Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to brain junk. I'm Trace Kerr.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Amy Barton. And today we're gonna talk about a topic ripped from the headlines. But then we're gonna take it back to ancient Japan.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: Ooh.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Because that's the road I went on. And you're gonna come with me.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Okay, I'm ready. I got my seatbelt. I'm ready to go.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Okay. First, I want you to get in a calming position and think safe thoughts, okay? Because we're gonna talk about spiders for just a few minutes.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: Okay. I'm okay.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Specifically, giant venomous flying spiders. If you have not seen this headline, you've not been reading anything.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: I hate everything about it.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Yes. It's this spider with the skinny legs that go all the length of a finger, and it's the size of a jelly belly. It takes up, like, the full. They can be up to almost an inch. If it's a lady, I hate it. So they are called the joro spider, trichonophila clavata. And it's a spider that hails from East Asia, like China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan. It's here in the US now.
Yeah. So they are indeed venomous, and they are a lot bigger than the majority of us spiders that I interact with. Although you get into dry areas and we get tarantulas and stuff, it's not quite that beefy, but it is unusual and potentially invasive. It could kind of take over our spiders.
And the thing that people are freaking out about is the headlines just say it's giant, it's venomous, it flies. So what I wanted to do today is to bring us back to a safe place and talk about the good things about this spider. Cause there are a few. First of all, if the joro spider bites you, it's gonna be itchy, guys. You're gonna be okay. It is not going to hurt you. Its venom is not for us. It is for other bugs. It's painful, but not life threatening to us at all. It's definitely more life threatening to, like, butterflies and wasps and cockroaches, which can get caught in its nice, big webs. And its webs, if you're wondering, are the big, traditional style spider webs, which are orb webs. The spiral or wheel shaped ones are apparently called orb webs. So I learned a lot today.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Yeah. And, you know, I've seen pictures and they're, like, yellow and they're black and they're gigantic.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: And then they're weird looking.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: They do the thing that I've seen in australian spider videos where the webs are like, over your head, and they're just in the middle over your head.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: And they can be up to 3 meters. Is that right? Let me look at my notes. It was big. I'm like, are you sure?
[00:02:50] Speaker A: I can never go to the east coast now? They were. Because the article I read this morning actually was like, New Jersey, New York, they could be coming for you. And I was like, yeah, where's my note?
[00:03:01] Speaker B: About the size. It was meters that they could be. Because I'm like, how long? Meters? 3ft, right? Is this wrong? So the webs can be quite vast, but again, just itchy. And you're gonna see that guy coming. So that's good. And everybody's freaking out. Cause they're flying spiders. I just made you snore. That's like, I get a brain junk medal. You did, everybody. I just leveled up. Yes.
I don't even remember. It was, oh, ballooning. So everybody's like, they fly to. But I want you to come back to Charlotte's web when the babies are flying away to live their life. That's what they're doing. It's not like they're coming for you. They just get their little piece of flossy web and they're off into the world away from you. So that's nice.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: Yeah. But this is not a teeny tiny baby spider. This is like a tube of chapstick coming at you.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: And that's what led me down. This is. I looked up its proper name, because, you see, it's just in the news. It's just the Joro spider. And so then you go to Wikipedia, as all of us do, for our most technical information, our most accurate and technical information. And I encountered the legend of Joro Gumo, which led me down an entirely different road. So now when you see this spider, you get to wonder, is this a shapeshifting woman, or is it just a spider?
[00:04:32] Speaker A: Okay, now I'm intrigued. Okay.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Joro Guma is a yokai, which is a japanese creature of folklore. So it's like their creature, their.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: So it's like a mythological thank you.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: That's the word. I'm like, it's gone. There is a really big word that went away.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: It's called perimenopause. Welcome.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: So glad to be here. I'm gonna forget about that soon. I'm gonna be really warm. So this is largely from the Edo period writings in Japan. And jorogumo usually means a shape shifting woman. So it often starts as a spider and transforms into a beautiful woman. Who can control other spiders. Sometimes she usually seeks to seduce men, whom she then binds in her silken devours as one does.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: And in one version, it means, in the written word, entangling newlywed woman. So there's definitely some cultural things happening with all this, because in folklore, I find that there's often either the avenging or the vengeful woman. And this, you know, she's either saving people from a thing or she is wreaking her revenge. In one, she's depicted as a spider woman manipulating other small, fire breathing spiders. That's my favorite version of her.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: I was just looking her up. Cause I was looking at art of the. What is it again? Joro gumo.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: What does it say about the way my brain works that I did not look at pictures? I just wanted more stories. What does she look like? She's probably a sexy vixen.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: Well, I mean, like, in old drawings, it looks like a woman kind of hunched over in a kimono with, like, lots of little arms and little spiders coming off the arms. I'm having so much fun looking at these pictures.
More images. Let me just click. Images. Oh, this is probably a mistake.
Yeah, I would say. Oh, yeah. It's like a lady in a kimono, and then she has lots of extra little legs just coming out from the kimono.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: It's so weird.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: I don't like that.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: So in most of these stories, she gets to be truly either spider or beautiful woman.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: She is vengeful, but often the guy is a little sketchy. She's setting them up, and they're falling for it.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: Wow. I really love. Okay, so who. Where am I that it says this? Dcmp.org dot. They're, like, also known as the binding bride whore spider. Yes, the horse spider or entangling bride. Yeah, whore spider, actually. Whore spider sounds like a heavy metal band. I'm on board.
