are the victims in a different way. What's what
Speaker 6: what's the one that you remember the most of that?
Speaker 7: Oh? Oh gosh, fuzz I think that the most to me,
Speaker 7: the most fun chapter. I did three chapters set in
Speaker 7: India and and and.
Speaker 8: That was.
Speaker 7: Fun, partly because in India there's a the animals, a
Speaker 7: bunch of the animals that are tests there, you know,
Speaker 7: pests in quote, Yeah, elephants, monkeys, uh and uh, there's
Speaker 7: one I'm forgetting.
Speaker 8: But anyway they are they are really revered.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 8: The elephant is Ganesh, the monkey is Hanuman.
Speaker 7: So there's this situation where there people are are are
Speaker 7: you know, both encouraged, you know, loving them and feeding them,
Speaker 7: but also like make this stop.
Speaker 8: You have to make this stop. So the poor guy.
Speaker 7: I spent some time at the and this this bureaucrat
Speaker 7: who was charged with UH trying to deal with the
Speaker 7: monkey because the monkeys, you know, they're stealing things. They're
Speaker 7: outside the temples or people are feeding them, but then
Speaker 7: they're constantly stealing things, picking pockets, turning your pockets inside
Speaker 7: out there, you know, coming into your house and like
Speaker 7: picking up an induction cooker and throwing it.
Speaker 4: On the ground.
Speaker 7: They're like they're really people get really pissed at them.
Speaker 7: So he but he's like, you know, he kept telling me,
Speaker 7: you need to call this man, doctor Singh at the
Speaker 7: Wildlife Bureau. It is his problem, it is his situation.
Speaker 7: These are wild animals. It is not my problem.
Speaker 8: So then I'm called. I get hold of doctor Singh
Speaker 8: and he's like, these.
Speaker 7: Animals are no longer wild, they are not my problem.
Speaker 7: So it's just this wonderful UH Indian bureaucracy moment that
Speaker 7: I quite enjoyed.
Speaker 5: And then I want to know, as does everybody else,
Speaker 5: do you know what you're doing next?
Speaker 8: Oh? I do, Yeah, I have.
Speaker 7: I'm I'm i'd say two thirds of the way through
Speaker 7: a book that is I'm not. I don't usually talk
Speaker 7: about what it's about because I but I in general terms.
Speaker 8: I'll give you you know what I'll do.
Speaker 7: I'll give you the working title and you can guess. Okay,
Speaker 7: it's called replaceable you.
Speaker 3: Oh, there is some of that.
Speaker 4: There's you know, there's want to be. Do we want
Speaker 4: to be? You know androids part us, part machine part Well.
Speaker 6: Maybe it's when you die? Is it part and die?
Speaker 6: What you save download into computer?
Speaker 8: We'll see, you'll see.
Speaker 5: Mary. I, now that I have chatted with you, I
Speaker 5: love you even more. I am telling you. I I
Speaker 5: gush you are you make. Your work makes me so happy.
Speaker 5: I am fascinated by the things you write about, and
Speaker 5: your sense of humor just speaks to me. I sit
Speaker 5: there giggling and going, I love this woman. I am
Speaker 5: so thrilled that you came and spent some time.
Speaker 6: I just gave away the name of her next book
Speaker 6: after next, So there you go. That's right, Mary, Thank you.
Speaker 6: Wait to see the next book.
Speaker 4: I just adore her her.
Speaker 5: You know, you've got a taste of the kind of
Speaker 5: stuff that she gets into. And she what's interesting to
Speaker 5: me is she she really does. I didn't want to
Speaker 5: say it to her because I thought, you know, she
Speaker 5: might misunderstand me. But She's kind of like the Howard
Speaker 5: Stern of literature. You know, she goes, she goes for
Speaker 5: the stuff. Howard always talked about the stuff that nobody
Speaker 5: wanted to get into and everybody thought was prurient.
Speaker 4: But actually, but she does endure serving. She's not doing
Speaker 4: it an.
Speaker 6: Curian way, and it's intelligent. And by the way, everyone
Speaker 6: has sex. Hello, you like to kind of know, well,
Speaker 6: not ever, I some point when you look at me when.
Speaker 4: You're staying on David's on the screen.
Speaker 6: Okay, I'm sorry, he's having sex right now, baby, what
Speaker 6: do you got?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 9: When I saw the movie the right stuff, I actually
Speaker 9: I misinterpreted the whole time.
Speaker 4: Somebody's been.
Speaker 9: Got so I had it, you know, because we had
Speaker 9: Mary on and she does so many weird things in
Speaker 9: science right. Oh, she comes from all these different angles.
Speaker 9: I wanted to throw a few things at you. Is
Speaker 9: it a science myth or a science fact? And whether
Speaker 9: you're able to determine whether it's real.
Speaker 4: Or is.
Speaker 9: Number one, we use only ten percent scent of our
Speaker 9: brain falls.
Speaker 6: Meth I know I'm using at least seventeen, So go ahead,
Speaker 6: you're correct.
Speaker 1: We use our entire brain even when we sleep. Yes,
Speaker 1: there is a dark side.
Speaker 4: To the moon. There is a dark side to the moon.
Speaker 1: There's a dark side to the moon, I believe.
Speaker 6: Well, like there's drug like drug dealing.
Speaker 5: On their No, no, if I if I remember correctly,
Speaker 5: the dark side of the moon is always the dark
Speaker 5: side of the moon because of the perfect rotation the
Speaker 5: moon has around us, so that we really only are
Speaker 5: exposed to one side of the moon in its entire immutation.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Pink Floyd.
Speaker 4: Is that correct?
Speaker 1: So you're saying there is a dark side of the moon.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, but now I'm no.
