America’s Funniest Science Author on Orgasms, Cadavers & Space Travel

Really now, really, really.

Now really Hello and welcome to Really No Really with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden. It would be a wonderful gift to us if you became one of our subscribers. So if you enjoy our show, please subscribe. Take science and humor and combine them together and you got a Mary Roach book. The author of seven New York Times best selling books. She's written about cadavers and the afterlife, living life in outer space, and what to do when

Their active coitus.

To completion while in an MRI ultrasound sonogram like device.

Her science Really no, really Okay now.

This I know.

I always say I'm excited. I'm excited to be with you, I'm excited to do our show. I'm excited about our guests. Always, always, always this. I am so excited. This is one of my favorite authors in the world. I don't know why she must have nothing going on in her life right now to be doing our little show. Because Mary Roach, many of you will know who she is. She has She has written seven New York Times bestsellers. They're always almost always one name books like we have.

Stiff, we have Spook, we have bonk. Hacking with Mars she went all out on that.

Then we have Gulp, we have Grunt, and we have Fuzz and they are a cross between science and comedy and they are hysterical books. She has written for The National Geographic, Wired, New York Times, magazine, Vogue, GQ. She writes a lot and the thing that I think most

You like an author who's going to jump in on the thing, whatever the thing is.

I want to know how she did it, Why she did it, how she got a husband to do it, how.

She if she came to me and said, I want to have sex and they have to do it in front of a researcher.

Yes, who's gonna's gonna have instruments? The minute I hear sex and measuring, I'm out.

So there's so much, so much to this.

And so let's just jump in with the author, extraordinary Mary Roach.

Welcome to really no.

Really, oh, thank you so much, so excited to be here.

So how how did you when you did this? The book bunk okay, yeah, and gives a little bit of history and sex research, because that in itself is a fascinating feel because a lot of sex researchers are looking down upon because it's like the sort of the dark you're the g of science. It's like it's it's dirty somehow. And then what got you to the point of, Hey, hobby.

I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna spend some time in this and I'm gonna go we're doing with me?

Yeah?

Okay, this is what happened. I was looking at and this is very un characteristic of me. I was looking through an issue of Film Quarterly, which makes me seem really erudite and and scholarly and anyway, I don't know why it wasn't my own copy, but there was a reference to the coolpiscopic films of Masters and Johnson, and I was like, wait a minute, colposcopy.

That's when they're taking like a biopsy of the cervix.

They're in there doing stuff, so on like this means Masters, Johnson, the sex researchers that we've all heard of, we're literally filming a woman while she responds sexually. It sounded like that. So based on that sentence, pretty much, just that sentence in Film Quarterly, I I went to my editor, like, sex Research next book, right, because okay, this is this is science the physiology of intercourse and arousal. And he okay,

And she's like, go, go, go do it. And in fact there was.

But the thing with my books, I always like to put myself into the story a little bit, and in this case, I thought, well, that's a little weird. So I'll try to find researchers who are doing work in a lab with subjects, and I'll just be there, you know,

Because it's incredibly awkward.

But I realized I was probably gonna have to do that because I wasn't getting access any other way. So I found this guy, doctor Dang, who was an imaging expert in London, and I came across a paper he had done about erections and pay own and he had done a three D movie of an erecting penis his own by the way, and he said, and this is all an email. He's like, yeah, for the next my next experiment, I would like to film with ultrasound three

We'll go to see a play. Jeremy Irons is in something in the West End. It'll be great.

Also, have to have sex in front of a researcher. My husband is he's he's such a first of all, he's a man, he's a great guy. And he had also said up front when he heard what the book was about, he's like, sex research, sign me up.

Extent on exactly. So so yeah, so.

We went and did that, and and people think it was an mri I tube, which fine, I would I'd have sex and an m R two. But you know, I said, you have privacy. Right, you're in a little tube. It's uncomfortable. You're cramped in there. I don't even know if you could fit two people. Well you can't because somebody else. Yeah, somebody else did it, those little acrobats, people from the Netherlands up his name was jup Jupe and his wife or girlfriend or whatever anyway, but you know,

You're like arms length and it's it was awkward.

