玛丽·罗奇钟爱撰写古怪科学题材

美丽与赢得网球大满贯、赋能社区或在南美洲的荒野中追踪美洲豹有何关联？大家好，我是伊莎贝拉·罗西里尼，欢迎回到《这不是一档美容播客》第二季。在这里，我将揭示那些触及美丽如何贯穿我们生活方方面面的故事。请通过您喜爱的播客平台收听由欧莱雅集团出品的《这不是一档美容播客》。

What does beauty have to do with winning a tennis grand slam or empowering communities or tracking jaguars through the wild heart of South America? Hi there. I'm Isabella Rossellini, and I'm back with season two of this is not a beauty podcast where I uncover stories that get to the heart of how beauty is woven through every facet of our lives. Listen to this is not a beauty podcast from L'Oreal Group on your favorite podcast platform.

我是吉尔伯特·克鲁兹，《纽约时报书评》的编辑，这里是《书评播客》。我们为您带来了秋季小说预览和非虚构作品预览。过去两周我们讨论了近30本书，希望您已抽空收听这两期节目，并开始收藏想读的书目。本周，我们邀请到一位杰出的作家。

I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of The New York Times Book Review, and this is the Book Review Podcast. We gave you a fall fiction preview. We gave you a fall non fiction preview. We talked about almost 30 books over the past two weeks, and hopefully, you've made time for both of those episodes and have started saving the books you wanna read. This week, we have on a wonderful writer.

与我对话的是《僵硬》的作者，她著有《幽灵》《 Bonk》和《吞咽》，她是玛丽·罗奇——一位创作了八部科普畅销书的科学记者，包括她的新作《可替代的你：人体解剖学冒险》。玛丽，欢迎来到《书评播客》。

Joining me is the author of Stiff. She's the author of Spook. She's the author of Bonk, and she is the author of Gulp. She is Mary Roach, the science journalist behind eight popular science books, including her latest, Replaceable You Adventures in Human Anatomy. Mary, welcome to the Book Review podcast.

非常感谢。

Thank you very much.

玛丽，你的上一本书《毛茸茸的麻烦：当自然打破法则》讲述了动物与人类接触越界时的故事。而新书又回到了你熟悉的领域——那个永远令人着迷的人体。

So, Mary, your last book was Fuzz, When Nature Breaks the Law. It was about animals. It was about essentially what happens when animals and humans come into to contact. They cross that line. With your new book, you're back on territory that you know very well, which is the human body, the endlessly fascinating human body.

是什么促使你回归这个主题？

What made you come back?

正是因为它永无止境的魅力。人体就像个奇异的外星世界，我在中学和大学都未曾深入研究。我就像个不断发现新大陆的探险家，乐在其中。所以从某种角度说，这对我而言是个顺理成章的选题。

It's just that. It's endlessly fascinating. It's this weird foreign planet, and I didn't study it in high school or college. And so I'm like that explorer who keeps finding new continents and having a blast. So in a way, it's it's a logical topic for me.

我似乎总是被人体及其所有的神奇与怪异之处所吸引。

I seem to just be drawn to the human body and all its miraculousness and weirdness.

跟我们说说你这次探索的领域吧。这个范围相当广泛。在这本新书中，你写了假肢、器官移植、白内障手术。

Tell us about the continents you're exploring this go round here. It's a pretty big tent. This new book, you write about prosthetic legs. You write about organ transplants. You write about cataract surgery.

你还写了铁肺的历史——这完全不在我今年的阅读预期里，但我读了并且很喜欢。你是怎么选定这个宽泛的（如我所说）大框架的？然后又如何决定内容的取舍？

You write about the history of the iron lung, which is not something I would have predicted reading about this year, but I did and I enjoyed it. How did you settle on this sort of broad, as I say, big tent? And then how do you decide what goes in and what goes out?

我一贯如此。我会设定一个宽泛的主题框架，这样就能精选最让我着迷的内容。不过最初启发我的是位读者的邮件，他提议的选题（职业橄榄球裁判）并不合适——我根本不看橄榄球比赛。

I tend to do that. I have a a very broad umbrella of a topic, but that enables me to cherry pick the things that I am most fascinated by. But I the thing that first drew me to the topic was it was a email from a reader who had a book idea for me that didn't quite work. It was professional football referees. I don't watch I don't watch football.

或许是我孤陋寡闻，说不定职业橄榄球裁判其实有着我们未能欣赏的酷炫有趣之处。但...

They may be. Maybe I'm an idiot, and maybe secretly pro football referees are really surprisingly cool and interesting in ways that we don't appreciate. But

这位读者看过你的书吗？因为这选题似乎有点偏离你的领域。

Has this person read any of your books? Because that just seems a slight slightly out of your out of your zone.

她每本都读过。这次她还陪我完成了其中一章的调研，我寄给她样书后她也读了。两天前朱迪发邮件说，她发现有个人的工作是在比赛前用泥浆浸泡橄榄球——本质上就是给橄榄球做泥浴。她还开玩笑说：'如果你真要写橄榄球裁判的话...'

She's read them all. And this one, she's came with me for one of the chapters, and she's I sent her a book, and she's read it. And two days ago, I got an email from Judy, and she said she sent this clip of there's some guy whose job is to bathe the footballs in mud before they're used. So it's essentially a mud bath for footballs. And she goes, in case you're still gonna do that, that football referee Very

放松。我渴望成为比赛前被泥浆覆盖的足球。

relaxing. I would love to be a football slathered in mud before a game.

是啊。我甚至乐意认识那个负责涂抹的人。在人生的这个阶段，这想法对我而言极具吸引力，听起来很舒缓。不过确实。

Yeah. I'd even be happy to meet the guy who does it. It just sounds really appealing to me right now at this point in my life. It sounds soothing. But Yeah.

泥浆浴也是。总之，在邮件往来中，她提到自己是截肢者。我经常这样——如果有人分享生活或职业经历，我总会追问。我是个既好奇又爱管闲事的人。

The mud bath as well. Anyway, so in the back and forth of on email, she mentioned that she's an amputee. I I do this all the time. If somebody shares something about their life or their career, I tend to ask questions. I'm a curious and nosy person.

于是我询问她截肢领域和假肢的现状。她说自己是选择性截肢者，即主动要求切除腿部——因先天脊柱裂和脊柱矫正手术后，她的脚部扭曲，多次手术仍无法正常运作。

So I was asking her, like, what's going on in the world of amputation and limbs and things? And she said she was an elective amputee. In other words, somebody who wanted their leg, their foot, the lower part of their leg cut off because it it didn't work well. She'd had spina bifida. She had spinal corrective surgery.

她目睹佩戴假肢者登山奔跑，而自己却行动受限。但鲜有医生愿为其截肢，他们总说'你的脚是健康的，血液循环正常'。

Her foot ended up being twisted, and there were a number of operations, and it never really got to the point where it worked the way a normal foot should work. And she would see people with prosthetic limbs who were hiking and running around and doing things that she couldn't do, but it was very hard for her to find a surgeon willing to cut off her limb. And she said they'd say to me, but your foot is healthy. It has a blood supply. Yeah.

