When animals break the law (featuring Mary Roach)

Daniel and Kelly chat with Mary Roach about her latest book (Fuzz), and how she goes about getting the incredible stories that appear in her books. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Daniel Whiteson?

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• 1:44Kelly Weinersmith?

  So, Mary, what is the most embarrassing situation you've ever been in as part of your book research?

• 1:51Speaker 04

  That's an easy one. That one, not surprisingly, was for Bonk. The subtitle of that book is The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. So that is a book about the delightful awkwardness of taking sex, arousal, orgasm, all of that, all the physiological components of it, and putting it in a laboratory setting with, you know, a couple doing things and then somebody in a white coat taking notes. And so I wanted to get at that central awkwardness of what I just described. And I found this researcher in London who's doing something with four dimensional ultrasound, so 3D movies, basically, in ultrasound. It was a diagnostic tool.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  And he wanted to do one that was actually a penis and a vagina interacting. And I said, well, I would like to be there when you do that, to observe. And he wrote back, well, if your organization can provide some volunteers, then I'd be happy to do that. So my organization asked its husband.

• 2:56Kelly Weinersmith?

  If you want to hear the rest of that story, you'll have to listen to the rest of the podcast. So on today's episode of Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe, we have the amazing Mary Roach on the show.

• 3:20Daniel Whiteson?

  Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and I'm rarely embarrassed by my own science.

• 3:26Kelly Weinersmith?

  I am Kelly Wiener-Smith, and my science has put me in loads of embarrassing situations, or maybe gross and embarrassing.

• 3:35Daniel Whiteson?

  All right, tell us quickly, what is the grossest thing you've ever done for science?

• 3:39Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, my gosh. All right, hands down. So I hate the smell of fish. And I worked on a project where we were trying to figure out what kind of impact the coal-powered power plants on Lake Erie were having on the local fish populations. These surveys happen every 20 years or so. And the way you do it is you essentially put a net into the water that gets sucked into these power plants. And the water is used to like, cool things down, generate steam, blah, blah, blah. But the fish get smooshed against the net. And as the temperature of the water heats up, they all die. And so not all of them, but many of them. Some of the power plants pull the nets out and dump them into dump trucks, which literally fill up halfway or more with dead fish. And somebody has to go in there, including in the middle of the summer,

• 4:20Kelly Weinersmith?

  with waiters on and like sub sample and identify what species of fish are in here? How many are in here? Do any of them look like they have fungal diseases and would have died anyway? So I had to like become very intimate with dump trucks full of dead fish under a hot summer sun. And that is the most disgusting thing I've done in my whole life. And I hate the smell of fish and I still don't eat fish. I just can't, I just can't.

• 4:43Daniel Whiteson?

  Sounds like a good job for your future robot research assistant.

• 4:46Kelly Weinersmith?

  Bring the robot overlords on. That sounds great. I mean, I learned a lot about fish identification that summer, but I would maybe give up that knowledge if I could have avoided that job.

• 4:56Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, sometimes doing science means getting all mucky and dirty. And sometimes explaining science requires you to get in weird situations, sometimes scary, sometimes embarrassing, sometimes just downright odd.

• 5:09Kelly Weinersmith?

  But always when they're explained by Mary Roach, absolutely hilarious. So let's just jump right into the interview. Let's not make people wait.

• 5:22Kelly Weinersmith?

  On today's show, we're incredibly lucky to have Mary Roach. Mary has been my absolute favorite pop sci author since I picked up Stiff as an undergrad in 2003. Stiff, Spook, Bonk, Packing for Mars, Gulp, Grunt and Fuzz have all been New York Times bestsellers. And I have been at the bookstore the day each of them have been released so that I could get my copy as soon as possible. So if you've ever wondered, how many lasers does it take to keep birds away from the Vatican's flowers? Can you lower the national debt by doing a more thorough job of chewing your food? What's it like to go to the bathroom in space? What happens at a body farm? Have scientists been able to find the soul? Or any other equally weird questions? We've got the gal for you. Her latest book is Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law. Welcome to the show, Mary.

• 6:07Speaker 04

  Hey, thanks. Thank you so much, you guys.

• 6:09Kelly Weinersmith?

  I'm so excited to have you on the show. I got to talk to you once about cosmonauts and that was so much fun.

• 6:14Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, the cosmonauts love those guys.

• 6:17Kelly Weinersmith?

  They're special. To start off, so one of the things that I love the most about your books is that there are topics that I didn't know I was dying to learn about. And then as soon as I start reading, it turns out I was dying to learn about these topics. So let's get started with fuzz. How did you pick the topic for the book fuzz? What was the thought process there? And then in general, how do you pick your book topics?

• 6:35Speaker 04

  I always wished that I had the really succinct and fantastic origin story for a book. You know, like that there was something in my past that triggered this passion that I had to spend two years down this rabbit hole that had meant everything to me. It's never like that. It's like I turned in a book and I would like to do another one. That means I need an idea for another book and I don't have one. So it's this process of just sometimes looking back at things that I've covered before or something I heard about. In this case, I had heard about a lab up in Ashland, Oregon,

• 7:15Speaker 04

  the National Wildlife Forensics Laboratory. And there's a woman there who was an expert and published a paper on how to tell real versus artificial or counterfeit tiger penis, which is that this is used medicinally sometimes for virility. And she wrote this paper on how to tell real versus counterfeit tiger penis. And that's the thing I get kind of excited about, that there's a scientist out there whose area of expertise is detection of counterfeit tiger penis. Because of course, you know, if somebody's smuggling this stuff in, you need to prove that it is an endangered species in order to arrest the person. So she needs to be able to tell, is it real or not? And happily, it is almost always fake. It's usually cow or deer penis,

• 7:58Speaker 04

  which is a lot bigger than a tiger penis. Anyway.

• 8:01Kelly Weinersmith?

  Does she do it by morphology or genetics?

• 8:04Speaker 04

  Oh, by morphology. It is so easy to tell. Like a tiger penis, you can't see, because this is audio, but a tiger penis is like, it's a little tiny thing. You know, and a deer penis is pretty big.

• 8:12Daniel Whiteson?

  But does either one actually have an effect on, you know, male performance? Does it really matter if it's counterfeit?

• 8:18Speaker 04

  Like most of these things, I think, you know, maybe kind of psychologically inspiring, but not the tiger penis. That'd be a little depressing. I don't think there's any peer reviewed controlled studies suggesting that any of these penises have any solid effect on male performance. But regardless, people smuggle them in and out of the country. I thought, oh, well, that's an interesting line of forensics. Forensics is interesting. Well, maybe I'll go up there and I'll talk to her, which I did. And it was a wonderful morning. We had dried animal penises laid out on the table. And I took some pictures, which is still on my phone. Every now and then the grandkids are like, what's on your phone? I'm like, no, no, no, no. There's a lot of stuff on my phone we can't look at because I'll have to explain.

