Bill Bryson on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky

the amazing bill bryson about his brilliant book called the body a guide for occupants now it's so in the end your book is it's it's many pages it's close to 400 pages long but it's so easy to read now we all know that if you know a subject inside out then you should be able to explain the most complex aspect of that subject to a six-year-old by deconstructing them then reconstructing and distilling that information but you're not you know this is not what you do for a living are you right for a living but this is not you don't study physiology for a living the line I take is said I just unprofessionally ignorant right I take a subject I know nothing about and I just try and find out I try to understand it and and in some ways that's a real advantage because unlike a scientist you know I have this infinite capacity to be amazed by what I hear a lot of the scientists I interview they you know they're a little bit jaded by the subjects they're doing because they spent their whole lives doing it they're fascinated by well they kind of lose the magic of it it just seems ordinary to them was to me you know some of the almost everything I put in the book when I read this or learned it from an interview I just thought this is amazing why didn't why didn't they teach me this in school I would paid a lot more attention if I'd known something I know I know but you know teachers have it tough anyway basically they look after our children for 15 years and try and teach them something in between there is that suppose so the lady that you met who was an expert on skin.the what she says about the first layer of skin and the different colors that skin can can be was an absolute revelation we ready I slay verbatim just take it take us through that it's very simple that that you know your color what your race which is everybody in the world judges you by is is one millimeter depth if you took took off the outer millimeter of your skin which is obviously practically nothing nobody could tell no the greatest scientists in the world couldn't tell what race you are couldn't tell whether you're black or white or Asian or whatever says hey it is extraordinary says this that are you talking about it's extraordinary how much such a small facet of our composition is given so much importance people act as if skin color is a determinant of character when all it is is the reactions biologically there is actually no such thing as race nothing in terms of skin colour facial features hair type bone structure or anything else that is a defining quality among people's and yet look how many people have been enslaved or hated or lynched or deprived of fundamental rights through history because of the color of their skin I mean that is revelatory to me that's revelatory well it was to me that's what's in the book is pretty yeah I think it was it's and um you know in the dissecting room a doctor showed me how much a millimeter of skin is and just sort of lifted it a little patch of skin back off this cadaver and you can see light through it I mean you can almost it's almost transparent that's how little you know that's a little of you is race you fascinated you are of an age where your reflect you've always been it you've observed a lot and now you're reflecting a bit more than observing and then you're researching probably more than you've ever done in the last couple of books you you've lost three books at least that you've written and this is because you discovered you had an extra kidney I was sent for an MRI scan for something my heart which turned out to be nothing I'm pleased to say and they discovered in passing it just entirely by accident that I only have one kidney I was one born with one kidney it happens fairly often they think it's about one in a hundred but they're no idea really because they don't go and look at everybody you know and and the fact is that you know any of us can eat anybody in every Lister's might only have one kidney but I've never had a scan they wouldn't know so about one in every hundred of us goes through life with one kidney not knowing it but discovery making that discovery really drove home to me that you do have no idea what's inside you and and that that was the spur to me to try to understand a little bit better about how we're put together alright in the papers yesterday and today there's this global drug shortage they're saying this is legal drugs they're a global drug shortage because the perfect storm in the hindrance of drug production but also because demand is so high then you talk about America who are the most obese nation in the world closely followed by Chile but we're right up there in the top ten France 49% French people are clinically obese as well maybe what we should do to get fitter but then of course we are being told the best thing you could do for the clients have left less children in the future for your children in the future and then you end the book with a chapter called the end which I love I think you've written I think you wrote this book just so you could have a chapter called me at the end but you talked about that French lady who smoked and drank till she was 115 she gave up seven years before she died at the age 122 and all drinks and smokers cite her at some time in their life as some kind of mitigation is why they might be able to carry on but of course living longer is also a problem even though we are ignorant Lee fascinated by it and this this this continuing sort of climb to the top of Everest and Beyond of medical research that just wants to to get us to live long for no reason that may be good for us because you know medical science can keep you going longer and longer and longer and you know it would be it would be irresponsible to withhold treatments from people just because they're old but at the same time what we're doing is a lot of people who really have lost and you know have lost reason the reason to live you know they mean they may be Kaveri confused they may be completely demented they may be in a lot of pain and may be suffering mightily we can still keep them live I mean keep the human body going but the question is is it always worth it and it's an impossible thing to answer because you can't just euthanize people that would be cruel and heartless at the same time it's kind of kind of cruel heartless to keep them alive when there's when there's no quality of life my mum died the thing about the most striking thing about her passing was she told me she was frightened right because it took her quite a while to pass away and she was frightened she didn't want to be front she was frightened of dying but petrified and it was only around the corner and that is another reason that people don't want to hang her I don't know I don't to be frightened for the last I've had a wonderful time you know thank God I don't be frightened for the last month or two months of my life and and then at the end of it died anyway yeah this I mean that's that's the thing about almost all deaths because most people nowadays you know we used to just die suddenly we just have heart attacks really good or you get pneumonia you know and you would die quickly and kind of painlessly now but now increasingly humans suffer lingering doubts and that is that is a worry I mean I nobody wants to spend two years dying and and yet because of medical treatments is possible increasingly possible to do that all right every chapter in this book is absolutely solid gold a couple of cookies before you go because now you gotta go it isn't true is it that our hair and our nails go after we we are deceased that is not true that is a myth my hair is barely growing now ya know after you die it's no that's true almost all of the things that we all know that we all feel we know about the body turn out to be miss the idea that that you only use 10% of your brain complete myth the idea that the average man thinks about sex every second seven seconds completely that people don't think about sex all that offered at all just all that kind of stuff is mostly miss with things that you think you know because you've been hearing them all your life mostly a minute now what was your favorite bit of it I think the most the most amazing fact I learned was was to do with the brain the brain is is the most wondrous creation in the universe and I think the single most amazing fact to me in the book was if you took one cubic millimeter of your brain which is about the size of a grain of sand there's enough processing power in that tiny grain of sand of your brain to hold all the movies ever made science is having said that scientists still can't find a thought no no we have them but we don't know where they come from and we don't know where they are yeah exactly she said they can examine the brain they can have brains they can be gifted brains for research but I can't find the thoughts right that I love that and I also loved you're talking about wars 2 CH 2 oh you got your hydrogen your oxygen you've got two parts hydrogen one part gin hydrogen oxygen know basically weightless put together they would can weigh billions of tons yeah well this I mean as as I say in the book if you've ever just tried to move a paddling pool full of water or carry a couple of buckets of water water is really heavy and yet it's made of these two as you say really really light elements okay great thank you very much oh my goodness me bill bryson the body the book is out today the Chris Evans breakfast show with sky

Channel: Virgin Radio UK

Views: 6,686

Rating: 4.9365077 out of 5

Keywords: virgin radio, virgin radio uk, virginradiouk, chris evans, chris evans virgin radio, chris evans breakfast show, bill bryson, the body

Id: Qxffth0Iiuo

Length: 8min 52sec (532 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 03 2019