Ishmael beahs second book is coming out in january of 2014. Mary roach, how did elvis die. Well, there are different theories but my belief, based on research for my book, is he was a vic of severe constipation and associated sudden death. Host how did you find that out . Guest one fine day i was talking to somebody at the here in d. C. , the Armed Forces Institute museum. They have a monstrous colon, a huge subjects some severe difficulties, internal difficulttives. Mega colon. The woman happened to say to me Elvis Presley died of that. And i went, what . And i spent a day with Elvis Presleys doctor and learned about the kings troubles with severe constipation. Who was his doctor . Nick dr. Nick nickopolus. What was that like . Cincinnati was lovely. It was the anniversary of elvis death and friends were milling around. Dr. Nick was doing a memorial tribute. Then i went over to his house, the house that elvis had built for him in the 70s, and and dr. Nick and i sat around in the living room of this wonderful 1970, at the time very posh place. Great big rooms, and we sat there, dr. Nick here and his wife, edna, and edna would be thefurniture was quite far apart and i would try to lean down and put my coffee. Id have to get up slightly to get the coffee down, and dr. Nick and i talked about elvis, and every now and then edna, from would pop up with an observation or comment about priscilla presley. So this little dispatch from the Distant Island nation of edna. Host what did you learn from dr. Nick . Guest i was there to talk about well, i should explain to people. Gulp is adventures on the alimentary canal. From nose to tail, and this chapter, is it possible to die of constipation . And you hear sometimes about people who died upon the toilet. The throne. You know. Which i guess would be appropriate with elvis. Anyway issue was anyway i was bid in this notion. Most people assume it was an overdose that killed elvis, and in fact he certainly took a lot of drugs and that didnt help, but the actual moment of death as far as i could tell from the autopsy, from the cause of death was a fatal heart arrhythmia, which can come on when somebody is pushing, straining at stools. So the moment of death would appear to have been defecation associated. So, fit right in with the book, and i thought i need to talk to dr. Nick, who was lovely, gracious man in his 80s now, and invited me in, and we sat around and had coffee and chatted about elvis and constipation and things. Host where did you get the idea to write gulp . Guest gulp is so roachable. Its just a wonder i didnt write about this topic before. Its kind of a taboo subject, and i enjoy writing about taboo topics that particularly that relate to the human body, partly because its fun to play with taboo, because everybody stays away from it. Therefore, all the more for me to play with. Im kind of the bottom feeder of nobody fiction. So, ill tack that. You dont want to do that . Ill do it. And because its taboo, i think people anything taken away and made taboo, people are secretly fascinated with. Kind of like somebody says, youre on a dealt that you cant have any desserts or whatever, and thats the thing you crave. So people are both repulsed and drawn to it, and they kind of want to peek behind the curtain. So im pulling the curtain apart for people. And i also i think when its your own body youre talking about, the taboo does it a disservice, because sometimes people have issues that it dont even feel talking to their doctor about, like Elvis Presleys problems. Those are things because its taboo people dont want to bring it up. They feel embarrassed. Cop constipation is embarrassing. Host you write, theres an up napable feeling head had ten time inside any life. A mix of wonder, privilege, humidity, and all that border on feel. I it in a field of snow in alaska with the Northern Lights overhead so seemingly close. I dropped to my knees. I am walloped by it in the mountains, looking up the sparkleing sphere smear of our galaxy. What made you have that feeling . Guest well, i decided to get my first colonoscopy without any drugs, because i wanted to see what it looked like in there, because my feeling was, this is your own body and here is this opportunity, this very, very rare opportunity to see these miraculous parts of you that are day in and day out keeping you alive and doing these amazing things, and i thought, okay, im going to observe this. Im going to see my own colon. And i expected to feel the emotions that im describing there in the passage that you just read. When in fact i felt mild to moderate cramping. But anyway, that had been my hope, it would be this kind of transcendent experience, and it was actually very it was an amazing thing to witness. However, the intermittent sharp pain and discomfort kind of distracted me from my goal of lofty feelings. Host mary roach, theres National Museum of health and medicine here in washington . Whats there . Guest thats the mega colon. The home of the mega colon, which inspired the trip to memphis to visit with dr. Nick, elvis physician, personal physician for many years. So, that is the mega colon that brought on this whole chapter. What does bonk mean . Guest bonk is slang for sexual intercourse. I have to say, though, people are going to start calling going, excuse me, i believe that you misspelled the title. Its boink, not bonk. To which i reply, yeah, okay, it is both. Bonk is a little more common in the uk. Its in fact thats what people say in the uk. I grew up in new england and we said bonk, and to me boink is a silly word, and bonk is like, its people will write to me and said, think its boink, like nobody noticed the title had been misspelled. But enough people complained that i had made up for book tours a little yellow letter i to the test on the cover of the paperbook is yeley. A little peel and stick letter i that i had a whole of and people could apply to the cover of their book if it really bothered them i used bonk instead of boink. Host what did you research in the book . Guest bonk is a book about sex labs. And im saying its a book about people, brave souls, who studied the physiology of sex. Not gender stuff or sociology or h. I. V. Transmission but specifically just the bio mechanics and the physiology of arousal, orgasm, intercourse. So