Ximena Nelson (12:14)

It's a magazine for fans of radio shows. Look, here's an article on the spider lady.

Mishke (12:21)

When you're injured because some no good knucklehead nitwit has made your life miserable either through a car accident, a boating accident, a slip and fall, or some other form of carelessness and recklessness. Maybe something unfortunate that happened at work. I mean there are so many ways others can mess up and leave us injured unfairly. Some bone headed moon calf dunder pate screws up, you end up being the one who pays. But you can turn the tables. You can make them pay. I call it payback. I trademarked that. That's my phrase, payback. All you have to do is call Brad, Shaw and Bryant and they can get you the financial compensation package to make your world whole. Once again, Brad, Shaw and Bryant, they have focused on one thing, one thing, and they do it better than anyone else. They know the law. Find them@minnesotapersonalinjury.com. Ximena Nelson is a professor of animal behavior at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Devotes her life to the study of spiders. I like spiders, always have. Even as a boy, especially as a boy. When I saw her book the Lives of Spiders, I wanted to be a spider when I was a kid. The Lives of Spiders A Natural History of the World's Spiders. Hemina Nelson, thank you so much for being here. What was it originally? What got you to want to spend so much time with, with spiders? Was it because you realized in your work anytime you look closer at those small things in nature, they just become more and more fascinating? Or was it because there was this big hole in the research, someone had forgotten to really study spiders and you were looking for a gig and so you went with that. What prompted all of this?

Ximena Nelson (14:32)

I guess the part that I love about my job is the fact that yes, as you point out, when you look in depth at something, it's just so much more interesting. And I have the opportunity that many people don't have to be able to do that. But I first started working on spiders really because I wanted to work with a particular person during my master's degree and he worked on spiders. I had no special interest in spiders, but I really liked his approach to the natural world. And as soon as I started working with the spiders, it was just like, wow.

Mishke (15:03)

When I say that I find spiders so wildly complex and fascinating, I honestly mean in a way I would never say about dogs. And Americans love their dogs and I love dogs. And we think of dogs as something that we would love to learn more about and be around more. I just have a hard time feeling a book about dogs would be this interesting. And I mean in the way spiders layer after layer deliver surprises and wonders and jaw dropping moments, insights that just leave you aghast. That was the delight in reading your book. And you benefit from the sheer variety.

Ximena Nelson (15:48)

Absolutely. I mean, thank you so much for saying that. First of all, I mean, I think my job's done if that's what you say about the book and about spiders. But I do have to point out that there are more species of spiders in one family than there are all mammals. So there is a lot more to play with than just dogs. And they never cease to surprise and impress.

Mishke (16:09)

I did have trouble finding out what really is behind the fear. I believe you mentioned the fear of spiders is generally greater in the population than the fear of virtually any other creature.

Ximena Nelson (16:24)

Yeah, that's right. It seems to be the single biggest animal phobia and I really haven't found a convincing explanation for why that might be. When you talk to people, they say, oh, it's because they move fast or because they're hairy. It's a body plan which is quite alien to us, but so is the body plan of a crayfish. So I just have yet to find an explanation that I find really convincing. But there's no doubt that there is a large phobia and I do think that it's largely driven by peers or by parents because kids, before they go to school, if they don't have phobic parents, love spiders. I often get 3 year old, 4 year olds so excited to meet me and wanting to come to the spider lab and see the spiders and they're quite happy to handle the spiders. But as soon as I go to school, it's all over. Apart from one small group. They all do have venom. It's just that the venom won't affect humans for a few reasons. The toxins don't affect mammals because we're not their prey or. Or simply because they can't actually pierce through human skin.

Mishke (17:30)

I guess if I'm going to start somewhere, I'll start here with the predatory behavior I tried to figure out looking at your book. There's way too much that's interesting than we could ever get to in this interview. So I'll start with the predatory part. Every spider has venom, apart from one.

Ximena Nelson (17:47)

Small group called euloborids, which is one family of spiders which doesn't have that many species. But apart from that small group, all spiders have venom.

Mishke (17:57)

And the only other couple of things we can say where we can be fairly comfortable, this covers all spiders. All spiders can create silk.

Ximena Nelson (18:08)

Yes, we can definitely say that.

Mishke (18:10)

But all spiders don't create webs.

Ximena Nelson (18:12)

Yeah. In fact, only a minority do. That's one of the surprising things that kind of comes across in this book. And to be honest, when I was writing the book I study spiders and I was taken aback by that.

Mishke (18:23)

Yeah, that really threw me. The sheer variety of webs was crazy enough, but the fact that it was a minority through me. We can say they all have eight legs.

