Replaceable You with Mary Roach

Summary

StarTalk Radio – “Replaceable You” with Mary Roach

Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Guests: Mary Roach (science writer), Chuck Nice (comedian), Gary O'Reilly (sportscaster), Bill Nye (science advocate)
Aired: December 12, 2025

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Overview:

In this lively episode of StarTalk, Neil deGrasse Tyson and panel dive into Mary Roach’s new book, "Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy." The conversation explores the wild past, quirky present, and tantalizing future of medical advances in replacing, repairing, and augmenting the human body. With humor and insight, the group discusses regenerative medicine, prosthetics, organ transplants, and the evolving boundaries between biology and technology.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction & Mary Roach’s Unique Angle

• Mary Roach’s writing focuses on underexplored corners of science, blending humor, deep research, and compelling storytelling.
• She takes inspiration from real people and unusual stories, not just sci-fi or pop culture, to approach topics from unexpected directions.
• Quote:
  • “I go and I target some unsuspecting expert researcher, scientist, and I use them as an unpaid tutor, basically.” — Mary Roach (06:00)
  • “It’s a unique niche in the nonfiction-verse.” — Chuck Nice (05:48)

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2. Historical Background: Replacement Parts for Humans

• Origins: Replacement parts for humans have been pursued since at least 1500 BC.
• First Chapter - The Nose:
  • Nasal mutilation was common as punishment for crimes in ancient cultures.
  • Famous astronomer Tycho Brahe had a fake nose, and intricate nose repair “industry” emerged as a result.
  • Innovations: Early surgeons like Frank Tettemore (1894) devised prosthetic noses using glasses and celluloid, while Gaspari Tagliacozzi (1500s) pioneered surgical reconstruction with skin flaps.
• Quote:
  • “It was a pair of glasses…and you would hang a celluloid plastic nose off the glasses. At the bottom, to hide the line, there was a mustache. So it’s basically Marx glasses—a medical version.” — Mary Roach (19:11)
  • “So the literal meaning of the word ‘deface’ would be to just slash, lop off your nose?” — Chuck Nice (18:20)

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3. The Struggle for 'Wholeness' and Amputation Choices

• Stories include patients seeking elective amputations for nonfunctional limbs and the difficulty of finding surgeons willing to perform these procedures.
• The discussion pivots to how technology does not always solve for individuality or the bias toward “fixing” rather than adapting differently abled bodies.
• Quote:
  • “It’s specifically about how hard it is if you want to get something off…and that bias for wholeness.” — Mary Roach (10:07)

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4. Bionics and Pop Culture vs. Medical Reality

• Six Million Dollar Man & Star Wars inspired public imagination but are far from today’s real-world technology.
• Real prosthetics are heavy, expensive, and require constant charging—not seamless or perfect.
• Prosthetic hands are a technical feat, especially the challenge of replicating complex, independent finger movement; arms are less commonly replaced than legs due to practical and technical obstacles.
• Quote:
  • “Everybody thinks that’s easy, but it’s not easy. Those arms, they’re heavy…they’re like $15,000, insurance doesn’t pay, so it’s just not there yet.” — Mary Roach (12:53)

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5. Prosthetics: Tech Advances and Limitations

• State-of-the-art legs: Prosthetics with AI and microprocessors can adjust gait and help prevent falls, but are costly and not waterproof.
• Osseointegration: Attaching prosthetics directly to the bone allows for better sensation and movement, but carries infection risk.
• Antiperspirants for residual limbs illustrate the pragmatic side of living with prosthetics.
• Quote:
  • “If you could do that—setting aside the infection issue—it’s great, 'cause now you have sensation through the bone. You can tell what surface you’re walking on.” — Mary Roach (27:12)

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• Humor break:
  • “Residual limb antiperspirant. Did you know that was a thing?” — Chuck Nice (27:37)

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6. Organ Transplants: New Hurdles and Innovations

• Heart transplants: Limited by how long organs remain viable after extraction—new machines can extend shelf life by simulating heart/lung function (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO).
• Rejection: Major obstacle for complex organ (and face/hand) transplants—body tends to attack foreign tissue.
• Xenotransplantation: Recent attempts to use genetically modified pig organs (e.g., kidneys) in humans; limited success so far, requiring genetic editing for compatibility.
• Quote:
  • “Some of the face transplant people need like a second face because they’re having rejection issues…People are asking to have hands taken off.” — Mary Roach (32:07)
  • “You gotta genetically edit those suckers, those pigs…knock out [the alpha gal] protein, now the body's a little more accepting.” — Mary Roach (32:41)

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7. The Bioengineering Frontier: Chimerism, 3D Printing & Scaffolds

• Chimerism: Future potential where pigs could gestate human-compatible organs via stem cell edits and gene editing.
  • The vision: people have their “own personal pig for spare parts.” (34:13)
• 3D bioprinting: Current state is at “Wright Brothers stage”—labs can print simple structures (mouse ventricles, heart valves) but fully functional, implantable human organs remain decades away. AI and improved cell scaffolding might accelerate progress.
• Quote:
  • “How long before we’re printing an organ you could install in a body? He said, ‘We are kind of in the Wright Brothers stage.’” — Mary Roach (46:18)

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8. Extreme Body Replacements and the Ethics Thereof

• Unusual examples:
  • The “finger penis” in Georgia, where a man’s finger was used to reconstruct his penis after cancer.
  • “You could crook it up like a finger…and in order to show how strong it was, they hung a ceramic water pitcher on it.” — Mary Roach (44:47)
• Whole body transplants: Theoretical (à la “head transplants”), but not currently possible—main challenge is reconnecting nerves, especially the spinal cord.
• Ethical questions loom around creating humans from one’s own pluripotent stem cells and gene editing for “designer” organs or immortality.
• Quote:
  • “If you take someone’s blood cells…regress them to pluripotency, direct them to become an egg or sperm...in theory you could create another human being with only your own genetic material.” — Mary Roach (50:51)
  • “Are there ethicists working in tandem with these efforts, or are they brought on only when it’s too late?” — Chuck Nice (51:33)

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9. Cosmic Perspective: What if Nature Has the Answer?

• Tyson proposes that rather than inventing mechanical replacements, perhaps the more profound solution is unlocking regeneration—as seen in newts, lobsters, and worms—at the genetic level for humans.
• Quote:
  • “Maybe the solution…is not inventing a kidney or heart or limb…Maybe it’s going into our DNA, splicing in that which regenerates organs in other animals…the future of this is you just go in and…another organ grows.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson (52:29)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Mary Roach: “Journalist, science communicator, and writer…nonfiction author. Funny. Sometimes.” (06:43)
• On rejection: “Some of the face transplant people need a second face…People are asking to have hands taken off.” (32:07)
• On pig organ farms: “I went to China. They call 'em piggeries. Facial recognition for pigs!” (35:12)
• 3D printing organs: “We are kind of in the Wright Brothers stage.” (46:18)
• On ethics: “There are ethicists who are publishing papers about this with warnings and everything. But I don’t know if…I hope so.” (51:41)
• Cosmic Perspective: “We see a problem, a challenge, and then we try to address that problem…maybe the future of this is you just go in and they twiddle with your DNA and another organ grows.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson (52:29)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Mary Roach’s Introduction & Philosophy: 05:54 – 07:20
• Origins of Nose Replacement: 16:03 – 20:45
• Techniques in Historic and Modern Reconstructive Surgery: 19:11 – 20:45
• Prosthetic Limbs and Bionics—Current State: 23:28 – 26:00
• Osseointegration & Prosthetic Advances: 26:13 – 28:06
• Organ Transplantation Innovations: 29:29 – 31:07
• Xenotransplantation & Genetically Modified Animal Organs: 32:28 – 34:13
• 3D Printing of Organs/Scaffolds: 37:03 – 39:29; 45:51 – 47:50
• The "Finger Penis" & Extreme Replacements: 41:19 – 45:35
• Ethical Considerations & Reproductive Technology: 50:32 – 51:54
• Cosmic Perspective – Regeneration in Nature & The Future: 52:24 – 56:43

