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The science journalist Mary Roach has written about sex and death and the disgusting wonders of the digestive system — basically, all of the topics that children are taught to avoid in polite company — and she’s turned that writing into best-selling books by identifying the strange but true comic details that stem from nature and biology. In her new book, “Replaceable You,” she examines prosthetics, robotics and other ways that technology can interact with human anatomy.
On this week’s episode of the podcast, Roach tells the host Gilbert Cruz how she comes up with her ideas and what keeps drawing her back to the bizarre, hilarious bits of trivia that the human body offers up.
“It’s endlessly fascinating,” she says. “It’s this weird foreign planet, and I didn’t study it in high school or college. So I’m like that explorer who keeps finding new continents and having a blast. In a way it’s a logical topic for me — I seem to just be drawn to the human body and all its miraculousness and weirdness.”
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The post Mary Roach on the Timeless Appeal of Weird Science appeared first on New York Times.
