Episode 686
Mary Roach, Janesh Rahlan, Amy Millan
Popular science writer Mary Roach dives into lab-grown organs, historical nose jobs, and unlikely hair transplants, as covered in her latest book Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy; stand-up comedian Janesh Rahlan riffs on learning Spanish as an Indian American growing up in Texas; and singer-songwriter Amy Millan (of the indie group Stars) recites her teenage monologue from Degrassi Junior High, before performing a track from her new solo album I Went to Find You.
Mary Roach
Humorous Science Writer
Mary Roach is the author of nine New York Times bestsellers, including Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, and now, her latest book Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy. She has written for National Geographic, Wired, The New York Times Magazine, and the Journal of Clinical Anatomy, among others. Mary was a guest editor of the Best American Science and Nature Writing series, an Osher Fellow with the San Francisco Exploratorium, and serves as an advisor for Orion and Undark magazines. She has also been a finalist for the Royal Society's Winton Prize and a winner of the American Engineering Societies' Engineering Journalism Award, in a category for which, let's be honest, she was the sole entrant.
Janesh Rahlan
Stand-Up Comedian
Janesh Rahlan is an LA based comedian, actor, and writer. He’s opened for acts like Kumail Nanjiani, Atsuko, Josh Johnson, Cedric the Entertainer, Alex Edelman, and Jordan Klepper. He's a regular at many clubs, including the Hollywood Improv and San Francisco Punch Line. His comedy touches upon his immigrant upbringing and aggressively millennial persona.
Amy Millan
Indie Singer
Canadian chanteuse Amy Millan is best known as the co-lead vocalist for indie rock act Stars and as a satellite member of the iconic collective Broken Social Scene. She launched her solo career with Honey from the Tombs (2006) and Masters of the Burial (2009), blending indie rock with country and folk influences. After a 15-year hiatus from solo work, Millan has returned with I Went To Find You, a deeply personal album that explores themes of loss, friendship, and self-discovery.
Show Notes
Best News
Elena’s story: “Tooth Is Implanted in 34-year-old’s Eye to Restore His Vision After Two Decades”
Luke’s story: “DoorDash for Good’ Rescues 250 Million Pounds of Food from Becoming Waste”
Mary Roach
Mary discusses her latest book, which is Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy
Luke and Mary talk through some particularly zany moments in medical transplantation, including Hormel Foods’ breeding of super-clean pigs, Tycho Brahe’s brass nose, and Dr. Okuda’s contribution to hair transplantation.
Janesh Rahlan
Janesh performs a hilarious stand-up set that starts with his experience growing up Indian in Texas, then transports us to what really went down at the Constitutional Convention.
Live Wire Listener Question
If you could replace one body part with an upgraded model, what would it be?
Amy Millan
Amy performs “Don Valley” from her latest album, I Went to Find You.
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Elena Passarello: From PRX, it's Live Wire. This week, writer Mary Roach.
Mary Roach: I called up my old travel buddy, Steph, and I said, so, you know, the Caucasus Mountains are beautiful this time of year, and there's a guy who makes a penis out of fingers, so let's go.
Elena Passarello: Comedian Janesh Rahlan.
Janesh Rahlan: So that's why I decided, I was like, I'm going to keep it honest, they asked me, they're like, what's your greatest weakness? I look them dead in the eye. I'm like, yo, I am ticklish as hell.
Elena Passarello: With music from Amy Millan and our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello, and now, the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank: How exciting. Thank you, Elena Passarello. Thanks everybody for coming out to Live Wire at the Alberta Rose Theatre here in Portland, Oregon. Fabulous show in store for you this week. As you may or may not have noticed, the news of the world a little on the bleakish side, but that's where Live Wire comes in, my friends, because we scour the globe and try to find some actual good news that is happening out there. And by God, we found some this week, it's a segment we call The Best News We've Heard All Week. Elena, what's the best news you heard all week?
Elena Passarello: Okay, this news is in honor of one of our guests, Mary Roach. This is some pretty interesting and a little gross body part science. It involves an osteoodontokeratoprosthesis. Osteo means bone. Donto means tooth. Kerato means cornea and prosthesis means fake.
Luke Burbank: Okay, so some pretend eye in your tooth.
Elena Passarello: What? Yeah, other way around, but but not bad. Yeah, this is a story involving a gentleman in Canada named Brent Chapman. 20 years ago, when he was 13 years old, he had an adverse reaction to a drug that left him sightless. And one eye and severe burns on his cornea in the other eye has not been cited for the remaining portion of his life and has worked with the same doctor for 20 years and has had over 50 surgeries. Still not recovering his sight. And there is this surgery that I just said the name of at the top. That surgery was invented in 1960 and had never been performed in Canada before. But his doctor, Dr. Maloney was like, you know what, let's give it a shot. So they took one of Brent's canine teeth. They drilled a hole in it. They fashioned a prosthetic eyeball lens, which I believe is the correct anatomical term. And then they put it through his eye and into his cheek. And you wanna use a tooth because it's very hard, it's durable, it's resilient under lots of different circumstances, and it's the same cellular make up as the body that it lives in. So it's gonna accept, like the eye and the cheek is gonna accept the tooth. And then they attach it to like a retinal nerve or something like that, that has an aperture in it that allows it to be sensitive to light. And now, Brent Chapman has, when he wears glasses, 20/30 vision in that eye. [Luke: What? From this tooth?] Yeah, but this is the best part of the story. They both, the doctor and the patient, said the moment that he put his glasses on and they looked at each other in the eye. These are people with a two decade long relationship of doctor and patient. They made eye contact for the first time and both were just tremendously moved. Like, they were looking at each in this new way and now Brent says he's going to travel, he's gonna go to Japan and "I'm not gonna make everything about me anymore." Which is a very Canadian [Luke: That is super Canadian.] thing to say if you ask me.