Yeah, Viagara was used in a magazine. A magazine was used because your husband wasn't facing you or something.

But I can't pure he goes, don't worry. He goes, yeah, well we have we have viagra. And he said, and I have some like stimulative literature. I think it was like a was there a copy of g QQ or something. I mean it was something like it wasn't poor and it was you know, I think you know how they have a pretty woman telling a joke or something at Esquire and I was like.

That's what he like that.

I probably know this, but both of my children are in vitro, so I had to go h and make deliveries and the quality of the.

Stimulating material and they should be top notched.

They are always like, you know, very scratchy portant films from the nineteen seventies or something.

You got a movie, at least you I.

Had a video.

I had a little video, but I didn't have a partner, so you know, it was we needed to compensate.

So wow, wow.

Yes, it was filmed in It was four D, which means three D plus time. I think this is the way that anyway, Yes, it was an ultrasound movie. I looked him up recently to see if the story ever, i mean, the journal paper ever appeared, and it didn't. And part of that was that the three D didn't come out that well. You could actually the film was online of Oh my god.

So, I mean, I want to talk a little bit about about all your books and how you get there, but can you talk a little bit about because for people that may not be familiar with your work, like Gulp is really about what our bodies do with food from beginning to end, and where the waste goes, and how it's the whole pane of the journey.

Uh, it's the.

Tube, yees, the tube us right as this knows to ask, Yeah, how.

Do you decide? It's exactly what you said?

You saw you know, you read this one little fact to it and you went, I think I want to pursue this. You the subjects of your work, as I say, are always the crossoad of something scientific and h and your extraordinary sense of humor comes into play. But how do you how do you go, this is it? I'm gonna I found it. I found the next one. I'm going to oz what what's is there? A? How do if that happens, it flips the switch for you?

Yeah?

I wish it were always as simple as the colposcopic films of Masters in Johnson, which was like the thirty second I have my next book. Yeah, But more often it's sometimes it's something I stumble onto in one book, like in Stiff, I came across, uh, some studies that the early days of trying to figure out what do all these bits and pieces of the human body do? Like what is this thing. You know, before people knew

Now?

This is like this is this is the weird tube that starts in your nose and mouth runs all the way through you full of bacteria. It's like the donut hole. I mean, you're the donut. And then there's this weird other world that's this tube literally from your mouth to your anus, and it's a whole different set of rules in there. It's really weird. So so I'm not you know, there's I do possibly here and there touch on things like digestion, nutrition, but it's that it would be to

Then like chewing.

There's a whole lab in the Netherlands where they study the way that you you know, when you chew, you break something down and then and then you just you'd form it into a bowlus like, so it's it's swallowable. It has to be in the swallowable state. And they like, do you know video X rays of people chewing and forming boluses and just the.

Whole I don't any any with science.

So often there's some thing that you've taken for granted that all of a sudden you're like, wow, bullus formation is really interesting and gross, let's get Mary roach on them.

I love that you take this out and you're not a scientist either, which is lovely that it's out of curiosity and you go deep, you go down, you go down. Robert Hoiles.

Yeah, But I also love that where your curiosity goes to in science is to the stuff that I guess, in some ways might be considered the tabooy stuff, you know where people do want to know how does an astronaut boop?

You know how? And you go and you.

Know most of us would would we mean and we had an astronaut on our show, that was the.

Last question we would ever ask them. But you go right to it.

I have no shame, ye Jason.

I know, I completely own the fact that my mind is, let's say, in the gutter sometimes and and the other thing with a taboo with with with taboo topics and books. Early on in my career, I know I hadn't written I'd written a lot of magazine stuff, but I hadn't done a book, and I was thinking, like, what is it that hasn't been written about already? Yeah, and the taboo things are things that other people might go I would never write a book about Kidavers because people would

I'll do it.

But because I get back to the astronaut thing, you did zero gravity, right?

I did?

Yeah?

I did?

And did you? So?

