WEBVTT - Replaceable You, with Mary Roach 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:14.960 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:17.920 is Robert Lamb and we have a special treat for 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:22.119 you here today. Mary Roach has a new book that 0:00:22.239 --> 0:00:26.400 is about to come out, Replaceable You Adventures in Human Anatomy. 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:30.200 Mary Roach is a multiple times Stuff to Blow your 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:33.319 Mind guest. Anytime she has a new book out, we 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:37.040 always say absolutely, send us an advance copy, let me 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:39.120 get my hands on it, and we would be happy 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:41.320 to have her on the show. So once more, I'm 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:43.599 going to be chatting with Mary Roach again about her 0:00:43.640 --> 0:00:47.720 new book, Replaceable You Adventures in Human Anatomy. It's going 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:50.800 to be released September sixteenth, twenty twenty five, and is 0:00:50.800 --> 0:00:54.240 currently available for pre order. So without further ado, let's 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:59.440 jump right into the interview. Hi, Mary, welcome back to 0:00:59.440 --> 0:00:59.760 the show. 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:00.960 Thank you so much. 0:01:01.280 --> 0:01:04.360 The new book is Replaceable You, which will be released 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:07.560 September sixteenth, twenty twenty five, and it's currently available for 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:12.240 pre order. As always, it's a tremendous, insightful and humorous read, 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:14.680 and in many ways it feels like a natural follow 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:17.600 up to topics you've explored in previous books, especially two 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:21.520 thousand and three Stiff and twenty sixteen's Grunt. Did it 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:24.880 indeed spring in any way from topics you touched on 0:01:24.920 --> 0:01:27.360 in previous books or was there some other sort of 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:28.600 out of the blue inspiration. 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:31.120 Well, I always have the human body kind of the 0:01:31.160 --> 0:01:34.920 back of my head as a fertile area to poke 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:41.600 around in. In this case, it didn't really spring from 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:46.640 anything in a past book per se. This the idea 0:01:46.720 --> 0:01:48.800 kind of came from a couple of things I encountered 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:52.320 in talking to people. I'm often my way of finding 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:55.120 a new book topic is sometimes just to reach out 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:59.160 to people I've met in the past and kind of 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:03.320 just bitball brainstorm and this but this one was a 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:08.080 reader wrote to me and said for your next for 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:11.519 your next book, you should write about professional football referees, 0:02:12.000 --> 0:02:16.680 which was, you know, no disrespect, just a terrible idea 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:19.120 for me. I don't I don't watch football, I don't 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:23.200 know anything about football. And but we had a conversation 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:26.520 on email and she mentioned that she's an elective vamputee 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:30.160 and I had never heard this term, and I asked 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:33.280 her what that means. And she's talking about how she 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:37.400 has a kind of a dysfunctional foot. It's healthy, you know, 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:40.440 it gets blood, it's funk, it's functional, but not in 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:42.280 the way she would like it to be. And she 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:44.919 wanted it cut off and replaced with a prosthetic because 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:48.000 she would see people walking around on prosthetic feet and 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:52.160 they're running and they're hiking, and she couldn't do that stuff. 0:02:52.240 --> 0:02:54.520 And so she and it was very hard for her 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:57.240 to find a surgeon willing to cut off a quote 0:02:57.280 --> 0:03:01.000 unquote healthy foot, and that frustrated her. And it was 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:05.680 kind of interesting, does this sort of sense of whole, 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:09.200 like this bias for wholeness and this sense of are 0:03:09.240 --> 0:03:12.280 we a whole entity? Are we made up of parts? 