Ximena Nelson (18:34)

We can say they all have eight legs, they all create silk and they've all got two body parts. And that's pretty much the only thing that we can say with any consistency across all the spiders.

Mishke (18:43)

And that's the delightful thing. I mean, the wondrous thing about the book is then the whole world opens up because there's variety in all directions. I mean, the eyes alone, in some cases, four pair of eyes, that's the majority of cases. In fact, four pair of eyes. I am convinced 1,100th of 1% listening to this would know that. And then when you get into how good the eyesight can be in some of these cases. There was one spider where you talked about the eyesight being greater with this.

Ximena Nelson (19:15)

Spider than with a cheetah, one group of jumping spiders. But all jumping spiders have what we would call spatial acuity or visual resolution better than a cat. But there's one genus in particular that's pretty phenomenal. Pretty phenomenal. They can see to a resolution that's not overly dissimilar to ourselves.

Mishke (19:36)

If you go back 380 million years, you can find what you would refer to as the first true spiders. You would have to go 150 million years later before you would find the first dinosaur. And you would have to go 225 million years after that to get to people. These things have been doing their thing on this planet for a long time and evolving for a long time. But even with that, I find myself wondering why certain evolutionary characteristics exist. I don't understand the prevalence of cannibalism with spiders. By that I mean I don't know why that was necessary. That needed to be a part of their lives.

Ximena Nelson (20:24)

It's interesting, I've been asked that a few times and I don't have a good answer for that. I mean, they. I would argue that they are quite nutritionally good for each other in the sense that they have the exact nutrients that they need. And I argue that basically because I rear spiders and sometimes the easiest way to rear spiders is to let the baby spiderlings eat each other because they, the ones that survive are really fit and healthy and fat and well, they've got really good nutrition. And if you give them flies or other food, they just don't. They just are not as healthy. But that again is based on my rearing spiders. I don't have a good answer for you in terms of why it is that there is the prevalence of cannibalism. That there is. Having said that, they have quite a reputation for being cannibalistic, but actually they're not quite as cannibalistic as their reputation might suggest. There are a few species for sure where the females will often, if not most of the time, eat the male who is trying to mate with her, which is unfortunate for the male. And any spider will opportunistically kind of, you know, kill another spider and get a meal. But actually, to be fair, they don't tend to. It's not like they're typically going out to hunt other spiders unless there's a specific predatory prevalence of that particular behavior. And there are some groups of spiders that, that do hunt other spiders, not typically their own species.

Mishke (21:57)

But most cannibalism in spiders would be during or immediately after copulation, right.

Ximena Nelson (22:05)

Apart from siblings eating each other when they're very young, those two instances would be the majority.

Mishke (22:10)

I was just trying to figure out why males would continually come back in the evolutionary process to anything that would create that kind of danger for them. I just don't. Can you help me understand that?

Ximena Nelson (22:26)

If there are more males than there are females in the population, then basically the male who can absolutely guarantee paternity, if you like, is winning. Because the females often will not mate more than once. They will only mate once. A male that can do anything to try and improve his chances that her eggs will be fertilized by his sperm then has a selective advantage. And sometimes it is believed that some of the sexual cannibalism in some species where the male actually literally feeds himself to the female, it is so that essentially the female has a lot of time while she's munching away at him for. For his sperm to inseminate her eggs.

Mishke (23:07)

Male dark fishing spiders die spontaneously during sex. That's the Nelson Rockefeller way to go. Here in the United States, a female spider in some species will let herself be devoured by her spiderlings. There has been some suggestion that part of that is a piece of. Of where people end up with these fears of spiders or this sense that there's something dark and menacing about them, this particular behavior. There has been also some speculation that another little piece has to do with the way they move. Can you give us a little insight into what people might mean when they say, look at the way they move? What are they seeing?

Ximena Nelson (23:56)

Well, first of all, they're seeing the coordination of eight legs that can propel a spider pretty fast when it wants to. And one of the reasons that they can move quite fast and it's almost Robotic in some ways is because they don't have. When we move our arm or our knee, we've got muscles that extend the arm and then flex the arm and it's a nice smooth motion. But with spiders, they actually have hydraulic power essentially. So they shunt their blood, which is called hemolymph, and then that rapidly extends the legs.