可她说'我无法正常行走，也不想要它。人们髋关节磨损后可以置换，为何截肢就不同？'这确实不同，我认为我们存在对'身体完整'的执念。

But I can't walk on it very well, and I don't want it. Essentially, people their hip wears out, and they get a hip replacement. Why is this different? And it is different. I think we have a we have a bias for wholeness.

毕竟，脚部是可见的器官，无法复生，医生犹豫也有诸多考量。但她最终找到了愿意手术的医生。

You know, when a foot is a it first of all, you can see it. You're not gonna put it back on, and there's various reasons why a surgeon might be hesitant to do that procedure. But she did finally find someone to cut off her foot.

所以你

So you

总之

So anyway

在与她的这次对话中。

in this conversation with her.

所以那还好。

So that was okay.

然后你说

And you said

是的。选修教育。

Yeah. Elective education.

这里还有更多。

More here.

这就是我的工作方式。我有两个小小的灵感碎片。我从不从一个主题开始。

This is what I do. I have, like, two little kinda nuggets. I never start with a topic.

你有没有试过用其他方式开始，还是这始终是你创作过程的一部分？

Have you ever started the other way, or it's just always been part of your process?

我想，最接近的一次是关于《Bonk》这本书，它研究的是性生理学，而非性别或行为，而是探讨这些器官如何运作？兴奋和高潮作为身体过程究竟是怎么回事？同样，我并没有想过要写一本关于马斯特斯、约翰逊和金赛这些勇敢研究性生理学的人的书。那是对马斯特斯和约翰逊阴道镜影片的引用。我当时想，阴道镜，那是子宫颈。

The closest I got, I think, was with Bonk, which is a book about the study of sexual physiology, not gender, not behavior, but how do these bits and pieces work? What is going on with arousal and orgasm as a bodily process? Again, I didn't think, I wanna write a book about Masters and Johnson and Kinsey and these very brave people who decided to study sexual physiology. It was a reference to the colposcopic films of Masters and Johnson. I went, colposcopy, that's the cervix.

所以我想，天啊。他们拍摄了一个女性在性反应时体内的画面。我当时就觉得，这就是我的下一本书，关于性研究。我不记得有过这样的情况，我可能会想到，比如消化道。我有种感觉，鼻子和屁股之间的那条管道遵循着不同的规则，那是个非常奇怪的空间。

So I thought, my god. They filmed a woman inside her body as she's sexually reacting. And I was like, that's my next book, sex research. I don't think it has ever happened that I've thought maybe gulp, like the alimentary alimentary canal. I had a sense that that tube between the nose and the ass was it's like there's different rules in there, and it's a very weird space.

那确实是个非常奇怪的空间。

It is a very weird space.

你知道，副标题《消化道历险记》，我想让它感觉像你是一个沿着运河旅行的游客，几乎像一本旅行日志。所以那是我最接近在有任何具体内容之前就有了概念的一次。

You know, the subtitle, Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, I wanted it to feel like you're a tourist going down the canal, a travel log almost. So that was the closest I've come to having a concept before I have any of the bits and pieces.

你过去说过，在书与书之间的空白期，是一个四处摸索的过程。是的，直到你找到下一个想法。我有点好奇具体的细节。那是什么样子的？这种四处摸索是怎样的？

You've said in the past that when you're in between books, it is this flailing around process Yes. Until you alight on your next idea. I'm just curious a little bit more of the specifics. What does that look like? What is the flailing around?

你只是在随便翻阅医学期刊吗？你在做什么？

Are you just picking up random medical journals? What are you doing?

我有时会联系过去合作过的研究人员，如果我对某个想法有一丝灵感，就会向他们请教。我经常这样做。我会和飞机上的人交谈。我不断地，就像捡起很多石头看看下面有什么，那是不是一本书？那是不是一本书？

I sometimes call researchers I've worked with in the past to pick their brain if I'm if I've got a germ of a possible idea. I do a lot of brain picking. I talk to people on planes. I I'm constant I'm just, like, picking up a lot of rocks and looking underneath and just, is that a book? Is that a book?

而且经常，几乎总是会有错误的开始，我以为自己找到了方向，结果花了好几个月研究一个主题，最后却因为各种原因放弃，可能是后勤问题或获取途径。这很让人抓狂，因为这并不是说你只要足够努力就一定能找到。这只是机缘巧合，你所能做的就是尽可能保持开放的心态。有时我会回顾每本书的废弃章节文件夹，还有一个叫‘杂项’的文件夹，里面是不适合任何书但有点意思的内容。

And there's there are often, almost always, false starts where I think, yeah. I've got it, and I spend it up to a couple of months in one case looking into a topic and then discarding it for various reasons, maybe logistics or access. It's maddening because it's not a formula of if if you work hard enough, you will find it. It's just serendipity, and it's all you can do is leave yourself open as much as you can. Sometimes I go back in for every book, there are folders of rejected chapters, and I also have a folder that's just called stuff, which is doesn't fit in any book, but kinda interesting.

我记性不好，总是忘记‘杂项’文件夹里有什么。你知道吗？就像那个胖子。我会回去看看，然后想，有没有其他角度看待这个？这对我来说是最难的部分。

And I have a short memory, so I forget I always forget what's in the stuff folder. You know? It's like that fat. And I'll go back in there, and I'll go, is there another way to look at this? It's the hardest part for me.

确实如此。我不知道下一本书要写什么。我现在非常迷茫，吉尔伯特。我已经经历了三次错误的开始。

It really is. I don't know what the next book is. I'm I'm flailing so bad right now, Gilbert. I've gone through, I'd say, three false starts.

你必须写下一本书吗？可以休息一下吗？是什么推动你继续

Do you have to write a next book? Can you take a break? What is the impetus to keep

因为你得找到下一个目标。我不知道还能做什么。我真的不知道。如果我知道其他事情可做，我想我会很乐意去做。但但还有一点。

Because you identify the next one. I don't know how to do anything else. I don't know how to do anything else. I really I would if I did know how to do something else, I think I would love to do that. But but here's the other thing.

当我找到一个让我热血沸腾的话题时，那种感觉太棒了。我得去那儿看看，看看是否行得通。我要联系这个人。我能做到，我完全可以。

I I love it when I do find a topic, and I'm kinda on fire about it. Gotta go here, and I'm gonna see I'm gonna see if that'll work out. I'm gonna get in touch with this person. I could do that. I could do that.

这非常刺激，有趣且令人上瘾。这是我最爱做的事，所以真的不想做别的。而且说实话，我也没其他本事。吉尔伯特，我没有任何工作技能。

And it's very exciting, and it's fun, and it's addictive. It's the thing I love to do most, so I don't really want to do anything else. And also, there's not much else I can do. Let's be honest. I don't have a lot of I don't have any job skills, Gilbert.

我没有

I don't

但你已经证明自己能胜任这个。你证明了可以做好这件事。

have proven that you could do this. You've proven that you could do this. Do it well.

就是这样。

And that's it.

