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Speaker 4: Oh hey, it's that bottle of mustard you don't even
Speaker 4: remember buying, but you've moved with twice now Alli Ward,
Speaker 4: Oh we're walking into spider webs for smologies. Here's the deal.
Speaker 4: Smologies are shorter, edited to be kid friendly and classroom
Speaker 4: safe versions of our original episodes. So if you're not
Speaker 4: with kids, you can go ahead and have the full version.
Speaker 4: It's linked in the show notes. But hey, if you're
Speaker 4: looking for something shorter and less swarrier, you've come to
Speaker 4: the right place. Okay, here we go spider webs. Okay,
Speaker 4: I just want to say, if you're listening you're not
Speaker 4: a huge fan of spiders, I want to tell you
Speaker 4: that you're brave. I'm proud of you. And spoiler alert,
Speaker 4: this is not scary at all. We barely even talk
Speaker 4: about spiders themselves, but rather we just kind of focus
Speaker 4: on things that come out of their rears. So for
Speaker 4: anyone in your life who's a spiderfobe, just gently maybe
Speaker 4: send them this episode. Tell them it's a great way
Speaker 4: to admire the critters, and there are very few goosebumps
Speaker 4: in the road ahead. So one day we're going to
Speaker 4: work up to arachnology. We're going to talk about the
Speaker 4: animals themselves one day. But today is not that day,
Speaker 4: my friends. So today we're just walking into spider webs. Okay, spidronology.
Speaker 4: What in the dark, shadowy night is that. So unless
Speaker 4: you are a spider doctor, you probably did not know
Speaker 4: that there is a word for spider webs, and it's
Speaker 4: spid droins. Well, spid drowins are the main proteins in
Speaker 4: spider silk, and they're as strong as steel, but they're
Speaker 4: more flexible and they're similar to collagen or carrotin. We're
Speaker 4: going to get into it. So, yes, kiddos, this is
Speaker 4: a whole episode unraveling the mysteries and looking into the
Speaker 4: future of spider silk. What it is, how it works,
Speaker 4: how it may change all of our lives. So stick
Speaker 4: around to get a lifetime's worth of appreciation and context
Speaker 4: about what a spider web is, what is made of,
Speaker 4: how strong a single thread can be, how it's synthesized
Speaker 4: and labs future medical uses. Some superhero flimplam, transgenic goats,
Speaker 4: jeene splicing, and the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
Speaker 4: With Utah State Biology Professor and your new favorite spidronologist,
Speaker 4: doctor Randy lewisgious algy.
Speaker 5: Alogyng coolbeens.
Speaker 4: So if you could tell me your first and last
Speaker 4: name and how you pronounce it, Randy Lewis, Doctor Randy Lewis,
Speaker 4: Doctor Randy Lewis, walk me through a little bit about
Speaker 4: what is spider silk because I know enough about a
Speaker 4: spider butt to know that different things comes out of
Speaker 4: their silk glands. Yes, what's going on?
Speaker 6: So the spiders that we work with make six different
Speaker 6: kinds of silk in a gloom. They're the ones that
Speaker 6: make the typical round web. It's called an orb web
Speaker 6: that most people think about that spiders may okay.
Speaker 4: Side note, if you're wondering what invisible force has captured
Speaker 4: your face, what gossamer thready creation has veiled you at night,
Speaker 4: those are likely the work of orb weaver spiders. They
Speaker 4: are architects and artisans. They are craft spiders. Their talent
Speaker 4: is innate, and their spiral spider webs are just iconic. Now,
Speaker 4: Some like the Nephela golden orb weavers spin this brilliant
Speaker 4: yellow silk. It just glimmers. It's like threads of gold.
Speaker 4: So what's up with cobwebs. Well, spider web tends to
Speaker 4: mean one that is still inhabited, and cobwebs refer to old,
Speaker 4: abandoned ones, so once they get dusty, they tend to
Speaker 4: lose their tack. But a cobweb is also a type
Speaker 4: of web, one that's less of a two planed spiral
Speaker 4: net more of a three dimensional maze. We'll get into that.
