Stuff You Should Know - How Spiders Work

Episode Date: April 30, 2015

Spiders are second only to snakes in the dread departemnt, but they're actually very helpful arachnids who are only deadly to humans under the worst case scenario. Of the more than 40,000 species, very few spiders are even venomous to humans. Learn everything you ever needed to know about these 8-legged wonders in today's episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

attention bachelor nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable

happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Yeah, there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. That's right. How are you doing? I'm doing great man. Good. How are you doing, Jerry? Oh, goodness me. Good to be back in 1A. Yeah, the... It's been... Fighters and stuff. 24 hours. Yes. Last year. I saw one thing

when I was watching a documentary on spiders that they said you're never more than an arm length away from lots of spiders. Yeah. And I wondered because I've done you... I finally did your little trick with the flashlight. Did it work? Oh, yeah, dude. It's horrifying. They are everywhere. But I wonder about like in this room, in this... It feels like hermetically sealed concrete vault. Right. Are there spiders in here? No, there's one dangling above your head right now. I see. No, they are pretty... They're good at hiding. They're small. So you're saying they're in here? I would guess so. I mean, like why would they not be in here? Like the one place in the world. Yeah. And they've been around for what? 400 million years? Yeah, they're pretty durable.

They've spread everywhere. Everywhere, baby. And one of the ways that they have adapted is by generating new species. Yeah, like to the tune of 40,000 that we know about. And they're like, there may be thousands of more species, not just spider species. Yeah, exactly. They have a tendency to kind of take over an area because they're actually in their realm of existence. They're frequently apex predators. Yeah, I mean, they're the... They've been likened to sharks in that they are robots that kill and eat and make baby spiders. Right. And sort of what they do in life. Yes, but they also do some pretty neat geometric designs. Sure. The spiders are pretty fascinating, super creepy things. Yeah, that thing you sent,

the how they take over that, like that building. Yeah, it was Baltimore's wastewater treatment plant. They took over four acres of it. It was abandoned, right? No. Oh, really? Yeah, they just got a foothold in there. That happened while dudes were working in the building? Yeah, they didn't notice? Yeah, they said no, they noticed. But like, what are these guys going to do? They're like wastewater treatment guys, not exterminators. So they didn't know what to do. Call an exterminator. Well, they did. The Baltimore city was like, can anybody help with this? We have something of a spider problem. And they actually brought in some academics who determined that something like there were 35,000 spiders per cubic meter

in that building. That is a ton of spiders. They were saying, and this article, I think it was on Wired, points out that these are mid-career etymologists who have seen stuff before. Did they say etymologists? Entomologists, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And they were like, I've never seen anything like this before in my life. So they brought in the spider version of Quint from Jaws? Probably. He's like, you're going to have to move. You have to kill the queen. Yeah. Now I think even he was like, where you guys got to go. No, there's not a queen because I didn't realize this, but it makes sense when I hear it. Spiders lead solitary lives. They bow down to no one. Yeah. They just do what they want to do. Yes. And spiders are not insects. They are

arachnids in the class arachnida of the order Aranaea or Aranaea. We even got told how to pronounce those words. I think, yeah. No, I think it's just A. Isn't that what the lady said who wrote us? No, I think she said like it. It's pronounced like it looks. Oh, okay. So it would be Aranaea. Well, it's the same order as ticks that we've talked about in scorpions, which I would like to cover at some point. Scorpions. And mines. What was that? My scorpion. Oh, I thought you were going to sing like Rocky like a hurricane. I'm probably seeing winds of change instead. Oh, really? Yeah. Down in Gorky Park. It's a good song. Yeah. Man, I like it a little harder. I like it all. All scorpions all the time. All right. So spiders, because there are 40,000 species,

they obviously differ from the tiniest little thing to the Goliath bird eater of Australia, which can be as big as a dinner plate. I think that's actually from South America. Oh, is it? Oh, I thought those were Australian. No. Australia has plenty of spiders, scary ones too, but the Goliath bird eater South America, I believe. Yeah, you're right. And it's called a bird eater because it can actually eat small birds. It does. It frequently eats little baby birds, but those are still birds. And it's a spider eating a bird. There's a video that we have on the podcast page for this episode of a Goliath spider eating a mouse. Yeah. And it's remarkable. Yeah. Dude, I saw one of a spider eating a

viper snake. What? Like the snake went into the hole and the tarantula won. What? And I mean, they'll eat fish, they eat frogs and lizards, insects obviously. Yeah. But they'll eat whatever. Yeah. They're carnivores. They do make it into a soup. Down it goes. Okay. So I think we've kind of laid the groundwork here. Spiders are extraordinarily fascinating. Yes, I agreed. You said they're arachnids, which means that they're not actually insects. Right. And the thing that differentiates them from insects is pretty simple. They don't have a true thorax. They have a cephalothorax, right? Right. Which is the head and the thorax fused together. And then they have the abdomen. So spiders have two segments. Yeah. That's what makes them different. Yeah. And the

segments to me seemed what they housed seemed a little backward. Yeah. Like that rear segment, the abdomen, I would have thought like, oh, that's where the stomach is and all that stuff. The stomach, the brain, the eyes and the mouth are actually in the front cephalothorax. And the abdomen is where the heart and lungs, reproductive organs and digestive tract are. Right. Which seems a little flip floppy to me. It's like a Ferrari where like the trunk is in the front and the engine in the back. Yeah, or a Volkswagen. Same thing. Yeah. Well, not all Volkswagen's, but my old Beetle had the rear engine. Yeah. It makes them go, go, go. Yeah. Or it's air-cooled. So if it's super hot, it makes it stop, stop, stop. Oh, gosh. Yeah. Another thing that spiders