Luke Burbank: I also love that this was all 100% covered by Canadian healthcare.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, I think it cost him one Tim Horton's copy. [Luke: Yeah, exactly.] Yeah, that's right.
Luke Burbank: The best news that I heard this week is also about people doing some real good in the world. There were some folks in Pittsburgh [Elena: Yeah.] where you spent some formative years. This is back in like 2019. They noticed that like Door Dash was becoming really popular, you know, Door Dash where you can get like food delivered to your house or whatever. And so they thought they would kind of make their own Door Dash-esque app. They call it 412 Food Rescue.
Elena Passarello: 412, yeah.
Luke Burbank: 412, that's an area code there in Pittsburgh. But instead of their app being the number one way for Luke Burbank's to get Taco Bell at 11 o'clock at night that they will regret deeply the next day, their app, 412 Food Rescue, connects people and organizations that have food that they can't sell for whatever reason. So like food that maybe the cans got dented or something, there's esthetic reasons, or the food is nearing its sell-by date, or it's just been delivered to the wrong place or whatever. Connect those people with people who need food. Goes to this kitchen in the Millvale neighborhood in Pittsburgh and since they started doing this they have churned out about 600 meals a day.
Elena Passarello: Oh my gosh.
Luke Burbank: 70 million pounds of food over this time have been turned into 57 million meals. And this is the part that I didn't even understand. It saved 30 million pounds of emissions from not having this food go to waste.
Elena Passarello: Right, because you got to haul it out and put it in a landfill and whatever.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, and then the other food that people need that would be replacing that has to get created There's this whole kind of you know chain of events. This has become so popular now. It's spreading It's spread to all these other places, Illinois, Arkansas, California, New York, Colorado, North Dakota, Texas. They think that they're saving about 102 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions every year doing this. Which is like over 4,000 cars just being taken off the road every year.
Elena Passarello: Great.
Luke Burbank: I expected a stronger response to that from this Portland audience.
Elena Passarello: We were all thinking it.
Luke Burbank: That's a borderline erotic statement to people in Portland that we got 4,000 cars off the road. So if people want to find out, the sort of parent organization now is called Food Rescue Hero. They're all over the place. You can just Google that and see if there's one near where you are. If you're listening to this on the radio or if you're here in Portland to see if you can be part of this. I would say that I did a little looking into their program because when I hear about food that's approached at sell-by date, I think about some childhood trauma. Um, my mom's system of going to the grocery store and approaching the dairy manager at the Safeway when all of the milk was expiring and asking them, can I make you an offer on this milk? And the dairy manager would say, I'll give it to you for free if you will leave the store immediately. And she'd bring home like 20 or 30 gallons of milk that was all expiring, which then would have to be frozen. But then the problem is, when we run out of milk, it's time for school at seven a.m., and we're like chipping away, trying to like, with an ice pick, chisel milk into the breakfast cereal. And I have it on good authority that they don't do that at Food Rescue Hero. They don't freeze any of the milk. So that right there, that's the best news that I heard all week. Our first guest is the author of eight New York Times bestsellers, including Stiff, The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Gulp, Adventures on the Elementary Canal, and now Replaceable You, Adventures in Human Anatomy, which has been called an amiably entertaining, endlessly intriguing stroll through the stuff of which we're made. And we are delighted to see what she has made of here on Live Wire. Please welcome Mary Roach to the show. Mary Roach, welcome to Live Wire.
Mary Roach: Thank you very much.
Luke Burbank: I've been a fan of your writing for years and years. So excited to finally interview you. I've heard that this book idea kind of came to you by way of the topic of NFL referees.
Mary Roach: Yeah, yeah, that's right. I had an email from a reader who apparently has read my oeuvre, oeuvre. And she said, I really think that your next book needs to be about professional football referees. I have no idea why.
Luke Burbank: So this person had read, again, your oeuvre. [Mary: My oeuvre, yeah, I don't know.] And thought, this makes a lot of sense to write about Ron Torber and Ed Hockley. Those are two real NFL referees. That's fine. That's OK. I can do that all night. Why in the world would this person-.
Mary Roach: You need to write a book about professional foot-
Luke Burbank: Well, get this person my email address, please. [Mary: Okay, I will.].
Mary Roach: Somebody needs to do it, please, not me, but somebody needs to do it. She was a lovely person and we communicated back and forth and she revealed that she's an amputee, an elective amputeee, and I didn't know what that was. And that's somebody who wants their part to be removed because it doesn't work very well. And it's very hard to find a surgeon to cut off something.
Luke Burbank: Because this this uh, Woman had-
Elena Passarello: She had spina bifida as a kid. [Luke: Her foot was problematic.] And her foot was twisted, and she couldn't hike, she couldn't run, and she would see people with a prosthetic foot doing all of that, and she's like, why can't I have that?