关于这本书，我特别好奇你找到的最早的身体替换手术案例有哪些。不是要你剧透全书内容——所以才需要买书来读嘛。不过很想听听早期的一些例子。

For this book in in particular, I am curious what some of the earliest examples of body replacement surgery that you were able to find were. I don't wanna ask you to tell me everything that's in the book. That's why the book is there, to read it. Yeah. But curious about some of the early stuff.

是的。书从鼻子开始写起，因为一切源于此。历史上全球范围内，鼻部毁损反复出现——如果你想用一种对大众可见的方式惩罚很多人，作为威慑，就割掉鼻子。这很可怕，毕竟那是人的脸面。

Yeah. Well, the book opens with with a nose because that's kind of where it all began. The reason for that is that nasal mutilation was, globally and historically, comes up over and over if you want to punish a lot of people in a way that's very visible to the population, so it's a deterrent, you hack off the nose. It's a horrifying thing. It's somebody's face.

这是他们的个性特征，而且显而易见。鼻部毁损在古代很常见，因此人们很早就想出了一种外科重建鼻子的方法——从脸颊或前额取一块邻近的皮瓣，松解皮肤但仍保留原有血供，将其翻转覆盖在鼻部，使其在原有血液供应下生长。这样身体会向移植组织生长毛细血管，从而可以雕刻出新鼻子。

It's their personality. It's and it's on display. So nasal mutilation happened a lot. So early on, people figured out incredibly early on, people figured out a a way to surgically rebuild noses by taking a, like, a flap of either the cheek or the forehead, the adjacent flesh, loosen that skin, but keep it attached to its original location, flop it over onto the nose, and let it grow in there while it's still attached to its original blood supply. And so you put it on the nose, the body grows capillaries into the tissue at that you've parked there, and you can you sculpt this new nose.

这可以说是整形手术的起源，令人震惊的是这些技术早在公元前1500年就已出现。历史上还出现过各种假鼻，包括金属假鼻、赛璐珞假鼻等。我最喜欢的是1896年弗兰克·泰蒂摩尔发表的论文，他设计了一种轻巧的赛璐珞假鼻，可以挂在眼镜架上——眼镜框上连着假鼻子，最妙的是...

So that was, like, the dawn of plastic surgery, and we're talking 1,500 BCE that were that some of these things were going on, which was astounding to me that somebody figured that out. There were also, throughout history, prosthetic noses too. There were metal noses, eventually celluloid noses, and different techniques, my favorite being a guy named Frank Tetimore in 1896 published a paper about he had this celluloid lightweight, which was great, nose, and you would hang it off a pair of glasses. So they had the glasses, and the nose was attached to the glasses. And this is my favorite bit.

当时这显然只适用于男性。他们会用胡子遮盖假鼻与上唇的连接处，本质上就是医疗版的格劳乔·马克思眼镜造型。

There was a little this would only obviously work for men back then. A mustache to cover the edge, the border between the prosthetic nose and the upper lip. So you'd have it was essentially a medical Groucho Marx glasses.

这些知识你会永久记住吗？你刚说自己记性不好，是不是完成新书宣传后就会清空记忆，然后突然又要开始背诵关于人体的新知识，上一本书学的内容就全忘了？

Do you remember these facts forever? I know you just said you have a bad memory, or is the cash cleared after you do a book press tour where you have to just move on and then all of a sudden memorize a bunch of new facts about the human body and everything that you learned from last book is gone?

我连短期记忆都困难。看这个——这些是记忆卡片。过去三年半写书期间积累的知识，我现在正试图重新塞回脑子里。

I can't even remember them long enough. Look. See what this is? These are flashcards. This is me attempting to shove back into my head all of the things over the course of, what, three and a half years or whatever I spent on this book.

从交稿到出版隔了一年。正如我说，我记忆力不好，现在不得不临时抱佛脚。最糟的不是这个，但对我来说确实困难。我总担心会脱口说出书里的内容，可被问到具体年代时却想不起来。

And the time has gone by. It was a year between when I turned it in and when it finally is coming out. And I don't like I said, I don't have a good memory, so I'm having to kinda cram them back into my head. And that's the hardest it's not the hardest, but it's it's hard for me. I'm constantly in fear that I'm gonna blurt something out that's correct in the book, but I couldn't remember it when I'm in and I'm on people will say, what century was that?

我就含糊其辞：几百年前吧，反正很久了。这种问题我直接甩锅——自己查书去。

I'm like, a couple hun 100. That was a while ago. I kinda took the puck. Look it up.

作为一个同样记性很差的人，我深表同情，玛丽。那些抽认卡可别弄丢了。

As someone who also has a terrible memory, I sympathize, Mary. Those flashcards do not lose them.

不会的。我不会弄丢。

No. I won't.

这本书的重要部分——我觉得你的许多书都是如此——涉及你在报道过程中前往某地。我想那一定很有趣。我想这正是你所做报道类型的魅力所在。我很好奇，你认为这种实地考察对你从事的这种科学新闻报道有多重要？

A big part of this book, and I feel like many of your books, involves it involves you traveling somewhere as part of your reporting process. I have to imagine that's fun. I have to imagine it's part of the appeal of the type of reporting that you do. I'm curious how important you feel that fieldwork is for the type of science journalism that you do.

哦，这对我来说至关重要。我喜欢写作，但前提是我有一大堆好素材可用。而素材只有在我亲自前往、花时间、至少打扰别人一个下午（最好是两天）的情况下才算好，因为我想要有场景、人物、对话、正在发生的事情以及可供我描述的内容。但这实际上也限制了我，因为现在很多科学研究都是关于蛋白质受体和基因组这些肉眼看不见的东西。所以如果你去实验室，基本上就是别人在向你解释一些东西。

Oh, it's it's essential for me. I love writing, but only if I have a pile of good material to work with. And it's only good if I went there and I spent time and I inflicted myself on somebody for at least an afternoon and preferably two days because I wanna have a a scene and people and conversation and things happening and things for me to describe. But that's actually it's limiting for me because so much of science now is protein receptors and genomes and things that you really can't see. So you're go if you go to a lab, you're somebody's explaining something to you.

但就视觉效果而言，现在已经没有解剖台上的尸体了。情况大不相同。但我必须有那些素材。我离不开它。我依赖着我所见所闻所经历的现实素材这根拐杖。

But in terms of the visuals, there are no bodies on slabs anymore. It's very different. But I have to have that. I gotta have it. I rely on the crutch of reality of the things that I've seen and heard and experienced.

这就是我能做这份工作的方式。

That's just how I can do what I do.

我认为你的书之所以如此通俗易懂且引人入胜，部分原因在于你不只是在页面上堆砌事实。你确实在努力构思如何构建一个章节——这些书都非常注重章节编排——你在其中呈现一系列人物角色，并通过这些角色传递信息和科学事实。显然这些都是你长期实践的成果，而且非常刻意。我猜这是因为你既想取悦自己，也在考虑接收这些内容的读者。

I think part of the reason your books are so accessible and entertaining is because you are it's not just a bunch of facts on a page. You really are trying to think about creating a chapter, and these are very chapter oriented in which you are presenting a cast of characters, and you're relaying information and scientific fact through those characters. This is obviously all something you've done for a while, and it's very deliberate. I imagine it's because you're trying to entertain yourself, but you're also thinking about the reader who's gonna receive this stuff.

