Join the Morbidly Curious Book Club Today: https://www.morbidlycuriousbookclub.com/ Early + Ad-free for Patreon members: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheMorbidlyCuriousBookClub " Over time, devices migrated inside the body -- masticators gave way to dentures, glasses to contact lenses, toupees to hair transplants. Replacements became more integrated, more complex, more expensive. False teeth and prosthetic limbs can now be screwed into bones, artificial lenses surgically implanted. Of late, the buzz is for regeneration: bits and pieces grown from one's own cells. Stem cells and gene editing have landed us on the brink of a medical revolution. When it comes to regenerating entire complex body parts, however, it is a wide brink, with plenty of open terrain for hype. " Order "Replaceable You" here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/replaceable-you-adventures-in-human-anatomy-mary-roach/43877f72ed2db635?ean=9781324050629&next=t&aid=87301&listref=the-morbidly-curious-book-club-picks Welcome to a very special BONUS episode! To celebrate the release of her new book, "Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy" I had the chance to sit down with Mary Roach and gush about her to her, but also to dive into some wonderfully weird science. (Huge thanks to W.W. Norton & Company for sending me an early copy!) We also touched on her other highly ubiquitous book, and our previous book club pick, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Mary Roach is the author of the New York Times bestsellers STIFF, SPOOK, BONK, GULP, GRUNT, FUZZ, and PACKING FOR MARS . Her new book, REPLACEABLE YOU: Adventures in Human Anatomy , debuts in September 2025. Mary has written for National Geographic, Wired , and The New York Times Magazine , among others, and her TED talk made the TED 20 Most Watched list. She has been a guest editor for Best American Science and Nature Writing , a finalist for the Royal Society's Winton Prize, and a winner of the American Engineering Societies' journalism award, in a category for which, let's be honest, she was the sole entrant. More at www.maryroach.net About Replaceable You: The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manufacturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what’s available―sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye parts from jet canopies and breasts from petroleum by-products. Today we’re attempting to grow body parts from scratch using stem cells and 3D printers. How are we doing? Are we there yet? In Replaceable You , Mary Roach explores the remarkable advances and difficult questions prompted by the human body’s failings. When and how does a person decide they’d be better off with a prosthetic than their existing limb? Can a donated heart be made to beat forever? Can an intestine provide a workable substitute for a vagina? Roach dives in with her characteristic verve and infectious wit. Her travels take her to the OR at a legendary burn unit in Boston, a “superclean” xeno-pigsty in China, and a stem cell “hair nursery” in the San Diego tech hub. She talks with researchers and surgeons, amputees and ostomates, printers of kidneys and designers of wearable organs. She spends time in a working iron lung from the 1950s, stays up all night with recovery techs as they disassemble and reassemble a tissue donor, and travels across Mongolia with the cataract surgeons of Orbis International. Irrepressible and accessible, Replaceable You immerses readers in the wondrous, improbable, and surreal quest to build a new you. So...do you have an idea for Mary Roach's next book? Put it in the comments... Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-morbidly-curious-book-club-podcast/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
