The Host's Fascination with Antarctica and Adam's Antarctic Adventure

Adam couldn't help but think about Antarctica when he was discussing various topics on his podcast. He mentioned how much he envied those who had reached the continent, especially since it's one of the most remote and inhospitable places on Earth. The host joked that having coveted reached Antarctica would be a great achievement, and Adam couldn't disagree more. In fact, Adam shared that he hadn't been to Antarctica himself, but it was a lifelong dream of his.

The conversation took a turn when Jamie mentioned an astronaut who had tried using flatus to propel himself across the flight deck of a spaceship during a mission. The host found this idea both amusing and intriguing, asking if someone else had calculated whether pissing really hard would be enough to generate sufficient thrust. Adam chuckled at the absurdity of the situation, recalling how he had met Jamie through an email about the podcast.

Adam's introduction to the episode was inspired by a Twitter thread that started with a question about whether it's possible for an astronaut to propel himself across the flight deck using flatus. The conversation quickly escalated to include discussions about urine streams and their potential propulsion capabilities. Adam couldn't resist sharing his own experience of meeting Jamie, who had pitched the idea of doing the podcast to Chris Hadfield when he was on the International Space Station.

The host revealed that Roger Crouch, an astronaut, had attempted to use flatus for propulsion during a mission but ultimately found it didn't work due to the fabric of the chinos being worn. This led to a discussion about how astronauts need to be naked in order to generate sufficient thrust, which made NASA rather uncomfortable. Adam joked that this was a "mixed gender" issue, adding to the humor.

The conversation wrapped up with the host thanking Mary for coming on the podcast and expressing his enthusiasm for having her as a guest. Mary reciprocated the sentiment, stating that it was a pleasure to meet the host and Jamie, and that she looked forward to discussing the book when it's released.

As the episode came to a close, Adam mentioned that he was excited to have Mary on the podcast again soon, specifically to talk about her personal footnote. The host smiled at this, knowing that Adam was a fan of lengthy footnotes. Overall, the conversation demonstrated the hosts' lighthearted and humorous approach to discussing various topics, from propulsion systems to astronautics.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome to the adam savage project i'm adam i'm normit's a it's a merry rhodes oh my goodness dot my friend it's been i i think it's been almost  a year i think i did i interview you over at the exploratorium about a year ago was that when we  were there or was that like two years ago that was about uh i i think it was over a year ago because  it was pre-coveted yeah yeah exploratorium yep yep they want to do in your suits i was i had my suits  they wanted us to talk about space and i think we spent a whole hour talking about space poop  i did that yeah that's my fault that's my fault i think because i got alex i tried to be a maker  and i made a replica i did my adam savage thing i made a replica of a fecal bag an apollo  era fecal bag but it was not nearly as high fidelity as had you made an apollo era fecal  bag but i was just thinking about the other that the other day because i was actually going through  my space folder of inspiration and i have a folder labeled things i might build one day and i found  the spatula i have pictures of the spatula that they use  on the shot that they used on the shuttle and it's a normal kitchen spatula that's been attached tofor the toilet shuttle toilet uh-huh oh  wow because the shuttle toilet no i don't mean see here i go againwe could now proceed on a solid half hour of the shuttle space toilet um anyway  yeah the spatula because there was always there was i thought you were talking about the um  the spat sat which was a spatula that one of the astronauts was on an eva outside  the shuttle and he dropped the spatula which i think he was like like bondoing somewhere rightand he dropped it and so it you know it's now or well it's probably not orbiting anymore but it  was for a while us a spat a spatula satellite i was so i was just reading yesterday about  the probable condition of elon musk's tesla as it approaches mars right now and that solar radiation  has rendered probably all the paint's gone and the leather work is rotting because  the radiation's breaking all the carbon chains of everything natural  oh wow and then in a few years it'll just be an aluminum frame i would love to see that i just man  i would love to see like when he first let it go i guess there are images of that although  kind of live streaming there's like there there's like a dash cam looking at them right but it  wasn't exactly the perspective i wanted that you know it comes you know i wanted it from off  to the side so you could see it actually taking off uh yeah but now it's on the so it's yeah  on the way to mars but mary um you like all of us have survived the last uh nine months or so uh in  lockdown and i'm just i'm curious i'm curious how how you've been coping how it's all been going for  you you know for me the timing was i don't mean to say anything positive about coven but the timing  was okay because i wasn't researching i wasn't traveling researching i wasn't in that phase  because that would have completely derailed me for a year i would have been able i would have been  just hamstrung so i was at the end of a project i was finishing writing i was going over edits i  was doing all that crap uh finished that