In this case, I had done this story on flatulence-it was like 1989 or something-and I had all this great material. It’s kind of a stupid way to come up with books. I’ll have two or three chunks of material that didn’t get put into a book or a story, and then I’ll go, “Oh, if I took all two or three of these, what would be the umbrella over all of those that might be…” I’ll have some specifics and then put a book around them, which I don’t recommend to anybody. I do one book and then I go, “Oh God, I don’t have any more ideas, what am I going to do?” I kind of come at it inside out. Well, I like writing books, and the thing that trips me up is that I’m not very-it's not like I have a list of ideas to work through as the years unfold. How do you come up with your ideas? What drew you to the alimentary canal? Your books are all about topics people probably didn't realize they wanted to know about until they start reading. We talked to the author about making gross topics palatable to readers, putting yourself out there for science, and the parts of the alimentary canal that just aren't that interesting. Mary Roach's book, Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, is available in paperback now.
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