Behind the Scenes for Our 1-Year-Bookaversary!

Celebrating one year of Spooky Science

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1:00Suffering from dry, tired, irritated eyes? Don't let dry eyes win. Use Sustain Pro. It hydrates, restores, and protects dry eyes for up to 12 hours. Sustain Pro. Triple action dry eye relief. But like kudos, I guess, to the ghost hunting teams who are making sure to log every fart. If you're not logging every fart, you should be. Right. Because like, listen, even if you think they're so silent, you're using really sensitive noise recorders as well. So like that little, that little toot could sound like a demon growl. So, yeah.

1:34I'm Paige. And I'm Megan. And this is Spooky Science Sisters.

1:42Hello, you're listening to Spooky Science Sisters, a podcast where we present to you a science-based and probably very giggly discussion on all things strange and unusual. We are about six days past our first book-aversary, so the one-year anniversary of when the book, Spooky Science, was released. So to celebrate it, we wanted to share some of the things that we wrote that didn't make it into the final cut of the book.

2:14Because we wrote about them and we loved them, but sometimes our editor did not agree or felt the space was needed elsewhere. So, yeah, this will be a short, fun episode about some of those things that we wish had made it into Spooky Science. Yeah, I don't think it was that our editor didn't like them. I think it was just that we had limited page count and they had to cut somewhere. It was mostly for the sake of space. But, yeah, I think there were some where it was like, I don't know if this is necessary or not.

2:50But, yeah, it was more often that, yeah, it was just space that was needed. Anyway, first, though, we need to do something spooky. So, Paige, has anything spooky happened to you recently? Yes, actually, something sort of spooky did happen to me. So we had some friends in town and they had like this cute little Airbnb right downtown. So we like went downtown and kind of were out like drinking a lot of the night and went back to their Airbnb and we're just like sitting there chit chatting and just sort of got on the topic of ghosts and aliens and spooky stories.

3:27And everybody was like sharing their scary stories or like the things they're afraid of. And me and one of our friends both have this fear, which we've talked about a number of times on the podcast, but we both have this fear of like somebody living, you know where I'm going with this. I do. Living in our attic or, you know, like living in our house and we don't know it. And so we talked about this some and I don't know, you know, you have those nights where you just like tell these spooky stories and there's just sort of like a weird vibe when you leave where it's just like, ooh, kind of like a chilling.

4:01Creepy vibe or whatever. So we leave, we say goodbye to them, we go home and we pull into the driveway and Elliot's like, I'm pretty sure I closed the garage door when we left. And I'm like, yeah, I thought you did. And I was like, we both like swear we remember him hitting it and like waiting for the garage door to go down before we pull out of the driveway. But when we came home at like midnight or whatever time it was, the garage door was very much open. I looked at him and I was like, I'm not going in there. So he's like, all right, you stay out here and I'll go make sure it's fine.

4:38But that whole night, I was like very concerned that somebody had either like broken into the house and taken something or had gotten into the house and they were just like hiding until we went to sleep. Or this was this person like who is living in our attic leaving. Oh, yep. Uh-huh. Yeah. So I have like, I had a number of theories that night and had kind of a hard time getting to sleep because I was pretty concerned about it. But no, pretty sure we just left the garage door open the entire time we were gone.

5:09Yeah. We've definitely had the garage door bounce back up for, you know, unknown reasons before. So probably you like saw it closed and just didn't realize it popped back up right after. Oh, for sure. And like, I'm sure that's all that happened now. But coming back right after we had had this sort of like spooky night with our friends, it was like, oh my God, this is how I die. This is it. This is it. So that was pretty spooky and just like weird timing. And then I think the only other thing I was going to say, which is like totally unrelated, is that it like simultaneously feels like the book just came out yesterday and also like it came out three years ago.

5:54Yeah. It sort of feels like we started writing or at least like talking about the book four years ago now. And it was. Yeah. Not that long ago. It was. Two years ago? Uh, no. It was going on three years ago when we first talked about it. Right? Yeah, I guess that's right. Yeah, we turned it in in 24. It released in 25. Yeah. But so it was fall of 23.

6:24Yeah. And so, yeah, this fall will be three years until the idea became for real. Yeah. And then we turned it in a year later. And then, yeah. And then a year after that, it came out, which was a year ago now. So, yeah. So it sort of has been a long process, but simultaneously a very short and fast. Right. Yeah. Like when we were writing it from the time we like officially started to the time it released, it was like the fastest stretch of time like ever in my life.

