Spiders are not out to get you, they don't even know you exist, if they could understand

what a human being was and what we are capable of doing they would avoid us like the

plague. Rod Crawford is the curator of the Arachnids and related research collections at Seattle's Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture,

where he works with around 200,000 specimens from around the world, focusing on those from Washington State.

Rod has been working with the museum, collecting and studying spiders since the 1970s, and even made an appearance on Bill Nye the Science

Guy in 1996. His website called Spider Myths is a long-term and exhaustive project with the goal of debunking the many, many

misconceptions about spiders and I was lucky enough to join Rod in his lab at the Burke Museum

to discuss some of these urban legends and bogus facts.

I was pretty shocked at some of the myths that I believed wholeheartedly and I bet you will be too and maybe like me you'll walk away being just a little bit less afraid of these vital little creatures.

I'm here

here at the American hysteria.

I'm here with Rod Crawford and I'm so excited to talk to you so thanks for coming on the show.

You're welcome.

And we are going to be discussing all kinds of spider myths of which there are way more than I ever

expected and I have to admit that I've been duped quite a bit about spiders so I

would love to just start with getting to know you a bit. What was it that

inspired you to start debunking spider myths? Well after I had been working with spiders here for 15 or 20 years or so, I got to be sufficiently

well known as a point person on spiders that I started getting lots of public inquiries.

And gradually it dawned on me that the public inquirers the vast vast

majority believed certain things about spiders which were all wrong.

Well, I mean, I have to include myself in those because as I mentioned, you know, I have a pretty big fear of spiders, but I also have a very deep respect for them, right?

Which is a big difference.

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