Luke Burbank: Did that start getting you thinking about, what, prosthetics and things?
Mary Roach: Yeah, that was I thought that was kind of interesting, you know What does it take to convince somebody to cut off your foot if your foot has a you know? It's a healthy foot. It just didn't work very well. And other people have resorted to shooting their foot there was a guy who had like foot drop and in which is when you're you can't pick up your foot as you're walking which is something you need to do otherwise you kind of shuffle and drag your foot. And, nobody would amputate. So he he shot shot his foot and then he's like well, now you can't tell me it's a healthy foot. So, that was effective. That was effective, strategy.
Luke Burbank: What are some of the early examples of humans trying to kind of like replace or augment our bodies with non-human stuff?
Mary Roach: The first one that I came across was noses. There's long been a demand for artificial noses because nasal mutilation, like hacking off somebody's nose, has been a punishment kind of throughout history and globally. Because it was kind of a, it was a punishment, but it was also a deterrent. Like, the whole population would see that, you know, your nose has been hacked off and it's... Not an appealing thing to have happen. And so, there was a demand for rebuilding noses. And so like 1500 BC, they were doing this thing where they'd loosen a flap of cheek or forehead and then like flop it down onto the nose, but keep it attached to its original spot. So there's a blood supply while the blood supply is growing in on the, which like incredible that that was done.
Luke Burbank: Without anesthetic
Mary Roach: Without. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Or like, you write in the book that like Tycho Brahe, the astronomer, had lost his nose in a duel, like in a fight as a young man, and so had like a brass nose that was often falling off at important moments.
Mary Roach: And I feel like Tycho Brahe was a pretty vain guy. So I think that the moment when the nose dropped off at a party must have been hard for Tycho or Tycho.
Luke Burbank: It's amazing what he accomplished considering, I went back when I was reading the book I then went back and was googling like paintings and drawings of this you know famous historical figure knowing that a lot of his life was spent trying to keep this nose kind of in place as he's like observing the universe.
Mary Roach: I feel like based on those same paintings that you saw, I feel like he he went all in with the mustache. He was literally wider than his, you know, roughed collar. It's like a very elaborate mustache to kind of distract you. My favorite artificial replacement nose was from 1894. An army surgeon named Frank Tettemore, who this was now we were working with primitive plastics like celluloid and it was so lightweight. But how did he, instead of gluing it on, he suspended it from a pair of glasses. And in order to hide the line between the nose and the upper lip, there was a mustache attached. It was essentially a medical Groucho Marx glasses.
Luke Burbank: Say the magic word, you win $100. All right, Mary, we've got to take a very quick break, but I have so many questions for you about your latest book. We're talking to Mary Roach this week on Live Wire. The book is Replaceable You Adventures in Human Anatomy. Short break and then more Live Wire in just a moment. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. We're at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Oregon this week talking to Mary Roach about her latest book, Replaceable You Adventures in Human Anatomy. For this book you went to Chengdu, China. What were you trying to find out in Chengdu China?
Mary Roach: I was visiting a super clean, that's a technical medical term, super clean pigsty, which is where they are raising genetically edited pigs so that their organs could be used for transplant in a human. I mean, that has been going on here. There are a couple companies here, but both of them ghosted me. Did not respond in welcoming way to my desire to come and hang out with the pigs. In the super clean designated pathogen-free facility. I was just attracted to the whole idea of a pigsty that would be super clean. [Luke: Yes.] And how do you?
Luke Burbank: Like a very sort of, you know, type A pig.
Mary Roach: Pig. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: A Felix Unger of pigs. How is it exactly that the pig became the animal that we seem to use the most for trying to like grow body parts that we can use in the human body?
Mary Roach: Yeah, yeah. Well, you can kind of blame Hormel, because Hormel. They're going to have to do something about it.
Luke Burbank: They made it so delicious that people thought, well, could my heart be possibly made out of this bacon?
Mary Roach: Yeah, Hormel teamed up. There was the Mayo Foundation and the Hormel Institute, which, in fact, still exists. But in the 40s and 50s, they wanted to come up with a miniature pig that they would be more manageable in a laboratory, because pigs, they're big and they're very loud. Pavlov, who preferred to work with dogs, he's quoted as saying, all pigs are hysterical. So, they make a lot of noise, they're big, they're, you just- It's a hard animal to have running around in the lab. So, so they're like, let's make a miniature pig also, you know, then the organs will be the right size see that's critical for transplant and the Hormel people are like look we're pretty good at breeding pigs.
Luke Burbank: You also went to the nation of Georgia to find out about a pretty remarkable idea for a penile implant.
Mary Roach: Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I was first trying to figure out what book I was gonna do, I was talking to someone who worked in actually a stem cell lab, but the conversation veered off in other directions and she mentioned a surgery. She said, there's a surgeon, there's paper I saw where in surgeon rebuilt a man's penis using his own middle finger. And I, of course, pictured the finger removed as is with the nail and installed just like that and able to kind of like, you know, beckon.
Luke Burbank: That's honestly where I started with the chapter.
Mary Roach: Right. Yeah. Yeah, I wrote letters in Google Translate. You can write a letter in Georgian. You can read a letter. In Russian, I wrote all these letters and the surgeon ignored me. And so I called up my old travel buddy, Steph. And I said, so, you know, the Caucasus Mountains are beautiful this time of year. And there's a guy who makes a penis out of fingers. So let's go. So I just showed up at this clinic. I did show up. And the woman there, you know, I'm like, I'm that person who keeps sending letters and I've come to see Dr. I've came all the way from America and Dr. Kuzunov was on vacation.
