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"Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War" With Author Mary Roach on Wednesday's Access Utah

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Segment 2 of interview with Mary Roach
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Segment 3 of interview with Mary Roach

Grunt tackles the science behind some of a soldier's most challenging adversaries—panic, exhaustion, heat, ​flies, ​noise—and introduces us to the scientists who seek to conquer them. ​Roach ​​visits a repurposed movie studio where amputee actors help prepare Marine Corps medics for the shock and gore of combat wounds. At Camp Lemmonier, Djibouti, in east Africa, ​she discovers that diarrhea can be a threat to national security. Back in the US, fashion design​ers at U.S. Army Natick Labs​ explain why a zipper is a problem for a sniper. Roach samples caffeinated meat, sniffs an archival sample of a World War II stink bomb, and stays up all night with the crew tending the missiles on the nuclear submarine USS Tennessee. She answers questions not found in any other book on the military: Why is DARPA interested in ducks? How is a wedding gown like a bomb suit? Why are shrimp more dangerous to sailors than sharks? Take a tour of duty with Roach, and you’ll never see our nation’s defenders in the same way again. 

Tom Williams worked as a part-time UPR announcer for a few years and joined Utah Public Radio full-time in 1996. He is a proud graduate of Uintah High School in Vernal and Utah State University (B. A. in Liberal Arts and Master of Business Administration.) He grew up in a family that regularly discussed everything from opera to religion to politics. He is interested in just about everything and loves to engage people in conversation, so you could say he has found the perfect job as host “Access Utah.” He and his wife Becky, live in Logan.