Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Brazilian Wandering Spider Bite - Die Hard

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

Wes prepared something of a horror anthology wherein he shares a couple of true tales of spider bite victims, some of whom suffer a cruel and unusual side effect caused by a peculiarly invigorating venom. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome everyone back to Tooth and Claw podcast. We have my older brother and wildlife bear biologist Wes Larson with us. Hey guys. And then you got two beefy boys. Two beefy guys. I've never been more flattered in my life. I'm the little guy. Jeff, you're the beefy guys.

Wes is smaller than you would expect. And then we got two beefy bros. Yeah. That was how we were described in Outside Magazine. Yeah. Go check it out if you want to read about us. But yeah, we got a good laugh out of that one for sure. Hey, happy October, guys.

Yeah, happy. Yeah, it's good to be here. I love October. I'm excited that it's October, that it's spooky time. Yeah. I feel like September for you is a little bit complaining because you're like, oh summer's almost over i'm so sad summer's almost over but then like once october hits like you're kind of like this is nice yeah i'm a summer kid like summer for me has always been my favorite it's born in

july i just love swimming i love like being hot i love late summer nights i love summer so you're right like september it's like oh man summer's pretty much over even though september's always like really nice i love september but october is when i've like accepted that summer is over and i just love Love, love Halloween. Why do you think that guy wants to be woken up when September ends? That's a sweet month to be awake for. Yeah, that's a good point. Like, that's when I would want to start going to sleep.

Summer and September? I want to go to sleep after, if I'm a bear, I want to go to sleep after Christmas. Yeah, that was Billy Joe Armstrong, that guy. Just so everyone knows, too, we're at our family cabin and there is a fireplace. So if you hear a little bit of crackling. Don't fall asleep. Well, this is my favorite time of year. Me too.

Today was kind of a perfect day. Big Cottonwood Canyon in Utah, just beautiful colors. Foggy. It's really foggy. Have you guys ever driven in a super heavy fog where you just like... Can't see. Well, I guess if I hit something, I hit something. Yeah, a bunch times.

But I do love like just being out in a foggy fall day. October day. I think for me too, like the thing I love so much about Halloween is it's not just the day. For me, it's the whole season. Like October 1st. This year I started early because I was. I'm going to be gone for part of Halloween. I just start watching horror movies.

I just get so into it. Like the whole month, I'm like feeling Halloween. So I just love it. I'm happy that we're up here at the cabin. We're going to watch a scary movie after we're done. I'm happy. You're happy, Wes. And because of that, I thought the two episodes,

maybe more, that we released in October, we should have like kind of a spooky theme to them. What do you guys think? I don't like it. You don't like it. You don't like getting spooked out as much as I do. Let's just stick to sharks. Shark off.

That's pretty spooky in its own way. No, I don't get scared is my thing. You get scared. You don't like slasher movies and stuff. The new Halloween movie scared you. That was scary. You do get scared. Not that much.

I just watch like that Talk to Me movie. Yeah. And it's like well done. So I was like fine with it. But I was like, I don't know. I just don't feel anything. See, I get like an adrenaline rush and I get really into the movie. But then I can leave.

leave it behind. Like, I'm not, like, at that night, I'm not, like, shivering in my bed and, like, scared. So I love the experience of watching him. You do with slasters. I went to a haunted house. The last one I went to, the workers were, like, trying to scare me, you know? And I wasn't reacting at all because, like, I didn't want to pretend. And they, like, started just, like, asking me what time it was and stuff. You're like, you're welcome. You should do one of those, the haunted house challenges where it's like no one's ever gotten. Oh yeah. And they like.

And they like, yeah, they strap you down and like punch you in the groin. In a horror movie where like a demon is standing in front of me and that's like, okay, I guess I believe you all now. You know what I mean? Sure. I agree with you, but I think you're right when it comes to like possession, supernatural movies, you get just about as scared as anyone in slasher movies.

Well, that's like possible. A person could stab you with a knife. That's Halloween too. That's still horror. Like, that still counts. Okay. Okay. We settled that.

Well, I'm going to try and scare you today. Well, we're going to talk about kind of a scary animal. Okay. So first, I'm going to start by going over a couple symptoms from the bite of today's animal. Oh, before. Yep. Wow. And I want you guys to tell me if those symptoms are spooky or not.

Okay. Okay. First one is severe, localized, and general pain. Spooky or not spooky? Just because the word severe, I will give it a spooky. Spooky? Mike? Yeah.

I'll agree with Jeff. Okay, increased heart rate and blood pressure. I don't like, yeah, that's pretty spooky to me. As I get older, sometimes. That sounds kind of sexy to me. Yeah. Oh, that's another way to look at it. Sexy spooky?

Keep that in mind. Kind of like Elvira. Who's the wife from the Adams family? No, that's not Elvira. That's a morticia. Morticia, yeah. Sexy and a little. Both of those ladies are sexy.

All right. Vertigo and visual disturbances? No. No, that's more like frustrating. Really? Visual disturbances, I thought you guys think that's spooky. Some people do that on purpose. All right.

There's a whole stroke. There's a whole spooky movie about vertigo. Whatever. What's it called? Vertigo. Nausea and vomiting. No. You need the word projectile vomiting.

Okay. Yeah, like piece suit vomiting. I throw up like every day. Okay. A painful erection that doesn't go away for hours or possibly even days. No. Not spooky. I'd be spooked.

Mike, since you said spooky, when are you getting spooked? What hour are you like? Four hours. You know, that's what the commercials always say. For me, I think it'd be. But if it's three hours and 59 minutes, I'm like, I'm good. We're good here. Party, party, party.

Spooky. Yeah, exactly. Four hours. I would be spooked. Probably an hour. Yeah. Difficulty breathing, paralysis, and death. Death?

You can't be spooked if you're dead. That's true. But death is spooky. Yeah. I'll give that spook. Okay. All right. So there's a lot of spooky, super normal symptoms to this animal's bite.

Nothing weird in there at all. You guys probably guessed it by now, but today we're going to be talking about the Brazilian wandering spider. Oh, yeah. Which is often deemed the most venomous spider in the world. How many people do you think guess that? That's what we're talking about. Yeah. Not many.

It's often deemed the most venomous spider in the world. Some people say that it's the most dangerous spider in the world as well. Wow. A big part of that's because they're also thought to be very aggressive spiders. But I'll let you guys be the judge of that when we're done with the episode, because we're going to talk about whether or not that title is actually earned. I like it. I'd like to think, like, when you say that, like, some people say it's the most dangerous spider in the world.

Yeah. That they're, like, not scientists or anything. It's just like people. Just people on the street. All right. I've been thinking about this spider a lot recently. You guys know I just went to Brazil not long ago. And while I was there, we were at this, like, kind of.

of jungley lodge, and I was responsible for this group of guests that I was guiding through Brazil to see Jaguars and a few other things. And this woman came out at night and she was like, oh, there's a big spider in my room. I was wondering if you could kill it. And I was like, oh, how big are we talking? And she said like, oh, about the size of my outstretched palm. And she showed me her whole hand. I was like, oh. So is it a tarantula? And she's like, no, it's not a tarantula. So immediately my mind went to Brazilian wandering spider. And immediately I was like Code red.

Well, I didn't, and I didn't want to like freak her out. So I was just like, yeah, let's go to your room and I'll see if I can find it. And we go to a room and she described it as like being on the ground too and they tend to be on the ground. And so I was like, huh. And so we didn't find it. But then luckily I talked to one of the other guests that had also seen it. And she said it was really spindly. And so I showed her a photo of a wandering spider.

And she was like, oh, no, no, no. So it wasn't one. But I was a little nervous. Yeah. Yeah. Because, wow. I didn't want to be like, yeah, that might be the most dangerous spider in the world that you have in your room. You wouldn't have to put it that way.

No. Yeah. I mean, I think it was technically, though. What? A Brazilian wandering spider. Yeah, I guess. You were in Brazil and it was wandering around her. Fair enough.

Maybe that was its home. Yeah. He knew exactly where it was. You don't think it's wand. Well, you can wander around your house. Yeah, that's true. Not all, what is it then? Not all souls who wander lost?

Right. Yeah, whatever Gandalf said. we should know that. Well, what constitutes wandering? If I, like, get up and, like, walk across the room? Isn't it just, like, carelessly moving around? I don't know. It's just like, where'd you get that?

Careless? That's just what I thought. I know. It sounds very webster of you, though. I'm not used to out. Oh, yeah. Like, I pulled one out. Yeah.