have in common is they all have eight legs. Yeah. Although some of them, it looks like they have 10 pairs of legs. Oh, really? Or no, I'm sorry. 10 legs, five pair of legs. And what that is, is actually they have something called pedipalps. Oh, yeah. Some of them are longer and look leggy. Right. So it looks like they have five pair of legs, but really it's four pair of legs and a pair of pedipalps. And these things are basically, it's like, they're forearms. They're arms. Yeah. It's like a squirrel. Imagine a squirrel spider. Yeah. Little tiny little front arms. Yeah. Eating a nut or a mouse or a viper. What else? All spiders spin silk, right? Yeah. But not all of them spin webs. Right. Yeah. But they all are capable of creating silk, which we'll talk about. Yeah. To

me, that's the gold. That's just amazing. Yeah. And other, there are other insects that can spin silk, like silkworms. Sure. Nothing in nature is like spider silk, though. No. It's strong. It's elastic. For example, if you are a spider and you build a web, you can trap a bumblebee, a big old bumblebee at full speed and your web will be able to withstand the impact. Yeah. It's a huge, huge, massive impact. And the tensile strength of your web is going to take it like nothing. Yeah. I think I saw one thing that said it was a hundred times stronger than a human ligament. That's strong. Yeah. Stronger than steel even. That's strong. But again, that's a tease. We're going to cover silk here in full. But back to the body, my friend. Spiders breathe

in a very basic way, but fascinating. They have a trachea and what are called book lungs. Most of the species have both. Some just have one. But it's really a different thing. What they do is air flows in through these basically slits in the exoskeleton, which is the trachea. And then there's just a lot of, not osmosis, but diffusion basically. Gas exchange. Yeah. But it's not like I'm breathing in air. It's just air is being diffused in and CO2 is diffused out. Right. And the movement of the spider actually pushes air through these trachea. Yeah. It's not like a lung that breathes, quote unquote. And then they do have, most species have both trachea and book lungs. But the book lung kind of is like an extra, well, it's an extra lung. It's an extra place

where gas exchange takes place. Yeah. And they're called book lungs because it looks like an open book that's being flopped open. So there's different leaves. Yeah. And those leaves are filled with blood, but the exterior of them come in contact with air. So that's where the gas exchange takes place. Yeah. And speaking of the blood, it's called hemolymph. And it circulates O2 and nutrients and hormones at all. But again, in sort of a fascinating way, it has a simple heart that's just like a pump in, pump out. Yeah. And it basically just saturates all the organs in blood. And that's where they get their oxygen. Yeah. It's not a closed system where like your arm is getting blood because blood vessels are carrying blood to it. It's like your entire arm,

everything beneath your skin would be full of blood. Yeah. So everything in there that needs oxygen or hormones or whatever is getting them just from being bathed in this stuff. Yeah. It's pretty remarkable. It is. Brains. They've got them. Yeah. They are tiny little brains. And some spiders are smarter than others. But in general, spiders, the way I read it, was are sort of like little chemically signaled robots. There's just chemical signals flying all over the place that operate everything. I think the jumping spiders are the smartest ones. Well, yeah. And it's kind of making, it's puzzling science. So there's, they have ganglia. Yeah. They don't even have true brains. Yeah. Just little nerve cells. Exactly. And they're

like little nerve bundles. And that's where all their impulses are originate. Yeah. That transfers the signals to the rest of their body. And in a jumping spider, the ganglia amounts to about a hundred thousand neurons, just tiny, tiny, tiny amount of brain power. Yeah. And yet their vision is about on par with human vision. Well, some. The jumping spider. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The jumping spider, yes. They see great. They have eight eyes with almost 360 degree vision. And they can see very clearly their surroundings. But again, they're doing this with a hundred thousand neurons. So roboticists and a lot of other smart people are looking into this to see like where this efficiency is taking place, like how you can generate that level of clarity and

information from just a hundred thousand neurons. Yeah. They think they don't think they know that they like to drink human blood jumping spiders, but from mosquitoes. And supposedly by looking at a mosquito, they can tell if it has blood in it or not. Oh, really? Just from vision. Wow. And I don't think they figured that out either. But they've seen clearly that every experiment, they go to the mosquito with the blood, right, which is remarkable. Jumping like 50 times their body length. Yeah. To pounce on whatever it is. Yeah. So imagine being a human and jumping even one time your own body length, your height, you know, like a standing broad jump. Yeah. But a six foot one. Yeah. Right. That's not going to happen. These guys can do 50 times

and they do it quick too. Yeah. Super fast. Spiders are amazing. Hey, maybe that's why they called the comic The Amazing Spider-Man. Oh, maybe. And it's funny when I was reading all this stuff every like 10 seconds, I was like, oh, just like Spider-Man. So clearly Stanley did his research. Well, what's funny is like this article by old Tom Harris. Old Man Harris. Tries to, like it compares like spiders to humans throughout the whole thing. Yeah. It's pretty neat. Just like humans, spiders have a brain, but not really. Right. Yeah. And speaking of Spider-Man, I guess Spidey Sense is sort of what's really going on. They do have those eyes. And while the jumping spider can see really well,

most spiders, it's a secondary sense. And they use that Spidey Sense. It can feel vibrations like remarkably well. Feel it. Feel it. Is that good vibration? So they can sense anything from like a long way away and sort of know what it is even. Yeah. Especially if something's in the web. So they've got hairs all over their body, right? They also have additional hairs called Tricobothria. Yeah. And the rest of their body are basically like it's touching the ground so it can sense like movement on the ground or vibration of the ground or in their web or something like that. But the Tricobothria hair can sense movement in the air. Like that's how sensitive this is. And this is how spiders really sense their environment. Yeah. And they can also taste,