Speaker 6: And they use the silks for very different purposes and
Speaker 6: they have very different mechanical properties, so you know, evolutionarily,
Speaker 6: you sort of have a lot of evolutionary tinkering that
Speaker 6: went on before we ever got to take a look
Speaker 6: at it. So basically, in most of the glands, there's
Speaker 6: a couple of them that they don't produce silk all
Speaker 6: the time, but generally they produce silk, put it in
Speaker 6: a gland. They have it in a form that's still
Speaker 6: not completely identified, but we think they're sort of very
Speaker 6: small little balls of protein that are present in there.
Speaker 6: Then when they pull the silk out, so they pull
Speaker 6: it out like flaws. They don't squeeze it out like toothpaste. Okay,
Speaker 6: so all of the silks have to be pulled out.
Speaker 6: And when they pull that the silk at the very
Speaker 6: end of a tube going down from the gland that
Speaker 6: they make it to the outside, all the silk then
Speaker 6: behind it starts to get pulled out because it's very viscous.
Speaker 6: On the trip down that tube, the sheer forces cause
Speaker 6: the protein molecules to basically line up. Like you can
Speaker 6: imagine if you were to take spaghetti start getting it
Speaker 6: down through a funnel. All the spaghetti has to line
Speaker 6: up where it doesn't go down. Now I'm hungry, So
Speaker 6: that's what's happening in this trip down there. When they
Speaker 6: do that, they actually protein molecules lock together and become insoluble,
Speaker 6: and that's how the fiber forms. Amazingly enough, it can
Speaker 6: happen in as little as ten milliseconds. So if you
Speaker 6: see a spider fall, that silk is solidifying in milliseconds
Speaker 6: as it comes out of the spider.
Speaker 4: And do they use a combination of their spinnerets or
Speaker 4: their legs or gravity what gives it that force? All
Speaker 4: of the above.
Speaker 6: So they can't squeeze it out, so they either have
Speaker 6: to pull it out with their leg. The other thing
Speaker 6: they can do is attach it to something and walk
Speaker 6: away from it. Okay, So the silk that most people
Speaker 6: are interested in called dragline silk, and it's dragline because
Speaker 6: when they walk away, they drag it behind them.
Speaker 4: Ok So, if you.
Speaker 6: See a spider crawling across the ceiling, for instance, if
Speaker 6: you watch it, it'll crawl for a little ways and
Speaker 6: then it'll start wiggling its butt. We can't stop talking
Speaker 6: about it when it does that. It's using another silk
Speaker 6: to attach the major silk to some kind of a
Speaker 6: protrusion on the wall. So just like a climber. You know,
Speaker 6: if a climber climbs so far that they put a
Speaker 6: piton or a hook or something in there, it's exactly
Speaker 6: what spiders have been doing for four hundred million years.
Speaker 6: So so rock climbers are a little behind on the
Speaker 6: And in addition, they can stick the silk to almost anything.
Speaker 6: Now they have trouble with something like teflon, but they
Speaker 6: can stick it to glass wonderfully. So you know, you
Speaker 6: put them in a glass aquarium, for instance, or a
Speaker 6: plexiglass aquarium, and you can see the little attachments where
Speaker 6: they put all the silk down. That is how they
Speaker 6: produce the silk and have to pull it out.
Speaker 4: And what are some other types of silk because you
Speaker 4: said six, okay, so real quick. They've got major ambulate
Speaker 4: or dragline silk, one that is just super strong. It's
Speaker 4: as strong as steel, but it's tougher and it acts
Speaker 4: as those webs spokes and the non sticky outer rim.
Speaker 4: And then there's minor ampulate, which is temporary kind of
Speaker 4: like a sketch while they're building the web. Then they
Speaker 4: have flulagem sticky silk for the inside spiral of the web,
Speaker 4: that little bullseye super sticky. And then to biliform silk
Speaker 4: is stiff eggsac business. There's acidiform, which is the saran
Speaker 4: wrappie sheet that they mummy their prey with. It's two
Speaker 4: to three times as strong as that first dragline silk.
Speaker 4: And then there's also aggregate, which is hardcore glue silk.