Did you memorize? Yeah, I mean, you're looking at me. I didn't have Google or anything. I know. That's spooky. All right. Okay, so I've got a couple of stories. And for the first one, I'm going to take you guys to Tropical South America.

We're on a banana. plantation, a large five-inch spider has just finished hunting insects, arthropods, small amphibians, and small rodents. Its potent venom can kill any of these things in seconds. The spider's finished hunting, its morning, it cautiously crawls up a banana tree, tucks itself in between the bananas, where it's waiting in protected shadows to emerge at night and hunt again. The spider wasn't ready for was a farm worker that quickly and deftly cut this bunch of bananas from the tree, and rather than run down to the arm of the farm worker, the spider just tucks it. itself further back up into these bananas.

Not long after it's plunged into darkness, when this fruit was placed into a crate, that crate was nailed shut and put into a truck. The spider would only see light and freedom again, almost a week later, halfway across the world, when the crate of bananas opened in the kitchen of a pub in Bridgeway, UK. It's in the United Kingdom. Yeah.

Truly a wanderer. Yeah. This is really a wandering spider. Yeah. Seeing a chance for escape, the spider darts out of the crate, unseen, and it hides under a nearby dishcloth. It had been through quite the ordeal. Not another bunch of bananas?

No. It's been through quite the ordeal, and aside from not being able to feed for days, it's also extremely agitated and defensive. So chef Matthew Stevens is busy cleaning the kitchen, and he hadn't seen this massive tropical spider run out of the bananas and hide under the dishcloth. Oh, man.

Had he been able to see the spider, he would have seen it in the classic wandering spider defensive pose. So they plant their back legs, they put their two front legs up in the air. They expose their fangs, and their fangs, like, glisten, and they, like, do this little dance with their legs up in the air.

Right. Spooky or cute? It's pretty spooky. I'll show you guys a photo. It's kind of cute. Some of them, though, yeah, when it's, like, a smaller fuzzy spider, it's cute. I would think with the big ones,

I'm like, that's kind of cute. Let me show you guys a photo. You know, it'd be more threatening if the spider, instead of just, like, doing, like, a spread eagle thing, is, like, put its hand on its holster, like a gun on it. Yeah. Then you'd know for sure, like, ah, this.

Or if it, like, used one of its legs to do, like, the throat slash. Or, like, the thumbs down. Spiders have thumbs, right, Les? No. Well, if it did, like, four-legs, throat slash. Yeah. This is the position. Oh, yeah, that's not cute.

That's just spooky. So when they do this, and we're going to talk more about this later, but just this is the defensive position. So what's the bright red on them? It's its fangs have that like red coloration sometimes. We're going to get into that. Okay. But this is what Matthew would have seen had he been able to see it, but the spider is underneath the cloth.

Even for large mammals, that can be a really intimidating display. It's a clear warning that that spider is not one to be trifled with. But he couldn't see any of this as he reaches for the dishcloth. A sudden surge of pain shoots into his fingers as he grabs the cloth, and he felt something squirm underneath. He describes it as having grabbed a big, sharp thorn. Now the spider rushes out and it's doing this display in full view. And him, like Stephen's not thinking that it could be an exotic and like incredibly venomous spider, grabs it.

He grabs it because he like, this dude just isn't afraid of spiders at all. But like, he's never seen a spider that big. No, but in the UK, I think there's like, nothing hurts us here, you know? Wow. This dude just like, for whatever reason you can give me all the reasoning in the world. It's not going to be like sufficient. I will say, I'm not even bare-handing like a tiny spider. In Brazil, I will, like, all grab tarantulas when I know it's a tarantula because they won't bite you and it's like fun to hold them.

Whoa. But anyway. But it's not like a, well, with you, it's kind of a reflex. But like, you just want to like interact with the animal. Yeah, maybe that's like, this is like him being like defensive. I think he wanted to kill it. Yeah. Anyway, it bites him again.

By what? Like strangling it? It bites him again. Smash it. He throws it into the front. freezer, and then he pours boiling water on top of it. In the freezer? Yeah.

What is this guy doing? I don't know. Yeah. That part was hard to piece together, but that's what I understood. Through it in the freezer, poured boiling water on it. Not long after, he starts to feel intense pain radiating up his arm. So the spider is just perfect temperature then. Yeah.

It doesn't kill the spider. Because he's like cold and hot at the same time. He's comfortable. Yeah. He feels intense pain radiating up his arm from where he'd been bitten on it. his hand, his hand swelled up to the size of a balloon, which isn't a great reference. Balloons can be lots of things. It was like a deflated balloon.

And he started feeling dizzy. So a friend takes him to the local community hospital and the doctors just tell him to go home and keep an eye on it. Because again, this is the UK, like a spider bite isn't something. Like there's, there were spider. There's like a brown widow, which doesn't kill people. When he gets home, he collapses on the floor. He's feeling intense chest pain.

So his partner, she calls an ambulance, and he's rushed to an emergency room at Musgrove Park Hospital. At the hospitals, his symptoms worsen. His heart's beating so fast that he felt like it might explode. He had chest tightness, high blood pressure, and he remembers thinking that he wouldn't survive this ordeal. So doctors are now pretty curious. They're like, wait, this guy got bit by a big spider and he's having this crazy reaction. Like he was able to communicate that to that. Yeah.

And he had actually, when he threw the spider, he had then taken a photo on his cell phone. This is 2005, so they're a grainy photo, but he shows them a cell phone pick, and they send it then to experts at the Bristol Zoo nearby. These experts are immediately concerned, and they send people to catch the spider in the kitchen, which they do. It was still alive,

and they quickly, positively identify it as a Brazilian wandering spider. Man. So he gets a saline drip. It dilutes the venom in his system. He makes a successful recovery. He's discharged the next day. They didn't tie his hand into, like, a balloon animal or something? and popped in,

shot off. Like, I think it's supposed to say his hand inflated like a balloon. Not like the size of a balloon. A hot air balloon. Yeah, I mean, that's a very big range. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no.

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Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash special offer. Terms apply. So there's actually been some other really big scares that have happened when Brazilian wandering spiders or look-alike spiders have been sent on produce to countries outside of Central and South America. Just this August in Austria, a market was closed for days when a store manager called the fire department because he had sent. seen a really big spider on some on a shipment of bananas and he this guy was smart enough to know that it might be a Brazilian wandering spider. They never found it. But then one of the spookiest ones was that in 2017 there's a British mother who had taken a banana up to her seven month, seven month old baby's room. And when she bit down into this banana, she somehow ruptured an

egg sack of Brazilian wandering spiders, they think. And these these spiders can have like hundreds and hundreds of spiderlings in this egg sack. And the spiderlings had hatched already. So when she ruptured it, they just poured into her mouth. No way. All over the bed and all over the toddler's crib. Oh, man. And so she, like, picked up her baby and rushed out of the house.

Wait, so, like, that stat that, like, every person eats seven spiders a year, it's, like, all her. Yeah, the average is way thrown off because of that. Yeah. But so the logistics of the egg and the banana. That's what I was thinking. Did she bite through the peel? I think what had happened is the egg sack had probably been on like where she grabbed the banana or something. And then when she peeled it down and bit into it, it like ruptured it somehow.

But yeah, it's not like she bid into the egg sack because it wouldn't make sense because it wouldn't, she wouldn't bite into a peel. But that's the story. I'm just going off what was reported. And she was traumatized. Like this woman would not return to her house until it was like fumigated. The grocery store paid for a fumigation. like she said there's just little spiderlings everywhere. That's awful.

Yeah. So we're going to get into a little bit of biology. I have got a couple more stories. This is a bit of an anthology episode because there wasn't like one story that really stood out to me. But it's a really fascinating animal with some really interesting ways that it's venom works on people, especially on people that have penises. So there are eight species of spiders belonging to the phenutriaginus. Phenutria, if you're talking about a Phenutrius spider, you're talking about a Brazilian wandering spider.

So there are also wandering spiders, but Brazilian wandering spiders are the ones to be worried about. It's kind of tricky because they don't just live in Brazil. They live throughout Central and South America, but they're called Brazilian wandering spiders. There's eight species. That's okay. It's like German Shepherds. Yeah, exactly. There are a large spider with the leg span reaching.

German chocolate cake? Sure. You can find those. French toast. French toast. Yeah. They're a large spider with a leg span reaching up to seven inches across, which is pretty massive.