对，对，没错。

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

以及他们如何接收信息。

And how they receive information.

我的直觉一直是，如果我觉得某件事不够有趣好玩，读者大概也会觉得无聊。老实说，我做这行是因为热爱旅行，也痴迷于能踏入那些原本无缘接触的世界。比如突然想到——不知为何——邦克公司的场景，听说这家情趣用品制造商声称设有研发部门，我当时就想：这地方我必须去。

I my sense has always been, if it's not interesting and fun for me, it's probably not gonna be interesting or fun for the reader. I'm doing it, let's be honest, because I love to travel, and I love I just love the the ability to step into these worlds that otherwise I would have no access to. Like, what just came to mind, I don't know why, was a scene in Bonk or I heard about this. It was a company that makes dildos, and they claimed that they had a research department. I was like, I am so there.

结果发现研发部门几乎名存实亡。但那个画面太绝了：人们抱着成堆巨型...呃...宫殿走来走去。工厂流水线上多是当地山谷来的拉丁裔女工，那些可爱的年轻姑娘们。我就想：你们怎么跟父母解释工作内容？

But it it turns out the research department really barely existed. But just this scene with people, like, walking along with armloads of these giant, you know, palaces. And and a lot of the people working the assembly line that in the factory, they were women, local women from the valley. And I was like, these lovely young Latina women. I'm like, what do you tell your parents?

有个姑娘说'我在塑料厂上班'。不知为何想起这个，但那种荒诞感让我觉得——好吧，既然有研发部，我脑补的可是正儿八经的实验室，有人在研究...天知道研究什么。

And they she goes, I work in plastics. I don't know. I don't know why that came to mind, but just the surprise of it, I thought, okay. There's a research department. You know, I'm picturing an actual department with somebody doing I don't know what the research would be.

但他们至少得有个写字板吧。

But they have a clipboard.

必须配白大褂和写字板！还得有测试机器确保产品动作标准且耐用。记得牛仔裤广告里那个反复磨屁股的机器人吗？我猜他们可能需要个情趣用品测试机。

They've gotta have a they're gonna have a lab coat, and there's gonna be clipboards. Yes. And perhaps a testing machine where they're making sure that it moves the right way and it doesn't deteriorate. Did you ever see those ads for jeans where they had this robot that was, like, scraping the butt along the floor over and over? I was imagining maybe there'd be, like, a dildo testing machine.

而且，无论如何，事情并非那样，但它也没有让我失望。我就是为那种事而活的。

And, anyway, it wasn't like that, but it didn't disappoint. I live for that kind of thing.

说实话，我无法想象有什么能与这本书相提并论，至少没那么滑稽。但这次你能去哪里旅行呢？

I cannot imagine anything was the equivalent to this book or at least not as hilarious, to be honest. But where where were you able to travel for this one?

嗯，这点你可说错了。好吧，不。这次嘛，让我想想...我该怎么说呢？

Well, you'd be wrong there. Okay. No. This one, I let's see. How do I say this?

有人跟我提过，是一位在干细胞实验室工作的女性。我不知道我们怎么聊到这个的，但她告诉我她在期刊上看到第比利斯一位外科医生的论文。结果发现——她不记得具体位置——但我找到了他。

Somebody mentioned to me it was a woman who worked in a stem cell lab. I don't know how our conversation got to this, but she told me there she saw a paper in a journal about a surgeon in Tbilisi. It turned out. She didn't remember where he was. I found him.

但她说那位医生用男人的中指重建了阴茎。患者曾患癌症。而我当然想象着那根带着完整指甲的手指直接接在那里的画面。当时我心想，在了解更多之前，我至少要见见那位外科医生，如果见不到患者的话。于是我借助谷歌翻译，用格鲁吉亚语、俄语和英语发了邮件。

But she said he used a man's middle finger to rebuild a penis. He'd had cancer. And I, of course, was picturing the finger as is with the nail intact attached down there. And I'm like without knowing anymore, I'm like, I'm going to meet that surgeon, at least if not that man. And so I wrote I sent with the help of Google Translate, I sent emails in Georgian, in Russian, and in English.

没有回复。完全没有。没人给我回电。但我喜欢旅行，我朋友斯蒂芬妮也是。我就想，高加索地区的秋天应该很美，而且——那里还有个用手指造阴茎的外科医生呢。

No reply. No reply. No one would call me back. So I I like to travel, and I my friend Stephanie likes to travel. And I'm like, you know, the Caucasus are supposed to be lovely in autumn, and, also, there's a surgeon who built a penis with a finger.

所以我其实没看到手术。据办公室主管说，他大概做过五次这种手术。他当时不在，我就像个傻子似的直接找上门——人家在休假。

So I didn't actually see the surgery. He's done it maybe five times according to the office manager. He wasn't there. I just showed up like an idiot. He's on vacation.

我说，但我们大老远从美国赶来。她人很好，说，你们俩真是傻瓜。但她又说，听着，他的电脑在办公室里。

And I said, but we've come all the way from America. She was very nice. She said, well, you're a couple of idiots. But she said, look. I his computer is in his office.

那里有照片。我们进去吧。于是她坐在他的桌前，我们一起看了那次手术的一些影像，最终那个手指只是内部结构，提供支撑。我完全不明白这位外科医生为何选择用患者的手指，而不是使用现有的可用于重建手术甚至勃起功能障碍手术的植入物。

There are photographs. Let's go in. And so she sat down at his desk, and we we looked at some images of that surgery, which, in the end, the finger was just the interior. It was supplying rigidity. I have no idea why this surgeon chose to use the man's finger rather than some of the available implants that can be used in reconstruction or even erectile dysfunction surgery.

明明有能实现相同效果的植入物，但不知为何——我后来试图联系他跟进此事，他却始终没有回复。我不知道他是否会看到这一章或整本书。你

There are implants that will do that, but for some reason and, again, that I tried to follow-up with him, and he never did get in touch. I don't know if he'll even see the chapter or the book. You

该给他寄本免费样书。

should send him a free copy.

我是该寄。通常我都会寄，但这次有点恼火，因为他始终没回复我。

I should send. I I typically do, but I was a little miffed that he could he never got back to me.

哦，情有可原。你跑那么远，那里风景好吗？

Oh, fair enough. You went far. Was it nice?

美极了。山上的景色非常美。是啊，这就是我的工作模式——花几天做研究，然后剩下的时间四处旅行。

It was beautiful. That was beautiful up in the mountains. Yeah. This is what I do. I spend a couple days on the research, and then I spend the rest of the week traveling around.

我们马上回来。

We'll be right back.

嗨，我是艾希莉。我和男友住在旧金山。我们希望能正式共享我的《纽约时报》订阅账号，但拥有各自独立的登录权限。我们都热爱烹饪，喜欢待在厨房，不过我是个追求30分钟内搞定高效晚餐的女生。

Hi. This is Ashley. I live in San Francisco with my boyfriend. We would love to officially share my New York Times subscription with separate logins. We both love cooking, love being in the kitchen, but I'm a thirty minute and under efficient dinner girly.

