Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says, spider
Speaker 1: he is our hero. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, everybody, quick,
Speaker 1: Spider check. Spider checks? Are the spiders on your body?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I've got three ticks, but no spiders.
Speaker 1: I'm not a record free I'm just kidding. I don't
Speaker 1: only ticks, I have a verbal what what so? Uh? Yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: no spider spiders on your body. You couldn't find any
Speaker 1: of mine either, Which is that that's something of a comfort.
Speaker 1: Why why do you ask? Well, I just we had
Speaker 1: to establish that before we could move on so quick.
Speaker 1: Round the table. How do we feel about spiders? Generally
Speaker 1: in favor? There are a couple of exceptions that wig
Speaker 1: me out, Lauren. I like them, like them, I do.
Speaker 1: I find them fascinating and cute. I appreciate them very
Speaker 1: much cognitively, but I think that they are the physical
Speaker 1: embodiment of fear. I I am. I am designated as
Speaker 1: the person who takes care of any sort of spider
Speaker 1: incident in our home. Spider incidents also any other type
Speaker 1: of creepy crawley sort of thing. So spiders are just
Speaker 1: one form I would say bugs, But of course then
Speaker 1: I would offend all people who are true lovers of spiders,
Speaker 1: which are of course arachnids. Uh. Yeah. So, but most
Speaker 1: of the time I just capture them. I do a
Speaker 1: capture and release program because I think spiders are incredibly helpful,
Speaker 1: so I don't I don't like to extinguish their little lives. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you don't like your entire body being covered in insects,
Speaker 1: you should appreciate spiders certainly. Uh. And I not being
Speaker 1: entirely covered in insects Another fun fact. Yeah, I get
Speaker 1: pedantic about the arachnid distinction too. I you know, I
Speaker 1: just can't deal with it. A while back, there was
Speaker 1: an AP and Associated Press story going out. There was
Speaker 1: just some little fluff piece about there were some children
Speaker 1: visiting the office of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and
Speaker 1: it said that the governor smashed a spider in front
Speaker 1: of the students. That was the story, but it called
Speaker 1: it a spider, and then a paragraph later referred to
Speaker 1: it as an insect but not the same thing. That
Speaker 1: that's like saying, um, a mammal and a bony fish.
Speaker 1: They're they're like separated by that much distinction. I think
Speaker 1: the headline show should have been politician Christie in between
Speaker 1: bridge uh bridge conspiracy theories, squishes, a possible insects slash
Speaker 1: a acted details to follow when you get more on
Speaker 1: this story. Uh yeah, this is complicates or or okay,
Speaker 1: So here here are two specific types of spiders that
Speaker 1: do give me a little bit of Willie's when to
Speaker 1: look at them, or at least pictures of them. I
Speaker 1: have not seen either spider moving around in person, but
Speaker 1: you've probably eaten both of them. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: The curved spiny spider is more is native to Asia,
Speaker 1: and I have not yet made my way there. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that I couldn't have possibly encountered one some
Speaker 1: other way, but pieces of your food somewhere it could be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: curved spider, that's the actual name, curved spiny. And we
Speaker 1: have a picture in our notes, which I realize not
Speaker 1: terribly helpful for you listeners out there. But the picture
Speaker 1: it looks almost like the body shape is almost triangular.
Speaker 1: And then uh, in the at the base of the
Speaker 1: abdomen are these long horns that extend outward. And that's
Speaker 1: actually a female. The males do not have the horns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit like a like a wishbone with
Speaker 1: a spider attached. I was going to say, it looks
Speaker 1: like Tim Curry and Legend, right, Yeah, in spider form, right,
Speaker 1: I do not want spider him Curry. No, it only
Speaker 1: it only choose insects, not scenery. Then I have the
Speaker 1: Ravine trapdoor spider, which you know, Joe, before the podcast started,
Speaker 1: you said, this thing doesn't even look real. It does
Speaker 1: look kind of weird because if you were to view
Speaker 1: the spider, uh, like like, let's say it's just crawling
Speaker 1: around on the ground. You were reviewing it from above,
Speaker 1: it looks like someone has cut it's abdomen in half,
Speaker 1: like it's it's just a flat ended abdomen as opposed
Speaker 1: to a rounded one. Yeah. In the back of its abdomen,
Speaker 1: it's just this flat disc with the design that looks
Speaker 1: like one of the Dharma initiative from Yeah, it looks
Speaker 1: kind of like it could be a poker chip or
Speaker 1: a coin even And and the thing is, this is
Speaker 1: a trapdoor spider. It digs a burrow and it crawls
Speaker 1: down in it. So if you were to actually see one,
Speaker 1: you would be more likely to see it's it's rear end,
Speaker 1: that flat rear end, and think, hey, that looks neat
Speaker 1: I should pick that up, and then immediately regret your decision.