and then had a couple uh i did a adaptation of a packing  for mars for middle grades so that oh neat that could all be done at home it's basically just take  80 000 words turn it into 20 000 words and rewrite every single one of those 20 000  words you know i was like hey no problem just jettison some chapters throw it together well no  no no uh more work than you'd think but fun uh so you know i had and then i yeah i'm doing an update  stiff it's been 20 years since stiff came out wow so i know right i'm old wow you  you must count a whole bunch of uh uh uh forensic pathologists uh that you must be responsible for  thousands of forensic pathologists i've launched many careers i have every now and then someone  at a reading will go oh man you know you're i'm now studying to be a forensic pathologist  or whatever you know something from stiff and yeah and you're the reason i'm all like yay sorrywhoever it is that cuts those heads off yeah exactly uh so yeah a little update epilogue  sort of bringing stuff up to date for stuff so i had i had things to do um to keep myself busy  because i don't have hobbies i don't i don't have a like you know i'm not like you i don't have a  cave and a like ed's got a studio in the backyard the basement the uh uh he's got a workshop he's  just my husband ed can uh occupy himself easily he likes to cook whereas i just i'm a i'm a  one burner gal i don't have four burners ever going so it's good that i had something to do i do  so given the oscillation of projects lots of research and travel than the hunkering down  to right does this mean that there's a new book coming out can we talk about it at all  we i asked my publicist she's like please please hold off till february okay  she doesn't want me to to and this kills me because adam  there is a footnote it is the longest footnote it is three quarters of a page it's well beyond the  the allowable boundaries of a footnote it is sort of a whole chapter unto itself and it is for you  inspired by you and entirely addressed to you you can guess what it's about but anyway it wasn't  my god i can't wait it was sort of an assignment that you gave me years ago oh um i as i was just  reading uh the longest footnote i've ever read last night how long was it well it's almost book  length um i was reading uh ada lovelace's notes on the uh analytical engine of course um yeah and  i've i've been researching her for a thing i'm working on and she's more amazing the deeper  you get into her mind um because she translated this french article about the analytical engine  and she'd been working with babbage for years already but in this translation she included  translators notes which are twice as long as the actual article she translated and they're  the first notes of and this is it's basically all a footnote that that presages the entire computer  age because she realizes because she points out the difference between affecting numbers and  affecting operations upon numbers wow and in that difference she's like wow we may be able to  actually compute things that aren't mathematical at all because we can symbolize everything  and you're like amazing she saw this a hundred and some you know 140 years ago it's not amazing  60 years ago yeah very good anyway yeah that's uh i love long foot notes and i think oh my gosh  well we'll have you back on the podcast when there's an actual book tour to talk  about we'd love to hear about it cool cool that sounds good have you guys do i i find that um  on uh that my wife julie and i take any excuse to get out of the house together so like even a small  errand we drove to a w uh uh a w burgers in marin a couple of days ago just for the hot dog yeah  yeah yeah no i believe it yesterday uh because we we redid our the the our uh fireplace we realized  something was wrong it it the facade was separating from the wall and for the past  10 years we thought well it's happening slowly we'll just let it we'll monitor we're going to  monitor that well we finally took it down and the fireplace somebody essentially just  shoved some remnants of bricks in there and like stuck them together with i don't know  mayonnaise and then slap quickly slapped something it was completely falling apart anyway  we're finally done with that uh process but we needed to get a mantle and so we were looking  at a piece of i got a slab of wood for the mantle so ed someone said hey there's this place in san  leandro that's got a bunch of different woods that are pretty cool and i'm like i'm coming with you  so we're like so excited we're driving to san leandro to look at wood it's very so yeah yeah  any excuse to get out i'm curious in the in the last nine months i mean there's been such a  a battleground about science and truth um but specifically since so much of what's been talked  about in the last eight months has been about the the body and things that are within your realm  i'm curious if your body of knowledge from writing your books gave you uh uh a different perspective  on what's been going on well it took me back to uh i did a one of the i think it was the  first feature story i ever reported uh first major feature story or uh they sent me to was a magazine  piece and they sent me to the common cold unit in the uk which is this place where british people  would sign up as a holiday to go and it's in the in wiltshire and you know open and the fields  outside it's a lovely place to go for a walk and you'd have a roommate and you would have a virus  dripped up your nose uh and they would see like you know who i mean not everybody would get the  virus and some of them were coronavirus so they did some studies i think when i was there it was  a coronavirus trial and you and this they would literally drip it up your nose and then you'd  