Spooky 7

Introduction to Shopify

0:00When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof, like Skims or Allbirds, sure, you think about a great product, a cool brand, and great marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business, making selling, and for shoppers buying, simple. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. It's home of ShopPay, the number one checkout in the world. You can use it to boost conversion rates.

0:30Versions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going through to checkout. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Allbirds uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash income, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash income to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash income.

1:00This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. That's a secret. I could not participate in these experiments because I would just always be stressed out.

1:37That's my secret. I'm a chronic worrier. Yeah.

1:44I'm Paige. And I'm Megan. And this is Spooky Science Sisters. Hello, 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. Today, we are going to be doing a short and spooky episode, but we're going to be doing this Megan style, which means it is topics that I have chosen and that I'm going to tell Paige about.

2:17And I'm pretty sure that this is the most random pair of topics that I've ever selected, but they are the things that have caught my eye over the last few weeks. And per usual, that has now become our audience's problem. But this is our seventh round of short and spookies. So, in keeping with the Fast and Furious franchise naming scheme, at this point, I'm sure that there are some people who have not been listening that long because we haven't done a short and spooky since episode 80-something.

2:52And they're probably like, what the fuck are you talking about? Why is this a thing? But anyway, you're in it now. We're keeping with the Fast and Furious movie franchise naming scheme, which means that this episode has to be titled Spooky 7. When I was looking up that movie, because I was like, oh, I have no idea what Fast and Furious 7, which it is Furious 7, so I had to figure out the naming scheme. But did you know that it was directed by James Wan? Well, so, no, I didn't until I read your notes.

3:25But this has to be, like, the one weird film that's not, like, I can't think of anything else that he's done that's not, like, a horror. Right. I think he's been a producer on some pretty, like, not scary stuff. Everything else, though, that he's directed is, you know, Insidious and Saw and the Conjuring franchise and the, like, Annabelle spinoff. And then, like, right in the middle is Furious 7.

3:56Furious 7. Yeah, who would have guessed Saw and Furious 7 had, like, anybody working on it that was the same. Right. Had the same director. So I was like, well, how appropriate that it's a scary movie director for this episode. Anyway, short and spooky. Spooky 7. Great. But first we have to do something spooky. Paige, what is your something spooky for this episode? I feel like you laugh because you know exactly where I'm going with this.

4:27I was going to say, I feel like I have an idea what it's going to be after tonight. Again, for those who have listened for a while, you know that there have been, I don't know, like, if you look, it happens at least once a year. Where we talk about my mic just, like, not working. Well, tonight, guys, it was one of those nights. And, yeah, we originally were going to start recording at 8.30. It is 10 p.m.

4:55And, like, here's the thing. I was tired at, like, 6. So it's fine. Yeah. What about you, Megan? What is your something spooky? My something spooky is that it was Alice's seventh birthday this week. And on last Sunday, we had her birthday party. And the last 10 to 15 minutes of the birthday party, when the parents were supposed to be showing up to pick up the kids, we had a tornado warning.

5:25So my something spooky is gathering up a dozen six- or seven-year-olds who are screaming and freaking out and getting them all into the storage area to figure out if we are about to have a tornado descend on us. Only one person cried, so it was okay. Hey, that's pretty good. Yeah, yeah. We did all right. I think they practice a lot at school, or they do a good job practicing at school, so they're pretty controlled. So anyway, spooky seven.

5:55For our first study, we are going to talk about infrasound. And we're going to talk about a new study on the effect of infrasound that was published last month that has implications for debunking or explaining paranormal experiences. So this was published in April of 2026. It is now May of 2026. For those of you listening in the future.

6:25And we will put a link to that paper in the show notes so people can go ahead and access it because it is an open access paper so you can go read it and it's pretty cool. All right. As a refresher, I think we've talked about it before, but I'm not totally positive. If you've read the book, you already know about infrasound. So there's my little sneaky plug for, like, go read the book because you'll learn more about it. But it has been suggested as a possible source of hauntings for quite a long time, since at least the 1990s.