Speaker 1: These are native to the state we live in. These
Speaker 1: are native to Georgia. And if you've never seen a
Speaker 1: picture of one, like I said, if you look at
Speaker 1: what it looks like, it's fake. In fact, I remember
Speaker 1: seeing comments on a blog post about these things where
Speaker 1: one of the well one of them said, no, that's
Speaker 1: a that's a spider that was injured by being cut
Speaker 1: in half and uh and then it healed. You should
Speaker 1: be ashamed of yourself. And there's like, no, dude, this
Speaker 1: is actually the way these things look in real life. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll try to remember to post some post some pictures
Speaker 1: on social Yeah, when this this podcast goes live at
Speaker 1: any rate, Yeah, there there's some spiders that kind of
Speaker 1: wake us out. But we're not just here to talk
Speaker 1: about the future of getting the willis. We're here to
Speaker 1: talk about science and technology. So I think we should
Speaker 1: discuss how spiders fit into our future, specifically how they're
Speaker 1: going to be inspiring technology that matters to us. So
Speaker 1: we're talking about bio mimetics again, that's right. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've established that spiders are very important to us in
Speaker 1: a natural way absolute cleaning up insects in the ecosystem.
Speaker 1: But by looking at natural designs that we find in
Speaker 1: the organic kingdoms, we can actually see, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: nature has been working on this design for a long time.
Speaker 1: There's no shame in sort of getting some inspiration from
Speaker 1: what's already been done. Sure, especially when you know you
Speaker 1: get something as completely effective as, for example, spider silk. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: this is the main focus of this podcast is spider silk.
Speaker 1: Now we're not saying that spiders don't have a myriad
Speaker 1: of other incredibly amazing attributes and features, but spider silk
Speaker 1: alone is phenomenal stuff. Yeah, spider silk is i will say,
Speaker 1: completely amazing. So it's very tough and ductile. It's able
Speaker 1: to withstand enormous stretching pressure before it breaks. So according
Speaker 1: to some accounts, spider silk you can stretch it out
Speaker 1: by about of its length without its snap. That is
Speaker 1: absolutely amazing, and we talk about ten style strength, which
Speaker 1: is that ability to withstand that pulling force before it snaps.
Speaker 1: And the fact that this has such elasticity makes it
Speaker 1: an incredible material. Well yeah, and it's the elasticity paired
Speaker 1: with how strong it is for its weight and size.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I was actually reading a really funny paper online.
Speaker 1: So if y'all seen Spiderman two, yeah, yeah, okay, so
Speaker 1: Sam Raimi, Spiderman's not some other Spider Man. This isn't
Speaker 1: the one where he disco dances down the show. No, No,
Speaker 1: Tony McGuire, Oh my godness, Molina as Cock. Right, brilliant, brilliant,
Speaker 1: uh performance, I would say, right, wonderful. So Doc Cock
Speaker 1: is fighting with Spider Man on top of a train
Speaker 1: and he basically he hits the switch and throws the
Speaker 1: train out of control. You know, there's no breaks and
Speaker 1: it's barreling down towards the end of the line. Right,
Speaker 1: And since Spider Man is not Superman, he actually wants
Speaker 1: to save people and not just let rampant destruction rain
Speaker 1: down upon poor average mortals. Right, I think you're referring
Speaker 1: to Man of Steel, not Superman in general. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Spider Man cares about people. So he wants to stop
Speaker 1: the train, right, right, How's he going to do it? Well,
Speaker 1: he tries a few things. He tries to sort of
Speaker 1: brace against the tracks, and that doesn't work. So then
Speaker 1: he gets the idea. He puts his body out on
Speaker 1: the front of the train and he shoots spider webs
Speaker 1: out into you know, he can shoot the webs out
Speaker 1: of his hands, and he shoots them out so that
Speaker 1: they attached to the buildings he's passing by as he goes,
Speaker 1: and this forms a kind of V shaped uh rubber
Speaker 1: band sort of of tensile strength to press back against
Speaker 1: the force of the train as it barrels forward. And
Speaker 1: spoiler alert, he does manage to stop the trains. It
Speaker 1: would have been kind of a bummer if if all
Speaker 1: of his efforts had failed and that people just plummeted
Speaker 1: to their death or something. Sure, but you know, many
Speaker 1: times in superhero movies, superheroes do things that don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have anything to do with physics at all whatsoever. Right,
Speaker 1: So could this actually be something Let's say that let's
Speaker 1: say that we were able to scale up the Spider's silk.
Speaker 1: Is that even remotely possible? Yeah? Based on a paper
Speaker 1: I read. Yes, I was actually reading this paper in
Speaker 1: the Journal of Physics Special Topics, which is an undergraduate
Speaker 1: journal run by the Department of Physics and Astronomy at
Speaker 1: the University of Lester. And by the way, this journal
Speaker 1: is delightful. I can't wait to read more of it.