sit around and but things you got three lovely home-cooked meals a day like shepherd's pie would  arrive in one of those stackable like i don't know if they call them there's a word for them  like the lunchbox the miners lunchbox yeah exactly exactly that would have been left on your step  and when you went for a walk with someone you had a string you'd stay 30 feet apart  so it was like i was social distancing back in 1985 and thinking this is hilarious uh and  little did i know that uh uh fast forward 40 years or whatever it is uh i'd be i don't have  the string but i think that people we should have a string we should have this i think we  will need a six foot string and they need to hold it because you know you got the creep  oh yeah you have the creep yeah i'm i'm i start out at six and then particularly if you're  drinking you know you're socially you're like yeah yeah i think i get i think i'm close i think i'm  a little closer we're gonna back off maybe not you know by the end of the night you're like  so we need the string uh anyways yeah a kiddie pool with suspenders  yes even better yeah i know uh so the common cold yeah it just took me back i mean i love  microbiology i don't know a lot about it but i i love it i this was a one of the studies they've  done at the common cold unit also relevant for covid uh they they were trying to get at  do virus is a virus more readily spread uh by fomites that is by touching a glass that someone  else then picks up touches picks their nose so is it more readily spread that way or through the air  through droplets and aerosols and the way they studied it is they had a card game they had people  for the fomites that people playing uh poker so they're touching cards they're all sharing  so they're sitting around table and then they and then they you know the aerosols  it's just people in the room and uh for that particular virus the fomites were the better  the better um yeah and and that i remember in the beginning of covet people were obsessed with touch  don't touch your face don't touch your face yeah and now it's shifted completely to aerosols and  i wondered about you know that work back in the day with the uh with on transmission they even did  someone else did this great study they had a lecture theater and they were observing  uh people on a panel and they were counting the number of times  oh no it was it was the people on the panel were watching people in the audience and counting  them times they picked their nose touched their eye or picked their nose and picking  there's a tremendously high surprisingly high unconscious nose pick rate like you're not really  thinking about it you're just kind of like no oh no i really think i save her every secondi'm really glad that touching your face thing doesn't turn out to be important because i  i it turns out i'm completely incapable of not touching no no same here and but the other thing  about the touching your face that i never got i mean okay don't touch your eye because it's a  direct route into the nasal passages and obviously sticking it up the nose same thing but how  if you touch your fork okay your forehead or your i'm almost like this all right how did  how's the virus getting from here to how's it my it's not walking they don't have legs  but it's not like does that just sort of keep out of the zone i never understood that well yeah  i mean i'll bet once it's here it's it's odds of getting to a mucous membrane have increased  dramatically yeah okay it's a precautionary just just you know stand back it's the line  at the at the um immigration when you come into the it's like stand behind the line basically  because you lie down on your pillow and then you just start to smear it all over and then you're  drooling and then you've got a liquid powder oh okay right the liquid path and the face smooshi overlooked both of those yeah all right now i get it yep but anyway yeah so have  there been any uh movies or television that has that's helped get you through  yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah for um okay this one i i i keep mentioning it to people and  everybody's like whoop um so hope you're gonna be like but okay it's called be foreigners  no okay see well there was the wolf what is before okay it's it's norwegian  all right so you got your sub subtitles so you know okay no it's norwegian and any way i describe  the premise it's going to sound really dumb but it's not it's really good so here's the premise uh  here it's set in contemporary oslo right okay and it's a police department there's people who work  in the police department okay what's going on is all of a sudden um some kind of weird portal has  opened up in the water off the bay whatever the hell the bay is outside oslo i've never been there  but people from the viking area people from the edwardian area they're popping up  and they're they're just arriving and the and it's just it's done so well this sounds dumb right it  sounds terrible oh it sounds amazing anyway there's a it's a murder story this woman and  uh and they the people uh who show up are called beat the foreigners like as in before and right  there's a lot of parallels to immigration and i mean you know there's these people showing  up there's a lot of hostility towards but they try to fit in and like the ones who are really  the old norse they're just like in the woods running around getting rabbits and the people  the guardians are you know have brought in their own weird drugs uh the viking anyway  there's a woman the police department hires as a publicity thing of a foreigner and she's awesome  she's really tough and she works with a regular oslo guy and they're trying to solve this murder  it's really good this i just did this whole 10 minute ad for