Speaker 4: And they're produced by four to six hairy nubbins on
Speaker 4: their undercarriage called spinnerets, and those each have a bunch
Speaker 4: of nozzles kind of like froyo dispensers, and then they're
Speaker 4: stretched out and it's extruded from the glands, from the spinnerets.
Speaker 4: Does it look like a glove slowly waving at you,
Speaker 4: palpating some goo. Yes, it does. But let's get back
Speaker 4: to the silk itself. And how different from a molecular
Speaker 4: structure are these six different types of silk.
Speaker 6: So all of them have what I call a lego sequence.
Speaker 6: So those are sequences that naturally when they make a
Speaker 6: fiber inner digit tape. So they literally have holes and
Speaker 6: pins just like legos do.
Speaker 4: So most of.
Speaker 6: The silks have some form of lego. Now it turns
Speaker 6: out some of them have longer pins, some of them
Speaker 6: have bigger holes, some of them have you know, some variations,
Speaker 6: but all of them have something that allows them to
Speaker 6: stick together to make a fiber. Then the ones that
Speaker 6: have stretch have in there something looks like a slinky,
Speaker 6: you know, at a nanoscale. And so when it stretches
Speaker 6: and you let go, it retracts. The difference is that
Speaker 6: it doesn't retract as fast as you stretched it. So
Speaker 6: in that retraction that loses heat and so it keeps
Speaker 6: from basically serving as a trampoline.
Speaker 4: And how are the spiders determining Okay, I know I
Speaker 4: need a dragline here to make the framework of my net.
Speaker 4: I know I need somethings to keep.
Speaker 6: It's all genetically programmed. It's absolutely clear. I mean, they
Speaker 6: have no brain in the sense of being able to
Speaker 6: make that decision. And so you know, in some cases
Speaker 6: we can collect the silks from the spider directly, but
Speaker 6: most of the time it's difficult. For instance, they know
Speaker 6: that they want to use the prey wrapping silk when
Speaker 6: they have prey. So it turns out if you can
Speaker 6: find just the right frequency on the spider, then they'll
Speaker 6: believe that they have something to wrap and now I'll start
Speaker 6: putting that silk out so you can catch that. But
Speaker 6: most of them are almost impossible to collect because you
Speaker 6: can't provide the right stimulus.
Speaker 4: It's true a web can act like a harp, and
Speaker 4: spiders here with tiny slits in their feet totally normal
Speaker 4: and threw little hairs all over their body. So with
Speaker 4: this markes board of silks, some have to be stronger
Speaker 4: and cooler than others, right like, some have to be better.
Speaker 4: And now, which spider has the best silk?
Speaker 6: You know, I think that's a tough question. There is
Speaker 6: a mark spider from South America that is argued to
Speaker 6: have the strongest silk. Now, it's strongest in the combination
Speaker 6: of stretch and strength because it stretches lots more than
Speaker 6: most spider silks do, not because it's necessarily strong. The
Speaker 6: variations in the silk, even with an individual spider are
Speaker 6: fairly large because they don't do a good job of
Speaker 6: controlling the diameter. Really, and whenever you measure strength, you
Speaker 6: measure it based on cross sectional area. So obviously if
Speaker 6: something's fatter, then it's going to be stronger than something
Speaker 6: that's thinner.
Speaker 4: Just side note, think of a braid versus a hare,
Speaker 4: or a rope versus a thread, or one string of
Speaker 4: the cheese versus the whole string cheese. I'm so hungry.
Speaker 6: So you know, when you say which spider has the best,
Speaker 6: I think it's which silk is the best, And that's
Speaker 6: clearly dragline. It's got the best combination of strength and
Speaker 6: elasticity to give you the you know, that unique combination
Speaker 6: that no man made material can beat.
Speaker 4: Is dragline silk. The one where you're walking into the
Speaker 4: backyard at night and you get a web on your
Speaker 4: face and you feel like you're going to die.