Mishke (24:29)

When I would read something like this is just from your book here. Unlike most other animals, spiders use a lightweight hydraulic system to straighten their legs and combine this with immense power and sensitivity. The mechanics of spider locomotion has been used to develop soft actuators, the parts of a machine that convert energy into, into mechanical force, enabling movement. The speed and pivotal flexibility of the hydraulically propelled jumps of jumping. Spiders are used to develop lightweight robots for jobs requiring high pressure and fast motion, such as for hydraulic pistons and for safe grasping tasks in robot human interactions. More recent work is exploring spider inspired soft robotics as prosthesis. They're working on this with artificial limbs.

Ximena Nelson (25:22)

Quite a big area of research because spiders are very, very strong. They can carry many, many times their own body weight for hours on end and be not worried about it at all. And yet they also are very delicate in the way they do everything. And so if you could convert those two particular properties, what better than a prosthesis that's like that?

Mishke (25:44)

Yeah. So I start to combine these things, this extraordinary way they move, the way we can learn so much from them and take parts of what they do and work it into our world of mechanics. The extraordinary stories of their eyesight. And it goes on and on. You come across one spider that I just would have argued was impossible to exist out there. Could not be possible. And that is the spider that, that does all its hunting underwater.

Ximena Nelson (26:13)

Yeah, the diving bell spider. It's amazing. Yeah. They carry their own little scuba gear.

Mishke (26:18)

Basically spends most of its life underwater where it hunts aquatic invertebrates. Air breathing. This is where I don't even understand again, evolutionarily, why this would be necessary. It learned to build a web between aquatic plants and in order to go down there and survive without air, to create a diving bell, a kind of large bubble made of silk that it could get inside and stay breathing within, and then periodically go back and get more air into the diving bell when needed. Right.

Ximena Nelson (26:57)

Well, there's a will, there's a way, evolutionarily speaking. I mean, Webb's silk is hydrophobic in the sense that it repels water. If you build a, let's call it a web that happens to be a balloon shape and it's in the water and then you've got air, then you can actually literally go underwater and not have that competition that's just on the side of the streams, for example. You don't have the competition and you've got basically that food source to yourself. I can see how evolution might favor that when you've got competition in streams.

Mishke (27:32)

To go through all that effort to create a diving bell so you can go down underwater and survive there and create this little pocket of air and do your hunting. Would it have perhaps also been the case that you would have had fewer predators down there?

Ximena Nelson (27:47)

Yeah, you would expect that.

Mishke (27:50)

The web sizes, when you say webs can be the size of a truck, what are we talking about here? Size of a truck?

Ximena Nelson (28:00)

They can be 15 meters high, spanning trees, many trees, and 20 meters wide, for example. So they can be huge, Absolutely massive.

Mishke (28:11)

We have in our head this classic two dimensional image of a web. But there's such variety. There's a web that looks like the main big top tent in a circus, except in miniature. So these elaborate, three dimensional, wondrous structure.

Ximena Nelson (28:28)

Looking webs, those are actually really, really common. They're quite small often and so people don't notice them. I'd say that they're probably the single most common web that I probably tend to come across.

Mishke (28:39)

The weird thing that I would have said was impossible was the decoration of webs. Can you explain what is meant by decoration in some cases, actually bringing in decorative additional items and in some cases decorating with the silk itself.

Ximena Nelson (28:54)

Right, yeah. So there are two types of decoration that can be used by certain groups of spiders. One is silk based and those can be very beautiful. They can be in zigzags and Xs, radial things like a spiral. The function of this is still debated after hundreds of years. But then other groups of spiders will actually bring in leaves and they will decorate their webs with leaves or in fact, even their dead prey like that they've eaten. Instead of dropping it out of the web, which most spiders would do, they actually string it into the web. And those are thought to maybe act as decoys. So the idea is that maybe a bird or some other animal that might be potentially going to attack the spider instead attacks one of these dead prey or a leaf, providing the spider with a little bit more opportunity to survive, because there are lots of decoys there.

Mishke (29:46)

Essentially the diameter of some types of silk, more than 20 times narrower than a human hair. So it's really thin. And yet these webs can catch large prey. I would not have known without reading your book, that they can catch birds. And this silk staying intact after being hit by things, big things, has to do with this extraordinary makeup of this material. Steel is firm, you write, but it has very little elasticity. A rubber band is elastic, but when stretched too much, it breaks. Silk is unmatched when it comes to how effectively it combines these two opposing properties in a single material. Silk structures intercept prey, absorb the energy of the prey's momentum as it crashes into it, and then transmits vibrations that allow the spider to locate the prey and hold onto it. But it gets more intricate and complex than that. The silk becomes what is normally in the interior of a creature. It is a sensing mechanism. It is almost like a part of their brain.