I think you wrote that. The way they had to test the toilet stuf because they have to because they're sending people up, is they had to have a guy try and do it in zero grat I mean, it's.

That amazing, you know, it's it's a chamter. I'm glad you're asking me, but I love to talk about.

So how yeah, how they figure out how to do this?

I'm glad you're asking me, but I love to talk about.

So how yeah, how they figure out how to do this?

Oh god, it's so it's so interesting because it's you know, you take a toilet, okay, this is a system that relies on gravity and water flow, water flowing down and flush.

There's that keyword, flushing.

Away and and so you now, when you're talking about putting a waste management system in space, you need to completely rethink the system, you know. And so in the first two space programs, you know, in in actually three and Mercury they didn't need it. Gemini and Apollo, there was no toilet. There was the fecal bag because there was no you know, they hadn't redesigned the system. They didn't have enough space. So you were like crapping in a in a plastic bag with a little fingercut to

On.

So they had to yes, so they had to completely rethink it and now, all right, you're not going to put this multi million dollar device up into zero gravity without testing it first. Uh So they had to put it on the the what used to be called the vomit comet, that plane that goes up and down on a roller coaster, and you have twenty seconds of weightlessness

You know, It's like who can.

It's like you could time your yeah, set your watch by most people's sphincters, you know.

You're like, there's a certain time of day you can go.

And that's it.

And so they so they're like, what do we do? And then so then they hired or they gave the assignment to someone at NASA AMES to come up with a high fidelity human fecal simulant and I have seen the paper and there are recipes and photographs and.

It was a series.

The guy would not reply to my emails, so I last didn't get to interview this man. But but he really took it to heart, like I'm gonna there's the exact amount of E. Coli even in here, the reology, the viscousness, everything is the same. And so that enabled them to test this toilet, uh and subsequent toilets. And for me, this is not so much about poop as it is about just the surreal wonderfulness of engineering.

You bought the challenge and about that challenge, how important that's a make or break.

My favorite moment on that one would have been the guy outside the curtain twenty seconds later going Houston, we have a problem.

The other part of that is dandriff, All this stuff is floating around if you're not careful, yes, and you're I mean, so imagine that.

If they didn't have that, I understand.

Yeah, they called them they called okay, So yeah, with space the shuttle toilet it had a little cap that would a little door that would close when you were done. Okay, because because the stuff, the contribution is briefly hovering. It's floating right, okay. So and if you if you shut the door at the wrong time, you would have what was called fecal decapitation.

And this is an actual term. I didn't make it up.

This is a n acid term. So, but that little beheaded, the little head of is now going to float around, yes, the space shuttle.

And it's to you to chase it down.

How get over here?

On our first episode we learned about fecal clouds, and now here we.

Are, so let's go so quickly.

So some of the other Yeah, what I thought would be fun and a great way to introduce your work to people who may not be familiar with all of it is I thought I'd name one book at a time and maybe you could share, like the most fascinating thing that you thought came out of that book for you, like the fun fact that you went, oh, oh.

My god, this is so hard, this is so hard.

If you're wrong, we don't know, We have no idea.

So I think the first one was stiff, right, which was the Curious subtitle of The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, which was a yes, really an exploration of what we do with dead bodies from the moment of departure till they're they're done being used, either interred or eused science. What what what was the most fascinating or one of the most fascinating revelations came out of that book for you?

Oh God, that one.

You know, people are familiar most with with you know, only people we donate your body to science. It's often you're being used to teach anatomy or to learn some surgical technique, or you know, there's some some pretty common things.

But then there's stuff like there was a.

Dude in Powersists around the turn of the last century, Pierre Barbet, who was investigating the Shroud of turin Uh. He had this idea that the nail the blood marks where the nails were like that that he could verify the the truth of the shroud by erecting across and taking cadaver, sometimes arms with a weight, sometimes whole bodies, and like putting them on the cross.

And I was like, that's a.

Pretty unique and horrifying use of the donated cadaver. Ye I don't know whose cadaver it was, but anyway, that one kind of took took the cake as as uh, most bizarre cadaver.

I would say, actually conclude anything from it.