Like for not being a tarantula, this is one of the bigger spiders. And they kind of look, you know when you see those videos in Australia of like the massive huntsman spiders like on the wall or whatever, they kind of look like that kind of spider. They're tan or yellow. They have a bright yellow and red marking on their ventral sides, on their underside. and on the underside of their legs. So I just showed you guys a picture of that when they do that little defensive display,

they show off that bright coloration on their underside. And that just serves as a warning to potential predators. Like in the natural world, generally when something is brightly colored, it means that it's dangerous. Like a mallard duck. No, not like a mallard duck. More like a Poison Arrow frog or like...

Clifford, the Big Red Dog. Exactly. Clifford, he is quite dangerous, I would imagine. But a Brazilian wandering spider, like pretty much saying like, I'm dangerous, look at, you know, this bright coloration. Trying to be intimidating as it can. Exactly. Like tough guys wearing pink. Sure.

Do you think it's maybe? W.W.E. They like wore some like very colorful outfits. Right. And he's intimidating. Yeah. But those guys are intimidating no matter what, right? Yes.

Okay. All right. They are, they're called wandering spiders because they're nomadic. They don't have webs or burrows that they return to. They hunt prey by chasing it down, and then they pounce and deliver a bite. They pounce? Yeah. Wow.

Mike, you look like you have a question. It can wait. Is it about something I just said, though? Kind of. Then you should ask it. Well, I was just wondering. So do they spin webs? Do they have web?

They have spinnets, and they use them for, like, making egg sacks. They can make these little anchor, like, ropes with their, with their web sometimes. But they're not spinning a web to make a home. Interesting. They're not, like, or a trap for prey. Like, that's not something they do. do. Okay. So they, because of that, they are a very aggressive spider. They're like a wolf spider. They're a spider that has to actively hunt down prey. And then they, that puts them at risk. Like, they're not a

spider that just sits in a burrow and like a really nice safe burrow and waits for prey to come to it. Because of that risk that they take, they've evolved a really aggressive response to things that might be threats. So like a big spider like that, doing that display and showing you that it's dangerous, you're still much more dangerous to it than it is to you, like a person. We can hurt that animal much more than it ever could us. Pick it up, throw it in a freezer. Yeah. But it is intimidating.

It is like, oh, this might hurt me, you know, and sometimes that's enough for them to discourage something that could hurt them. So when they chase prey down, they have these really powerful serrated jaws. Like they have the, they have more like pincer type fangs. So some spiders have things that are vertical and are just like used to inject. They have ones that are more like pincers and they have a serrated teeth on them. And what they do is when they grab an insect or a little frog or something, they use those to like crush it up. So they like pulverize it with their fangs.

And that does a lot of the work for them. And then they squirt those digestive juices onto them like we've talked about with other spiders. That's right. enzymes and it just breaks their prey down towards liquefied and then they use their sucking stomach to suck it in. Wow. So that's kind of across the board. They just flirt them up. Yeah, across the board, spiders don't eat anything that's like chunky. Like it has to be liquid because their digestive systems can't process like hard material. It has to be liquid because they have what's called a sucking stomach. They have to suck it in. So if you, if you're an insect and

you're unlucky enough to get killed by a spider, you're going to get liquefied before it sucks you in. That's just what's going to happen. I wonder if they eat for your listeners. Yeah. Oh, you worms. We love you, but just watch yourselves out there. Do we know anything about them eating for pleasure? Do they have taste buds or anything like that?

I think that's really hard to, A, to like, even if you show that an animal has taste buds, to then, like, say, oh, does it eat because it enjoys it? Sure. But, like, you know how a bear will go after, like, a candy bar in a garbage can because, like, that's the freaking taste really good. Yeah. Or, like, at least gives them more caloric intake. But it's still not, like, I do think you're kind of making it sound too human still. Sure. A bear eats a candy bar.

It doesn't, like, care at all what type it is. So, like, a bear doesn't care that it's, like, a chocolate. Well, we don't know. Like, that's the thing. We can't say that. But what we can say is, like, when a bear eats something that it can taste, that it's, like, high and. fat or high in sugar, its body tells it, this is what we want, you know? And it's very likely that like that same thing could happen with a spider. But I wonder. In elementary school kids should do

a sign, you know, like the science fairs, where everyone tests like the different foods. Yeah, just line a bear up in front of different candy bars. An unlimited amount of like each type though. Yeah. And then like at first it's going to eat a bunch of them and you can't just like go off the first one it eats. Right. But maybe like after time it finds like, like, I love Reese's pieces. Like, there's a good chance that people have run these kind of experiments. Like what candy bears like the most?

Or like if there's prey that spiders go for more often, like, I don't know. Like it's very possible. What candy would you guess? Chocolate covered cinnamon bears. No, no, no. Swedish fish. You think they like fish. I think that's a weird line.

Swedish fish is a good one. To be honest, though, like with these spiders, we could do. entire episode just on their just on their behavior I think maybe when we run out of good stories to tell was to start doing stuff like that denigrating the spiders but a cool a couple other really cool things about these spiders

because they don't have webs often you'll find them on really large broad leaves because they'll use it as kind of a natural web and I didn't really understand this until I was researching these spiders but it makes perfect sense when they stand poised on a leaf like that a leaf is so thin and it's got such a big surface area that like if a bug lands on it or something, it's going to produce

vibrations on that leaf. And spiders are so attuned to those vibrations that it essentially uses that leaf like it's a web. So when it's standing on the leaf and it's got all its feet on it and a bug lands on it, it can pinpoint where that bug is, like direction, distance, it's just like a bug landing on a web for a different spider. So they use a really big leaf kind of like they would use a web, which is really cool. Yeah.

Webs are cooler, though. Webs are really cool. But they also can use it as a way to escape predators. So, like, if something really big landed on that leaf, the spider knows, like, I got to get out of here. So often you'll find... How does it use the leaf to... Again, like, if the vibration's big, if it, like, feels a big vibration, then it's like, oh, shit. Like, if a tiger lands on its leaf, not like a meteor strike or something else.

On the leaf? Yeah. All right. They're like huge leaves, right? I guess you guys did think this was as cool as I did, but I thought it was really... cool. Yeah, how big are these leaves? I just really like spider webs. Like you'll see them on like banana trees, really big like bermilads. That's like a common place to find them. And I think it's really neat that this is a spider that has given up its ability to spin a web and to like trap prey that

way. It's more actively hunting so it can like seek out prey. These other spiders like the downside to having a web is you just got to kind of wait and hope you get lucky. This is a spider that's taking the initiative. But then it can also use nature as a web. spiders are going to get all the good spider jobs. It's like a wake up and grind spider. Yeah. I hate the spider. How successful is it compared to other spiders?

I mean, they're extremely successful spiders. Yeah, they kill prey all the time. All right, they only mate once, but they can have up to 3,000 eggs and four different egg sacks that they carry on their body. The males only mate once? No, the females. Okay. A lot of the spiderlings won't survive because when they hit their first molt. Because they get eaten by that lady.

No. When they hit their first molt, they sometimes will feed their siblings that have already molted. So like a spider that's already molted is like mobile again, but the ones that are molting, the little spiderlings are like pretty much frozen. So the older young will eat the ones that are still molting. That's thrown in the freezer. Yeah.

No, it's not it. But they like, that still is like kind of necessary probably, right? Because like these ones that have hatched like needs something to help them grow at the start. Yeah, I mean, it's like it's built into their evolution. Like, that's why they have so many. A lot of them die. A lot of them serve as food for the ones that are like, you know, naturally selected. Like, maybe if they didn't do that, they wouldn't have enough food, like, right when they were born or something.

Yeah, maybe. So their venom gets stronger as they get older, and females tend to have more venom and more potent venom than males. So we're going to talk a bit about their venom and the effects of their venom. Yeah. Multiple times, the Brazilian wandering spider has been classified by Gennis, like Gennis. like Guinness Book of World Records, as the world's most venomous spider. Currently, that title is held

by the Australian Funnel Web. And that's likely because while the actual potency of Brazilian wandering spider venom is higher, they don't tend to inject the quantities of venom that Funnel Web spiders do when they bite humans. Oh, that's a bullshit. Yeah, I know.

You got to give it to the... You got to give it to Yorick. You guys remember Yorick? Oh, yeah. Yorick. Funnel web. Every time someone brings up the Ginnah Book of World Records, like that institution. I was just imagine, like, a bunch of drunkards at the bar where, like, Guinness was first,

you know, how it all started at a bar, the drinking competitions or whatever. So I always imagine just a couple of drunk people arguing over spiders. I love some Australian frontal ab. How it, like, started with, like, actually, like, impressive things. Yeah. But, like, that fills up, like, so quickly that it's kind of like, well, what else? Like, let's look at spiders. Now, well, now there's, even like this one to me makes sense.