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:14.959 Can you just swap them in and out? And that 0:03:15.480 --> 0:03:19.320 kind of led me along that path. And of course, 0:03:19.480 --> 0:03:23.680 you know that there's lots of kind of interesting areas 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:29.440 like iron lungs and nasal mutilation and skin grafting and 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:31.680 the history of skin grafting. There's just a lot of 0:03:31.760 --> 0:03:36.640 kind of mary roachy topics under that umbrella of replacing 0:03:37.120 --> 0:03:38.840 bits and pieces of the human body. 0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:42.680 Was there a particular chapter that kind of solidified first, 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:45.520 or was there some were they just sort of all 0:03:45.560 --> 0:03:47.520 sort of come together like, what's your process when it 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:48.840 comes to writing a book. 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:53.960 I knew right off the bat there was something that 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:56.560 there's one thing that I definitely wanted to include. And 0:03:56.600 --> 0:03:59.000 this is again it was a conversation. This was a 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:02.720 woman who works in a stem cell lab, but it 0:04:03.080 --> 0:04:05.880 oddly had nothing to do with stem cells. She mentioned 0:04:06.080 --> 0:04:09.120 I think I had contacted her because I'd been poking 0:04:09.160 --> 0:04:12.400 around on the idea of fat as a topic a 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:16.000 book topic fat the substance fat, and I backed off 0:04:16.000 --> 0:04:17.960 of that because I don't want to write about weight loss. 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:22.640 So she mentioned, and I don't know how this came up, 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:25.400 don't remember, but she mentioned that there was a surgeon 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:30.520 who had reconstructed a man's penis using his own middle finger, 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:34.560 and that because of the way my brain works, that 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:36.800 just you know, I'm like, oh my god, they just 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:39.120 cut the finger off and like attached it down there 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:44.080 and he could move his finger. And I had this very, 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:47.599 as it turned out, inaccurate impression of what that surgery was. 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:49.599 But I'm like, I'm going there. I'm going to see 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:53.720 this surgeon. It turned out he's in former Soviet Georgia, 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:55.800 and I did go there, and this story is in 0:04:55.839 --> 0:04:57.440 the book, But I think that was one of the 0:04:57.440 --> 0:04:59.440 first places that I went to report in one of 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:02.560 the first chapter that I wrote, so that that kind 0:05:02.600 --> 0:05:05.919 of cemented things I think for me like that I 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:07.560 have to have a book that includes this. 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:11.359 Somehow, it reminds me a little bit of some of 0:05:11.400 --> 0:05:15.279 the topics you touched on in Grunt, which made me wonder, 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:18.640 do you revisit what you wrote in previous books when 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:21.960 you cover something like adjacent to it in a later book. 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:25.120 And I ask in part because I know that, like 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:28.599 the history broadly remains the same, and the autobiographical and 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:32.360 personal aspects of the book remains evergreen, but the science 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:34.560 and the way we perceive where we are with the 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:36.920 science can change so rapidly in just a few years. 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:41.880 Yeah, I did. I did go back to in Grunt. 0:05:42.640 --> 0:05:48.240 As you know, I covered the Department of Defense was 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:53.200 funding some work with penis transplants, in other words, taking 0:05:53.240 --> 0:05:59.360 a cadaver penis and hooking it up and replacing whatever 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:03.160 remains of a man's penis who And this was you know, 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:06.839 during Afghanistan and Iraq, when there were lots of IEDs 0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:10.920 going off and damaging not just legs but all the 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:13.760 way up to the pelvis so and I'd been in 0:06:13.800 --> 0:06:15.960 the lab when they were doing some of the early 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:20.320 work for penis transplants, so I did I called that 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:24.640 surgeon just to see where where things at, what's going 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:27.960 on in the world of transplantation. I don't like to 0:06:28.040 --> 0:06:31.560 repeat things that I've covered before. I mean, I was 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:36.560 definitely not going to include that project or kind of 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:41.200 go back and follow up on that patient or anything 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:44.280 like that. So I do make use of the people 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:46.880 that I've met and sort of pick their brains and 0:06:47.240 --> 0:06:51.520 get ideas from them, and also referrals to people that 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:56.520 they know. So I do that, but not I don't 0:06:56.560 --> 0:07:01.920 really completely step back into the setting of a previous book. 