Speaker 1: Mother Knows Death Presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy.
Speaker 2: Hi everyone, Welcome to this week's external exam on mother
Speaker 2: Knows Death. Today's guest is Mary Roach. So I wanted
Speaker 2: to tell you this. In two thousand and seven, I
Speaker 2: was in pa school learning how to do autopsies and stuff,
Speaker 2: and I was on my school break and I thought, Okay,
Speaker 2: I need to read a book that's for pleasure. But
Speaker 2: I'm a scientist, I'm a Doyork, so of course I
Speaker 2: wanted to read something that was about death, right, And
Speaker 2: I came across your book, Stiff, and I read it
Speaker 2: on the airplane on the way to Vegas with my friends,
Speaker 2: and I just can't believe that fifteen years later, I'm
Speaker 2: talking to you right now. It's just such a crazy world.
Speaker 3: Oh that's hilarious. I'm sorry you had to read it
Speaker 3: on an airplane because you believe there's a chapter about
Speaker 3: the forensics of airplane crashes.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Speaker 2: Well, just working in this field, I think that I
Speaker 2: am completely scared at all times of everything. And it's
Speaker 2: funny in this book, Gulp, you were talking about how
Speaker 2: hot dogs are. The Academy of Pediatrics or whatever said
Speaker 2: that hot dogs are one of the deadliest things for kids.
Speaker 4: And when I was.
Speaker 2: When I was rotating at the Medical Examiner's office, we
Speaker 2: had this case of this kid that was like three
Speaker 2: or four years old and was on the porch eating
Speaker 2: and one of the people that were a neighbor that
Speaker 2: was sitting on the porch had given the kid a gripe.
Speaker 4: And I mean, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, no, same shape as the windpipe exactly.
Speaker 2: But you don't I think if you're a regular person,
Speaker 2: you don't really think about stuff like that.
Speaker 4: And the guy's just like, oh, your kid, you want
Speaker 4: a grape? And then and then it was the neighbor's
Speaker 4: kid that died. Like how horrible is that?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 3: Oh, you don't ever recover from that. Imagine the guilt. Yeah,
Speaker 3: nobody knows. I didn't know until I somebody told me
Speaker 3: about yeah, grapes.
Speaker 2: So you're probably much like me that you're constantly freaking
Speaker 2: out about stuff that you never knew about until you
Speaker 2: started doing research on it.
Speaker 3: I know too much, Nicole, not nearly as much as
Speaker 3: you do, though, No, I see everything.
Speaker 4: You definitely know more than me, trust me. I've read
Speaker 4: your books, your no no.
Speaker 2: I guess my first question is going to be the
Speaker 2: one that you probably hear all the time. I know
Speaker 2: that when I get interviewed, people always say have you
Speaker 2: always been obsessed with death? And I'm like and I'm like, no,
Speaker 2: I haven't. Actually I wasn't like some goth like eight
Speaker 2: year old, you know what I mean. But I've always
Speaker 2: been interested in how things work and breaking down things.
Speaker 2: And I'm assuming that you're the same way. So what
Speaker 2: made you decide or not necessarily decide, or how did
Speaker 2: you fall into You were going not become an official
Speaker 2: scientist where you go to a lab every day and work,
Speaker 2: and you were going to research about it and write it.
Speaker 3: I didn't take science in high school or college. I
Speaker 3: was a liberal arts major, which of course prepares you
Speaker 3: for nothing. Well I shouldn't say nothing in the lights,
Speaker 3: but no specific job. So you know, one thing I
Speaker 3: could do is string words together. You do have to
Speaker 3: be able to do that to graduate. So I started
Speaker 3: as a general journalist, general writer, magazine writer. And one
Speaker 3: of the places I worked for in the early days
Speaker 3: of my career was a magazine called Hippocrates. It was
Speaker 3: a local I mean, they were headquartered here in the
Speaker 3: Bay Area, and it was medicine and health and all
Speaker 3: things related, and they had a wonderfully lenient approach so
Speaker 3: that I could do things like say, oh, well, okay,
Speaker 3: so you want something about weight loss. What if we
Speaker 3: what if I went to Tokyo and talked to sumo
Speaker 3: arrestlers about how they put on a massive amount of
Speaker 3: weight and then tell people maybe they could do the opposite,
Speaker 3: like is there there? And they'd be like, okay, do
Speaker 3: That's so cool? So I wrote for them for a
Speaker 3: long time. It was a wonderful experience. But that was
Speaker 3: really how I came to writing about else and the
Speaker 3: human body. And Stiff grew out of a column I
Speaker 3: did later similar subject area for so it was for
Speaker 3: Salon dot Com, and Stiff was something that I had
Speaker 3: written one short piece about. I stumbled onto these books
Speaker 3: in the basement of the UCSF Medical School here in
Speaker 3: the Bay Area, and they had a row of books
Speaker 3: called the STAB Car Crash Conference, the papers of the
Speaker 3: STAB Car Crash Conference. I'm like, what car crash Conference?
Speaker 3: And I started looking through it and they were talking
Speaker 3: about This was the sixties and late fifties and the
Speaker 3: early days of automotive safety, where there were no safe
Speaker 3: seat built, no air bags, The cars were just designed
Speaker 3: to look cool. And then they'd realized people were getting
Speaker 3: mangled and killed and that maybe they should look into
Speaker 3: making them safer. And so to make a crash test
Speaker 3: dummy for example, you know, you needed the bodies to
Speaker 3: calibrate them. You know, the dummy would tell you what
Speaker 3: the force was and the acceleration, et cetera. You had
Speaker 3: to know what is that kind of force or what
Speaker 3: does that do to a body? So they needed cadavers
Speaker 3: for that. So I had written about that, and then
Speaker 3: a out of that column, the book kind of agent
Speaker 3: contacted me and said, do you ever think about the books?
Speaker 4: That's really cool?
Speaker 2: So I guess when you posted articles with that content,
Speaker 2: it got a big response obviously, because people are into
Speaker 2: it as much as Yeah, they try to say.
Speaker 4: Like, oh, don't talk about that stuff.
Speaker 2: It upsets people, but there's a huge population of people
Speaker 2: that obviously love that stuff.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, and you know, I think there's a a
Speaker 3: kind of built in fascination for cadavers only because we're
Speaker 3: all going to end up that way. So it's personal
Speaker 3: to everybody in a weird way, you know, and everybody
Speaker 3: drives a car. So people are frightened by and kind
Speaker 3: of obsessed by that whole notion of the car crush.
Speaker 3: So I think it had that particular topic.
Speaker 1: It was appealing to people, you know, it appeals to
Speaker 1: their curiosity and cure mix of curiosity and fear and yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know what.
Speaker 3: Else, but anyway, it turned out to be an okay
Speaker 3: mix for a book.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that you talk about that because that was
Speaker 2: one of my biggest things when everybody was freaking out
Speaker 2: about people dying from COVID and stuff. I was just like,
Speaker 2: you realized that there's a way higher chance of you
Speaker 2: dying in a car, right, But how people don't want
Speaker 2: to think about that, you know, No.