• 9:02Speaker 04

  So I thought, this is going well. And then I went in to talk to the director of the lab. And I said, well, here's what I love to do, or that I need to do with the book. I have to be on the scene. And I imagined, you know, going in when they raided a fake tiger penis sweatshop in China. Like, you know, we'd go in and there'd be these poor people, and they have to do this. They carve little barbs because felines have barbs on their, the penis, little sticky uppy things, sort of like at the rental car, you know, don't back up on this, spikes like that. So somebody has to carve those. And I thought, we're doing hunched over carving these penises and we'll go in and it'll be this incredible scene. I had this whole scenario in my head and then I'd find other things to write about.

• 9:45Speaker 04

  And then the guy goes, you know, legally, if it's an open case investigation, you can't go along. You just can't. It's the law. No. So that just shut me down. And so I went home and I was like, ah, damn. But then I came across this book, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals, which made me think, this is a historical book, you know, about people used to put animals on trial that had misbehaved. And I thought, what if the animals were the perpetrators? And I say perpetrators in quotes, obviously animals follow their instinct, not laws. So what if we turn it around? And what if the animals are not the victims, but the perpetrators?

• 10:28Speaker 04

  And then it turns out there's this whole area of science called human wildlife conflict with conferences and experts and textbooks. And I had never heard of human wildlife conflict, had no idea people devote their lives to figuring out how to coexist with wild animals. So that's a very long winded way of saying that's what happened. This is how I got my idea for the book.

• 10:51Kelly Weinersmith?

  I mean, it's a great story.

• 10:53Daniel Whiteson?

  In general, I'd love to hear more about how you got into science writing. I mean, how did you identify this sort of opening in people's appetite that wasn't being completely served, or you know, this itch that people wanted scratching in a certain way?

• 11:05Speaker 04

  Well, again, not through a longstanding passion of mine. I was one of those people who thought in high school and in college, "Oh, science is boring. I want to be creative," which is so stupid. There's so much creativity in science. It wasn't something that I had thought about in college, or even when I first graduated. I was writing for the magazine of the Sunday paper here in the Bay Area, San Francisco Chronicle, just general stories, kind of a little bit weird Mary Roach-y, but not science-related. And my editor went to another publication called Hippocrates, which was more focused

• 11:45Speaker 04

  on health and medicine, but they still let me be Mary Roach and do kind of odd stories, which was fun. And then from there, an editor from Discover magazine said, "Would you like to do these weird Mary Roach stories for us? We are a science magazine. I know you're not a science writer, but why don't you do this?" And I was like, "Okay." So I did that, and those were the most interesting stories I'd done. And I loved writing about science, since I don't have a science background. They tend to be not heavy science. You know, they're definitely science for people who have mistakenly thought that they don't like science, or that they don't think science is interesting. I'm kind of a gateway drug to science writing.

• 12:28Speaker 04

  I'm heavy on narrative and fun and quirk. For me, the science and the discovery of learning about these different fields is tremendous fun and really gratifying. But am I really a science writer? I guess so. I don't know.

• 12:42Kelly Weinersmith?

  Of course you are.

• 12:43Speaker 04

  I look at real science writers, and you know, they're just, I can't understand their books.

• 12:49Kelly Weinersmith?

  I think you are the kind of science writer where people actually learn something because they make it to the end of the book, which I think is huge. And like, that's a real skill, getting people to stay to the end of the book.

• 12:57Speaker 04

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 12:59Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yes, you're welcome.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  That is my goal. Even just to the end of the chapter, man, I am always fighting for that. I really am. Yeah, I'm always sort of policing my words and my sentences going in. Has it been, it's been a couple pages, but since there's been anything really fun here or surprising, like, you know, let's punch it up. They're gonna put the book down. I know they're gonna put the book down any second.

• 13:21Kelly Weinersmith?

  I feel like it's an interesting activity when you're writing to figure out how long has it been since the funny thing that I said and then trying to not like overdo it.

• 13:28Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 13:29Kelly Weinersmith?

  Zach and I had a problem where a couple of chapters, we felt like we had gotten corny and we were just overdoing it. But you know, you want to make sure they come at a regular pace. It's an art.

• 13:35Speaker 04

  And you guys do it so well.

• 13:37Kelly Weinersmith?

  Thanks.

• 13:38Speaker 04

  It is some really tough stuff that you're asking people to come along with you for, and you managed to keep it fun, and that is extraordinary.

• 13:46Kelly Weinersmith?

  Thank you.

• 13:47Daniel Whiteson?

  I think you identified something really important, though, which is that a lot of science writing is done in a way that isn't actually that understandable, and yet a lot of people still love to consume it, which has always been something of a mystery to me. Like, I read Stephen Hawking, and I don't understand a lot of his books. And then people tell me, like, I loved A Brief History of Time, and I'm like, really? Did you actually understand it? Or did you just appreciate being in the presence of what felt like a great mind? So I wonder what people are going for sometimes with those books, if they actually want to understand, or if they just like, want to hang out with Stephen Hawking.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  I do too. I don't have an advanced degree, but I don't feel that I'm a moron. You know, I'll pick up, I don't know, Brian Greene, maybe. These are really gifted, super intelligent, successful writers, but I'm like, I don't know. Or even like astronomy for people in a hurry. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 14:37Daniel Whiteson?

  Astrophysics for people in a hurry.

• 14:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I'm like, I don't know, I'm not following along. I'm falling behind. Help me, I'm falling behind. And I know these books are huge sellers, and I'm always curious about that, how many people read it all the way through and really understand it in the way the author means it to be understood. I'd love to know that. Can we get AI to give us an answer on that?

• 14:59Kelly Weinersmith?

  I actually threw out my copy of Hawking's book because I realized I only had it on my shelf so that I could be the kind of person who looked like they could read that book. But I had only gotten through 10 pages, and I was like, this book being on my shelf is a lie. And so I kindly got rid of it.

• 15:16Speaker 04

  I'm glad to hear that. I mean, no disrespect to Mr. Hawking, but.

• 15:20Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, yeah, he's clearly way smarter than I will ever be.

• 15:22Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, when you're writing your books, you dive deep into a topic, you talk to the experts, you must at some point pass over the threshold where you're something of an expert in the topic yourself. How do you keep hold of what the reader knows and what they don't understand? And what this must feel like to them the first time they're hearing about it? That's a real challenge, something you pull off amazingly in your book.

