55. Mary Roach (Science Writer) – To Nietszche His Own

Think Again - a Big Think Podcast

Big Think / Panoply

Arts, Society & Culture

4.6 • 594 Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2016

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sex toy book parties! Penis transplants! Decomposition labs! These are just a few of the places the intrepid, New York Times bestselling author Mary Roach takes us in hilarious, curiosity-driven books like Bonk:: The Curious Science of Sex and her latest, Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War. It's some of the best, most engaging science writing out there. On this week's episode of Think Again–a Big Think Podcast, Mary and host Jason Gots discuss some of the above, then enter more the more abstract territory of dark matter, Nietzche's atheism, and emotional connection with artificial intelligence. It's a weird and wonderful talk adventure. Surprise discussion clips in this episode: Philosopher Simon Critchley on Nietzsche, Physicist Lisa Randall on Dark Matter, Sherry Turkle on Emotions and AI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Have you ever wondered what a sandwich sounds like?
0:03.0	Not much to it is there?
0:06.0	Unless of course, it's a Walker's sandwich.
0:10.0	Mmm, that is good.
0:13.0	Now that's what Asani should sound like.
0:16.0	Go all crisp in with walkers.
0:18.0	Delicious.
0:20.0	Hey there, I'm Jason Gatz and you're listening to Think Again a Big Think podcast.
0:30.0	Since 2008, Big Think has been sharing big ideas from some of the most interesting and creative minds around.
0:40.3	The Think Again podcast takes us in a completely different direction. It takes us out of our comfort zone, surprising me and my guests
0:44.3	with unexpected conversation starters from Big Thinks Interview Archives,
0:49.3	ideas that we didn't necessarily come here prepared to discuss.
0:52.3	I'm very excited to be joined today by the inimitable New York Times best-selling science writer,
0:58.0	Mary Roach.
1:00.0	Mary's one of the funniest best writers I've ever read in any genre, frankly, and her books
1:05.0	delve deep into subjects that if they weren't written so interestingly by Mary, many people might prefer to run away from screaming.
1:13.8	They include funk, the curious coupling of science and sex, gulp, adventures on the elementary canal, many others, and the new one, which is called grunt, the curious science of humans at war.
1:26.5	Welcome to think again, Mary. Thank you. I wanted to start by
1:30.0	talking to you about squeamishness and what, if anything, you've learned about squeamishness
1:36.6	in your many years of researching and writing about subjects that I think a lot of people are
1:42.6	probably squeamish about?
1:50.9	Yeah, squeamishness is, I think that squeamishness comes partly from a fear of the unknown.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Big Think / Panoply, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Big Think / Panoply and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.