Speaker 3: I know some of it, especially towards you know, towards
Speaker 3: the end of it, there were some conversations about you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm I support wearing masks, you know, and
Speaker 3: it was you know, I'm not against that, But there
Speaker 3: was a point at which some you know, the people
Speaker 3: were talking about I don't feel comfortable with whatever it was,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, you're in much greater danger driving to
Speaker 3: this event than you are. Yeah, exactly, I don't. I'm
Speaker 3: not I'm not not anti mass blaining means, but just
Speaker 3: the level of hysteria at certain points was kind of
Speaker 3: to me bizarre.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, because you're because I'm a person that has
Speaker 2: seen a lot of dead people in my life, like
Speaker 2: way before COVID ever started, So I know lots of
Speaker 2: people die every day, and you know that as well
Speaker 2: from your research, So I think for us it was
Speaker 2: just like, yeah, people are dying. People die all the time.
Speaker 2: That's what happens, all right, So getting into gulf. But
Speaker 2: the biggest thing that made me fall in love with
Speaker 2: your book was when you were kind of busted on
Speaker 2: your husband. Because I love to bring my husband into things,
Speaker 2: and when you were saying that about his parts in
Speaker 2: bed and being sockxic gas the hydrogen sulfide farts, I
Speaker 2: was like, that's so great because that's one hundred percent
Speaker 2: something I would do with my husband too. How he
Speaker 2: obviously he's he's married to you and loves you and
Speaker 2: think he likes that, right, Like that's he's cool with that.
Speaker 3: And he's a very good store.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's awesome totally, and he's he's like behind he's
Speaker 6: because of him.
Speaker 3: We have the line I have this line that I
Speaker 3: love in the book. I think it's in the book anyway,
Speaker 3: where they actually I don't know if it is, but
Speaker 3: that like, for one, I did a years ago story
Speaker 3: on flatulence and they had to I was a subject
Speaker 3: in the study at the Bino Digestive Disease Research Center,
Speaker 3: and they said, well, first we need to find out
Speaker 3: make sure you're a producer, like you produce enough gas, right,
Speaker 3: so they have you blown the mylar bag. It's a
Speaker 3: breath hydrogen test, so they have to know if you're
Speaker 3: a producer. And I said, yeah, I think I am.
Speaker 3: And I said, I think my husband is an executive producer.
Speaker 4: That's so great. I love that.
Speaker 3: All the best lines I come from something to do
Speaker 3: with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it's It's cool because I I feel like
Speaker 2: with my husband, we just constantly are going back and
Speaker 2: forth with these like like insulting jokes to each other
Speaker 2: kind of but I love it.
Speaker 3: It's just what does he do?
Speaker 4: My husband's a firefighter?
Speaker 3: Oh okay, cold, and so he's seen a lot too.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but he he like is really rough with
Speaker 2: me and the kids, like making jokes because and he's
Speaker 2: just like this is like sitting around the table at
Speaker 2: the firehouse. We just they constantly rip each other.
Speaker 4: You know. So it's really good.
Speaker 2: So you've been on the New York Times Bestseller seven times,
Speaker 2: which is just like you're such a rock stars. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it's it's just really mind blowing, honestly. But
Speaker 2: of all of your books, of all those seven books,
Speaker 2: which one is your favorite? That was your favorite to
Speaker 2: write or favorite?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, Well the research for packing from Mars I
Speaker 3: loved because I got to go on a simulated Daryl
Speaker 3: gravity flight. You know, where the plane kind of goes
Speaker 3: and theys roller coaster pattern and as it goes over
Speaker 3: and down, you have like twenty seconds where you are weightless.
Speaker 3: You are floating like a soap bubble.
Speaker 4: That's so fun.
Speaker 3: Oh cool it And I had always wanted to experience
Speaker 3: that so and it took me a while to achieve
Speaker 3: that string various people at NASA, but that was unbelievably fun.
Speaker 3: So the research for that one was you know, that
Speaker 3: might have been the most And also I got to
Speaker 3: look to Devon Island where they have a simulated it's
Speaker 3: like an analog from Mars and Moon, a simulate sort
Speaker 3: of a It looks a lot like the moon up there,
Speaker 3: so they do rover and suit rehearsals and things. So
Speaker 3: I love that word of the world. So that was
Speaker 3: very cool to be able to do that for packing
Speaker 3: from ours. But you know, Stiff I have his certain
Speaker 3: fondness for it because it was my first book and
Speaker 3: I thought it would absolutely fail, so so excited when
Speaker 3: it hit the bestseller list.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 2: It's it's funny that you might want to beat yourself
Speaker 2: up and think that that would fail, but then when
Speaker 2: I read it, I'm like, this is there's I know
Speaker 2: that in my line of work, there's just a whole
Speaker 2: entire world of people that are just want this so
Speaker 2: much they can't get enough of it. And you brought
Speaker 2: it to me stream. Really, I would say for the
Speaker 2: first time. You know what I mean, It's it's really awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was around the time that I think of
Speaker 3: the timing was good because it was the same year
Speaker 3: that the television show Six Feet Under came. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: and also CSI, the early CSI, so there were a
Speaker 3: lot of you know, bodies on slabs. There was a
Speaker 3: lot of so the taboo kind of began to erode
Speaker 3: a little bit and people were able to feel comfortable
Speaker 3: being curious, which I think is healthy, and I think
Speaker 3: that that helped a lot. But I think you're right.
Speaker 3: There's a tremendous ammer people who who love this kind
Speaker 3: of thing here.
Speaker 2: I've had I've had similar things with my content, with
Speaker 2: people thinking that these things only need to be available
Speaker 2: in medical textbooks and every day people shouldn't see them.
Speaker 4: And I disagree.
Speaker 2: I think that if you because it's not just you're
Speaker 2: looking at gore, like you said, like you're learning, what
Speaker 2: do we look for? How do you prevent the things
Speaker 2: from happening? Well, it's all about education and and just
Speaker 2: because you're not formally going to school for it doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that you have no right to learn about it, right,
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: You think, yeah, you think about I mean the thing
Speaker 3: with gulp, you have this, it's just one of the systems.
Speaker 3: But you have these things going on and sign you
Speaker 3: that are working miraculous and you never see them. You
Speaker 3: don't never see your intestines. While even if you stay
Speaker 3: awake like I did during your colonoscopy, you can't.
Speaker 2: You didn't do like that, do you know What's funny?
Speaker 2: Like I wouldn't advise that because it's like when you know,
Speaker 2: because they pushed the tube up there and they have
Speaker 2: to push air to expand the colon, and it sounds
Speaker 2: like really juicy, did your sound like that?
Speaker 3: Like really, No, I didn't remember. Maybe I was too
Speaker 3: traumatized by the pain when they were going around in
Speaker 3: the corners, you know, the kind of stretches the colon.