Speaker 6: Well, I don't know about the last part of that steamum,
Speaker 6: but certainly it's actually the combination of all of them,
Speaker 6: because the web has four different silks in it, Okay,
Speaker 6: so it has major miner, it has the glue, and
Speaker 6: it has the crapture spilled. So when you hit that, yeah,
Speaker 6: I think it's probably more the fact that it adheres
Speaker 6: to your face because of the glue. It also stretches
Speaker 6: enough so you know you can sort of feel that
Speaker 6: your face is going into it. When it finally breaks,
Speaker 6: it's already now, you know, sort of of attached all
Speaker 6: over there and stretched tight.
Speaker 4: Does that ever happen to you and you go, oh
Speaker 4: good one, guys.
Speaker 6: Not very often, especially because in the rocky mountains most
Speaker 6: of the webs are relatively well concealed, whereas in places
Speaker 6: like down south and you know, they stick them out
Speaker 6: anywhere because they have a much higher opportunity here and
Speaker 6: the Rockies. Most of them are where there's some light
Speaker 6: shining or something like that, or in a dark place
Speaker 6: in a barn. So it has happened occasionally in a
Speaker 6: barn where you know you just can't see them until
Speaker 6: it's too late.
Speaker 4: The ones that feel like very fine fishing line where
Speaker 4: you're you can almost feel it snappy. Though, that was
Speaker 4: stronger than I expected it, And who did I just
Speaker 4: wake up the thing? Even though I love spiders, I'm like,
Speaker 4: I definitely don't want to ruin your home. I want
Speaker 4: to be like Hurricane Alley just coming through ps. One
Speaker 4: of the most beautiful things I have ever laid my
Speaker 4: actual eyes on is this eleven by four foot tapestry
Speaker 4: woven from golden or weaver silk. It was on display
Speaker 4: at the American Museum of Natural History in New York
Speaker 4: in two thousand and nine, and it looks kind of
Speaker 4: like a table runner but made out of sunlight, or
Speaker 4: like a bedspread woven from an angel's laugh. It also
Speaker 4: looked expensive and took several years of milking wild malagassy
Speaker 4: spiders to make. It was not casual. And the work
Speaker 4: that you're doing with spidery tech, what types of materials
Speaker 4: do you think that you'll be getting to fabricate and
Speaker 4: how will that kind of change the way that we
Speaker 4: live potentially hopefully fingers crossed, all arms crossed.
Speaker 6: Yeah, right, So I think that what most people are
Speaker 6: not very aware of is is that we've been able
Speaker 6: to develop uses other than just fibers, and I think
Speaker 6: everybody when you think about spider silk, you think about clothing,
Speaker 6: you think about climbing ropes, think about lots of things
Speaker 6: along those lines, but on the fiber. And in addition,
Speaker 6: we think there's a real opportunity for composite materials, especially
Speaker 6: something like epoxy based composite materials that comes from two reasons.
Speaker 6: One is unique combination of stretch and strength, and there's
Speaker 6: no other materials out there that you could use for
Speaker 6: reinforcing to do that.
Speaker 4: So a composite epoxy material is usually made of say
Speaker 4: glass strands or carbon fibers embedded in a glue or
Speaker 4: a resin. So picture something made out of fiberglass and
Speaker 4: then imagine an upgrade to spidrin.
Speaker 6: The second is that we've found that spider silk can
Speaker 6: be made into an amazing adhesive. Well, we know ours
Speaker 6: adheres to plastic it us here ad here's to metilate it,
Speaker 6: here's to would I mean, there's almost nothing that we
Speaker 6: can't cote, using it as thin films, using it for coatings,
Speaker 6: there's almost nothing we can't coat. Everything from medical there's
Speaker 6: clearly interest in the defense department and lots of things
Speaker 6: in between.
Speaker 4: It seems absolutely unreal that it can be as strong
Speaker 4: as steel but a lot lighter.
Speaker 6: Sure, it's because it's got a combination of strength and stretch,
Speaker 6: and that's really what makes it unique, I think.
Speaker 4: Side note, like we heard in the Bones episode of Osteology,
Speaker 4: strength and flexibility is what make things work the best.