我想要的是烤盘一锅端料理。而他则讲究精细，喜欢赋予烹饪故事性。我希望能够保存自己的简易食谱并标记已完成菜品，我觉得让他拥有个人资料会非常棒。

I want a sheet pan meal. He is very elaborate. He wants to get into the storytelling. I wanna be able to save my easy meals and check off the ones that I've completed, and I think him having his own profile would be great.

艾希莉，我们听到了你的需求。现在推出《纽约时报》家庭订阅计划：你将拥有专属账号，讲究先生也会获得他的账号，还能再添加两位成员。了解更多请访问nytimes.com/family。

Ashley, we heard you. Introducing the New York Times Family Subscription. You get your own login, and mister elaborate gets his, plus room for two others. Find out more at nytimes.com/family.

欢迎回来。这里是书评播客，我是吉尔伯特·克鲁兹。坐在我身边的是玛丽·罗奇，《可替代的你：人体解剖奇遇记》的作者。正如我提到的，你的章节构建围绕场景、人物，以及沿途遇到的迷人研究者、科学家和医生，但你也始终贯穿着幽默笔触。

Welcome back. This is the book review podcast. I'm Gilbert Cruz, and I'm here with Mary Roach, author of Replaceable You Adventures in Human Anatomy. As I mentioned, you craft your chapters around scenes and characters and fascinating researchers and scientists and doctors. You meet along the way, but you also have always incorporated humor.

我想任何收听这次对话的听众都不会对此感到意外。在你早期的写作生涯中，是如何把握幽默分寸的——如何调节过多或过少，判断何时恰当何时不宜？

I think anyone listening to this conversation would not be surprised at that. How did you figure out maybe early on in your career writing books of the how to modulate between too much, too little, is this the right place, is this the wrong place?

我对此完全缺乏判断力。实际上是我的编辑在把控。举个例子，在《Bonk》书中有个段落：开罗有位外科医生发表了大量论文，研究他所谓的'性交反射'，我当时就想——这些到底是什么反射啊？

I'm not a good judge of that at all. My editor actually is. Here's an example. This was a section in Bonk. There's a surgeon in Cairo who had published dozens and dozens of papers on specific he called he was like reflexes of sexual intercourse, and I was like, I don't what reflexes are these?

于是我给他写信，他回复说很好。我可以展示给你看，演示一些这类反射现象。我当时想，好吧，这应该会很有趣。

And so I wrote to him, and he said, great. And I can show you. I can demonstrate some of these reflexes. And I thought, okay. That'll be interesting.

我们到了那里后，他说原本的志愿者临时来不了，但可以展示另一种反射。他用医院工作人员做示范，展示了肛门反射——就是当你轻刮肛门附近时，它会收缩。这是一种保护性反射机制，对吧？

So we went there, and he said, my volunteer has has disappeared, but I can show you another reflex. And what he showed me was using somebody on staff at the hospital. He showed me the anal wink, okay, which is if you scratch right near the anus, it it winks. It's a reflex, probably a safety thing. Right?

确实如此。

Absolutely.

没错。他演示完肛门反射后，我立刻觉得这必须写进书里，就叫它'肛门眨眼'。

Yes. Okay. So he showed me the anal wink. I'm like, this has gotta go in the book. It's the anal wink.

当我撰写这段内容时，还加入了完整场景描写：那个男人站在平台上，视线与收缩部位齐平。这让我突然想起小时候的复活节彩蛋——透过小孔能看到兔子小鸡的场景。结果交稿后，编辑用斜线划掉了整段，批注道：不行。绝对不行。坏女孩，不准写。

And I write it up, and I included this whole because there's this man standing on on a platform, so his eye level with the winking. And I flashed on when I was a child those Easter eggs where you look through the little hole, and you see a scene with the bunnies and the chicks, and I flashed on this whole scene. And my I turned the book in, and my editor I get it back, and there's a diagonal line through the whole passage, and it just says, no. No. Bad girl, no.

所以这段内容最终被删掉了。彻底删除了。

So that came out. That came out.

明白了。你觉得这个删改决定明智吗？

Okay. Do you feel like that was a wise choice? Do

你希望吗？我是。是的，我是。我我的

you wish? I do. Yes. I do. I my

编辑 有时候编辑确实知道他们在说什么。

editor Sometimes editors know what they're talking about.

是的，他们知道。我的编辑就清楚自己在说什么。感谢上帝让我遇到她。

Yes. They do. My editor knows what she's talking about. Thank God for my editor.

写完八本书后，你见过多少科学家和研究者？成百上千了吧？科学和科研领域如此繁多的分支和子领域是否曾让你惊讶？我们或许知道大类别，但总有人毕生只钻研某个微小领域——就像我现在用手指比划的这么小的东西。

After eight books, you've met, what, hundreds of scientists and researchers? And does it ever surprise you just how many different categories and subcategories of science and scientific research there are? It feels like we all know the broad categories, but then you have this person who's devoted their entire life to just this small thing. I'm making very small space with my fingers right now.

这正是我热爱的。那些人不仅奉献一生，还保持着炽热兴趣。写《吞咽》时，我在荷兰食品硅谷遇到一位六七十岁的学者，他花了几十年时间研究...

That is what I live for. The person who, yeah, who's not only has devoted their whole life to it, but is so interested in it. I remember the for Gulp, there was this guy in Food Valley. It's like the Silicon Valley of food in The Netherlands, and there was a guy who had studied for years, for decades. He was in his sixties or seventies.

咀嚼。纯粹的咀嚼。口腔如何分解食物形成食团并吞咽？他激动地讲解那个截断反射——比如咬花生时，到某个临界点花生会碎裂。

He chewing. Chewing. How does the mouth take apart food, form a bolus, swallow it? He was so excited. There's this cutoff reflex where, okay, if you're biting down on a peanut, at a certain point, the peanut will give way.

若继续施加相同咬合力，牙齿就会撞击受损，但人体会自动切断这个力而不需意识参与。他对这个咀嚼反射如痴如醉，而我为这样的研究者活着。同层楼或隔壁实验室还有位唾液专家，整个实验室都研究这个。

And if you continue to have the same amount of force that you were applying, your teeth would smash together and be damaged, so your body, like, cuts off without you even knowing or do it. And he was so excited about this reflex and chewing, and I live for people like that. And down the hall or maybe across the road or it it was in the area. There was a saliva expert. It was a whole laboratory.

我们采集了我的唾液，发现其实有两种不同类型的唾液。一种是基础唾液，另一种是当你进食时大量分泌、用于调节pH值并帮助形成食团的那种。首先，我学到的这些知识本身就令人惊叹，但更让我兴奋的是能遇到这些对唾液如此热衷的人——这个我们平时根本不会想到的话题。我想这确实是我的兴趣所在。

We collected my saliva, and there were two different there's different types of saliva. There's the kind that's that background saliva. And then when you're eating, the stuff that, like, comes pouring in to adjust the pH and help you form a bolus. And first of all, the stuff that I was learning was amazing, but just to meet these people who are so excited and passionate about this thing that none of us ever think about. I guess that's my turf, really.