unlike snakes, the one that we just released and smell. Yeah. So they're pretty well-defined senses. And they really enjoy the taste of mouse brains. Like they really save for it. Mouse brain soup. Speaking of feet and legs, I had no idea this was the case. They had this adaptation. Like we said, there are lots of thick hairs on the legs and at the bottom of each hair on the feet. Well, our feet. Yeah. So at the end of tons of hair. Yeah. At the end of each leg. And they have eight legs. But on the end of each hair are a bunch of feet, like you say. Yeah. Little feet. And that's why they can grip on to like anything. Yeah. Except the bathtub. Was that a joke or something? Or is that like a well-known thing about spiders that they can't

walk on bathtubs? Because I don't know what that means. I think bathtubs are a place where you find spiders a lot of times because they can't get out. So you'll be like, oh, there's a spider in the bathtub and you see it just going and sliding back down. So I think that was a bit of a joke. Okay. And that's my guess. Have you ever had one come out of the faucet? Like the bathtub faucet? No. That's always fun. Is that a thing? I was terrified for a brief time as a kid because I went to turn on my bathwater and like put my hand down and like a spider came out. And so for several years afterward, I was petrified. You didn't take baths? Nope. Yeah. I was just a stinky little boy. And that was last year. All right. So let's take a break. And then after that,

we will talk about the molting process and a little bit about spider silk. Hey guys, it's Chikis from Chikis and Chill podcast. And I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind season three. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was whatever love I have from you is extra for me. Like I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Chikis and Chill on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new tell all podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all. And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this. And I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly every day of my life. I think

about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Are we at the skeleton? I think we are, man. Exoskeleton? Yes. Spiders have a skeleton just like humans. Except it's on the outside. Exactly. And they move using muscles, right? But strangely, they only half move using muscles. Yeah. This was just so interesting to me. Seems like a maladaptation. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like something they should be able to do. Yeah. Spiders are able to contract their muscles, right? Yes. So they can move their legs inward. Right. And that's how they take a step. And then to complete the step, rather than

having muscles expand to move the legs outward again, they don't have those muscles for some reason. Yeah. Instead, they pump hemolymph into their legs using hydraulic pressure to force them back out. So muscles, hydraulic pressure. Yeah. Muscles, hydraulic pressure. It's so strange. It is really strange. But it clearly works well. It works sometimes. There's a spider can suffer from dehydration, basically, to where it doesn't have enough hemolymph to... Which is blood, again. Right. Yeah. To pump in, to create the hydraulic pressure necessary to make its legs move out. So if you ever see a spider on its back with its legs all curved inward, yeah, that's a dehydrated spider right there. Yeah, it may not be dead yet, basically.

Right. Right. And he'll tell you, too. Not dead yet. Just poke it. And then give him a drink, and send him along his way. Yeah. The exoskeleton itself is made of cuticle. And it's basically proteins like chitin and sugars like polysaccharides. And they're just stretched out and layered upon each other to make it super strong. Right. It's like a really strong shell. It is. For protection, obviously. The problem is that shell, once it's hardened, it doesn't keep growing, although the spider does. Yeah. So much like snakes and lots of other animals, spiders have adapted or evolved to molt to get rid of their old exoskeleton. Yeah. And a bunch of hormones trigger this when it's time to start growing. Sure. The spider will, I think, just like a snake,

start to absorb some of the inner layer of the exoskeleton. Yeah. And it becomes a little liquefied and they create this fluid barrier between the old exoskeleton and the new exoskeleton that they're growing. Yeah. Just like a little gap, basically. Right. A liquid gap. Right. Exactly. And as the new exoskeleton starts to grow a little more and a little more, eventually it absorbs that fluid. Yeah. And then now there's a gap, a real gap. Yeah. In between the old exoskeleton and the new one. Yeah. And then it's basically trapped inside this old skeleton and does a little incredible Hulk move where it pumps that blood again, the hemolymph and expands the cephalothorax and it just like busts out of it and then just keeps wriggling around until it's completely

out of it. But it's pants never fully rip off. That always bugged me. It's just so unlikely that a guy in like a 32 waist can become this like 10 foot giant. Right. Just as like lower calves and ankles were big enough to rip his pants into tatters down there. What about the waist and the thighs? No. Hulk should be naked. You know? Technically, yes. And again, Stanley really studied spiders. So you'd think he would know that about the Hulk's pants. But no. All right. So after they have molted, this is when they do most of their growing because their new exoskeleton is not quite fully hard yet. It can expand a little bit at this point. Yeah. But they're super vulnerable because it's not as hard at that point as well. Right. So they'll

just kind of go off and be like, leave me alone. Leave me alone. I know I'm the apex predator, but I've made a lot of enemies along the way and they are looking for me right now. So Chuck, we can't really put it off any longer and I don't know why we would. Is it time to get silky? Yeah. We're going to talk about spider silk. It's amazing. We talked already a little bit about its tensile strength, stronger than steel or Kevlar. And here's the neat thing, is that it's actually a liquid when it comes out until you start stretching it and then it becomes a solid. Right. It's extruded from spigots in the spider's spinnerettes. Right. So the spinnerettes are these little pairs of almost like arms or whatever that the spider's like just

kind of pulling the silk out. Yeah. As the silk is the silk, which is made up of amino acids in like a water solution, like you said, when it's extruded, the spider can do all sorts of different things with this. And depending on how much pressure it applies at the spigot or whatever, it could be a really thin strand. Yeah. It can be a thicker strand. It can be short, long. It could be a thin strand encased in a thicker strand. Yep. They can do all sorts of really neat stuff with their silk. So much so that researchers still aren't 100% sure what the heck is going on here, but they just know that the spiders can do tons of different stuff with just the silk proteins alone and the extrusion. Once they come out, the spider can weave these

things together to create even stronger thread. And again, this is stuff that apparently it's several times stronger weight for weight than steel and Kevlar. So it's five times as strong as an equal mass of steel and twice as strong as an equal mass of Kevlar. And remember with the bulletproof vest episode where we talked about using goat's milk to produce spider silk? Yeah, they're doing it. Yeah, they definitely are. They're not using it for, they haven't applied it yet, but they do have goat farms. They basically found the genetic code specifically that creates the drag line. And the drag line is the, that's sort of the most common silk that it will spin. It's like a line, it's like a mountain climbers rope. They'll leave behind them. Right. And in

case it needs to like retreat quickly, it'll have a little rope to pull itself along. Right. So that's the drag line. Yeah. So they isolated the genetic code for this drag line, put that in a goat embryo, implanted in a mama goat. And the goat came out like, why? They don't even know. That's the beauty of it. They milk the goat. And then from that point, it's a little bit like making cheese from what I saw. Like they separate the, they skim the fat off and it's like separating curds from whey. And then potentially we could have like ligament replacement with spider silk or heart. Yeah. They're looking to regrow human hearts with this stuff. Crazy dude. So imagine having a new heart grown from spider silk made from goat's milk.

