Hello, it is week three of our 20-day Atlas Obscura holiday Advent

adventure. Before we get into it, I have a little bit of Atlas Obscura business as many of you may or may not know

Atlas Obscura is more than just this podcast we've been running the website books, taking thousands of people on

international trips for well over a decade now. And to my somewhat continual

surprise and and great joy.

Atlas Obscura has grown into a pretty successful business.

Anyway, I'm saying all of this because we are doing a small fundraising round

right now, and we've opened it up for our community to invest in if you

are an accredited investor. So if that is you and you're interested in hearing

more about the business, reach out to me at Dylan, dyYLAN at Atlas Obscura.com,

and I can tell you all about the round.

Okay, now on to what we're here for.

We spent week one in space, week two exploring the beginnings of life on Earth, and here in week three we are moving forward in time and getting a little bit bigger on the scale of life.

We leave the microbes behind and celebrate some of our fellow earthly creatures in what I am calling Creature Week.

I wanted to play just a few of my favorite animal stories we've done over the couple

years. Today we're joining producer Sarah Wyman to meet a creature that

evolutionarily is twice as old as the dinosaur. We're headed to Finland to hang out with the deadly spiders

that love living inside of Helsinki's Natural History Museum.

Spiders and the man who loves them.

Up next. I'd like to introduce you to the Chilean recluse spider.

It's one of the most dangerous spiders in the world. It likes to live inside pockets of darkness,

scuttling beneath rocks, crawling inside logs, or even creeping through the darkest recesses of deep closets.

...