External Exam - Travel From Mouth to Anus with Author, Mary Roach!

Mother Knows Death Presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy.

Hi everyone, Welcome to this week's external exam on mother Knows Death. Today's guest is Mary Roach. So I wanted to tell you this. In two thousand and seven, I was in pa school learning how to do autopsies and stuff, and I was on my school break and I thought, Okay,

Oh that's hilarious. I'm sorry you had to read it on an airplane because you believe there's a chapter about the forensics of airplane crashes.

Exactly.

Well, just working in this field, I think that I am completely scared at all times of everything. And it's funny in this book, Gulp, you were talking about how hot dogs are. The Academy of Pediatrics or whatever said that hot dogs are one of the deadliest things for kids.

And when I was.

When I was rotating at the Medical Examiner's office, we had this case of this kid that was like three or four years old and was on the porch eating and one of the people that were a neighbor that was sitting on the porch had given the kid a gripe.

And I mean, you know what I mean.

Oh no, no, no, no, same shape as the windpipe exactly.

But you don't I think if you're a regular person, you don't really think about stuff like that.

And the guy's just like, oh, your kid, you want a grape? And then and then it was the neighbor's kid that died. Like how horrible is that?

You know?

Oh, you don't ever recover from that. Imagine the guilt. Yeah, nobody knows. I didn't know until I somebody told me about yeah, grapes.

So you're probably much like me that you're constantly freaking out about stuff that you never knew about until you started doing research on it.

I know too much, Nicole, not nearly as much as you do, though, No, I see everything.

You definitely know more than me, trust me. I've read your books, your no no.

I guess my first question is going to be the one that you probably hear all the time. I know that when I get interviewed, people always say have you always been obsessed with death? And I'm like and I'm like, no, I haven't. Actually I wasn't like some goth like eight year old, you know what I mean. But I've always been interested in how things work and breaking down things.

I didn't take science in high school or college. I was a liberal arts major, which of course prepares you for nothing. Well I shouldn't say nothing in the lights, but no specific job. So you know, one thing I could do is string words together. You do have to be able to do that to graduate. So I started as a general journalist, general writer, magazine writer. And one of the places I worked for in the early days

That's really cool?

So I guess when you posted articles with that content, it got a big response obviously, because people are into it as much as Yeah, they try to say.

Like, oh, don't talk about that stuff.

It upsets people, but there's a huge population of people that obviously love that stuff.

Well yeah, and you know, I think there's a a kind of built in fascination for cadavers only because we're all going to end up that way. So it's personal to everybody in a weird way, you know, and everybody drives a car. So people are frightened by and kind of obsessed by that whole notion of the car crush. So I think it had that particular topic.

It was appealing to people, you know, it appeals to their curiosity and cure mix of curiosity and fear and yeah, I don't know what.

Else, but anyway, it turned out to be an okay mix for a book.

It's interesting that you talk about that because that was one of my biggest things when everybody was freaking out about people dying from COVID and stuff. I was just like, you realized that there's a way higher chance of you dying in a car, right, But how people don't want to think about that, you know, No.

I know some of it, especially towards you know, towards the end of it, there were some conversations about you know, I mean, I'm I support wearing masks, you know, and it was you know, I'm not against that, But there was a point at which some you know, the people were talking about I don't feel comfortable with whatever it was, and I'm like, you're in much greater danger driving to

Well, yes, because you're because I'm a person that has seen a lot of dead people in my life, like way before COVID ever started, So I know lots of people die every day, and you know that as well from your research, So I think for us it was just like, yeah, people are dying. People die all the time. That's what happens, all right, So getting into gulf. But the biggest thing that made me fall in love with your book was when you were kind of busted on

And he's a very good store.

Yeah, that's awesome totally, and he's he's like behind he's because of him.

We have the line I have this line that I love in the book. I think it's in the book anyway, where they actually I don't know if it is, but that like, for one, I did a years ago story on flatulence and they had to I was a subject in the study at the Bino Digestive Disease Research Center, and they said, well, first we need to find out make sure you're a producer, like you produce enough gas, right, so they have you blown the mylar bag. It's a breath hydrogen test, so they have to know if you're

That's so great. I love that.

All the best lines I come from something to do with it.

Yeah, that's it's It's cool because I I feel like with my husband, we just constantly are going back and forth with these like like insulting jokes to each other kind of but I love it.