Speaker 4: So let spiders inspire you. It's okay to stand up
Speaker 4: for yourself and be strong, but maybe have some wiggle
Speaker 4: room or compromise when called for. And walk me through
Speaker 4: how you have managed to take spider silk and have
Speaker 4: it made in the lab and made through other organisms
Speaker 4: instead of having to hand spool anefhela spider in Madagascar. Sure,
Speaker 4: how are you doing it right?
Speaker 6: So you know, as part of the first week we
Speaker 6: did identified the genes that the spiders used to make
Speaker 6: spider silk protein.
Speaker 4: Okay, this is bananas and it may inspire this year's
Speaker 4: Halloween costume. Okay, So, almost a decade ago, Randy and
Speaker 4: a research team were able to splice spider silk making
Speaker 4: jeans into goats, and the goats then produced liquid spider
Speaker 4: silk in their milk and Randy was able to filter
Speaker 4: out the silk and then stretch it to the right
Speaker 4: consistency using machinery. So while he got to hold a
Speaker 4: lot of baby goats and pet baby goats on the
Speaker 4: head and essentially be a wizardy science shepherd of transgenic
Speaker 4: spider goats, there was a lot of milk being tossed.
Speaker 4: So then they spliced the spider silk gene into the
Speaker 4: DNA of silkworm moths, and rather than standard silk, those
Speaker 4: caterpillars now on this highly durable and really prized spider
Speaker 4: silk with much less waste. And when I visited his
Speaker 4: lab there were trays of chonky caterpillars just macha mancha
Speaker 4: manchin on ground mulberry pellets, and there are also other
Speaker 4: trays filled with soft egg looking cocoons that would be
Speaker 4: boiled and spooled with the silkworms.
Speaker 6: We were able to actually cut and splice the in
Speaker 6: our gene in exactly the same spot as the gene
Speaker 6: was for the silkworm silk protein, So now everything there
Speaker 6: is exactly the same as it was, except there's a
Speaker 6: different protein being made instead of the silkworm protein is
Speaker 6: making the spider silk protein and it proceeds to just
Speaker 6: put it right into the cocoon as if it were
Speaker 6: its own silk.
Speaker 4: And what did you start with? Did you start by
Speaker 4: putting these genes into E coli? And then did you
Speaker 4: move up to goats and then alfalfa and then.
Speaker 6: Yes, so we started with back here just because they're easy. Yeah,
Speaker 6: you know, we can put up with a new gene.
Speaker 6: We can pop it in the colion and get protein
Speaker 6: in three to four months. We then went to the
Speaker 6: goats and we worked with a company in Canada who
Speaker 6: had already developed a technology to get it into the
Speaker 6: goat's milk, so that we you know, we were able
Speaker 6: to take their technology and our technology, put them together
Speaker 6: and and in lip with the spider goats.
Speaker 4: Peanut butter, chocolate. Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy these pairings
Speaker 4: have nothing on spider goats. Now, what if you're too
Speaker 4: vegan for all? This business is outsourcing spydron limited to
Speaker 4: goats and caterpillars. Nope, they're also working on cramming the
Speaker 4: gene into and harvesting silk from alf alfa. Can I
Speaker 4: ask questions from listeners? Sure, Oh my gosh, listeners have questions. Okay,
Speaker 4: before we get into your spidy silk queries, a few
Speaker 4: words about sponsors of the show who helped make it
Speaker 4: possible to donate to a cause of the ologists choosing
Speaker 4: each week. And I realized this week that I forgot
Speaker 4: to ask Randy, so I rang them up on the
Speaker 4: horn and he answered it as desk phones man their magic.
Speaker 4: And then he said he'd like the donation to go
Speaker 4: toward the Women's Empowerment and Entrepreneurship Project in Guatemala, which
Speaker 4: supports women run farming initiatives to bring to market textiles,
Speaker 4: organic vegetables and free range chickens. And this was through
Speaker 4: Heifer dot org. Okay, now you may hear some words
Speaker 4: about some sponsors.
Speaker 1: Drivers know what trouble sounds like?
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Speaker 4: Okay your questions. Evelyn Jensen wants to know does spider
Speaker 4: silk come in different colors?