[00:07:12] Speaker B: Yeah, it does.
Let's start that. That's gonna be our first musical group.
There's also. No, no. I love that there's some regional lower in the regions with more water. Like, she allegedly is, like, the mistress of the waterfall. And so one local legend tells of a man who rested beside the waterfall basin when the Joro gumo tried to drag him into the waterfall by throwing webs around his legs. So she entangles him. He put the webbing around a tree stump, which was dragged into the falls instead of him. So he is saved. And so after that, the people of the village wouldn't come close to the falls anymore. And when a visiting woodcutter, who was a stranger to the area, cut a tree and mistakenly dropped his favorite axe into the basin. He tried to reach down and get it back, and the beautiful woman appeared and said, you must never tell anyone what you saw. And so he kept the secret for a while, which is great. But then, of course, he probably went to the pub and he had to spill his secret. And. Yes. And finally, at a banquet while drunk, he told the whole story, and he felt unburdened, and he fell asleep and never woke up again. There's a cautionary tale there. I'm not quite sure what it's meant.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: To be, but I'm thinking of people telling their children, don't go near the waterfall or the spider monster, the spider woman.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: That's true. Just that natural. Stay away from danger.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: Get you well. And then, you know, women, you know, we're conniving, we're weaving webs. We're, you know, so, I mean, it makes perfect sense. Although I don't like it.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: No, they're all kind of like this. In one version, the guy's corpse is found floating the next day at the falls.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: Yikes. Yikes.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: It's dark.
I thought I was sending this in a different direction. You could imagine the scary spiders are not so scary, but they actually kind of are creepy. If this is the version, if they can turn into ladies, you're like, hey.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: I know live spiders freak you out, but let me tell you a story where a man dies face down in a waterfall race.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: Sometimes they're worshiped for warding off water disasters. So that's good. Good.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
Wow. I feel like I'm seeing the origins of all the anime that my kids make me watch.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: That is exactly what I thought. I'm like, will's gonna like this.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: Where you have these horrible monsters that are also super sexy ladies. I'm like, I'm troubled.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Yes.
Yeah. So maybe I've just gone from bad to worse here. I don't know. But you think of Charlotte's web when you think of the flying ones. They're just flying away.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: No, I don't. I think horror movie. I think terror. Do not think Charlotte and terrific, you know?
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. That's fair. Well, I'm done talking about it, though. Now. Does that help? That's the bright spot in this episode. We're done. Yeah.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Yeah. No, they are all over the news. Cause they're just so.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: They're dramatic. Big. Yeah.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: And they are dramatic. You know, it's nothing because we. Okay. But a tarantula it's just like this little guy on the ground doing his ground stuff. These are up in the. They could be anywhere. It could be anywhere. I don't like that.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: That's true. Yes. At least tarantulas have the good grace to stay low in our area and. Or well south of us, and they're fuzzy, so that's a little bit more friendly.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: You know? It's like a little spider puppy. Although I have. I want nothing to do with it, but, like, it's not because these joro spiders kind of look like the souped up race car of the spider world.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: That's exactly it. Yeah. That's an f one spider.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Or, like, the speedy motorcycle that's cutting through traffic. It has that sort of feel about it.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: Arachnia. Yes. Was that her name from transformers? Now I have to look.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: I have no idea.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: Oh, I'm just going to tell you it is, and then we'll see if.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: It makes the episode. You know? It was right.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: That's right.
Yep.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: Wow. Well, I want to say thank you.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: But thank you for stopping Amy.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: That was so great. I'm glad you didn't tell me what we were going to talk about. No, it's not that bad, because, I mean, it's interesting, and it's so fascinating how.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: How the world can change in. It's just a spider, but it could change a lot of things around the world.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: And maybe we'll start coming up with some fun myths about gorgeous women.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: You know, I'm gonna stick with my selkie. I like the idea of the lady that's a seal. You know, like that.
[00:11:54] Speaker B: Yeah, that's nice.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Both forms, I can handle a little bit better than.
I'm gonna have to send you. I'll have to send you a picture of the lady that's in the kimono, but also with spider legs. It was a lot.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: I can't believe I didn't go looking for pictures.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: How could you not? How could you not?
[00:12:10] Speaker B: I don't know. There was more stories. There's so many.
[00:12:13] Speaker A: You're like, I just need to know. I need to read more, and then I need to share it. Okay, well, if you've now dealt with your arachnophobia in a mature way, you've taken some deep breaths. Don't go look at these guys. I will not have a picture in the show notes. I absolutely promise, because. No, thank you. No one wants that. You can go look it up for yourself. If you want to leave a nice review, that would be great. Thank you. We'd appreciate that. Also, we have some merch. No spiders on the merch. There are some orcas. There's some lovely cups. There's a cat in a box. That's great. Non newtonian fluid. So go check that out. Amy and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything. You never knew you wanted to know. I definitely knew that I did not want to know this, and I guarantee you will not be bored.