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Tone and Style

• The panel maintains StarTalk’s signature blend of humor and scientific rigor, with several moments of raucous laughter and playful banter, particularly around bizarre or eyebrow-raising anecdotes. Tyson grounds the discussion with cosmic reflections, and Roach offers unique, first-person accounts of being “on the ground” among scientists and in surgical suites worldwide.

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Summary

"Replaceable You" explores the limits of medical technology and bioengineering, from prosthetic noses of the 1500s to visions of printed organs and chimeric spare-part pigs. While we’re far from the sci-fi fantasies of instant replacement, rapid progress is being made—albeit often in unexpected ways and always accompanied by philosophical and ethical dilemmas. Mary Roach’s journalism illuminates both the technical marvels and curious humanity at the heart of these advances.

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Listen if you want:

• To laugh while learning about the wildest corners of medical science
• Real stories behind headlines about biotech, prosthetics, and transplants
• To ponder the ethical and cosmic implications of becoming our own repairmen—or our own “newts”

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Final thought from Tyson:
"Perhaps that's in our future. A future not yet visible to us, but maybe nature has that in store." (52:29–56:43)

Transcript

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[Chuck Nice]

Gary. Chuck.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Are you in need of any organs?

[Bill Nye]

Are we talking Hammond or.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Exactly y.

[Bill Nye]

All right.

[Chuck Nice]

We're talking about replaceable you.

[Mary Roach]

Ah.

[Chuck Nice]

All the ways our organs and appendages might need replacement in the future. Coming up with the one and only Mary roach. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist and I see next to me Gary O'Reilly. That must mean this is special edition Gary. Hey, Neil. How you doing, man? Former soccer pro, allegedly soccer announcer. And you lend of yourself to our cause.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah, with pleasure.

[Chuck Nice]

Thank you, Chuck. Good to have you, man.

[Bill Nye]

Always a pleasure.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, professional stand up comedian. You're working tonight.

[Bill Nye]

I am recording this. Makes no difference to say where because it'll be over by the time anybody hears this.

[Chuck Nice]

So today we're titling this. Are we replaceable? Are we replaceable?

[Bill Nye]

I see you've been talking to my wife.

[Chuck Nice]

Are we replaceable? So what does that even mean, Gary?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Okay, let me sort of phrase it this way. Some see the human body, especially the human brain, as the most complex machine we know that exists today in the universe. Yes, that we know about. Normally when you buy a complex machine, it comes with the contact details for the manufacturer, the warranty. Yeah, no such luck with the human body, as we all know. So how far has medical science got when it comes to replacement parts? Just FYI here, humans have been in the replacement parts business since about 1500 BC.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Gary O'Reilly]

That will all get explained. I'm not going to steal anyone's thunder. So Neil, if you would please introduce our guest.

[Chuck Nice]

Well this we now have three or four time. 5. How many times this person, how many times she's been on here?

[Bill Nye]

I don't know.

[Chuck Nice]

It's been a lot of StarTalk fan base. Mary Roach. Mary Roach, welcome back to StarTalk.

[Mary Roach]

Thank you. I think it's like five.

[Chuck Nice]

Five. I lost count. New York Times bestselling author. We eventually had to boost your vocabulary to put more than one word in the title of your books because I got you on list here. We got here stiff. That was like dead people. Grunt. That was like military bonk. I think that was just sex. It has to be fuzz. Well, I forgot. What was that?

[Mary Roach]

Bad sex.

[Chuck Nice]

Gulp. And finally we added more words to your title. Packing for Mars.

[Mary Roach]

Packing for Mars.

[Chuck Nice]

Packing for Mars.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

And that's just six out of the multiple books and latest offering is. I love the title. Cause it's so melodic. Replaceable you.

[Bill Nye]

Replaceable you.

[Chuck Nice]

This should be a song with that title.

[Bill Nye]

My sweet and replaceable you.

[Chuck Nice]

And it is a song. Yes.

[Mary Roach]

Play on. Embraceable you.

[Chuck Nice]

Subtitled Adventures in human Anatomy. And that's out at the fall of 2025. Welcome.

[Mary Roach]

Thank you. Thank you.

[Chuck Nice]

And you're in from Oakland, California.

[Mary Roach]

Uh huh.

[Chuck Nice]

Thanks for coming to my office here at the Hayden Planetarium.

[Mary Roach]

Always a pleasure.

[Chuck Nice]

Excellent, excellent. Putting us on your on your schedule. So you pick these topics that no one else thinks to talk about and then you just blow it wide open.

[Mary Roach]

That's my thing. That's my thing.

[Chuck Nice]

And you approach it journalistically, but all of your source material are people who are active in these topics and you put it together in ways no one imagines Even possible. So this is.

[Mary Roach]

It's incredible, isn't it? Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah, it is.

[Chuck Nice]

It's a unique niche in the nonfiction verse.

[Bill Nye]

Nice.

[Chuck Nice]

So again.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, no, I go and I target some unsuspecting expert researcher, scientist, and I use them as an unpaid tutor, basically.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, there you go. And if they're good and they're educators, they'll love to talk.

[Mary Roach]

They love to talk. They love it like their spouse doesn't want to hear because no one else wants to. Exactly. And like, oh, here's this woman. She wants to know what I do. Come on down.

[Bill Nye]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

So you have explored human behavior, not only physiologically, but you bring a dose of humor to it. It's part of our branding here. If you can't laugh or at least smile, you know, go home.

[Bill Nye]

Yeah. Yeah. You just spoke to half the country right now.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, so is there one or more words that you might describe yourself? If I were to pick, I would say journalist, science communicator, and writer. Just.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, all of those work. I might say nonfiction author. Sure. Funny. Sometimes.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah.

[Bill Nye]

We have something in common sometimes.

[Mary Roach]

Journal. Science journalist. Sounds a little highbrow.

[Chuck Nice]

It does, doesn't it?

[Mary Roach]

Doesn't it?

[Chuck Nice]

It does. It doesn't sound fun.

[Bill Nye]

Yeah. I was gonna say it sounds a little stodgy and boring, too.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah. That's not me.

[Bill Nye]

Does not apply to you at all.

[Chuck Nice]

So replaceable you. Embraceable you. What started you on that journey? At some point, you have to pivot and say, I'm done with the writing, and let me go do something else. And no one has done before.

[Mary Roach]

It's always very exciting, that moment where, like, I am so done with fill in the blank. I'm ready to move on.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah. So this one started. I got an email from a reader who had an idea, a book idea, and I would love to say that she was like, you should write about replaceable body parts. And I was like, hey, done. Next book. But in fact, she said, you should write a book about professional football referees, which is not the best match for me.