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:05.680 So the way that we perceive the current trajectory of 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:08.480 science is one of the really fascinating subjects in the 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:11.880 new book. In numerous places. I was really floored by 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:15.440 an early discussion in the book about how people viewed 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:19.240 the promise of denture technology in the forties, fifties, and sixties. 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:22.000 This was just really mind blowing for making. Can you 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:23.280 explain this one for us? 0:07:23.680 --> 0:07:27.640 Sure? Yeah, the history of dentures and we're talking here 0:07:27.680 --> 0:07:31.520 about not what goes on today, which is implants set 0:07:31.560 --> 0:07:34.119 into the bone and then a plate attached to those 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:38.760 talking more about a whole set of teeth that's either 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:44.520 glued or in some cases suspended through piercings. That was unbelievable. 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:50.480 A technology that at its best only gave you about 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:54.360 twenty five percent of your chewing capacity. It was never 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:58.679 a good solution. But what amazed me was this trend 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:01.160 in the period of time that you're talking about for 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:04.440 having all of one's teeth pulled at once and getting 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:06.720 fitted with dentures. And it was this sense of like, 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:13.400 I'll have a marvelous, healthy, white smile, and it was 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:16.280 done as a gift for brides. It called sort of 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:21.760 matrimonial dentures, I think was the term and the people 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:24.560 and I had thought of it as just this is 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:28.440 something that's done in poor communities or people who don't 0:08:28.440 --> 0:08:31.160 have access to good dental care, but in fact it 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:33.680 was just kind of a trend. And I could only 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:38.040 explain it to myself by thinking people were just assuming 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:41.280 it's new and it's man made, and it's got to 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:44.200 be better. I mean, Paul McCartney, his dad told him 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:46.160 you should when he turned twenty one, he should go 0:08:46.240 --> 0:08:49.600 get all his teeth removed and replaced with dentures and 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:52.640 people and there was this reddit thread. It's no longer 0:08:52.720 --> 0:08:54.880 up for some reason, but this reddit thread where someone 0:08:54.960 --> 0:09:00.440 mentioned it, and there are a thousand replies people saying 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:04.000 my grand my parent or grandparent, usually a grandparent had 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:09.160 this done and ended up regretting it. Always had difficulty 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:12.520 with the dentures, but it was a It was to 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:14.720 me kind of a good way to open the book 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:19.520 because it was this interest. It's interesting there's this tendency 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:24.960 among humans, particularly you know, starting in the nineteen hundreds 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:28.720 and onward, to just assume if it's if it's technical 0:09:28.760 --> 0:09:32.760 and new, it must be better, and to kind of 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:39.240 rush headlong into that technology without really considering how will 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:41.679 it stack up against what I've got going. My dad 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:44.440 lost all of his back teeth he had he had 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:48.480 a few front teeth in the front left and he 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:51.240 was much older, sixty five when I was born. But anyway, 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:53.840 he never got dentures. He never went. He didn't go. 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:56.360 I don't know if he didn't trust dentists. He was British. 