6:54Yeah. Nothing like a deadline to make it really speed by. But also, yeah, you could have fooled me that it's been a year since it released. And we've done a bunch of stuff since then. And yeah, we've both been busy with life and other podcast things and book events and all that. But it feels like it's slowed down a little bit now, which maybe is a little sad as well. It's been wild. So those are my some things spooky. What about you, Megan?

7:25Well, I've talked before about how I had been sitting in while we were writing the book. I had been sitting in our living room. Like, that's my go to spooky story for have you experienced anything paranormal. But I was sitting in our living room, heard footsteps like Alice coming out of her bedroom and then looked up and nobody was there. And that was really freaky. And I've told you before that Stephen has said regularly that he feels like he's always like seeing things out of the corner of his eye in this house.

7:56So the other night, we're both sitting in bed. We're watching a show together. And our bedroom door was closed. And we both heard what sounded like footsteps coming down the hallway toward our room from Alice's bedroom. And she had been asleep for a couple of hours. So we thought she'd woken up or something and was coming into our room and we're like bracing ourselves for, oh, man, like what's going on? We got, you know, she's either woken up sick or something. We got to get her back to bed. And then just nothing.

8:27Like she didn't nobody opened the door. Nothing happened. And we like heard a few more. And it was it was so creepy. We're pretty sure because I think simultaneously Georgie like crawled under our bed in such a way that like he was, I don't know, bumping the bed or like his little feet like sort of pushing himself under the bed maybe made the noise. Uh-huh. But it was totally bizarre. Did you like go and check? Or you just like laid in bed and you're like, oh, that was weird. Gosh, it was a couple of weeks ago now or a week and a half ago.

9:00I think we just laid in bed. That is like weird behavior, Megan.

9:06I can't remember if we laid in bed or if Stephen got up. There's no fucking way. I would be up so fast. No, I do. I think Stephen might have gotten up and gone into her room to check if she was still asleep. I didn't get out of bed, though. OK. But I can't exactly remember. OK. I mean, like, good on you if that, if you didn't. But like my anxious self, I would have been up and like, who's in here? And checking all the closets.

9:38Yeah.

9:41I mean, yeah, you'd hope. I think I'm pretty sure Stephen went and checked to see if anybody was walking around. But yeah, it's super weird. There's like something about this house. I don't know if it's when the dog moves around a certain way or what it is. But it just sounds like footsteps coming from that part of the house. And it's super creepy. That is spooky. I wonder if it's the same thing that's making the weird like thumping, pounding sounds at our house.

10:11I don't know. It's not great, though. I remember just laying there like, I was nervous. It scared me because I was like, just waiting. You should have just anticipating the door opening. And then it doesn't happen. Yeah, that's the worst.

10:26I hate that.

10:29This is the worst. Anyway, so I don't know. My less than 10-year-old house makes some really weird noises sometimes. It's probably just the floor is going to collapse out from underneath us at some point. No. So the other thing is that, oh my gosh, it was almost two weeks ago now. But I just recently went to the Committee for Skeptical Inquiries annual conference in Buffalo. And I posted on social media about it some.

11:00But yeah, just wanted to acknowledge that I went and I gave a talk that was a little bit outside my wheelhouse. It was about internet folklore and Appalachian rules and not deer and sort of how these sort of silly ideas that used to just live in fake stories online are starting to become these real things that people actually believe. And just talking about, you know, how we kind of approach that as skeptics. So I did this sort of brief talk on that, which means I had to talk really fast for 10 minutes. And I'm sure people noticed that I was freaking out during the whole time.

11:33So that was my something spooky that day. I'm sure you were great. Yeah. But I got to meet Kenny Biddle in real life and a bunch of other people in real life and see Bill Nye. And I saw a lot of cool talks. It is a super cool event if you are skeptical and interested in the paranormal, but also interested in health misinformation and how we encourage people to think critically and think scientifically out in the world today.

12:04So I can like highly recommend going if you want to go because it was a really cool event to next year's. I think next year's is in July and it will be in Philadelphia, which is pretty fun. Yeah, so it went well. I was very nervous. You nailed it, I'm sure. Scary in a good way, challenging. I got to network with some really cool people. I am super happy that I did it and I would super recommend that other people attend the conference in the future. And I think I would go to another one as well if I had the opportunity.