I think that that his conclusion was already in place before he started the project.

Yeah. All right.

So the book after that was Spook, which and I have to say, of.

All of them, I was really intrigued with this book. Spook is the science that tackles the afterlife. As you were saying, you you bumped into some research during Stiff that made you think about Spook.

So, I mean the one, the thing that I remember.

Was the the chapter you wrote about whether they're trying to weigh the soul.

Yeah.

Yeah, I thought that was fascinating.

That was so interesting.

Yeah, I mean, Spook is a book about people trying to use scientific method to prove or disprove the existence of a spirit or a soul. And I just love the fact that somebody is like, well, you know, you can have faith and you could do it that way, but I'm going to prove it and I have science.

Yeah.

So the soul where Yeah, that was Duncan McDougall was this.

Uh he was a physician around the time of a big tuberculosis outbreak. I think we're talking the teens nineteen or early twenties, So he worked in a tuberculosis sanitarium and so he sadly had a steady supply of people dying. And he was fascinated with consciousness theory. You might say, it's sort of supernatural type of things. And he's like, what if we took He had access to a scale. It was an industrial scale used for weighing silk, I think,

Yeah.

And what I also loved is that I found I found a modern day soul where a couple of them, but one of them was this guy who he's a. He was a sheep farmer, and he got interested in Duncan McDougall and the whole notion of can you weigh consciousness? And and and so he's like, well, I have to I butcher sheep anyway, so why don't I do it on a scale? And the scales had become by that point more sophisticated, so he's like, maybe I can get some data that's a little bit better than the you know,

I don't know.

Some of the sheep was gaining.

I love it.

Okay.

The next one was, of course, Bank is the book that we started with. There are so many fascinating things and yeah, oh.

My god, what about the Okay, here's my favorite. I think this is my favorite. This is something when I when I was working on this book, I would go into the UCSF Med School Library and they had a whole wall of the Journal of sex research, and I would just go through and maybe I'd be like table of contents, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring work. Oh, sexual intercourse as a potential cure for intractable hiccups, and I'd be like running to the copy machine, like this is

If you weren't married, uh huh.

Way, oh my gosh.

But I like that there's a demographic unattached pickuppers.

Yeah, but there were two things in that book that got me. Also.

One was, and I think you talk about her in the in the Ted talk, the woman who would brush her teeth to orgasm. Yeah, yeah, very little time is what you described, you know.

Yes, yes, you know.

Orgasm is a uh it's a reflex and it is triggered in some quite atypical, let's say ways, one of them being this woman who, when she brushed her teeth would have an orgasm. And you'd think she'd have like amazing oral hygiene and she'd be like really excited, like I have very clean teeth and I'm really happy all the time.

But she she didn't, she didn't like it at all.

She yeah, And there was another there's some people have spontaneous orgasms, and that you could imagine depending on the situation where it happens. You know, you're like, I don't know, your child's first communion or something. I think could be kind of awkward depending on where where it happens. Uh So some pits so people people want to be in control of somewhat of where they where and when they have an orgasm.

I'm sure this one, I'm this one had many Packing from Mars?

What was what was the blow away? Oh?

Packing from Mars.

I really enjoyed my time with the two retired cosmonauts because they were because you know, when you try to ask an active astronaut in NASA, uh, you know, does okay up on the shuttle, you get co Ed Cruz. Come on, somebody in the airlock has to have had sex, right, They're not gonna they're never gonna say As a matter of fact, on my flight, we were balking in there. No, they're not going to say it because that's the they'll never fly again. I mean, it's now is it's a

So yeah.

But the cosmonauts, on the other hand, they were First of all, I met them in the Museum of Cosmonautics, where they are now the directors of it. And it was ten in the morning, and and I brought this up. And well, first first I'd said, like, I wanted one of them to sing a song he'd written. He goes, I would need to have whiskey, and the other one goes, I have it.

So we go into the office.

We're drinking whiskey at ten in the morning, and so I thought this might be a good time to bring up.

This space SpaceX.

So So yeah, one of them, Sasha was his nickname. He's like, yeah, people are always saying to me, Sasha, Sasha, what about sex in space?