Do you guys hold any goodness world records? No. I hold two. For what? Oh, yeah, that's right. One's for the biggest thumb wrestling ever. And at Utah State, we, like, got in a circle and thumb wrestle at each other. That one's good.

Did you win, though, or was it just everyone? You just had to participate. And there's like a tournament. I didn't win, no. Yeah. And then one was for, like, most bouncy balls dropped at once. and they got a helicopter and bounced 10 billion bouncy balls. Did someone collect them afterward?

I remember. Do you think that guy in the first story would be good at thumb wrestling or not? Because, like, you wouldn't be able to pin that thumb down, but he probably wouldn't be too mobile either. I don't think it was his thumb. Well, his whole hand swelled up, didn't it? Yeah, he probably wouldn't be very good. It seems like he's good with his hands of his reaction.

I feel like it's hard to just grab a spider, right? Yeah, I guess. Do you have any world records? You got excited. No, I was excited because I knew you did. And I was like, I hadn't heard you talk about this in a while. That's what I was known for before Tooth and Claw. Youth sports families and fans huddle up.

Wherever life takes you, Game Changer keeps you connected. Stream games live and full HD when you can't be there. Get play-by-play updates right on your phone. And share game highlights with everyone. Full bragging rights included. Live the game like never before with Game Changer. Create your free account today at gcc. com. All right. So while I was researching their venom, I stumbled on an older book called Venomous Animals and

their Venoms, Volume 3, which is written by Carl Buttrul and Buckley was the other author. God, I really wish I didn't read this book. It's really scientific. The whole thing reads like peer-reviewed literature, really well done. But there's a whole section when they're talking about phenutria spiders or Brazilian wandering spiders where he goes into testing that they did on dogs with spider venom. And it was like, honestly, I've had to read a lot of dark things for this podcast. I think it was the hardest thing I ever had to read for the podcast. Super dark. I got halfway through it and was like, there's no way I'm including any of these details. So I just went away from it. It was the reason they did it is phenutri of venom was always

thought to be medically significant. So it was collected and tested. But honestly, like, I can't see a strong enough case for any kind of medical benefit to this to where that is worth it, testing on. Yeah. And then it really like sent me down a whole rabbit hole of realizing that I had really big qualms with that and then wondering why I didn't have bigger qualms with rodent testing. And it made me have to rechallenge that whole part of my life and like wonder why I drew those lines where I drew them. Kind of made me think that we shouldn't be testing on any animals. Yeah. Planting the apes. Yeah. We might have a plant in the ape scenario. Okay, so back to the venom. It's neurotoxic. It contains a mixture of proteins and peptides

that attack the central nervous system of both vertebrates and invertebrates. So they think that this is something they evolved not only to kill prey, but also as a defense against large mammals. The proteins and peptines have a wide-ranging effect in the body. They affect ion channels and chemical receptors in our neuromuscular system. Bites usually start with severe burning pain at the bite site and other symptoms like sweating and goosebumps are like two of the first ones that happen. So severe burning pain, sweating and goosebumps. Spooky. Yeah, goosebumps are spooky.

That's without a doubt a spooky one. Symptoms then proceed to high blood pressure, extremely fast heart rate, nausea, abdominal cramping, hypothermia, vertigo, blurred vision, convulsions, excessive sweating associated with shock, and then if symptoms continue to proceed, the patient may have breathing problems and paralysis, and if death ever occurs, it's generally the result of respiratory failure. So there's one other symptom we need to talk about. If you've got a penis, a bite from a Brazilian wandering spider can cause preepism, which is a condition where you have a long-lasting, painful erection.

Wow. Like no matter where it bites you? Yeah. And we're going to talk about that. We're going to the bone zone. It makes you erect, or is it like it waits? So you're going to, I'm going to get into that. Like the leprechaun.

It makes you erect. It makes you weird. Stop. What is it, tiger's blood? Forget that stuff. Yeah, exactly. Oh, seriously. Yeah, this one works.

I know. It's proven. Rhino horn is what you're thinking there. Rino horn. Well, a lot of stuff. Yeah. I don't know. Tiger blood works.

Yeah, but that's what they use it for. Really? They bones and stuff. So I'm going to do my best to give you guys a bit of an erection science without spinning too badly out of control. We'll see how we do. You already said seven inches is massive earlier. For a spider.

All right. Oh. Basically, when you get an erection, it's because something gets you aroused. Neurons in your brain tell your body to produce nitric oxide, which is essentially a message that your brain is giving your body to make an erection. So nitric oxide, remember that one. It's an important one. There's a cascade of other stuff that happens, and that leads to an enzyme called CGMP,

which essentially that enzyme tells your penis to open the gates, and it lets it swell up with blood. Can't anthropomorphize a penis like that, less. Well, I'm picturing it as like a little marshal, and it's like, open the guys! The tall British hat. And then when the deed is done and the erection is no longer needed, there's a substance called PDE5 that breaks down the CGMP,

and then the blood can rush out. So basically nitric oxide and GCMP are like the party starters. PDE5 is the party pooper. Okay? Gotcha. So drugs like sildenophil. which is Viagra. Yeah, so that's like the battering ram for people who can't open those gates.

I'm going to tell you what it does. Drugs like, it's like grong. Yeah, grand. Grond. Drugs like Sildenafil, which is Viagra, it works by inhibiting the party pooper substance. So the PDE5, which is what shuts the whole thing down, if you get rid of that substance, it allows your erection to stay. It allows it to form and then to stick around. So it inhibits that PDE5.

So you still, like if you're taking Viagra, you still have to get aroused on your own, but then it, like, keeps it there. Oh. So what happens with a lot of people is, like, they start to feel aroused, but then their PDE5 kicks in immediately, and they just, like, can't get a boner, and they can't keep a boner. So that's what, that's what still denifil does, is it cuts that party poop or drug. Interesting. Brazilian wandering spider venom is a bit different. side effect of it is that it ups the nitric oxide in your system. So nitric oxide is your system telling you that you're aroused.

Yeah. And like telling you to like go, you know? Yeah. And so it just pumps your system full of nitric oxide. So your brain is just like telling your dick, hey, we're aroused, we're aroused, we're aroused. And you're not actually aroused, like you're not sexually aroused, but your penis thinks you are. And so blood just like keeps running in, even though your body. he's like not telling it that it needs more.

Wow. So like you can't shut that off. As long as that nitric oxide is in your system, it's bone time. Is that chemical reaction exclusive to humans or is it happening to other prey items that these spiders? Oh, well, no, it's not exclusive to humans because they actually tested this in mice. And they're giving them like shots of just the like the nitric oxide portion of the venom. And they're seeing like what minimum amounts they could do to produce like my own. boners. And they're testing this as like a secondary option for people. Like this is ongoing. People,

like, they're testing Brazilian wandering spider venom probably as we speak for erectile dysfunction. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So it is a really common symptom then in penis packing bite victims that they all describe it as like this is a very common symptom and they all describe it. Would be like the worst place to get bitten by one of them. It doesn't matter where you get bit. But I'm saying like if you're like a, um, elementary school teacher. Oh. You're just like, I'm just going to say, like, we've all kind of gone through that as, you know, middle school, you get called up to answer a question.

It doesn't go away. Like, no amount of picturing like. Church, if I just, like, got nervous, like, the blood rush would start happening and be like, this is the worst place for it. Like, I've had, my thoughts are pure. Like, why is this happening to me, God? I think he understands, you know. Anyway, everyone that gets this, like, they describe it as being very uncomfortable, very painful.

It works on a whole different part. Why is it painful? Because it works on a whole different part of the erection process than Viagoras. So it's like, it's not. Is it like burning? It's just like pressure. Like you have like blood. Blood is constantly pumping in.

Yeah. And so it's like, not only is like, are you getting a boner, but it's like really a big one. Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think about how to say this. But like, that can be really uncomfortable. Oh, yeah. Honestly, like, I've even heard from people that have like a bad reaction to Viagra that like if it lasts for more than four hours, you're supposed to go see a doctor. And that's really painful.

And sometimes they have to like cut to like relieve that pressure. Oh, really? Yeah. So it's not fun. Except for like a few weirdos out there. Yeah. I watched a video of this guy just having girls kick them in the nuts. Like they were all fully cloth.