Speaker 1: I've never discovered it before. But it's obviously not going
Speaker 1: to be like a top resource for ground breaking research,
Speaker 1: but it's more full of kind of fun and weird topics,
Speaker 1: like science fiction based things. And you know what, if
Speaker 1: we wanted to offset global warming by moving the Earth
Speaker 1: farther away from the Sun, how much farther would we
Speaker 1: have to push it back and it's radius. See, these
Speaker 1: are cool questions. I mean, obviously there are no practical
Speaker 1: answers here because that's not something we could do. It's
Speaker 1: all just kind of estimating. But using what knowledge we
Speaker 1: do have to come up with interesting answers to weird questions,
Speaker 1: that's fantastic. Uh, And so I really like it in anyway.
Speaker 1: This one paper was called doing Whatever a Spider Can
Speaker 1: by Brian Forster in Stone, and they calculated the force
Speaker 1: that would have been required to stop a train as
Speaker 1: Spider Man does in the movie and then they compared
Speaker 1: that to the resistance force that could have been created
Speaker 1: by real spider webs assuming proportional scaling, and they concluded
Speaker 1: in the end of the paper that if Spider Man's
Speaker 1: webs were proportionally as strong as real spider silk, they
Speaker 1: actually should have been sufficient to stop the train as
Speaker 1: depicted in the movie. See this is incredible. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just it does demonstrate how amazing spider silk really is.
Speaker 1: And also this is you know, that was key to
Speaker 1: the formation of the mythology of Spider Man. I mean,
Speaker 1: the whole point was that the silk that Peter Parker
Speaker 1: creates is supposed to mimic what spider webs are naturally
Speaker 1: capable of doing. And even back when when Spider Man
Speaker 1: was being created, everyone was pretty aware of the fact
Speaker 1: that spider silk is really strong stuff, particularly when you
Speaker 1: take into consideration how thin that those those individual strands
Speaker 1: tend to be. So I mean, it's it's great to
Speaker 1: see that not only was this sort of common knowledge, uh,
Speaker 1: it not only did it bear out, but it shows
Speaker 1: that this was actually not necessarily plausible, but a possibility.
Speaker 1: If you were able to scale that up, it would
Speaker 1: in fact, have been sufficient to stop that out of
Speaker 1: control car. Yeah, so I was interested in finding out, well,
Speaker 1: what is the toughest known spider silk. It's actually not
Speaker 1: just the toughest snow and spider silk, but it's the
Speaker 1: toughest known biomaterial. It's a form of spider silk that
Speaker 1: comes from the Darwin's bark spider, the Carorostrius Darwinnie that's
Speaker 1: a Madagascar and it's a spider that makes silk that's
Speaker 1: up to ten times tougher than kevlar fibers. And toughness
Speaker 1: is the amount of kinetic energy the material is able
Speaker 1: to withstand without fracturing. In a two thousand ten paper
Speaker 1: in pl Os One, the author's discussed how they identified
Speaker 1: the spiders a good candidate for especially tough silk by
Speaker 1: observing how it created gigantic orb webs that were like
Speaker 1: up to two point eight square meters, which is more
Speaker 1: than thirty point one square feet. Is terrifyingly enormously gigantic
Speaker 1: spiderwebs suspended over water sources like streams and rivers, So
Speaker 1: you can imagine like seals and deer catch the flying fish. Now,
Speaker 1: I think they were catching for catching insects coming up
Speaker 1: off the water, and the authors point out that silk
Speaker 1: of this kind would be a great inspiration for incredibly
Speaker 1: tough bio mimetic materials. So they are all kinds of
Speaker 1: things we could use spider silk for if we had
Speaker 1: enough of it, in situations where we need materials that
Speaker 1: are very light and very strong and very elastic. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this has enormous potential. But I think that, I mean,
Speaker 1: clearly what all of us are thinking about here first
Speaker 1: is clothing. Yeah. Yeah, you can make you a really
Speaker 1: really lightweight bullet proof vest or something like that, or
Speaker 1: you can make it I mean like fashion. I mean
Speaker 1: I want a spider dress. Well, you're in luck, and
Speaker 1: all you need to do is break into a museum
Speaker 1: and steal it, because there has actually recently been had
Speaker 1: an entire garment, actually two whole garments made from spider silk.
Speaker 1: So in two thousand nine, Simon Pierce, who is a
Speaker 1: British art historian and textile expert, and Nicholas Godly, and
Speaker 1: American fashion designer, revealed the result of this textile experiment
Speaker 1: they'd been working on while they were both living on
Speaker 1: the island of Madagascar. Again in the same place as
Speaker 1: the Darwin's bark spider. And this was a spider silk cloth.
