Mary Roach on Disgust, Death, and Danger (Live at Mason)

Published: Oct. 18, 2017, 12:05 p.m.

Legal writing was never Mary Roach\u2019s thing. She describes that short-lived stint as an inscrutable \u201cbringing forth of multisyllabic words.\u201d Instead, she\u2019s forged a career by letting curiosity lead the way. The result has been a series of successful books\u200a\u2014\u200aGrunt, Gulp, Spook, Stiff, and Bonk among them\u2014 that all reveal a specific sense of nonsensibility (and love for monosyllabic titles).

She joins Tyler Cowen for a conversation covering the full range of her curiosity, including fear, acclimating to grossness, chatting with the dead, freezing one\u2019s head, why bedpans can kill you, sex robots, Freud, thinking like an astronaut, the proper way to eat a fry, and why there\u2019s a Medicare reimbursement code for maggots.

Read a\xa0full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.\xa0

Recorded September 27th, 2017

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