Yeah. It's just like. He was like paying them to do it. It was like, what is going on here? I just think about these scientists that are like testing the stuff on mice and they're like at a party and they're like, oh, what do you do for work? And they're like, they give mice boners all day. No, you can see him kind of like look off into the distance and then after a second. I'm a mailman.

I'm an accountant. Yeah. All right. Well, because their venom is so complicated, it's energetically really costly for wandering spiders to produce it. And so they only use it when they have to. As a result, this is a spider that's not really prone to deliver a lot of venom when it bites people. So they most likely have some of the meat, the most potent venom in the world. Freudian's lip then.

The most potent venom in the world, like not just for spiders, like across the globe. Like, this is probably one of the most potent venoms of any animal. But this study in 2018 by Bukarechi at all showed that less than 1% of bites by Phenutrius spiders are considered severe. and the idea is just that like because their venom costs them so much to make they do a lot of dry bites they often don't like pump in a lot of venom because it's just like not worth it to them so a study showed that there was about 4,000 people per year they get bit by phenutrious spiders but only about 3% of those bites were serious enough to require anti-venom which they do have and those involved or those generally involve children younger than 10 and adults older than 70

And the reason so many bites occur is because they're inactive during the day. They don't have fidelity to like a burrow or a web. So they look for dark places to hide. So we kind of talked about this with the funnel web spiders where like when they're in mating season, they're all over the place, like looking for places. And that's when people get bit. With wandering spiders, they're constantly wandering around. And in the day, they're looking for anywhere they can to hide.

So they're hiding in like boots. They're hiding in towels on the floor in sheets. Bananas. boxes, bananas, log piles, lots of anthropomorphic habitat, or not anthropomorphic, sorry, anthropogenic habitat. All right, let's see. So 15 deaths have been attributed to Brazilian wandering spiders since 1903, but there's some doubt over a lot of those deaths, and only two have been absolutely proven to be the result of the spiders. So really quickly, I'm going to read just the reports of those deaths, because I think they're interesting,

they're not very long. So in a case that occurred in Itainium, San Paulo, a 40-year-old man, was bitten in the foot, he presented significant pain and generalized contractures. He died six hours after the accident. A seven-year-old child bitten in the ear had convulsions, opistonus, which is essentially where your back arcs and you can't like get out of it. And progressive paralysis and died 17 hours after the accident. There was another case in Franco, Brazil, where a 10-year-old child was bitten on the middle finger. They had severe pain, tremors, contracture, respiratory paralysis and death, they died 30 to 40 minutes after the bite.

In San Sebastian, San Paulo, two brothers, six-month-old and 18-month-old. The children woke up during the night, crying and screaming, dying soon after. Their father removed the sheets and found a spider, which was given to a local institute and identified as a Brazilian wandering spider. That's a jerk. Yeah, killed two kids. One night, it's a record. A three-year-old girl was...

World record, Guinness World Record? Yeah, that one. A three-year-old girl, been on the third finger of her right hand. She had local pain, alternating prostration, cold sweating, chest and abdomen pains, three episodes of vomiting. She was admitted to, like, critical care three hours after the accident. She had five vials of anti-venom, a lot of, like, care, a lot of stuff to try and stop her from dying. But she got worse and worse and worse, had a cardiac event and died later.

So those are the deaths that are, like, reported. But there is supposedly 15 of these deaths since 19. of three. So just so you guys have that in mind. All right, I got one more quick story for you guys. This one's from one that I found on YouTube. It's a channel called Clint's Reptiles. Clint, from what I can understand, he's a PhD, he's a biologist, guy that likes to talk about reptiles and spiders and stuff, and he interviewed the guy that told this story. Being from the tropical Amazon region of Peru, Ronald was aware of many of the threats that one can encounter in the jungle, including the Brazilian wandering spiders. Locally, the spiders were feared as

understood that they had venom that was potent enough to kill grown men, and Ronald had seen the spiders around the country house he was working at in Santa Cruz, Peru. But in early 2022, so just last year, he was screwing a light bulb into a wood ceiling at the property, wasn't even thinking about spiders, just concentrated on finishing this task, and as he reached up to screw in the bulb, he feels a sharp prick on both sides of his finger and instantly pulled back. So when you think about it, to feel it on both sides of his finger means this, spider, it's like fangs bit on either side. Oh yeah, because it goes like horizontal. Yeah,

this is a big spider. Like for its fangs to go all the way around like an adult man's finger. Must have been really big. So he pulls his finger back. Maybe he just had small fingers. Yeah, could have just had tiny fingers. Pulls his finger back and he felt weight on the end of it. And the large spider was still clamped down on top of his middle finger. So he's yelling and shaking and he manages to throw the spider on the ground. And his co-workers approached and they immediately recognize it as what they called a banana spider. or a Brazilian wandering spider. Where was he again?

This is in Peru. Okay. Like the Amazon part of Peru. So it was like latched onto his finger? On to his middle foot. You're fine. How many Peruvians does it take to screw in the light bulb? I don't know.

How many, Jeff? More than just that word. You know that the guy in the first story, what was his name? Matthew Steve. He would have been like, it was latched onto his finger. He'd be like right where I want him. Yeah, exactly. Takes his cell phone photo on it.

All right. So within 20. minutes Ronald's finger and his hand had swollen up to about the size of a cantalope. Much better reference. Yeah. And all the veins on his arm were bulging out. Huge. Some of these photos you see are crazy.

That's crazy. Maybe you just had a huge hand. He was feeling really cold. His heart was racing and he's starting to feel weak and losing the ability to walk. His friends raced him by boat to a nearby city and we are not, I'm not going to laugh at it. His friends raced him by a boat to a nearby city and we arrived at the hospital. hospitals the doctors were waiting with anti-venom. The original hospital, though, wasn't equipped for long-term care, so they rigged up an IV,

put him in another boat with this IV, and raced him downriver to another hospital in Akitos. So on the journey, his symptoms continued, he's shivering, he's freezing, his whole body is trembling, and he had a painful, persistent erection. This dude was fully torched for two full days before it started to call him out of it. No way. Jeez, these spiders, dude. So after he stabilized in the second hospital, he had five days of treatment with different medications. He got a lot better, but his arm had no feeling for a full week, couldn't move his middle finger for a month without intense joint pain.

The spiders positively identified as a member of the Funitria family or the Brazilian wandering spiders. On this video, he talked about how horrible and painful the experience was, how worried his family was and how bad it was for him not to be able to work for a long time. And he did specifically say the erection was like terrible. Yeah, no, I've been... Well, he's wearing workers' clothes, I think, too, right? Yeah. That doesn't give you a lot of space. You don't think they took them off.

I don't know, man. Leave him some privacy. The boat ride, at least. So this is, like, maybe asking too much, but, like, do people ejaculate at all? So I was debating whether or not to include that. That doesn't relieve the pressure. And I will say when I was reading the part about the dogs, which I really didn't want to have to talk about, they said that happened with the dogs. Like they would just ejaculate.

But nothing would change. And it's like not, but it's not relieving pressure. Sure. I'm sure any fric, after a while, any kind of pressure or friction would be super painful to. Well, and I think your body kind of like doesn't realize what's going on. So like prepares what it normally does when like when that's happening, you know. and so I think that pressure gets relieved sometimes still, but the pressure of the blood rushing into the penis doesn't.

So I do think, like, now that we've talked about them, what do you guys think? Do you guys think this sounds like the most dangerous spider in the world? I think it sounds like my last choice to get bitten by. I think I would still rather get bit by it than the funnel web. Really? Mm-hmm. And the main reason is because...

I don't want a two-day erection. No, but the venom load on those funnel webs, Like you could get a lot of venom and then you're like like when we talked about the woman who got bit by yorick the spider remember his name but not hers she like almost immediately had like really severe symptoms and that that spider like from what I was reading like they give a lot of venom like up to 70% of their venom load or the whole load in most of their bites and like these spiders aren't doing that so I think you have a much higher chance of surviving a Brazilian wandering spider bite you're probably going to survive both of them though because there's anti-venom for both of them. But everything I read about this spider and then there's a lot of videos of people like holding them online which I don't recommend like your guy Jack was doing it. Oh really? A few other people and he was like his video was good.

Don't get me wrong. And like he didn't have himself get bit by it. Yeah. But like I don't think you need to hold it. I don't think you need to hold it. Have himself get bit by the one. No one's getting bid on purpose by this spider. No one is with the funnel web either.

Yeah. I don't know. King of Sting. He's the one guy. There's none on there of purpose spites. But I will say these spiders bite a lot more people than funnel web spiders do.