Speaker 3: I didn't notice the sounds until I was done. And
Speaker 3: of course, you you know, you far them all out,
Speaker 3: far out all the air. But uh, but anyways, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I stayed awake. He's like, oh, Ken, if that's what
Speaker 3: you want, and yeah, it's like, yeah, I want to
Speaker 3: see the because that's I'd like to be able to
Speaker 3: see the your like your skeleton. You have this thing
Speaker 3: inside you that's going to survive you. That's that's in
Speaker 3: there and you amazing thing and you never see it.
Speaker 3: So why can't so any any way you can allow
Speaker 3: people to share that miracle. Frankly is uh, I'm all
Speaker 3: for it. So whether that's a specimen or you know,
Speaker 3: some of the things like body worlds, the plastinated specimens,
Speaker 3: whatever it is, I'm all for that. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And obviously, like so many people are too.
Speaker 2: It's not it's not a small I feel like it's
Speaker 2: really not a small population at all. There were some
Speaker 2: really great points in your book that too. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: give you my two b ones quotes from your book,
Speaker 2: and I think that they're really simple, but a lot
Speaker 2: of people just don't get these concepts. One of them
Speaker 2: is the more you eat, the more you overeat. It's
Speaker 2: just like, it's just very simple. Right you were talking
Speaker 2: about the chapter with basically eating too much that your
Speaker 2: stomach will explode, and a lot of things, because right
Speaker 2: now the big thing is like this ozepic drug and
Speaker 2: weight loss and obesity is a huge thing at least
Speaker 2: in my field that we're seeing like all the time.
Speaker 4: It's just all deaths people. A lot of younger people
Speaker 4: are obese.
Speaker 2: And it's a very simple concept to start with that
Speaker 2: if you stretch your stomach out, then you're going to
Speaker 2: need to eat more food all of the time. So
Speaker 2: it just sounds simple, but I don't think that a
Speaker 2: lot of people realize that it's a muscle.
Speaker 4: That you can over overwork. The other is when you.
Speaker 2: Said that pharmaceuticals are in the business of treating, not curing,
Speaker 2: And I love that one too, because again, the pharmaceuticals
Speaker 2: are a huge part of I mean you should see
Speaker 2: I don't know what your local drugstores are.
Speaker 4: It's called CBS. I don't know if you have them,
Speaker 4: but I mean the.
Speaker 2: Place is just it is crazy all the time. And
Speaker 2: I have a friend that works there that is a
Speaker 2: pharmacist who.
Speaker 4: Just tells me the most.
Speaker 2: So pharmaceuticals are a huge part of life, and I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people need to keep that in
Speaker 2: the back of their mind, that that that's a thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very sad when there's some of these relatively
Speaker 3: uncommon diseases, but rather than looking for a cousin they
Speaker 3: are uncommon. First of all, there's not a lot of
Speaker 3: money to be made, and also to look for a
Speaker 3: cure that's a one time sale. So yeah, the ones
Speaker 3: that at that are money making are chronic. So there's
Speaker 3: lots of lots and lots of research for ways to
Speaker 3: treat chronic conditions because that's where the money is. I mean,
Speaker 3: you look at those ads for all the monoclonal antibodies,
Speaker 3: all the maps you know on TV, all them you know,
Speaker 3: they're like twenty thousand dollars for an infusion. I mean
Speaker 3: it's on godly sums of money that those costs and
Speaker 3: these are all chronic. It's often an im you know,
Speaker 3: suppressive situation. They're like it's you know, irritable ballad chrons
Speaker 3: or eggs or you know, one of those chronic conditions.
Speaker 3: But anyway, yeah, and then there's some little lethal, uncommon disease.
Speaker 3: They're like nahs that am I gonna make anything for
Speaker 3: those people? But I mean, I get it. It's it's
Speaker 3: very expensive too to go through the trials and to
Speaker 3: bring a drug to market. I understand that that's expensive
Speaker 3: and the finances don't make that a smart move. So
Speaker 3: I get, I get why it happens. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: but it's unfortunate.
Speaker 2: In the book you discuss inprit so I, this topic
Speaker 2: is something I've discussed before. You talk about cat. You're
Speaker 2: talking about animal food, which is which is cool. I
Speaker 2: remember one of my biology tea shirts taught taught us
Speaker 2: that really long time ago, like it. He said, it
Speaker 2: just they like they want to eat their own ship,
Speaker 2: but it needs to smell like just enough that humans
Speaker 2: kits tolerated in our house.
Speaker 3: That was so that was so interesting to me, said,
Speaker 3: you know, the cat is the customer in a sense
Speaker 3: they're eating it, but or dog. But really the customer
Speaker 3: is the owner. So if this stuff smells like shit,
Speaker 3: if it smells really awful, or if it in the
Speaker 3: case of there was a cat food where they had
Speaker 3: had pieces colored different colors and one was colored dyed red,
Speaker 3: and but then you know, cats puke, cats throw up,
Speaker 3: something would throw up in.
Speaker 6: The red would dye the carpet if you had a
Speaker 6: white carpets, And I like, nope, we're not going to
Speaker 6: use that anymore.
Speaker 3: But just and also I love that they're very concerned
Speaker 3: with dogs, who they don't want something that's gonna be
Speaker 3: difficult to pick up. So the food is designed to
Speaker 3: make the ship pick up able. God right, you know
Speaker 3: they don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so what I'm trying to get at with
Speaker 2: this is one of the parts. You said that they
Speaker 2: were trying to make vegetarian cat food.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, obviously like cats carnivores, right, So.
Speaker 4: This is my whole argument.
Speaker 2: Often since people, based on our teeth, are omnivores, what
Speaker 2: do you think do you do you feel kind of
Speaker 2: the same way when people say that being vegan is
Speaker 2: healthy or healthier than eating meat, or that it. It's
Speaker 2: not like or trying to just eliminate meat from our
Speaker 2: diets in general. When I feel like as I always
Speaker 2: try to look at us as animals.
Speaker 4: Too, because we are technically right right.
Speaker 2: And since we're omnivores, not to say that began people
Speaker 2: can't be entitled to that. But when they say it's
Speaker 2: healthier than me, I kind of think, well, like, I.
Speaker 4: Don't know we were supposed to eat. It's like saying
Speaker 4: I mean, I.
Speaker 3: Think I think when I think of it, just because
Speaker 3: of my most recent book, bears came to mind, and
Speaker 3: bears are omnivores and they eat a lot of They
Speaker 3: do eat meat. They will eat meat, you know, they'll
Speaker 3: eat they'll scavenger, carcass, they'll eat they'll sometimes kill something,
Speaker 3: but mostly they're eating acorns and grasses and berries, and
Speaker 3: so that's I mean, I think. I think being an
Speaker 3: omnionivre is just sort of evolutionarily. It's kind of like
Speaker 3: we can process anything you know, good for us. We
Speaker 3: can eat it. We can eat we can eat meat,
Speaker 3: we can eat grains. We can yeah, because we've got
Speaker 3: that all purpose grinding machine and our digestion is set
Speaker 3: up to handle it all so I think we just
Speaker 3: havele on, we just have moral options. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I can't speak to whether losing meat, I mean, protein
Speaker 3: is important, but there's other sources. But I don't know
Speaker 3: that it's I don't know. I don't know what these
Speaker 3: facts are in terms of what's healthier. I know, you know,
Speaker 3: a Mediterranean diet is supposed to be healthy, but I don't.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't I eat meat.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I'm curious too because you said that availability,
Speaker 2: like obviously one hundred years ago, three hundred years ago,
Speaker 2: there wasn't grocery stores that had pea protein sandwiches or whatever.