It's just what does he do?

My husband's a firefighter?

Oh okay, cold, and so he's seen a lot too.

Oh yeah, but he he like is really rough with me and the kids, like making jokes because and he's just like this is like sitting around the table at the firehouse. We just they constantly rip each other.

You know. So it's really good.

So you've been on the New York Times Bestseller seven times, which is just like you're such a rock stars. Yeah, I mean it's it's just really mind blowing, honestly. But of all of your books, of all those seven books, which one is your favorite? That was your favorite to write or favorite?

Yeah? Yeah, Well the research for packing from Mars I loved because I got to go on a simulated Daryl gravity flight. You know, where the plane kind of goes and theys roller coaster pattern and as it goes over and down, you have like twenty seconds where you are weightless. You are floating like a soap bubble.

That's so fun.

Oh cool it And I had always wanted to experience that so and it took me a while to achieve that string various people at NASA, but that was unbelievably fun. So the research for that one was you know, that might have been the most And also I got to look to Devon Island where they have a simulated it's like an analog from Mars and Moon, a simulate sort of a It looks a lot like the moon up there, so they do rover and suit rehearsals and things. So

Yeah, I don't.

It's it's funny that you might want to beat yourself up and think that that would fail, but then when I read it, I'm like, this is there's I know that in my line of work, there's just a whole entire world of people that are just want this so much they can't get enough of it. And you brought it to me stream. Really, I would say for the first time. You know what I mean, It's it's really awesome.

Yeah, I was around the time that I think of the timing was good because it was the same year that the television show Six Feet Under came. Oh yeah, and also CSI, the early CSI, so there were a lot of you know, bodies on slabs. There was a lot of so the taboo kind of began to erode a little bit and people were able to feel comfortable being curious, which I think is healthy, and I think that that helped a lot. But I think you're right.

I've had I've had similar things with my content, with people thinking that these things only need to be available in medical textbooks and every day people shouldn't see them.

And I disagree.

I think that if you because it's not just you're looking at gore, like you said, like you're learning, what do we look for? How do you prevent the things from happening? Well, it's all about education and and just because you're not formally going to school for it doesn't mean that you have no right to learn about it, right, I know.

You think, yeah, you think about I mean the thing with gulp, you have this, it's just one of the systems. But you have these things going on and sign you that are working miraculous and you never see them. You don't never see your intestines. While even if you stay awake like I did during your colonoscopy, you can't.

You didn't do like that, do you know What's funny? Like I wouldn't advise that because it's like when you know, because they pushed the tube up there and they have to push air to expand the colon, and it sounds like really juicy, did your sound like that?

Like really, No, I didn't remember. Maybe I was too traumatized by the pain when they were going around in the corners, you know, the kind of stretches the colon. I didn't notice the sounds until I was done. And of course, you you know, you far them all out, far out all the air. But uh, but anyways, yeah, yeah, I stayed awake. He's like, oh, Ken, if that's what you want, and yeah, it's like, yeah, I want to see the because that's I'd like to be able to

And obviously, like so many people are too.

It's not it's not a small I feel like it's really not a small population at all. There were some really great points in your book that too. I'm gonna give you my two b ones quotes from your book, and I think that they're really simple, but a lot of people just don't get these concepts. One of them is the more you eat, the more you overeat. It's

It's just all deaths people. A lot of younger people are obese.

And it's a very simple concept to start with that if you stretch your stomach out, then you're going to need to eat more food all of the time. So it just sounds simple, but I don't think that a lot of people realize that it's a muscle.

That you can over overwork. The other is when you.

Said that pharmaceuticals are in the business of treating, not curing, And I love that one too, because again, the pharmaceuticals are a huge part of I mean you should see I don't know what your local drugstores are.

It's called CBS. I don't know if you have them, but I mean the.

Place is just it is crazy all the time. And I have a friend that works there that is a pharmacist who.

Just tells me the most.

So pharmaceuticals are a huge part of life, and I think a lot of people need to keep that in the back of their mind, that that that's a thing.