before it i'm not even being  paid anything by netflix or was it netflix or hbo anyway it sounds like so good i tried to watch um  oh my gosh norm what is ron moore's uh scottish time travel show oh um no it's yeah it's just is  it joss whedon or ron moore ron ronald moore yes where she goes to the past and there's uh and oh  my gosh outlander outlander oh okay outlander i tried to watch it i watched four or five episodes  and it became such a it's a bodice ripper i mean it's it's a it's a bodice ripper that's that's  what it is and it's really good it's just not my personality okay there are no bodices written  in this one there are some people wearing strange things that may be ripped but no bodices there  are no bodies this sounds like a much more uh a nitty gritty uh version of that that sounds  amazing it's actually really good and then and then um okay queen's gambit i liked it but i'm  a huge fan of the walter tevis novel i you know it's funny i just read it a couple years ago yeah  me too me too for the first time i don't know why i just stumbled onto it loved that novel so i had  that weird disconnect of you know these outfits are they're really pretty the whole set you know  it kind of had a mrs maisel makeover and i that was jarring for me because there's none of that  in the novel fine it's a visual it's it's a it's a series i know i understand why they want to do  that but um that that kind of threw me but i did i did enjoy it you know um and i would have enjoyed  it had i not read the novel too but um so that was good yeah i read the novel way back in the 80s  because i was collecting books on pool and walter tevis wrote the hustler and the color of money  and then i read that and i read it i read the book about four years ago because ryan johnson  and i were talking about it and he was saying he'd read it and he thought it was  a nearly impossible book to film and then we ended up having this long discussion over dinner about  ways to visualize chess and i thought the show threaded that needle beautifully i did too because  the thing about the book that was extraordinary to me is i don't i don't play chess i know how  but only in that i know what the pieces do you know i would be beat by any a child could beat me  in 60 seconds uh but there's a lot of chess in the book a lot of discussion of different tactics and  openings and maneuvers but it never lost me it was that was done so well and it was hard enough to do  that kind of like the way the martian was able to talk about the technology that he was going to use  to survive and even if you didn't quite understand it he just he did it in a way that you you didn't  get bored you didn't lose the thread so tavis did that so well and then i thought the added  dimension of a visual presentation how is that going to work because the chess is an internal  procedure it's an it's it's it anyway they i thought they did a a really good job of  that with the cl thing on the ceiling yeah yes i listened to a podcast uh when the editor who um  did the entire series and she said the way she edited the the chess scenes  uh was it was a conversation as if it was dialogue so every move was a line of dialogue and then just  like they could condense a conversation as long as you get the salient points oh wow then that's  what got across emotionally for for the viewer yeah that's yeah i loved the sound effects the  sounds of the clock when she'd you know they'd smack the clock and then move the pieces  just the back and forth of that was enough to carry me through those scenes um but that i  just yeah i was really impressed with yeah they pulled off a tv show about chess i know i know  and you didn't have to know anything about chess to still find it riveting no and you also they  they've inspired a whole new generation of kids to play chess my granddaughter's six and we were  going to find get her a chess board because she she's real she's smart she loves you know she's  a analytical thinker we could not find we went to the toy store on lake shore no chess games left  it completely sold out yeah it was it turned out to be beneficial that i'd read the book because  i was watching it with julia and when the little girl is about to go downstairs into the janitor's  area in the orphanage my wife was like i don't think i can watch this show and i'm like it's  not going to turn out the way you think it's going to don't be afraid she's just going to play chess  um here's a really weird one i came across the woman that plays her her alcoholic mother in uh  queen's gambit is in fact the director of can you ever forgive me and the mr rogerswow yes yeah oh i love can you that's the one with melissa uh  mccarthy right and and the fabulous hugh grant not hugh grant richard thank you not hugh grahamyeah oh okay so cause she was as an actress really interesting to me because it was always a  tension of like because she's a little quirky and she's and you're like is she a good mother  or a terrible mother she's weird like and i always think they're about to devolve into some horrible  yelling match but they had a you know they're both strange damaged people but they meshed in this  really interesting way and i think that actress yeah she uh however she decided to play that yeah  created this lovely tension not in a don't go down their way but uh just a little what it's just like  y'all's a little off-kilter well there's a there's a i and i thought that was the single best thing  the show did with the book was really uh make that relationship feel real and and substantive i i was  because you finished the book and you're like well the mom was an alcoholic and she taught  her daughter how to be an alcoholic and a drug addict and that was kind of the way she loved her  and we all have