The gut is all the rage these days. Many an influencer has built a platform on how to keep our digestive systems happy, healthy and moving.

But humans have long fetishized the gut. Doctors and philosophers have deliberated its influence on our emotional stability. Theologians declared it wicked. Disposing of bodily waste in both sanitary and silent ways is a mark of modernity.

Historian Elsa Richardson found it all utterly fascinating. So she wrote a book to probe the organ’s colorful and often boisterous past.

This week, she joins host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas to explore the age-old question: Are we really ruled by our stomachs?

Guest:

• Elsa Richardson is a historian at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. Her new book is “Rumbles: A Curious History of the Gut.”

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