I find that the key to it, for me is in the reporting. I know that i have to have material that will lend itself to a humorous right up. The magic for him is in recognizing the potential of those scenes. He once pitched a story on the aergonomics of aerplane seats because they were doing some studies of that. And then go there and it's just 50 people sitting in aeroplane seats for seven hours. It's not very dynamic. But he became a passionate advocate for saliva. You now, don't get me started on saliva.
Mary Roach is the author of seven nonfiction books, including her latest, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law.
"In these realms of the taboo, there's a tremendous amount of material that is really interesting, but that people have stayed away from. ... I'm kind of a bottom feeder. It's down there on the bottom where people don't want to go. But if that's what it takes to find interesting, new material, I'm fine with it. I don't care. I'm not easily grossed out. I don't feel that there's any reason why we shouldn't look at this. And over time, I started to feel that ... the taboo was preventing people from having conversations that it would be healthy to have."
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