[Bill Nye]

Yeah.

[Mary Roach]

So. But we had a correspondence back and forth. It turned out she's an amputee. Specifically elective amputee. Like, she wanted her foot because her foot didn't work well. She couldn't walk right. She'd had spina bifida. Anyway, I was like, whoa. It was really hard for her to find somebody to take off her foot. Nobody wanted to do it. They're like, but this is a healthy foot. And she's like, I can't really walk a foot on it very well. So anyway, that was one thing that got me headed in that direction. And the other thing was I was.

[Chuck Nice]

So you amputated the foot because she couldn't find it off?

[Mary Roach]

I did. You know, it's not that hard. It's really ultimately, with the right equipment or even the wrong equipment.

[Bill Nye]

Not even the wrong equipment.

[Mary Roach]

It's pretty doable.

[Bill Nye]

The duller the better.

[Mary Roach]

And I didn't charge. I didn't charge her very much.

[Chuck Nice]

There you go.

[Mary Roach]

She did get it cut off, but not by me.

[Chuck Nice]

So for many of us of a certain age, yes, we all watched the $6 million man.

[Mary Roach]

Absolutely.

[Chuck Nice]

The first replaceable body part.

[Bill Nye]

We can rebuild him. We can make him stronger.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Mary Roach]

Better. Stronger, faster. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he had the eye. That. Which would be annoying, Right. You cue up your eye and it goes, why does it need to do that?

[Chuck Nice]

Right. And so then that was followed by. Was it also the $6 million woman, Lindsay Wagoner. Lindsay Wagoner.

[Mary Roach]

She had the ear instead of the eye.

[Chuck Nice]

So I thought that was inventive and creative and it gave us the word bionic as a bionic man. But none of that was part of your inspiration for this.

[Mary Roach]

Well, that's. It lodged in the back of my head. Because I grew up, I watched a lot of 70s television. I did watch the Lee Majors as the Bionic Man.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Mary Roach]

Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee Dee. Wasn't that the theme song?

[Bill Nye]

That was the theme song.

[Chuck Nice]

You got it. And dare I say.

[Bill Nye]

And they had to show him running in slow motion because he could run up to 60. 60 something miles an hour.

[Mary Roach]

And they speeded it up.

[Bill Nye]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

I never seen a white man run that fast. So I said, I gotta watch this show, put men on the Olympics. So, Gary, where are you gonna take us first?

[Gary O'Reilly]

It's interesting, having read the book, it's 17 short plays, different cast, different themes, but it's all based around this medical regenerative science.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

How did you go about that and not rinse and repeat every single theme in 17 chapters.

[Mary Roach]

I'm always going for kind of a odd take on things, you know, like again, the chapter, the amputation chapter. It's specifically about how hard it is if you want to get something. And that bias for wholeness. And so it wasn't like, here's the latest developments in prosthetic limb technology. Because that's, you know, you go to Wired for that or that's not my thing.

[Chuck Nice]

Go anywhere else for that.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah. And I try to throw myself into it, like There's a chapter on mechanical breathing. So I spent some. I found an old iron lung. Yeah. And Emerson.

[Bill Nye]

You spent some time in an iron lung.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, it was an old Emerson iron lung from the polio era. I mean, the original polio era, not.

[Bill Nye]

The one that's coming. Get ready, people.

[Mary Roach]

So that. Yeah, that was fascinating. So I'm always looking for a different way in, you know, having done all.

[Gary O'Reilly]

This research, having gone around the world, it seems. Do you get the feeling that medical science has failed us? That we've come so far in other areas, we're not able to get ourselves into a position where we can just chop and change parts?

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, no, I wouldn't say it's a. A failure, because I think the thing to keep in mind is, like, medical science has had a couple hundred years, right? And the human body's had millions of years of evolution, so it's like. It's. That's a hard thing to compete with. So I don't feel like it's a total failure. I feel like it gets.

[Chuck Nice]

We had millions of years of evolution, but in 10 years, we went to the moon. So I'm not buying that. We want to do it. We can do it, Right?

[Bill Nye]

Yeah. But I will say that. Would you say that maybe it's about. So there's not a lot of people here in America, around the world, you might find this. But not a lot of people here who are missing limbs, appendages, whatever. Which means there's not a lot of.

[Chuck Nice]

Money in it or the urgency of it.

[Mary Roach]

Well, the DOD spent a lot of money, you know, especially Iraq, Afghanistan, everybody getting. Stepping on IEDs. They funded a lot of work into prosthetics. I mean, it's. But, you know, it's the kind of thing. The hand is five fingers that are moving independently, and you gotta, like, track the signals from the brain, and that's gotta. So, you know, people. Most people who have an amputation, one arm missing or part of an arm, they just use the other arm.

[Bill Nye]

Right.

[Mary Roach]

They reach over and pick it up.

[Chuck Nice]

So was there no inspiration that came from Star wars where Luke lost his hand? Yeah, Luke. Luke had his hand cut off in a saber fight.

[Mary Roach]

Did he now?

[Chuck Nice]

And then. And you say, oh, my gosh. And then the next scene, he's just sort of.

[Bill Nye]

Yeah, the next scene is him getting a new hand.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. And it's like, okay, I just got a new hand.

[Mary Roach]

Everybody thinks that's easy, but it's not easy also. I mean, those arms, they're heavy. They have a battery that you have to charge, they're like $15,000. Insurance doesn't pay, so it's just not there yet. But I mean, you know, but give it some time.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, I was just exploring what sources of motivation might prompt people to think this way. And that might have been such a moment.

[Mary Roach]

Right?

[Bill Nye]

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[Mary Roach]

Hello, I'm Finky Brooke Allen and I support StarTalk on Patreon this is StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So if we sort of jump into replaceable youe. You start the first chapter is about noses.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And then you open up as to how long we've been in the business of replacement noses. I mean, I don't want to tell this story because it's yours, at least since Michael Jackson.

[Bill Nye]

Don't be sick.

[Chuck Nice]

That's a different nose.

[Bill Nye]

I had a beautiful nose. Bubbles took my nose.

[Mary Roach]

Aw, poor Michael.

[Chuck Nice]

One of the most famous astronomers had a fake nose.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Really?

[Chuck Nice]

Duke o'?

[Mary Roach]

Brie?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. I don't know if he got into your book.

[Mary Roach]

He's in the first.

[Chuck Nice]

Cause he read the book. I hadn't read the book.

[Mary Roach]

Who didn't read the book?

[Chuck Nice]

He read the book.

[Mary Roach]

Who didn't even read the first chapter.

[Chuck Nice]

Thank you.

[Bill Nye]

Yeah, Gary did. Gary did our homework.

[Chuck Nice]

Gary did our homework.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

But please, please expand on the nose replacement industry and where whereabouts began. Why?

[Chuck Nice]

No, no, we don't leave it in.

[Mary Roach]

So, yeah, well, nasal. It's because of nasal mutilation, which was a popular punishment, you know, going back. Yeah. Because first of all, nobody wants their nose cut off. But also it was like good deterrent. Right. Because everybody sees your face and they see. They're like.

[Gary O'Reilly]

It's literally the visible deterrent.