Ximena Nelson (31:02)

Yeah, I love that. I actually really like that. I mean, they're such small animals and they can do remarkable things. And I think part of it is because they've externalized. A lot of the. A lot of their biology is external to their body, even their digestion. I mean, they actually digest outside of their body. A lot of their sensory system is the web. So they are essentially like a giant antenna, if you like, around the body. And that antenna is detecting tiny little things. It's like, I don't know, it's their own little satellite dish which provides them with data, and they can interpret that data absolutely perfectly.

Mishke (31:38)

I have to believe, as people who are peers of yours and operate in other areas, learn about the sheer variety that you get to bathe in. I imagine some, from time to time must say something like, you know, I didn't know that. I might have looked into those spiders 25 years ago when I got into this business. I mean, if you had people, colleagues at all, ever say to you, I would not have dreamed there was that vault waiting to be entered with this creature.

Ximena Nelson (32:06)

I would say everybody, every single one of us who studies spiders now would say that even 20 years ago, we wouldn't have had a clue how vastly complicated and diverse that would have been.

Mishke (32:19)

When you delve into your book, it's just page after page of, wait, what's next? Including. You're going to have to help me with the name of this one. What's the name of the one that does the extraordinary. I'm going to try to find it here because what you wrote about it was so great. The one that does the dance.

Ximena Nelson (32:39)

The peacock spider.

Mishke (32:41)

Yeah, the peacock spider.

Ximena Nelson (32:42)

There are several species in this group, and they are all spectacular.

Mishke (32:48)

Legs are waved in time with the artful presentation of a slew of red, blue, green, and orange colors on swiveling folds that unfurl like fans from their abdomen. Music of the dance produced by abdominal fluttering. How does an observing female react? Well, if she is not impressed, she lifts and wiggles her abdomen, signaling disinterest. Until that happens, the male's aim is to get the female's rapt attention. If she turns and looks away, he changes rapidly from the visual dance to singing to singing through seismic signals. Once her attention is drawn back to the male, he once again pivots to the visual elements of his courtship, since these and the vigor with which he shakes his colorful peacock like fans seemed to persuade her to mate.

Ximena Nelson (33:38)

They've got like feathery protuberances across that fan and they wave them around and they dance, raise their legs and move them in a very coordinated fashion. So they're using motion and they're using an array of colors, which is overwhelming, and contrast, which is overwhelming. It is mind blowing. And for a poor little female spider, seeing that in front of her, it must be just like there is a.

Mishke (34:04)

Spider that when there's a predator nearby or when it senses trouble, can go into a vibrating state, moving so rapidly it almost becomes invisible.

Ximena Nelson (34:17)

Those ones are really common. Those are the daddy long legs spiders that a lot of us probably have in the corner of some room or other in our houses. They're called whirling spiders quite often because they literally whirl and you just can't see them.

Mishke (34:30)

You compared it to a propeller on a plane.

Ximena Nelson (34:33)

We lose sight of the actual spider. It whirls so quickly that we, our visual system cannot keep up essentially with the speed of the motion of the.

Mishke (34:42)

Spider, the speed of spiders. Again, there's a whole bunch of reading you can do just on the speed. I think there's another one that if a predator is approaching, it curls up into a ball and can roll down sand dunes at over 100 yards a second second. It's impossible for me to fathom. The last area I want to go into is an area I would have assumed would be impossible with these creatures, and that is their cognitive abilities. No one would have been able to predict what's being learned about the work of their. Can I say brain?

Ximena Nelson (35:20)

Absolutely.

Mishke (35:21)

Spiders have the ability to learn, have a certain cognition. They're not operating solely on instinct. They can plan.

Ximena Nelson (35:32)

That's right. That's quite overwhelming. And I love studying this because I design experiments and I'll spend weeks agonizing about how to design an experiment to essentially test the limits of what they can do. And then they Outwit me.

Mishke (35:46)

I picture discovery after discovery after discovery that you don't see coming. Sort of leaving you sometimes sort of dizzy.

Ximena Nelson (35:53)

Yeah. Almost catatonic.

Mishke (35:55)

I hope those of you listening will go out and seek out this book, the Lives of Spiders. A natural history of the world's spiders. I haven't even touched the incredibly beautiful photography and you cannot imagine the variety in these spiders. And I don't know where you find anything else like this. I had never encountered anything and I spend a lot of time at bookstores, so I'm so delighted you. You put your time and energy into this, and I. I hope it's a. A smash success. And thank you for taking the time to speak to us from New Zealand.

Ximena Nelson (36:33)

Oh, thank you, Tommy. That's great. And I'm amazed that you picked up a spider book, to be honest. So well done. And thank you very much for reading it and for enjoying it.