12:38So, yeah. Yay. So now I've talked about book stuff. Like I mentioned, it turns out when you write a book, you have to make a lot of cuts during the editing process, which I should have known. I've heard somebody before refer to it like the editing process as this idea of like killing your darlings. And which means, you know, you'll write things that you think are really great or that you really love, but they just they end up on the cutting room floor. You have to get rid of them for one reason or another.

13:08And, yeah, there's a decent number of examples of those things that, you know, I wish had been able to make it in, but couldn't for one reason or another. Some of those things we've already ended up doing full episodes on, like we did a Mokeli Mbembe episode and we did a Loveland Frogman episode very recently. Or they are things that we have covered in previous episodes, but for today, we have each chosen two or three topics of things that we just really wish had made it in and we want to be able to share with our audience one way or another.

13:42So for each, we'll give you a little bit of background information about where this would have belonged in the book and, you know, what you need to know to understand it without the book on hand and then, you know, tell you our little fun fact associated with it. Yeah, and some of these like may sound familiar to some of you if you were able to get your hands on our pre-order bonus, because while they didn't make it into like the official book print, we were able to get a lot of these printed as like bonus pages for the pre-order people.

14:17Yeah, and if you're in the Patreon, I still have to share some of these with you. Some of them have been shared already, so some will be familiar for that reason. But yeah, I'm still planning on posting the rest of them on Patreon. I am just the worst Patreon host on the planet. And like Paige mentioned, I cannot believe that it has been a year since the book released and so much has happened between now and then, and I just feel like things are crazy. Okay, so my first thing is related to infrasound and how convenient that the last episode that we released, we did a little short and spooky about a newer infrasound study that had been done to explain hauntings.

15:05But just as a reminder, if you did not listen to that episode or you haven't heard us talk about before, so infrasound is sound at a frequency that is too low for human ears to detect, and that's commonly cited to be less than 20 hertz. But just because we can't hear it doesn't mean that it doesn't necessarily affect our bodies, and there have been sort of several ways in the past that people have suggested that it could relate to hauntings, like just making people feel really uneasy or uncomfortable,

15:38all the way to like, you know, infrasound at 19 hertz is the same frequency as the resonant frequency of your eyeballs, which like might make you hallucinate and see a ghost, which would be totally crazy. But yeah, that's like the big Vic Tandy suggestion for infrasound. So that's sort of the background there. And there's one thing about infrasound that I had as a little sidebar in the book that has become like a frequent fun fact that I like to share with people.

16:09Like I think I've posted it a few times on threads or other places as, you know, share your favorite spooky fun fact or like weird fact, because I think it is really freaky and weird. So apparently to detect infrasound or one of the ways that you can detect infrasound is very low tech. And all you have to do is to light a candle, because apparently if you light a candle, even in a room that has like no drafts, no wind, like no movement of air,

16:44if there's a source of infrasound in the room, the candle flame will start to flicker and move around. So it'll be like there's this phantom wind in the room or your candle starts freaking out. And A, that's just really cool that the sound waves can affect the flame on the candle. But B, I also think about, you know, infrasound as this potential source for people thinking they've had haunted experiences.

17:14But I think even this like low tech way of detecting infrasound might make people think that they were being haunted. Because I'm just thinking like you're sitting in a dark room in a candle lit room. You know, it's a spooky night, but like there's no drafts in your room. It's everything still. And then, you know, all of a sudden the wind like blows across your chimney in just the right way to create a source of infrasound in the room. And your candle starts freaking out. That would creep me out.

17:44Oh, for sure. I would be freaked out by that. Yeah, I would too. I think candles as an infrasound detector is a super fun, spooky fun fact. It's one of those things that I really wish had made it in because I tell everybody about it now.

17:59Like right now. So if you are interested in following along with the book, on page 51 of the book is section, Did You Hear That?, which is all about infrasound. So it would have gone around there. And in our editor's defense, the sidebar that did make it in there is the one about Mrs. H and the haunted house in a medical journal, which like I also like that would have been part of this episode had that not made it in.

18:32Yeah, so I'm so happy that it's that one and not the infrasound candle experiment. But yes, I still love the candle. Okay, Paige, what is a story that you wish had made it into the book? The perfect lunch combo. That first bite of your favorite sub followed by ice cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends and now that's next level. Suddenly, the laughs get louder, the stories keep flowing, and the food tastes better.

