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The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters

Saliva the Superhero

The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters

American Public Media

Food, Arts

4.33K Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2014

⏱️ 52 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week it’s a look at saliva with America’s funniest science writer, Mary Roach, author of Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Trail. The Sterns are at the Blue Scorcher Bakery Café in Astoria, Ore., and we learn which salts are really worth the money with salt merchant Mark Bitterman, author of Salted: A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral.


Broadcast dates for this episode:


  • April 6, 2013 (originally aired)
  • March 28, 2014 (rebroadcast)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Our common nature is a musical journey with Yo-Yo Ma and me, Ana Gonzalez, through this complicated country.

0:08.1

We go into caves, onto boats, and up mountain trails to meet people, hear their stories, their poetry, and of course, play some music, all to reconnect to nature and get closer to the things we're missing.

0:24.4

Listen to Our Common Nature from WNYC, wherever you get podcasts.

0:32.0

It's the Splendid Table from APM American Public Media.

0:44.3

Thank you. from APM American Public Media. I'm Lynne Ro SETO-Castro, Casper.

0:46.6

Did you know that the digestive tract is also known as the elementary canal?

0:52.4

It's such a tranquil image.

0:56.9

Our dinners gently meandering down a peaceful, winding waterway, and tell that to the millions of people popping antacids every day.

1:03.7

But there is humor in taboo subjects like digestion, especially when you meet up with the

1:09.0

irrepressible science writer Mary Roach.

1:11.8

She's known for her take on cadavers, a book called Stiff,

1:15.0

but today we're talking to Mary about our two pairs of nostrils

1:18.8

and the Rodney Danger Field of bodily fluids, saliva.

1:23.8

Stick around. There's more this hour on The Splendid Table.

1:43.7

This is The Splendid Table from APM, American Public Media, the show for people who love to eat.

1:45.5

I'm Lynn Rossetto, Casper.

2:02.4

The next time one of your kids is groaning over their science homework, pull out a little Mary Roach and show them how funny and engaging science can be. Mary's the science writer with a

2:08.7

lust for research and a delight in the quirky. She's brought us stiff, which is about dead people,

2:14.9

and packing for Mars, which is a look at the surreal world of zero gravity.

2:19.8

Now she's taken on our digestive system, everything from taste to saliva to constipation in her

2:27.3

funny new book, Gulp, Adventures on the Elementary Canal. Mary, good to have you with us. Welcome.

2:35.2

It's great to be here.

...

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