0:09:56.400 --> 0:09:58.400 I don't know if that had anything to two in it, 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:01.839 but he u but he managed just fine using his 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:05.160 front teeth to chew, and I think, you know, probably 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:08.800 that worked better than had he gotten a couple of 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:11.880 those plates that are you know, glued with polygrip and 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:16.160 got stuff under them. It just sounded it sounded, you know, 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:19.200 like not a great technology, and he did find it. 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:20.680 You know, it was a little weird to watch him 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:24.320 chew his lamb chops, but it seemed to work. 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:28.200 Yeah, It's just it just it was so foreign to 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:32.080 imagine like this level of excitement and trust and not 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:34.679 only where the technology was going, but where it presently was. 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:37.000 Because I can I can imagine, I can sort of 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:40.040 put myselves in the shoes of imagining someone saying, Okay, 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:43.040 well I don't have to worry as much about taking 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:45.200 care of my teeth because the technology is coming along 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:47.560 really well and it'll you know, and sort of like 0:10:47.600 --> 0:10:49.480 putting that off on your future self. But to go 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:51.800 ahead and have it now, to go ahead and get 0:10:51.800 --> 0:10:55.240 the dentures that you know at an early age, Yeah, 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:57.800 it's hard to like, I can't think of anything, and 0:10:57.840 --> 0:11:01.280 surely there's something in our world that's that serves as 0:11:01.280 --> 0:11:04.320 an analogy for that, But I'm grasping at straws to 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:04.800 think of it. 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:10.400 Yeah, well, what's going on now with intraocular lenses for 0:11:10.480 --> 0:11:16.120 cat That's a technology that's for decades been used for 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:20.280 cataract patients in particular, where there's this opacification of the 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:23.160 lens and you just can't focus and things that you 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:28.760 lose color, and the technology is and the surgical procedure 0:11:29.200 --> 0:11:32.520 has come so far that there are now people who 0:11:32.520 --> 0:11:34.640 are in their twenties who just happen to be very 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:38.720 very near sighted who want to have it done. There's 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:41.440 a term for that that I've forgotten. I think that's 0:11:41.480 --> 0:11:45.040 an example, and that's an example where if everything goes well, 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:49.160 which it usually does, it's not analogous to the dentures 0:11:49.160 --> 0:11:52.240 in that I think folks would who have that done. 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:56.320 It can be kind of an amazing replacement. You don't 0:11:56.520 --> 0:12:01.200 have accommodation, which is the eyes amazing ability to go 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:04.880 from far away to near focus just automatically, you know, 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:08.160 sort of an built in auto focus. So that's not 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:13.600 something that exists yet, So you are accepting a compromise 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:16.120 in that sense. But for somebody who's who's very very 0:12:16.160 --> 0:12:20.360 near sighted or I suppose far sighted, it's an appealing option, 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:24.000 you know, to not have to think about glasses, contact lenses, 0:12:24.040 --> 0:12:28.120 et cetera. And it's I think, you know, even compared 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:32.680 to lasik, which can have after effects that are unappealing. 0:12:32.760 --> 0:12:38.319 But yeah, but to have all one's teeth pulled at 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:42.679 once and there. And I think also people people had 0:12:42.679 --> 0:12:45.800 a sense of people don't like to go to the dentists. 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:49.920 They don't like dental procedures. So in areas where dental 0:12:50.120 --> 0:12:53.440 care was lacking or wasn't close by, they thought, let's 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:55.560 just get it over with and I'll never have to 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:57.720 go back to a dentist, and I'll have this, you know, 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:01.760 perfect straight smile, I don't have to get fillings, etc. 0:13:02.120 --> 0:13:06.320 But in fact, the dentures, you know, the gums start 0:13:06.360 --> 0:13:08.040 to receid so that you would have to go back 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.200 and get refitted. So it really wasn't you didn't even 0:13:11.280 --> 0:13:14.040 deliver that right now. 