[Bill Nye]

It is.

[Chuck Nice]

Wait, wait, that was a punishment for a crime?

[Mary Roach]

Yeah. For crimes, yes.

[Chuck Nice]

What kind of crime?

[Mary Roach]

You name it, you name it.

[Bill Nye]

The crime of wanting to spite your face. I had to do it. I had to.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, don't use that one tonight on stage.

[Bill Nye]

Believe me, I want.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, okay. So what culture was big on this?

[Mary Roach]

This was in Ireland, in Egypt, in the Middle. Yeah, the Middle East.

[Dell Commercial Voice]

All over the place.

[Mary Roach]

They just cut, just hack it off. There was this story about Nepal. There was this whole town, Kirtipur, supposedly, where because the whole town was disloyal to the local conquerors, invaders, whatever, they denosed all the male population.

[Bill Nye]

My God, we are just awful as a species. I'm just saying. How disgusting.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Have you ever been to an ancient ruins, be it Roman or Greek, and seen a statue and its nose has been chipped away?

[Bill Nye]

Yeah, but is that on purpose?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah. Oh, I thought it just fell off.

[Mary Roach]

Like the old man, Right.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Apparently so.

[Mary Roach]

Is that right?

[Chuck Nice]

So the literal meaning of the word deface would be to just slash, slop off your nose?

[Bill Nye]

Yeah, hack off a nose.

[Mary Roach]

Oh, that's interesting. So, yeah. Where were you when I was writing the book?

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, yeah, that's so cool. But also that's in New Hampshire.

[Mary Roach]

New Hampshire? Y And the nose fell off there. Natural causes, however.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So who was the military surgeon that came up? U.S. military Surgeon. Came up with an idea for nose.

[Mary Roach]

Frank Teddemore.

[Gary O'Reilly]

That's the settlement.

[Mary Roach]

Love him. Frank Tettemore. Okay. 1894, Frank Tettemore, army surgeon, came up with. It was a pair of glasses. This is gonna work mostly for men. Pair of glasses. Okay. And then you would hang a celluloid plastic nose off the glasses. You need a little bit of nose left to. For the glasses. And then at the bottom, to hide the line, there was a mustache. So it's basically.

[Bill Nye]

Marx classes.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, exactly. A medical version of that. Yeah, exactly. But what was more amazing, although it's hard to beat, the Groucho Mars glasses was going back to, like, the 1500s. There was surgery where you would take a flap from the cheek. Right. Or the forehead, and then separate it, but leave it attached in one spot, flip it over onto the nose, leave it attached. So it has a blood supply while it's growing in on the nose. Right. And that worked pretty well, but you'd have scarring on the face. So this guy. I love this guy. Tagliacozzi. Gaspari Tagliacozzi in the 1500s is like, we need.

[Chuck Nice]

Was he Italian?

[Mary Roach]

No, he was from Pittsburgh. So he came up with this thing like. Like, let's take the underside of the.

[Chuck Nice]

Upper arm that you don't normally look at.

[Mary Roach]

That you don't look at. Right. And there's no hair there or anything. So. But the problem then is that you had to have your head kind of.

[Bill Nye]

Like attached to your forehead, your arm attached to your forearms.

[Mary Roach]

Like, you're checking if you have bo. It's that position. Right. So you do like that for a couple weeks. And so he had this whole harness system back then.

[Chuck Nice]

Everyone had bo. Let's be clear about this.

[Mary Roach]

So that made it easier.

[Chuck Nice]

Am I lying?

[Mary Roach]

There's a statue of Gaspari Tagliaccacci in Bologna. Like, it's like a niche in the wall. And he's. It's a full figure thing. And he's stepping forward towards the viewer, and he's holding something in his hand. And you, like, look closely, like, what is it? It's a nose. Wow. That's his thing.

[Chuck Nice]

Completely creepy. So there was a whole industry to repair those who were defaced.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah. And then syphilis came along. More need, more demand for fixing noses. It's been a thing.

[Bill Nye]

Now, what's the tie to syphilis? I mean, I'm not familiar with the.

[Mary Roach]

Eventually, if you don't Treat it, I guess the bridge of the cartilage.

[Bill Nye]

The cartilage deteriorates.

[Mary Roach]

Something like that. Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Let's get into how implant surgeons, plastic surgeons, as we historically refer to them, came across the golden ratio and Fibonacci sequence. When it came to breast implants and fat transfer, that just seemed to be surprising.

[Mary Roach]

It was surprising to me, and that's why I decided to go to Mexico City and see this plastic surgeon. He applied the Fibonacci. See the golden ratio, which is kind of two thirds, one third. You know, it's been around a long time. And you can find examples of it in nature. You know, those shells like that, and the design of sunflowers on a sunflower plant. It turns up everywhere, apparently. Anyway, so this guy wrote this paper. There were a couple papers. One was on the perfect calf, and one was on the perfect buttock proportions. And when he did a Brazilian butt lift, basically, you know, taking fat from one place and applying it elsewhere, he would use the Fibonacci sequence. I imagined him with, you know, I don't know, a protractor and markers. And he's like, no, I eyeball it. By now. I can eyeball it. But anyway, wow. So I just was kind of interested in that whole.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I was not expecting to read about the Fibonacci sequence in a butt chapter.

[Bill Nye]

Yeah, I was gonna say.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I wasn't either. And then I, you know, would sir.

[Chuck Nice]

Mix a lot agree with these proportions?

[Bill Nye]

Oh, he likes big butts and he cannot laugh.

[Mary Roach]

Oh, sorry. Yes. Okay. Well, thank you. I know this.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes. It's from the 90s, actually. It's a pretty old song. It is relative to him, but he would not. But it has to do with the evolving aesthetic that this involved.

[Mary Roach]

So I was interested because this was one of the first. This was the first chapter that I reported. So going back some years, and the Kardashian butt was the big thing at that point.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And that is literally.

[Mary Roach]

That is. Yes, it was the big thing. Yes. And that is not that evolved from the J.

[Chuck Nice]

Lo butt, the kid.

[Mary Roach]

But yes, the original.

[Gary O'Reilly]

The OG you know a lot about this.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah. So I was curious, you know, now is he discarding Fibonacci for Kardashian? Like, how does he deal with this? Anyway, so it was an interesting conversation and an interesting afternoon seeing this person have their fat from here, put here and back here.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Right?

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You mentioned prosthetics just a minute ago. But we have some really advanced prosthetics that have come up with microprocessors, they cost a lot of money. To the point, are they worth it? And then I asked myself, well, what.

[Bill Nye]

Do you need a chip in your implant for?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Because you've got them.

[Mary Roach]

So, like, you got a implant with your chip?

[Bill Nye]

No, no, not your smart ass.

[Lowe's Commercial Voice]

Yay.

[Chuck Nice]

Good one.

[Mary Roach]

Use that one tonight.

[Bill Nye]

Good one. Use that one. No, but seriously, what do you mean?

[Mary Roach]

Not in your butt.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Not in your butt. No, in a prosthetic.

[Mary Roach]

In a leg or a.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Then I started to read further through the chap. They cost how much? And they're not even waterproof.

[Mary Roach]

They're not. And the battery needs to be charged. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're heavy. That's another thing. But for a leg, particularly if it's an upper leg, they're pretty great for legs. They can help.