Yeah. Pump in in your chest. It's pretty neat. Yeah. I think I'd tell people about that. Be like, let me tell you about my new heart. Yeah, exactly. It has to do with spiders, goats, and my poor diet. A lot of steak, which is not true. What do you mean? The steak is not bad for you. Oh, right, right. Too, too much medical myth. Is that the deal? Yeah. Fats and stuff like that. They think that the silk glands originally started out as just ways to mark territory like a scent gland. And then they realize I'm actually can leave a substance behind that's super strong as it turns out. Super strong. And again, also pound for pound, it's as flexible as rubber. Oh, really? Natural rubber. Yeah. So it's pretty amazing stuff.

And again, the spider can do all sorts of different things with it. And one of the things you said is create the drag line, which is like a trail of breadcrumbs for an emergency. Yeah. Most spiders, that's the most common use of spider silk, I believe, across species. Right. Just like, I'm going to go 15 feet that way. And I'm going to leave my little drag line behind. Right. In case I need to high tail it out of there. Yep. They also have other glands that can produce substances to put on to the spider silk, like sticky stuff. Yeah. Which is very useful in creating webs. Or water resistant materials. Yep. Basically like spraying it with what's the stuff. It's just blanked. Like for Gore-Tex, you spray. Oh. Scotch guard. Scotch guard. Yeah, yeah.

Exactly. Female spiders will use, they'll make protective cocoons. Sometimes if you're in your basement and you see a big, looks like a cotton ball full of eggs. That's a spider's sack. Yeah. It's a cocoon. They've woven to help out their little guys and gals survive. And then did you see the netcaster? No. I ran across in this article, but I haven't seen one. Yeah. You can just Google on YouTube or whatever, netcasting spider. And it's basically like a little fishing net that they'll weave between, hold it between their legs like a sheet. Yeah. And then something walks by and they just throw it over their head real quick and like wrap them up in it. You can throw it in the van and drive off. Basically. So probably the most famous, and I

can't believe I even just said probably, but the most famous use of spider silk in nature is to spider webs. Yeah. The most amazing thing you will see is an orb-weaved web. Right. And there's a lot, then orb-weaved is the good one. That's the geometric looking. Those are the people. They clearly care about it. There are plenty of other spiders that really don't care what their webs look like. Job webs. There you go. Right. Yeah. They drink out of mugs and say like, I hate Mondays and stuff. They just don't care about their web. Like black widows actually make terrible, stupid webs. Oh, do they? Yeah. And you would think like they're sleek. Yeah. They're vicious. They have a cool symbol. Yeah. But they don't care what their web looks like. Yeah. And what are

you going to do? I'll bite you. Yeah. That's what they say. Or I'll mate with you and kill you. Right. Either way, you're getting bit. Have you ever seen, you see a lot of them in your apartment or a house? No. What are you implying? Huh? No. Well, I mean, well, you don't have a basement. No. See, I go in my basement, dude. They're everywhere. Man. It's creepy. It is creepy because, you know, they and brown recluses, which we'll talk about too, they're very reclusive. Yeah. Hence the name for the brown recluse. But black widows are the same. They don't want to have anything to do with you. And when you come near them, they want to get away from you. Yeah. So, having them in your house is not really much of an issue for you. No. It is for the insects in your

house. But for you, it doesn't really matter. But just seeing them and just knowing that, it just makes you kind of shudder, right? Well, that shiny red hourglass is just like creepy looking. They look really deadly. Yeah. And I have an unfinished basement. So there are spiders everywhere in my basement. Yeah. Oh, dude, everywhere. Is it like the Baltimore wastewater treatment plant down there? It almost is. Like I won't reach into any darkened area of my basement to get a tool or something. That's probably smart because they would want to get away from your arm. But if you really scare them or something, they feel threatened, they'll come at you. Yeah. Like it's not like they won't bite you. So I think that's very good, Chuck. I'm going to get you

shoulder length leather gloves for Christmas. Oh, I've got some. Do you? Yeah, not for that, but sure. You should wear them when you go to reach something. Well, I worry about my animal sometimes, but I read that spider venom and we're jumping ahead a little bit, but it's not harmful to animals. Like the most deadly spider in the world is the Funnel, Sydney Funnel weaver. Funnel web. Funnel web in Australia, of course. Yeah. Sydney. And they, I saw a video of a cat like playing with one and it said for some reason it like doesn't affect any animal, any mammal, but humans. That is really weird. And they have no idea why because humans came along way after spiders did. Yeah. So no one can figure that part out. That is really odd. Yeah. I don't think you

have to worry about your pets with spider bites. That's a good PSA right there. All right, so we're back at the web. I would advise everyone at some point, I'd like you to follow along if you're at home, but go to the house that works article on spiders. That little graphic is so helpful. The flash animation? Yeah. Yeah. And it works not on Android devices, but it just, you just go to your desktop, the desktop version of the site has this, the little flash where you just click next and it shows you exactly what it takes to build a spider web. Yeah, but we'll talk you through it here. The first thing that happens is a spider gets up on a someplace high up like a tree branch and fires that one, it's called a bridge, that one starting point down and just hope the wind