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:17.880 Later in the book, when you're discussing skin graphs and xenographs, 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:20.760 the skin graphs based on the tissue from other species, 0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:26.000 you hit on something similar about how certain headlines about 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:31.319 breakthroughs with xenographs might be considered an unnecessary distraction by 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:35.720 some in the industry, certainly on the research end. Of things. 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:40.000 But do you think these various headlines sometimes and you know, 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:44.280 advancements sometimes help implant the idea that the research is 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:46.040 much further along than it actually is. 0:13:47.360 --> 0:13:52.440 Oh yeah, absolutely, press press releases in particular, and a 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:56.640 lot of times newspapers just take information from press releases 0:13:56.679 --> 0:14:00.640 without doing additional reporting. So in that sense, yeah, makes 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:05.960 its way into the news. Absolutely. I think that you know, 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:09.760 you see a headline like lab grown penises are on 0:14:09.800 --> 0:14:14.040 the horizon, which was an actual press release headline from 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:18.439 some years back, and I don't know, the penises seemed 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:20.880 to still be out on the distant horizon. You know, 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:23.440 you follow up with these things a few years later, 0:14:23.480 --> 0:14:27.320 and the company's gone out of business, the researcher has 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:32.040 stopped researching that, and you know, and I think it's 0:14:32.080 --> 0:14:36.600 a disservice to the public because you know, I have 0:14:36.640 --> 0:14:39.720 a friend who have who has Parkinson's, and he people 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:41.880 are always sending him. Look, I saw this, I saw 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:44.360 this press release online. I heard about this technique. I 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:48.840 heard about same with the woman who the elective amputee said. 0:14:48.840 --> 0:14:51.600 I cannot tell you the number of times my friends 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:54.520 have sent me a link to a story that says 0:14:55.560 --> 0:14:59.520 twenty dollars. You can buioprint and prosthetic foot. You'll never 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:02.480 have to see prosthetists again. And it's cheap. And she's like, 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:05.240 that's never going to happen, and I want them to stop, 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:08.480 and they mean, well, but stop sending me this stuff 0:15:09.120 --> 0:15:11.040 because there's so much of it out there. 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:13.480 And I suppose that feeds into one of the central 0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:16.120 ideas of the book, right that the human body isn't 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:18.960 really replaceable, no matter how far the science has come. 0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:25.560 Exactly. It's it's you're talking about, you know, two hundred 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:30.840 or so years of medical science competing with millions of 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:34.920 years of evolutionary tinkering, and and that's a you know, 0:15:34.960 --> 0:15:38.200 that's that's tough to compete with, and it's tough to match. 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:42.480 So it's not it's not that the researchers and scientists 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:46.800 aren't doing a good job. They're doing amazing things. It's 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:50.440 just a really the human body is just infinitely complex 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:55.360 in ways that we don't even yet understand. So of 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:56.960 course it's going to take a long time. 0:15:57.480 --> 0:16:01.880 Yeah, yeah, you cover when you're talking about various transplants, 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:05.800 the unforeseen consequences like the I believe it was the 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:09.120 pig's heart that wasn't supposed to grow but then grew 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:11.560 inside the recipient's chest. 