这正是我热爱的地方。

That's what I love.

你显然是个充满好奇心的人。这种特质是否一直伴随着你？在你开始写书之前，无论是童年时期还是大学时代？在追求那些令人惊叹、略带怪异又离奇的事实方面，现在的你和从前是同一个人吗？

You clearly are a very curious person. Were you always this way, even before you started writing books as a kid, as a college student? Are you the same person you were then in terms of just your desire to find out about amazing No. Slightly disturbing and wacky facts?

完全不是。我的整个高中经历都很平庸——我不受欢迎，从不参加派对，像个失败者。我甚至能告诉你每周每晚ABC、NBC、CBS电视台的节目单。

Not at Not at all. My my whole high school experience, I wasn't popular. I didn't go to any parties. I was kind of a loser. I just I could tell you the lineup, ABC, NBC, CBS for every night of the week.

放学回家后，我会吃个纸杯蛋糕配杯牛奶，因为我实在太瘦了。我妈总想让我增重。我会坐下来写作业，

I came home. I had a cupcake and a glass of milk because I was really skinny. My mom was always trying to get me to gain weight. I'd sit down. I'd do my homework.

高中成绩很好，然后就看电视。没参加任何课外活动，对外界毫无兴趣。不过要说的是，初中时有段时间我和邻居会进行所谓的'罐头肉实验'——我们拿着写字板外出记录，这大概是...

I got great grades in high school, and then I'd watch TV. I didn't do anything extracurricular. I didn't show any interest in the outside world. I have to say, I there was a period when in middle school, my neighbor and I would do these we called them the potted meat experiments where we went out, and we we had clipboards. We that's one of the only

连实验服都没有。

No lab coats.

因为是在冬天，所以没穿实验服。但我们拿着写字板，还挂起了罐装肉三明治。其中一个挂在树上，另一个埋在雪里。我们把它们四处放置，然后回去观察，可能还在写字板上写了些什么。

No lab coats because it was winter. But we had the clipboards, and we we hung potted meat sandwiches. One we hung from a tree. We buried one in the snow. We put them around, then we went back and looked at them, and we maybe wrote something on the clipboards.

我不确定。那大概是我对科学方法产生过最接近兴趣的时刻了。我的生物老师并不怎么有趣。虽然成绩不错，但我就是提不起劲。后来上了大学，突然有了社交生活，在卫斯理安大学时我整天只顾着参加派对。

I don't know. I think that's the closest I ever came to having any sort of interest in the scientific method. I had not the most exciting biology teacher. I got a good grade, but I wasn't I just I wasn't very interested. And then I went to college, and suddenly, I have social life, and I was very focused on parties at Wesleyan.

勉强应付过去。成绩拿了些B和C，但主要是在摸索自己会成为什么样的人。说来惭愧，那时我既缺乏好奇心，对学业也不太投入。

I got by. I got b's and c's, but I was mostly figuring out what kind of human being I was gonna be. I wasn't very curious, and I wasn't that into my studies. I'm I'm embarrassed to say.

然后你就成了杂志作家？

And then you became a magazine writer?

是的。

I did.

最终是吧。刚开始做这行时，你是负责科学领域的吗？

Eventually. And were you in the science space when you first started doing that work?

算是，但纯属偶然。我最初为《旧金山纪事报》的周日杂志撰稿，虽然有趣但完全与科学无关。后来我的编辑佩吉·诺斯罗普去了本叫《希波克拉底》的杂志，内容关于健康与医学。差不多同时我也开始为《发现》科学杂志写稿，这些始终是最有意思的报道题材。

Yeah. But only by accident. I started writing for the Sunday magazine of the San Francisco Chronicle Examiner, which was fun, but wasn't a science beat at all. I had an editor, Peggy Northrop, who went to work for this magazine called Hippocrates, which was about health and medicine. I started writing for that publication and also Discover around that time, the science magazine Discover, and these were always the most interesting things to report on.

科学探索遍布全球，因此我通过前往遥远地区采写故事来满足自己的旅行癖好，但这始终充满趣味。我发现科学与医学真正令人着迷，这些年来我的好奇心一直停留于此。

You can find science going on all over the world, so I was able to feed my habit of travel by pitching stories in far flung locales, but it was endlessly interesting. I find science and medicine to be genuinely fascinating, and that's where my curiosity has stayed over the years.

科学也很恶心，我好奇的是你何时意识到自己会经常撰写那些相当骇人——或者说许多人认为骇人却仍想阅读的内容，我认为这正是你大部分作品中游走的边界线。

Science is also gross, and I am curious when you knew you were just gonna regularly write about things that are pretty gnarly, or maybe that many people would consider to be gnarly but still wanna read about, which I think is the line that you were toeing in in much of your work.

我想这始于为salon.com撰写专栏。不知道人们是否还记得salon.com，我猜——

I guess it started with a column for salon.com. I don't know if people remember salon.com. I'm I think

我记得。

I do.

它们至今仍在运营。salon.com是家网络杂志，当时很令人兴奋——毕竟是在互联网上。那大约是1999年，我记得正是那时开始发展的。

They're still out there. Think it was salon.com was it was an Internet magazine. It was exciting. It was on the Internet. This is around 1999, or I think it got rolling right around then.

我受邀撰写一个定期专栏，但属于纪实性专栏。由于我一直撰写与科学、医学及人体相关的内容，这就是专栏主题。但因为是salon.com，没有任何限制——那时的互联网就像狂野西部，文章直接发布。

I was invited to write a recurring feature, a column, but it was a reported column. And because I'd been writing about science and medicine and body related things, that was the topic of it. But because it was salon.com, there were no breaks. It was the wild west of Internet. Like, just it went up.

几乎没有编辑干预，我想报道什么就报道什么。《Stiff》中关于尸体的章节就是这样诞生的——当时我在加州大学旧金山分校医学院图书馆地下室闲逛。那里堆满了过时的资料，没有学生会需要或想查阅，但我喜欢在那里探索他们收藏的奇珍。

There wasn't a whole lot of editing, and whatever I felt like reporting on, I reported on. So I did that. Stiff happened. The cadaver element of it just happened because I was wandering through the basement of the UCSF medical school library. The basement had all the out of date stuff that no no student would ever need or or want to look at, but I love to wander through there and just see what they had.

我偶然发现了STAP汽车碰撞会议，那是汽车安全的早期阶段，也是创建碰撞测试假人的初期尝试。为了校准这些假人，他们不得不使用尸体，我为此写了一篇专栏，讲述尸体的用途。后来我又写了一篇关于尸体的专栏，那是为感恩节准备的，探讨人类胃部在破裂前能容纳多少食物，因为我觉得这会是一篇令人愉快的感恩节专栏。

And I came across the STAP car crash conference, which was the early days of automotive safety and the early efforts to create crash test dummies. And in order to calibrate them, you had to use cadavers, and it was I wrote a column about that, about the use of cadavers. And then I had another cadaver column, which was for Thanksgiving, and it was how much does a human stomach hold before it bursts, because I thought it would be a cheerful Thanksgiving Day column.