• 15:42Speaker 04

  That is always a concern that, over the course of the two or three years that I work on a book, have I actually learned enough that I'm assuming a level of knowledge on the part of my reader that doesn't exist? Because we are starting out at the same place, the place of just curiosity and near-total ignorance. And then I'm moving along through speaking to researchers and experts, I'm actually getting to the point where I'm understanding things in a way that I now think, is it completely unclear what I'm saying here? And that's a little tough. I do have, my editor at Norton is, she's a poet and a novelist, she has no background in science. She's a good editor for me for that reason,

• 16:27Speaker 04

  because she will sometimes just put a note in the margin, I, Mary, you've lost me here, or I don't know what you're talking about. That is helpful. That's why I'm so excited to talk to somebody who is an expert in their field, and when their field is something, you know, a little complicated, like, you know, stem cells, say. I mean, I'm so grateful to find somebody who can explain it to me, who has a sense of what I don't know, which is almost everything, and can then unpack it in a way that I understand. So, part of what my job is, is looking for those people who I'm going to then force to be

• 17:05Speaker 04

  an unpaid tutor for days on end, and for endless emails. So, I'm not entirely clear, can you just explain? That's so necessary to keep in your head where people are at, and whether you've left them behind. Because I get, let's be honest, left behind by a lot of science.

• 17:26Daniel Whiteson?

  I have this theory that Agatha Christie would be a great science writer because she seems to have this ability of like, obviously, understanding what's actually happening in her story and introducing the facts in a way that the reader discovers them and unravels the mystery in an organic way. Seems to me sort of the same challenge to like, write a mystery novel and keep in mind what the reader knows and doesn't know. I find that impossible. I can't imagine writing a murder mystery.

• 17:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is why I never read murder mysteries. Or even when I see knives out, I'm like, wait, wait, did she, wait a minute. And I'm always making my husband, stop, wait, stop, stop, wait a minute. And he hates it. He's like, can't we just keep going with it? Can we just keep this going? No, but I don't know, who's the guy? Is that the brother? Or is that the, wait, what? It's the same kind of thing. You're asking people to keep in their head the facts that you explained three chapters ago. And it's easy for you because you learned it as the author. I have in the book that I just turned in, there's a moment where I'm like, as we learned and forgot in chapter three, is nobody remembers.

• 18:28Kelly Weinersmith?

  How do the conversations with the experts often go? And has it changed over the like 20 so years that you've been writing? Because you know, sometimes I'll try to interview someone and they'll go right over my head. And I'm like, no, no, no, bring it down. And some of them can, and some of them can't. And I also feel like the relationship with some of the experts has changed over time as NSF keeps telling all the scientists that we are also communicators. And they feel like, but they're not. What is that like?

• 18:52Speaker 04

  You get a sense of this in the first five minutes, I think, of a conversation by phone or on Zoom, of whether a person's going to really be able to do that. And sometimes I just, in my head, stop the, you know, I just ask one or two more token questions and I thank the person. And then it says, oh, it never happened. You know, I will say, can we back up? And can you explain whatever it is? And then the explanation is different, but also incomprehensible for me. So there isn't much to be done there. And that's why I just, when I find someone who actually enjoys explaining things in an accessible way, I just want to, you know, I can't kiss them because we are on the phone, but I'm just.

• 19:35Speaker 04

  Like, okay, you're now going to be my guy for induced pluripotent stem cells. I'm going to be pestering you on and off for the next six months and not paying you for that. I'll send you a book. But it hasn't changed. No, I think that's always been there. I mean, I once was assigned to do a story. I wanted to go and you know those planes that fly into hurricanes? I had this idea that'd be a fun thing to do. And there was a hurricane hunter plane that was going into a certain kind of storm, not, in fact, a hurricane. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do that. And there was this meteorologist on board and it was almost like a form of hostility. He would not explain things in a way that anybody who's not a meteorologist could understand.

• 20:17Speaker 04

  And I kept trying, well, let's pretend I'm a sixth grader at somebody's barbecue party and just talk to me like that. And he wouldn't. And so we got down, it was in Monterey, we landed, and I called my editor and just said, forget it. You know, maybe you can pay my expenses, which aren't a lot, from here to Monterey, and we're done. Because nothing can't do it.

• 20:40Kelly Weinersmith?

  What a bummer.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know.

• 20:42Kelly Weinersmith?

  I love your expecting someone to be a tutor approach. I always have trouble figuring out how much research I should do before I reach out to someone. And I think that's because early on, I asked for an interview and they said, well, tell me what you want to ask me about. And I sent them my questions and they said, nope, these are not the most interesting things that I do. I will not be interviewed by you. And they like shut me down. And I was like, oh. And I was hoping you'd help me understand this stuff, but okay. And so I also feel like some people I talk to, it's almost like they don't respect the job of a pop sci author. Like NSF keeps telling everyone, you do these broader impacts, scientists can communicate. And I feel like a lot of scientists I've talked to now feel like, oh, if you're a scientist, you also can do science communication just as easily, like you learn that along the way. But it's a very different kind of writing. And so I feel like I encounter people who are very hostile, they don't feel like I've

• 21:26Kelly Weinersmith?

  done enough, and then also people who are like, well, I could do what you do.

• 21:30Speaker 04

  I think to go back to your previous question, not that there's anything wrong with the current question. To go back to your previous question, one thing that has changed for me over 20 years is that, and this is a wonderful thing when it happens, if I write to someone that I've never met and I say, hey, you know, I saw that you're working on such and such, and I'm working on a book, and I always have a little bio at the bottom of my email. And when someone writes back and says, oh, I've read one of your books, or I'm familiar with what you do, sure, happy to talk, I'd love to talk. I know that that's gonna go well, because they know the kind of weirdo that I am and the level at which I'm writing, and their enthusiasm suggests this is gonna be just what I need. Another thing that's changed is a lot of times when you reach out by email, you just don't get a reply.

• 22:15Speaker 04

  And I don't know if that's one of those people who hates science communicators, or it's somebody who doesn't check their email, or it's not a useful, I don't know what it is, but there's a lot more of just never hearing back through, whether it's LinkedIn or a university email address. I think it's easier now for people to feel okay ignoring you, because no one, eh, who checks their email? Nobody checks their email anymore. You know, you gotta text me. Well, I don't have your number. So, that's different.

• 22:45Daniel Whiteson?

  There's a gentleman in my department who I often go to with really hardcore questions about like general relativity, and his attitude is, you're wasting your time, there's no way you could ever explain these topics to the general public. And then he gives me a really excellent explanation, which I rely on for the podcast, and he keeps doing it. So he's quite grumpy about it sometimes, but he's also excellent at it. And it seems to me that there's this sort of conflict in a lot of scientists. They feel like, I just wanna be left alone to do my science, but they also feel like, hey, the public should support us, and this is important. And I think it's vital that people do the kind of work you do, because not every scientist can be out there explaining it to sixth graders. And I was wondering, like, if you feel sort of any hostility from scientists, or any

• 23:30Daniel Whiteson?

  sort of like, you know, weirdness that you're telling their story instead of them, what do you feel like is your relationship with the science community there?