people say, this is a Human Systems and it deserves deservee studies and understood, and for centuries nobody did that. It wasnt until the well, masters and johnson, and kinsey got it roling in earnest, put the until the 40s and 50s nonwanted to go there so i looked at brave souls who went there. So that is that the book is about. Host how significant were the masters and john since consistency studies. Well, kinsy had people come in and do this long not unlike this threehour interview. He would do an extensive interview about sexual habits, what do you do, how many times, what position . Really very specific personal questions about peoples sexuality, and he published these two volumes and that was quite controversy the things he uncovered. So that was mostly what however, he did get interested were talking the 40s and early 50s and he did bring people up into the attic of his house in indiana, and the attic sessions were essentially him with a movie camera and a not pad, observingtaking notes, and answering certain questions he had and studying the process of the sexual response cycle as it would come to be called. Build the work was never published in any journal or anywhere else. It was he didnt have an institute. Wasnt wearing a white coat. Masters and johnson actually this is in the 50s, mind you brought volunteers in to be observed, and sometimes it was couples or sometimes one person, and they took they were just documenting the entire sexual response cycle in men and women, like beginning stages of arousal, the plateau stage, orgasm, the whole thing, and really specific, and to publish this book human sexual response, cam out in the 50s the dates in the book cut by a time when it was really scan dellous, and they had gob out of their way to dress it up in the trappings of formal science there would be they came up witheuphemisms for things with a lot of syllables. A couple having next the lab would be the reacting unit. If the man lost his erection, a failure of ewrecktive performance, all pornography would be system lative literature. Everybody had a multisyllabic. Its a big book and very thorough. Even though theres nothing scandalous in there, they had so much hate mail they had to hire a second secretary to handle all of the hate mail. So my hats off to them. It was a tremendously brave thing to do at the time. Very conservative era. Nothing like this had ever been done, and they did it. And they got people to come into the lab. That was the amazing thing. I would have loved to interview some of their subjects, but they were anonymous and masters and johnson were fiercely protective of their identities, and i was going to put an ad in the paper saying, if you were one of those subjects, please contact me. And several people said, if you do that and we have tried, you will get people pretending to have been subjects who just want to tell you these titillating and absolutely false stories. So, i thought, well, how can i kind of how can i get across to people what i wanted to know, what would that have been like to its an extraordinarily awkward situation to be in a Laboratory Setting with somebody in a white coat with a note pad, then going to say, okay, now remove your clothes and proceed to do what you ordinarily do. Dont mind us. Pretend were not here. So, the way i got around that is, i well, i did find somebody its not common these days not very many studies where two people are required if youre studying arousal or orgasm, whatever it is, you can do that with one person. If you know what i mean. You dont necessarily have to have two people. So i did find one study, and i asked it was a dr. Dang in london, a fourdimensional ultrasound imaging study, they could actually make a fourdimensional film of the body parts in question, and i emailed dr. Deng, and i said, im very interested in this next project you have. This is a man who had been published. It was a legitimate research venture. And i said, im really interested in this historic jung take undertaking, could i be there in the room . And he wrote back right away and he said, well, you yes, you could, but were having difficulty finding a brave couple for intimate study. So if your organization would like to provide a volunteer, id be happy to arrange it. So, my Organization Called its husband, and i believe the way i phrase it was not entirely forthcoming. I said to ed, you know how you havent been to london . 25 years . And lets go, and ill take care of everything. Stay in a nice hotel. The west end, jeremy irons is in something,ing a big beer, stonehenge, we have to have sex in from of a guy in a white coat and that my muss, my husband, ed, a wonderful capacity for denial. So he latched on to the, hey, were going london, and did not even think about the segment in which we were going to have to and this is ultrasound. People say you were filmed in an mry tube and im like, no, actually there was no mri tube. In a that case you would have privacy, at least. A little cramped up and comfortable but privacy. With ultrasound, the guy is right here with the wand. So, was one of those it was a tremendously awkward experience, but at the same time i was thinking, this is going to be so fun to write. Going to be so much fun to write up. Miss husband ed deserves a medal for this bass he didnt have any sort of Silver Lining for him. For him it was a really awkward thing, and of course the burden of performance is on him. And i yeah. I could go into more detail but i dont think we need to right here. Host in your first book, stiff, the curious lives of human cadavers, the first line is the human haventes the approximate size and weight of a roaster chicken. How did you discover that . Guest one of the places i went to in stiff thicks this is a book about postmortem careers. People who have donated their body to science, research, education, and some of the more unusual places that theyve ended up. People are familiar with anatomy classes and dissection, but theres a lot of other things that dead people have gotten up to over the years that are quite fascinating. One of them is that surgeons will use cadavers to practice on, and to learn techniques or to refresh themselves and to practice basically you dont want to practice on a live person. So the dead are useful for practicing. And the place i went was