Talking 'Gulp' With Mary Roach

is all about the adventures of the digestive system. Yes, you'll recognize it in stores are online because it has a big mouth on the front, opening up telling lolling out um esophagus, waiting for that food to begin this epic journey through the body and uh. And it is if you If you've never read Mary Roach before, I just will remind you that she's the author of Stiff, which is the book about the life of human goodavers, about about how we relate to dead bodies, how science

has studied dead bodies. Um. She also wrote Bunk, which is about sex. She wrote Spook, which is about scientific investigations of the afterlife, and more recently she wrote Packing for Mars, which is about about human space exploration and a lot about the scientific research that has gone into making it possible for humans to travel to Mars and even return. And she brings that same level of research and humor and inquisition into this topic, which I think

is a wonderful topic really, from from mouth to sincter. Yeah, I mean, she brings so much humor to it, but but not in a way that which she's belittling the subject matter, like she dynystifies the subject matter, has a few laughs with you, but you never feel like she's exploiting the topic or anyone. I mean, it's just her books are great from from start to finish. Indeed, So, um, let's go ahead and get into it. Well, welcome to

our podcast, Stuff to blow your mind. Thanks for taking the time out of day to chat with us about your excellent new book Goal. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we were so excited. Um. In our podcast we try to cover a range of topics, whether or not we're talking about cloeca or um the role of regurgitation with vulters um. So the book is right up our alley. I love the house, the forks. It's really great. Thank you,

Thank you so much. It's really nice to hear that I have the whole Oh you do Yeah, very cool. It would be an honor to say we've been helpful with Yeah. Yeah, that was my training. That's where I started out with my all right, familiarized myself with because it's the whole tube, the whole tube. Yeah, well, thank you so much. Well, I guess we should just go ahead and launch into this. We wanted to know from you. There's so much researching here and so many wonderful little

nooks and crannies. Was there anything that really surprised you, um, any sort of discovery during your research period that you were you have the big moment of like, wow, I didn't see it in that context before. It was completely new to you. The entire trip down the food shoot, every every turn, I mean even just like even just in the mouse. The saliva is something that I just assumed, like most people, that it was for moistening the food

that you need to swallow to make the bowlers. But I was completely blown away by the fact that it's, uh, it's got like five other functions including I love this the enzymes and not just in saliva, but in some of the other digestive enzymes further on down the line there. But these are the enzymes when you hear about laundry detergent that says new new improved biz with stain fighting enzymes.

These are digestive enzymes, so you know the stuff that you spill when you spill your food that is meant to be in your mouth onto your clothes. Um, those enzymes are you know, amalas lipase protein as these are digestive enzymes. That just don't know that I found that kind of the whole uh laundry detergence like a digestive

tract in a box. I mean there's obviously other if there's your basic soap type products as well, but I just the fact that these were salivary enzymes and that art conservators use use their own saliva to clean because of the enzymes. Again, they need a delicate something to break down, maybe the egg wash or something like that. Uh, that they've been known to to use their own saliva. So obviously you're hitting up a lot of different places talking to a lot of people about the book right now.

What's your favorite part of goal that no one's asking you about? Um, Well, John Stewart was the only one to bring up rectal alimentation rectal feeding, so that's a that's an interesting I had a whole chapter and he's the only one that's brought that up a whole chapter on and we didn't have time, of course to get into it in any detail. So um, and I don't know if you want to get into it in in a detail, but I I just I have a chapter called eating Backward uh is the digestive track to two

Way Street. And this was fascinating to me that you can, I mean the small intestines where most of the absorption goes on, like eight percent of what you know absorption of nutrients. But the rectum does absorb. You can absorb you know, glucose and salt and some short change fatty acids.

There's some absorption that can go on. Also drugs. It's a it's a very effective drug delivery system if you for some reason you can't swallow them like the ancient Maya used to use the rectum because he doesn't have to do. The drug goes straight into the bloodstream, doesn't have to be processed by the stomach or the liver. It's just like booms into the into the blood. Then then you don't if it's one of those hallucinogens that would make you throw up. You don't have that problem either.

So it's so people had some creative uses for the rectum. Uh I don't know.