But I think when you get bit by a funnel web, you're in more trouble. But I do think it's between those two spiders. I think it's either a Brazilian wandering spider or a funnel web. Yeah, I think that the funnel web, I'll trust you that it's worse venom. But like anything that has to do with my penis and pressure, I don't want those two painful pressure.

I don't want that in the same sentence as penis and me. And with the funnel web, I remember, she kind of had like, the woman that got bit by the funnel web, like, had euphoria, too. Yeah. I forgot about that part. Yeah. We almost kind of wanted that. But it might have been the combo of the drugs they gave her and stuff.

Anyway, I do think this is a spider that's been miscast. I don't think, I think if they were the most dangerous spider in the world. Miscast is a funny word. I like that. That's not the term for this. but like, mislabeled. Mislabeled. I don't think, if they were the most dangerous spider on the world.

Do my vocabes on point today? You're crazy, do they? They would, people would be dying from them. You know, there'd be a lot worse bites. Like, if 4,000 people a year get bit by these and only 3% of those bites need anti-venom, then they're not that bad. But when you do get a big load of venom

from one of these spiders, I keep saying it like that. The second I said, it's like, freezing. Do you think if Frodo got bit by one of these, would still be like, share the load. Oh, man. Does he say that? Anyway, I don't, I think they do have the worst venom.

From what I've read, when they tested this venom, it was much more toxic than pretty much any other spider by a good margin. But they don't deliver as much as a lot of these other spiders do. Okay. Let's do our ouchies. We're going to do them for Matthew Stevens and Ronald, the guy in Peru. I'll go first. I'll say for Matthew, he had discharged the next day.

he didn't have the erection symptom, I'm going to say four. For Ronald, I'm going to say seven. Because I agree with Jeff, I think the fear of just having an erection that won't go away is like... Two days. Yeah. Man, yeah. And, like, he also, like, he had to get moved around by boat and, like, his heart's racing and stuff. And they're pretty...

People that don't know that not that many people to actually die from these spiders think that you die from these spiders when you get bit by him. Yeah. So he might have been worried about his life. But he's still, yeah, you know, I'll say like, I'll say seven still. I'm going to do seven. Four and seven. Yeah, I mean, first guy, English guy, I forget their names. Matthew Stevens.

Matthew Stevens. I mean, he did think he's going to die, but it ended pretty quick. So, yeah, I think I'll go four. And then what was the other guy's name? Ronald was the Peruvian guy. Ronald. I'll give him a 10 for the penis. Okay.

Wow. Because now is every time he gets an erection, he's got to be. like, well, if it stays for two days. He didn't say that was the thing he was worried about. He's got this psychological part now. Probably has phantom erections. Phantom pain. Yeah.

I'm going to go with five for Stevens because I do think the moment you collapse on the ground, that you're starting to really, really panic there. It sounded really bad for a little bit. Yeah. Five, all things considered, psychological, physical. And I think I'm kind of more in line with Jeff. I think I'm going to go with a nighan for the other guy. Old camelop hand.

What was his name? Ronald. Ronald. Yeah, because, I mean. What size do you think his other hand was? I don't know. I don't know. He might have had like a huge palm, but like tiny fingers.

All right. Okay. What about the first spider? Getting frozen and then water, boiling water poured on you. You thought it'd be nice. I think it'd be terrible. It'd be like a spa treatment. How many ouchies?

Uh, I don't know. I'm given that spider, like, probably a girl. I'm going to say she got eight out cheese. She didn't die and she got released actually by the hospital staff later. Where? Like just on the grounds of the hospital. In England? Yeah, he kind of buried that lead.

Wow. Yeah, someone just like let her go. That's crazy. Did she have one of those gowns with like the back missing? You can see her little spider butt. Was everyone mad at them? Yeah. I would be mad too.

Especially if it's a female. It was like cold enough that they were like, man, it's just going to die. but yeah what the heck so they even died a bad death i'll give that one a tent all right let's we don't have to do the spiders all right just that one i thought would be fun yeah it's interesting to think about you know you went through it a bit yeah actually though i'm going to give it four because i don't think they have as much pain sensors i think you're probably right okay if you're chasing data down instead of seeing it in one place you need the intuit erp Intuit Enterprise Suite.

All your data in one place with built-in AI for real-time insights. Learn more at Intuit.com slash ERP. Okay, let's get into our categories. So for the first category, I asked you guys to pick the scariest, we're going back to our spooky thing, the scariest spider scene in a movie, TV show, or book. Mine that I remember is just one of those, like, it's just like someone telling a story.

Like one of those like TV shows where someone like tells you a story of what happened to him But there was a black widow in her shoe And she just like put on her porch shoes in this black widow bitter toes Was that our black widow episode? It was like it okay But it wasn't the exact exact I don't know But like yeah ours is the first time someone's done a pop culture reference of That's pretty flattering, Josh, thanks

But like I don't know that as a can kid really freaked me out for putting my shoes on for a while because I watched it as a kid. What's yours, Mike? I think I've already brought this up before on the show, but the scene at the end of enemy, I knew you're going to say that. Dang it. We should have a backup. I don't think we should like, no, I have a backup too.

Okay. I don't think we should explain it. Because I do think that's like, even though that movie's been out forever, that's just like such a good payoff. Yeah. So I don't think we should spoil it. Right. Okay.

My backup, I guess we can get a little bit more into it. Well, I'm not even really, but there's an, old science fiction movie, the incredible shrinking man. Oh yeah. If you ever seen it. And he like fights a tarantula. Huge tarantula. And it does like the ending move is kind of like Sam with Sheelab. But yeah, it was just a movie that my dad showed me when I was like really little. And that movie, it's really fun because it's just like, honey, I shrunk the kids. Yeah. Just from like forever ago. But then there's the spider scene that it really, really stuck with me. Freaked me out. I also picked enemy, but I wasn't going to actually pick it because I didn't want to spoil it. So I, the one I have to go,

with is arachnophobia, like pretty much the whole movie. Because I, like, when I saw that, we've talked about it. Like, it scarred me. Like, I was afraid to sit on the toilet, you know, for a long time. And just, like, there's a scene where a spider crawls into, like, a football helmet. And then the kid goes to play football and he, like, dies. Yeah, and the spider crawls out. Yeah, that would get me.

There's a scene where there's, like, a couple eating. That's a 15-yard penalty. It's a couple watching TV, and they grab some popcorn and the spiders in there. And then it, like, comes down on the, lamp and lands on their hand. And then later you see it like come out of one of their nostrils and go back in when they're dead. It's just a creepy movie.

So it's got to be arachnophobia for me. Do you think those robot spiders and minority report can't? Yeah, that counts. Like a cannon eyeballs. Yeah. I think another honorable mention for me are the like weird spider alien things in the mist that like are have acidic webs and stuff. I thought about choosing those.

But kind of oddly they're made less scary because they kind of have. have like faces. Like googly eyes. Like weird, yeah. That's so I thought the first time I watched that movie, when I rewatched as like, I really like the creature designing this actually.

What do you think of the Harry Potter spiders? I think there, I actually like thought that was a really effective scene. In the second movie, that's like maybe my favorite scene because you think they're going to like be safe when they're talking to the main spider, Erigog or whatever. And then he's like,

just like, J.K., I'm going to let you eat them. Is it Eragorn? Yeah. Eragon or Eragog. Yeah. I always think when like a spiders,

it's smarter than the people or something though that they like right or an animal it's like why are they living in the freaking forest yeah yeah can't be that smart yeah fair enough okay so my next category is i want you guys both to recommend two scary movies this Halloween season and i want you to say why you know i'll go first on this one i picked one that i think is like a a movie that i like to re-watch every year i wanted to do one of those like a really just spooky yeary good Halloween movie and that movie is Bram Stoker's Dracula, the Francis Ford Coppola one from like the early 90s. In Keanu.

Yeah, with Keanu, Anthony Hopkins. Gary Oldman. Like, I think it's Gary Oldman's best performance. I genuinely do. No. Scared me so bad when I was a kid I couldn't watch the trailer. Like, probably the trailer that scared me the most. I think it's like such a good gothic horror movie with like such weird directional choices.

and just like, I just think it's perfect. Like every year I watch it and I just love it. It's long, but I just enjoy it the whole way through. And I think it's weirdly beautiful and like the casting and the costumes are also amazing. The set design is unreal. Yeah, it's such a good movie. So that's my, that's my pick for like a rewatchable one.

