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I wish book tours were the first step in publishing a book, not the last. At almost every event on the Bonk tour, some wonderful human being has raised a hand and shared some irresistible nugget that I'd managed to miss. After two years of fruitless searching, here is the man with the answer to the question: Is it true that people put live gerbils up their rectums? (Yes. And hamsters too. With thanks to Massachusetts radiologist Rick Schwartz.) In Denver, Colorado, urologist David Cahn shared his experiences with neoclitorises. I had told the story of how I'd suggested to a transgender surgeon that when he fashions a clitoris (using a bit of the glans) for a man who's becoming a woman, he should place it closer to the vagina than nature does. Kahn chimed in to say that it didn't really matter, as neoclitorises tend to "turn white and drop off." I've met two adults who were delivered by William Masters (of Masters and Johnson), a woman whose parents were interviewed ...

People often ask me whether strange people come to my Bonk events and ask peculiar questions. Not often. The people who come to my events are mostly book people. They're smart and funny and extremely likable. I have the most wonderful readers in the world. Though it's possible I'm biased.

There have been a few peculiar questions. Someone in Boulder asked me whether research had been done on whether volunteerism led to more intense orgasms. Wha..? Another person wanted to know if it's true that the genitals of a certain Amazonian tribe are deep blue. I surely hope that they are. This morning someone called in to the radio show I was on to ask about parallels between human and cetacean (dolphins and whales) sex. It was a bad connection, and I couldn't tell what exactly he was getting at. The program host encouraged me to talk about Alfred Shadle, whom I mention in the first ...

Four times last week, I returned to my hotel room at night to find that, mysteriously, the clock radio was playing. The first time it happened, I was concerned, as I had no memory of turning it on in the first place or of becoming the sort of person who listens to smooth jazz. Then I realized that I couldn't possibly have turned the clock radio on, because I had no idea how to turn it off. Putting the radio on, it finally dawned on me, was part of the "turn-down" service: It was the latest symptom of Fine Hotel Amenity-Planning Dementia.

I am wary of pressing random buttons on hotel clock radios. You run the risk of activating the wake-up call of the last person to use the thing. I don't know who these people are, but I mistrust them. These are people who will spend 15 minutes figuring out how to set a hotel clock radio alarm, when a wake-up call can be arranged in 4 seconds. And they ...

I was supposed to be on a flight to Toronto right now, the last stop on the three-week book tour for Bonk. Instead I am sitting in a hotel room in Denver, saying shit shit shit shit shit. I got up this morning and called Air Canada to get a seat assignment for the flight. I realized, as I was speaking to the kindly Air Canada man, that I did not have my passport. I had originally been scheduled to fly home before heading to Toronto, but the schedule had changed and we'd skipped the flight home. Where I would have picked up my passport.

"Hey," I said. "I don't need a passport to go from the States to Canada, right?"

The kindly man grew less kindly. He said that of course I need a passport.

"But I'm an American citizen!" They love this in Canada. ...

Me: What's the strangest question you've been asked at a reading?

Mary Roach: At a reading for Stiff, a woman came up to me ??? and she looked like a fairly ordinary person, a college senior, maybe ??? and she said, "If a guy dies and he's lying around for two or three days, would he still be hot?" I said, "No, the body would cool down to room temperature pretty quickly."

I started going on about how many degrees the body loses. She said, "No, no, no. I mean, if he was hot, would he still be hot?"

There were people in line behind her, kind of looking horrified. It didn't seem to me that anyone had put her up to this or that she was making a joke. She seemed to have a real curiosity.

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Stiff introduced a flourishing cadaver industry and a science writer with a wicked sense of humor, besides.

In Spook Mary Roach asks, What happens to the part of us that isn't so easily identified? What does science have to say about spirit energy? Read the interview.