our crosses to bear and the show got you right to that same point  yeah yeah it was a very it was it was well nuanced is that horrible word everybody uses about  portrayals but anyway it was that that word it was really well yeah it's really it was interesting  it wasn't cliche it wasn't predictable um and it's what the other thing is amazing to me uh  about that show and about my brain is how much that i i read the book two years ago and i kept  turning to ed and going because he read the book too like hey that wasn't in the book i don't think  that was it but he's like you know what i think it was like i think it stuck fairly closely to the  to the book i just forgot oh no a lot of the book but mike forbiglia  has a joke in one of his recent specials where he says i've read hundreds and hundreds of books  in my life and i don't remember anything hey everyone adam here and i just wanted to let  you know that today's episode of the podcast is made possible by support from american giant look  things are weird and if i've taken one thing away from recent events it's that the method by which i  think we can start healing is by participating in and supporting our local communities  and personally i'm always looking for brands that match my values ethical local sustainable  american giant is one of those brands it might not be the least expensive but their upfront cost  is far outweighed by the durability and quality of the stuff they make they make the best sweatshirt  on the planet and i just happened to be wearing one today and i didn't know i was recording this  they have also built a 100 usa based supply chain i own over a dozen of their products  some for over half a decade and the quality and comfort never ceases to  amaze me also as you can imagine i am hard on my stuff and theirs is as durable as it gets  right now you can get 15 off your first order when you use promo code adam s  at american dash giant.com that's 15 off when you use code a-d-a-m-s at american dash giant dot com  no i don't know i go and yeah i go back because i i've started putting on good reads because  sometimes people say oh what do you recommend and when they say this do they you know they go what  what books do you know have you read lately and i go i just like sit there like a grouper like  oh so i'm what i do now is i go you know if you go on good reads all my and i only put on four  and five star mostly five star i just don't put it on because i don't rate books i don't want to rate  i don't not give anybody a one or two star just not ooh yeah so uh it's like here's all the books  i love they're all go there because i can't think i can't even name one it's like 200 books on there  you're doing a writer's version of what everyone in la does because no one in l.a  will say a movie is a piece of because they all know how hard it is to make a movie  and they forgive everybody because it's hard to make a movie exactly and you spend you spent  two years on a book well some people spend two years on a book or more or less whatever you spent  you but you whatever however it came out here just a big chunk of you there and then somebody comes  and shits on it you're like oh really did you need to do that that wasn't then you're asked to take  out you know to condense it into one fourth of length right that's right exactly i i remember  a former movie critic telling me that he realized he had to stop writing movie reviews because he  got off on actually like dissing terrible movies and he's like i saw this part of my personality  and it was so clear it was just awful i didn't want to i didn't want to exercise that phone  no i do i i i talked to her there's a woman who i won't name any names but a woman who  reviewed one of my books and who did it it was a nice review and i was thanking her but  in the conversation she said no i i but i really enjoy a real writing a nasty review i was like  you do i can't one time i i i was assigned a book review and for the the new york times and they  you know they do need to run a mix of good and bad otherwise what's the point of a book review  section yeah um i mean i could i have another answer to that which is never mind but anyway  so um i got this book and i was like ooh it's not i don't it's not very ee so it's like and i tried  to get out of i said you know you don't have a lot of pages in that book reviews well why don't  we focus on a book that's more deserving of the treatment and the exposure and let's just skip  he's like no mary you have to do this review you have to do this you you haven't you've raved about  every book i've given you so i did this review it was so painful for me i pointed out a couple  things about it and then i would go to be fair though the reason he may have done this you know  i kind of like gave him an excuse and then and then it came out i was bracing for like a letter  from the guy and i got this thank you like he couldn't tell that i it was actually a bad reviewto my mind was a bad review but he uh he couldn't tell so yeah but you were being constructive i  mean that's what he saw yeah you know i was it was exactly it was constructive criticism um i was a  little shocked i'm gonna just mention another writer i was a little shocked when susan orlean  came out recently and said she reads everything on uh on an e-reader yeah which i i super admire that  life would be a lot easier if i could do that but then i also think life would be easier if i like  magritte just painted and i had a little canvas in the corner of my apartment that's all i needed  but do you do you need the physical book or are you fine with e-readers as well i've got i've  got to have the physical book i ca like i just i just accepted a um i'm doing a book review for the  times and uh what they've