Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas, and
Speaker 1: we have another treat for you here as we are
Speaker 1: about to interview science author Mary Roach, one of one
Speaker 1: of our favorite authors, one of our writing heroes, and
Speaker 1: she has a fascinating new book called Gulp and it
Speaker 1: is all about the adventures of the digestive system. Yes,
Speaker 1: you'll recognize it in stores are online because it has
Speaker 1: a big mouth on the front, opening up telling lolling
Speaker 1: out um esophagus, waiting for that food to begin this
Speaker 1: epic journey through the body and uh. And it is
Speaker 1: if you If you've never read Mary Roach before, I
Speaker 1: just will remind you that she's the author of Stiff,
Speaker 1: which is the book about the life of human goodavers,
Speaker 1: about about how we relate to dead bodies, how science
Speaker 1: has studied dead bodies. Um. She also wrote Bunk, which
Speaker 1: is about sex. She wrote Spook, which is about scientific
Speaker 1: investigations of the afterlife, and more recently she wrote Packing
Speaker 1: for Mars, which is about about human space exploration and
Speaker 1: a lot about the scientific research that has gone into
Speaker 1: making it possible for humans to travel to Mars and
Speaker 1: even return. And she brings that same level of research
Speaker 1: and humor and inquisition into this topic, which I think
Speaker 1: is a wonderful topic really, from from mouth to sincter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, she brings so much humor to it, but
Speaker 1: but not in a way that which she's belittling the
Speaker 1: subject matter, like she dynystifies the subject matter, has a
Speaker 1: few laughs with you, but you never feel like she's
Speaker 1: exploiting the topic or anyone. I mean, it's just her
Speaker 1: books are great from from start to finish. Indeed, So, um,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and get into it. Well, welcome to
Speaker 1: our podcast, Stuff to blow your mind. Thanks for taking
Speaker 1: the time out of day to chat with us about
Speaker 1: your excellent new book Goal. Thanks for having me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were so excited. Um. In our podcast we try
Speaker 1: to cover a range of topics, whether or not we're
Speaker 1: talking about cloeca or um the role of regurgitation with
Speaker 1: vulters um. So the book is right up our alley.
Speaker 1: I love the house, the forks. It's really great. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. It's really nice to hear that
Speaker 1: I have the whole Oh you do Yeah, very cool.
Speaker 1: It would be an honor to say we've been helpful
Speaker 1: with Yeah. Yeah, that was my training. That's where I
Speaker 1: started out with my all right, familiarized myself with because
Speaker 1: it's the whole tube, the whole tube. Yeah, well, thank
Speaker 1: you so much. Well, I guess we should just go
Speaker 1: ahead and launch into this. We wanted to know from you.
Speaker 1: There's so much researching here and so many wonderful little
Speaker 1: nooks and crannies. Was there anything that really surprised you, um,
Speaker 1: any sort of discovery during your research period that you
Speaker 1: were you have the big moment of like, wow, I
Speaker 1: didn't see it in that context before. It was completely
Speaker 1: new to you. The entire trip down the food shoot,
Speaker 1: every every turn, I mean even just like even just
Speaker 1: in the mouse. The saliva is something that I just assumed,
Speaker 1: like most people, that it was for moistening the food
Speaker 1: that you need to swallow to make the bowlers. But
Speaker 1: I was completely blown away by the fact that it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's got like five other functions including I love this
Speaker 1: the enzymes and not just in saliva, but in some
Speaker 1: of the other digestive enzymes further on down the line there.
Speaker 1: But these are the enzymes when you hear about laundry
Speaker 1: detergent that says new new improved biz with stain fighting enzymes.
Speaker 1: These are digestive enzymes, so you know the stuff that
Speaker 1: you spill when you spill your food that is meant
Speaker 1: to be in your mouth onto your clothes. Um, those
Speaker 1: enzymes are you know, amalas lipase protein as these are
Speaker 1: digestive enzymes. That just don't know that I found that
Speaker 1: kind of the whole uh laundry detergence like a digestive
Speaker 1: tract in a box. I mean there's obviously other if
Speaker 1: there's your basic soap type products as well, but I
Speaker 1: just the fact that these were salivary enzymes and that
Speaker 1: art conservators use use their own saliva to clean because
Speaker 1: of the enzymes. Again, they need a delicate something to
Speaker 1: break down, maybe the egg wash or something like that. Uh,
Speaker 1: that they've been known to to use their own saliva.
Speaker 1: So obviously you're hitting up a lot of different places
Speaker 1: talking to a lot of people about the book right now.
Speaker 1: What's your favorite part of goal that no one's asking
Speaker 1: you about? Um, Well, John Stewart was the only one
Speaker 1: to bring up rectal alimentation rectal feeding, so that's a
Speaker 1: that's an interesting I had a whole chapter and he's
Speaker 1: the only one that's brought that up a whole chapter
Speaker 1: on and we didn't have time, of course to get
Speaker 1: into it in any detail. So um, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if you want to get into it in in
Speaker 1: a detail, but I I just I have a chapter
Speaker 1: called eating Backward uh is the digestive track to two
Speaker 1: Way Street. And this was fascinating to me that you can,
Speaker 1: I mean the small intestines where most of the absorption
Speaker 1: goes on, like eight percent of what you know absorption
Speaker 1: of nutrients. But the rectum does absorb. You can absorb
Speaker 1: you know, glucose and salt and some short change fatty acids.
Speaker 1: There's some absorption that can go on. Also drugs. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a very effective drug delivery system if you
Speaker 1: for some reason you can't swallow them like the ancient
Speaker 1: Maya used to use the rectum because he doesn't have
Speaker 1: to do. The drug goes straight into the bloodstream, doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be processed by the stomach or the liver.
Speaker 1: It's just like booms into the into the blood. Then
Speaker 1: then you don't if it's one of those hallucinogens that
Speaker 1: would make you throw up. You don't have that problem either.
Speaker 1: So it's so people had some creative uses for the rectum.
Speaker 1: Uh I don't know.