Mary Roach
Mary Roach
Mary Roach is an American author, specializing in popular science and humor. As of 2016, she has published seven books,: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places, Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, and Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth20 March 1959
CityEtna, NH
CountryUnited States of America
I talk to a lot of people who, when you try to sum them up in a couple of sentences, seem like they must be insane.
Most of the people who are engaged in the subjects that I look into are pretty interesting. Whether its sex researchers or someone who's devoted their career to saliva or somebody who does research with cadavers, there's an inherent fascination in the subject matter of their work.
Literally thousands of e-mails over the course of a book go out to people I've never met, people who might end up being the focus of a chapter.
We can study it, we can apply principles of peer-reviewed research, we can do it.' People say, 'Yes, we can figure it out.'
There are three kinds of people in this world: 1) People who make lists, 2) People who don't make lists, and 3) People who carve tiny Nativity scenes out of pecan hulls. I'm sorry, there isn't really a third category; it's just that a workable list needs a minimum of three items, I feel.
People don't appreciate their intestines until something goes wrong. But I always hope that people gain a little appreciation for their guts.
I'm always imposing my taste in books on others. I hope that people enjoy being surprised by a book they might not otherwise read - I enjoy the surprise myself when others do this to me.
I didn't really realize that writing... would be fun and people would pay you to do it. Being an astronaut is a glory profession, and so is writing, in a way.
I don't know of many people who've done sex research with an eye toward people saying sex is bad for you, except for the promiscuity and cervical cancer link - which is actually a valid discovery.
People are surprisingly off put just by saliva, the substance that you carry around in your mouth. You swallow it. You have no objection to it. But then it leaves your body, and you're just revolted. So it - that - just that right there to me is a fascinating thing.
Dead people never seem to address the obvious - the things you'd think they'd be bursting to talk about, and the things all of us not-yet-dead are madly curious about. Such as: 'Hey, where are you now? What do you do all day? What's it feel like being dead? Can you see me? Even when I'm on the toilet? Would you cut that out?'
There are fast chewers and slow chewers, long chewers and short chewers, right-chewing people and left-chewing people. Some of us chew straight up and down, and others chew side-to-side, like cows. Your oral processing habits are a physiological fingerprint.
To me, NASA is kind of the magical kingdom. I was sort of a geek, and you go there, and there are just these wondrously strange things and people.
There are people who would love to spend their last ten years, or five years, or whatever it is, on the surface of Mars.