attaches it to something else below it. Yeah. And if it attaches, then it cinches it up really tight and he's like, I've got this sort of like the foundation. That's the baseline. The baseline. Yeah. Very nice. And the spider crawls across that baseline, which I think it's a bridge is what it's called, but I like baseline. All right. It crawls across the baseline as it does, it releases another line of silk that's much looser. Yeah. It sort of dangles below it and it attaches it at each end where the baseline is attached to those two branches too, right? Yes. And like you said, it dangles below it and forming is kind of a lazy V and the spider crawls down to the lowest point of that V and then drops another line from that point down to say another anchor

point. So that forms like a tighter Y. Yeah. It sort of looks like an upside down coat hanger. Yeah. If the hook was straightened out. Exactly. Or a Y, you know. A Y with a line crossing the two points at top. Exactly. So now it's got this, and again, it tightens everything up along the way if everything is going as planned and then you have, it has to lay out frame threads and this is when it starts going in, not, I guess a circle, but a circle made up of straight lines. Yeah. That makes sense. Kind of. Yeah. I want to say octagon, but it's more than eight sides. It's a polygon. Is it? Oh, yeah. There's more than one gone. So it's a polygon. Oh, I thought poly meant five. No. No, I think that's a, I don't think so. Hectagon. Pentagon.

Pentagon. Is that five? I think so. Oh, man. Oh, man. We're going to get killed. But it's a, several rhombuses put together. All right. Let's go with that. So there's a structure now. There's like the outer structure. There's an inner structure and the thing is getting stronger and stronger and the spider will create, it will start at the middle and basically create like a circular, like a nautilus motion. Yeah, exactly. Laying silk all around. Most people think of spiderwebs as fairly sticky. It is not sticky at this point. And for one very good reason, the spider has to move along it. So it hasn't laid down any sticky silk yet. Right. But once it creates this circular pattern and knows where it's going to go, it goes back around it and eats the old stuff while it

lays down a sticky silk in its place. Yeah. It's a spiral. We keep saying circle. I think spiral makes a little more sense. That's the word. So yeah, like you said, it'll eat the previous one, lay down the sticky one, but it also still has an auxiliary spiral to get around on. It just knows where to walk basically. Yeah. Like I'm not going to walk on the sticky one. I'm going to walk on the other one. Right. It's pretty amazing in itself. Yeah. And then its web is, is created and that's again, it's called an orb web. A lot of spiders and it's mostly from garden spiders that create orb webs in an elevated area. Beautiful. Charlotte must have been a garden spider. It's clearly an orb web. That thing definitely had more than 100,000 neurons because it could spell.

Yeah. We had a big garden spider. We've won last year on our side deck, attaching to our house. And it was in a great place that the dogs wouldn't hit it and we wouldn't hit it. And we would just go out every day and be like, you know, check it out and see how it was doing. How was it doing? It was doing great. Lots of, lots of flies and stuff. It was fattening up. Well, they're not there for long. Yeah. So generally they'll hang out in the middle of that web, wait for the vibrations. Right. And like we said, they can even tell the difference between like a wasp getting caught, which is not so great sometimes, or a butterfly, let's say. Right. And which they want to eat. So they love butterfly. Yeah, delicious. Butterfly

tastes like frog legs to them. Some other spiders will be like, I'm not waiting in the middle of this web. It's raining out. I'm going to go hang out my nest and they'll leave like a drag line that in this case is considered a signal line. Yeah. And it's just attached to the web. So they're looking for signals like vibrations from the web. Yeah. It's like being the laziest fisherman, the one that just throws out the thing with the bobber and then just starts drinking beer and reading their outdoor. Readers digest. Readers digest. Yeah. And then when they feel something, they're like, oh man, I'm fishing. Exactly. Yeah. That's that kind of spider. Here's the other neat thing. When a web is no longer useful, many times the spider will

eat it and recycle that silk. Yeah. Which is amazing. It breaks down the proteins and it uses it again later. Yeah. Little recyclers. Pretty smart things. All right. Well, let's take our final break here and then we will talk about some other hunting methods that spiders use right after this. Hey guys, it's Cheekies from Cheekies and Chill Podcast. And I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was whatever love I have from you is extra for me. Like I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me

as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Cheekies and Chill on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention, Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all. And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward, and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now?

You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this, and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So we're back and we're talking about other hunting methods. As I said, this great documentary I watched said that spiders are some of the maybe the best, most efficient, fully realized predator on the planet, dude. Like as well as a shark. They're as good as a shark. Spider would kill a shark in a second. If he was the size of a shark, he might.

Oh, definitely. And by the way, we did our little PSA with snakes. You shouldn't kill spiders either. No, I mean, like you want to leave them around because they're like taking care of a lot of pests that you don't want. I talked about mosquitoes. I hate mosquitoes. Who doesn't? I'll kill a mosquito. So a spider will eat a mosquito in a second. It's like frog legs to them. Again, nothing but frog legs. So let's talk about some of the other ways that spiders can hunt. Some have venom. Like they'll wait in a little trap door that they've made a little hole in the ground. They build a little web door on a hinge. Yeah, like a tiger pit. And they'll jump out. You can see video of this online too. Or they'll let you fall into the hole and then they're on you.