19:04Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today. So mine would have been kind of around the same area, just a couple pages before, around page 45 in the Doctor Will See You Now section. And again, like in our editor's defense, we sort of came in like hard with the sidebars in the first section.

19:37We had like a lot of stories we wanted to tell. We were like very excited about some of the sidebars we had. And then it was also like the first section. It really set the stage for the whole book. And because of that, there wasn't like really a lot of room for a lot of the sidebars we wrote. So a lot of the sidebars we really loved came from that first section. But this one is about Elva Zona Heaster Shue or Zona. And we told this story in depth in episode 29, which was our first, I think, spooky true crime episode.

20:11Oh, you're right. Yeah, that was when we came up with the concept of spooky true crime. I think inspired by hearing that specific story. And I was like, well, we got to do this. There is no better spooky true crime story than this story. Like this is the best. Yeah. And so I'm not going to tell the whole story if you want to listen to the whole thing. Again, go back to episode 29. But just as a recap, this story was about a woman, we're going to call her Zona, who died in 1897. And shortly after her death, her grieving mother, Mary, testified in court that she believed that Zona was murdered by her husband.

20:52And she believed this because she said that Zona's ghost had come to her and revealed that this was a murder and told her how he had done it. This story is so great because they don't just like blow her off. They end up exhuming her body and they determine that the cause of death is strangulation and then Mary, her mom, testifies in court. And the jury comes back with a guilty verdict like pretty quickly after they go to deliberate.

21:25It's like just over an hour. And Trout is sentenced to life in prison for murdering his wife. And there's actually a historical marker in West Virginia where this occurred that reads, this is the only case in which testimony from a ghost helped convict a murderer. And so we love this story because like how cool, right? This like woman's claims that her daughter's ghost comes to her and says, hey, this is what happened to me. My husband killed me. And then that is actually what lands him in prison.

21:55But obviously, us being us, like we don't think this was actually Zona's ghost. We believe, or I guess like I believe, I guess I shouldn't speak for you, that this was likely just a situation where Mary, her mom, didn't really like Trout, her husband. She had had some like prior issues with him. I think that paired with the fact that she was grieving from having just lost her daughter. She may have been experiencing like what would be considered a bereavement or a grief hallucination.

22:31And there is some research to actually support that. So in 2015, there was a study titled, and you know, I pulled it up, but I have to find which tab it's on because I've got 1600 tabs open. Titled grief and bereavement, what psychiatrists need to know. And in that study, they showed that 60% of their participants reported having a hallucinatory experience after the loss of a spouse.

23:02So, yeah, I think that's probably what happened. I think you had some other thoughts about it previously, Megan. But anyways, this is one of my favorite stories. I think in the original episode about it, we chalked it up to more like a sleep paralysis slash dream fueled by her prior suspicions and didn't know about the fact that the hallucinatory experiences are more common for people when they're grieving or experiencing some sort of mental distress.

23:34So knowing that, then, yeah, I think, you know, some combination of like weird sleep paralysis dream situation slash hallucination that helped her piece together what her subconscious already knew about her son-in-law. Yeah. And in the jury's defense, there was also a lot of circumstantial but still pretty compelling evidence of a previous wife that Trout had that had died under very mysterious circumstances. So it was pretty clear that this was a pattern for him. Yeah.

24:05Yeah, not a great dude. Yeah. So fuck that guy. Yeah. I have like so many things I could still say about this, but I will not because we'll be here forever. So go back to episode 29 because it is a really good story. And yeah, there was a lot more detail. And I think it's worth a listen. Yeah. That's also just one of those early episodes that I thought turned out really well. Yeah. Yeah. It's all been downhill. No, I'm just kidding.

24:37Okay. Well, that brings us to number two of mine. So my second one was about werewolves and sort of about really early werewolf folklore, some of the first werewolf folklore that came specifically from writings from the Greek philosopher Plato. But also from scholars like Pliny the Elder and Pausanias who are writing about a group of people known as the Arcadians.

25:10And Arcadia is this historical region in the Peloponnesian Peninsula in southern Greece. So like pre-ancient Greeks, we have the Arcadians and the Arcadians supposedly practiced human and animal sacrifice where they would cook and eat the meat of both the animals that they sacrificed, but also potentially people that they sacrificed. And those who indulged in cannibalism would end up getting transformed into wolves.

