Since she burst onto the scene with 2003’s “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers,” the science writer Mary Roach has been grossing readers out with curiosity, humanity — and alarming gusto. And we can’t look away.
Whether she’s talking ghosts (“Spook”), sex (“Bonk”), space (“Packing for Mars”), digestion (“Gulp”), war (“Grunt”) or nature gone rogue (“Fuzz”), Roach provides the kind of earworm (sometimes literally) that can stop a dinner party in its tracks. Her latest, “Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy” (out on Sept. 16), features an iron lung party, and, while often sensitive to the realities inherent to the subject, still manages to furnish plenty more factoids.
Here are 10 bits of trivia we’ve learned from the laureate of the lurid that we’ll never forget — even if we wish we could.
1. The legume can be an accomplice to murder.
Beans (beans!) may be the musical fruit, but socially dicey flatulence will be the least of your problems if you overindulge in the castor bean (full of the highly toxic protein ricin) or the rosary pea (the toxin abrin). In the waning days of barbecue season, use caution bringing this up when baked beans are served.
2. Cadavers make the best crash-test dummies.
They are already dead. And did you specify what kind of medical science you wanted to be donated to?
3. Astronauts drink recycled (desalinated, filtered, sterilized, sweetened and deodorized) urine.
To research this choice detail in 2021’s “Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void,” Roach went method and sampled her own. “Kinda like Kool-Aid,” she wrote.
4. Polar bears love menstruating women.
Also used tampons. It’s something primal, possibly connected to the scent of seal blubber. (Surprisingly enough, this tidbit is included as an aside in “Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War.”)
5. Elvis died of a constipated “mega-colon.”
Yes, the cause was technically heart failure. But as the King’s autopsy showed, he was suffering from a terribly impacted colon, which contained, among other unhealthy things, medical waste from an X-ray procedure. Cue something horrible about not leaving the building.
6. Alka-Seltzer can indeed make you explode.
Should you chase those beans with a megadose of effervescent antacid, according to “Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal” (2013), proceed to call Hercule Poirot immediately.
7. There is a stem-cell follicle-regeneration lab in California.
Because, of course there is!
8. Necrophilia is illegal in only 16 states.
This fun fact comes courtesy of “Stiff,” the 2003 cadavers tome, not “Bonk,” the science of sex book from 2008.
9. You can orgasm after death.
You’d have to oxygenate the sacral nerve, which is admittedly unlikely to happen in the wild, but still. (This one is from “Bonk.”)
10. A rat tail got lost in a man’s penis.
Presented without comment.
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