Speaker 2: But so that's interesting to me for as far as
Speaker 2: an evolutionary perspective, like if our teeth will start changing
Speaker 2: over not anytime soon that we'll see, but over the
Speaker 2: course of hundreds and thousands of years because of the
Speaker 2: availability of food and stuff.
Speaker 4: That's just it. It's interesting.
Speaker 3: It is interesting because yeah, you think if you don't,
Speaker 3: if you don't need those things, you know, you look
Speaker 3: at birds that didn't before they were predators. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: they didn't, they didn't need to fly away because nobody
Speaker 3: was coming after him. I don't need these things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I don't Yeah, that is interesting. It's a
Speaker 3: pretty slow timeline evolution. But who knows, I mean presumably presumably.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I always I always worry about that,
Speaker 2: like not worry, but I think about that stuff, just
Speaker 2: with the phones and this and that. Obviously we'll never
Speaker 2: be able to get to see it how our skeletal
Speaker 2: system changes from sitting all day or you know, and
Speaker 2: it's just it's.
Speaker 4: It's kind of an interesting subject for me, all right.
Speaker 2: So in the grocer room, we could all agree that
Speaker 2: I do post all the time, and the ones that
Speaker 2: seem to get the most, oh my god, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: throw up occasionally. It'll be like eyeball ones or something.
Speaker 2: But most of us could agree that we get schemed
Speaker 2: out by mucus in particular, like loogis that are coughed up.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and ucas is the worst.
Speaker 4: It really is.
Speaker 2: And I used to work in when I worked in
Speaker 2: the microbiology lab. I used to get the specific it
Speaker 2: was in the hospital and I would get specimens to
Speaker 2: look for bacterial infections and I would have to stick
Speaker 2: a swab like in a cup of it and play
Speaker 2: with it and put it on a Petri dish, and
Speaker 2: I did that with urine poop, whatever you name it,
Speaker 2: no problem.
Speaker 4: But the disputum, that's what they called spudum. It was.
Speaker 4: It just makes you like one again.
Speaker 3: So it's it was gonna say. Then'll go finish your question.
Speaker 2: Okay, I was just gonna ask you, like, well, because
Speaker 2: this is probably what you're about to say, Like, while
Speaker 2: you were researching this book, was there one part of
Speaker 2: the GI system that in particular made you.
Speaker 3: Like, uh, yes, it's the mouth, for sure. Is the
Speaker 3: mouth that it? And I'll tell you this wasn't for Gulf.
Speaker 3: It was years and years ago. I was reporting a book.
Speaker 3: I was at this place, Hilltop Labs, where they test
Speaker 3: products that combat odor, like deodorants, douches, cat litter, and mouthwash. Okay,
Speaker 3: this is this is their little niche. They're in Cincinnati,
Speaker 3: or there used to be. I don't think they're there anymore. Maybe,
Speaker 3: But anyway, I asked the guy who the main guy
Speaker 3: at Hilltop Labs. I said, what is the most disgusting thing?
Speaker 3: Because we were looking in the fridge. You know their
Speaker 3: fridge is full of really rank stuff. I said, what's
Speaker 3: the most disgusting thing in here? What's the most disgusting smell?
Speaker 3: And he did not hesitate. He said, oh, hands down,
Speaker 3: incubated saliva. The smell, the smell of I mean, it's
Speaker 3: like bad breath on steroids. You know, it's just a
Speaker 3: really rank smell. But but the tick and then saliva
Speaker 3: has also the well, of course there's two kinds of saliva.
Speaker 3: There is the you know, the the background one and
Speaker 3: the one that's the releast when you're eating. So there's
Speaker 3: there's two different kinds. But regardless, the the the mucous
Speaker 3: element of it, you know, the kind of like you
Speaker 3: know what, okra, if you don't prepare it right, that
Speaker 3: strand that comes up, and if I can't finish my gumbo,
Speaker 3: if this, if there's that it also sometimes there's sort
Speaker 3: of like bubbles on the top that look like the liver.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm done. I love gumbo, but I can't
Speaker 3: eat that. That that mucoid texture is is bad. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's and just and chewing the very the thing
Speaker 3: that we're doing when you think about it, that I
Speaker 3: was thinking about it quite a bit for that chapter.
Speaker 3: You know, what we're doing is, you know, we're taking
Speaker 3: something apart with our teeth and then moistening it with
Speaker 3: the saliva to form a bowlus.
Speaker 4: Which is which is a gros. It's a grossy word.
Speaker 3: I know it should be like a heavy metal band
Speaker 3: opening for Slayer, but it's it's like and I started
Speaker 3: when I'm in a restaurant and there I started looking
Speaker 3: at people chewing of like, oh, you're forming a bulls.
Speaker 3: I know what you're doing. It's like picturing it. And
Speaker 3: it became it was kind of like I was like
Speaker 3: almost feeling as though, like chewing and eating is something
Speaker 3: you should do behind closed doors. Not sex, like people
Speaker 3: could should have sex in.
Speaker 6: Public and eat, but closed doors, because when you're thinking
Speaker 6: about it, as I was just the the you know,
Speaker 6: bringing the bullets together and then the bullet slithering down the.
Speaker 7: Tube and then I don't know it is.
Speaker 3: To me it was somehow worse than the shitting.
Speaker 4: You know. What's interesting too.
Speaker 2: This is like a side note, but another argument that
Speaker 2: I always have is that with health insurance and stuff like,
Speaker 2: your teeth are typically not covered. And every time I
Speaker 2: go to the dentist, it's like a thousand dollars for something,
Speaker 2: and that's why it's not covered, and it's what it's
Speaker 2: like the first part of your digestive track, like you need.
Speaker 2: It's like if it was your esopha guess it'd be
Speaker 2: like five dollar copay.
Speaker 4: But here it's it's it's just like that. I don't
Speaker 4: understand it. I can't it.
Speaker 3: It is unbelievable to me. That also vision, if you know,
Speaker 3: if you're like me, I'm like twenty one thousand, I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm lined without my contact So if I couldn't, if
Speaker 3: I couldn't afford to have corrective lenses, I'm that'd be dead.