Yeah, it's very sad when there's some of these relatively uncommon diseases, but rather than looking for a cousin they are uncommon. First of all, there's not a lot of money to be made, and also to look for a cure that's a one time sale. So yeah, the ones that at that are money making are chronic. So there's lots of lots and lots of research for ways to

In the book you discuss inprit so I, this topic is something I've discussed before. You talk about cat. You're talking about animal food, which is which is cool. I remember one of my biology tea shirts taught taught us that really long time ago, like it. He said, it just they like they want to eat their own ship, but it needs to smell like just enough that humans kits tolerated in our house.

That was so that was so interesting to me, said, you know, the cat is the customer in a sense they're eating it, but or dog. But really the customer is the owner. So if this stuff smells like shit, if it smells really awful, or if it in the case of there was a cat food where they had had pieces colored different colors and one was colored dyed red, and but then you know, cats puke, cats throw up, something would throw up in.

The red would dye the carpet if you had a white carpets, And I like, nope, we're not going to use that anymore.

But just and also I love that they're very concerned with dogs, who they don't want something that's gonna be difficult to pick up. So the food is designed to make the ship pick up able. God right, you know they don't.

Yeah, it's so what I'm trying to get at with this is one of the parts. You said that they were trying to make vegetarian cat food.

Yeah.

Yeah, obviously like cats carnivores, right, So.

This is my whole argument.

Often since people, based on our teeth, are omnivores, what do you think do you do you feel kind of the same way when people say that being vegan is healthy or healthier than eating meat, or that it. It's not like or trying to just eliminate meat from our diets in general. When I feel like as I always try to look at us as animals.

Too, because we are technically right right.

And since we're omnivores, not to say that began people can't be entitled to that. But when they say it's healthier than me, I kind of think, well, like, I.

Don't know we were supposed to eat. It's like saying I mean, I.

Think I think when I think of it, just because of my most recent book, bears came to mind, and bears are omnivores and they eat a lot of They do eat meat. They will eat meat, you know, they'll eat they'll scavenger, carcass, they'll eat they'll sometimes kill something, but mostly they're eating acorns and grasses and berries, and so that's I mean, I think. I think being an omnionivre is just sort of evolutionarily. It's kind of like we can process anything you know, good for us. We

And yeah, I'm curious too because you said that availability, like obviously one hundred years ago, three hundred years ago, there wasn't grocery stores that had pea protein sandwiches or whatever. But so that's interesting to me for as far as an evolutionary perspective, like if our teeth will start changing over not anytime soon that we'll see, but over the course of hundreds and thousands of years because of the availability of food and stuff.

That's just it. It's interesting.

It is interesting because yeah, you think if you don't, if you don't need those things, you know, you look at birds that didn't before they were predators. They're like, yeah, they didn't, they didn't need to fly away because nobody was coming after him. I don't need these things.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so I don't Yeah, that is interesting. It's a pretty slow timeline evolution. But who knows, I mean presumably presumably.

Yeah, I know, I always I always worry about that, like not worry, but I think about that stuff, just with the phones and this and that. Obviously we'll never be able to get to see it how our skeletal system changes from sitting all day or you know, and it's just it's.

It's kind of an interesting subject for me, all right.

So in the grocer room, we could all agree that I do post all the time, and the ones that seem to get the most, oh my god, I'm gonna throw up occasionally. It'll be like eyeball ones or something. But most of us could agree that we get schemed out by mucus in particular, like loogis that are coughed up.

Oh yeah, and ucas is the worst.

It really is.

And I used to work in when I worked in the microbiology lab. I used to get the specific it was in the hospital and I would get specimens to look for bacterial infections and I would have to stick a swab like in a cup of it and play with it and put it on a Petri dish, and I did that with urine poop, whatever you name it, no problem.

But the disputum, that's what they called spudum. It was. It just makes you like one again.

So it's it was gonna say. Then'll go finish your question.

Okay, I was just gonna ask you, like, well, because this is probably what you're about to say, Like, while you were researching this book, was there one part of the GI system that in particular made you.

Like, uh, yes, it's the mouth, for sure. Is the mouth that it? And I'll tell you this wasn't for Gulf. It was years and years ago. I was reporting a book. I was at this place, Hilltop Labs, where they test products that combat odor, like deodorants, douches, cat litter, and mouthwash. Okay, this is this is their little niche. They're in Cincinnati, or there used to be. I don't think they're there anymore. Maybe, But anyway, I asked the guy who the main guy

Which is which is a gros. It's a grossy word.