And then my second pick that I'm going to recommend kind of a newer one, the movie Talk to Me, which was made by some Australian filmmakers. I just watched it yesterday. Oh, cool. Yeah. I saw it at the Film Fest. Sundance Film Festival this year and then went and rewatched in theaters really spooky, a really good take on like possession horror, ghost horror, and just like, I just thought

it was like a really, really good movie. It was one of those movies that made me feel like I was on a roller coaster ride. So I really, really liked it. I definitely recommend it. It is really scary though. So if you don't have high tolerance for like ghosty horror movies, I maybe not. That's nothing for you. Yeah, Jeff doesn't care. That's nothing. It really isn't. I I get, I don't know. I can't, I get too bored in those. Yeah. Wes and I, we were talking right before we started recording about how there's like a really

big distinction for me between horror movies and Halloween movies. And one can be the other. Horace big circle, Halloween's little circle. Right. And I think like some of my favorite Halloween movies are not really scary. Like I would consider like the first Harry Potter movie. There's a lot of Halloween vibes going on. I would say the third one.

The third one's great too. We joke about it. Hubey Halloween, really stupid movie. But it's got like pretty good Halloween vibes, you know, like the color orange and pumpkins. I like it's fun. Yeah, it's fun. A Halloween movie that like takes place on Halloween night is really fun. Yeah.

It would be my choice for like the main character who's a male gets like a chick so far out of his life. The biggest gap in like leagues. Yeah. You want to put it that way. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I settled on Paranorman. Great movie.

Love it. Yeah. Oh, that's a good take. And then this is kind of more like a window dressing. Like if you're out of party and you know, people can like handle this kind of thing. Phil Tippett's mad god. I don't know if you ever saw it from a couple years ago. No, you recommended it.

I just, it's just not really my wheelhouse. Sure. Yeah. I mean, so Phil Tippett, he's the guy that he's like the stop motion, practical effects, like the godfather of it all. And that's like, it's kind of hard to sit down and watch it full all the way through. But if you're at like a fun Halloween party and you got like little finger foods and loitering around, it's kind of a fun visual spectacle to have kind of playing in the background. Cool. Jeff? Um, yeah, I'll go with Halloween three. Okay. Which, so like Halloween movies originally, like, it was supposed to be Mike Myers,

but then they're supposed to just kind of go Halloween theme. Halloween three is season in the witch. right? Yeah. There's like how they like were planning to do it originally. So it has nothing to do with Mike Myers. It's like about like TV TV and like kids being hypnotized and stuff. And there's like weird robot security guards. It's a goofy movie, but it's good. Yeah, but it's like pretty fun. Yeah. And like there's a really great scene as someone just like ripping someone's head off. Oh yeah. I forgot about that. And then And the other one I want to say is one that, like, I haven't seen in forever. So maybe we can do, like, a Discord night because I know they watch movies. Yeah.

But I've been wanting to watch Edward Scissor hands. Okay. Sure. Yeah. I count that as, yeah. What, a Halloween? Yeah, I can see it. For me, it almost feels like more of a Christmas movie, which I know is weird.

I mean, my favorite Halloween movie is Sleepy Hollow. Yeah, me too. Any love for The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown? No, I never got in Charlie Brown at all. Yeah. any of the Charlie Brown stuff. I haven't seen it in a long time, but I liked it. Our next category is a new one.

We're going to play a little game of Would You Rather? So I thought up of just like a few kind of bad situations, and you guys got to tell me, would you rather? Okay. Would you rather take a six-hour road trip to Las Vegas in 95-degree heat in a car that has no AC or have a boner that last 10 hours? Ooh, 10 hours. Which would you rather do?

I've done the Vegas one. Okay, which one would you rather have? It's not like the worst. So I'll do Vegas. Okay. Would you rather listen to four straight hours of the baby shark song at like high volume or have a 10-hour boner? I think a lot of parents out there will have some experience on that one. The baby shark song.

Okay. How long was the boner? Ten hours. Ten hours again. I'm just going to let you know that's going to be in all of these. I'll be wearing like just boxers. if that's the case. Okay.

You have to watch Mission Impossible 7 three times in a row, just back to back to back. I'm taking the boner. Or a 10-hour boner. Boners all around. Man. Really bad diarrhea for an entire week or a 10-hour boner. Oh, so now you're just saying B-Jep for a week?

What's your answer? Diary. Rub it in my face, too. Mike, I know your answer here. Oh, man, diarrhea. Are you kidding me? All right. This is so sweet.

I said, I called it a doctor. doctor to get mine fixed. Your diarrhea? Yeah. Okay. We don't need to go into that anymore. All right. That's it.

I don't have any more. That was all the ones I could think of for now. Oh, man. Okay. Those was pretty, I had to think about those. There's a couple that are hard. Yeah. How many did you choose Bono for?

Just one. Just the mission impossible. All right. So our next. Maybe we'd understand it if we watched three more times. True. Yeah. I don't think it'd make any more sense.

All right. My next category is an underrated thing about October. It doesn't have to be Halloween-centered, just about October in general. My pick is going to be candy corn. I'm one of those people that just loves candy corn. I think a lot of people think it's like a trash candy. And I will agree with you if you get the wrong kind of candy corn, it's trash. But like just the Brocks, however you say that brand name, the normal store-bought brocks candy corn is so good.

So I think it's underrated. So whenever Halloween rolls around in places that I've worked, I do like little surveys. And candy corn is almost universally panned. Yeah, people don't like it. I think it's just the last candy corn they ate was like the kind you get in those little single serving packages or whatever and it's really waxy. Yeah. But if you get the right kind of candy corn, it has like this like buttery flavor and it's just like, I think it's delicious. The texture is really good.

It's like somewhere between like a gummy bear and like a marshmallow. I just love it. It's a good pick. Okay. So candy, you are saying. Just candy corn. Candy corn is underrated. I didn't say candy.

I'm just messing with you. I mean, okay, I'm going to say two because I'm not sure this one. Well, I don't know. One is like pumpkin spice. I think it's become like such a joke that I think it's kind of like underrated now because I really like a pumpkin spice coffee or having it for like coffee. Yeah. I think it's nice like.

having that seasonal thing. I think it's a stretch to say it's underrated, though. Because of how, like, overrated people are saying it is. I know. I'm kind of on the same wavelength as Jeff. Okay. I still think that's a weird zig. Okay.

Well, what's your other? My other one's weird, too. Yeah. So it's like October's the best month for sports. Because you got NFL, you got playoff baseball starts. Yeah. But the underrated part is the NBA starts, and everyone kind of forgets about that. And hockey.

And hockey. Yeah. So all four major, I actually, that was my second reason why October is underrated. So I'm glad you took it. The first one, it's a weird personal bent. So my birthday is in September. And the older I get, the better it feels the farther away my birthday is. And my birthday can't be any farther away than October.

It's like a personal. Yeah. And you don't really mind like the fact that you're getting older. You just hate that like anyone even sends you a single text to wish you're. Happy birthday. Never do that. Oh, man. You should have seen me.

I did it like two days in a row because I got the day wrong. He got it wrong and I was mad. We put you on Instagram. You're almost to 2,000 followers. Am I? Yeah. Has yet to do a post. No post or a story.

That should be a Guinness Book World's record. It's like what I'm most interested in on Instagram is how many followers might give without providing a single thing of content. Well, now I don't like I can't ever do anything. Yeah, now you have to like keep that. I wouldn't have anyway. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light, and I was transported to another place.

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Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never. All right, let's do some listener questions. So we'll start with some subscriber questions. This one's from Allison. Allison asks, if you had to be either slightly uncomfortably hot or slightly uncomfortably cold forever, which would you pick? Cold.

Hot. Cold. All right. Isabel asks, what's your go-to bagel order? I don't have one, but maybe like everything bagel with bacon and egg. Yeah. Mine's everything with plain cream cheese, toasted bagel. I don't, the more busy a bagel gets, the farther away from the bagel.

I like a salty bagel with like a fruity cream cheese in it and toasted. Okay. So that's just where I'm at. Although, like a breakfast bagel every once in a while is pretty nice with like an egg and ham and stuff going on. Yeah. Yeah. But I still just prefer like a nice simple bagel. Bagel.

This one's from Lona. Alona asks, what is each of your found a spider in the house procedure? Do you catch and release, squish, or does it depend on the species? It does depend on the species for me. If it's like one of the hobo spiders, like the ones that I know, if they bite, it can have like necrosis and stuff, I usually just kill them. I don't like try and catch them. How? Squash.