[Gary O'Reilly]

But how do you get the stability in your center of gravity when you've got another perspective that comes.

[Mary Roach]

But they can kind of like, if they sense that you're about to fall, they can kind of help, you know, prevent that. And there's some that kind of. That use AI to kind of learn your gait. And I mean. So the legs have come a long way. The legs are a lot. I mean, I went to the national gathering of the amputee Coalition, so it's a huge. Like, they book the whole hotel.

[Chuck Nice]

That's a thing.

[Mary Roach]

That's a thing. And, like, you're. So you're in the lobby and, like, everybody has a prosthetic leg. It's kind of great. But not so many arms, because the arms are, you know, because the fingers.

[Bill Nye]

That's a problem.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, like, you can sort of toggle through the grip, but it's. It's kind of wonky. It's not quite there yet.

[Chuck Nice]

So how much of the bionic man are we today? How far have we come in the 50 years since the 1970s?

[Mary Roach]

Legs and arms and eye.

[Bill Nye]

Legs, arms, eye.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, he had all his organs, though, is that right?

[Bill Nye]

His torso.

[Chuck Nice]

His torso, as far as I know. All right.

[Mary Roach]

It's just legs and arms.

[Chuck Nice]

And he had his own brain.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, he had his own brain.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so we're kind of there.

[Mary Roach]

But the eye, the optic nerve is kind of part of the brain.

[Bill Nye]

Yeah, it is. And that's. That's. That's. Well, actually, they. I read an article about a prosthetic eye that is attached. That will give sight. That will actually give sight.

[Mary Roach]

Huh.

[Bill Nye]

Is there anything.

[Mary Roach]

Is that not very good sight?

[Bill Nye]

No, it is.

[Mary Roach]

Believe it or not, it's not rudimentary sight.

[Bill Nye]

But it's rudimentary sight.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah. Like. Right. Yeah. We're not. But the lenses for cataract surgery, that's. That's.

[Chuck Nice]

That count.

[Bill Nye]

Absolutely.

[Mary Roach]

But yeah, like the whole. That's pretty complicated to do an eye and an optic nerve. Hook that up and everything. But yeah, I mean, I think AI is going to speed things up quite.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Going back to the prosthetics, there's something called osseointegration.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Which is that bone.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah. Just think dentures versus implants for your teeth.

[Mary Roach]

Yes. So it screws directly into the bone. And it's great if it's, you know, if there's no infection. There's been, you know, some issues with infection which you don't get with the implant in the mouth. And it's the same. The same guy who came up with the implants in the mouth. Brain Mark. Per Ingemar. Bren has an accent that I. Per Ingemar. Somewhere up there. Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Easter Wiener Deer.

[Bill Nye]

Yes. There you go.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Just love school. I know.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He's like, wow, this seems to be working well and doesn't get infected even though the mouth is full of bacteria. Wow. Let's just screw them in everywhere. And if you could do that. Setting aside the infection issue, it's great. Cause now you have sensation through the bone. You can tell what surface you're walking on.

[Chuck Nice]

And see, bones are like two by fours inside your body that you just hang stuff on with carpentry.

[Bill Nye]

Well, this.

[Mary Roach]

Screw it in. It's carpentry, right? Yeah. You just screw it in. And now you don't need the socket. Cause the socket, you know, it works by compression so it can be uncomfortable. It's sweaty. I remember seeing a booth for like residual limb antiperspirant. Cause it's on a hot day, they like.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, residual limb antiperspirant.

[Mary Roach]

It's such a.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Did you know that was a thing?

[Bill Nye]

That's a thing.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah.

[Bill Nye]

Is that anything like Mondo? These commercials, people are putting deodorant everywhere.

[Mary Roach]

What is up with that?

[Bill Nye]

What the hell is happening?

[Mary Roach]

What the hell?

[Bill Nye]

I know. Back in the day, we used to just say something called wash your ass. That's what we would say.

[Dr. Horton Commercial Voice]

All right.

[Bill Nye]

They like. That's what. Be like, oh, my. I'm so. Like, things are so weird down there. Be like, yeah, go wash your ass.

[Mary Roach]

I know. What a marketing coup that is.

[Bill Nye]

Yeah, tell me about it.

[Mary Roach]

Anyway, where were we?

[Bill Nye]

What is. What are the specifics with the infection? Because the mouth is the dirtiest part of the body. And when you get an implant, they screw it into the bone. That's why you got to wait, like two months before you get the actual.

[Chuck Nice]

Tooth for the bone to heal.

[Bill Nye]

The bone has to heal around the anchor, and there's like zero problems with that. But you put it in the leg and they got infection problems.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah. You know what I think it is because I did a book that. Well, I had a saliva chapter. Saliva has probably. Because the mouth is a cesspool of bacteria, saliva has antibacterial properties. So. Which makes sense.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Right?

[Mary Roach]

Yeah. So I'm.

[Chuck Nice]

I say that about dogs.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yep.

[Chuck Nice]

But I always wonder whether. How soon after they lick their butt is that a true fact about their saliva?

[Bill Nye]

I am never going to find out.

[Chuck Nice]

No.

[Lowe's Commercial Voice]

What's wrong with you?

[Chuck Nice]

Let the dog lick your wound. It's got the antibiotic.

[Mary Roach]

No.

[Chuck Nice]

Right after it sniffed someone else's butt. Licked its own butt. No, I'm not going there.

[Mary Roach]

That's how powerful saliva is. You can lick your butt and then lick your wound. Check it out.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Still not doing the practical. So what advances have we made now in organ replacement in terms of having like a dialysis machine that's big and clunky and sat next to somebody, but actually being able to replace organs?

[Mary Roach]

Well, one development that's pretty cool is you could extend the shelf life of a heart that's been taken for transplantation. So right now, if you take a heart from a donor body, Right. You've got, you know, four to six hours on ice. Or if you use. There's some more modern, like perfusion systems, like a box where you're given in a blood. You're given an oxygen supply. Right. And that'll get you like 12 hours. But there's a lab, University of Michigan extracorporeal life support lab, which is where they came up with the ecmo Extracorporeal, you know, the heart lung machine. So it's. It's basically oxygenating you outside the body.

[Bill Nye]

Right.

[Mary Roach]

So it's taking the place of your heart and lungs.

[Bill Nye]

It's this machine that's what they use during open heart surgery. So they're pumping the blood through and the oxygen, and it's basically your heart for the heart, for the course of the surgery.

[Chuck Nice]

Lung machine.

[Mary Roach]

Exactly. But there are some folks who are. Now there's like a mobile unit that they're talking about. You could. So instead of somebody, if you have a heart attack, your heart stops. Say the emergency personnel doing, like, cpr, they could do extra. They could hook you up, like, sort of like two things through the neck and start doing that gotcha in your home. Like if you could get the equipment downsized a bit and you. But the problem there, you've got like four minutes before you're heading into the zone of are you saving a life or creating a vegetable?

[Bill Nye]

Right. Because yeah, at that point the deprivation of oxygen you have in danger of creating a brain dead person. Wow.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So the biggest issue seems to be the rejection of an organ. A donated organ. Yeah, I mean, are we, are we anywhere near overcoming and if we are, how.