Speaker 1: Now it wasn't made by the Darwin spark spider. It
Speaker 1: was made by golden orb spiders of Madagascar, and they've
Speaker 1: been known to produce very brightly colored yellow silk, this
Speaker 1: beautiful golden hue. So the project started in two thousand four.
Speaker 1: They had the help of a team of seventy workers
Speaker 1: who collected wild spiders for the project, and then another
Speaker 1: dozen workers who harvested the silk with hand powered extraction machines.
Speaker 1: The silk extraction machinery was actually inspired by a similar
Speaker 1: system more than a hundred years old, which the French
Speaker 1: missionary Jacob Paul Kembaway used to harvest filaments for spider
Speaker 1: silk textiles around the turn of the last centuries, around
Speaker 1: the year nineteen hundred in Madagascar. Um. But coming back
Speaker 1: to this project, the recent one, over a period of
Speaker 1: four years that they were able to spin the silk
Speaker 1: into thread and produce an eleven foot long by four
Speaker 1: ft wide piece of cloth out of spider silk. It's
Speaker 1: bright yellow. It's kind of strange to imagine handling. I
Speaker 1: just imagine incredibly exhausted spiders being very very proud of
Speaker 1: their work. Yeah, you you'd be pretty on target there,
Speaker 1: at least about the exhausted part. So producing spider silk
Speaker 1: is not easy. So we can make silk from silkworms.
Speaker 1: That's not that much of a problem. Well not not
Speaker 1: if you're a person. But have you ever asked a
Speaker 1: silkworm how they feel about? It's true, no one knows
Speaker 1: what it's like when you're a silk worm. Well you know.
Speaker 1: But but silkworm are relatively um docile creatures. I mean,
Speaker 1: they basically just hang out being worms and produced the
Speaker 1: silk stuff. Spiders, as it turns out, are less friendly,
Speaker 1: aus especially to each other. So spiders are cannibals. They're
Speaker 1: also really aggressive, aren't they in territorial while some are
Speaker 1: And yeah, you can't pin spiders up together because after
Speaker 1: the work is done each night, they'll eat each other.
Speaker 1: So apparently Peers and Godly tried to create a reusable
Speaker 1: spider farm at first, but um I wrote an article
Speaker 1: for the Economist where Peers explained that they'd have a
Speaker 1: collection of five spiders that would cannibalize itself down to
Speaker 1: fifty or so over the course of a few days.
Speaker 1: You know, I think if if Ford had to work
Speaker 1: with these kind of problems, we never would have had
Speaker 1: an assembly line. Yeah, just say if the machinery ate itself.
Speaker 1: So apparently, in in the more final version, the project
Speaker 1: involved constantly releasing spiders and then catching new ones. It's
Speaker 1: a very work intensive project. Exactly. Apparently they ended up
Speaker 1: using more than a million wild spiders for the production
Speaker 1: of this one cloth. One million, sixty three thousand to
Speaker 1: be exactly. You gotta figure some of those were recaptures.
Speaker 1: Some of the spiders are like not again. So the
Speaker 1: cloth eventually went on display in the American Museum of
Speaker 1: Natural History in two thousand nine. Uh, And people say
Speaker 1: it has really unique tactile characteristics, like it feels vaguely sticky,
Speaker 1: and that the cloth threads are both very very light
Speaker 1: and very very strong. I don't think I want sticky clothing.
Speaker 1: I worked pretty hard at my clothing not being sticky.
Speaker 1: Somebody had to wear it because they didn't stop at
Speaker 1: this one shawl. They created the first piece that they
Speaker 1: created a cape after that. Yeah, they made a cape.
Speaker 1: They made a cap up and they made a lady
Speaker 1: wear it. And there are pictures at her. There are
Speaker 1: pictures of her wearing it, and she did they make her?