started doing now uh i mean i was gonna say it's because the book review  sections are shorter but if they're online there's no limit but i guess you know they are still  putting out a paper book reviews actually so they tend to give you you do two books in one 1200 word  review which is a lot of reading for one little anyway so and they're trying they're all going  like oh well it's covered so i'm not in the office so how about a pdf i'm like  i like to write especially if i'm reviewing it i want to write all over it i want to  underline stuff i'm like i'm really sorry i'm going to be a pain in the ass can you  send me can you can we fedex here's my number please i can't i don't i want well and as a reader  i just i just want the book i just i i know it's part of part of it is because i'm i'm a little bit  of a luddite um but i uh also just the the other physical object i like a hardback book even i love  me too i love a hardback i love the heft of it i like flipping through and i like the ones with the  what's it called on with it there's a word deckle edge yes thank you i was going to say  beveled edge but that's the fireplace we were working on the bevel deckled yeah i love the  deckling i wish i were the kind of writer that got declining i'm not thoughno you know what what you need to do is you need to do uh oh this is a great pitch you need to do  an uh uh like a first edition call back time travel edition of like six of your books all  done in like the old cloth covers yes with like the endless forwards one after the other x i x i  you know all the fake page numbering that happens before page one totally i would love that now i've  tried i've always i want a boxed set i want you to do a box set like really gorgeous kind of but yeah  um i've suggested it never happens i want to help design the case for the box set because i feel  oh that's awesome yeah i'll i'll tell them that you're gonna be on the hook i'm in i'm in  okay good um i don't even get the little fussy thing at the end that goes about the typeface  like i want to know like how did that come up we're like i think we need  a whole separate page about the typeface i think people really want to know about the  origins this time is i love that it exists i love it i do i do too it's just this weird throwback  somebody in the publishing world said yes we're going to do a whole page dedicated to the typeface  i mean i love it when when we were working on when simon schuster and i were working on my book and  they said do you have ideas about fonts and i'm like oh do i and i told them my two favorite fonts  and they i said so if you did the cover in uh sans serif and a serif font let's do futura uh medium  medium bold and kazla and those are my two favorite sans serif and serif font and so they did  it and i i got the cover treatment from them and i was like the kerning on this lettering is really  weird um could you send me the photoshop file so i could check out the layer and they're like oh no  we don't share we only share pdfs so i took their pdf into my photoshop overlaid and they had gotten  caslon right but they had swapped futura for some faster alternative and i was like you  bastards exactly but here's a movie director on a movie poster like well here's the rub i don't  think i have a copy of it right near me but um if you take the book jacket off my book on the spine  is still that old font and i can't abide it i can't bear to look at it  oh my god i just talked to a i just talked to um you know that's the the podcast saw bones no  it's a popular podcast uh that has to do with medicine it's it's uh uh i forget their names  now that's bad i should say their names anyway saw bones but they did it's part it's  popular enough that they did a book based uh on saw bones it's me it's medical history basically  and these two people do it they're funny and one is an md and one isn't i think they're a couple  um but the book beautiful hardcover book but they left in the dummy index so the index get  this and get this the index is for some weird fringe deep dive into knives so it's like  military you know there's like weird names of military knives there's polishing stones and it's  like an entire six page index about knives which and then and then what the publisher did is uh  said well we can't we can't redo the book so we're going to hand we're going to glue  together the pages of the index so people won't see them oh my god what a solution yeah how do  they even think of that but they took so long to glue the pages together that the book wasn't  available at the time they were publicizing or it just it one thing led to it was just  a horrible anyway so the paperback's coming out and i'm like good it has another chance the index  is now correct but anyway holy can you imagine no i mean i used to work in graphic design where  when we put an image on a a layout we'd write in sharpie on it fpo four position  only so the printer would know to swap it out and the number of times i'd open up a catalog  and see fpo over a photo that happened all the time back before computers oh yeah no i can't even  uh i maybe just but it's a very interesting index i kind of lost myself in the yeah the knives index  is like wow this is a world this is a complicated world i mean my next book is going to be stick  shiv it was a house ad for their other book they're publishing  i love the idea of someone who specializes in reading indices uh yeah i i love i i'm a  i go straight for the index i mean is this you know if it's a something a research  type of project i don't i don't even think about reading the whole book just straight to the index  and they're and also people who people who do indexes what are they have indexers i guess  they're called indexers yeah that's it i