6:58And as a reminder, infrasound is sound that is below the threshold of what human ears can detect. And that is often defined as around 20 hertz. So that's the frequency of those sound waves. And I guess even that is, like, sort of debated. So people have gone back and forth about infrasound and whether or not it affects people a lot. But there are natural and artificial sources. Natural things could be tectonic activity like earthquakes, volcanic activity, in which case I assume they mean movement of magma beneath the surface, creating infrasound, which I think is pretty neat.

7:40It's spooky. It is spooky. But I think, like, the infrasound thing with earthquakes, too, is why they think, like, animals, for example, might be able to detect them, like, that they're coming. So, yeah. So it's all sort of, like, weird little sixth sense stuff. Other sources can be distant storms and even the vocalizations of some animals, like big cats and alligators. And artificial sources can be things like traffic, water moving through pipes in plumbing or heating systems, fans for heating and cooling, and other mechanical systems.

8:21And, like I mentioned, whether or not infrasound actually affects people is still debated, but it has been linked to feelings of dread, feeling like someone is watching you, and general unease and discomfort. So basically feelings that people sometimes associate with haunting experiences or, like, feeling like there's some sort of paranormal presence. You know, they'll attribute it to, like, making them feel uncomfortable and bad.

8:55So the other thing here is that it seems like sensitivity to infrasound would have been important for us in an evolutionary sense because having some innate sense that a storm is coming or a predator is nearby would be valuable. And to me, it seems reasonable that some people could be more sensitive than others. So maybe this is an issue for, you know, people who are particularly sensitive to infrasound. And maybe that's why it's been sort of nebulous as to whether or not it affects people because it only really affects certain people.

9:31I don't know. Anyway, so this new study that came out was done by a group of psychologists and neuroscientists at McEwen University and the University of Alberta, which are both located in Edmonton, Alberta, in Canada. This is not their first attempt to experiment with infrasound in a way that could explain paranormal claims. They previously played infrasound on hidden speakers in a commercial haunted house attraction to see if it made people more scared, which I love.

10:05That's such a creative idea. I guess they did say that people seemed to walk faster when the infrasound was present, but the results that they got from monitoring people's, like, the official results that they got from monitoring people's startle response and the EEGs that they were monitoring were overall inconclusive. They couldn't tell for sure if it had an effect. And I guess just for some context here, and the thing that's weird about infrasound to me is, like, you can have infrasound that's quote-unquote really loud at, like, a high decibel level,

10:49that if it were audible to human ears would really, really hurt your ears. So, I don't know. It's just really weird to think of something that's, like, really loud, but we can't actually hear it. I don't know. That's just sort of creepy inherently. Well, we've all played, like, the mosquito trick on adults, right? Like, as kids. The mosquito trick? Like, the—it's called, like, the—I think it's called, like, the mosquito soundbite, but, like, the really, really, really high-pitched.

11:19Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, like, I remember as, like, kids, we would, you know, pull out our phones and put it on our phones and play it and thought it was, like, so funny that all the kids could hear it, but, like, none of the adults could. Yeah, yeah. Because at some point you lose the ability to hear that. So, like, I don't know. It's not much different than that. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense, but it just is weird. Yeah, it is weird. It's also weird to be in the age group now to know that I used to be able to hear that, but I can't anymore.

11:50Yeah, I know. That's a real bummer, knowing, oh, man, I'm past that age. We just had a whole discussion in the group chat earlier about being like, oh, I'm so decrepit now. So, yeah, so, I don't know. Infrasound just is sort of inherently spooky to me for that reason. So, I would argue simplifying things a little bit more to do this new study, but they did get some significant results from it. So, in this new study, participants were asked to sit in a room for, I think, a period of five minutes and just listen to music.

