Not all conversation is appropriate for the dinner table – and that includes, strangely enough, the subject of eating. Yet what happens during the time that food enters our mouth and its grand exit is a model of efficiency and adaptation.
Author Mary Roach takes us on a tour of the alimentary canal, while a researcher describes his invention of an artificial stomach. Plus, a psychologist on why we find certain foods and smells disgusting. And, you don’t eat them but they could wiggle their way within nonetheless: surgical snakebots.
Guests:
- Mary Roach – Author, most recently, of Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
- Martin Wickham – Head of Nutrition, Leatherhead Food Research, U.K.
- Paul Rozin – Professor of psychology, University of Pennsylvania
- Michael Gershon – Professor in the Department of Pathology and Cell Biology, Columbia University Medical Center
- Howie Choset – Professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University