I know it should be like a heavy metal band opening for Slayer, but it's it's like and I started when I'm in a restaurant and there I started looking at people chewing of like, oh, you're forming a bulls. I know what you're doing. It's like picturing it. And it became it was kind of like I was like almost feeling as though, like chewing and eating is something you should do behind closed doors. Not sex, like people could should have sex in.

Public and eat, but closed doors, because when you're thinking about it, as I was just the the you know, bringing the bullets together and then the bullet slithering down the.

Tube and then I don't know it is.

To me it was somehow worse than the shitting.

You know. What's interesting too.

This is like a side note, but another argument that I always have is that with health insurance and stuff like, your teeth are typically not covered. And every time I go to the dentist, it's like a thousand dollars for something, and that's why it's not covered, and it's what it's like the first part of your digestive track, like you need. It's like if it was your esopha guess it'd be like five dollar copay.

But here it's it's it's just like that. I don't understand it. I can't it.

It is unbelievable to me. That also vision, if you know, if you're like me, I'm like twenty one thousand, I mean, I'm lined without my contact So if I couldn't, if I couldn't afford to have corrective lenses, I'm that'd be dead. You can't yeah anything. And and but because you know, because everybody ends up meeting a significant amount of dental work, it's just they're like it's too expensive, we're not going to do it. But they've created this thing like, oh, dental,

I know it may like I can see like veneers and stuff obviously bleach like cosmetic stuff, but I have like a hole in I filling in a hole in my tooth, and I keep biting my cheek so bad, and I'm like, this is when I eat, you know, so I need it fixed for eating. It's I don't care about it otherwise. I actually excited him sometimes just like pull the tooth out, but then he says.

Oh, you'll teeth or get croaked and this, you know, But that's just a side note. One another cool thing I know.

It is it's and the other thing with that, if you have any problems with your jaw, that's a musculo that's part of the muscular skeletal system that you know, the TMJ, the tempo Manda Viller Joy. Yeah, but because it's near it's they call it part of the mouth. So they don't cover that.

Yeah, it's don't cover that.

It's incredibly expensive the things that people do for jaw disorders, and they'll know that's a that's dental. Weait don't cover that.

And even like Peridonald sometimes too. It's another thing. And that's like really actually one of my friends Lindsay doctor Lindsay fitz Harris, I don't know if you're she just threw, oh yeah, she's awesome her In her book, she was talking a lot about how the soldiers a lot of their problems stemmed from paradonal disease and how it could be systemic if you get bacteria in your blood and and it's.

It's crazy that they don't they don't pay.

Heart infections. Yeah, on the valve. The bacteria colonizes the valve of the heart and you getcarditis. I mean, yeah, it's insane that that's not covered. But you know, it's all bottom line money.

That's what everything is. Yeah.

Every week on Mother Knows that we talk about all of these different stories that relates to posts that we have in the Grosser Room. And I think you guys would really love it if you joined right now. You could join for only five ninety nine a month and you get to see.

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If you have an interest in any particular topic, you could search by the title, Like I was just telling you about the guy that got impelled with the garden flag and that is called damage by decoration. But you also could just search, like today, I didn't remember what I called the post, so I just searched garden flag there and lawnmower. If you search lawnmower, all the lawnmower accidents will come up. So it's it's really awesome when we have a great group of people in the gross room.

So one of the cool things I learned in your book.

So when I let me tell you this story and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. When I first started working in the lab when I was like nineteen, I go in there and they don't clean.

The labs a lot.

So some of the stuff there is has been there since like the thirties or the forty, you know what I mean. Like nobody goes in and takes signs down. And there were signs in the lab that said no pipeetting by mouth, and I was like, who the hell. I mean this was in like two thousand, so I

And I thought that that. I was like, well, what if you get it in your mouth? And they said, well, do something like that. That's how it was back then. I didn't realize that it's in your book. You were talking.

About like doctors actually tasting urine and stuff to check for this smell.

Yeah.

Yeah, the urine would have a sweet taste.

Right.

It's been a while since I looked at the book, but there was, Yeah, it was. Physicians were much more sort of involved with their senses smell and taste, and because there were fewer diagnostic tests that you could order or send to the lab, they relied much more on their on their senses. Yeah. That was amazing to me. Yeah, that they would taste things and smell things. Yeah, I don't It becomes part of your job. And it ceases to be strange or gross.

You know.