Like that snake. Yeah. This tarantula ate a viper. Man, that's crazy. And when I say ate it, like it's not like a snake eats something and it's just not there anymore. Like, you know, it sucked out whatever it could eat from the snake after paralyzing it with its venom, which is where we are. Wolf spiders? Yeah. They're land spider. They don't hunt with the web. They stalk their prey, which is terrifying. Yeah. Jumping spiders do that too. Yeah. The difference. So jumping spiders stalk their prey kind of like a cat, but when a cat is ready to pounce, it will pounce and run. Yeah. A jumping spider just pounces and it lands. Goes to work. Yeah. And you're toast. Yeah. Bad news. You ever seen the wolf spider when it has all the babies

on its back? No. Jump off and run around. That's something that I think is worth mentioning here. Yeah. It's terrifying. So you said a lot of spiders. A lot of spiders will create like a cocoon for their spiderlings with silk. Yeah. And a lot of spider species will just like, there you go, kids. Go have a good life. Sure. And the spider mom goes off. Wolf spiders carry their cocoons around with them. And then like you're saying, even after the spiderlings hatch, the spiderlings just hitch a ride on the back of their mom for a while until they're old enough to start taking care of themselves. And then they spread out, which is really unusual for spiders as far as reproduction goes. Yeah. It's crazy looking. I've seen wolf spiders that, maybe it was a noise

that frightened them or something, but all of a sudden they're, you know, 50 spiderlings. Yeah. Right. Did you see that vine that that dude posted from Mexico in the beginning of 2014 that became really famous? It looks like a little toupee on like a blue plastic bin. I don't like where this is going. And he goes up and like pokes it. And all of a sudden the toupee just turns into about 10,000 spiders. But it's not actually spiders. They're harvest men like Daddy Longlegs. Uh-huh. Daddy Longlegs aren't actually spiders. They're arachnids. Oh, is that the deal? Yeah. Okay. And one of the things that differentiates them is this packing, clumping instinct that they'll form. It looks like just this bad toupee just sitting there, but it's really a bunch of

spiders or a bunch of harvest men. Not a good toupee. And what? No. Terrible toupee. Yeah. And what they're doing is they're maintaining moisture in like a hot, dry environment by clumping together and kind of pooling their moisture. Oh, wow. And then as the sun goes down, they'll like spread out again. But if you go up and touch them like this guy did on Vine. Yeah. So it's just like this nine second loop over and over again. They just separate and scatter everywhere. It's pretty neat. Have you done a don't be dumb on the granddaddy Longleg supposedly being the most poisonous? I looked into it. Or venomous. No, I kind of ran into a brick wall. Because it's like. I think that's an old wives tale. So this is what I found. Yes. That they,

they, they, the old wives tale is that they are the most poisonous around, but their mouths are too small to puncture human skin. Yeah. But if they could, they could kill you. Yeah. I don't believe that. So if it's a harvest man that is, and apparently there's a bunch of different arachnids that are called granddaddy Longlegs. Yeah. But if it's the harvest man, then it's completely false because not only do they not have venom, they don't even have fangs. They couldn't bite you. But another caveat to that is that although they can survive, if like they lose a leg, and this is an adaptation to where like if a predator has their leg, yeah, they'll just pull it off themselves and run off. Yeah. And the guy's like, oh man,

they can't regrow their legs. Yeah. They can survive without them. They can't regrow them. Okay. So they'll have like just whatever seven legs. Yeah. So you don't want to pull the legs off a granddaddy Longlegs because it's not growing back kids. Yeah. It's not cool to do the torture insects. Don't listen to Ricky, your Billy, your Tommy, or whoever's telling you that their legs are going to grow back. No, they're going nowhere. No, nowhere. All right. So we were talking about venom. Most spiders have pretty much the same procedure when killing prey. They have the weapon is these a pair of jointed jaws called a chelarisa ray. I think you're going to go with that. I'm going with chelacery. All right. Chelacery. Chelacery. Man, some people like this stuff.

Some people think it's some people are like, that's it. I'm done with these guys forever. But each part of this jaw has two parts, the basal segment, which is the bulk of it. And then these fangs and just like snakes, these fangs act as little needles and they have a venom duct that they'll squeeze the venom through the fang just like a snake. Yeah. It's pretty remarkable. And the venom is very frequently a neurotoxin. So paralyzes the prey like a snake in any cases. And then I think you're really funky with the spider after that point. So it's taken down a mouse. It's paralyzed it. The mouse is like, oh God, I'm locked in. I can experience everything, but I can't move. And this is horrible because now I'm being killed by a spider.

It's like the anesthesia awareness. Exactly. But even worse than that. But there's not a doctor. It's a spider. You're being operated on by a spider. And the spider is now injecting you. Now that you're paralyzed, now it's injecting you with digestive enzymes and you will be liquefied from the inside out. Yeah. Because like we said, spiders eat nothing but soup, essentially. Yeah. Their entire life. But the soup that they eat doesn't start out as a soup. Instead, it starts out as muscle and tissue and all that kind of stuff inside a mouse. Yeah. And then once it liquefies, the spider will suck all that stuff out and then that's

its food and it tastes like frog legs to it. The actual fangs themselves can work a couple of different ways. In the case of a tarantulas, it works like an ax. Yeah. The fangs swing down. Yeah. And araniomorphs, which are the most dominant suborder, they act as little pinchers. Which is better. Yeah. Because I think the tarantulas need to actually pin something against something to swing those little fang axes down. Yeah. Whereas if you're an araniomorph, like your pinchers are just using the pressure created by the other pincher to puncture your prey. So what does this mean for us, dude? You get bit by a spider, a venomous spider. Are you going to die? No. The chances are pretty high that you're not going to die.

That is an adult, healthy adult human. Yeah. I think that across the entire world, the morbidity rate of a spider bite is like 10 percent. But even for ones that we think are so deadly, like the brown recluse spider, morbidity rates were at 5 percent before we discovered anivin. Right. It's not going to feel good. No. And there's actually some nasty, nasty videos on YouTube. There's a guy, the video, the worst one, he basically created a video diary of him just filming his foot with a brown recluse bite. Nobody wants to see that. And just talking about like how nasty it is. And he stopped because he thought no one wanted to see it. And everybody's like, where's more videos? What's going on now? So he started like posting them all the time.