and i found myself wondering because they did one for  my book and i didn't even ask them did you do you guys just run a computer program for common words  and then word cloud right yeah yeah or should i tell you some words that should be in the index  i think i did suggest a few yeah i don't have indexes in indices sorry it's indices isn't it  i don't have indices i feel like it has to be said in a british accent i have no indices i like the  indus index i don't have an index index in my book and i i feel like i mean each book i get a couple  of emails from people saying i really wanted to go you you don't have an index i hate you  you waste my time you waste my time uh i don't i guess because my books aren't thought of as  if they're not that's not a definitive treatment of a topic and i mean who's gonna go to it and  say let's see if mary roach covered i don't know the lashley gland or something whatever actually i  i disagree i think that would be a perfect i mean going to places like you who have compiled a whole  bunch of different fields to talk about a central subject i think that's a perfect place to start  your research and figure out where to go looking for the right papers i should have an index you're  right you totally should i know i don't can i call your publisher and complain call them up  you know what i'd have to pay for it but that's okay i would but they're funny publishers are  funny they're like you must pay for your author photo and photo permissions it's like really okay  funny little um quirk for my book tour simon and schuster actually made me a little amex card for  expenses wow cool um and i never freaking used it i mean i build them but i i just like i got this  and totally forgot i had somebody else's credit card to spend with in my wallet you idiot i knowi want one of those i could have gotten a massage on the publisher  holy yeah cause you can't really tell then when massage parlors and restaurants who can tell rightnow that's a pizzeria no no happy endings that's a dessert parlor is there something  that you are super craving to go back to once we are potentially somewhat back to normal yeah  well first i need another book idea um but once i have one uh just going out there into the world  into other people's worlds the thing that i do and i love to do you know i was just looking  uh for i have to do a podcast has to do with gulp later somebody else's podcast and i was reading uh  i was reading the chapter in the netherlands at food valley the oral processing lab and i  was like god i miss i miss being in a lab where people study chewing using comfort putty this  like looks like a silicon looks like a pencil eraser and you chew it and i was like these  these little universes that i i get to visit i haven't been there in a year and and i'm like i'm  kind of a hollowed out husk of myself now i'm like i miss that when will when they'll let come back  yeah me too we uh we drove across country my wife and i uh in  late september early october for about two and a half weeks and that was that sustained us for  a couple of months it was really really nice to have such a break in the routine which route did  you take uh well we actually took separate routes i drove from here to nashville basically taking um  i didn't know that you could take route 80 for like 1700 miles 80 goes all the way across yeah  well i took it all the way to wisconsin and then down to salt lake denver and then across  kansas wow that was yeah kansas was a little bit flat wow wow yeah i came out i originally  came out west on the 180 when i moved out on it was a driveaway car some poor schmo oh wow  right yeah trusted myself and two other recent college graduates with his old cutlass supreme  that's a nice road trip car it is a it was great it was great by the time i got there i ended up in  salt lake city with a goal to get to nashville and so i was like all right let's look up what  is the road trip from salt lake city to nashville and like at least two different blogs devoted an  entire article to the i to the fact that the drive from salt lake city to nashville is the worst road  trip in the u.s that is super super boring yeah yeah at least you get to go through the salt flats  right i love this right yes yeah up above salt lake yeah yeah love the salt flats that's the  highlight for me i don't remember a lot about that trip i was 21. uh the salt flats are just amazing  yeah so yeah road road trip yeah we were ed and i were gonna drive down to see his mom uh and and  but it was just that well do we stay in hotels we don't we didn't do we didn't want to do the back  then people were quarantining for two weeks right before they would see anyone we're like two weeks  in south florida oh maybe not maybe not yeah so we didn't do it but we were thinking about it did you  did you uh have a camper or did you stay in hotel hotels we stayed in hotels yeah and it felt really  pretty safe every hotel i was at was at like 10 capacity yeah the hotel staffs were all so pleased  to see people they were i had the best customer service i've ever had bar none yeah everywhere  yeah i think we could have done it yeah that way yeah cool um and it was i i miss i missed like  you i missed travel i you know i flew a hundred thousand miles a year every year for the last 20  years and uh yeah i know i i there were years when i was on the road for about four months reporting  back in the um well not so much these days i think it was back in my 20s and 30s when i had  less of a home life to come back to i think about the relationship i was in is like there's kind  of a reason maybe i was always on the road and then i'm not quite so eager to get home i guess  uh but um but but yeah i i miss it it doesn't have to be exotic i'm not looking at