I remember me the only time I've ever gagged and had to leave the room because I was about to throw up. The only time was not anything from any of my books. It was I'm friends with Judy Melanick, who she's in New Zealand now. She was a medical examiner here at Oakland. Okay, yeah, yeah, and she has a she does a lot on TikTok. But she said that she kind of made it a personal goal of hers to make me gag. I think because one day she goes, she goes, wow, yeah, I've got a couple

Yeah.

I remember the first time I smelled it, and I was because I went to the medical Examiner's office for I had to rotate there while I was in school. And when I you know, every time I was there was the main part of the office and the morgue was downstairs, and when I walked down the stairs, I was like, what the fuck is that smell? Like, it's just it's not poop. It's just like dead fish poop.

It's like every worse smell you're in, like all mixed together.

Yeah.

No, yeah, And when you multiply that, you know when it when it's suspec when it's a body that has been fully like the peak of future faction, that is really and then and also sometimes it would be mixed with the person that's been drinking fast amounts of alcohol. There was that kind of sweet, sickly alcohol smell mixed in. It was really intense and really.

But it's funny because you do get used to it. And if you're if you're ever walking down the street, and even if there's like a rat dead on the side of the road. You will instantly smell it now and you will be like, something's dead near me. I don't know what it.

Is, but I sell it. It's just so specific.

But then by like I was at the Emmy's office for a whole summer, so obviously we had decomps every day in Philadelphia, right, but yeah, just like it was every day there. But by the end of the summer, I was like eating lunch down there, pud Ever, and then gets back to my next topic, because you were talking about you had a whole chapter about like talking

And yeah, I like how. I like how you said that people are are weird about.

Eating organs because it almost makes them feel like they're like an animal, like an animal, like not we're not like them, kind of, you know, we are like them, right right?

I mean I think the supermarkets and the purveyors of steak and cuts or you know whatever roasts. They do a good job of making it, of divorcing it from the creature it came from. You know, it looks like meat. It doesn't. It doesn't have the same shape. It doesn't. It just doesn't look a little yeah the chicken lying that looks like a chicken leg. But anyway, it just makes it easier to to deal with than organs are.

Yeah, and I get grossed out. Like even last night, I put a chucked roast into the instapot right it was rall. I just threw it in and then when I opened it, I had to shred the meat. And just seeing like the the bundles of I could see the like vascular comp like.

I can't I can't turn it off.

And then I saw the fashion and the bundles, and I was like, I like barely ate it.

I was like, man, I try to turn it off so bad, but it's just hard.

Oh yeah, No. I remember as a kid my mom, I don't know she we didn't have much money when I was a kid. And my mom would buy pretty cheap cuts of meat, and there was one and I remember I could see the vein in the like coming through, and I was just so skin I know I'm supposed to be here.

I know it's weird, right, like you have no problem eating it, And then I'm better like eating meat than I don't like preparing raw meat too much. But chicken doesn't look anything like us, you.

Know, exactly, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

I remember the first time I had tongue. It was well, I was heading down to an article on this ship and they made tongue. They didn't tell they didn't say what it want. This is why would they, you know? And I was like, this is really good. It's really tender. I like it. What is it?

Goes?

Oh, it's tongue langua. And then suddenly I was like, I think I can feel the taste buds, but taste buds like you great completely ruined it for me. Oh a minute ago, I was really enjoying it.

Yeah, that that's how it is. You're just like, don't tell me. Because one of the girls I used to work with, she was from China and she would make dumplings all the time. And I was like, yo, dude, how do you make these? They're just so good? And she she's like, oh, I just put leaks or whatever.

And then I ate it and she goes, you ate brain afterwards, and I was like, I never would have been eaten it, but I.

Was like, really good, yeah, yeah somebody, and yeah, I went. I was on a book to her Japan and my hosts took me to a restaurant and they go, this is really good. And I go, oh, is that my po tofu? And she goes, well, so similar, and I had it and then they I said, so, well, what was it? And she said that was cod semen?

Is yeah, you just you just want to know you don't want to eat any any semen from any animal, all right.

So the last thing I want to wrap it up with is that we have a mutual friend, Michelle. And one of the things that Michelle and I have always bonded with was our poop stories.

And she, I mean, she's hilarious.

She has she has openly said that she has shipped outside all the I mean, I don't even know if she's told you all this stuff. But she has a really bad problem with getting diarrhea, and just like having to go right then and there.