[Mary Roach]

Well, it's been tough. You know, I remember like 10 years ago there was just tons of stuff about face transplants, hand transplants. And these are, these are tricky because it's called a composite tissue allotransplant. So it's lots of different types of tissues. There's lots for the body to get worked up about and go like, ah, I don't like this. I asked, you know, because I was thinking, you know, I don't see much about that anymore. Like. Cause I remember seeing the first bilateral leg trans arm transplant there. Somebody did a leg. I was like, why do you not hear about that anymore?

[Chuck Nice]

We got the face transplants. When the chimps ripped off your face.

[Mary Roach]

Yes, that's right.

[Bill Nye]

Yeah. But then we realized, you know what, just stay away from the chimps. People go, why are we spending all this money trying to figure out how we transplant a face, get away from the chimp.

[Mary Roach]

But yeah, but as it turned out, some of the face transplant people need like a second face because they're having rejection issues. People are asking to have hands taken off. Like the immune system figures out a way. It's just like the immune system does not want. So it's not like something where insurance covers it and everybody's having it done. They kind of moved away from that.

[Chuck Nice]

So if we have rejection issues with the organs of other humans, how is it that an organ from a pig could ever work at all?

[Mary Roach]

Great question, Neil. Thank you. So you gotta genetically edit those suckers, those pigs.

[Bill Nye]

Gotcha.

[Mary Roach]

So there's something called an alpha gal protein. And if you knock that out now, the body's a little more accepting. So now it's on a par with putting another human's organ in. But you know, what are we at? There's one guy who's had a kidney for about nine months. Everybody else lasted about two months. But those.

[Chuck Nice]

The pig kidney.

[Mary Roach]

Pig kidney, yeah. But those first ones, those folks were really sick. That was done like a compassionate, I'll.

[Bill Nye]

Give you time to say goodbye type Thing.

[Mary Roach]

Well, it was like, you know, you're going to die soon, so could we give this a whirl and maybe it'll work.

[Chuck Nice]

I'd be all for it.

[Bill Nye]

You're gonna die.

[Chuck Nice]

Whatever organs in and out. More science.

[Bill Nye]

Yeah. And maybe I'll help somebody else.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, right. Maybe it'll help me. But it'll surely help help the process of helping other people.

[Bill Nye]

So I'm curious as to why, you know, we look at transplant. Transplant and that includes the pig. Instead of like if you were to take a pig's organ and graft our cellular signature onto that organ so when we put it back in our body, our body is, is fooled into thinking that it's us.

[Mary Roach]

Well a version of that is called chimerism. So no. So if you were to take a pig when it's just a few cells old and do an edit whereby that pig is not going to grow a pig kidney. And now you introduce some human stem cells, pluripotent stem cells that are going to fill that niche, that open niche. So now you've got a pig. This is all in the future. It's very early on.

[Chuck Nice]

It's a pig with a human kidney.

[Mary Roach]

It's a pig with a human kidney. So the pig's grown up with it doesn't bother the pig, it's part of its body, but it's an actual human organization. So you could then take that and transplant it. And the end point being everybody has their own personal pig, like with a car for spare parts and you just like waiting to go.

[Chuck Nice]

So I used to feel bad that a pig would give its life and give up its organs for you.

[Bill Nye]

And then you had bacon.

[Chuck Nice]

How much bacon? And pork chops and pork sausage I eat. So I guess the trick is don't ever name the pig. Maybe that's the trick.

[Bill Nye]

And even then I'm like Jimmy was delicious.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So Mary, you said this is all in the future, right. So where did you go and find a 26 story pigsty with elevators that could hold 40 ton loads and facial recognition.

[Mary Roach]

I went to China. That was pretty amazing. Right. But those were pigs for Eden. Those are for eating.

[Chuck Nice]

Facial recognition for pigs.

[Bill Nye]

I'm gonna definitely buy the book. But you gotta kinda.

[Chuck Nice]

With facial recognition for pigs?

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, yeah, they've got. This is. Yeah, it's a 26 story piggery. They call em piggeries.

[Bill Nye]

Piggeries.

[Mary Roach]

So it's just super high tech, big kind of pig agriculture and the facial wrecking. I don't know why they need that. But they got It. But those are not for.

[Chuck Nice]

In case your pig commits a crime, you'll know.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, right.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So if you've got these kind of facilities.

[Mary Roach]

Yes. For pork. Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Aren't you then one step away from having pluripotent cells in a very sterile situation, and that then becomes an offshoot of just not the meat, but the organs.

[Mary Roach]

Well, chimerism is like. It's pretty early on. Like somebody, as far as I know, that it's gotten. Is somebody created, like, got a pig probably, I think, to grow a mesonephros, which is apparently a very primitive kidney. It's not known if that would even grow into a whole kidney. So it's. And I don't have any reason to believe China's further along in these things. No, really. Like when I was talking to the folks who. At these super clean pigsty that I was at, and it was super clean. It was super.

[Bill Nye]

Well, how was the smell? Because pigs, I mean, my God, they're God awful.

[Mary Roach]

I know. But you know what? Because it's super clean and I'm not super. They would. I couldn't go in. I was watching them on a video camera.

[Chuck Nice]

So you stank.

[Mary Roach]

So I stank.

[Bill Nye]

You got a bunch of pigs sitting around like, oh, God, these humans. Jeez Louise. These humans.

[Mary Roach]

Oh, my God, get her out of here.

[Chuck Nice]

Pig saying, jeez Louise. But wait, can we back up just briefly here?

[Mary Roach]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

I remembered some years ago when I hosted a spinoff of PBS Nova, Nova Science now, we went to a lab where, picking up on your point, they created a scaffold in the shape of the organ that was intended. Then they got cells of that organ and cultured those cells into that scaffold.

[Mary Roach]

Yes. Which.

[Chuck Nice]

And then the cells knew what to do. Together they. They took heart cells and it built into a heart. And then you flick them and then they all started beating together. And I thought the cells know what they're trying to do.

[Mary Roach]

They do. If you look at. If you look at heart cells, just a sheet of them under a microscope, they're beating and they, like, open up, like a connection to one another. And they all start beating and using. Together, together, together. Even to the point where they catch air, they're like bouncing off the. Yeah, that's. But the scaffold thing is tough because a heart is not just a bunch of cardiomyocytes. You have to align them properly. I mean, I don't know what you saw. There's a lot of overstatement.

[Lowe's Commercial Voice]

Yeah.

[Mary Roach]

It was a killer.

[Chuck Nice]

It was a.

[Mary Roach]

It was probably a Bladder, Right.

[Chuck Nice]

I don't remember actually, but no, but it was very futuristic and they didn't claim to have the solution then.

[Mary Roach]

Right, right, right.

[Chuck Nice]

It made me look forward to what.

[Mary Roach]

This could be and that technology, D cell recell. So okay, you take a heart and you using the same kind of thing an embalmer would do. Or use the vasculature to pump in detergent. Right. And that's right.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And you wash it.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah. All of the cells, the detergent opens up the fats, all the contents of the cells come out. You can basically rinse away all the living stuff and you're left with the extracellular stuff, the scaffold. And the hope was now we can use that same capillary system to put the cells back. But the problem, according to the bioprinting lab that I went to, is that the breakdown products, those are molecular tiny, very tiny. And the stuff you're trying to pump in is much bigger and you can't. And there's different types of cells, like how are you gonna tell them where to get off the train? You know the different types. And for muscle cells you have to align them the way like the patterns. Yeah. Like the shoulders, like they're in a fan shape. The heart, they're in a helix shape. Cause it kind of twists as it pumps. So you gotta align when you're printing. So to just throw em on a scaffold does maybe for like, you know, this outer ear that I think is the one that is approved. FDA approved outer ears.