Mishke (36:41)

Absolutely.

Ximena Nelson (36:41)

That's been really fun.

Mishke (36:54)

All right. That there's the platers. The platers. Thanks for that groove. Thanks to Hemina Nelson, the world's great spider expert, for appearing all the way from New Zealand. Her one thing. People, spiders. She found it. And not everyone's one thing is as cool as that. I look at people's one thing from time to time. Some puzzle me. I think often of Mr. Don Gorski of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. He was a shoeshine guy back in 1972 when, at the age of 18, he bought his daddy's old car and went to get a Big Mac for the first time in his life. And he has not eaten anything else since. He has lived on Big Macs and Big Macs only since May 17, 1972. Today I received a letter in the mail from Don Gorski of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, inviting me to Fond du Lac on March. What is it? 15th. Let's see what we got here. Here's Don's invite. Mishke. You're cordially invited to the eating of my 35,000th Big Mac. Don's gonna have his 35,000th Big Mac and he wants me to be there along with some other folks. He says, come on down to 699 South Military Road in Fond du Lac. Saturday, March 15, around 2pm I'll. I'll eat my Big Mac. I'll hand you your own little free coupon to get your own Big Mac, Mishki. And you can join me. Remember when we had our Big Mac together in my kitchen? Park across the street from the McDonald's and please be careful crossing Military Avenue. It's a busy road. Do I want to travel across the state of Wisconsin on March 15th and watch Don eat his 35,000th Big Mac? He eats two a day, one for lunch, one for dinner. And that is all he eats and all he has eaten for a very, very, very long time. I did have a Big Mac with him a decade ago. I sat in his kitchen there in Fond du Lac on a winter day, staring out into his backyard at a life size statue of Ronald McDonald. We each had a Big Mac. Don also had a Coke. He drinks six Cokes a day at least and has for over half a century. He's over 70 years old. He's doing fine, he's healthy, he's happy. Here's a little snippet of my visit with Don from years ago. Don found his one thing, one thing, just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don't mean shit.

Don Gorski (40:00)

It's kind of like you have chocolate for the first time or something. It's hard to describe it because I couldn't get enough of them at first. And hamburger to me was just the perfect food. I personally remember when I was younger and then I heard that McDonald's was coming out with the Big Mac. I'm sitting there like, someday I'm gonna eat them like crazy. I just knew it at that time. I'd ordered three Big Macs and a Coke. And then there was no state sales tax at the time and they were 49 cents, so it was. Coke was a dime, I believe at the time. So it was a buck 57 flat, no tax or nothing for a whole buck 57. I went on the car and chomped down my three Big Macs. And then I went did my shoe shining thing and then I went back to McDonald's, got three more, another buck 57, went back to work and then worked until middle of summer. I had to stay almost till 10 o', clock, but then McDonald's was open until 11, so I could still go there and get three more. And that's what I would do after work, get three more. Initially, I was eating nine a day just because I couldn't help myself. I took that first bite and it's like, man, this is the best food in the world. Just the perfect food.

Mishke (41:05)

You couldn't imagine having anything else. This was going to be what you were going to live on, right?

Don Gorski (41:10)

That's what was my thinking. And it went that way for quite some time. Of course, your body just naturally says, I'm not Eating nine a day anymore. All of a sudden I'm down to five, down to four, and then gradually I get down to where I'm eating two or three a day, which is more normal.

Mishke (41:27)

Choose something you love. One thing, right? Jack Palance. One thing. I knew a bank robber years ago. He's now long gone. He was an interesting fella, spent his life robbing banks. That was his one thing. His name was Charles Easy Ekman. He decided early on in life to become a bank robber. And he was prolific and he was proficient and he was laser focused. The only time he would ever get caught, and he would get caught and he would serve time only to get out and return to bank robbing. The only time he'd get caught was when someone he robbed a bank with turned state's evidence, got caught and turned state's evidence, getting a lighter sentence for himself by fingering Easy Ekman. I met Easy long after he had retired. And he did formally retire as an older man. He retired from bank robbing. I met him in a senior high rise facility where he was loved by all the old women. And they all knew him as Easy, the retired bank robber. This was many years ago. I'd visit him and I'd sit and listen and he talked about his long bank robbing life. He had mouth cancer at the time he was dying. It had metastasized. It affected his speech. But he was quite cheerful. And I would sit and BS with him. I'd put an old cassette player between us and record our conversation. And I just marveled at the man.