But I think it says brown recluse spider bite disturbing video after three months. Put those words into YouTube and it will bring up this dude's foot. And it looks like a giant cabbage patch kid. And there's a, it looks like, have you ever seen Requiem for a Dream? Oh, yeah. You remember the end where he's got that super mess? That on the top of a cabbage patch kid's foot. And people wanted more, more, more, which proves my theory that the internet is thunderdome. But this guy is like, it's so gross. Like you could easily fit two fingers into this spider bite. And the reason why is because this guy suffered necrosis, which is a side effect of the brown recluse is toxin. And if untreated, you're probably, again, you're not going to die. It's

going to hurt like crazy. He was going to a doctor through all this though, right? Yeah, he had to. You'd have to be just totally psychotic to have your foot look like this and not go seek medical attention. I think it's looking better today. It's Thursday. Yeah. But the, the, the, you can suffer severe like scarring and tissue damage, but you're probably not going to die. But it hurts because they affect our ion channels, right? Yeah. Kristen Conger, I think, had wrote a great side article about how deadly spiders work on how stuff works. And for instance, the, the Sydney funnel web venom, it's a Delta atrocotoxin. And it is an amino acid chain that causes damage to nerve cells.

Yeah. It makes our nerve cells like fire excitedly, like constantly. I think it's, I think some toxins when they affect our nerve cells, it just makes them fire over and over and over again, which affects their performance. It's not what you want. And as far as nociceptor cells, you are just experiencing tremendous amounts of pain. Right. Or before 1980, when they discovered the funnel web anti-venom, you could die from it. But since then, they say no one has died from it. No. And the funnel web, this is the one that's routinely pointed out as the world's deadliest spider. Yeah. Although Kristen points out there's no real scientific consensus on that, because there's not that many spiders that really even have a chance to be considered deadly to humans.

Yeah. But the funnel, the Sydney funnel web, which lives in a 99 mile radius around Sydney, Australia. Yeah, right in the city. Right. Is, is, I guess, if you really pressed a scientist, a science, I almost said Scientologist, if you pressed a spider researcher, they would probably say the Sydney funnel web. And one of the reasons why is because it's fangs. It's pincers can pierce a human toenail. Yeah, that's frightening. And they're aggressive. Right. Like if you want to get out of here, they may not get out of there. They may say, oh yeah, I'm coming. Yeah. They like eat a can of spinach and come at you. That's scary. I think there's one in Brazil, too, called the Wandering Spider, Brazilian Wandering.

And it is, has been cited as the deadliest as well, because it can inject up to two milligrams of venom, which is just, that's a lot of venom for a spider. Yeah, it is. So it is a hunting spider as well. And it is also aggressive. So I'm glad that most venomous are the most aggressive. Yeah, it's fine how that works out. So how do we get spiders? Chuck, where do they come from? Well, they have sex. Yes, they do. Spider sex is pretty fascinating. Not as interesting as snake sex. No, maybe it is. I don't know. I don't think so. Let's talk about it. Okay, so we said that spiders are almost exclusively solitary hunters. Yeah, they don't hang out with their families. So if you're a male and you're like, I gotta

reproduce, I gotta pass these genes along, you are going to seek out a female spider, but it's not the easiest thing in the world to do. Yeah. Not only do you have to find a female spider, you have to find one of reproductive age and ready to reproduce. Yeah, and not eat you. That's a big, that's a big point. But in the case of the Black Widow, you're gonna get eaten anyway. Yeah. But females are way bigger than the males. Which is one way that males get eaten. Yeah, I saw a video of a Black Widow's mating and it looked like a little baby spider trying to mate with a big, big spider, but it's just a male and a female. Yeah. So the female, when it decides, all right, I guess I have to do this, I have to be defiled. I'm gonna lay down a drag line,

sort of like a snake does, covered in pheromones. Yeah. Wherever I go, I'm just gonna leave this scented trail behind me on this drag line. Or if it's a web-based spider, they may lay pheromones over the web. Right. And just let the wind do its work. Yeah, either way, these spiders are gonna pick up on us and be like, okay, I'm heading that direction. Yeah, I'm gonna follow this drag line, pull my little self down this drag line. And finally, I get to the female. Although we should point out another creepy thing that spiders will do is they're so desperate to mate that they'll hang around females that are too young until they get to the right age. Right. Like they'll hang around the playground. Yeah. And it's so creepy and predatory. Right. They'll be like, oh, she's

close. Let me wait a few weeks. Yeah. So yeah, they're like, I don't feel like searching. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just gonna wait. So when they find the female, that's just step one. Step two is convincing her that you're not dinner. Right. And that you're not trying to encroach on your territory. Right. You're like, I just want to mate. Right. And there's some different ways that spiders do this. So like with a jumping spider and species that have like good vision, they may do a little dance. Yeah. Make a little love. Look at me. Look at me over here. Yeah, wolf spiders will do that. And then spiders again, that are web based, the male may come up and like play a little, little tune on the web. Yeah. Like plucking a guitar string. Exactly. For the female

to be like, oh, I see what you're after. She's like, is that Jose Feliciano? Right. I'm such a sucker for Jose Feliciano. So once they have convinced the female spider that they are there to have some fun, right? They're not food. Yeah. They're not a threat. They like the tune of my guitar or the way I dance. There's a lot of work that goes into it. The female finally is like, all right, well, let me just get into position here and send you the right signal that I'm ready to go and might shake my web or something. If I don't like you or I might just crawl away. But otherwise, here I am. Let's do this. Right. And so like any other animal on the planet, they copulate by putting their reproductive organs together, right? No, they don't couple.