[Chuck Nice]

All right.

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[Mary Roach]

Done.

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[Chuck Nice]

Today.

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[Gary O'Reilly]

I want to get to 3D printing, but if I don't address the finger penis, he's gonna have a tantrum like a three year old.

[Bill Nye]

I think I have been exceedingly patient and.

[Gary O'Reilly]

See what I mean?

[Bill Nye]

And very mature throughout this entire show that I have pushed the issue.

[Chuck Nice]

Take it over, Chuck.

[Bill Nye]

So here we go.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, let's check. Take it over. Go.

[Bill Nye]

All right, so please tell us you went to Tbilisi to check out a finger penis.

[Mary Roach]

I did.

[Bill Nye]

And, yeah, so did one. Did it come from Donald Trump? Cause I saw South Park. And two, I'm sorry. Anyway, forget that joke. Just go with it.

[Mary Roach]

Okay. All right. Well, early on, when I was thinking about doing this book, I was talking to this woman. She actually worked in a stem cell lab. It had nothing to do with the conversation, but for some reason she mentioned this. She'd seen a paper by a surgeon who had used a man's own middle finger to recreate the penis he'd had.

[Bill Nye]

How appropriate.

[Mary Roach]

And I, of course, imagine what happened to his penis. Cancer. Cancer. So he. So, yeah, you can get penis.

[Bill Nye]

Wait, you get cancer of the penis?

[Chuck Nice]

You can get penis cancer.

[Bill Nye]

Okay, let me just say this. All of our research dollars should now be going to cure cancer of the penis. I had no idea that this existed.

[Chuck Nice]

I get.

[Bill Nye]

I get. I get letters from the American Cancer Society on a daily basis. I'm just like, yeah, whatever, whatever. If they send me penis cancer material, I'm sending money.

[Chuck Nice]

Anyway.

[Mary Roach]

Anyway, so check your mail.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Ch. Incoming.

[Mary Roach]

Here it comes. I, of course, pictured the man's finger taken intact with the nail and everything and just stitched in place and able to kind of move and beckon like a finger could. Right? Which is not.

[Bill Nye]

It's not the case, I gotta say. On the one hand, it's crazy, but on the other hand, I love to be able to stand naked in front of a bed and go, come in, come in.

[Mary Roach]

That's what I was picturing. And that's why. And I understand, knew that was probably not the situation, but I'm like, I'm go. And I wrote. I used Google Translate. I wrote to this person in English, in Russian and in Georgian, and I got no reply. So I did. What I sometimes do is I showed up. I just showed up. And it's, you know, the Caucasian smells.

[Chuck Nice]

You are bold. Keep going.

[Mary Roach]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

All right. So then what happened?

[Mary Roach]

Okay, well, the surgeon was on vacation, but the woman who runs the office took pity on me. Cause I've come all the way from America to see this penis.

[Chuck Nice]

And that's a sentence.

[Bill Nye]

I love that.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Why are you here in Georgia?

[Chuck Nice]

Ever been uttered in the history of the world?

[Bill Nye]

Can you imagine an immigration officer all.

[Chuck Nice]

The way from America to see this penis?

[Mary Roach]

So she took pity on me and she said, well, he's gone, but his office is open. And I know that we can get onto his computer. And there are some photographs. And there were some photographs, okay? The finger was used inside for rigidity. Okay. And then they used some skin from, I think, the lower part of the forearm anyway. And then they put that around it. It looked very penis like. But here's the thing. It didn't move and beckon like that, but you could crook it up like a finger. And they had a photograph, and in order to show how strong it was.

[Bill Nye]

They hung a bucket on it.

[Mary Roach]

Not far off, a ceramic water pitcher.

[Bill Nye]

Oh, my God. You know, that is impressive, I have to say.

[Mary Roach]

White with kind of red and green flowers.

[Bill Nye]

May I take a coat, please?

[Chuck Nice]

My job is coaching at the restaurant.

[Mary Roach]

A little more iced tea, my love?

[Bill Nye]

Yeah, get out.

[Mary Roach]

And I, you know, because I never. This guy never. I called, I tried to follow up. He never. He never got in touch with me. So I don't know quite why he didn't use. There are medical surgical products for erectile dysfunction surgery. You know, you can. That are even like that, bendable kind of deals. I don't know why he didn't use that, but interesting choice, but.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You happy now?

[Chuck Nice]

Did you get out of your system?

[Bill Nye]

That was fascinating. I'm sorry, I think I speak for everyone. We all want to know about finger penises.

[Mary Roach]

You definitely speak for me.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You have to buy the book and read the chapter. 3D printing.

[Mary Roach]

Yes.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Are we into 3D printing for things such as organs?

[Mary Roach]

Now, that's a tough one. I asked that very question at the lab that I went to at Carnegie Mellon, the Feinberg lab, that does a lot of stuff with 3D printing.

[Chuck Nice]

You've been everywhere.

[Mary Roach]

I've been everywhere. I have been absolutely everywhere. No, and I asked that same question. How long before we're printing an organ that you could install in a body? And he said, we are kind of in the Wright brothers stage.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Oh, took it that far back.

[Bill Nye]

I'm gonna say that's relatively close. Let's be honest. The Wright Brothers. 1901. Flying Bicycle. 1903.

[Gary O'Reilly]

But that's a flying bicycle.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, not really, because they used a combustion engine.

[Bill Nye]

Yes. So let's be honest. If you're looking at 1903 and then commercial flight. Commercial flight.

[Chuck Nice]

15 years, 15, 30 years from now, 25 years later.

[Bill Nye]

So you're looking at about 35, 40 years. And we could be someplace.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Oh, even this and that. Because we're going to plug AI In.

[Mary Roach]

Exactly. He said. He said like a couple of decades. Okay. But things are speeding up more quickly now because of AI So there's a lot of stuff going on that led him to think that, you know, it could happen faster than that. But he put it at about 20 years.

[Chuck Nice]

And the. It is what, specifically?

[Mary Roach]

An organ that you could print that could then be put in a body, installed, hooked up.

[Bill Nye]

That's amazing. Is the printing process using your own cells? Because now we can take regular cells and turn them into stem cells. So do they take your own cells and then.

[Mary Roach]

Well, at this point, they're just taking off the shelf and trying to figure out right now there was a woman there who had printed a single ventricle for a mouse and installed it. And months later it was still working. I was like, whoa. So you actually have this thing that's pumping and keeping a mouse al. Well, it still has its own heart. Okay. And the ventricle doesn't have valves, so the blood shoots out either end. So we have to get the valves installed. But, you know, they can print valves and print valves.

[Gary O'Reilly]

They're at the stage of throwing spaghetti.

[Bill Nye]

At the wall, by the way. I mean, I wonder if you could do a hybrid, especially for a heart. Because we already have valves that are artificial.

[Mary Roach]

Right.

[Bill Nye]

And so you could print the musculature and then apply the valves and actually put that heart in a person.