Luke Burbank: Oh, no.
Mary Roach: And I was like, yeah, but we've come all the way from America, to which the proper response would be like, well, you're a couple of idiots. But the woman who was, I guess, the office manager, receptionist, whatever, she said, but we can go up to his office and I'll open up his computer and we can show you.
Luke Burbank: Let you rifle through his medical files. [Mary: Yes.] They haven't heard of HIPAA yet in Georgia. [Mary: No.] [Elena: In Georgia.]
Mary Roach: Yeah, so she found some files, and in fact, okay, sadly it's not quite as I envisioned, but in some ways it's better, okay? Because all right, so it was, the finger was used for rigidity. I don't know why the normal medical implants that are used for erectile dysfunction, but for some reason he wanted to use the finger for rigidity. So... He did, and then he took some forearm skin, kind of wrapped it around and then molded it. It looked pretty real, I have to say, pretty good. But here's the best thing about it, it's apparently very strong because there was a slide that showed the penis and bent up like that and with a ceramic water pitcher hanging from it.
Luke Burbank: I'm listening. Wow. We're talking to Mary Roach here on Live Wire this week about her latest book, Replaceable You. All right. Can we, as we're getting a little low on time here, talk about a subject near and dear to my heart as a middle-aged man who is sometimes on television? Hair transplants.
Mary Roach: Yes. Yes.
Luke Burbank: When did we first get the idea that this was a thing that could even happen? And what's the history of the hair transplant?
Mary Roach: There was a guy named Okuda, a Japanese physician, and he got very excited because he realized you could take, there's something called donor dominance where if, wherever you take the hair from, that's how it's going to be. So if you take that, and so for a transplant, if you hair from back here on the sides and the back, and that doesn't fall out because it's not sensitive to testosterone. So you could take, you know, a couple thousand hairs back here, put them up here. And they'll stay. So that was pretty cool.
Luke Burbank: I believe they're called follicular units.
Mary Roach: They're called follicular, but I can't say.
Luke Burbank: Not that I've been Googling.
Mary Roach: I can't say follicular unit. I was doing [Luke: I barely said it.] an audio book and I kept going, follicular, follicular unit, thank you. So, but the Okuda papers were amazing because he was moving everything everywhere. He was like taking chest, pubic, hair, putting it up here, hair from up there, down here, pubic. [Elena: Toe hair.] But the thing is, when you do that, OK, you can, because there's something called pubic alopecia where you go bald down there. But if you take head hair and you put it down there, it will take, but you'll have to trim it every few months. Likewise, if you take chest or pubic hair and you put in up here, and this is a quote from a paper journal paper, it is difficult to style.
Luke Burbank: Is this then why you asked one of these doctors to transplant some of your, was it head hair onto your leg?
Mary Roach: Yes, it was it was head hair because I wanted to be able to demonstrate. When I went out on book tour, I want to be to show people donor dominance. Okay, so they, I've donated some follicles to research. So I was in this hair transplant surgeon's office and I'm like while you're there up there I have a little bald spot now tiny where they took that follicles out. I said, would you take a couple follicular units and would you put them on my leg? So that, by the time I go out on book tour, I will have luxuriant flowing, [Elena: A fall.] hair, yes. Something I can braid. Sadly. they didn't take. Oh.
Luke Burbank: So they did the procedure.
Mary Roach: They did. They implanted a couple of follicular units. And right here.
Luke Burbank: I mean, what a party trick if you could have pulled that off. [Mary: I know.} We're talking to Mary Roach here on Live Wire radio. OK, Mary, one of the things that you used to do was you would post a medical dictionary word of the day on Twitter, which we thought was a very fun thing. And we kind of wanted to get in on the act, even though we don't have any formal scientific training or even informal scientific training.
Mary Roach: Yeah, yeah.
Luke Burbank: But we do have some names for body parts, some slang names for anatomical terms that we have picked up in our favorite place to do research, random corners of the internet. So we wanted to throw some of these slang terms for bodyparts at you and see if you might be able to decode what we're talking about. [Mary: All right.] How about Trillibubs?
Mary Roach: Trillibugs?
Luke Burbank: Trillibubs, B-U-B-S.
Mary Roach: Oh, trillibubs? This is a body part?
Luke Burbank: Yes, this is slang for a body part.
Mary Roach: Testicles are too big to be trillibubs, I think. Tonsils? No.
Luke Burbank: They're also known sometimes as trolley bags. I don't know if that's helping.
Mary Roach: Oh, trolley bag.
Luke Burbank: That does sound very testicular.
Mary Roach: It does sound like scrotal to me. No?
Luke Burbank: It's related to tripe, it's the guts. Scottish, in the late 16th century, they used to call the entrails of an animal the trillibubs or the trolleybags.
Mary Roach: Okay, all right. [Luke: How about?] All right.
Luke Burbank: How about luxury bones?
Mary Roach: Luxury bones... Tusks.
Luke Burbank: Oh, I'm going to give it to you, T.
Mary Roach: Ding, ding, ding.