Easy Ekman (43:10)

I've been shot twice, shot at Stan a few times, knife right, beaten left or dead. One time we came out of Atlanta, Georgia. Somehow the alarm went off. I had a brand new buoy up the hill, down the hills. I'm going about 120next day. In the paper you would read what they said. They put.42 bullet holes in that car. I got buckshot in my neck and back. We'd go in and I'd get this shotgun out.

Ximena Nelson (43:42)

Boom.

Easy Ekman (43:43)

Get on the floor. You gotta scare him. You gotta scare people. He would get the money out of the drawers.

Mishke (43:51)

Why were you always the gunman?

Easy Ekman (43:53)

That's just the way it worked out, that's all. Always. You know the thing about this, we had an M.O. we never hurt anybody. Never. Never shot nobody, never hurt nobody. In all them years when you walked.

Mishke (44:09)

Into a bank, did you always pull the trigger on the gun to get everybody's attention?

Easy Ekman (44:13)

No, not always. Depending how many people were in there, what they Kind of look like, you know, we robbed two banks in New York one Saturday morning. Robbed two of them. Kind of funny about one of them. He's getting the money, you know, and I got the shotgun and this song was playing, the shadow of your smile. I said, who's the boss here? Who's the boss? This little chubby guy puts his arm up shaking. I said, come here. Turn that goddamn music off. The next day we'd always get the paper and the headline said, I'm Robert hates music.

Mishke (44:55)

That was easy. Ekman's one thing, bank robbing. I'm more of a white collar crime guy myself. I can't get into it right now, but as I like to say, catch me if you can. I knew a coffin maker years ago. He lived in my neighborhood. He built coffins, wooden coffins. Nice fella. Had a little storefront coffin shop down the block. That's all he made. Only thing he did just focused on wooden coffins. It was his one thing. You walked in his front door, the little bell would ring just like any typical retail operation and there he'd be making his coffins. It's the damnedest thing. There were coffins all around. You could walk up to them, check the price tag. I visited him with a recorder, bsed with him a little bit about his life making coffins.

Coffin Maker (45:51)

I got a lot of interest, people stopping in and curious, what are they curious about? A lot of people's reaction to this was like I reinvented the wheel. Well, I just dug up the wheel and represented it. I mean, this was what people expected 70 years going back. I mean, it was handmade wooden coffins. A lot of times in small towns and not so small towns, the local furniture guy who made a lot of his own furniture would also cobble together coffins. Well, I just kind of brought that back. I had a family in here last week who were looking at my product and their choice was something that I could offer them or a sixteen hundred dollar rental for a two hour wake.

Mishke (46:40)

Sixteen hundred dollar rental, that is a good business to go into. 1600 bucks, two hours, it's an expensive.

Coffin Maker (46:48)

Party at that point. I had a family in here a couple of years ago, going back and they said it was a five figure rental out in Arizona and your coffins run 500 to $800.

Mishke (47:03)

What kind of experiences have you had? One on one with people coming in.

Coffin Maker (47:06)

The door, it tends to be the guys and they come in in various shades of yellow and gray. And they have a finite amount of time left on the Earth. And they're picking out their caskets. That's a pretty humbling experience. Experience. I've always thought of it as taking control at a time when they're losing the ultimate control. I had a woman in and she's got a 5 inch tumor on her aorta. And any day that thing could rupture. And, you know, she picked out the one that she wanted. One of these gentlemen, he brought in his wife, who was in perfect health and such, and he was trying to get her to commit to buying one. And it was his way of just taking care of her. And she was mortified by the idea, Repelled by the idea. I have sold to people who have stated that they were going to be cremated. And they, in effect, didn't want to face the flames. It's a fascinating thing because it's so personal.

Mishke (48:13)

One thing. Finding your one thing in life, it can be tricky. Where's your true passion? Have you found it? Of course. Every now and then there are these freaks. There are these freaks who say, yeah, mishk. I focus on 10 things and I do them all pretty well. Very, very unusual to find those folks so unusual. They're generally well known. They're famous the world over. Ben Franklin, for instance. Try getting Ben Franklin to do one thing. Ben. Stick with printing. You're good at running a printing shop. Stay with it. But I want to be a founding father. I want to secure America's independence. I want to help form the first government. I want to be an author. I want to be a politician. I want to be an inventor. A scientist, a scholar, a philosopher, A diplomat. Diplomat. And I'm going to do them all. Well, Ben, damn it, I'm not going to say it again. Focus on one thing. Paul McCartney focused on one thing. Music. That's it. And look what he accomplished. What if half the time he had said, well, music's good part of the day, but I'm going to use the other half to pursue my passion to be Liverpool's number one pest control guy. What would we have ended up with in the form of music? My guess, John Denver. All Neil Armstrong ever wanted to be was an astronaut. That's it. That's all he longed to be. What if he chased another rabbit as well? What if he also wanted to run a beautiful colonial bed and breakfast in Vermont with his mother, Grace? Neil, can you pick up the lace curtains today? Well, mom, actually, no, I can't. I have to spend the day in a flight simulator. Neil, we talked about this. I told you to focus on One thing now, drop that astronaut nonsense. Well, let's go to the phones, huh? Let's go to the phones and talk to the people. Always good to check in with people. I'm locked into this little studio here. It's dark. I'm alone, and the people are out there. I know they're out there there, and I'm gonna find them. I'm gonna go searching for him, and I'm gonna talk to him.