[Mary Roach]

You could. Yeah. And right now you can take cow collagen, which the body. Human body accepts fine. But what's great about printing could be custom fit. Cause some, you know, cow valve. Because sometimes it's too big for people. Like, it doesn't fit everybody. Not everybody's a candidate. But now you could. You can, you know, and I've seen a 3D printed, like, tri leaflet valve. It's pretty cool. I have a little one in a jar. I could have brought it today and showed you. Yeah, it's so. It's cute.

[Gary O'Reilly]

This sounds like we are inching towards people who will see this as a road to immortality.

[Mary Roach]

Oh, like what? Putin?

[Gary O'Reilly]

And yeah. Xi said, yeah, it's fabulous that you've been able to find these experts in these fields. But it seems a lot like a conversation we have in so many other areas which leads us towards is it going to be misdirected in some way for people using it for immortality, for wanting to live an extended lifetime beyond 2, 3, 4, 500 years of age?

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, I don't think that's gonna come from replacement bits. I mean, the one. You know, there is a surgeon who repeatedly talks about a whole body transplant if you could hook up the spinal nerves, which isn't possible now, but if you can do that, and you can certainly hook up the blood supply to the brain and the head. I mean, that's been 1970. Robert White did that with monkeys. Successfully transplanted one head onto a different one's body.

[Bill Nye]

I mean, you could Freaky Monkey Friday.

[Chuck Nice]

No, no. What you would do there. No, no. The application is clear and present. Because Alzheimer's, you have a perfectly functioning body and your brain is gone. And als, you have a perfectly functioning brain and your body's gone.

[Mary Roach]

Right. So with als, if you could.

[Chuck Nice]

With the als, you would take that person's head and attach it to the body of the. Of the Alzheimer's patient, and then you get one whole person out of that.

[Mary Roach]

Oh, interesting. You took it a step further.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, yeah. Do both. Right?

[Mary Roach]

Do both.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mary Roach]

Right, right, right.

[Chuck Nice]

I'm thinking.

[Bill Nye]

No, I'm saying that's scary. It makes perfect sense, but it's very Frankensteinian.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Well, yeah. Then you go back to the pluripotency of being able to edit cells down in genes, and then where can that go? And how could that be misdirected potentially in the future?

[Mary Roach]

Well, at this point, we were just talking about implanting clusters of cells that might help somebody with Parkinson's or diabetes. And that's pretty. But you're talking about. What are you talking about?

[Gary O'Reilly]

So if we took someone's and they created their own egg, they create their own sperm, fertilize them in vitro.

[Mary Roach]

Right. In vitro. Gametogenesis.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Fine.

[Mary Roach]

Right, right, right. You could, in theory. Right. If you take someone's blood cells and you regress them to pluripotency, and then you direct them to become. Say it's a man and you direct it to become an egg, or if it's a woman, you direct it to become sperm. And now you could have create another human being with only your own genetic material, which I think Elon Musk is probably really excited about because it's just.

[Chuck Nice]

Because we need more Elon Musk's in the world. Was that the motivation?

[Mary Roach]

Yeah. So that. But that's an interesting potential future direction, right?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yes.

[Mary Roach]

And there are ethics papers out there.

[Bill Nye]

On that, I would imagine.

[Chuck Nice]

So let me ask more precisely. Are there ethicists working in tandem with these efforts or are they brought on only when it's too late?

[Mary Roach]

I think they're ethics.

[Chuck Nice]

Can you tell us what we shouldn't have done?

[Mary Roach]

I think there are ethicists who are publishing papers about this with warnings and everything. But I don't know if I can't answer that question, whether they're working in tandem. I hope so.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. So we gotta end it there. Yeah, man, we could be here for hours talking about it.

[Bill Nye]

Yeah, it's fascinating.

[Gary O'Reilly]

It is fascinating.

[Bill Nye]

Very well, let me get it.

[Chuck Nice]

Here we go. Oh, right. Replaceable. You all right? So congratulations again on another book that no one else would have even thought to write. And you did it.

[Mary Roach]

I done it. Thank you. All right, thanks, you guys.

[Chuck Nice]

Chuck, always good to have you, man.

[Bill Nye]

Always a pleasure.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, Ray, pleasure. Neil, thanks for cooking one of these up again.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Oh, yeah. Well, thanks to our guest.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Mary Roach]

And thank you for reading the book.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You're welcome. Enjoyed it.

[Chuck Nice]

So I just have a cosmic perspective on this. If I may. Please, go ahead.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Should we stop you.

[Chuck Nice]

Just. If I may. What has happened in the history of science and technology and history of innovation is we see a problem, a challenge, and then we try to address that problem and try to fix that problem. One of the more famous examples of this was the manure problem in Manhattan more than a century ago. The population was growing, horses were everywhere, manure was everywhere. And someone wrote a tongue in cheek article about that. We were headed towards a manure catastrophe where the horses that come in to take out the manure from the other horses, they leave manure behind. And who cleans that up? And you get a point where the entire city is buried under manure. Consider also that flies reproduce in the manure. And we didn't have supermarkets yet. There were street vendors selling fish and other other produce and meats. Flies would be all over. It was a sanitation nightmare. So what do you do? You gotta research that. You say Maybe we can change the food that the horse eats to reduce the amount of manure. Put something in the food so that flies won't want to reproduce in the manure, and you start attacking the problem directly. And the solution was the automobile. That's what got rid of the manure. It came from another place. It came from another mindset. It was, I'm not trying to fix the horse. I'm going to invent something that doesn't even need the horse. When I look around at nature, I see newts that can regenerate limbs and tails. Lobsters regenerate claws. They don't need prosthetics. They don't need medical doctors. They don't need anything that we are currently exploring to replace our organs. It is built into their DNA. And we like to think of ourselves as the top of some kind of evolutionary pyramid when other animals can recreate their organs and we can't. So how far does that go? The planaria, it's a form of worm. You can cut off its head and it'll regrow a head. Oh, my gosh. So maybe the solution to this is not one lab or another inventing a kidney or heart or a lung or a limb. Maybe it's going into our DNA, splicing into it that which regenerates organs in other animals, the animal kingdom. We have DNA in common with them, with other vertebrates. We're vertebrate, they're vertebrates. Let's go in and find out what's making that work. Maybe the future of this is you just go in and they twiddle with your DNA and another organ grows. And at the top of that list, we put military veterans who need the limbs first, then everybody else second in line to replace our organs and our limbs for whatever it was we were doing on our job. In defense of the country or just being dumbass. To quote Chuck. Perhaps that's in our future. A future not yet visible to us, but maybe nature has that in store. That is a cosmic perspective. Neil Degrasse Tyson here as always, bidding you to keep looking up. Was that too long?

[Bill Nye]

No, there's. There's part parts that can be pulled out and collapsed and it'll work just as fine. Yeah, it's.

[Chuck Nice]

It.

[Bill Nye]

It worked on every level. So.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Mary Roach]

Oh, it's good. And people are looking at those.

[Bill Nye]

Yeah, exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

That's why I was going to bring it up, but we ran out of time.

[Mary Roach]

That's why it's so frustrating when, like, people make fun of, like, why are you studying newt. They're studying, you know, I know. They're like, they're so short sighted, the people who are making these cuts.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, every one of them.

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