You and Betty and the Nancy's and Bill's and Joes and Jane's will find in the study of science

a richer, more rewarding life.

Welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indravis Gontas.

This is a podcast that explores the space where science and society collide.

We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it

matters.

While the rest of us were hunkered down at home, Mary Roach, America's funniest science writer,

and already a two-time guest in Inquiring Minds, was writing a book about her two-year journey around the world, during which she encountered bear managers and danger tree faller blasters and human elephant conflict specialists, people whose professions involve animals or

other ways in which nature breaks laws made for humans. Her new book is just out. It's called

Fuzz when nature breaks the law. And we've had her on inquiring minds in the past on episode

31 talking about her book

Gulp, Adventures through the Elementary Canal. And if you want to hear me giggle incessantly,

go back and re-listen. And also on episode 138, where we talked about her book, Grunt,

about the curious science of humans at war.

Mary Roach, it is such a pleasure to welcome you back to inquiring minds.

Oh, it is such a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me back. It's always so much

fun. So, of course, your book has me chuckling all the way through. But one of the things that

kind of really kind of got me to set up and think in a way that I hadn't before, I mean, a lot of

it does. But even in the way that these sort of labels are written, it's kind of funny, is how

you describe the people that you profile and the kinds of organizations they work for

and what an oxymoron it is. So tell us about, you know, organizations like the fish and game and

wildlife and, you know, why it's ironic. Well, that goes back to the dawn of conservation in this country. And conservation did not start out as like,

...