12:28And the music they played was either calming or it was unsettling music. And 50% of the time, infrasound was added at a frequency of 18 hertz. After the participants were done, they surveyed them, so asked them some questions about their emotional state, and they collected saliva samples. And what they found was that the ones that had infrasound added showed a spike in their cortisol levels in their saliva.

13:00And cortisol is a hormone that's released when we get stressed out. It's sometimes called the stress hormone. And this was regardless of the type of music that was playing in the room the participant was in. That is so cool. Yeah, right? Like, it was that, you know, if they were unsettling music playing and the infrasound was added, like, their body started to produce cortisol. If it was, like, calming, happy music, didn't matter. The infrasound went on and they started to see spikes in their cortisol levels.

13:34Like, it just inherently stressed them out. So, the addition of the infrasound also contributed to participants feeling more irritated, uncomfortable, or generally sad. And, again, this was regardless of the type of music playing. So, for example, someone who was listening to the happy, calm music, once the infrasound kicked on, they started to just find it kind of annoying, which I think is sort of a funny thing.

14:06But, yeah, they just, like, started to get sort of, you know, uncomfortable and annoyed by it as soon as the infrasound was on. So, it's a really cool experiment because, you know, it's one of these ones where we can definitively show, hey, it has an effect on people. It's stressing people out. And so, for a believer or for a more suggestible person who walks into an old, creepy building where there's a source of infrasound, they might attribute any negative feelings to, again, the presence of something paranormal.

14:40So, it's basically just a way that we can prime people to believe that they've had a paranormal experience, which is pretty cool. It is super cool. Yeah. I wonder if anyone has ever been able to hear below Bonnie Hurts. Like, I mean, in, like, recent days. Like, in the last, you know, couple hundred years. Oh. So, that's part of the debate because I waded through some older papers that, you know,

15:12talked about the debate of whether or not infrasound actually affected people. And some of them, some of them came down to, like, what even was infrasound because one paper pointed out that people have been able to, like, hear down to a frequency of, like, one and a half hertz under the right conditions. Wow. So, yeah. And, like, I don't, I don't know. I don't really know what specifically those conditions are, but maybe it's just, like, it has to be loud enough for them to really hear it at that super low frequency.

15:43But, yeah, that's why it's controversial still because there's debate as to, like, what infrasound even really is. Sure. Yeah. Today, though, like, man, I feel like you're just surrounded by it all the time. Right. You know, which is probably to your point, right? Well, yeah. And I don't know. It's like kids are always, like, walking around talking about seeing weird shit. And, like, I mentioned earlier, like, they do, they can hear a wider range of sound than adults can.

16:15So, I just wonder if there's, like, kids out there who are running around and are able to hear. Oh, because, yeah, because kids tend to just have more hallucinatory or what some people might call paranormal experiences. So, maybe it has to do with them being more sensitive to sound waves. Yeah. Yeah. That could be it. I don't know. We should just become social scientists and psychologists and just start doing experiments. I definitely need another career change. I think probably, yes. No, I don't.

16:45I just need to read interesting papers by people who do those experiments and then talk about them on the Internet.

16:53I'm already stressed out enough. That's a secret. I could not participate in these experiments because I would just always be stressed out. That's my secret. I'm a chronic worrier. Yeah. Exactly.

17:12This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result, less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

17:48It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Okay, so that is short and spooky topic number one, new study about infrasound.

18:22So, our second topic is about mold. New research about mold. Okay, so way back in episode 53, we had Annalise Baer on the show to talk about all things mummies and ancient Egypt. And we talked about the pharaoh Tutankhamun, commonly nicknamed King Tut, and the supposed curse on his tomb.

18:54So, as a reminder, famously the financier for the excavation of that tomb, George Herbert, the fifth earl of Carnarvon, who is also known as Lord Carnarvon, died of a combination of sepsis and pneumonia just two months after he and Howard Carter, who is the archaeologist, opened and entered King Tut's burial chamber. And, of course, the press ran away with that story, declaring that his death was the result of the curse of the pharaohs.