Speaker 6: Interestingly enough, the answer is yes to a certain extent.
Speaker 6: So one of the spiders that we worked with called
Speaker 6: in Golden or Weaver, and it's silk is actually a
Speaker 6: gold color. There's another spider that makes sort of a
Speaker 6: greenish huge silk, and then there's a whole family that
Speaker 6: make everything from sort of a brownish silk to a
Speaker 6: pinky silk, but they use it almost exclusively for their
Speaker 6: egg cases, so it's clearly to camouflage the egg case.
Speaker 6: So there's a pretty wide variety of colors that are
Speaker 6: out there, particularly for the egg cases.
Speaker 4: So spiders are just out there using their stiffest silk
Speaker 4: to make little Easter eggs. Moving on, Deli Dame's Ashley Kelly,
Speaker 4: Caleb Patten, Canon Purdy, and first time question asker Laurence
Speaker 4: all echoed Christina's question. Christina Neil wants to know, how
Speaker 4: do you feel about Spider Man? Is there even an
Speaker 4: ounce of truth to the idea that spider silk supporting
Speaker 4: the weight of a human being could be used or
Speaker 4: can be used in weaponry.
Speaker 6: So it turns out that that's a very interesting question,
Speaker 6: and we have answered it. We got answered. We got
Speaker 6: asked that question the first time from a children's program
Speaker 6: at the Canadian Broadcasting Company radio program and they asked us,
Speaker 6: you know, particularly, I guess it Spider Man two really
Speaker 6: stops the train, and ask the question, could he really
Speaker 6: do it? Yeah, So put the students to work on it,
Speaker 6: and the answers, yes, there's no question. So we you know,
Speaker 6: we took it like the last spit on it. A
Speaker 6: reading was like one hundred and twenty miles an hour,
Speaker 6: and we counted up how many cars there were and
Speaker 6: how big the engine. We got rough weights for those,
Speaker 6: so we were able to calculate how much energy was
Speaker 6: in that train and then go back and look how
Speaker 6: many times did he stick the web onto the wall?
Speaker 6: And the answer is he actually was about three times
Speaker 6: over having the ability to stop the train. That was
Speaker 6: kind of where we left it. Then we got another
Speaker 6: question and somebody came up with, well, how much would
Speaker 6: he have to consume to make this? But because it's
Speaker 6: all protein, right right, So it turns out we calculated
Speaker 6: that was about had to eat about eighty five pounds
Speaker 6: of steak a day. So we felt like, yes, it
Speaker 6: was possible, but clearly, practically it's unlikely that he could
Speaker 6: have managed to eat enough to make as much spider
Speaker 6: so protein as as he was able to shoot out.
Speaker 4: It's a sizzler. Keeping that in mind, are you hungry?
Speaker 4: Who else asked about eating? Let's see Brandon Butler wants
Speaker 4: to know is it true that spiders can eat their
Speaker 4: silk and recycle it?
Speaker 6: The answer is yes, several species do that, some of
Speaker 6: them do it actually on a daily basis.
Speaker 4: And I imagine then they can just kind of destroy
Speaker 4: and munch on their own web and rebuild it if
Speaker 4: it gets damaged.
Speaker 6: Right, Yes, frequently they don't do that. Usually when it's
Speaker 6: going to be repaired, they don't seem to clean up
Speaker 6: the old web. They just put a new one, you know,
Speaker 6: fill in that area with new silk.
Speaker 4: Oh, just imagine an HGTV show where you make a house,
Speaker 4: but your building materials come from your butt, and then
Speaker 4: when it kind of starts looking shabby, you just eat
Speaker 4: the whole house, make another buttthouse. It's rustic, it's resourceful,
Speaker 4: it's d Why why why? Emily asks, what are cobwebs
Speaker 4: versus spider webs? And why don't I notice the cobwebs
Speaker 4: until long after the spider is gone?