And my mom is the same way. Actually, she's probably.

My brother has the kroons. It comes and goes. He's oh really, he's okay right now, but for a while he's like twelve times a day.

Yeah, crones is so terrible. It looks so painful.

Yeah, it's horrible.

Yeah, yeah, my mom My mom has it too, and she drives us not with it. We call it colon blow actually, but.

My ibs, yeah, what's the other one? The sheriitable bowel and in flammabastic colonly Yeah, pastic colon is she and she called it that anyway, I don't know, Yeah, I.

Think it would probably fall under that umbrella of of that.

And it's funny because it drives my dad not because they'll be driving over here and then like she he has to stop at a gas station or something because she'll And Michelle's kind of the same way.

Oh yeah, no, it's it's I don't have that, but I can't imagine. You're there's a certain level of anxiety that comes with that, you know. In terms of traveling, My brother used to love to travel, and for a while there he was like, what happened.

Yeah, I think that I when I had it really bad when I was in my twenties and then it's stopped. I think a lot of it is attached to nerves. And you know, I had like a shady boyfriend, shitty literally shitty boyfriend at the time. But yeah, So I was going to ask you if you had any embarrassing poop stories, but you would feel comfortable talking about that, Like.

I would definitely feel comfortable talking about them. But I'm trying to think if I, oh, okay, So I was, well, it's traveling. I was doing a story in the Amazon, and one of the things I was traveling with it anthropologist who was studying the socio economics of murder and how it and it doesn't matter what. We were going house to house in way out, and they would give you this bowl or chicho, which is a salima fermented

Oh my god.

Brown Patch, the tree.

I think that's what's the greatest part about being human is that any person, no matter what, has the story, especially just like as you get older, you're like the stories come more and more frequently.

And I'm so envious of people.

I mean, you seem like you overall have like a good gi So I I do nail actually too. But but like when I was younger, it was like it was bad. You know, I'd have to just as soon as I went into a restaurant like scope out where the it and people have a really horrible time.

No, it's it's it is horrible. Yeah, no, I know I've heard stories from people, some people and my husband's family, my especially toward the end of his life, my father in law you know, was like to got it, just yeah, scope out? Where is the gos as vathue? And that's disruptive. You know, you don't you don't want to have to be I think that, I mean, I don't know because I don't have that issue, but I would think that that insecurity is as bad almost as actual shitting.

Oh yeah.

I always say that that the worst surgeries to have to get were the worst pathology to have is ones that have to deal with your urinary track or your digestive track, because it's something you have to do multiple times a day.

Yeah.

And one of my brother's friends, a young kid in his thirties, he just had ulcerat of koalitis and how to have his tire colon removed. And while it was good, like he had to get a bag, which he just got reversed. And he didn't want the bag because it comes with all the other things that come with a bag, but he just said it was awesome because he could go out and like.

Yeah, no. In fact, I've talked to people for another project about that and they're like, it it was great to being not I mean, you're just freed from all that. I mean, yeah, you have a bag, but you have some measure of control with the bag. Yeah, with an Austin bag, and you know it's now you're free to go where you want and to travel and you control now when you change the bag. You know you have a system and you know along your need and it

That any anything that has to do with you just don't you don't think about it every day. But it's like, even when he was healing from surgery, before he got the bag, it was like, you have to go to the bathroom that day after you just had something sewn back together that you have to push through, you know what I mean, it's just so's so scary.

No, And then yeah, when you have when you have surgery, because my brother here, I'm like sharing my brother's private details.

We're all friends here, we all talk about all of our problems, just what he was.

Talking about, you know, after the surgery, then you can get strictures from this, you know, Scarry.

Oh god, Yeah, it's such a mess.

And then then that creates a sort of self perpetuating cycle of blockages and surgery and strictures and more blockages and more surgery.

Yeah, it's it's so horrible sometimes. I see because I worked not only doing autopsy, but I worked in surgical pathology too, and I would just get these colon receptions from people that you just feel so bad. You're like, these people have been through pure hell and it looks it just looks painful looking at it.

Oh my god. Yeah, so inflamed and stretched out.

Oh my god. I can't imagine.

Those were people with medical one you know, it's a Hirsts Sprungs disease.