• 23:38Speaker 04

  I don't feel hostility. From the people who respond to me and agree to talk, I think that usually goes well. There was a woman who on Amazon was very put off by Gulp, which is Adventures on the Alimentary Canal. It's, you know, the tube between nose and [BLEEP] and all the weird things that go on in there. And she was very, very angry that I hadn't mentioned the mucus layer in the stomach. Basically, her feeling was that people like me are stealing science, making money off of it, cheapening it, dumbing it down. I looked her up on Rate My Professor and she

• 24:22Speaker 04

  had, it was very mixed. There were people who were like, she's a really great professor and I learned a lot. And then there are people like, she's such a [BLEEP], I hate her. I do not deserve that D. These are people who aren't reaching out to me. They're obviously talking for the most part behind my back. I'm sure that that's out there. I don't get a lot of it directed at me through email or, oh yeah, I don't read my Amazon reviews anymore. And as I hope that you don't either.

• 24:47Kelly Weinersmith?

  No.

• 24:48Speaker 04

  There was a reviewer who said the same kind of thing, that making science accessible, I was disrespecting it. Or, you know, that kind of reaction exists out there for sure, for sure. Probably far more people than I want to believe feel that way about me. But they're nice enough to keep it to themselves.

• 25:06Kelly Weinersmith?

  I bet that's the minority opinion. But let's take a break and then when we come back, we will talk about animals getting in trouble.

• 25:23Speaker 05

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by breakout singer-songwriter Alex Warren.

• 25:43Speaker 06

  To this day, Ordinary would not have done anything and I would have not been able to put it out if Book Talk didn't back it. It up and if my wife and her friend didn't back it up.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 25:52Speaker 06

  Pretty crazy how like just one thing.

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  Right.

• 25:55Speaker 06

  I mean, you, I bet you, we could point to nine different things in our careers where it's just one thing all of a sudden, if that one thing didn't happen, then I wouldn't be here.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  What you're talking about right now.

• 26:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

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  Is what I've been talking about since the beginning of my career. There's these things outside of you.

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  Yeah.

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  That make everything happen. These other forces somehow came into contact with each other.

• 26:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

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  Help propel you to this place.

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  It's just insane.

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  Experience before the moment. A Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 26:31Speaker 07

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• 27:47Speaker 07

  Hear the full conversation at ibm.com/smarttalks or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 27:56Kelly Weinersmith?

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extenture, Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extenture is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extenture is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection, common cold, sinus infection,

• 28:41Kelly Weinersmith?

  inflammation in the nose, flu or flulike symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extenture. Learn more at extenture.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 29:05Kelly Weinersmith?

  So Daniel and I have this long-running debate about whether or not Virginia or California is better. And, oh, I guess you're probably going to fall on the California side, but I think Virginia is clearly better. But we were going to each ask a question about animal problems that are in our area. And I have tons of trouble with deer. We have like 40 deer in our hayfields. Last night I counted, and they are also in the roads.

• 29:30Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 29:31Kelly Weinersmith?

  And why don't they get out of the way when I'm driving towards them? So yeah, what's going on with the deer? And how do we get them out of the roads?

• 29:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, the deer in the headlights phenomenon. When you think about animals not getting out of the way, an animal in the road sees a car coming at it, and it perceives it as a predator, which makes sense, like this thing is coming at me. I don't know. And so there's this thing, flight initiation distance, which is how long can I stay where I am? Maybe if I'm eating something delicious, how long can I stay here before I actually really need to get out of the way because I'm going to be hit or grabbed or eaten or whatever it is? But in general, the car hasn't been around that long, the automobile. So the evolution hasn't kind of incorporated, you know what, there's things going 60 miles per hour. So you need to like update your sense of how quickly do I need to run? How quickly do I need to get out of the way?

• 30:22Speaker 04

  So there's some confusion with that. I mean pigeons are obviously really good at it. You can never hit a pigeon with your car. And I'm not saying that I try to do that. But the other thing going on is one of the ways that an animal can detect or a person for that matter, the way we can tell how quickly something's coming at us is looming, like it's getting bigger and bigger. Like how quickly is it getting bigger and bigger? That kind of tells us how quickly it's coming at us. And animals are not with cars again, because they're very fast. Pedestrians too, you know, the faster the car, the harder it is to judge. You know, how quickly is it coming at us? Deer are active, you know, it's dusk and night. And when what's coming at you is just two pinpoints of light. All you can see is these two pinpoints of light.

• 31:05Speaker 04

  It's very hard to see is that looming, is it getting bigger? It just may look like two points of light, not changing. So you can imagine the deer looking at that, these two points of light going, huh? Couple of points of light, huh?

• 31:21Speaker 04

  By the time they figure out that there's a car attached, it's too late. And that is really bad for deer, but also really bad for people. Because, you know, people often say, oh, what's the most danger? People ask me, what is the most dangerous animal of all the animals that you wrote about? Well, first of all, I would say, you know, bacteria or viruses, but they're not really animals. So deer in terms of the number of people, not because you hit the deer, but you swerved to not hit the deer and you hit a tree or you went off a cliff. So deer are very, very dangerous in that way. The other thing that happens is a deer is running across the road in front of you and your eye is on that deer and deer, there's usually more than one. So you are looking at that deer, you hit the brakes

• 32:06Speaker 04

  and then what you end up hitting is the deer behind that one that's also crossing at the same time.

• 32:12Daniel Whiteson?

  That exact thing happened to me as a teenager.

• 32:15Kelly Weinersmith?

  Did you hit the second one?

• 32:16Daniel Whiteson?

  I hit the second one, yeah, exactly. Went through the windshield.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:19Daniel Whiteson?

  I like looked at it deep in the eyes before it bounced off.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:23Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 32:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it's

• 32:24Daniel Whiteson?

  Terrifying.

• 32:25Speaker 04

  Really dangerous when it's a tall animal like a moose or an elk because you're just hitting the legs and you're knocking the legs out from under and the whole body and the antlers come crashing down on the roof and the windshield. So camels are a problem in the Middle East. Lot of broken necks. It's bad. It's bad stuff.

• 32:45Kelly Weinersmith?

  I was interested in the various ways that people have come up with to try to keep the deer off the road. Some of them were fairly hilarious and I love that you introduced this topic with the woman who called into the radio show. Would you share that story with us?

• 32:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, Donna. Donna called. It was, I forget where this, it was a call-in radio program and this woman called in and said, "I have a pet pee. Why do they put deer-crossing signs in these areas of high traffic? Why would you put it there?" The guy's like, "There's a silas." He goes, "It sounds like you think that they're placing the signs." So it is like, she didn't understand that you put the signs where the deer are crossing. It does not, you don't just choose where you're going to tell the deer to cross.

• 33:37Daniel Whiteson?

  The deer can't read the signs.

• 33:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 33:41Speaker 04

  The tone of the DJ is, it was a mix of incredulity and kindness, Donna. It sounds as though.

• 33:49Kelly Weinersmith?