i mean beaches and  loveliness is great but kind of boring compared for me to being in somebody's lab oh no i remember  you saying that one of your favorite things to do is to look out the window of a plane and go what  is that oh my god i want to go there yes yes just fly yeah exactly the more desolate and weird the  better like flying ever flying over the arctic just like there's just nothing there just like  weird lakes and and i would i uh uh that that's the kind of place didn't they someone ended  up doing the show you and i talked about did they really it's like what on earth it's called what  on earth and they start up above and they're like they see stuff i mean it's a different  a slightly different science channel right yeah uh so and then they go and look at it but they didn't  do it as well as you and i what it what maybe they did maybe they did it better who did it i'm  gonna go take a look did it pretty differently i'm pretty sure i pitched that idea to them at  some point maybe it was a soft pitch oh well they went ahead and did it some version some version  television yeah but um uh yeah i just uh i want to keep i want to go to those weird obscure corners  i mean there are a lot left out there to go and you've been to antarctica like more than a few  times right yeah i've been four or five times yeah i know i love that place and it used to be  the government would pay for it it was the most amazing thing in the world the polar programs  uh and national science foundation has polar programs and they had a press trip budget  where they would uh they and it and in the beginning it was kind of like a junket where  they you know send a group of people down and it's almost like a tour around and you've got a little  time with the researchers that you needed but in the later years they're like do you need to go out  to uh where they're searching for meteorites in the middle of nowhere in a tent camp  i'm like yes i do i need to go there i desperately need to go there for this story and it was just  amazing or you could go like the drive alleys i need to go to the drive and then you'd get a  helicopter or the twin otter that would just that would take you there and drop you off and you'd  stay for a few days and report your story it was so great it was amazing or sometimes it was on one  of the research vests than nathaniel palmer i was out for two weeks when they were doing mud coring  yeah absolutely amazing oh that sounds i'm so jealous has coveted reached antarctica or is  it the one continent that hasn't coveted has reached antarctica they i think it's a maybe  the chilean base oh man maybe the chilean base is the only base i believe that had family has  family members there uh i see uh um so yeah it's there it's even there can you believe it i know  humans man we can't be trusted with anything adam you haven't been to antarctica  i haven't and it's it's a life goal a few years ago norm uh norm and joey uh got to go  on an arctic icebreaker trip for what was that three weeks for yes i remember  yeah yeah yeah amazing i love the arctic too yeah fantastic lifelong dream of mine yeah all right  adam i thought of you today well i thought obviously thought of you today  because how could i not how can i do your podcast and not think about you that'd be  really weird um but no actually yesterday it started it was a tweet it was a twitter thread  based on uh the um could an astronaut propel herself or himself across the flight deck  using flatus and somebody bless their heart actually did a bunch of calculations and said  even if you weren't eating a chipotle something or other burrito it would be a challenge and  then someone else came in and said what about the urine stream with the urine stream do it and they  calculated like that's a good question if you're pissing really hard would that do it and then  so you know it was just i thought about yeah because that's how we met yes that's how we met  i i wrote to you i emailed you out of the blue we uh jamie and i took you out to lunch at serpentine  uh here on around the corner from the cave and you uh yeah you you told us that and we  we ended up pitching it to chris hadfield yeah when he was on the iss and he said yes i totally  want to do it and nasa was like nobody can do it everyone stopped talking about it yeah exactly but  but roger crouch the astronaut who told me he had tried it he tried it but he and it didn't  work obviously he's like the the lungs hold a lot more air than the rectum you can blow the average  person can blow harder than they can fart so why are we even thinking about farts i'm like because  it's more fun it's true it's more fun uh but the yeah anyway he said he thought maybe that he since  he was wearing his chinos as they wear they've got to change the outfit for astronaut the chinos  anyway uh he felt that the fabric of the pants and might have interfered with the thrust somehow  you'd need to be naked and nasa was not excited about that especially as it was a mixed gender  uh mission well now given that we've been able to bracket this podcast by talking  about things and it's artifacts mary thank you so much for coming on the podcast it's been a real  breath of fresh air to see you in the new year oh god likewise always always always a treat  great to see you and great to meet you norm and i i i hope we get to dine soon when we're back  to normal it'd be great to see you please give ed my regards oh likewise um give my regards to  julia and uh wonderful to see you and thank you so much for having me on it's so much fun my pleasure  and oh yeah we're gonna have you on to talk about the book when that's coming okay and your personal  footnote excellent oh yeah no i'm totally into it the lengthy footnote all right excellent\n"