Luke Burbank: That's right. [Mary: All right, all right.] One point for Mary Roach. This started fairly recently on Twitter by a user named Dan Sheehan who wrote, according to most health insurance companies, teeth are luxury bones that I must pay more to continue enjoying. So if you hear about someone's luxury bones, they're talking about their teeth. How about lug hole?
Mary Roach: Love hole?
Luke Burbank: Lug, L-U-G, lug hole.
Mary Roach: I thought you said love.
Luke Burbank: What if we gave you love hole and it wasn't sexual? We're just increasingly eroticizing these clues. And then we're scandalized that you think we're talking about. No, like L-U-G, lug hole.
Mary Roach: Okay, lug, lug hole. Well, how many holes are there? You know, there, I mean.
Luke Burbank: Most people have two of these.
Mary Roach: Lug hole, but my nostrils, no.
Luke Burbank: Not nostrils.
Mary Roach: No, lug hole. Earring hole? Ears. [Luke: Ears, that's right.] Okay, alright.
Luke Burbank: From Scotland, lug is also a term-
Mary Roach: See, I'm not liking the scottish ones.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, okay, all right. No more, no more Scottish ones. Wait, that's most of them. Hold on. How about, uh, brust warzen? It's not slang it's just german so if you speak a little german you can figure it out
Mary Roach: You're brust?
Luke Burbank: Brust warzen.
Mary Roach: The breast. Warzen, breast, nipples? Nipples?
Luke Burbank: Nipples, which in German translates to breast warts.
Mary Roach: Ah, wow.
Luke Burbank: That's what they're calling him over there
Elena Passarello: Wow, that's a, that a downgrade.
Luke Burbank: How about suburbs?
Mary Roach: Suburbs, suburbs, your suburbs. Well, something distant, your feet.
Luke Burbank: Higher.
Mary Roach: Your knees?
Luke Burbank: Other side of the leg. And then higher.
Mary Roach: Your ass? Yes! Oh, all right. Suburbs? Suburbs?
Luke Burbank: It appears in 1878 in the Dundee Evening Telegraph. [Elena: Scotland again!] [Mary: It's Scottish.] Okay, but this is a good one. This one you want to hear. 1878 Dundee Evening Telegraph describing an assault that happened with this language. A young man hit him a belt back of the ear, fetching him another on the nose, and planted such a kick in his suburbs as to send him headlong over an ash heap.
Mary Roach: And it was never used again, that slang, until tonight.
Luke Burbank: That's right. How about your commandments?
Mary Roach: Um your commandments.
Luke Burbank: Just commandments.
Mary Roach: Commandments, commandments, um. You have 10 of them?
Luke Burbank: Yeah.
Mary Roach: You got 10 of them.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, so we're narrowing it down now. Fingers. [Mary: Fingers.] Fingers, nails.
Mary Roach: Ah, okay.
Luke Burbank: Tudor English, I know that's kind of close to Scotland, but don't get mad.
Mary Roach: Yep.
Luke Burbank: In Tudor England, your ten commandments were your ten fingernails. Shakespeare alludes to it in Henry the Sixth, Part Two. Could I come near your beauty with my nails? I could set my ten commandments on your face. Also, everything sounds sexual tonight. This is awful. Everybody get your minds out of the gutter. Mary Roach, you've been an absolute sport. Thank you so much. The book is Replaceable You. That's Mary Roach, everybody, right here on Live Wire. That was Mary Roach. Make sure you grab a copy of her book, Replaceable You Adventures in Human Anatomy, wherever it is that you get your books. Live Wire is brought to you by Powells Books, a Portland institution since 1971. Powells offers a selection of new and used books in stores and online at powells.com. You're tuned in to Live Wire from PRX. Of course, each week on the show, we like to ask the Live Wire listeners a question and we were kind of inspired by our conversation with Mary Roach this week. So Elena, what did we ask the live wire listeners?
Elena Passarello: This is so good, if you could replace one body part with an upgraded model, what would it be?
Luke Burbank: I feel like this is just like asking for inappropriate responses, but I'm gonna hope that the Live Wire listeners were above all of that
Elena Passarello: You know, I had the same feeling, but of all these responses, I think only one of them is PG-13 rated and all the other ones are general audiences. So we're in good shape. Thanks, guys.
Luke Burbank: All right. Lay it on me. What's something that a Live Wire listener would like to upgrade on their body?
Elena Passarello: Sid wants to upgrade their nose with a city mode filter that blocks out mystery smells on public transit.
Luke Burbank: My girlfriend has the most sensitive sense of smell of anybody that I've met. Like we will walk into a room and she'll go, are you smelling that? And I rarely am. It's like very subtle, you know? And then it just feels like so much pressure on me to not ever smell bad in any department.
Elena Passarello: She's a bloodhound.
Luke Burbank: Precisely. So anyway, well, so far so good. We'll keep going. What's another body part upgrade that one of our listeners wants?
Elena Passarello: This is one that I need from Rachel. Rachel wants to install a don't overthink this button right on the side of the head.
Luke Burbank: Yes. I've been, I've been working on that in two departments. One, I read a quote recently that said like, no one has added a second to their life by worrying. I'm trying to remember that. And then box breathing.
Elena Passarello: Oh yeah. I'm a boxer.
Getting very in very into box breathing these days. I don't know why, not because of the world falling apart or anything, but trying to use those to kind of short circuit some of that anxiety stuff.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, and then when Christmas time comes and things get really hectic, you could do a gift wrap box breathing.