Speaker 3: You can't yeah anything. And and but because you know,
Speaker 3: because everybody ends up meeting a significant amount of dental work,
Speaker 3: it's just they're like it's too expensive, we're not going
Speaker 3: to do it. But they've created this thing like, oh, dental,
Speaker 3: that's different. That's not part of it. It's like, what
Speaker 3: do you mean that's not part of it. It's the
Speaker 3: beginning of your gas testinal system. I mean, it's the
Speaker 3: beginning of your elementary system. It's it's like you said,
Speaker 3: so important, and it's not covered.
Speaker 2: I know it may like I can see like veneers
Speaker 2: and stuff obviously bleach like cosmetic stuff, but I have
Speaker 2: like a hole in I filling in a hole in
Speaker 2: my tooth, and I keep biting my cheek so bad,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, this is when I eat, you know,
Speaker 2: so I need it fixed for eating. It's I don't
Speaker 2: care about it otherwise. I actually excited him sometimes just
Speaker 2: like pull the tooth out, but then he says.
Speaker 4: Oh, you'll teeth or get croaked and this, you know,
Speaker 4: But that's just a side note. One another cool thing
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: It is it's and the other thing with that, if
Speaker 3: you have any problems with your jaw, that's a musculo
Speaker 3: that's part of the muscular skeletal system that you know,
Speaker 3: the TMJ, the tempo Manda Viller Joy. Yeah, but because
Speaker 3: it's near it's they call it part of the mouth.
Speaker 3: So they don't cover that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's don't cover that.
Speaker 3: It's incredibly expensive the things that people do for jaw disorders,
Speaker 3: and they'll know that's a that's dental. Weait don't cover that.
Speaker 2: And even like Peridonald sometimes too. It's another thing. And
Speaker 2: that's like really actually one of my friends Lindsay doctor
Speaker 2: Lindsay fitz Harris, I don't know if you're she just threw,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, she's awesome her In her book, she was
Speaker 2: talking a lot about how the soldiers a lot of
Speaker 2: their problems stemmed from paradonal disease and how it could
Speaker 2: be systemic if you get bacteria in your blood and
Speaker 2: and it's.
Speaker 4: It's crazy that they don't they don't pay.
Speaker 3: Heart infections. Yeah, on the valve. The bacteria colonizes the
Speaker 3: valve of the heart and you getcarditis. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's insane that that's not covered. But you know, it's
Speaker 3: all bottom line money.
Speaker 4: That's what everything is. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Every week on Mother Knows that we talk about all
Speaker 2: of these different stories that relates to posts that we
Speaker 2: have in the Grosser Room. And I think you guys
Speaker 2: would really love it if you joined right now. You
Speaker 2: could join for only five ninety nine a month and
Speaker 2: you get to see.
Speaker 4: Multiple posts a week.
Speaker 2: We have thousands of posts, pictures, videos over the course
Speaker 2: of years. When did we start the gross Room in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty nine, twenty nineteen, Yeah, and you can see.
Speaker 4: All the way back and it's just really awesome.
Speaker 2: If you have an interest in any particular topic, you
Speaker 2: could search by the title, Like I was just telling
Speaker 2: you about the guy that got impelled with the garden
Speaker 2: flag and that is called damage by decoration. But you
Speaker 2: also could just search, like today, I didn't remember what
Speaker 2: I called the post, so I just searched garden flag
Speaker 2: there and lawnmower. If you search lawnmower, all the lawnmower
Speaker 2: accidents will come up. So it's it's really awesome when
Speaker 2: we have a great group of people in the gross room.
Speaker 2: So only five ninety nine a month. Yeah, so visit
Speaker 2: the grossroom dot com for more info.
Speaker 4: So one of the cool things I learned in your book.
Speaker 2: So when I let me tell you this story and
Speaker 2: you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. When I first
Speaker 2: started working in the lab when I was like nineteen,
Speaker 2: I go in there and they don't clean.
Speaker 4: The labs a lot.
Speaker 2: So some of the stuff there is has been there
Speaker 2: since like the thirties or the forty, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. Like nobody goes in and takes signs down.
Speaker 2: And there were signs in the lab that said no
Speaker 2: pipeetting by mouth, and I was like, who the hell.
Speaker 2: I mean this was in like two thousand, so I
Speaker 2: was like, who would pipet by mouth? That's disgusting, right,
Speaker 2: And then some of the old heads that worked there
Speaker 2: that were like getting ready to retire, because I was
Speaker 2: nineteen and there was people there that were like almost seventy, right,
Speaker 2: they said, oh, yeah, we used to cut pipe pet's
Speaker 2: like a straw basically that you use a bulb to
Speaker 2: suck it up. But they're like, yeah, we used to
Speaker 2: do it with our mouth to suck the urine up
Speaker 2: and like put it into test tubes and stuff.
Speaker 4: And I thought that that. I was like, well, what
Speaker 4: if you get it in your mouth? And they said, well,
Speaker 4: do something like that. That's how it was back then.
Speaker 4: I didn't realize that it's in your book. You were talking.
Speaker 2: About like doctors actually tasting urine and stuff to check
Speaker 2: for this smell.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the urine would have a sweet taste.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It's been a while since I looked at the book,
Speaker 3: but there was, Yeah, it was. Physicians were much more
Speaker 3: sort of involved with their senses smell and taste, and
Speaker 3: because there were fewer diagnostic tests that you could order
Speaker 3: or send to the lab, they relied much more on
Speaker 3: their on their senses. Yeah. That was amazing to me. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that they would taste things and smell things. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't It becomes part of your job. And it ceases
Speaker 3: to be strange or gross.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: I remember me the only time I've ever gagged and
Speaker 3: had to leave the room because I was about to
Speaker 3: throw up. The only time was not anything from any
Speaker 3: of my books. It was I'm friends with Judy Melanick,
Speaker 3: who she's in New Zealand now. She was a medical
Speaker 3: examiner here at Oakland. Okay, yeah, yeah, and she has
Speaker 3: a she does a lot on TikTok. But she said
Speaker 3: that she kind of made it a personal goal of
Speaker 3: hers to make me gag. I think because one day
Speaker 3: she goes, she goes, wow, yeah, I've got a couple
Speaker 3: of interesting specimens of the more today. Why don't you
Speaker 3: come over? And they were there was two people who
Speaker 3: had been found after weeks and it was summer, I
Speaker 3: would say, maybe after about a week, and it was,
Speaker 3: you know, a hot time in summer, and the that
Speaker 3: smell when she opened up that particular very bloated green specimen,
Speaker 3: I was just completely overcome and had to you know,
Speaker 3: it was had to leave the room. She's just she's like, what,
Speaker 3: it's not that bad. She goes, it's so different than
Speaker 3: a diaper, Like, it's definitely different than a diaper. So
Speaker 3: she she but for her it was just but I'm
Speaker 3: sure for you, I it's you're just used to it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember the first time I smelled it, and I
Speaker 2: was because I went to the medical Examiner's office for
Speaker 2: I had to rotate there while I was in school.