What? You're being quiet. They don't couple like snakes even do. The male deposits sperm onto a little web and then picks it up. It's basically like IVF. Yes, but with pedipalps, little forearms that the spider has. Yeah. He deposits that sperm onto the gentle opening of the female. Right. And I guess the female stores it there near the ovaries. Yeah. She's like, smell you later. Yeah. If he's lucky. If he's not lucky, she turns around and eats him afterwards. Right. Right. Which the male spider is fine with because all it wants to do is reproduce. But then at some point later on, the female will be like, oh, yeah, that's right. I've got that sperm stored away. I'll fertilize these eggs and there you have it. Yeah. And then

they lay, like we said, either hundreds or thousands of eggs in one go and they may encase them. Like we said, they may carry them around. They may abandon the eggs entirely and just say good luck. What's crazy to me, spiders, so they live months up to years. Apparently tarantulas can live up to 20 years. Yeah. Like a pet tarantula. But one thing I found was that a lot of spiders can go up to a year between feeding. Oh, wow. Yeah. Between feeding. Yes. Crazy. Isn't that surprising? Yeah. Spiders. Fascinating. Yeah. And as I said in the snakes one, I don't kill spiders, but nothing would terrify me more than a tarantula crawling up my arm. And that's funny too, because tarantulas are not poisonous to humans. You can have an allergic reaction to a tarantula,

but in most people who are allergic to tarantulas, you're allergic to their hair. Yeah. So crawling on you would create maybe like a skin rash or something. The venom is probably not going to do much more than you might not even have a reaction to it. You could feel pain from their fangs puncturing your skin. Sure. Just like if I took like a sewing needle and punctured your skin to be that same kind of sensation. I think it would more just be being freaked out that a tarantula is attacking you. It would be the biggest setback from being attacked by a tarantula. Yeah. I wouldn't even need to be attacked. Just, you know, you see movies where actors have to do that or let one crawl over their face or something. There's no way. No way. No. Could never, ever, ever

do it. I have a great Yumi story. When she was a kid, she was at one of the Smithsonian's or whatever, and they brought in like a thing full of tarantulas and set them down. I think they actually dumped them in the center of the kids or whatever. Yumi just got up and started, ran out of the room. She was just gone. And her teacher had to run after her to like catch her again. She's like, you guys are idiots for sitting here. I'm taking off. I mean, I'm definitely an arachnophobe. Oh, are you like dyed in the wool really genuine? To a certain degree. Like when I see a spider, I'm not, I don't run away screaming. But if it's proximity, if like one was on me, I would not enjoy that except of any size. Yeah. And yeah, so I'm a bit of an arachnophobe.

Gotcha. What about you? You don't care? I mean, yeah, it's more like when I can see their, the features and everything that I'm really like, those are freaky creatures. Yeah, but I loved my garden orb weaver. I wasn't like, you know, and some are just beautiful, like the ones are like bright yellow and black and like, there's a lot of really fascinating spiders. But no, I don't, I don't want to be the focus of one's attention, I guess is what it comes down to. Yeah, like when I'm hiking through the woods and you walk, your face walks through a spider web. Yeah, that is like, yeah, I do not react well. Yeah, like a little, little girl. What about the movie arachnophobia? You like that one? Yeah, it was good for its time, I think.

I think so too. Yeah, I'll sign off on that one. Was it Bill Pullman? Was he in that? Or Jeff Daniels, which one? I think it was Jeff Daniels. Yeah. And John Goodman. No, he was in that. Yeah, here's the external. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, good flick. So that's spiders, everybody. If you want to know more about them. Oh, Chuck, we didn't talk about the diving spider, one of the most fascinating spiders of all. Yeah, we got to, we got to put that in. Yeah, it segues with our diving bell episode because they basically weave a little ceiling of spider web at the surface of the water. No, underneath the water. Oh, is it underneath a little bit? Totally. Okay, so they'll weave a little like ceiling,

like a little parachute, and then they'll take air bubbles under there one by one until it's a little diving bell. Right, and these spiders breathe like any other spider above land, but they live underwater almost all of their life in this little pocket of air that it builds for itself. And those are the ones that will eat fish. Man, that's crazy awesome. Yeah, there's all kinds of great documentaries online about spiders. They all unfortunately are sort of salacious, you know, with the music and all this stuff. It's fascinating, I think. If you want to know more about spiders, you can type those words or well that word into the search bar at housetheforks.com, and you can also go check out the podcast page on stuffyoushouldknow.com for this episode. It's

got links to most of the stuff we've talked about. And since I said search bar somewhere, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this dog blood donation. Remember in our blood types episode, I was surprised to know that animals could donate blood as well. Yeah, even though it makes perfect sense. This is from Cara or Cara. Hey guys, I've been listening for about four years and you guys keep me company on my long commute and when I have to drive the tractor. One year ago, we got a call from some acquaintances of ours asking how much our dog weighed. We didn't know them super well, but being open minded, we said 56 pounds and asked, they asked if we would be willing to let our dog be a blood donor for their dog because their area was out of

dog blood. Their dog had been battling an acute autoimmune issue for several days and needed a dog over 50 pounds to be a donor to get just through the night. Being animal lovers and knowing my dog was healthy and fit, I didn't hesitate. So we brought hatchet in and they did a quick test to see if the bloods were compatible, which was basically swirling them together. They were a match and we proceeded with the transfusion. We didn't get to watch the process, but hatch came out about an hour later, a little drowsy, but still his regular self. What did you guys just do to me? Exactly. He was a little lazy the next day or two, but made a fine recovery and the other dog ended up making a full recovery. Oh, that's sweet. Despite a bleak diagnosis. If you have a dog,

I'd suggest finding friends with dogs 50 pounds or more who'd be willing to be blood donors in case of an emergency. Dog blood is often scarce. So thanks guys. You've made me a champ at the trivia table. That is Cara in Lexington, Kentucky. Thanks a lot, Cara. That's a great PSA. Yeah, and she sent a little picture of hatchet and hatchet looks like a fine, fine dog. It was great. If you want to let us know how your dog saved a life, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com and you can hang out with us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all. And now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable

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