  I appreciate the kindness, though. I feel like that's part of what made it such a charming, funny story.

• 33:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, they put the sign right here. It was like right before there's a curve and it's a terrible place to tell the deer to cross.

• 34:02Daniel Whiteson?

  If only we could tell the deer what to do. Well, these stories of like human-animal interactions, human wildlife interactions, I think are really fascinating from like a public health point of view and a forest management point of view and out here in the wonderful state of California, as of course you know, we deal a lot with bears. My family goes camping a lot. Recently, we had this experience where we went camping and of course, we had a bear bag. We made the mistake of leaving one can of seltzer in the backseat of the car. And there was a bear and it came and it opened the car door and got the seltzer, crunched the seltzer, drank all of it and didn't harm the car at all. It was incredible. Like it used its snout to like open the door somehow. Anyway, bears are very, very smart.

• 34:46Daniel Whiteson?

  And I often wonder like, it must be very challenging to design bear-proof trashcans that are complex enough for bears to not be able to figure them out, but simple enough for humans to be able to figure them out.

• 34:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is the problem. This is the problem. If you go, as I did, I was in Colorado, actually, not California for this chapter, but at one point, the researcher and I were walking down this alley where behind all the restaurants in downtown Aspen. And these bear-proof containers were either broken or not being used, partly because it's difficult. I mean, it's like reading a Stephen Hawking book. It's like, you know, harder than one of those, you know, press while turning aspirin bottles. It was, it required two hands and it was, and you could imagine if you're some restaurant worker who's poorly paid, who's middle of a shift, running out with a bag of garbage, you know, not bothering to lock

• 35:41Speaker 04

  it again. And also, and one of the things that was being done well in an area near Aspen, not Aspen itself, was that they were holding educational talks for the people who worked in the kitchen. The patrons and the restaurant owners have been educated, you know, okay, a fed bear is a dead bear. Like this is what happens. The bears get used to being fed. They keep coming here. There's going to be a conflict and then the bear will be killed. But the people who worked in the kitchen, some of them didn't speak English. They hadn't been told why it's important to lock this container. So they were doing outreach in Spanish in this community, just so that people got it. Like, oh, this is why we do it. And it's a nice thing to do for the bears. But yeah, they're very smart.

• 36:22Speaker 04

  The guy that I spent time with had done a study on bears breaking into minivans in Yosemite. They would break into other cars, but for some reason, it was, so they all knew there's a certain minivan. And he wasn't sure, like I said, is it the fault of the minivan maker? Are they not, is there something about the doors that are easy to pop open? He said, it might be that, but I think it's more that a minivan is a place with lots of children and lots of spilled food and crumbs and soda and a lot of nice smells. And the bears are like, that's the place for me.

• 36:54Daniel Whiteson?

  Same reason dogs like babies. Yeah. Well, you know, I've been to Aspen Center for Physics, of course, is there in Aspen. And many times I've seen a genius theoretical physicist standing in front of one of those things and like unable to open it, you know? And it's like when you stand in a shower in a hotel and you're like, how you turn this thing on and what's hot and what's cold. It's like a new puzzle every single time.

• 37:16Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. The number of times I've called the front, it's like, I'm standing here naked. I can't take a shower because I'm too stupid to figure out your shower system.

• 37:29Kelly Weinersmith?

  And the fancier the hotel, the more obscure the system is.

• 37:33Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh, yes.

• 37:34Kelly Weinersmith?

  And the less likely they already have coffee, which sucks. Give me a motel that's with coffee.

• 37:38Daniel Whiteson?

  Probably bears could figure it out, though. They'd be happily taking showers.

• 37:41Speaker 04

  The bears could figure it out. The bears could figure it out. They're also, there was a guy from Colorado Fish and Wildlife or Fish and Game, I forget what they call themselves there. But he was describing how, you know, up in the hills where there's a lot of delicious food for bears, natural and man-made, they got a lot of break-ins. And he was describing how he came to this one place where the bear had literally just pulled the door out of the frame, just like, like, you know, Incredible Hulk style, pulled it off. But then carefully just set it aside and leaned it against the wall, not like threw it over the deck or knocked it down, just sort of carefully laid it aside. I just, I love that. I love bears.

• 38:26Daniel Whiteson?

  I love megafauna in general. I wish we had more megafauna still in North America, you know?

• 38:31Kelly Weinersmith?

  Like the giant sloths?

• 38:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, the giant sloths. Giant anything would be great. I once did a story on the Gippsland Giant Earthworm, which is this worm that is so, it's the size of a 45 record around, it's big. And I was like, I'm gonna interview this woman who studies. The Gibsonian giant earthworm.

• 38:51Daniel Whiteson?

  You're saying this is an earthworm like the size of a fire hose?

• 38:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:55Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh, my God.

• 38:55Speaker 04

  It is definitely at least that big. And you can hear them moving underground. She goes stomping around in the field and you hear this this sort of gurgling sound as they move through their tunnels. And she was able to pinpoint where it was, dig with the shovel. And like, we saw this glimpse of the giant earthworm like going away down the tunnel. Happily, she didn't cut it in half. But anyway, any giant thing. But I was gonna say, getting back to you, you're talking about how they're broken without, to get the seltzer water, without causing damage. And there are bears that kind of get a reputation. And again, this was in Colorado. There was this one bear that was breaking into cabins and going in. And people would be like, you know what? He didn't touch anything. He just went to the fridge.

• 39:40Speaker 04

  He took out the honey and the yogurt and the beer and shut the door and left. And everything was fine.

• 39:46Daniel Whiteson?

  Help yourself, man.

• 39:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. But and because of that, no one wanted to call him in. And so there was this thought that maybe, you know, that these are the bears that don't get killed by fish and wildlife. And that maybe over time will select for bears that are mellower and better mannered. And that maybe one day bears will just be like, you know, big raccoons, you know, just kind of bumbling around, getting into the garbage.

• 40:10Kelly Weinersmith?

  Are they checking to see if someone is home first? I feel like I'd feel different if I came home and was like, oh, my yogurt is on the counter, a bear must have been here. Or if I was like there while it was eating my yogurt. That would be much eerier.

• 40:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. They prefer to come in when no one's there. But sometimes they don't know. There are stories of a bear coming in, grabbing a chicken off the dining table while people are eating. Or somebody like they're sitting at home and a bear comes through the door and they run and lock themselves in the bathroom. They are sometimes coming in when you're there. And when it's dangerous is often if the person has a dog and the dog is, you know, of course, freaked out and the dog's going after the bear and the bear is in freak out, defensive mode. And if the person tries to come between the dog and the bear, they can redirect the attack onto the person. So that's a bad situation.

• 40:59Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, what do you think more broadly about this interaction between humans and wildlife? A lot of people feel like, oh, we have to protect the humans. We should get rid of the bears. Like, this is why we hunted a lot of megafauna to extinction. But, you know, the bears were there first, right?