Speaker 1: I don't know if they personally did. I assume she
Speaker 1: was some kind of model. I'm sure there are pictures
Speaker 1: of this one particular woman on the internet wearing this
Speaker 1: spider silk cape. She looks very serious, as she looks
Speaker 1: very regal. But you know, in every photograph she's thinking,
Speaker 1: you get this miracle of nature off my skin. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at it right now, and uh, you see what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. She seems to have the same same sort
Speaker 1: of expression of disdain that most fashionable models are are
Speaker 1: are told to cultivate. I'm not saying that they have
Speaker 1: disdain like you're not good enough to wear this? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what, I can't read the expression anymore. Beyond that, Well,
Speaker 1: if she's out there listening, you can ride into us
Speaker 1: and tell us what it was like to wear that
Speaker 1: spider cape. Yeah, let us know. It's a very specific
Speaker 1: call out there. But okay, so spider silk has amazing properties,
Speaker 1: but this project shows how difficult it is to mass
Speaker 1: produce useful amounts of it. I mean, obviously we're gonna
Speaker 1: have trouble coming up with a million spiders every time
Speaker 1: you want to make a pair of socks. So so
Speaker 1: clearly getting spiders to make this silk for us is
Speaker 1: not the most practical approach, especially if we want to
Speaker 1: talk about mass production, right right, especially for something like clothing,
Speaker 1: which I do want to point out this was a
Speaker 1: viewer question from YouTube, actually Mr Richard Miller and I
Speaker 1: and I mentioned the full name because that is his
Speaker 1: full YouTube name. UM asked us about this on on
Speaker 1: YouTube and our video about bio memetics, So thank you
Speaker 1: so much for writing that question in Richard. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: so spider silk from spiders probably not the practical solution,
Speaker 1: not feasible at all, but again, as we said, very useful.
Speaker 1: So is there a way we can make useful amounts
Speaker 1: of spider silk or something very much like spider silk
Speaker 1: without milking a million spiders. Well, we're working on it.
Speaker 1: The short answer at this very current point in time
Speaker 1: is not really but all right, so uh so, some
Speaker 1: researchers have created spider silk from silkworms. They they genetically
Speaker 1: engineered the silkworms, which produce hella more silk than spiders do,
Speaker 1: to create stuff that is not quite as strong as
Speaker 1: actual spider silk. It's it's sort of a hybrid between
Speaker 1: the two. Still pretty cool. So this way you get
Speaker 1: you get the benefit of being able to produce the
Speaker 1: silk without the concern of the product producers eating one
Speaker 1: another at the end of every day or biting you. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's fair, and and more silk than you would from
Speaker 1: the spiders overall, uh, fewer, fewer silkworms or spiders involved. Yes,
Speaker 1: you can also code bacteria to create spider silk. Well, bacteria, bacteria, Well,
Speaker 1: they're not creating the silk. There's there's a few steps
Speaker 1: in this process here. First you take and or engineer
Speaker 1: a gene that encodes the production of spider silk proteins. Okay,
Speaker 1: and you pop that gene into some easily programmable bacteria,
Speaker 1: like for example equally. Um. Yeah, it's it's nasty, but
Speaker 1: it's one of those that we know a lot about. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can just kind of scrape out part of its
Speaker 1: genetic code and be like here, instead of doing this
Speaker 1: other thing, we want you to produce this protein. Um.
Speaker 1: Then you must about with the bacteria is metabolism to
Speaker 1: give it the right building blocks to create the silk
Speaker 1: proteins and bam, you've got we little silk factories. But okay,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, that just sounds like that would leave
Speaker 1: you with the protein, right right, Yeah, So that's that's
Speaker 1: the first part. Once you've got this raw protein material,
Speaker 1: you need to purify it into silk fiber and then
Speaker 1: spin the fibers into the actual tensile silk strands. Um.
Speaker 1: Part of this involves stretching the fiber to align its molecules,
Speaker 1: which is possibly best done using a mechanical actuator, which
Speaker 1: is like a little spider silk taffy pole. I didn't
Speaker 1: think it was possible for me to get more disturbed
Speaker 1: as this podcast, and yet somehow it's And I don't
Speaker 1: even find spiders to be that ikey or anything, but
Speaker 1: this this is weird. With start with Tim Curry from
Speaker 1: Legend Spider, and we just go downhill from well that's
Speaker 1: all right, Well, I'm sure, I'm sure that it's gonna
Speaker 1: turn around and by the end of this I'm just
Speaker 1: going to be singing the praises of spiders. Well, are
Speaker 1: you ready for something really silly? Sure, hit me with it.
Speaker 1: What if instead of spider silk we used spiber silk. So,
Speaker 1: so we flipped the d around it. That's essentially the process.
Speaker 1: What is spiber silk. So one of the companies that's
Speaker 1: that's working with bacteria to create spider silk is called
Speaker 1: Spiber b e R. So the b being from bacteria
Speaker 1: I would imagine or something. Um, but they're they're talking there.
Speaker 1: I mean, they've got these grand plans that they're talking about,
Speaker 1: like building cars out of spider Shut up and skeptical
Speaker 1: of that. Well, okay, so here's the like over on
Speaker 1: tech stuff. We recently did a pair of episodes about
Speaker 1: carbon fiber and it's it's really impressive stuff. It's some
Speaker 1: like six lighter than steel, but five times is strong.