Do you have sex in space?

And he's like, of course, by hand, you know, it's like yeah, okay. So he and there was some sort of you know, uh, there were rumors about a particular couple. Ever was able to pin them down on that, but they but they did say that there was discussion at roast Cosmos, which is the Russian space agency. Some discussion about when weather to send up a doll like a sex doll, and and yeah, I know, can you imagine.

They would do it as an experiment how sex thoughts perform in space? Did? I mean? I just make it another part of the program. Do you have one last? The one with animals. It's fascinating to me too, where animals are the victims in a different way. What's what what's the one that you remember the most of that?

Oh? Oh gosh, fuzz I think that the most to me, the most fun chapter. I did three chapters set in India and and and.

That was.

Fun, partly because in India there's a the animals, a bunch of the animals that are tests there, you know, pests in quote, Yeah, elephants, monkeys, uh and uh, there's one I'm forgetting.

But anyway they are they are really revered.

You know.

The elephant is Ganesh, the monkey is Hanuman.

So there's this situation where there people are are are you know, both encouraged, you know, loving them and feeding them, but also like make this stop.

You have to make this stop. So the poor guy.

I spent some time at the and this this bureaucrat who was charged with UH trying to deal with the monkey because the monkeys, you know, they're stealing things. They're outside the temples or people are feeding them, but then they're constantly stealing things, picking pockets, turning your pockets inside out there, you know, coming into your house and like picking up an induction cooker and throwing it.

On the ground.

They're like they're really people get really pissed at them. So he but he's like, you know, he kept telling me, you need to call this man, doctor Singh at the Wildlife Bureau. It is his problem, it is his situation. These are wild animals. It is not my problem.

So then I'm called. I get hold of doctor Singh and he's like, these.

Animals are no longer wild, they are not my problem. So it's just this wonderful UH Indian bureaucracy moment that I quite enjoyed.

And then I want to know, as does everybody else, do you know what you're doing next?

Oh? I do, Yeah, I have.

I'm I'm i'd say two thirds of the way through a book that is I'm not. I don't usually talk about what it's about because I but I in general terms.

I'll give you you know what I'll do.

I'll give you the working title and you can guess. Okay, it's called replaceable you.

Oh, there is some of that.

There's you know, there's want to be. Do we want to be? You know androids part us, part machine part Well.

Maybe it's when you die? Is it part and die? What you save download into computer?

We'll see, you'll see.

Mary. I, now that I have chatted with you, I love you even more. I am telling you. I I gush you are you make. Your work makes me so happy. I am fascinated by the things you write about, and your sense of humor just speaks to me. I sit there giggling and going, I love this woman. I am so thrilled that you came and spent some time.

I just gave away the name of her next book after next, So there you go. That's right, Mary, Thank you. Wait to see the next book.

I just adore her her.

You know, you've got a taste of the kind of stuff that she gets into. And she what's interesting to me is she she really does. I didn't want to say it to her because I thought, you know, she might misunderstand me. But She's kind of like the Howard Stern of literature. You know, she goes, she goes for the stuff. Howard always talked about the stuff that nobody wanted to get into and everybody thought was prurient.

But actually, but she does endure serving. She's not doing it an.

Curian way, and it's intelligent. And by the way, everyone has sex. Hello, you like to kind of know, well, not ever, I some point when you look at me when.

You're staying on David's on the screen.

Okay, I'm sorry, he's having sex right now, baby, what do you got?

You know?

When I saw the movie the right stuff, I actually I misinterpreted the whole time.

Somebody's been.

Got so I had it, you know, because we had Mary on and she does so many weird things in science right. Oh, she comes from all these different angles. I wanted to throw a few things at you. Is it a science myth or a science fact? And whether you're able to determine whether it's real.

Or is.

Number one, we use only ten percent scent of our brain falls.

Meth I know I'm using at least seventeen, So go ahead, you're correct.

We use our entire brain even when we sleep. Yes, there is a dark side.

To the moon. There is a dark side to the moon.