• 41:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:12Daniel Whiteson?

  Like, in my neighborhood, people worry about their cats because there's coyotes in the neighborhood. And I'm like, well, you know, coyotes live here. We moved in and brought our cats.

• 41:21Speaker 04

  People are funny about, oh, it's so cruel to keep a cat inside. I've had cats as indoor cats. They're fine with it. You're just projecting on your cat. Your cat doesn't give a [BLEEP]. It wants food and a lap.

• 41:35Daniel Whiteson?

  And the birds are happy if your cat stays inside also.

• 41:37Speaker 04

  Exactly. The birds are happier. Yeah.

• 41:39Kelly Weinersmith?

  So, speaking of the cats, I've talked to a couple of different people who do animal control work, and nobody wants to see someone out there, like, shooting the feral cats. Because we all, like, have warm and fuzzy feelings about the cats, even though they're killing the birds, they're killing the rodents. And so there are a lot of popular programs where the cats are captured, spayed or neutered, and then released again, where they're still, of course, being ecological menaces, but you hope that the numbers don't grow. And it seems like they were doing something similar with the monkeys that you studied in one of the chapters. Can you tell us about the monkeys and also what it was like to get robbed by a monkey?

• 42:13Speaker 04

  Sure, but I did want, on the topic of cats first here, the program in New Zealand is really interesting. Predator-Free New Zealand 2030, which is an attempt to rid the island of stoats, rats.

• 42:26Daniel Whiteson?

  What's a stoat?

• 42:27Speaker 04

  It's like a weasel, a long, tubular, fierce, vicious thing.

• 42:32Kelly Weinersmith?

  But cute.

• 42:32Speaker 04

  But cute. Possums, that's the other one. So they're non-native species. And, you know, New Zealand has flightless birds. So that's like easy pickings if you're a stoat. And the possums, you know, strip the trees and do other things. So there's this desire in order to preserve the native species. There's a program by using poisons to eliminate predators. But there are also, and again, these were brought in, the cats were not native. There's a [BLEEP] ton of feral cats in New Zealand. They brought them in thinking they could get rid of the rats, I think it was. Anyway, if you're going to do Predator-Free New Zealand, you... Rationally should also be getting rid of the feral cats, but that is a flashpoint and you can't do that.

• 43:16Speaker 04

  So that's yeah, interesting.

• 43:18Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, culture, it's so interesting how, you know, human emotions sort of make all of this much more complicated. Like I think the macaques, they're in a culture where you're not supposed to kill animals and so.

• 43:28Speaker 04

  Well, the macaques, yeah, I mean, in India, not just macaques, but elephants as well. Some of the nuisance, quote nuisance animals are also representations of gods. Hanuman is the monkey god. So if you go to a Hanuman temple in India, there's monkeys everywhere and people are, on the one hand, fed up with macaques because they break into houses and they steal things and they're very aggressive. But on the other hand, people are feeding them. It's like making an offering. So they hang around urban areas and temples and are fed at the same time they are despised. And the poor people who are the animal control types are completely fed up.

• 44:10Speaker 04

  It's an intractable problem because people are encouraging them. Also, there's not reliable garbage pickup. I was in Delhi, but also in, in other cities. It's so, there's a lot of food for them and they're very smart, you know, like bears. I was staying at this hotel in Jaipur and around dusk, you look at the rooftops and all of a sudden the monkeys are coming out. And the monkeys, you know, we were in a restaurant and this monkey just all of a sudden is on the rafters and is dropping down onto tables and the waiters have, you know, a stick handy to just threaten the monkey and get to leave. They're everywhere. It's hard to get approval for any kind of control because of the religious overtones of a monkey. To hire monkey catchers, I mean, what's done is to capture them and take them to this big area

• 44:55Speaker 04

  south in the southern part of Delhi, used to be a quarry, this big chunk of land. And so they're captured and brought there, but it's very hard to get somebody to take the job of monkey catcher because you're harassing a monkey and that's, people are not comfortable with that. They're not comfortable with killing them. They're not even comfortable with birth control efforts which have been going on. Just because it's a god. I mean, it's not literally a god, but it's. It's too close for comfort and so it's a big problem. Yeah.

• 45:23Daniel Whiteson?

  So what's going on in this region where it's all just the monkeys? Like the monkeys are in charge. It's like some monkey kingdom?

• 45:28Speaker 04

  I went there. I got in there. It is. It's monkey central. They feed them. It's concentrated in certain areas. It's an old quarry, but it is all overgrown. It's actually a lovely place to be a monkey. It's just a wild space. But there are villages close by and the monkeys are really good at climbing right up over the wall and harassing people in the village. There was a guy there who's like, you cannot even eat a rooty. The monkey will always come and take it. They're not being kept in very well.

• 45:56Kelly Weinersmith?

  I think there's a lot of things that we do when it comes to animal control that makes us feel good, but isn't actually changing anything. I think when you move animals from one place to another, so you know, you've

• 46:06Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 46:06Kelly Weinersmith?

  You mentioned that the monkeys get out. I think a lot of times you move an animal and they've spent their whole life getting used to an area. They know where the food is and now you've dropped them as an adult into an area they don't know. And it seems like in the book you discovered that that's a problem.

• 46:18Speaker 04

  Well, it may be effective for the town from which you removed them, but you've now put them in an area where they're going to figure out where's, say it's a bear, where's the closest town that has a restaurant or that has houses with cat food or what, you know, just attractants, as they say. And they're going to start doing the same thing there. So you've just kind of moved the problem. That's an issue for the control agency or the wildlife folks who decided to do the relocation. If that bear gets into any kind of situation where it's becoming aggressive and it hurts or kills somebody in that new town, now you, the wildlife agency that moved the bear, that translocated the bear, now you are liable now. So you're open to a lawsuit and that has happened.

• 47:03Speaker 04

  There've been some big payouts in situations where that bear that they know is got habituated to food. They know that's a high risk bear and they've moved it and something happened. So that's also a consideration. It works a little better in a younger bear that hasn't gotten set in its ways, but it's very expensive also to do. And the sense is among some of the wildlife control people that it's done in cases where there's a lot of publicity, you know? In other words. You're not going to kill that bear because you're going to get a lot of heat and anger from the public. So it looks good to do that, but it doesn't always work in terms of what the bear's behavior is in the new place. And it's also not necessarily a nice thing

• 47:47Speaker 04

  to do. As you mentioned, this is an animal that knows food sources, knows the terrain in the place that it is. So you're now taking it and putting it somewhere else. There were researchers that looked at the survival of, it was either raccoons or squirrels that had been trans, I think it was squirrels, that had been translocated and very few of them survived. They put radio collars on them. They'd find like a piece of radio collar, you know, it's like all that remains of squirrel 67.

• 48:14Daniel Whiteson?

  Probably torn apart by the local squirrel gangs, right? Not happy to have some new person come eating their nuts.