Speaker 6: No. By the way, what I loved is you weren't
Speaker 6: just wrong. You gave a whole definition. You got a
Speaker 6: whole thing a paragraph. And when they discovered it and
Speaker 6: they went and what was your essay?
Speaker 4: What's your essay? What's your essay?
Speaker 6: Scer well, what's the perfect score?
Speaker 4: Sixteen?
Speaker 6: Nowhere near that? So far off of that. If I
Speaker 6: had a better breakfast that day, they say breakfast it's
Speaker 6: the most important, and if I remember to bring a pencil,
Speaker 6: those two things could.
Speaker 5: Have really a different instead of state school versus versus.
Speaker 6: Private Okay, Uh.
Speaker 9: The human stomach can dissolve razor blades in two hours.
Speaker 4: No. First of all, I never heard this.
Speaker 5: The first time I'm hearing this, I don't know if
Speaker 5: it's fact or fiction. Dissolve a razor blade in two hours? Yes,
Speaker 5: if it also washed it down with coca cola, it can.
Speaker 6: It can. The we can make it.
Speaker 1: The Human Summit can do that. Yes.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 1: There were active volcanoes on the Moon.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, they would have to be active volcanoes on
Speaker 4: the Moon at some point.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, there were.
Speaker 9: In fact, when the dinosaurs were on this planet, there
Speaker 9: were on the dark side.
Speaker 1: There you go. Water conducts electricity.
Speaker 4: I believe it does.
Speaker 6: Okay, that's got to be a trick question. You think
Speaker 6: it does because they don't. They tell you don't.
Speaker 1: Put the radio standing in the water.
Speaker 6: They tell you on the radio next. I know, I know.
Speaker 6: But does it conduct him? Does it not? I would
Speaker 6: think yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1: You would think you would think it is.
Speaker 4: I knew, I knew, Yes, I know.
Speaker 9: Water is actually an insulator, which means it doesn't conduct electricity.
Speaker 4: So is it complete? Bs.
Speaker 5: We see the stories of a guy through a radio
Speaker 5: into the bathtub to kill the guy.
Speaker 1: That's no, no, no, no, no, no no, no, do not
Speaker 1: do that. No, no, that will kill him right away.
Speaker 4: Please do not.
Speaker 1: No danger will Robinson don't.
Speaker 6: By the way, I'll just go on to say most
Speaker 6: of what you hear.
Speaker 9: Say, don't do You're not self listening to the podcast, right, Yeah,
Speaker 9: that would be a bad idea. The danger comes from
Speaker 9: the minerals and chemicals in the water, which are made
Speaker 9: up of electrically charged ion.
Speaker 4: No, it's kind of a trick question.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, let's do one more, one more, one more.
Speaker 1: Sugar makes kids hyper, well.
Speaker 6: Not necessarily, no, no.
Speaker 4: No, really, they do not.
Speaker 9: That is actually a myth based on a nineteen seventy
Speaker 9: eight study that was faulty. There has since been double
Speaker 9: blind studies which has shown that sugar doesn't do any
Speaker 9: sort of hyper All.
Speaker 5: Right, well, it made me fat and I'm sorry to
Speaker 5: put that sentence in the past tense.
Speaker 4: Fat.
Speaker 5: You look good, by oh, for God's sake, you're a
Speaker 5: very nice, lying son of them.
Speaker 6: No, it says I'm getting all my eyes drying out.
Speaker 6: I'm not seeing as well. So thank you everybody for listening.
Speaker 4: Thank you, everybody. Take it away now.
Speaker 2: Really no, really, that's another episode of really no really
Speaker 2: comes to a close. I know you're wondering, is it
Speaker 2: true that an American and Russian astronaut had sex in
Speaker 2: space for research purposes? Well, that answer in a moment,
Speaker 2: but first let's thank our guest, Mary Roach.
Speaker 4: MS.
Speaker 2: Roach is on x slash, Twitter at Mary underscore Roach
Speaker 2: and her website is Maryrooach dot net.
Speaker 3: As always, you can find us online at reallynoreally dot com.
Speaker 2: We're also on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and threads that Really
Speaker 2: No Really podcast. Our full episodes are on YouTube and
Speaker 2: if you're watching there, then hit the subscribe button and
Speaker 2: take that bells.
Speaker 3: You're updated when we release new videos.
Speaker 2: If you ever really no really, let us know and
Speaker 2: wonderful things may happen. And thank you for listening, subscribing,
Speaker 2: and sharing the show. As we enter our second season,
Speaker 2: we love having you with us. Keep coming and maybe
Speaker 2: bring a friend. We release new episodes every Tuesday, so
Speaker 2: make sure to follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you get your podcasts. And now, have American
Speaker 2: and Russian astronauts had space.
Speaker 3: Sex for science?
Speaker 2: Well, NASA says absolutely not, and American astronauts.
Speaker 3: Famously avoid the topic.
Speaker 2: But according to a report in the Guardian from twenty ten,
Speaker 2: cosmic couplings have taken place. Because future space missions could
Speaker 2: be conducted by married couples, researchers wanted to know if
Speaker 2: sex and zero gravity was even possible. Twenty positions were
Speaker 2: tested via computer simulation and produced ten possible positions for
Speaker 2: real life testing. Of these, only four tested as possible
Speaker 2: without mechanical assistance. In addition, one of the principal findings
Speaker 2: was that the classic so called missionary position, which is
Speaker 2: so easy on Earth when gravity pushes one downwards, is
Speaker 2: simply not possible in outer space. Well, I say, nothing
Speaker 2: is insurmountable with the ingenuity of clever, determined people. After all,
Speaker 2: it was a rocket scientist who invented the personal lubricant astroglide.
Speaker 3: So good luck, brave adventurers.
Speaker 4: Really really m.
Speaker 2: No raising really no really is production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 2: Blase Entertainment