I just squash. Yeah, with my foot if I can, if not, with something else. Really? If it's a spider that I know isn't like going to mess with me at all, I catch and release. I just pick them up, throw them in the freezer, boil some hot water and pour it on top. Take them to the hospital. Yeah. So if it's in like the top corner on your ceiling west, you're trying to squash it with your foot?

No. If it's up there, I probably wouldn't do anything. But they're the ones that run on the ground. The ones that run on the ground that bite are the ones I'll sometimes kill anything else. I either just leave it. Like jumping spiders, I leave because they kill a lot of the other little bugs and stuff. But the bigger ones I flush them a lot of the time. See, I always let them go.

I do the cup catch. release when I can, but if it's not, this is going to sound bad. If it's not super convenient, squash. I kind of feel like they could survive a flush. Probably not, but maybe. All right, that's it for subscriber questions. Jeff, you got some listener questions. Sarah Ann Lopez asked, favorite Halloween costume you had as a kid.

Ooh, Robin Hood. I loved my Robin Hood costume. I had like the little Errol Flynn hat in a bow. Yeah. I was really into vampires, so I did like five years of vampire. costumes. We always had really cheap costumes as kids. Yeah. So I'll just go once my mom took a skeleton that we had like as a Halloween decoration, just like a paper skeleton that was on the wall and just like stapled it to my shirt. Yeah. And that was my costume. Yeah. So I'm going to pick that one just because of how like last minute it was. Like now looking back, mine's probably like when I was like two and I was Rambo. Rambo. That's a good one. It's pretty funny. Windinator 3,300 asks FMK. You know, like, mummy, a vampire, a werewolf.

Oh, well, I'm marrying the vampire. Edward. Because I feel like they're, like, romantic. You get to live in a castle. I guess you should think of Bella. You live forever. Yeah. Like, they, I think their lives seem like the best.

I don't want to live forever. I'm killing the vampire. What are you going to do forever? You can still kill yourself if you want. You can stake yourself through the arm. Okay, that's a good point. I am effing the werewolf. The mummy.

Pre-wrap. Killing the mummy? Seems fun. The mummy seems a little too dirty. Yeah, I'll kill the mummy. I feel like mummies have the most potential for, like, bad stuff happening. I'll eff the mummy. Jeff likes some old.

Mary the werewolf killed a vampire. Because, like, first of all, killing the vampire is going to feel the best of all of those things. how many people get to kill a vampire and then they like disintegrate you know and turn to ash? That would make you feel better than it. It would be kind of cool. Vampire or is it like a Nosferatu vampire too?

It's a hot one. I don't think there are hot money. The nice thing about a werewolf is like, A werewolf's only a werewolf on a full moon. So normally you're just like, you're living your life. But then when it's a werewolf, it sucks. Yeah, but then you would just turn into one too, right? Like just have them bite you and turn you into one.

and you just get to go do werewolf shenanigans once a month. Yeah. Have like crazy werewolf sex. Right. It's pretty good. I like your pick. I'm going to marry the,

but I'm sticking to vampire. I'm marrying the mummy. I don't think the mummy is very good at conversation. I just want to be left alone. Yeah. Just put it in its doom and like push it into a hole. Kill the vampire as we previously discussed. And then I'll figure out how to deal with the werewolf situation.

When that cross that bridge when we get to it. So you're like, Furries a bit, don't you? J.D. Munoz says, meow, meow, meow. Okay. Who would win in a cage, or this is K-Money, who had went in a cage match between Michael Myers and a grizzly bear?

Grizzly bear. Oh, Mike, what? No way. Michael Myers dies like a hundred times. It's hard to kill Mike Miles. Yeah, but it's not like he cut. Well, okay, but a cage match, like, his knife is bigger than any tooth or claw.

I just think the grizzly bear's attack is too violent. I think it takes him. out finally. But yeah, you're right. He is like kind of invincible. Okay. Evie Howard, end of the world. Would you rather zombies, robots, or aliens?

End of the world. End of the world. I don't want to be robots. No zombies either. Yeah, probably aliens. I think I'd pick zombies. Like I think a zombie apocalypse is the best apocalypse. Really?

Yeah, you just kind of get to like. Like on a personal level? I think your life gets so bad. I'd say robots because maybe they, Like, robots are making food now. Maybe I could still get McDonald's. You need to read, I have no mouth, and I must scream. It makes me not want it to be robots.

Well, if I could still get McDonald's and stuff. But you can't, like, with the zombie apocalypse, like, I feel like the world still has resources and it's still, like, a beautiful place. You just get to, like, shoot things sometimes. There might be McDonald's. With sog. Yeah. With zombies.

All right, last one. Three ring jessers. see, what animal makes the best ghost? Animal makes the best ghost. Huh. I would say like a jellyfish. It'd be fun to have little jellyfish ghosts, like, flying around in your house.

Because I don't know that. What is like a good ghost? Like, what are the parameters? Yeah, I don't know. I just think that would be a beautiful one. Yeah. Okay. No, I like that choice.

I like the aquatic aspect, but I'm going to go shark. Just imagine a shark goes. It'd be cool. There's probably a shark ghost movie out there. Swimming through the air. Yeah, we should get on that if there's not one. Yeah. Mike.

I was thinking a sugar glider. Okay. Hmm. I like it. I don't know why I was thinking that, but. All right. Well, thank you everyone for submitting those questions. We're going to do a couple more spooky episodes. We'll have more spooky questions.

And let's go into conservation. As far as I can tell, this isn't a species that's in need a lot of conservation. I think they're doing pretty well. I think they're pretty proliferent throughout their ecosystems. Be doing better if they can make a web to catch stuff. Yeah, I think they're doing okay with their strategy. I think their main threats are habitat destruction, just kind of losing habitat, like a lot of other animals. Yeah, but this is an animal.

It's like South America. Like with spiders, they can kind of figure out alternative habits. So they're doing pretty well. All right. And then finally, how much do we like this animal? I think I like spiders. I'm not like a huge spider person. So I'm going to say, I'm going to give Brazilian wandering spiders.

I think if I saw one in the wild, I'd be pretty excited. So I'm going to give them like a six. How about this? Let's do like the, we're doing clause rating. Yeah. Let's do it for like spiders specifically. Like do it overall, but like what would their cloud rating be if it's only spiders? How much do you like them for a spider?

Oh, for all... For all... Oh, like how much... Yeah, compared to other spiders. So, yeah, compared to other spiders, I would say this is like a nine-cloth spider. Okay. Yeah. And just for animals...

But just in general, they're a six. Yeah. They're definitely unique. It's... I mean, I don't know how many spiders are, you know, they pass up on the whole web experience or, like, can give people erections. Yeah. But, like, just...

I have a soft spot in my heart for spiders and snakes and stuff just because... because like, I have a hard spot for Spartians. But it just, it just seems like they're so overhated that I want to come to their defense a little bit. Yeah. We should call this episode die hard. But not come too much to their defense. No, but they sound great.

I like these spiders and I'm going to give them in nine compared to all the others. Spiders. Yeah, spiders. What about overall? I'll give them an eight. Seven. Let's go seven. I'm going to say, I'm going to go low. I'm going to go three overall.

And for spiders, I'm going to go four. I think they're impressive. And, like, I think that, like, it's cool that they exist. But, like, huge spiders, I just don't like as much as, like, small, colorful spiders. Yeah, they do look like a lot of other. They look like wolf spiders. They look like a lot of them. They look like a lot of them.

Yeah. They're cool. Just when they do their little dance. And they're dancing. is awesome. Maybe I need to re-evaluate that. But right now I'm putting them at like six, no, probably has to be like 842. Okay. All right. Pretty far down. All right. Well, thanks guys for listening. Thank you to everyone who made it through this episode. A lot of erection talk in this one. But I think it's really interesting. And like they are a spooky animal. But, you know,

just like every other animal that we talk about on this podcast, they've earned their right to live on our planet. They have, like, their important ecosystem players. They're, like, eat a lot of the stuff that makes us sick. They're just, like, they're cool animals, and they deserve to be around. And I think if you see a spider, do your best to treat it with respect. If it is one that's potentially dangerous and you have to kill it,

I guess that's okay. And I do that myself with ones that are potentially dangerous, but otherwise, remember that it's an animal that deserves to live. Don't flush them down the toilet. Yeah, you know? Put them outside. Yeah. I will start doing that.

Okay. I'm going to hold you to it. Okay. All right. Thanks, guys. Love you. Love you. Bye.