Luke Burbank: Uh-huh. Yes, precisely. Very meditative. Okay, one more before we wrap things up. Something that one of our listeners would like to upgrade, Elena.
Elena Passarello: This one from Greg is amazing. Greg says, I'd upgrade my appendix so that it finally does something useful. Maybe a wifi hotspot?
Luke Burbank: I like the idea of like, I'm somewhere trying to find a signal and I'm looking at the list of, I've tried to find some free wifi and it just, one of them is called Greg's appendix.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, that's right.
Luke Burbank: But then I'm trying, it's locked. I'm try to guess the password. What would Greg use for the password to his appendix? Hey, thank you so much to everyone who responded to our question. And it did so mostly in an appropriate manner. We really do appreciate you. Thank you so much. You are tuned into Live Wire. Our next guest is a comedian who's open for everyone from Kumail Nanjiani to Atsuko Okatsuka to Cedric the entertainer. He's a regular at the Hollywood Improv and the San Francisco Punchline. And now he can add the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland to his resume. Let's take a listen to the very funny Janesh Rahlan here on Live Wire.
Janesh Rahlan: Thank you guys so much for coming to this Portland establishment that isn't a strip club or a dispensary. That's been cool. Nice change of pace. But it's pretty neat walking around your city. It's fascinating. It's just boobs, weed, and donuts. It's cool. I like that you let a 14-year-old boy just design it. It's very nice. But thank you guys for having me. If you're not familiar with me, my name is Janesh Rahlan. My Starbucks name is Abdul Iqbin Saleem. And if you're wondering what's going on with this face, I am half Indian, both halves, technically. And it's a good time for us, by the way. I know there aren't any in here. But we're having fun, OK? If you are not Indian, think about it. Where we get people of color advantages. Like we get to eat spicy food and dance, but we're also richer than white people now, huh? How about that? You guys were so scared of Mexicans. Stealing your jobs, we snuck right in. And I blame the media, because the media had you guys worried. The media was like, you better build that border wall. You better secure that border wall. You guys forgot about the firewall, dude. We're out here now. I'll tell you this, it wasn't always easy. I was born in India, and then when I was six, my family moved to Texas, okay? And after Texas, we moved to Ohio. So that's zero for two, if you guys are keeping score. But it was important for me to live in the South and the Midwest, because I learned a lot of things that I couldn't have learned in other parts of America, you know? Like I got exposure to white culture in a way that I wouldn't have gotten. I learned so much about how much you guys love haunted houses. That's huge. Huge part of white culture is the love of haunted houses, which makes perfect sense, because life has to be pretty good for you to seek out fear. Doesn't it? No person of color wakes up and is like, you know what today needs? More adversity. But I've been in California for 10 years now. I've been on the West Coast. I moved to California to work in tech because that's my birthright, sir. And uh, it was very fun. I worked for LinkedIn, which is the number one professional network, number two Indian dating website. I enjoyed it, but it was hard for me to get that job, because I struggle with interviews, because I'm very honest in them, to a fault, I would say. Because they ask questions like, what are your greatest strengths? That's an easy one, usually. But then they ask, what's your greatest weakness? That's a hard one, right? Because people say things like, oh, I care too much. I say yes to everything. But these are lies, right, sir? We know that's not the truth. So that's why I decided, I was like, I'm gonna keep it honest. They asked me, they're like, what's your greatest weakness? I look them dead in the eye. I'm like, yo, I'm ticklish as hell. Because that's real vulnerability. You understand? You're gonna give me company secrets. You're going to be like, we got a strong NDA, but it's not stronger than a GGG. That's a goochie, goochie, goo, miss. That's what that is. I love being out in the West, it's fun. I like the West Coast, I like how progressive it is, but there's certain things that's been tough for me to get behind. Like all the milk alternatives you guys love out here. I can't, I can't do it. I grew up in the South and the Midwest. I view milk the way Republicans view gender. I'm like, God made two. Whole and chocolate. And the rest is a liberal agenda, okay? And I don't know why milk does this to me. I'm progressive on other issues. Like I believe gender is fluid, but almonds better stay solid. I uh, I got an ozempic prescription recently. I'm excited about that, because I didn't want to miss out on that class action lawsuit. You know what I'm saying? That's gonna be nice! I'm not gonna take it. A magic weight loss dog? Are you crazy? But I'll show up to court. Yeah, absolutely. I'll be like, your honor, I got eight nipples now. Like I said, I really do appreciate how progressive it is out here on the West Coast. I think that's something we can't take for granted. You know, appreciate that, cherish that. The rest of the country is going through it right now. You know? Like, my wife is from Tennessee. And two years ago, they passed a bunch of anti-drag laws out there, right? And they had goofy rationale. They were like, these aren't American values. It's not what the Founding Fathers would have wanted. The Founding fathers would have hated drag queens. And it's like, dude, the Foundings Fathers wore wigs, blouses and blush. Every day. These were some baddies, okay? As far as I can tell, America was built by drag queens. Right? Like Portland, their best friend was a guy named John Hancock. What? Are we even debating right now, you know? And that's such drag behavior. They got mad at the king, started spilling all of his tea, and then they had that constitutional convention. But we know the truth, right, sir? That was a week-long drag brunch. They were hammered the whole time. Do you realize that? You have to be drunk to come up with the Bill of Rights. You got it? That's not a sober man's