Speaker 1: And Spiber is claiming that they're artificial spider silk. Spiber
Speaker 1: silk maybe as as strong as steel and lighter even
Speaker 1: than carbon fiber. Alright, So, and of course lighter cars
Speaker 1: means that the the engine has to work less to
Speaker 1: move the car, so it ends up being a more
Speaker 1: efficient vehicle in the grand scheme of things. Okay, now
Speaker 1: I want to apologize and back off on my skepticism little. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I guess they're not talking about making every part of
Speaker 1: the car out of No. No, I imagine like the
Speaker 1: engine would still be made of engine, but some parts
Speaker 1: of it would be made the body that chases. It's
Speaker 1: it's why do I never pronounce that? Correct? I go
Speaker 1: through like nine pronunciations in my head. None of them
Speaker 1: is pronounced. So yeah, No, the chassis, the body of
Speaker 1: the car, like those elements will be made of this
Speaker 1: bider silk material we talk about. When you talk about
Speaker 1: carbon fiber, you're not really talking about a body that's
Speaker 1: made out of fibers. You're talking about a reinforced material
Speaker 1: that has these fibers that produce that that resiliency and
Speaker 1: decrease decrease in in weight as well. So some sort
Speaker 1: of thing. You're also talking about using fibers to spin
Speaker 1: a cloth and then reinforcing that cloth with a resin,
Speaker 1: which I imagine is the process that they are imagining. Right.
Speaker 1: It sets it into a specific shape and then it
Speaker 1: does not move out of that shape. You know, you
Speaker 1: can apply heat or whatever, and it's gonna it's going
Speaker 1: to retain the shape that you gave it due to
Speaker 1: the resins that you've added in the process. Okay, so
Speaker 1: is there anything else we can use to make artificial
Speaker 1: spider fiber other than fiber bacteria. Oh yeah, plants, tobacco
Speaker 1: and alfalfa in particular seem like decent candidates for for
Speaker 1: growing this protein. Um or hate goats, of course, I
Speaker 1: mean goats. I mean if goats simulator has taught me nothing,
Speaker 1: it's taught me that a goat's tongue is at least
Speaker 1: as sticky as a spider web. Wait, this is goats
Speaker 1: with a tea, not gobes. Not no, no, there's not
Speaker 1: goat bacteria. We're talking about goats, all right, So you
Speaker 1: guys might actually remember this one from from the headlines
Speaker 1: of the Internet. Some researchers introduced this gene that you know,
Speaker 1: encodes the production of spider silk proteins into the sequence
Speaker 1: that goats used to create their milk. So so you
Speaker 1: milk your transgenic goat, and then you isolate out the
Speaker 1: silk proteins and then you use those to create yourself. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: your goat never stops screaming and having nightmares for the
Speaker 1: rest of its life. The goats reportedly or otherwise normal
Speaker 1: happy goats. Well, and to be fair, we're talking about
Speaker 1: proteins that you didn't have to process in order to
Speaker 1: get the silk. You're not actually milking a goat and
Speaker 1: spider silk is coming. Never stop screaming a spider goat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I assumed upon first read. And that's not
Speaker 1: that's not how it's okay, all right, fair enough, because
Speaker 1: I don't want spider goats at all. Okay, it's swinging
Speaker 1: from skyscrapers. But okay, I really find this equally awesome
Speaker 1: and amazing and a little strange. Strange and I don't
Speaker 1: know the disturbing is the right word. It's just so unusual,
Speaker 1: Like it's amazing to me that people have come up
Speaker 1: with these ideas and been able to implement them and
Speaker 1: not turn out to be some sort of supervillain. That's
Speaker 1: the amazing part to me. Jonathan. I advise you to
Speaker 1: get used to what's weird, because reality is weird. That's true.
Speaker 1: Just getting weird. And we're not done yet. Let's hit
Speaker 1: me next weirder than you can possibly imagine. Hit me
Speaker 1: with the next one. Oh you know what, I know
Speaker 1: this next one because this is what I talked about
Speaker 1: in the video, the idea of studying spider webs to
Speaker 1: see what keeps them anchored to other surfaces in a
Speaker 1: really sturdy way. Right, So this is not just the
Speaker 1: material properties of the silk itself, but here we're sort
Speaker 1: of looking at the architectural properties, the more macro architectural
Speaker 1: properties of the webs disks they use to attach webs
Speaker 1: to surfaces. Right. So it's an interesting question. It's one
Speaker 1: that you don't necessarily think about, but occasionally it pays
Speaker 1: to think about things like what makes sticky things sticky?
Speaker 1: What makes glue sticky? What is it ultimately that creates
Speaker 1: that bond that's making things stick together? And there are
Speaker 1: different answers depending upon what material you're looking at, But
Speaker 1: this is one of those things that you know, we
Speaker 1: kind of take for granted, right, We're just glue is sticky.
