Bill Bryson on the miraculous human body

a human heart of the course of an average lifetime will in effect lift a one ton weight 150 miles into the air so bill you've written this book the user's guide to the body I just wondered if you could tell us what was the motivation what was it that got you interested in this topic well there was there were several things one the most personal was that I discovered quite by chance that I was probably born with just one kid I have only one kidney and that made me realize I have no idea how I'm put together idea what goes on inside me and at first I was alarmed to discover I have only one kidney but then I went to see you a kidney specialist and he said no no it's not that big a deal I was better to have to if you can but if but about one person in 100 is born with just one and it's just proof that you don't you know your body does look after you so you said that there were multiple reasonably well then another one was that my older son is doctor now but he was in medical school if he and I went to the pub he would he would tell me really excitedly about some very technical stuff you know electrolytes ribosomes which just kind of captivated enchanted really by how taken he was by the body and that made me realize how little I know these things are you know what quarter of an inch away from me in the other or my stomach pounds more like an inch and a half away from it you can palpate a lot of these things and yet you know I've never seen him I don't know what's going on in there there were so many things as I was reading the book that I just thought even though I know a bit about science like we're really surprising to me I mean you were writing where the eyes and how the things that we see are actually a fifth of a second of a prediction into the future I wondered maybe if you could tell us two or three things that were the perhaps the most mind-blowing for you as you were coming well that was that was one of them and and just in a more general sense how your brain you know interprets the world and allows you to make sense of the world if what you saw inside your mind was exactly what your eyeballs are taking in it would be just be complete class and as you say that that you touched on the idea that the brain isn't giving you this exact present moment it's it's in order to allow you to function in the world better reflexively it constantly predicting what's gonna happen a fifth of a second in the future and and of course you have a big blind spot in the middle you have your both eyes these two pretty big holes in the center of your field of vision that's that but you cannot you're not aware of it in the same way you're not aware of blinking point being that your brain is constantly interpreting the world for you and and and and essentially giving you a world you can cope with rather than a world that is really you're not getting the literal world around you at all ever that's a weird one isn't it yeah was there any other crazy facts that really blew you away from the book that well the others the brain and just how much the just how the 75-day deeper so water and the rest is just protein fats and yet look what it does I mean that to me was just mind-blowing excuse the sight pun the one thing that really really just completely rocked me back on my heels was the idea that if you took a cubic millimeter of of your brain of your cerebral cortex which is about the size of a grain of sand that is enough storage capacity there to contain all the movies ever made including trailers you know and I and a very helpful professor of at the University of Durham worked out for me that it would it would hold 1.2 billion copies of of my book and you got that and one cubic millimeter of your brain and think of all the cubic millimeters you've got can I ask you a bit about the the things that you did and the people he went to meet was there a particular trip that you made that you'd like to the Secretary was that was to me was the most fascinating I was immediately struck by how completely different the body is I mean an opened up human body particularly you know a cadaver which is drained of all life and color is just a slab of meat I mean it's not very different from your Christmas turkey it's just in terms of the texture and the tone of it and kind of the chilliness of it all that and that was that was to me was all the more marvelous to think that did this these innards that I'm looking at were until recently soon as this person you know used to sit up and laugh and smile and have dreams and fall in love and do all of these things with with all of this and all that did it was this flesh you know this is kind of massive undifferentiated organs and flesh it was just it just it struck me how unmanned be is and yet somehow miraculously look what it does it seems like you started off your career writing sort of about places you didn't travel books and obviously words very famously about about this country in America but it feels like sort of you had your a very big and successful book the short history of nearly everything and now this book of course so it feels like you've sort of moved into science I had long wanted to do a book about science to understand the universe I mean I really wanted to the extent that is possible doable I wanted to you know understand why how we went from the Big Bang this moment of creation for everything to right now you know how did we get from there to here and and to what extent can I understand that I thought there's got to be some level at which I can engage with with science without being a scientist about it and and that was the whole idea the book and my publishers kind of indulged me in this as if you know I would get it out of my system but luckily for me it was the most successful book I've ever written it went well and that and that it kind of liberated me to do other kinds of books some of which have not been so successful but but all of which I've enjoyed immensely and it's given me you know a much much more interested in life than if I had just you know I can't bear the thought that by this time of life I just be trying to think where have I not been yet where can i you know what country can I go to get drunk and make a fool of myself with the travel books that you know you reaching a point in which you you feel as if I've really mind this vein already I mean you can't keep doing the same thing over and over again I wondered as well about say with your short history of nearly everything I think you have a list of errors in it that a list of like Corrections that you keep online is that right I think so anything's in the world has that what I have I don't it's I mean one of the great frustrations of doing a book is that a book is frozen I mean it becomes essentially and and I'm going through this right now is to with the body because I will pick up the new scientists in or nature or something and that's it oh my god there's a new study this is completely this changes everything yeah you know the book is finished it's frozen I can't really get back to it and and so for better or worse what I tend to do is just you know you just accept that and you have to kind of walk away from it and with the shortest to nearly everything I mean I for time I kept trying to keep up with it and correct everything and and you know I don't know update the number of exoplanets and things like that but it was just it was impossible I mean the book was written two thousand four or five and somebody just think of how things have changed just in terms of things like dark matter and dark energy and all kinds of think there was a planet whenever at that book and now it's you know so there's all kinds of things I'd love to go back and then I hope that I live long enough to go back and revise it and update it but all that will do is just it's just pushed further into the future the time when it's out of date again you were involved in a campaign I think it was campaign for rural England carrying to protect actual England and it was kind of about litter and waste I think was the thing that you were interested in and it feels to me like a New Scientist at least we're writing a lot about waste these days but not so much litter it's more to do with things like plastic in the ocean and more sort of less visible forms of waste I wondered and I wondered if where you think we sort of are in our public conversation right waste I mean do you think we're going in the right direction with anything I I mean seriously I think I don't think the world has ever been as crazy and as unprepared for the future as it is right now look who is President of the United States of America and I don't think I need to say anything more than that and but just look at you know how little we are doing collectively about things like climate change and and I'm one thing that particularly disturbs me now is its how untrusted scientists have become you know so many people are very very suspicious of what scientists tell them which I just don't understand I mean I grew up in a world in which anybody who had a lab coat on was believed automatic and you know maybe we were a bit naive to accept any of that but when it's so obviously sensible to at least at least consciously accept global warming is something we need to do something about because the consequences are so bad if we we don't so I don't understand why people are so opposed to that and why they what when scientists say things to them about pray'd facts in front of them that they reject them I struggled not to be too too depressive about the whole world yeah though I do the book was was really to focus on the things that the body does well and does well for us the body really is mostly a success story for most of us most parts of us are working flawlessly for four decades it's kind of a miracle and the miracle of life altogether which is that all of these things inside you work together you don't have to tell your heart to be to your lungs to breathe and inflate and deflate all that they all this is done for you and to me that's quite a miracle yeah I agree it was nice to have a celebration of the body been told I need to do a slightly cheesy sight off so just I would just say Bill Bryson thank you very much for talking to us it's been a real pleasure thank you what part of that was cheesy I don't know but in my in my brain it was probably so it really has been a pleasure you know I've been pleasure for me to think

Channel: New Scientist

Views: 22,559

Rating: 4.9205956 out of 5

Keywords: body, bill bryson, life, death, brain, consciousness, health, human, lungs, heart, mind

Id: FZDEpQV8lqI

Length: 10min 21sec (621 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 03 2019