Oh yeah, where they don't have that, they can't there's no motility on a ladder half, so everything just sort of files out and stretches the colling out that it gets really flabby and it doesn't work, and they they have.

It's horrible.

I was thinking about that actually when you were talking about the specimen at the motor because I'm not sure. I mean, I'm sure in other countries that still happens all the time that you would get because that that one is from an older person.

Right, Yes, it's from I want to say, the early nineteen hundreds.

Yeah, so first Sprungs they but now they would diagnose it and treat it much they I mean, that individual I think that was you know, untreated over years and years.

Yeah.

So that's another reason why because a lot of things that we take for granted in this country, and I have followers all over the world that send me cases, so I know a lot of still what's going on and that will stood will still happen in other countries that don't have medicine like we have here. Yes, it is important to see even that would be super rare to see in America, like a nineteen year old, you know.

But absolutely, or somebody with goiter because now we have biodized soul.

Yeah, and there's lots of things like that, Like you still would have believed though, some of the things that we do see because people are just in denial. They're in denial. There's all different reasons. People don't have money, people are scared. They're just scared of doctors. No.

I think that happens that somebody gets starts to get it simper or a condition, and they're scared to learn what it is, and that worse it gets the more scared they are, and then they just never go and they just they're in this very deep seated denial and by the time they do get help, it's too late.

Yeah, that happened.

A pathologist that I used to work with, she said that she worked with another doctor who kept he kept coughing a lot, and he thought that he had lung cancer and was scared to death and didn't go to the hospital and then he ended up dying and then when they did an autopsy on him, he had TV which he.

Could have treated. Well. No, yeah, it's just like sad when you hear stuff like that.

Yeah, very sad.

Are you working on any I know you just came out with your most recent book has been over it's been over a year now that it's been out, right, yep, how does that doing?

And it is?

Oh, fuzz was but it went really well. Yeah, that that book did very well. It was it was great. I wasn't sure because it's a little bit of a departure for me. I'm usually writing about the human body or in some capacity, or you know, human bodies in unusual circumstances like combat or space. So so Fuzz was a was a departure and that I had a lot of trepidation and a lot of anxiety. But it was well received. You know, it's fun. So I mean it's it's still the same sort of booty all over the

Yeah, it's it's it's awesome. I think that anything you write people are going to be into because it's it's your style and that's what they like, your style and learning from you because I learned.

I I mean I have.

I've been in a GI track, hands in a track, and I learned.

So much just because I hear that. Ye really I did, I did. I loved it.

You won't even believe this, but I I don't really like to like sit down in the corner and read because I have kids and it's always crazy in my house. So I put the audio book on and I like to cook. I'll be in the kitchen for hours, like I homemake a lot of like pasta and stuff. And my husband kept walking in the kitchen and he's like what the fuck? He walked right in when you were talking about like the anal sex stuff or like it was like the end with a constantation and all that stuff.

I love it.

Are you working on it.

Yeah exactly.

I'm the same way. It's like every now and then, though I see somebody reading stuff while they're I think twice this has happened while they're eating at a restaurant. I'm like, you are my people, you're eating and reading that book.

Yeah exactly.

I am working in another book. I'm not really talking about it in specifically what it's about, but it is. I'm back in the human body.

Oh that's exciting.

Yeah, I'm excited to see what that's going to be because I'm like, oh, like, because I love the way that you broke down the GI track and I'm like, okay, she needs to do every single cardiovascular systems, the reproduct it, there's just you could do everything now, you know.

It's but so the nervous system in the brain have been done so well, you know, Ballar Sacks, David Eagle and I've done those so well. The reproductive system gets a lot of there's a bunch of books on I feel like that, you know, the I kind of you know, the elementary canal and the testins and the eating is after that. I think that one, you know, on the bottom seater, I'll do you that. So yeah, I probably so, I think it was was it did something on the

Well.

So nice to have you as an honor to meet you. It's just I'm kind of like starstruck. And yeah, I said to my husband, I was like, she's such a big deal.

So I'm just so excited that you did this for us.

Oh so happy too. I'm so happy to you know. We're two peas in the pod, you and me. So it's it was a natural fit and a really fun conversation.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for listening to Mother nos Death. As a reminder, my training is as a pathologist's assistant. I have a master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education. I am not a doctor, and I have not diagnosed or treated anyone dead or alive without the assistance of a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based on my experience working in pathology so they can make

Thanks