There's a dark side to the moon, I believe.

Well, like there's drug like drug dealing.

On their No, no, if I if I remember correctly, the dark side of the moon is always the dark side of the moon because of the perfect rotation the moon has around us, so that we really only are exposed to one side of the moon in its entire immutation.

Thank you, Pink Floyd.

Is that correct?

So you're saying there is a dark side of the moon.

Yeah, yeah, but now I'm no.

No. By the way, what I loved is you weren't just wrong. You gave a whole definition. You got a whole thing a paragraph. And when they discovered it and they went and what was your essay?

What's your essay? What's your essay?

Scer well, what's the perfect score?

Sixteen?

Nowhere near that? So far off of that. If I had a better breakfast that day, they say breakfast it's the most important, and if I remember to bring a pencil, those two things could.

Have really a different instead of state school versus versus.

Private Okay, Uh.

The human stomach can dissolve razor blades in two hours.

No. First of all, I never heard this.

The first time I'm hearing this, I don't know if it's fact or fiction. Dissolve a razor blade in two hours? Yes, if it also washed it down with coca cola, it can.

It can. The we can make it.

The Human Summit can do that. Yes.

Uh.

There were active volcanoes on the Moon.

Yes, yeah, they would have to be active volcanoes on the Moon at some point.

Yes, yes, there were.

In fact, when the dinosaurs were on this planet, there were on the dark side.

There you go. Water conducts electricity.

I believe it does.

Okay, that's got to be a trick question. You think it does because they don't. They tell you don't.

Put the radio standing in the water.

They tell you on the radio next. I know, I know. But does it conduct him? Does it not? I would think yes, yes, yes.

You would think you would think it is.

I knew, I knew, Yes, I know.

Water is actually an insulator, which means it doesn't conduct electricity.

So is it complete? Bs.

We see the stories of a guy through a radio into the bathtub to kill the guy.

That's no, no, no, no, no, no no, no, do not do that. No, no, that will kill him right away.

Please do not.

No danger will Robinson don't.

By the way, I'll just go on to say most of what you hear.

Say, don't do You're not self listening to the podcast, right, Yeah, that would be a bad idea. The danger comes from the minerals and chemicals in the water, which are made up of electrically charged ion.

No, it's kind of a trick question.

Okay, well, let's do one more, one more, one more. Sugar makes kids hyper, well.

Not necessarily, no, no.

No, really, they do not.

That is actually a myth based on a nineteen seventy eight study that was faulty. There has since been double blind studies which has shown that sugar doesn't do any sort of hyper All.

Right, well, it made me fat and I'm sorry to put that sentence in the past tense.

Fat.

You look good, by oh, for God's sake, you're a very nice, lying son of them.

No, it says I'm getting all my eyes drying out. I'm not seeing as well. So thank you everybody for listening.

Thank you, everybody. Take it away now.

Really no, really, that's another episode of really no really comes to a close. I know you're wondering, is it true that an American and Russian astronaut had sex in space for research purposes? Well, that answer in a moment, but first let's thank our guest, Mary Roach.

MS.

Roach is on x slash, Twitter at Mary underscore Roach and her website is Maryrooach dot net.

As always, you can find us online at reallynoreally dot com.

We're also on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and threads that Really No Really podcast. Our full episodes are on YouTube and if you're watching there, then hit the subscribe button and take that bells.

You're updated when we release new videos.

If you ever really no really, let us know and wonderful things may happen. And thank you for listening, subscribing, and sharing the show. As we enter our second season, we love having you with us. Keep coming and maybe bring a friend. We release new episodes every Tuesday, so make sure to follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And now, have American and Russian astronauts had space.

Sex for science?

Well, NASA says absolutely not, and American astronauts.

Famously avoid the topic.

But according to a report in the Guardian from twenty ten, cosmic couplings have taken place. Because future space missions could be conducted by married couples, researchers wanted to know if sex and zero gravity was even possible. Twenty positions were tested via computer simulation and produced ten possible positions for real life testing. Of these, only four tested as possible

So good luck, brave adventurers.

Really really m.

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