Speaker 2: And when I you know, every time I was there
Speaker 2: was the main part of the office and the morgue
Speaker 2: was downstairs, and when I walked down the stairs, I
Speaker 2: was like, what the fuck is that smell? Like, it's
Speaker 2: just it's not poop. It's just like dead fish poop.
Speaker 4: It's like every worse smell you're in, like all mixed together.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, And when you multiply that, you know when
Speaker 3: it when it's suspec when it's a body that has
Speaker 3: been fully like the peak of future faction, that is
Speaker 3: really and then and also sometimes it would be mixed
Speaker 3: with the person that's been drinking fast amounts of alcohol.
Speaker 3: There was that kind of sweet, sickly alcohol smell mixed in.
Speaker 3: It was really intense and really.
Speaker 2: But it's funny because you do get used to it.
Speaker 2: And if you're if you're ever walking down the street,
Speaker 2: and even if there's like a rat dead on the
Speaker 2: side of the road. You will instantly smell it now
Speaker 2: and you will be like, something's dead near me. I
Speaker 2: don't know what it.
Speaker 4: Is, but I sell it. It's just so specific.
Speaker 2: But then by like I was at the Emmy's office
Speaker 2: for a whole summer, so obviously we had decomps every
Speaker 2: day in Philadelphia, right, but yeah, just like it was
Speaker 2: every day there. But by the end of the summer,
Speaker 2: I was like eating lunch down there, pud Ever, and
Speaker 2: then gets back to my next topic, because you were
Speaker 2: talking about you had a whole chapter about like talking
Speaker 2: eating organs and stuff. And yes, when I first started
Speaker 2: doing autopsies, I couldn't eat ribs for a while, like
Speaker 2: they looked way too much like like barbecue spare ribs,
Speaker 2: the fascia. Really that's like, yes, I can't know, but
Speaker 2: organs I still can't do. They have a very specific
Speaker 2: smell and a very specific look.
Speaker 4: And yeah, I like how. I like how you said
Speaker 4: that people are are weird about.
Speaker 2: Eating organs because it almost makes them feel like they're
Speaker 2: like an animal, like an animal, like not we're not
Speaker 2: like them, kind of, you know, we are like them,
Speaker 2: right right?
Speaker 3: I mean I think the supermarkets and the purveyors of
Speaker 3: steak and cuts or you know whatever roasts. They do
Speaker 3: a good job of making it, of divorcing it from
Speaker 3: the creature it came from. You know, it looks like meat.
Speaker 3: It doesn't. It doesn't have the same shape. It doesn't.
Speaker 3: It just doesn't look a little yeah the chicken lying
Speaker 3: that looks like a chicken leg. But anyway, it just
Speaker 3: makes it easier to to deal with than organs are.
Speaker 3: On the other extreme of that, they're very much you know, hey,
Speaker 3: that's that's the thing I have inside me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I get grossed out. Like even last night,
Speaker 2: I put a chucked roast into the instapot right it
Speaker 2: was rall. I just threw it in and then when
Speaker 2: I opened it, I had to shred the meat. And
Speaker 2: just seeing like the the bundles of I could see
Speaker 2: the like vascular comp like.
Speaker 4: I can't I can't turn it off.
Speaker 2: And then I saw the fashion and the bundles, and
Speaker 2: I was like, I like barely ate it.
Speaker 4: I was like, man, I try to turn it off
Speaker 4: so bad, but it's just hard.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, No. I remember as a kid my mom,
Speaker 3: I don't know she we didn't have much money when
Speaker 3: I was a kid. And my mom would buy pretty
Speaker 3: cheap cuts of meat, and there was one and I
Speaker 3: remember I could see the vein in the like coming through,
Speaker 3: and I was just so skin I know I'm supposed
Speaker 3: to be here.
Speaker 2: I know it's weird, right, like you have no problem
Speaker 2: eating it, And then I'm better like eating meat than
Speaker 2: I don't like preparing raw meat too much. But chicken
Speaker 2: doesn't look anything like us, you.
Speaker 3: Know, exactly, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I remember the first time I had tongue. It was well,
Speaker 3: I was heading down to an article on this ship
Speaker 3: and they made tongue. They didn't tell they didn't say
Speaker 3: what it want. This is why would they, you know?
Speaker 3: And I was like, this is really good. It's really tender.
Speaker 3: I like it. What is it?
Speaker 7: Goes?
Speaker 3: Oh, it's tongue langua. And then suddenly I was like,
Speaker 3: I think I can feel the taste buds, but taste
Speaker 3: buds like you great completely ruined it for me. Oh
Speaker 3: a minute ago, I was really enjoying it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that that's how it is. You're just like, don't
Speaker 4: tell me. Because one of the girls I used to
Speaker 4: work with, she was from China and she would make
Speaker 4: dumplings all the time. And I was like, yo, dude,
Speaker 4: how do you make these? They're just so good? And
Speaker 4: she she's like, oh, I just put leaks or whatever.
Speaker 2: And then I ate it and she goes, you ate
Speaker 2: brain afterwards, and I was like, I never would have
Speaker 2: been eaten it, but I.
Speaker 3: Was like, really good, yeah, yeah somebody, and yeah, I went.
Speaker 3: I was on a book to her Japan and my
Speaker 3: hosts took me to a restaurant and they go, this
Speaker 3: is really good. And I go, oh, is that my
Speaker 3: po tofu? And she goes, well, so similar, and I
Speaker 3: had it and then they I said, so, well, what
Speaker 3: was it? And she said that was cod semen?
Speaker 5: Is yeah, you just you just want to know you
Speaker 5: don't want to eat any any semen from any animal,
Speaker 5: all right.
Speaker 2: So the last thing I want to wrap it up
Speaker 2: with is that we have a mutual friend, Michelle. And
Speaker 2: one of the things that Michelle and I have always
Speaker 2: bonded with was our poop stories.
Speaker 4: And she, I mean, she's hilarious.
Speaker 2: She has she has openly said that she has shipped
Speaker 2: outside all the I mean, I don't even know if
Speaker 2: she's told you all this stuff. But she has a
Speaker 2: really bad problem with getting diarrhea, and just like having
Speaker 2: to go right then and there.
Speaker 4: And my mom is the same way. Actually, she's probably.
Speaker 3: My brother has the kroons. It comes and goes. He's
Speaker 3: oh really, he's okay right now, but for a while
Speaker 3: he's like twelve times a day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, crones is so terrible. It looks so painful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's horrible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, my mom My mom has it too, and
Speaker 4: she drives us not with it. We call it colon
Speaker 4: blow actually, but.
Speaker 3: My ibs, yeah, what's the other one? The sheriitable bowel
Speaker 3: and in flammabastic colonly Yeah, pastic colon is she and
Speaker 3: she called it that anyway, I don't know, Yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Think it would probably fall under that umbrella of of that.
