This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

I was working at the radio station K-A-L-W in San Francisco in 2003 when a preview copy of the book,

Stiff, The Curious Lives of Human Cadhavers, was sent to the station. It immediately became one of my

favorite books of all time,

full of fun, gruesome, intriguing stories about what happens to our bodies after we die.

So, in 2003, I scheduled what turned out to be the very first media interview of the author, Mary Roach.

Do you remember that? I remember it so well. I was like, oh, I got it.

And I kind of dressed up even though it's radio.

And it was like one of the best interviews ever.

Over the years, Mary and I have become friends.

We even shared an office in Oakland for a while.

And over her career, she has continued to come out with some of the best and

certainly the funniest science books I've ever read.

Long-time listeners will know that she has been on the show a few times over the years,

but when she announced that her new book was about designing human replacement parts,

designing is the key word there.

I knew that it was time for us to have a long, overdue chat.

My name is Mary Roach, and my book is called Replaceable You.

And the subtitle, which doesn't really tell you that much, is Adventures in Human Anatomy.

But what it really is, is this scientific pursuit to find replacement parts for our worn out, diseased and malfunctioning bodies.

That is exactly right.

Some of it historical and some of it current.

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