19:29And even though it was really just that it was 1923 and antibiotics didn't exist yet, and Lord Carnarvon was already known to struggle with respiratory problems. So, you know, they make it this big curse. They make it very mysterious. But, you know, this guy had some health problems already. So, and apparently he got like an infected mosquito bite or something. So, that was part of the sepsis thing. Like, listen, that should be a lesson. Be grateful for modern medicine because you could cut your face shaving on a mosquito bite and then, you know, two months later you're dead.

20:04So. Big oof. Big oof. Everybody, take your medicine and shut the fuck up.

20:12I'm a little sensitive about that right now. Okay, so there's probably not a lot of mystery here as to why he died based on the age and his health problems. But some historians and scientists have proposed that there was something in King Tut's tomb that did play a role in Lord Carnarvon's death. And that something is mold. Yay! Yay, mold! Mold! Uh, specifically, a type of mold called Aspergillus flavus that is a common soil fungus that can infest harvested grain and cereal crops, but any moist, warm environment will do.

20:56So, it can infect human tissue, where if inhaled, it can cause severe respiratory illness known as aspergillosis. Or, if ingested, has toxins that can harm the kidneys and liver, even to the point of being carcinogenic, meaning it can cause cancer. So, you know, this is all stuff I didn't need to know. Yeah, I was good. I'm not eating a lot of moldy grain, so I'm probably okay.

21:27So, we know that King Tut's tomb was undisturbed since he died around 1324 BCE because the seal was still present on the door. So, Carter and Lord Carnarvon were truly the first people to enter his burial chamber in over 3,000 years, which is crazy. And mold spores can remain dormant for centuries, so you can imagine, you open up this old room, the air starts circulating again and stirring things up, and you might get exposed to something nasty.

22:06And there was a significant amount of grain and bread that were left as offerings in the tomb, so the Aspergillus flavus may have been on that, and it may have been Carnarvon that got sick rather than Carter because Carnarvon's health was already poor in the respiratory department. So, basically, you know, he probably got a pretty standard illness. It may have been helped along by this infection that he got from this mosquito bite, but the fact that he was sort of immunocompromised makes him more sensitive to being affected by this fungus that may have been present.

22:43Poor guy. Yeah. So, I will say, because of that, Lord Carnarvon's death being related to mold is debated. People have gone back and forth on it. But we do have more definitive evidence of Aspergillus flavus playing a role in the deaths of archaeologists that happened 50 years later in 1973. So, a group of 12 archaeologists opened the tomb of 15th century Polish king, Kazimierz IV, in order to carry out some conservation work,

23:17and 10 of them would end up dying over the next few years. Oh, no. Yeah. And at least four of those deaths were within a few weeks of opening the tomb. And I say at least because the others are a bit harder to nail down time-wise. Like, some official sources, papers that have been published, will say that all 10 died within a few weeks. But then others say it took, you know, a few years for the last ones to die and that some of them may have been related to cancer.

23:50But they were all certainly premature. Some sources say it was up to 15 people who ended up dying. But again, you know, it gets linked again to this idea of a curse from opening the tomb, so things get sensationalized a little bit. But importantly, a microbiologist was able to identify the presence of Aspergillus flavus within Kazimierz's coffin or body. And it's pretty much assumed that it played a role in their deaths, which is crazy.

24:20Like, that must have been a particularly, I don't know what the word is for, like, strong or virulent strain of it or something. I have no idea. But, yeah. So, anyway. So, there's definitely more concrete link to it hurting archaeologists in that case. You said it's assumed that it played a role, but did they not check the bodies of the people who died? So, my understanding is that this all sort of happens after the fact. And I think they could have done some sort of analysis, like, in their respiratory excretions or something to figure out if Aspergillus flavus was present.

25:00But I think it was, like, later investigations where it became an option, and so they checked for it. So, yeah. So, I am not 100% sure, but my impression is that nobody was specifically checked at the time that it happened. So, it's like, it's not, you know, a home run hit out of the park. And it's also worth pointing out, I think it's the Skeptoid podcast episode about King Tut and this idea of there being some sort of fungus action happening that, you know, he mentions that archaeologists aren't wandering around worrying about this when they have to open up tombs and stuff like that on the regular.