Speaker 2: And it's funny because it drives my dad not because
Speaker 2: they'll be driving over here and then like she he
Speaker 2: has to stop at a gas station or something because
Speaker 2: she'll And Michelle's kind of the same way.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, it's it's I don't have that, but
Speaker 3: I can't imagine. You're there's a certain level of anxiety
Speaker 3: that comes with that, you know. In terms of traveling,
Speaker 3: My brother used to love to travel, and for a
Speaker 3: while there he was like, what happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that I when I had it really
Speaker 2: bad when I was in my twenties and then it's stopped.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of it is attached to nerves.
Speaker 2: And you know, I had like a shady boyfriend, shitty
Speaker 2: literally shitty boyfriend at the time. But yeah, So I
Speaker 2: was going to ask you if you had any embarrassing
Speaker 2: poop stories, but you would feel comfortable talking about that, Like.
Speaker 3: I would definitely feel comfortable talking about them. But I'm
Speaker 3: trying to think if I, oh, okay, So I was, well,
Speaker 3: it's traveling. I was doing a story in the Amazon,
Speaker 3: and one of the things I was traveling with it
Speaker 3: anthropologist who was studying the socio economics of murder and
Speaker 3: how it and it doesn't matter what. We were going
Speaker 3: house to house in way out, and they would give
Speaker 3: you this bowl or chicho, which is a salima fermented
Speaker 3: manioca believe anyway, I know, it's really rude. You had
Speaker 3: to take a sip, you know, because they bring it
Speaker 3: to you as you came in the house, and I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, I like kept spitting it. He said,
Speaker 3: Now you know, the savvy chicha drinker isn't worried about
Speaker 3: the spit. They're worried about the unfiltered and well watered,
Speaker 3: so you probably will will yet sick. I was like,
Speaker 3: oh great, thanks, So I made it through the time
Speaker 3: I was there. But then as I was just arriving
Speaker 3: out leaving the jungle. Fortunately I left it because I
Speaker 3: never would have made it to the outhouse, so stay
Speaker 3: in a hotel and I it was so bad that
Speaker 3: I because I would wake up and I was afraid
Speaker 3: I wasn't going to make it to this bathroom. So
Speaker 3: I slept in a big fifty bag plastic bag. I
Speaker 3: pulled it up around me. I didn't ship the bed
Speaker 3: because it was one of those things where you're like
Speaker 3: shitting and puking at the same time. And then even
Speaker 3: with the fifty bag, well they did. I protected the
Speaker 3: bed and I hadn't spare them underwear that I didn't
Speaker 3: quite make it in time, so they were a little
Speaker 3: bit soiled. So I was like Jesus, I was too
Speaker 3: embarrassed to leave them in the trash, so I just
Speaker 3: threw them out the window and they caught in a
Speaker 3: tree branch. Oh my god, I can get but I
Speaker 3: just still remember they were green underwear.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Brown Patch, the tree.
Speaker 2: I think that's what's the greatest part about being human
Speaker 2: is that any person, no matter what, has the story,
Speaker 2: especially just like as you get older, you're like the
Speaker 2: stories come more and more frequently.
Speaker 4: And I'm so envious of people.
Speaker 2: I mean, you seem like you overall have like a
Speaker 2: good gi So I I do nail actually too. But
Speaker 2: but like when I was younger, it was like it
Speaker 2: was bad. You know, I'd have to just as soon
Speaker 2: as I went into a restaurant like scope out where
Speaker 2: the it and people have a really horrible time.
Speaker 3: No, it's it's it is horrible. Yeah, no, I know
Speaker 3: I've heard stories from people, some people and my husband's family,
Speaker 3: my especially toward the end of his life, my father
Speaker 3: in law you know, was like to got it, just yeah,
Speaker 3: scope out? Where is the gos as vathue? And that's disruptive.
Speaker 3: You know, you don't you don't want to have to
Speaker 3: be I think that, I mean, I don't know because
Speaker 3: I don't have that issue, but I would think that
Speaker 3: that insecurity is as bad almost as actual shitting.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: I always say that that the worst surgeries to have
Speaker 2: to get were the worst pathology to have is ones
Speaker 2: that have to deal with your urinary track or your
Speaker 2: digestive track, because it's something you have to do multiple
Speaker 2: times a day.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And one of my brother's friends, a young kid in
Speaker 2: his thirties, he just had ulcerat of koalitis and how
Speaker 2: to have his tire colon removed. And while it was good,
Speaker 2: like he had to get a bag, which he just
Speaker 2: got reversed. And he didn't want the bag because it
Speaker 2: comes with all the other things that come with a bag,
Speaker 2: but he just said it was awesome because he could
Speaker 2: go out and like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no. In fact, I've talked to people for another
Speaker 3: project about that and they're like, it it was great
Speaker 3: to being not I mean, you're just freed from all that.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, you have a bag, but you have
Speaker 3: some measure of control with the bag. Yeah, with an
Speaker 3: Austin bag, and you know it's now you're free to
Speaker 3: go where you want and to travel and you control
Speaker 3: now when you change the bag. You know you have
Speaker 3: a system and you know along your need and it
Speaker 3: is freeing. And you know, people always assume, oh my god,
Speaker 3: the worst possible thing in the world could be to
Speaker 3: have warn those bags, But that's that's not the case
Speaker 3: for most people. Yeah, with them, it's actually freeing to have.
Speaker 2: That any anything that has to do with you just
Speaker 2: don't you don't think about it every day. But it's like,
Speaker 2: even when he was healing from surgery, before he got
Speaker 2: the bag, it was like, you have to go to
Speaker 2: the bathroom that day after you just had something sewn
Speaker 2: back together that you have to push through, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, it's just so's so scary.
Speaker 3: No, And then yeah, when you have when you have surgery,
Speaker 3: because my brother here, I'm like sharing my brother's private details.
Speaker 4: We're all friends here, we all talk about all of
Speaker 4: our problems, just what he was.
Speaker 3: Talking about, you know, after the surgery, then you can
Speaker 3: get strictures from this, you know, Scarry.
Speaker 4: Oh god, Yeah, it's such a mess.
Speaker 3: And then then that creates a sort of self perpetuating
Speaker 3: cycle of blockages and surgery and strictures and more blockages
Speaker 3: and more surgery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's so horrible sometimes. I see because I
Speaker 2: worked not only doing autopsy, but I worked in surgical
Speaker 2: pathology too, and I would just get these colon receptions
Speaker 2: from people that you just feel so bad. You're like,
Speaker 2: these people have been through pure hell and it looks
Speaker 2: it just looks painful looking at it.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. Yeah, so inflamed and stretched out.
Speaker 4: Oh my god. I can't imagine.
Speaker 3: Those were people with medical one you know, it's a
Speaker 3: Hirsts Sprungs disease.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, where they don't have that, they can't there's
Speaker 7: no motility on a ladder half, so everything just sort
Speaker 7: of files out and stretches the colling out that it
Speaker 7: gets really flabby and it doesn't work, and they they have.
Speaker 3: It's horrible.