activity, just standing there like, okay, so rule number one, you can say whatever. Benjamin, sit down. Don't touch my gun. Get your hands off my gun! You know what, rule number two. Thank you. Thank you, thank you guys. I just think it's bizarre the way we look up to the founding fathers because at the end of the day these were men in their early 20s, like that's not a group known for decision making. You know? Like we don't even let those guys rent cars. And I don't care how smart you think you were at that age, you were probably dumb. Dude, I was 23, I had a combination body wash shampoo cooking oil. Y'all mean charge of laws? And I think what I love the most about being out here is just how much you guys embrace every single identity. I think that's so huge. I think it's vital. Yeah, appreciate that, dude. Because when I first moved to Texas, I remember all my classmates wanted the same thing. Everyone's like, I'm a real Texan. I'm real Texan, and that's why everyone wanted that one identity. And that could mean anything, right? Like you like going to the rodeo, you're a real Texan. And when I was there, people would always ask me, like, hey, what type of Indian are you? Which some people find offensive. I personally don't think so, because Indian people ask each other that question routinely. Indian people walk up to me like, hey man, what type of Indian are you? Doctor or engineer? And I'm like, I'm a comedian. And they're like, oh, he's Mexican. And. And in Texas, I didn't know what they were saying. I froze up and they put me in ESL classes. All right, yeah, English as a second language, which is a ridiculous concept in a state where people sound like that. And, but my class, my class was great because it was me, 10 Mexican kids, okay? We were 11 brown kids in one room, Portland. We became the school soccer team by default. It was great. But what's messed up is I ended up learning more Spanish than English. But I still had an Indian accent. So I was going around school, speaking Spanish, and in Indian accent, like, hola. Como estas, Juan? Todo bien? Okay, todo bien. So after a year of living in Texas, I was walking around speaking bad Spanish and bad English. And that's when it hit me. I was like, man, I'm a real Texan too. Folks, you've all been amazing. Thank you so much. If you enjoyed this, grab a card. Follow me on Instagram. I've been Janesh Rahlan. Thank you.
Luke Burbank: That was Janesh Rahlan, recorded live at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland here on LiveWire, where we have to take a very quick break, but stay where you are. When we come back, we're going to talk to indie rock artist Amy Millan from the band Stars about her new solo album and her bit part on the TV show Degrassi, Jr. High. Stay with us, more Live Wire in a moment. Welcome back to Live Wire. I'm your host, Luke Burbank. Okay. Before we get to this week's musical performance from Amy Millan, I got a little preview of next week's show for you. We are going to be talking to the writer and director, Laura Chin about her book, Acne, which looks at her life growing up in South Florida, she was a mixed race kid who was raised in the church of Scientology. She also was as the name of the book would indicate battling some very oily skin, the book is gritty and also very funny. I can't wait for you to hear about it. Then we've got standup comedy from one of our very favorites around here, Mohanad Elshieky. He's gonna tell us the most embarrassing Uber ride ever featuring him as the passenger who embarrassed themselves. And to round things out, we're gonna hear some music from Jenny Connolly, one of the founding members of the Decemberists off of her latest solo album. It's gonna be a fun and funny show for you next week on Live Wire, so tune in for that. This week, our musical guest is Amy Millan. She's best known. As the co-lead vocalist for the indie rock act, Stars, as well as her work with the band Broken Social Scene. She launched her solo career with Honey from the Tombs and Masters of the Burial, blending indie rock with country and folk influences. Now after a 15-year hiatus from doing solo stuff, Amy has returned with a new album, I Went to Find You. It's a deeply personal record that explores the themes of loss and friendship and self-discovery. Take a listen to Amy Millan. Recorded live at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Oregon. Hello there.
Amy Millan: Hello.
Luke Burbank: Welcome to the show. You've released a ton of really great solo work, but you've also collaborated in these other groups like Stars and Broken Social Scene, and it seems like both of those groups came to you at some point. What do you think it is about your music or your personality or what is it that people always seem to want to have you come be part of the thing they're doing?
Amy Millan: I think everything that I've done has to do with friendship. I met Evan Cranley from Stars when he was 14. He's now my husband of 20 years. I didn't marry him when he 14. It's not weird, my promise. Kevin Drew I also met at camp when we were just babies. So we've all been friends. We all grew up together. And I think we just wanted to all hang out and just travel the world together. And lucky us, we got to.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, and have made some really incredible music through all of that over the years. What is it like for you when you're working on solo stuff versus that collaborative process? Because those bands are like as collaborative as it gets it would seem, just the way the music actually functions, you know? It's very non-traditional in a lot of times. And then you go to writing music that's gonna be like on this new album.
Amy Millan: Well, I started writing alone in university when I was sort of, actually Kevin Drew kind of broke my heart, don't tell anybody. We got over it, we're really good friends now.
Luke Burbank: So you're married to one person from the band.
Amy Millan: Oh, listen, listen. It's Fleetwood Mac in there, man.
Luke Burbank: But we're broken-hearted over a different.
Amy Millan: It's crazy in there. The book's gonna come out one day, I promise.
Luke Burbank: Is this Canadian Fleetwood Mac? [Amy: Yeah.] This is band?
Amy Millan: Yeah, but and we still actually we didn't kick Lindsay Buckingham out of the band. We stayed together.