• 48:20Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 48:21Daniel Whiteson?

  I mean, I know, we feel that way whenever Virginians moved to California. We're like, hey, you know.

• 48:26Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's why I left. That's why I left.

• 48:28Speaker 04

  Stop eating my nuts.

• 48:30Daniel Whiteson?

  Exactly.

• 48:31Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right. Well, let's take a break. And when we get back, we're going to ask Mary about some of the most extreme situations that her work has put her in.

• 48:48Speaker 05

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by my friend, John Legend. What still makes you just sit down at the piano? If you sat down at 9 a.m. and then at noon, you had a full song that you recorded and put in your voice recorder or you recorded at your studio, you just created something brand new that didn't exist when you woke up. What a beautiful feeling it is. I'm always excited to write something new. I've been writing for Broadway, which has been a new challenge with new collaborators and.

• 49:33Speaker 07

  These amazing performers who are triple threats, who can sing and dance and act and do all these amazing things. And I want to keep feeling that. And so that means not resting on my laurels, going out there and continuing to create something new. Experience before the moment. A Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with IBM's Ana Paula Acees about what digital sovereignty actually means in the age of AI.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  AI now moves from somebody operating a system to the technology actually making decisions. So you have to have a much better visibility of what AI is touching, data it is accessing, and where.

• 50:22Speaker 07

  Hear the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.

• 50:26Kelly Weinersmith?

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extentur, Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extentur is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extentur is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection, common cold, sinus infection,

• 51:11Kelly Weinersmith?

  inflammation in the nose, flu or flu-like symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extentur. Learn more at extentur.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 51:34Kelly Weinersmith?

  So Mary, what is the most embarrassing situation you've ever been in as part of your book research?

• 51:41Speaker 04

  That's an easy one. That one, not surprisingly, was for Bonk. The subtitle of that book is The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. So that is a book about the delightful awkwardness of taking sex, arousal, orgasm, all of that, all the physiological components of it, and putting it in a laboratory setting with, you know, a couple doing things and then somebody in a white coat taking notes. So I wanted to get at that central awkwardness of what I just described. And I found this researcher in London who's doing something with four-dimensional ultrasound, so 3D movies, basically, in ultrasound, which is something that surgeons could use,

• 52:24Speaker 04

  say, if you were working on a cleft lip and you wanted to get a sense of how that lip is moving before you did the surgery. And he had, I think it was a Peyronie study that he had done with an erecting penis and looking at before surgery, what am I dealing with? It was a diagnostic tool. And he wanted to do one that was actually a penis and a vagina interacting. And I said, well, I would like to be there when you do that, to observe. And he wrote back, well, if your organization can provide some volunteers, then I'd be happy to do that. So my organization asked its husband. And my husband is such a good sport, you know?

• 53:09Speaker 04

  He had said, oh, sex research, sign me up. You know, he was like, well, I don't know, whatever. I really put the emphasis on, let's go to London, you know, I'll pay for a nice hotel and we'll, you know, we'll go to see some plays. I think Jeremy Irons is in something right now. And we told, it'll be really fun and we have to, you know, have sex in front of a guy.

• 53:32Speaker 04

  I look back now on that and I think, how did that even? I guess I'm just really committed to getting good material. Material that would be fun to write up, fun for the reader. I knew that that was going to be really fun to write and also really not fun to do.

• 53:48Daniel Whiteson?

  So you went through with it?

• 53:49Speaker 04

  Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes, I did, yeah.

• 53:55Daniel Whiteson?

  And your marriage survived.

• 53:56Speaker 04

  It's a very fun scene. It's only a couple of pages. It's only a couple of pages. It was funny because my editor goes, Mary, I don't, you know, she has a thing about people need to take you seriously as a science writer. You know, this is science writing. It's for people to respect you. And so she was like, I don't know if this scene should really be in here. And then my agent read it and goes, Mary, you need more detail in this scene.

• 54:19Speaker 04

  So I'm like, I think I hit it just about right. We're gonna leave that as is.

• 54:24Kelly Weinersmith?

  I think that's why we take you seriously because it's like she is actually willing to like get involved in this stuff and be a data point in this study.

• 54:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:33Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah. Physics is so much less embarrassing. I'm relieved.

• 54:37Kelly Weinersmith?

  How about scary? Have you ever signed up for something, thought this is a great idea? And then when you were in the moment, thought this was a bad idea?

• 54:44Speaker 04

  There were things that I did and that I didn't really think about it till later, that it was probably a stupid thing to do. For example, in the leopard chapter in the book, this is a section of the Middle Himalayas where leopards actually do prey on people, children, old people, easy targets. And as we'd come into this area, the researcher had sort of done this death tour of, see this bus stop? An old gentleman was taken, waiting, sitting there. See this field? So it was like this tour of maulings. And so I, at one point, it was a nice evening and I said, I'm gonna go out for a walk. And nobody wanted to come with me. So I went out for a walk and then the sun went down more quickly than I thought. And that's the hour at which all of these attacks happened.

• 55:27Speaker 04

  And I was walking back thinking, this is really stupid of me. And it was spooky because of what I knew as I was doing it. But then sort of looking back, just like, that was really stupid of me. But not terrifying. I sometimes put myself in a situation that my husband will go like, you did what? I did the story before it's on. This was years ago and I wrote for salon.com and I did a story about bashful bladder, paruresis, which is a condition, you know, men at the urinal, they can't start to pee. And it can be extreme. There are people who bring a self catheterization kit when they travel just because they just, if anybody's close, they can't.

• 56:09Speaker 04

  I don't think this is a woman problem much, but anyway, the way that these folks get help is similar to if you're afraid of spiders, you know, it's a progressive, the spider's closer, it's in the room and eventually it's, you know, two inches away. So there's a treatment that is where you're somebody's pee buddy, where, you know, they drink a lot of water and then you're like out in the living room and they're like, okay, I'm gonna pee now, I'm in the bathroom. You're like, okay, I'm in the living room. And then you get sort of closer to them and to the point where you're, or I was, outside the bathroom door. And I'm like, outside the bathroom door and the guy's like, okay, I'm doing it, I'm peeing. So anyway, I was like, wow, I really helped this guy and this is great and it's an interesting story. And my husband's like, where were you this afternoon?

• 56:55Speaker 04

  Some rando guy's house who's peeing and I'm standing outside the door and he's like, did you know this person? No, I didn't know. You know, there's a Google group, whatever it was back then, where I just posted something and somebody said, yes, you can help me and be my pee buddy. So I'm just always like, ah, that sounds great. That'll be really interesting.

• 57:18Kelly Weinersmith?

  Is there data to suggest that this sort of like, protocol works in the long term?