Speaker 2: I was thinking about that actually when you were talking
Speaker 2: about the specimen at the motor because I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sure in other countries that still happens
Speaker 2: all the time that you would get because that that
Speaker 2: one is from an older person.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, it's from I want to say, the early
Speaker 3: nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so first Sprungs they but now they would diagnose
Speaker 8: it and treat it much they I mean, that individual
Speaker 8: I think that was you know, untreated over years and years.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that's another reason why because a lot of things
Speaker 2: that we take for granted in this country, and I
Speaker 2: have followers all over the world that send me cases,
Speaker 2: so I know a lot of still what's going on
Speaker 2: and that will stood will still happen in other countries
Speaker 2: that don't have medicine like we have here. Yes, it
Speaker 2: is important to see even that would be super rare
Speaker 2: to see in America, like a nineteen year old, you know.
Speaker 3: But absolutely, or somebody with goiter because now we have
Speaker 3: biodized soul.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's lots of things like that, Like you
Speaker 2: still would have believed though, some of the things that
Speaker 2: we do see because people are just in denial. They're
Speaker 2: in denial. There's all different reasons. People don't have money,
Speaker 2: people are scared. They're just scared of doctors. No.
Speaker 3: I think that happens that somebody gets starts to get
Speaker 3: it simper or a condition, and they're scared to learn
Speaker 3: what it is, and that worse it gets the more
Speaker 3: scared they are, and then they just never go and
Speaker 3: they just they're in this very deep seated denial and
Speaker 3: by the time they do get help, it's too late.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that happened.
Speaker 2: A pathologist that I used to work with, she said
Speaker 2: that she worked with another doctor who kept he kept
Speaker 2: coughing a lot, and he thought that he had lung
Speaker 2: cancer and was scared to death and didn't go to
Speaker 2: the hospital and then he ended up dying and then
Speaker 2: when they did an autopsy on him, he had TV
Speaker 2: which he.
Speaker 4: Could have treated. Well. No, yeah, it's just like sad
Speaker 4: when you hear stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very sad.
Speaker 2: Are you working on any I know you just came
Speaker 2: out with your most recent book has been over it's
Speaker 2: been over a year now that it's been out, right, yep,
Speaker 2: how does that doing?
Speaker 4: And it is?
Speaker 3: Oh, fuzz was but it went really well. Yeah, that
Speaker 3: that book did very well. It was it was great.
Speaker 3: I wasn't sure because it's a little bit of a
Speaker 3: departure for me. I'm usually writing about the human body
Speaker 3: or in some capacity, or you know, human bodies in
Speaker 3: unusual circumstances like combat or space. So so Fuzz was
Speaker 3: a was a departure and that I had a lot
Speaker 3: of trepidation and a lot of anxiety. But it was
Speaker 3: well received. You know, it's fun. So I mean it's
Speaker 3: it's still the same sort of booty all over the
Speaker 3: map approach that I seemed to take. But yeah, no,
Speaker 3: it was. It was fun. It's a it's a book
Speaker 3: about people and animals getting in each other's way, human
Speaker 3: life conflict.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's it's awesome. I think that anything you
Speaker 2: write people are going to be into because it's it's
Speaker 2: your style and that's what they like, your style and
Speaker 2: learning from you because I learned.
Speaker 4: I I mean I have.
Speaker 2: I've been in a GI track, hands in a track,
Speaker 2: and I learned.
Speaker 4: So much just because I hear that. Ye really I did,
Speaker 4: I did. I loved it.
Speaker 2: You won't even believe this, but I I don't really
Speaker 2: like to like sit down in the corner and read
Speaker 2: because I have kids and it's always crazy in my house.
Speaker 2: So I put the audio book on and I like
Speaker 2: to cook. I'll be in the kitchen for hours, like
Speaker 2: I homemake a lot of like pasta and stuff. And
Speaker 2: my husband kept walking in the kitchen and he's like
Speaker 2: what the fuck? He walked right in when you were
Speaker 2: talking about like the anal sex stuff or like it
Speaker 2: was like the end with a constantation and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: And he's like what And I'm like, listen, dude, I
Speaker 2: could eat a hamburger hamburger over a dead bye, Like
Speaker 2: I don't. This doesn't really gross me out to cook
Speaker 2: and do this. So yeah, it's it's awesome.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 3: Are you working on it.
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: I'm the same way. It's like every now and then,
Speaker 3: though I see somebody reading stuff while they're I think
Speaker 3: twice this has happened while they're eating at a restaurant.
Speaker 3: I'm like, you are my people, you're eating and reading
Speaker 3: that book.
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: I am working in another book. I'm not really talking
Speaker 3: about it in specifically what it's about, but it is.
Speaker 3: I'm back in the human body.
Speaker 4: Oh that's exciting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm excited to see what that's going to be
Speaker 2: because I'm like, oh, like, because I love the way
Speaker 2: that you broke down the GI track and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: she needs to do every single cardiovascular systems, the reproduct it,
Speaker 2: there's just you could do everything now, you know.
Speaker 3: It's but so the nervous system in the brain have
Speaker 3: been done so well, you know, Ballar Sacks, David Eagle
Speaker 3: and I've done those so well. The reproductive system gets
Speaker 3: a lot of there's a bunch of books on I
Speaker 3: feel like that, you know, the I kind of you know,
Speaker 3: the elementary canal and the testins and the eating is
Speaker 3: after that. I think that one, you know, on the
Speaker 3: bottom seater, I'll do you that. So yeah, I probably so,
Speaker 3: I think it was was it did something on the
Speaker 3: heart recently? Yeah, cancer, didn't he do didn't he recently
Speaker 3: do something on the Anyway, I feel like some of
Speaker 3: those systems have very very veriodite and scholarly minds applied
Speaker 3: to them, So I might not go there, but I'll
Speaker 3: always figure something out.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: So nice to have you as an honor to meet you.
Speaker 2: It's just I'm kind of like starstruck. And yeah, I
Speaker 2: said to my husband, I was like, she's such a
Speaker 2: big deal.
Speaker 4: So I'm just so excited that you did this for us.
Speaker 3: Oh so happy too. I'm so happy to you know.
Speaker 3: We're two peas in the pod, you and me. So
Speaker 3: it's it was a natural fit and a really fun conversation.
Speaker 4: Awesome.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 9: Thank you for listening to Mother nos Death. As a reminder,
Speaker 9: my training is as a pathologist's assistant. I have a
Speaker 9: master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education.
Speaker 9: I am not a doctor, and I have not diagnosed
Speaker 9: or treated anyone dead or alive without the assistance of
Speaker 9: a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social
Speaker 9: media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based
Speaker 9: on my experience working in pathology so they can make
Speaker 9: healthier decisions regarding their life and well being. Always remember
Speaker 9: that science is changing every day and the opinions expressed
Speaker 9: in this episode are based on my knowledge of those
Speaker 9: subjects at the time of publication. If you are having
Speaker 9: a medical problem, have a medical question, or having a
Speaker 9: medical emergency, please contact your physician or visit an urgent
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Speaker 4: Thanks