25:40So these are some of our earliest werewolf stories. And they're thought to be associated with this like wolfish form of Zeus known as Lycaon Zeus. And Lycaon, like this is where we get the term lycanthropy. So you've got these early stories and on this mountain, Mount Lycaon, you've got this altar to Lycaon Zeus who were supposedly making these sacrifices. And it was sort of assumed that they were just stories, just, you know, kind of scary stories to warn against these kinds of things.

26:12But then in 2016, and this is where the sidebar comes in, there was an archaeological excavation that was happening on Mount Lycaon and they found the skeleton of a teenager who was laid out like very carefully in this very intentional way in this shallow grave that was outlined with slabs of rock and part of their skull was missing, like presumably it had been caved in by something. But Mount Lycaon is an altar, it's a religious place, but it is not known to be a cemetery or like a place where people would be regularly buried.

26:50So it brings into question like, hey, maybe some of these stories that they were telling about the Arcadians, like weren't just stories to warn against these practices. Like they were actually sacrificing people in the name of this like wolfish Lycaon Zeus. Yeah, but probably they didn't turn into wolves. Okay, so that's my werewolf sidebar that I really wish had made it in just because I think it's sort of fun to think you've got this spooky story that some ancient scholar just made up to make some more ancient people look bad and then turns out they might have been on to something.

27:25Paige, what is your second thing that you wish had made it in? So here's the truth. I mean, obviously, like I wish most of them would have made it in, right? But the one that I was a little sad. Okay, so content wise, it didn't need to be in the book. It really didn't add a ton, if I'm being honest. But I thought I was like the funniest when I wrote it. So that's why I was sad it didn't make it in because I was like, wow, they don't think I'm funny at all. So, story of our lives, really.

27:57Yeah, for sure. Nobody thinks I'm as funny as I think I am. Is the sidebar that should have gone, again, in the first section or the ghost section of the book and around the Doth My Brain Deceive Me section, which is around page 33. And I really don't need to talk about this much, but if anyone, and we've talked about this for sure in the past, if anyone has ever been on like a ghost or like a haunted history tour, you know that like one of the things that those tour guides cling to is like the smell of sulfur.

28:38And they'll say like, oh, if you're walking through this area, like a lot of like our guests will say that it smells like sulfur over here. And like that's a sign that you are like near a spirit or near a ghost or, you know, whatever the story may be. Or a demon if you're Zach Bagans. Yeah, right. And so it's like that smell has long been associated with like Satan and demonic activity for like a long time.

29:10And so it's not totally surprising that like they cling to this like, oh, if you smell sulfur. And my thing is always like, they always say it, like when we went to the one in New Orleans, they always say it when you're like in the city by like sewers. It's like, yeah, it smells all the time. Yeah, of course it smells. Yeah. Or you're doing a ghost hunt in like a 150-year-old building with shitty plumbing. Like, yeah, okay, you're going to smell some sewer gas every once in a while because no one's flushed this toilet in like eight years.

29:43Yes, exactly.

29:45So that like always sort of cracks me up when we go on these tours. And like, you know, Megan and I love them. But every time we go on them, they're like, oh, if you smell sulfur. It's like, yeah, we're in a freaking city. Of course I smell sulfur. But this sidebar was specifically about farts and how you may think sometimes that you smell something spooky going around or that maybe there's a demon in your midst. But like really either you let out a little fart that you didn't know you let out or someone maybe let out a little fart near you because it does not take much fart to make a big stink.

30:23And also like the odor threshold, which is the concentration in air detectable by your nose or by smell of hydrogen sulfide is like 0.01 to 1.5 parts per million, which is like not very high. That means less than one to about one molecule of hydrogen sulfide in a million molecules of air is detectable by your nose.

30:56Your nose is very sensitive to farts. Yeah. So that was literally the whole sidebar was just me being like, yeah, maybe your ghost hunting partner is farting on you. Yeah. And listen, I like I totally believe that there have been incidents of this where, yeah, it's a ghost hunting team, but someone just doesn't want to admit that they farted. Oh, for sure. Like it's not every instance, but like it definitely has happened. Yeah. But like kudos, I guess, to the ghost hunting teams who are making sure to log every fart.