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:18.080 Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there's and there's also there's there's 0:16:18.080 --> 0:16:20.680 just connections between you know, we think of ourselves as 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:23.080 made up of parts and the parts can you know, 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:25.600 you can replace parts, that's what you do on a car. 0:16:26.000 --> 0:16:29.480 But there are these kind of invisible links between you know, 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:32.600 the brain and the organs, and the organs themselves and 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:36.560 the There's just a lot going on that is difficult 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:41.400 to anticipate when you talk about creating something to replace 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:45.080 an individual piece, you know, trying to incorporate that piece 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:48.640 into a whole system. I mean, we are a massively 0:16:48.680 --> 0:16:51.400 complex system, so it's it's quite a challenge. 0:16:51.480 --> 0:17:02.160 Yeah. 0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:05.600 Now, the history of our attempts to replace lost limbs, organs, 0:17:05.600 --> 0:17:10.480 and tissues, this is as captivating and sometimes more nauseating, 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:14.560 certainly than the current and bleeding edge research into such replacements. 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:16.160 And you can discuss a lot of this in the book. 0:17:16.240 --> 0:17:18.880 So I want to start with the history here. What 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:22.119 was your favorite I can't believe they were trying to 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:25.320 do blank back in such and such year, tidbit. 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:32.679 I think the I can't believe reaction had to do 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:39.439 with the crafting of a vagina from the intestine, and 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:43.399 that is a technique that is sometimes done with trans women. 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:48.720 If there's been problems with the more standard procedure, you 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:52.920 can in fact bring a section of the intestine down 0:17:53.480 --> 0:17:58.119 and use it and it works surprisingly well. And it 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:03.040 isn't it's it isn't new. In the eighteen hundreds, there 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:06.399 were surgeons who were doing this, but it's it's for 0:18:06.480 --> 0:18:10.639 cancer patients and the set that there was a quote 0:18:11.920 --> 0:18:13.320 I wish I had it in front of me, but 0:18:13.400 --> 0:18:16.399 the surgeons were all conferring, like, should we do this? 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:18.720 It's kind of risky. I don't know, it hasn't been done, 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:23.040 but they said, if the home life and matrimonial harmony 0:18:23.080 --> 0:18:26.320 depends on it, it is mandatory. I'm like, hello, maybe 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:32.679 want to check with that woman before you do that. Yeah, 0:18:32.720 --> 0:18:35.199 But it's an it's a I spent some time with 0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:40.200 the surgeon who who from time to time does that technique, 0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:43.040 and it is a kind of an incredible I just 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:46.280 I just love the idea of like recruiting parts of 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:49.720 the body that evolved for one thing and using them 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:54.800 for something else. And the body is surprisingly adaptable, you know, agreeable, like, yeah, 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:56.719 I can be a vagina. I think I can do that, 0:18:56.800 --> 0:19:00.800 you know, moist tubular secretion. Yeah, I got it. 0:19:01.680 --> 0:19:03.399 And then of course early on in the book you 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:08.160 walk us through the history of just replacing the nose, 0:19:08.359 --> 0:19:10.479 and there's so many interesting details there with like the 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:13.159 marching of the skin up from the forearm and so forth. 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:16.320 Oh yeah, yeah, and this goes back to like fifteen 0:19:16.359 --> 0:19:22.600 hundred BC. This is a technique because nasal mutilation was 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:26.280 a pretty common you know, globally and throughout history. If 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:29.280 to punish a group of people or an individual, to 0:19:29.400 --> 0:19:32.919 cut off the nose was popular because not only is 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:35.600 it humiliating and awful for the person, but it serves 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:38.720 as a kind of a deterrent, like, look, what will 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:42.080 happen to you if you steal, if you're supporting the 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:45.880 wrong leader, whatever whatever it is. So there was this 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:53.199 demand for rebuilding the nose, and over the course of 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:58.119 time some very ingenious techniques, you know, taking a piece 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:00.600 of the forehead or a piece of the cheek, taking 0:20:00.600 --> 0:20:04.240 that skin, loosening it, leaving it attached so it still 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:08.240 has a blood supply, and then turning it over and 0:20:08.240 --> 0:20:10.440 putting it in place on what's left of the nose 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:12.159 and building a nose that way, and that and the 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:14.560 fact that I mean plastic, that's the dawn of plastic 0:20:14.600 --> 0:20:18.520 surgery right there. That's really where it began with the nose. 