Luke Burbank: That's very Canadian of you.
Amy Millan: Yeah, we all forgave each other, we're all still besties, but I was kind of like the sad girl university, like, he's so mean to me, why does he so mean me? And I had to like keep writing that song over and over again. And then I, so I hadn't joined a band yet when I was writing sad songs, skinny boy, all bones, no lies, you know, that kind of thing. And then I actually this record that I just put out as a full collaboration. Because I wasn't sad and lonely anymore, I didn't really know what to write about. And then my friend, Jay McCarroll, who I met, we collaborated on this record completely. He wrote pretty much 98% of the music. And then I was like, oh, Perry Menopause, there's so much to talk about.
Luke Burbank: Yes.
Amy Millan: It's really, really popular right now.
Luke Burbank: It is.
Amy Millan: I was like, damn, I wish I'd kicked in on that earlier.
Luke Burbank: It may be our age cohort, but I feel like perimenopause is a very, very hot topic.
Amy Millan: It's hot, it's hot right now, man. [Elena: Literally.] Literally, yeah.
Luke Burbank: Literally, I didn't mean it as a pun, but I just beat it. It's definitely something that I'm hearing about and that we're talking about a lot. It seems a great topic for a record.
Amy Millan: Yeah, I mean, I turned cinquenta. I only say my age in Spanish now. Ever since I turned cuarenta. That's what is one of the things I decided was cuarenta. I was like way better than forty. [Luke: Yeah.] So when I turned cuarenta, now I'm cinquenta uno. I'm close to cinquenta dos. Thank you Spanish for being so hot.
Luke Burbank: It does take the edge off.
Elena Passarello: Gorgeous, gorgeous age.
It's way, like people want to get dancing with the cinquenta, you know. So yeah, I was moving through a lot of feelings
Luke Burbank: One other thing, and I'm so sorry to ask this because you probably get asked about it a lot, but it is on your Wikipedia page, so obviously it's true. Were you really in an episode of Degrassi Junior High?
Amy Millan: I was.
Luke Burbank: Where you played a pregnant teen.
Amy Millan: When I got pregnant, my boyfriend David wanted to help. It was his parents who were the problem. You know what his father said to me? He said, whatever you do is your own choice. I don't want my son involved. I don't even speak to David anymore.
Luke Burbank: And scene.
Amy Millan: I mean, honestly, this is the crazy thing about aging and memory. I don't remember what I had for breakfast, but I can remember that monologue from when I was 13.
Luke Burbank: Phenomenal a woman of so many talents. Well, let's hear the musical side of your talents. What song are we gonna hear?
Amy Millan: This is a song, speaking of Degrassi and Toronto, this is a very Toronto song. It's about the neighborhood I grew up in and the little buds I met and kind of that feeling when you're 12 and you're like, what is happening and why are grownups so weird? So yeah, I just... I harken back, I started making this record from now and then I kept moving back and back and back and this is about my little childhood home. It's called Don Valley.
Luke Burbank: This is Amy Millan here on Live Wire.
Amy Millan: Down the street a one-way sign headlights right through me was i everyone I've given away all I got I know you'll come to me Every time we try Memories My best friend as a kid had a They were perfect Down my street, the lonely kind, Cemetery sightlines, Don Valley highway signs, Gettin' high, in high rise.
Amy Millan: Thank you so much, Portland.
Luke Burbank: That was Amy Millan right here on Live Wire, recorded at the Alberta Rose Theatre. Her latest album, I Went to Find You, is available now. And that is going to do it for this week's episode of the show. A huge thanks to our guests, Mary Roach, Janesh Rahlan, and Amy Millan.
Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our executive producer, Heather de Michele is our executive director, and our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Eben Hoffer is our technical director, Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid is our assistant editor, and Teja Pallikonda is our production fellow.
Luke Burbank: Valentine Keck is our operations manager, and Ashley Park is our marketing manager. Tiffany Nguyen is our intern. Our house sound is by D'Neal Blake, and our house band is Sam Pinkerton. Ethan Fox Tucker, Ayal Alves, and A Walker Spring, who also composes our music. This show is mixed by Eben Hoffer and Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid.
Elena Passarello: Additional funding provided by the James F. And Marion L. Miller Foundation. Live Wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week we'd like to thank member Jim Pierret of Northfield, Minnesota and Beth Lewis of Beaverton, Oregon.
Luke Burbank: For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to LiveWireRadio.org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire team. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.
PRX.
Staff Credits
Laura Hadden is our Executive Producer, Heather de Michele is our Executive Director, and our Producer and Editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Eben Hoffer is our Technical Director, Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid is our Assistant Editor, and our house sound is by D. Neil Blake. Jennie Baker is our Photographer. Valentine Keck is our Operations Manager, Ashley Park is our Marketing Manager, Tiffany Nguyen is our Intern, and Ezra Veenstra runs our Front of House. Teja Pallikonda is our Production Fellow. Our house band is Ethan Fox Tucker, Sam Tucker, Sam Pinkerton, Ayal Alvez, Ben Grace, and A. Walker Spring, who also composes our music. This episode was mixed by Eben Hoffer and Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid. Additional funding provided by the James F. And Marion L. Miller Foundation. Live Wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week, we'd like to thank members Jim Pierret of Northfield, MN and Beth Lewis of Beaverton, OR.