31:26If you're not logging every fart, you should be. Right. Because like, listen, even if you think they're so silent, you're using really sensitive noise recorders as well. So like that little, that little toot could sound like a demon growl. So, yeah. Yep. So again, do I feel like this was needed content wise? Did it really add a whole lot? Maybe not. But I thought I was funny. So I thought I would share it with everyone.

31:56I actually don't think that was one that was printed as the bonus pages either. So that's a treat for everybody. That's just a real treat for everybody. We still think farts are hilarious.

32:11And ghost farts are even funnier. Yep. I love that you're over here talking about like real shit. And I'm like, yeah, you probably just farted. It's fine. My last one is also because I was really hoping to make an inappropriate joke in the book that I did not get to make. Good. I'm not the only one. Yes.

32:34Okay. So my last one is also back to ghosts because like Paige mentioned, we had a lot. We had a lot to say about ghosts. We had a lot to say about ghosts. Listen, there's an argument to be made that we could have just written the entire book and done another book about everything else. But here we are. So my last thing, which is another thing that I have definitely talked about in like one or two social media videos at this point. But, well, I don't think it made it into the bonus pages.

33:06And I don't think we've talked about it on the podcast before. But we have talked about a lot. We have talked about on the podcast and we talked about in the book, obviously, these ancient Mesopotamian ghost stories. Because they are the earliest written ghost stories that we see, which is like another fun fact that I love that did make it into the book that, you know, the second that we had a written language that we had cuneiform, we were writing down ghost stories and ways to do exorcisms and ways to protect ourselves from ghosts and deal with them and all this.

33:40It's the best. So that is wonderful on its own. But the other thing about Mesopotamia is that we also get from them the oldest known depiction of a ghost. So this is a picture of a ghost that is carved onto a Babylonian tablet that I believe was sort of like stashed away in, you know, the collection of the British Museum, like, you know, which of course it was. But then someone managed to translate it and like realize this image was on it, like within the last few years.

34:15But the text on that tablet is cuneiform and it describes a ritual for banishing a ghost that is bothering you. And the picture is supposed to be this ghost being led back to the underworld. And the method of banishing this ghost is like the ghost is supposed to be this like lovesick man who like needs a lover, like needs to get laid basically to return back to the underworld.

34:47So it's this woman like leading him back to take care of this, which like, of course, a woman's got to take care of the problem.

34:56But the tablet has this image of the woman leading like a nude male figure who is the ghost, like by a rope attached to his bound hand. So it's like a little bit kinky as well, which is why I was very sad that I said, because like this is an exorcism ritual and I got to make the joke in the sidebar that like The Exorcist would have been a very different movie in ancient Mesopotamia because it would have been porn.

35:26Would have been an adult film. That exists. Oh, for sure. If you can think of it, what is the rule? If you can think of it, there's porn for it. Right. Yeah. I don't remember what the rule is called, but yeah. If you've watched it, let us know.

35:44But in ancient Mesopotamia, that would have been the way. Yeah. That would have just been instructional and useful information. So, listen. But anyway, I was a little sad that that got cut because I think it's pretty funny. I think I'm funny. I think you're funny. Okay. Well, those are things that got cut that we wish didn't, but now we got to tell you guys about them. So that's the beauty of having a podcast is you still just get to yap at people about whatever you care about.

36:17I just wanted to say that. So, like, obviously, there were some of the main texts that got cut. There was obviously some sidebars that got cut. I think one of the things I remember feeling particularly sad about or had to come to terms with was all of our ridiculous titles that we had come up with. Oh, yeah. Because, again, we, like, think we're funny, but, like, maybe nobody else was. Yeah. And we're making this sound so negative. It was not a negative experience.

36:49No, not at all. We had a great experience going back and forth with the editor and working together to, you know, make the best version that we could to release. But, yeah, you get really emotionally connected to the things that you write because you work really hard on them. And you put them in there, obviously, because you care about them. Or, like Paige said, because we think we're really funny and then people don't agree. And the thing is, is, like, I recognize that just because I think I'm funny doesn't mean that that should be in print. And, like, someone else probably isn't going to enjoy some of this shit as much as I think they will.

37:22So, like, kudos to our editor for making those calls because some of them probably weren't really that funny. Yeah. Yeah, or they were more, like, inside jokes that wouldn't have made sense for half the people reading. But, yeah, I think the only other thing I wanted to comment on, just because, I don't know, I felt like this is sort of our opportunity to talk about, like, how the book was different than maybe we initially, like, had pictured it or how it had changed along the way.