Speaker 1: But why Well, in this case the spider silk. The
Speaker 1: reason why it's these attachment disks are so strong and
Speaker 1: resilient and able to hold a web in place is
Speaker 1: due to, uh, the geometry of those little disks. It's
Speaker 1: actually imagine a spider web like a strand, and a
Speaker 1: spider web as a thread, and then think of even
Speaker 1: thinner threads that are in a particular geometric pattern that
Speaker 1: are like a staple that are holding that strand in
Speaker 1: place to whatever surface you're talking about, whether that's a
Speaker 1: plant or your your a corner of of your house,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Um and scientists looked very closely
Speaker 1: at this and realized that this particular geometry and approach
Speaker 1: was extremely um effective, and they wanted to see if
Speaker 1: perhaps they could copy that, and so they ended up
Speaker 1: using a a synthetic model. They ended up pulling out
Speaker 1: a filament and then used uh, you know, artificial material.
Speaker 1: This wasn't spider silk at this point, but used the
Speaker 1: same approach in making these little manature sort of stitches
Speaker 1: or staples as an attachment desk, a synthetic one, and
Speaker 1: it works. They used electro spinning to create the fibers.
Speaker 1: That's where you use electric charge to draw a solid
Speaker 1: fiber out of a liquid, right, and in this case
Speaker 1: it's an extreme really thin uh fiber. But and even
Speaker 1: but even using even thinner fibers to attach it to
Speaker 1: another surface. And you know, right now, there aren't a
Speaker 1: ton of practical applications for it, but there are potential
Speaker 1: practical applications for this kind of approach, including using it
Speaker 1: in the medical field for things like binding broken bones
Speaker 1: together where you can stitch them together with this stuff,
Speaker 1: and it could make uh, the healing process much faster
Speaker 1: for certain kinds of injuries, which I thought was you know,
Speaker 1: I thought that that now, that's amazing. So I really
Speaker 1: was excited when I read about this. Uh and this
Speaker 1: is a fairly recent study that was was published, So um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what kind of inspired the whole video in the
Speaker 1: first place. Yeah, that, I do think that's really cool
Speaker 1: for biomedical adhesives or even just stronger industrial adhesives. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's always a good reason to make something real sticky.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. But I think there are a lot
Speaker 1: of other really cool uses of spider silk and just
Speaker 1: spider technology in general. One it I found was about
Speaker 1: water collection. You ever seen a spiderweb outside stretch between
Speaker 1: two branches after it's rained, or when it's dewey in
Speaker 1: the morning and with droplets and it's kind of beautiful,
Speaker 1: or like when that happens and then there's a sudden
Speaker 1: freeze and you get a frozen spiderweb. I love it
Speaker 1: because it means I'm less likely to walk through them, because,
Speaker 1: like in the video, that's usually my experience of suddenly
Speaker 1: becoming a ninja master, you know, flailing my arms around.
Speaker 1: Everyone else just thinks I'm having some sort of crazy fit,
Speaker 1: but it's just that I flogged through a spiderweb. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: there's actually something to that, to this water retention property,
Speaker 1: and we think that it might actually be useful. So
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, a group of Chinese scientists published
Speaker 1: findings in the journal Nature about the properties of spider
Speaker 1: silk with regard to water. So, spiderwebs are very good
Speaker 1: at collecting water from the air based on tiny changes
Speaker 1: in the structure of the silk in the presence of moisture.
Speaker 1: They have all these little tiny fibers sort of poking
Speaker 1: out from the main drag line silk, and those can
Speaker 1: change their shape with response to water, and what that
Speaker 1: ends up doing is collecting lots of water along the
Speaker 1: length of the web. So there is debate about whether
Speaker 1: the water collecting ability of the web is actually a
Speaker 1: trait that's been selected for, like whether that's something the
Speaker 1: spiders want and that's giving them a survival advantage, or
Speaker 1: whether it's just kind of a side effect of what
Speaker 1: webs do. Anyway, we don't really know for sure which
Speaker 1: one it is, of course, for the practical application that's
Speaker 1: moved right. So in any case, Yeah, the researchers were
Speaker 1: able to create artificial structures that mimic the water collecting
Speaker 1: properties of the spider webs. And it's worth noting that
Speaker 1: something like this could be really useful in basically any
Speaker 1: situation where moisture is precious, or where it would be
Speaker 1: advantageous to collect moisture from the air, say in a
Speaker 1: very dry climate cool. And then there is this other
Speaker 1: story that I like the idea of using spider web
Speaker 1: technology to make windows safer for birds, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the I don't know. I'm sure we've all had
Speaker 1: the experience of hearing a bird collide with a glass
Speaker 1: pane of glass. It happened during my very first job interview. Ever,