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:23.080 And then of course that leaves scarring, or it can 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:26.080 leave you know, if you put a graft on the 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:28.560 place where you took the skin. Now you've got skin 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:32.200 that doesn't match. You know, it's not seamless. So they 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:36.679 started using the underside of the arm the fifteen hundreds 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:38.760 in Italy, just having you know, and then then you 0:20:38.800 --> 0:20:40.760 of course to have the arm underside of the arm 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:43.040 close to the nose, you had to have the arm 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:46.000 up over the head with a harness. I mean, it 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:49.800 was quite an elaborate setup to for a few weeks 0:20:49.840 --> 0:20:53.399 to keep that piece of the underside of the upper 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:56.240 arm attached to the nose. He kind of looked like 0:20:56.240 --> 0:20:59.280 he was you know, I've seen a etching of that 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:01.560 and the guy looks like he's checking for bo kind 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:06.040 of a you know, head close to the underarm pose. 0:21:06.160 --> 0:21:12.000 But just amazing the ingenuity that went into it. And 0:21:12.040 --> 0:21:15.800 then once you know, you had more options with different 0:21:15.840 --> 0:21:20.719 materials and adhesives. There were noses made of celluloid, noses 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:25.640 made of brass or other metal composits. There were noses 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:31.119 hanging off glasses frames, kind of a grouseiow Marx thing 0:21:31.160 --> 0:21:33.240 because they even had a little mustache to cover up 0:21:33.280 --> 0:21:36.360 the boundary below the lower boundary, So it was kind 0:21:36.359 --> 0:21:38.320 of a medical Gaucho Marx glasses. 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:42.560 The flammable celluloid nose that you mentioned that was rather 0:21:42.600 --> 0:21:43.720 horrifying to imagine. 0:21:44.520 --> 0:21:49.480 Well, yes, it could only carry the Groucho Marx comparison, 0:21:49.600 --> 0:21:51.560 so far, you definitely not want the cigar. 0:21:53.840 --> 0:21:56.440 One example you brought up that really floored me too 0:21:56.560 --> 0:22:01.359 was the idea of polyester hair implants. I no idea 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:02.160 this was ever a thing. 0:22:02.800 --> 0:22:05.080 Oh me, neither me neither, Thank you for asking. Nobody 0:22:05.119 --> 0:22:08.720 has asked about that, but there was in the nineteen seventies. 0:22:09.520 --> 0:22:13.879 It was possible if you were losing hair, either you know, 0:22:14.000 --> 0:22:16.200 a bald spot or just sort of all over. 0:22:17.000 --> 0:22:17.840 You could have. 0:22:19.320 --> 0:22:24.000 Essentially doll hair inserted with a kind of surgical crochet 0:22:24.119 --> 0:22:30.439 hook kind of hooked into the scalp. And it was 0:22:30.480 --> 0:22:33.440 a terrible idea for a number of reasons. First of all, 0:22:33.880 --> 0:22:35.800 if you start to go gray. It's not going to 0:22:35.840 --> 0:22:38.119 go gray. You can't style it the same way you 0:22:38.119 --> 0:22:40.280 can style it. You can barely style it at all, 0:22:41.000 --> 0:22:44.520 not to mention infections and all these horrible kind of 0:22:44.880 --> 0:22:49.359 lumps that would appear, and it was it's illegal now, 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:52.120 but for a while, I think in Turkey you could 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:55.480 still get it done and you had to space them 0:22:55.560 --> 0:22:58.359 out such that you kind of looked like a doll, 0:22:58.400 --> 0:22:59.960 you know, how dolls have? You know? 0:23:00.119 --> 0:23:00.600 The barb. 0:23:02.040 --> 0:23:07.680 Far apart. It didn't look natural, it looked like dull hair, 0:23:08.359 --> 0:23:10.200 but it was something and it was not cheap. 0:23:11.119 --> 0:23:15.920 Wow. Yeah, Now I have to ask of which of 0:23:15.960 --> 0:23:19.760 the following did you find more horrifying, goat milk transfusions 0:23:19.960 --> 0:23:25.199 or goat milk based breast implants. I was surprised at 0:23:25.200 --> 0:23:27.800 how how many different uses we had for goat and 0:23:27.840 --> 0:23:28.359 cow milk. 0:23:29.480 --> 0:23:32.440 Yeah, goat milk in particularly, I guess because there's less 0:23:32.440 --> 0:23:35.320 of a market for drinking goat milk. They're like, what 0:23:35.320 --> 0:23:41.240 can we do with this, but goat milk. I think 0:23:41.280 --> 0:23:48.359 that the transfusions shocked me more partly, but they shocked me, 0:23:48.359 --> 0:23:49.920 But on the other hand, it's kind of you know, 0:23:49.960 --> 0:23:52.480 they often worked pretty well if someone was hemorrhaging and 0:23:52.520 --> 0:23:54.200 losing a lot of blood, and you needed to keep 0:23:54.200 --> 0:23:57.159 the volume up. Obviously you don't have red blood cells 0:23:57.160 --> 0:23:59.040