It's Friday, June 24th, 2016, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indra Viscontas.

And I'm Kishore Hari. Each week, we bring you a new, in-depth exploration of the space where science,

politics, and society collide. We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover,

and why it all matters. You can find us online at motherjones.com slash inquiring minds or inquiringshow.

tttelber.com.

You can also support us at patreon.com slash inquiring minds.

And you can subscribe to the show on iTunes or any other podcasting app.

I've been looking forward to this week's interview for a long time.

Mary Roach is America's funniest science writer, and she's well-deserving of that title.

Every single time one of her books come out, I am among the first to read them.

And for this particular book, I was lucky enough to receive a preview copy. So her new book, Grunt, the Curious Science of Humans at War, is now out

just this week, and it's all about war and the military industrial complex.

But most importantly, it really sings the praises of the unsung scientific heroes to do with the military.

People who test out suits to make sure that they withstand IEDs and bomb blasts, scientists who are trying to figure out how can we reduce the amount

of diarrhea that our soldiers encounter as they go out into places where the bacteria are very

different from what their bodies are used to. How much sweat can a person withstand in certain heat

and so on and so on and so on? It's a really interesting book, but in some ways it's her most

political book yet, because a lot of her other topics, she's talked about sex, she's talked

about cadavers, she's talked about the intestinal digestive system, which are all taboo in a certain

way, but not necessarily political. So I was surprised that this was

the topic that she was tackling next. And yet she does it with her usual grace and, of course,

amazing sense of humor. So humor and military science don't seem to go together.

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