25:40So, this might sort of be an overblown thing, but it's at least interesting and spooky and potentially killing off people, so. What do you mean they're not worrying about it? Well, like, it's not, like, people don't think it's... It's not, like, super common. Right. Yeah. Okay. I thought you meant they just, like, don't care. No, it's more like this is not something that they're particularly worried about actually being a threat. And so, they're not, yeah.

26:11Which, you know, maybe they should be, but who knows? It seems like a lot of the evidence is sort of, like, circumstantial or added after the fact, is my point. Okay. Yes. So, overall, though, the idea of mold causing deaths and being mistaken for this curse from opening these old tombs is sort of old news, but we're talking about it today because Aspergillus flavus has become a promising candidate in studies looking to identify new cancer therapies.

26:41And I think this was a study from last year that was kind of making the rounds in the news, so we're, you know, we're a little behind in the scheme of things still talking about it in 2026 versus 2025, but I don't know, is what it is. The algorithm does what it wants to do and shows me things a year later. But researchers are trying to find sources of chemicals called ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides, or RIPs for short.

27:16That's a lot easier to say. That was tricky. Yeah, so that's a very fancy phrase. The modified refers to the fact that we are genetically modifying natural peptides in whatever they're harvesting these from to fight infections, or in this case, to try and fight certain cancers. So, they were looking for fungal RIPs, and they looked at a lot of different strains of Aspergillus because they're common funguses.

27:53Oh, my God, funguses, fungi, who even am I?

28:00And found that Aspergillus flavus is potentially a good source for them. So, yeah, long story short, in the same way that, you know, penicillin was developed from mold, the next breakthrough in cancer drugs might be from a fungus as well. And I do think it's sort of ironic in this case that it's sort of a fight-fire-with-fire situation, since you're trying to use a carcinogenic mold to fight cancer. But I guess that's sort of the thing with cancer-causing drugs is, like, one of the side effects of chemotherapy is, like, oh, this might cause cancer.

28:37Like, and bury cancer. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You got to kind of pick the lesser of two evils in some cases. But, yeah, it's just kind of a cool aspect of it that this legendary fungus that might have killed off some archaeologists might actually end up being a cancer treatment. Very cool. Yes. Uh, yeah. So, those are our two short and spooky stories for today. That's all I have for our seventh round. And looking back on these two topics, the theme of this episode, I said there was no theme.

29:13This was very random. But we're going to say the theme was hidden spooky stuff. I feel like these two things are, they feel like they go together better than a lot of our other short and spooky episodes. You know, they might, but we're going to pretend like I had a theme here going into this. I feel like I had to come up with one at the end. But, yeah, the infrasound study, like, hidden noise that you can't detect, but it makes you feel weird. And then the new cancer therapies, but from this microscopic fungus that might make you really sick and make people think that a tomb is cursed.

29:52Very cool. That's the, that's it. We did it. All right. Well, that wraps up our 106th 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.

30:26For more information or to check out other shows, please visit evergreenpodcasts.com. NFL football season is here, which means when you switch to Verizon, it feels like because you get NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube on us when you buy an eligible 5G phone on select unlimited plans. Which means you can watch every out-of-market game every Sunday afternoon. And it's all on us. Now that's the Verizon way to kick off the NFL football season right.

30:58Switch and get NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube on us. Only with Verizon.

31:04I see you. Avatar Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney+. It's the film critics are calling the best Avatar yet. Go, go, go, go! A true epic and completely jaw-dropping. This is the only purest thing in this world. Return to Pandora on Disney+. It will be an adventure for the whole family. And watch the Oscar-winning phenomenon at home. This is sick! Avatar Fire and Ash. Now streaming on Disney+. Rated PG-13.