Speaker 6: So most so cobwebs. The proteins that cobweb weavers use
Speaker 6: are in many cases very similar to the proteins the
Speaker 6: orb weavers use. So the cobweb is basically a three
Speaker 6: dimensional net. It does not have any adhesive on it. Oh,
Speaker 6: so what happens is that the organism physically gets in
Speaker 6: and can't find its way out, okay, as opposed to
Speaker 6: being stuck on the web blight with an orb web.
Speaker 6: And so that's one of the major differences. That's why
Speaker 6: most of those have a more potent poison, because they
Speaker 6: got to catch them in and keep them from getting.
Speaker 4: Away, got it? So black widows right, exactly exactly. So
Speaker 4: if there's spun as a cobweb, there are a different structure.
Speaker 4: But also a cobweb can refer to that dusty web
Speaker 4: that's lost its stick and been abandoned but just think
Speaker 4: of how many more cobwebs you would have to clean
Speaker 4: up if spiders didn't do it for you by eating them.
Speaker 4: Thank you, spider Billy. Marina wants to know how do
Speaker 4: spiders use their silk to fly? I think he's talking about.
Speaker 6: Believing, Yeah, so blowing. Yeah. So basically, especially when they're small,
Speaker 6: there's a nest of one hundred hundred and fifty little
Speaker 6: leadbet spiders, and they got to spread out if they're
Speaker 6: going to eat anything. So what happens is they usually
Speaker 6: go up into something, they lay a big line off
Speaker 6: the end, and when the wind gets up, they jump,
Speaker 6: and their fate is now completely dependent on where they
Speaker 6: end up.
Speaker 4: Can't they get pretty high like ten thousand?
Speaker 6: Yeah, they've they've found them. I think they've found them
Speaker 6: clear into the thirty to forty I mean, the up
Speaker 6: as high as airplane as the jets fly.
Speaker 4: How do they not run out of silk?
Speaker 6: They don't. They just put one thing and they'll let
Speaker 6: the wind get it. So it's like they're putting out
Speaker 6: a sale. So they use it like a sale.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, So it really is wherever the wind blows.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you got that right, You got that.
Speaker 4: Right, okay? And what about the best thing about better
Speaker 4: silk for your job?
Speaker 6: I think the best thing about my job and I
Speaker 6: always say that you know, it's coming to work and
Speaker 6: having a realistic expectation that you're going to find something new.
Speaker 6: Multiple times a year. I have to say that I
Speaker 6: other than a day I have meetings all day, I
Speaker 6: would I have not dreaded a day come to work
Speaker 6: since I started.
Speaker 4: For thirty years. For thirty years, Well, thank you so
Speaker 4: much for doing this. That's such a joy and enjoyed it.
Speaker 4: Enjoyed it, okay. So ask smart people some silky questions
Speaker 4: because you'll never know what they know unless you ask.
Speaker 4: And I hope this has given you greater appreciation for
Speaker 4: our leggy friends. And this Halloween season, when you see
Speaker 4: a spider web decoration, just feel free to stop everyone
Speaker 4: around you inform them of the molecular engineering that goes
Speaker 4: into it. So for more on the topics discussed, you
Speaker 4: can head over to my website. For links, it's aliwar
Speaker 4: dot com slash ologies slash Spidronology. Also linked is Aliward
Speaker 4: dot com slash Asmologies, which has dozens more kids safe
Speaker 4: and shorter episodes. You can blaze Through, and thank you
Speaker 4: Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio and Shared Sleeper of Mind
Speaker 4: Jam Media for editing those as well as Zeke Rodriguez
Speaker 4: Thomas and it says we like to keep things small
Speaker 4: around here. The rest of the credits are in the
Speaker 4: show notes. But before I go, if you stick around
Speaker 4: to the end, then I give you a piece of advice.
Speaker 4: And this week my piece of advice is that when
Speaker 4: you're nervous about something, imagine it going the best way
Speaker 4: it could. Let's say that you have to give a
Speaker 4: presentation in class, or you're about to do tryouts for
Speaker 4: the baseball team. Just imagine it going as well as
Speaker 4: it could and then go into it with that kind
Speaker 4: of confidence. That's what I do when I have big
Speaker 4: steak stuff. Okay, I hope that helps all right? Bye Bye, soligious.
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