• 57:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, it does. It's, I forget the term in psychology for phobias. You start small and you just kind of incrementally increase somebody's exposure. And so like, I'm the spider. He wrote to me later and he said, he was very grateful. He said, you know, I have a girlfriend now and I'm able to go to the bathroom off the bedroom and pee in the middle of the night. I could never do that before. And I'm like, good.

• 57:47Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh yay.

• 57:48Speaker 04

  I know.

• 57:48Kelly Weinersmith?

  Imagine having Mary Roach be your like pee pal who got you over your phobia. That's like a great story and a bar.

• 57:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was something good that came from my writing.

• 57:59Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 58:00Speaker 04

  Or my research, anyway.

• 58:01Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, you mentioned that you sometimes have people who don't respond to interview requests. I wonder if there's ever an interview you really, really wanted that you pushed for, that you were persistent in going after until you got it. How do you convince somebody to talk to you if they're not sure about it?

• 58:17Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. First of all, I just feel that enthusiasm helps a lot. And sometimes enthusiasm takes the form of sending a second and even a third email. It doesn't always work, but people respond, I think, to, you know, if you're that curious and interested and enthusiastic about their research, and that is appealing for people. And I think people like to talk about their work, you know, maybe their family doesn't want to hear about it anymore. And to have somebody say, I'm super interested in what you do, and I want to see and observe and learn about it. I think that that goes a long way. Also, I think people don't like to say no three times. So, you know, persistence pays off also. You just wear them down to

• 59:00Speaker 04

  a stub. Just keep at them. It doesn't always work. I mean, there are definitely people who, and it's often something, but the nature of their work, they don't want any attention in the media. They don't want to, and I think more so now with, you know, with social media. And if just one person twists what they do and gets on social media and everybody piles on, I totally understand why that's a scary thing and why you want to avoid that. So that's become harder for me. Any lab where work is done with animals, that's very hard to get in. I had a situation in my last book where the university said no. They didn't

• 59:41Speaker 04

  really say why. They just said no. And then the guy who runs the lab said, it's my lab. You're going to come to my office and we're going to talk, and then we're going to walk across the hall. And we're not going to go to the animal lab, but yes, you can come. And they can't tell me what to do. But, you know, he was familiar with my work, and that was, he's been there long enough that he didn't give a [BLEEP] what the people in the public affairs office had to say. But often, there's reasons why people are wary about an outsider coming in and writing about what they're doing. And I completely... Understand that.

• 1:00:16Daniel Whiteson?

  I have friends who are climate science researchers and they're very concerned about how they're portrayed.

• 1:00:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:22Daniel Whiteson?

  You know, the nuances are crucial in that field.

• 1:00:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. The other thing that I do is I will tell them, you can fact check this to make sure I have it right. And I will never send the material to the person, but I will get on the phone and read it. And I'll say, stop me if something's wrong. And that works really well. If you give it to them, they'll go in and rewrite it.

• 1:00:45Kelly Weinersmith?

  I've made that mistake.

• 1:00:48Speaker 04

  You did, no. So that doesn't happen. But just reading it to people, I'm always very nervous to do that. That's always a scary thing to do. But when it goes well and somebody actually likes the way you've portrayed their work and them, that's very gratifying. That's a good day.

• 1:01:05Daniel Whiteson?

  It's terrifying to write about somebody else's expertise and then send it to them for review and you're like waiting to hear back. I know that feeling.

• 1:01:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:14Daniel Whiteson?

  That boy has bravery.

• 1:01:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's why I do it on the phone. Yeah.

• 1:01:19Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's smarter. Yeah. That's, I think, what I'll do in the future. So we are just about out of time and I want to respect your time. Are you allowed to tell us what your next book is going to be about? Or is that top secret until it comes out?

• 1:01:29Speaker 04

  Oh, no, I can tell you. It's called Replaceable You. So it's all kinds of bits and pieces of the human body and replacement elements. Some of it's historical, some of it's current. You know, it's my usual Mary Roach wandering dingbat approach.

• 1:01:44Kelly Weinersmith?

  I cannot wait. Is it coming out soon?

• 1:01:46Speaker 04

  September, so almost a year. The lead time is quite long these days for books. Yeah. So.

• 1:01:54Kelly Weinersmith?

  It's painful submitting a manuscript and waiting a whole year.

• 1:01:56Speaker 04

  I know, and I have the sense that everything is out of date. You know, I've already done one round of, has anything changed? Surprisingly, things change slowly. You know, you have this sense that there are new discoveries every month and it's like, well, it's probably not going to happen for another five to 10 years. So it's okay, but it does feel like it's hard to be up to date in anything when you're turning it in.

• 1:02:21Kelly Weinersmith?

  I wouldn't write about AI right now because I feel like that year would be a huge, your book would be out of date the second it hit the shelves.

• 1:02:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. How does anybody write about AI? I don't know.

• 1:02:30Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right. Well, thank you so much, Mary. This was so much fun. I will be a little bit more careful with the deer. And Daniel, you need to not travel with seltzer water anymore.

• 1:02:40Speaker 04

  Was it even flavored seltzer water?

• 1:02:42Daniel Whiteson?

  It was, yes, watermelon.

• 1:02:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:44Kelly Weinersmith?

  Are you sure it wasn't stuff that the kids had like ground into the rug beforehand? Seltzer, why would they go for that?

• 1:02:50Speaker 04

  I think the seltzer water was a red herring. Yeah.

• 1:02:53Kelly Weinersmith?

  I think so.

• 1:02:53Daniel Whiteson?

  Could be, could be.

• 1:02:55Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right. Well, be more careful, Daniel.

• 1:02:58Speaker 04

  Thanks, you guys. That was so much fun.

• 1:03:08Kelly Weinersmith?

  Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We would love to hear from you.

• 1:03:13Daniel Whiteson?

  We really would. We want to know what questions you have about this extraordinary universe.

• 1:03:19Kelly Weinersmith?

  We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions for future shows. If you contact us, we will get back to you.

• 1:03:25Daniel Whiteson?

  We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us at [email protected].

• 1:03:32Kelly Weinersmith?

  Or you can find us on social media. We have accounts on X, Instagram, Blue Sky, and on all of those platforms, you can find us at D and K Universe.

• 1:03:41Daniel Whiteson?

  Don't be shy. Write to us.

• 1:03:46Speaker 07

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• 1:05:52Daniel Whiteson?

  So, everyone on board? Yeah, I think so. You can't see it, but everyone in this room is nodding. They all agree the launch plan's perfect, but Julie has an idea how it can be even better. So she asked Copilot Cowork to help her overnight.

• 1:06:02Kelly Weinersmith?

  Hey Copilot, gather the past three months of retail sales reports, surface key insights, and build a deck outlining a partner strategy by tomorrow morning.

• 1:06:14Kelly Weinersmith?

  Morning team, I found a way to improve the plan. Check Slide 4.

• 1:06:18Daniel Whiteson?

  Get help with complex tasks with Copilot Cowork. Microsoft Copilot, work lives on.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

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