是啊，挺应景的。

Yeah. Seasonally appropriate

应景的感恩节话题。谢谢。但他们使用尸体的做法毫无道理。我们不必深究这个。总之，我发现了一项研究，那些专栏的点击率很高。

Seasonally Thank you. Appropriate. But the fact that they used cadavers made no sense. We don't need to get into that. But anyway, they had There was a study I found, and those columns got high hit rates.

我知道这一点是因为我的经纪人——至今仍合作的经纪人——联系我说，你应该考虑出本书。你的哪些专栏点击率最高？我说，呃，这些关于尸体的似乎挺受欢迎。所以这些禁忌或恶心的话题，我认为读者和大众内心其实有种天然的好奇心。这就是我朝这个方向发展的原因。

And I know that because an agent, my agent I still have, had contacted me and said, you should think about a book. Which of your columns got the highest hit rates? And I'm like, you know, these cadaver ones seem to be popular. So these things that are taboo or gross, there is a kind of built in curiosity, I think, among readers and the public in general. So that's how I I got headed in that direction.

没错。

Yes.

但你一直坚持这么做。是啊，到底是什么特质——哦对——让你如此热爱禁忌话题，不管我们用什么词来形容它。因为在这些书中，或许不是每一本，但大多数都有那么几章会让普通读者边读边从指缝里偷看。

But you've continued to do so. Yeah. What is it about you Oh, yeah. That really loves the taboo, you know, whatever word we wanna use to characterize it. Because in each of maybe not each of them, but in most of these books, there are a couple chapters where the average reader probably is, oh, they're reading through outstretched fingers or something.

是啊，吉尔伯特，我也不知道。可能我有点问题吧。我不...

Yeah. I I don't know, Gilbert. There may be something wrong with me. I don't

我完全没有那个意思。我只是想问，兴趣点在哪里

That's not what I'm implying at all. I'm I'm just asking where where the interest

我想，我认为我的读者们——我也不确定。当我想象我的读者时，脑海里浮现的是一屋子玛丽·罗奇。就像《成为约翰·马尔科维奇》里的场景，整个餐厅坐满了穿着各式服装的约翰·马尔科维奇。

think that the people who I think that my readers are I don't know. I what I when I picture my readers, I just picture a room full of Mary Roach. You know? It's like the scene in being John Malkovich, you know, where the whole restaurant is full of John Malkovich in various outfits.

完全同意。

Totally.

所以我猜想喜欢我书的人也有类似的古怪偏好吧。而且正因为这些是大多数人避之不及的话题，反而成了我的机会。关于心脏的书有人写，关于大脑和神经系统的著作汗牛充栋，皮肤也有人研究过，但消化系统这类题材——我来接手。

So I just assume that the people who like my books have a similarly weird bent, I guess. And I I think also because this is stuff that most people shy away from, it's available to me. People have written about the heart. People have written books, many books about the brain and the nervous system. People have written about skin, but I'm like, the digestive system, the stuff that I'll take that.

这个领域归我了。

I got it. That's mine.

你已经划定了自己的地盘。

You you've staked out your corner.

没错。正是如此。我在自己这个又脏又臭的小角落里待得很开心。

Yes. Exactly. Yes. And I'm happy in my corner, my filthy, dirty, little, stinky corner.

你会对这些事情感到恶心吗？你有这种反应能力吗？是的。

Do you get icked out at this stuff? Are you capable of that? Yeah.

不，我从未被书中任何内容恶心到过，但我有个朋友。她搬去了新西兰，但她曾是我居住的阿拉米达县的验尸官。我想，她把恶心玛丽·罗奇当成了个人目标。有一天她说，哦，今早解剖室有几个有趣的案例，你应该来看看。

Not at I've never been icked out by anything in my books, but I have a friend. She's moved to New Zealand, but she was the medical examiner for Alameda County where I live. And she, I think, made it a personal goal to ick Mary Roach out. So one day, she said, oh, we have I have a couple of interesting cases this morning in the autopsy Room. You should come down.

我去了，那里有几具在炎热天气下存放数周后被发现的尸体，我不得不迅速离开。我干呕了，完全不明白她怎么能...她说，这有什么？和换尿布没区别。我说，抱歉，这真的不一样。

And I did, and there were a couple of bodies that had been discovered after a few weeks in in hot weather, and I had to leave quickly. I gagged, and I have no idea how she does what she she said, what do you mean? It's no different than changing a diaper. I'm like, I'm sorry. It's really different.

那些视觉冲击，我甚至不愿向你描述，但比我曾在田纳西州尸体农场见过的任何景象都更甚。所以，是的，我确实会被恶心到，会干呕着逃离房间——我就是这么做的。没跑，但快步走了出去，再也没敢回去。

The visuals of that, I won't even begin to describe to you, but it was beyond anything I'd seen even at the body farm in Tennessee where I visited. So, yeah, I do have that capability to be picked out and to gag and run from the room, which is what I I did. I didn't run, but I walked quickly out of the room, and I couldn't go back.

玛丽，你写了大量关于人体的内容，活着的躯体，逝去的躯体。我想知道这是否影响了你在生活中对某些事物的精神层面的思考方式。

Mary, you write so much about the human body, bodies that are alive, bodies that are not alive. I'm wondering if that has affected the way that you maybe spiritually think about things in your life.

我不是个很有灵性的人，但要说的是，看到尸体——无论是在推车上，或是在尸体农场里躺在树下草地上（我用后者举例，因为穿着衣服的他们，作为实验 clothed vs unclothed 的部分，这是个法医研究）——远看你会以为那是个打盹的人。嗯。但你绝不会认错。

I'm not a very spiritual person, but I will say that seeing seeing a dead body either on a gurney or, in the case of the body farm, laid out on the grass under a tree and I'll use the latter example because that at a distance, that person, because they were clothed, it was the part of the experiment had to do with clothed versus unclothed. It's a forensic study. So at a distance, you could you think that you could mistake that for a a person napping. Mhmm. But there's no way you would.

尸体有种特质。它如此像一个空壳。你能感觉到有什么东西离开了。曾经存在的，现已消逝。这只是个躯壳。

There is something about a dead body. It's it is so much a hull. There it you have this sense of something is checked out. Something was there, and it is gone. And this is a hull.

这只是一具躯壳。现在只剩肉体了。这让你不禁思考接下来的问题：它去了哪里？所以它只是让我想到了这一点。我没有答案。

It's just a shell. It's just meat now. And so that makes you think the follow-up thought is, where did it go? So it just it it brought that to mind. I don't have an answer.

如果非要给出答案，我会说，当我死后，我会回到我出生前待了千万年的地方。我不知道那是哪里或是什么。但这确实引发了这种思考。它确实比平常更频繁地让我想到这个问题。

If I had to give an answer, I would say, when I die, I'm gonna go back to where I was before I was born for all those millennia. I have no idea where that is or what that is. But but there but it does it does bring that. It certainly brought it to mind more than it normally would.