Ximena Nelson (51:02)

Hello?

Kevin Doran (51:02)

Matt here?

Mishke (51:03)

Matthew? Yeah, it's Mishke.

Kevin Doran (51:07)

Mishke. How are you doing?

Mishke (51:09)

Good. What are you up to?

Kevin Doran (51:12)

I was just doing some plumbing with my son earlier.

Mishke (51:16)

Is that your one thing that you've devoted your life to? Yeah.

Kevin Doran (51:21)

Yeah, pretty much. I was gonna go on insurance sales, and I decided, you know what? Plumbing's a lot funer. It's tangible. It's right there. People call me when they need me, and they're happy when I leave.

Mishke (51:31)

I think you dodged a bullet not going with insurance sales. I don't know that you'd be alive still today. And when I say that, I mean you'd be dead at your own hands.

Kevin Doran (51:41)

I tend to agree with you there.

Mishke (51:43)

There may be little kids who say, when I grow up, I want to be an insurance salesman. Haven't found one yet, but I'll tell you something. There's all sorts of kids who love messing around under the sink. My brother used to drink the stuff under there, and, boy, would he get in trouble. Many, many trips to the hospital in an ambulance. But he liked it under there. It was like his little playroom. And my parents, knowing that, still stored all that nasty stuff under there. And he'd drink it and go to the hospital. And today he's a zombie.

Kevin Doran (52:14)

Oh, my goodness. Yeah, that's not good.

Mishke (52:17)

They weren't parents of the year. I gotta tell you, though, in the old days, I used to hear stories. This was back in the 70s. I used to hear stories of some pretty wild stuff that happened with plumbers going into houses of private people. I mean, there'd be some interesting encounters, unusual behavior. And some things got a little bit. I don't want to go too much into it, but you have stuff like that ever.

Kevin Doran (52:42)

I think the strangest thing I run into was we were in public bathrooms, a public women's bathroom. We were doing some work above the ceiling, and we had the. We had our carts in front of the door and signs that, you know, don't come in. Men working. And wouldn't you know it, I'm above the ceiling waiting for my partner. To hand me a pipe, and in comes the lady, bulldozes right past him into the stall right below me and has at it while I'm sitting there. There's nothing I can do.

Mishke (53:08)

Well, there was something you could do. You could have had some fun. I certainly would not say there was nothing to do there. There were about nine things to do, and you could pick from them various entertaining things you could have done. I don't know what you had with you that you could have dropped on her head or. Or sounds you could have made funny little sounds, animal sounds. I mean, we are never without options when we get into these situations. Sometimes to do nothing is the big mistake.

Kevin Doran (53:37)

Well, you know, it was going all right until she looked up, and then I. Then I kind of froze. And I don't remember much after that.

Mishke (53:45)

There's an ideal thing to do there. There's the perfect thing. We're not finding it.

Kevin Doran (53:49)

No, it's a tough one. It's a tough one. You're 10ft in the air, ceiling tiles open below you, and you got one view, and that's it.

Mishke (53:57)

You know what you do there? You say what nurses say when they see your popo. You know, when they see you without any underwear on, and they say, oh, I've seen a bunch of those. You yell down to her, you know, I've been around plumbing all my life. I've seen that. What you got right there. At least one other time. You wouldn't be able to say you saw it all that often, but maybe one other time, maybe it was a family member. Well, I've enjoyed visiting with you.

Kevin Doran (54:25)

Same here, Misky.

Mishke (54:26)

I hope to talk to you again.

Kevin Doran (54:27)

Well, anytime.

Mishke (54:28)

Okay. So long.

Ximena Nelson (54:46)

It.

Kevin Doran (55:18)

This is Joel Lassing. Please leave a message. The mailbox is full and cannot accept any messages at this time. Goodbye.