Speaker 1: it was very upsetting for everyone involved. Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: leaves an impression that literally, I mean certainly on certainly
Speaker 1: it's very sad actually, uh, And I you know, I've
Speaker 1: seen this happen uh a few times myself. I am
Speaker 1: a soft heart hearted person, so for me it's immediately
Speaker 1: a blow, a little bit traumatized, and I mean obviously
Speaker 1: for the bird as well. So one way to potentially
Speaker 1: head that off is to incorporate some reflective material inside
Speaker 1: the window that is reflective to birds but not reflective
Speaker 1: to human beings. You see, spiderwebs reflect ultra violet light,
Speaker 1: which birds are able to see but we can't. It's
Speaker 1: one of those reasons why if we're walking towards a
Speaker 1: spider web and these strands are thin enough, we may
Speaker 1: not know to sit and walk right into it. But
Speaker 1: birds are not going to do that. They're going to
Speaker 1: see the reflection of ultra violet light, assuming that there's
Speaker 1: a light source shining in that area. So that means
Speaker 1: that if you were able to incorporate a similar approach
Speaker 1: and and you know, move some ultra violet material reflective
Speaker 1: material into the material of the window itself, you can
Speaker 1: make it visible to birds while still remaining practically invisible
Speaker 1: to humans. Uh From I understand, most of the glass
Speaker 1: panes that are made this way, if you're really close
Speaker 1: and you're looking at it from different angles, you can
Speaker 1: sort of see where that those those patterns have been
Speaker 1: made in the glass, because it's not like it's a
Speaker 1: solid pain of ultra violet reflective material. It's more like
Speaker 1: a pattern that birds can see and thus veer away
Speaker 1: from in time instead of colliding with that that pane
Speaker 1: of glass. But I thought that was really cool too,
Speaker 1: just this idea of, Hey, you know, why don't birds
Speaker 1: fly into into webs more frequently? Ah ha, here's the
Speaker 1: reason why. How are we incorporate that into the design
Speaker 1: of stuff we make? Mhm, there's there's lots more things
Speaker 1: that we can do with with spider stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know there's um. Okay. So, so it
Speaker 1: turns out that the that protein that I was talking
Speaker 1: about earlier, if you use that to create a powder,
Speaker 1: it can go in stuff like shampoos and cosmetics to
Speaker 1: make your skin and hair feel smoother. That that is
Speaker 1: currently in use today. Joe, you were making a really
Speaker 1: terrific face in response to when I want to feel
Speaker 1: fresh and smooth, I rubbed spiders over every inch of
Speaker 1: my body. Um. Sounding more and more like it's a
Speaker 1: doctor weird segment at the beginning of an aquitine hunger
Speaker 1: force cartoon or um. Related to the biomedical properties that
Speaker 1: Jonathan was talking about earlier, you can use it to
Speaker 1: help heal wounds. Um. It is spider silk has in fact,
Speaker 1: traditionally historically been used as kind of a wound covering
Speaker 1: in the field. You can coat implants with it, which
Speaker 1: will hypothetically reduce the body's immune reaction to so you
Speaker 1: could you could reduce the chances of your body rejecting something,
Speaker 1: or use it to use spider silk to manufacture artificial tendons,
Speaker 1: you know, good and springy and and again. Yeah, uh
Speaker 1: and hey, it's conductivity of heat, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: is similar to that of copper, but it's only one
Speaker 1: seventh is dnse, So it could be really useful in
Speaker 1: like heat exchange systems like h vacts or electronics or cookware. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually read about that that you might be able
Speaker 1: to use spider silk to cool your computer in the future.
Speaker 1: You know, this is really amazing stuff, and it's why
Speaker 1: we wanted to specifically focus on spiders because while bio
Speaker 1: memetics in general is a fascinating, which fascinating field, just
Speaker 1: the fact that spider silk it has provided so much inspiration,
Speaker 1: is a great example of why it's important for us
Speaker 1: to pursue all levels of science, not just in engineering
Speaker 1: or biology, but you know, everything, because they feed off
Speaker 1: of one another. So yeah, we're glad that we were
Speaker 1: able to dedicate a couple of episodes to this. I'm
Speaker 1: sure we'll return back to it because it's impossible to,
Speaker 1: you know, just say oh, well, over and done. Let's
Speaker 1: move on, because I think biology will continue to be
Speaker 1: a source of inspiration and we'll we'll see other examples
Speaker 1: that will need to be talked about. So if you
Speaker 1: guys out there have any examples you think we should
Speaker 1: chat about in future episodes, or perhaps there's just some
Speaker 1: other topic that you really would like us to tackle,
Speaker 1: let us know. You can let us on Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: or Google Plus. Our handle it all three is FW thinking.
Speaker 1: We look forward to hearing from you, and you'll hear
Speaker 1: from us again really soon. For more on this topic
Speaker 1: in the future of technology, visits Forward Thinking dot Com,
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