The Gory Details
Think science is boring? Think again. In this episode, we explore the strange, hilarious, and sometimes disturbing truths about our world with National Geographic science reporter Erika Engelhaupt, author of Gory Details: Adventures from the Dark Side of Science.
From what’s really floating in public pool water, to a biologist who stung himself with every insect imaginable, to the shocking secrets of the most murderous mammals on Earth—this book uncovers the bizarre realities most scientists don’t talk about.
Blending humor with hard facts, Erika Engelhaupt takes us behind the curtain of biology, anatomy, space exploration, and even death, revealing science’s weirdest (and most unforgettable) stories.
👉 If you love Mary Roach’s style of science writing, this episode is a must-listen.
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Start your free seven-day trial and unlock this episode plus hundreds more all ad-free when you become a Mysterian on Patreon. Tell me what you found really fascinating about, uh, looking at autopsies. Yeah.
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You know, I, I, like a lot of people who, uh, are interested in, you know, forensic science and crime scene investigation, I, I watch a lot of those TV shows even though I know a lot of the science is wrong on shows like CSI and, um, and Bones and things like that.
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Still they're, those are really, um, really interesting, um, kinds of shows.
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And so I would say that like a lot of people, my, you know, imagination or what I, what I imagined an autopsy to be like was shaped a lot by those kinds of shows.
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Um, and for me, my age growing up when I was a kid, uh, there was a show called Quincy that was really the big deal. And, um- I remember Quincy. Yeah. That was my man. You remember Quincy, Quincy, [laughs]
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Quincy M.E., and he was this medical examiner that was always solving crimes and, um, and you know, they would always show these autopsies and it, it's like this kind of like dark room with a bright light hanging down over this body on a, on a, you know, metal tray and, um, you picture like all of those, um, pull-out metal drawers full of bodies and, uh, and maybe there's like a, a window built into the wall for the family members to come up and, and view the body to identify it and things like that.
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So that was, that was what I was kind of imagining, right, as, as an autopsy.
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And then a couple years ago I had the opportunity to actually go to the Baltimore Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, which is, you know, one of the, the biggest, uh, forensic science centers in the country. Um-
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