37:53And the one thing that, like, really kind of cracks me up is looking back at our very first pass at the outline. And we were so ambitious. We had, so what, the book ended up being, like, three sections, essentially, right? Yeah. We initially, in the first pass outline, had listed seven sections. And while a lot of this stuff did still make it in the book, we had, like, an entire section that had one, two, three, four, five, six subsections that, like, we just thought we were going to fit in there somehow.

38:34And, like, this is the whole idea, right? You make the first pass outline, they tell you it's going to change a lot, but it's just to start getting your ideas down. But I just, like, I think it's very fun to go back and look at some of this and think, like, oh, my, like, what, what did we think writing a book was going to be like?

38:55I mean, I guess I can maybe picture how this would have gone. It would have been, it just would have been really different. It would have been really different is the point. It would have been a lot less depth. It would have just been really fast, like, really brief things on each thing. And I appreciate how it turned out where we got to do the really in-depth with Ghost and, like, apply all those ideas to everything moving forward. But, yeah, we had, we had a lot of stuff in there. Well, and I got, like, I also got, like, sort of a kick out of the fact that we, so we made four different versions of the outline.

39:28And then still what we had sort of landed on at the end was different than any of those even. And so, I don't know, it's just, I don't know, funny to look back and see how much it changed. And, you know, a lot of this stuff did still make it in. But I think the way that it was written is probably more true to, like, how we've done the podcast and everything. So I'm happy with the product that we got. I just, it's fun to look back at it. Yeah. But also, your comment at the end is still my favorite.

40:00Oh, yes. So at the very end, so clearly this one did not go to our editor because I would not have left this thing. Because I think once we started, like, really putting the outline together and I started writing and, like, we were, man, what was this from? We have notes in here from, like, January and March of 2024. And, like, we turned this thing in in August, September of 2024. So, like, we were still figuring out what was even going to go in the book a few months beforehand.

40:34So I was maybe starting to get a little bit nervous about, you know, what was going to end up writing. But I wrote at the bottom of this outline, Megan is a complete dumbass for signing up to do this book. She's been nothing but sick or itchy for months now. Somehow this same brain got her a PhD. She's been nothing but sick or itchy for months now. Yeah, I had. So it was, like, when we were really getting down to writing and getting into the nitty gritty, getting it all laid out, figuring out where things were going to fit and, like, doing the hard work.

41:12It all came together really fast. But that first few months of 2024, I mean, I just had, like, horrific. I think I had some horrific colds. So I was really sick. And I got bitten up by the chiggers at one point. So I was itchy for, like, two weeks and just couldn't even focus on anything. And I just felt like I don't even think my brain works anymore. So, yeah. So this is your sign. You can be really in the depths of despair, being like, this is no way this is going to happen.

41:45And then five months later, you've turned in a book and it gets published.

41:53It all came together in the end. It was worth it. Yeah. I mean, how many people do you know can say they've published a book? Like, that's pretty cool. Yeah. For real, for real. I know. We are pretty amazing. We are pretty cool. Anyway, so I hope that you guys learned a few more fun facts in this episode. And I appreciate you letting us indulge our first book anniversary joy a little bit by

42:25looking back at the process of writing it and some of our favorite missing things. And also, thank you to everybody who's bought the book and supported the book over the last year because that's been pretty incredible to see, too. Yeah.

Reflecting on reader reviews and support

42:39It really has been. Like, it's been super fun to see reviews come in and, yeah, that have, like, mostly been positive or, you know, at least critical in helpful ways. Yeah. Critical in ways that I understand. Yeah, we've gotten a lot of constructive criticism, and I think that's awesome. And we've met a lot of really cool people and gotten to do a lot of cool things. And, yeah, it's been a good ride. Now we should just ride another one. Eh.

43:12And with that, that wraps up our 107th episode. If you liked this episode, hit subscribe and share with a friend. Check the show notes for links to all of our social media accounts, our Discord server, and Patreon. If you have any questions about previous topics or ideas for future episodes, email us at thesisters at spookysciencesisters.com. As always, thank you for listening and stay spooky. Spooky Science Sisters is a proud member of the Evergreen Podcasts Network.

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