Mary Roach & William Bell

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2016

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Though she didn't earn a degree in the sciences, author Mary Roach has a knack for writing about them with insight and wit. Whether she's describing what happens to the body after death or the many aspects of human sexuality, Roach makes her topics accessible and fun. Roach has authored half a dozen books including: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, as well as articles for magazines including Vogue, GQ, and National Geographic. Mary Roach sat down with Jesse about whether shark repellant actually exists, life on submarines and how leaches inspired her to write a book on military science, Grunt. William Bell is a soul singer and songwriter whose distinctive sound is forever associated with the legendary Stax Records. Along with with performers like Otis Redding, Sam and Duke, Isaac Hayes and the Staple Singers, Bell helped create music that continues to entertain and inspire. He is famous for his hit songs including You Don't Miss Your Water, Private Number, A Tribute to the King and Everybody Loves a Winner. He also co-wrote the classic song, Born Under a Bad Sign which was originally performed by Albert King and later covered by Jimi Hendrix, Etta James, Cream and even Homer Simpson. William Bell joined Jesse to talk about what it was like beginning his musical career while still a teenager, how he returned to his career after being drafted and his new album out on Stax Records, This is Where I Live. Jesse shares why Tanya Tucker's voice and classic song, What's Your Mama's Name manages to move him every time he hears it.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:13.8	It's Bullseye.
0:14.8	I'm Jesse Thorn.
0:16.3	My guest Mary Roach is a best-selling author of books about the science of death, sex,
0:21.4	and space, among other things.
0:23.7	For her latest grunt, she's turned her focus to the military.
0:28.0	Sort of in its wider sense.
0:30.5	Like, did you know that the military, at one point, was studying shark repellent?
0:37.4	Want to guess how they came to be studying shark repellent?
0:40.8	Well, I'll give you a hint.
0:42.6	It was real fun.
0:44.2	They were explorers and hunters and they, it was just kind of a way to get funded to go
0:49.8	off an adventure like, we need to go test this in Ecuador.
0:52.8	We need to go off the coast of Ecuador, get a boat, get a hotel in the beach and throw
0:56.4	some crap in the water and see what happens with the sharks and they did this for years.
1:00.5	Now those Washington fat cats.
1:03.4	It's Bullseye.
1:11.6	Coming up, I'll sit down with Mary Roach.
1:14.0	Some of the things she writes about can be pretty dark.
1:16.4	Like, what happens to our bodies after we die?
1:18.9	But neither Mary nor many of the people that she writes about let that bring them down.
1:25.5	Here's a kind of humor that's not disrespectful.
	...

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