Mishke (55:28)

How many people are trying to get a hold of you and leaving messages and they're piling up like mail outside your front door when you're on vacation and no one gets to leave anything for you. You don't know how many people are trying to get a hold of you because your box is all filled up. What is the point of even having voicemail now? What happens if I show up at your front door? Can I even find your house through the shrubbery? Then when I get inside, will it be all dark, just a maze of garbage bags? Have to work my way through finding you in the back room alone in the corner with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. What happened to you? You're not a typical listener, are ya? You gave me your number. You said I could call. Who are you? What are you? You're a hoarder, A loner, a lost soul. One of my great listeners, and I'm so glad to have you. Couldn't make it without you. I built my damn career on people like you. God bless you. Road into town on a crippled horse Got fired from a cattle drive way up north. Want to smoke a Marlboro Ride in a dump truck Pop me a cold brew Talk about my hard luck Dirty up my blue jeans Build in a new shed Beat up my best friend Leaving lying half dead. Hello? Hello there. John.

Kevin Doran (57:37)

Miski?

Mishke (57:37)

Yeah.

Kevin Doran (57:39)

Wow. Hi.

Mishke (57:40)

Weren't expecting my call?

Kevin Doran (57:44)

Not at this very minute, no. It's a welcome surprise.

Mishke (57:48)

Well, I like to surprise people. I don't like to plan these things. That's no fun. The spontaneity is the. The true spice of life, don't you think?

Kevin Doran (57:58)

True. I agree.

Mishke (57:59)

What am I catching you doing? Speaking of spontaneity, I'm.

Kevin Doran (58:05)

This is gonna sound very strange, but I'm. I'm putting. I'm putting my merch together. My. I sell T shirts of myself and other things due to my work in pro wrestling, so souvenir shirts and the like.

Mishke (58:21)

You're a pro wrestler?

Kevin Doran (58:23)

I'm not a pro wrestler. I'm a pro wrestling ring announcer. And still people wear my name and. Or image on their chests on T shirts. So it's. It's weird. But I don't know how I got here, but I'm here.

Mishke (58:36)

You are the first pro wrestler announcer I've ever spoken to. So give me an example of what a pro wrestling announcement would sound like.

Kevin Doran (58:46)

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, from right here in beautiful St. Paul, Minnesota, it is TD Mishke, basically like that.

Mishke (58:54)

Are you doing these in the small, little, small, little wrestling operations around town that I hear about?

Kevin Doran (59:00)

There's a number of them around town. We are the. We're the. We're the biggest. We are based out of, actually, the First Avenue, the nightclub in downtown Minneapolis. But we do shows all over the place.

Mishke (59:12)

You wrestle at First Avenue?

Kevin Doran (59:15)

Yeah.

Mishke (59:15)

Bloody Rain. Bloody Rain, pretty much.

Kevin Doran (59:21)

Pretty much.

Mishke (59:22)

I was just talking about how people need to find or should find their one thing in life. That one thing, that one passion. It sounds like you found it.

Kevin Doran (59:32)

I think I did, yeah. It took me a while, but I think I did. I kind of lost my way for a while when I, you know, got to be a little older, discovered girls, but found my way back. Eventually.

Mishke (59:44)

People make the mistake of saying Finding girls causes you to lose your way. That is the way. That is the way. I suppose I did read, however, when I was researching all this pick one thing stuff I did read. The number one mistake people make is thinking they have to find their one thing in their 20s or find their one thing in their 30s. Sometimes you have to do some living and discover your passion through doing some living. And then when you find it, it doesn't matter when it is. That's the Holy Grail. You have the one thing where Could I maybe come see you do your work sometime soon?

Kevin Doran (60:24)

We have a Show on the 28th, the Friday the 28th. That's at the Lynn Lake VFW, the James Valentine VFW. Tickets are on sale at the door to go there. And then in June we'll be back at First Avenue for Russell Palooza. And in September we'll be at the Mall of America and a bunch of outdoor brewery shows in between.

Mishke (60:47)

All right, Wonderful. Well, I hope to run into you sometime. Great talking to you.

Kevin Doran (60:52)

Absolutely. Thanks, Mishki.

Mishke (60:53)

You be well. Bye Bye.

Don Gorski (60:54)

All right.

Ximena Nelson (60:54)

Bye bye.

Mishke (61:01)

Thanks for listening this week, folks. I'll talk to you again next time, eh? Will you come back? I'll be here in a week. You come find me. We'll talk some more. I look forward to that. Goodbye for now.

Ximena Nelson (61:25)

It.