a seminar for a facial and Reconstructive Surgeons and they were practicing techniques on heads. And people think, why didnt they have the whole body . And the thing is with cadaver research, you dont want to waste usable tissue, so you would the head would be in recop struck stiff Plastic Surgery lab. The arm might be, say in a test of a power window to make sure that if somebodys hand were in it, wouldnt cause an injury. The legs might be anyway, you can be in five places at once as a research cadaver. Which i think is kind of a pretty ultimate multitasking. So the heads were in they had them set up this is a longwinded answer. They were in roasting pans of the sort that you would use to roast a chicken, and because in fact theyre about the same size. So i happened to make that observation because there were 30 heads in roasting pans in this surgical Training Seminar that i was at in texas. Host who donates their bodies . Guest i think people who donate their bodies tend to be people like myself, kind of practical, utilitarian, cheap. Its doortodoor service, they pick you up no rigmarole with the funeral home. You can do a service if you want to but you dont have to. So theyll pick you up and you go plus you get this sort of wonderful feeling of having donated, making a donation to science, contribution host tax deductible . Guest that would require putting a value on a dead body, and if you which is an interesting issue, because dead bodies are kind of like cars. If you part by part, if you added up what each individual part sells for, although shipping and handling youre not selling the goods but if you take the cost of each individual one and add them up, its a far greater number than it would be just for a whole body. So, its difficult to put a figure actually on should irs audit well, see, the irs this is not going to audit you on it. Going to be a really strange scenario if they audit you after beyond the grave. Host there is a shortam of dead bodies for surgeons, et cetera . Guest yes and no. People depending on where you live, because if youre in if you live somewhere near, say, stanford or harvard, people love to donate to those schools. Its kind of like you can say, im going to harvard. Ive often thought they people who run the real body program that should have tshirts that say, im going harvard, the donated body, and there can be two medical schools close by. Theres, like, duke and another smaller college that a medical school but doesnt have the same prestige so duke is always sort of quietly giving some of their surplus. So theres regional surpluses and deficits. Some places have plenty of bodies, others are always scrambling to get more bodies. Host in stiff, the cure use lives of human cadavers you write it makes little sense to try to control what happened to your remains when youre no longer around to reap the joys or benefit0s of that control. People who make elaborate requests concerning disposition of their bodies are probably people who are troubled with the concept of not existing. Guest yeah, that is the number one reason in my experience, that people cite when theyre not going to donate they dont want to donate their body to science, to research, to education. They say i want to be able to say what its used for. I want to cure cancer. I dope want to be used in a Plastic Surgery seminar. People want to exert control over the circumstances, though theyre no longer in the circumstances at the time. So in a way its a way of still being around. People dont people have a lot of difficulty with the prospect of no longer being around. Of course, youre not going to be around to care or to take issue, so it doesnt make not a rational thing. I know the feeling. People say, well, are you you wrote this book, you presumably are going to donate your body to science, and i have to say i have the paperwork for stanford and ucsf medical school, two schools withins the radius of where i live in the bay area. So i have the paperwork, but i havent filled it out. Im kind of like a college senior. Im like, sort of deciding where i want to go, and whats the view like from the anatomy lab over there at ucsf and what are the facilities and how am i going to be stored. Who cares . Im dead but i have that irrational kind of desire to and i also think its interesting. I havent pulled the trigger. I havent filled out the form, signed it and turned it is. And as the author of stiff, kind of have to. To be cremated now would be just seems wrong. But i have not quite got up the nerve. Host the last chapper in stiff is remains of the author, will she or wont she, is the title. Mary roach, you right youre concerned about ed. Guest yes. Host and his take on your being donated. Guest yes. Ed is my husband, and ed is a very squeamish man, and the thought of me or him become upon a table for him hes like, do i get to keep my underwear on . Thats what he focused on. I dont want to take my underwear off in a roomful of strangers. Plus youre dead, you look like crap. Thats his concern to me, the taught of me being parceled out and used was disturbing to him, and one of the things i realize in talking to medical ethicists and various people is that the wishes of the living are more important than the wishes of the dead. Somebody said, if somebody leaves elaborate plans for their remains that has a tremendous impact on the living. The people who just lost their loved one. So its hard enough to cope with the loss of somebody, and then to find out they wanted to be donated to science and theyre going to be used in some kind of research or experimentation or whatever it is, and that is an upsetting thing for the family. But the people who work in will body programs will usually go take the side of the living because the dead, lefts face it, theyre dead, and the living still have emotions and things to deal with. And so when that that circumstance does occasionally present itself where the family is very, very uncomfortable with the wishes of the deceased to become go to an anatomy lab or be used in medical research. Its very upsetting for them. And in that case the body wouldnt be. Its not like the university is going to come and pull the body away from the funeral home. Its horrible, traumatic tug of war. They let it go. They understand. Host being caught in possession of a