以你对人体大小细节的了解程度，你是否能做到看着人们时，不只是想着‘哦，他们的胃现在正在这样运作’？不。就像我们正在享用这顿美餐时，你和我。实际上当食物经过口腔进入食道时...

Are you capable with all that you know about the human body, both big and small? Are you capable of looking at people, not just thinking about, oh, their stomach is doing this right now? No. As we're having this wonderful meal, you and I. It's actually as it goes through the mouth and down through the gullet.

那本书对我来说是最难的，特别是咀嚼章节之后，我去餐厅时会看着人们咀嚼吞咽的样子。我当时觉得这太恶心了。我想人们应该在公开场合做爱，私下吃饭，因为进食过程很恶心。不过幸运的是这种感觉会消退，然后你继续读下一本书。但确实会暂时对这些过程产生高度敏感——这些你之前完全没注意过的生理活动，《Bonk》那本书也是如此。

That one, that book was the hardest for me because I would go, especially after the chewing chapter, I would go to a restaurant, and I would look at people chewing and swallowing and watching. And I think it's that's disgusting. I was like, people should have sex in public and eat in private because eating is disgusting. But, fortunately, that fades, and then you move on to the next book. But there is temporarily this heightened awareness of these processes that you were up until that time blissfully unaware of, and that was true for Bonk too.

仅仅是性兴奋的各个阶段就让我分心，比如‘耳垂现在充血了吗？’这种念头确实有点干扰注意力。

Just the all the phases of sexual arousal. It's very distracting me going, oh, are the ear lobes engorging now? It can be a little distracting.

你认为完美的玛丽·罗奇式项目应该是什么样的？哪些元素能让它出彩？

What do you think is the perfect Mary Roach project? What are the elements that make it sing?

我必须能实地探访。比如我无法完成纯历史题材的书。首先我不是专业历史学家，也不知道该如何着手。我可以分章节做小片段研究，但我需要掺入一些历史元素。

I gotta be able to go places. Like, couldn't do a purely historical book. First of all, I'm not trained as a historian, and I would not know how to I wouldn't know how to begin to go about doing that. I can do little slivers of research chapter at a time. I like to have a little history.

当然要有点历史元素。我喜欢写几个历史章节。如果我有档案室，有几份档案可以翻阅，有素材可以构建，那么一点历史背景就再好不过了。世界上有无数地方的人们在做着超乎想象的事，或者人们以为是一回事，结果却截然不同。

A little history, absolutely. I love to have a couple historical chapters. If I've got an archive and I've got a couple folders to play with and something to build from. A little bit of history is great. Lots and lots of places to go with people doing things that no would no one would have imagined are being done in the world, or they pictured them one way, and they're actually completely different.

所以总有许多出人意料的场景，有时甚至超现实，还有些自带幽默感的东西。如果要取笑谁，那肯定是我自己。我就是那个懵懂笨拙的局外人，有时则是情境本身的荒诞让人发笑。这些通常是我寻找的元素，但意外地难觅踪迹。所以我现在才这么手忙脚乱。

So lots of just surprising settings and things that are sometimes surreal and things that lend themselves to humor. If I'm gonna make fun of anyone, it's me. I'm the clueless, bumbling outsider, or sometimes it's just the weirdness of the situation that's funny. Those are the elements that I typically am looking for, and it's surprisingly hard to find. That's why I'm flailing right now.

反正我总是手忙脚乱。人们以为，哦你们这些作家肯定列好了待写书单吧？我说，花大价钱维护这种书单的日子早该结束了。我根本没有什么待写清单，真的不知道。

As I'm always flailing. People think, oh, you people go, so you have a list of books that you're gonna get around to writing? I'm like, quit paying lots of money to have that list. I don't have I don't have anything on a list. I don't know.

我从来都不知道。不过无论如何，这些就是我要找的元素。

I never know. But, anyway, those are the elements.

你的新书里有什么想写却不得不舍弃的内容吗？

What is one thing that you had to leave out of your new book that you wish you could have gotten in?

我本想写一章关于子宫移植的内容——有几件事因为缺乏接触渠道不得不放弃。没有现场素材，没有人物，没有场景背景。子宫移植很有意思，因为这是种临时性移植。

I wanted to include a chapter on there were a couple of things where people just I didn't have the access. I didn't have the scene, the characters, the setting. I didn't have that. I wanted to include a chapter on uterus transplants Mhmm. Which I found interesting because this is a temporary transplant.

如果女性因故无法用自身子宫孕育胎儿，她可以接受移植——子宫可能来自活体捐赠者（已无生育需求者）或遗体。移植后可以妊娠分娩，之后子宫会被取出，这样受体就不必终身服用免疫抑制剂（毕竟没人想一辈子吃抗排斥药）。这种临时移植很酷，但开展这项手术的大学医疗机构拒绝了我的采访请求。

A woman can get a uterus if her own uterus is not able to carry a child to term for whatever reason, it's possible to take one either from a donor, a living donor who's not gonna have any more children, or from a cadaver. And to transplant that, the person can then carry the fetus to term, have the baby, and then the uterus is taken out so that the person doesn't have to be on a lifetime regimen of immunosuppression, which you don't wanna be on immunosuppressive drugs your whole life. Yeah. It's a temporary transplant. I thought that was very cool, but the universities, the medical facilities that were doing it didn't allow me to go.

我本可以参与移植手术、分娩过程或器官摘除的现场报道。我说，任何一项都行，真的任何一项都可以。但不知为何，他们就是不愿意让我参与。

And I could have been there for the transplant, the birth, the removal. I'm like, I'll take any of them. Take any of them. But no, that for whatever reason, didn't want to didn't wanna play with me.

嗯。在不具体点名的情况下，你对这种犹豫是否有什么猜测？

Yeah. Do you have any suspicions as to, without naming any places in particular, what the hesitation might be?

有时候大学就是不愿意让外人介入，可能是出于责任考量，或是想严格控制社交媒体上的信息发布。具体原因他们没说，但现在确实越来越难了。我发现患者隐私问题比过去更受重视，现在想当玛丽·罗奇这样的纪实作家可不容易。

Sometimes universities just would rather not have someone there for I don't know if it's liability or just wanting to be very cautious and control what goes out into the world of social media. I don't know. They didn't say specifically, but it's gotten harder. I I find there's more patient privacy issues than there used to be. It's gotten a little harder to be Mary Roach.

但这本书完全看不出这种阻碍，里面精彩的故事已经足够多了。感谢玛丽·罗奇做客我们的书评播客节目。

Well, I was not able to tell that by this book, and there's more than enough fascinating stories in this one. Thank you, Mary Roach, for coming on the Book Review podcast.

噢，当然。这是我的荣幸。非常感谢你，吉尔伯特。

Oh, absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you so much, Gilbert.

以上是我与玛丽·罗奇关于她新科普著作《可替代的你》的对话。我是《纽约时报》书评编辑吉尔伯特·克鲁兹，感谢您的收听。

That was my conversation with Mary Roach about her new science book, Replaceable You. I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of The New York Times Book Review, and thank you for listening.