And Then The Sub Went Silent

NICK O’SADCIA: Bridge cleared, the hatch is sealed. Awaiting permission to launch on your word.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

VICTORIA ORPHAN: This is Alvin dive 5268.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Victoria Orphan is a Caltech professor and a deep sea explorer, which means that a few times a year, if she’s lucky, she climbs down a ladder into a 7-foot-wide titanium globe that serves as the cockpit of the submersible Alvin. And then, with a pilot and another scientist, she sinks miles into the sea–

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Can’t wait to see what the seafloor looks like here.

FLORA LICHTMAN: –to places no human has ever been to collect creatures no one has ever known, to study some of the most alien ecosystems on Earth.

When I mentioned to other scientists that I was interviewing oceanographer Victoria Orphan, they all basically said the same thing– oh yeah, she’s a badass. So I had this idea in my mind of what to expect.

I’ve interviewed a number of explorers, and I’ve found that it is a profession that sometimes attracts big personalities, people who seem energized to risk life and limb to find something new, people who are always ready to tell you a swashbuckling tale, exaggerated or not. And so when I sat down for my first interview with Victoria, I was a little surprised.

What is your personal relationship to risk?

VICTORIA ORPHAN: I’m definitely not a risk taker. I am not somebody who wants to– jumps at the chance of bungee jumping or paragliding or any of those adrenaline junkie sports. Nope. No, thanks.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I wasn’t getting a hint of swagger.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: It would scare the pants off of me, so– [LAUGHS]

FLORA LICHTMAN: And the more I talked to Victoria, the more it became clear that her reputation for badassery was definitely not thanks to self-promotion. In fact, it was so buried under layers of humility and understatedness that to find that part of her personality, I had to follow her to the bottom of the sea on her deepest dive yet, a dive that did not go as planned.

NICK O’SADCIA: Uh, I don’t know. Should I be concerned about that?

FLORA LICHTMAN: This is The Leap, a series about scientists who are risking their careers, reputations, and even their lives to discover something new.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SPEAKER 1: All right, we copy on the bridge. Brakes off. All set.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: We’re now slowly making our way out of the harbor. There’s all sorts of–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Victoria is sailing on the RV Atlantis, a huge science research vessel with cranes, a library, labs, a machine shop. It’ll carry the scientists, the crew, the Alvin submersible, and all their equipment to sea.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Yeah, I don’t know. It brings this inner joy of being able to be part of this great science adventure.

FLORA LICHTMAN: They’re zigzagging around Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: All sorts of snow-capped mountains around us. We saw a pod of orcas go by. I mean, it’s just about as epic as you can get.

FLORA LICHTMAN: The sea floor is epic, too. Here, two continental plates are ramming into each other, creating a deep trench. And that trench is exactly where Victoria is headed. The water down there is just above freezing. There’s no light. And the creatures that live there have found unusual ways to survive, some of them living off of methane that bubbles out of the trench.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It’s about as remote as it gets. And yet, we’re deeply connected to these ecosystems and the creatures that live there. By eating methane, these deep sea microbes trap a powerful greenhouse gas at the bottom of the sea, rather than letting it bubble up into the atmosphere. But to understand how that works, you need to go there, which means diving to depths few people have ever visited.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: For me, it’s the deepest dive I’ve ever done. Yeah, almost 5,000 meters.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Three miles down.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: A little over three miles down.

FLORA LICHTMAN: You’re grinning ear to ear right now.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: [LAUGHS] It’s pretty exciting, you know? A lot of times, we live vicariously through our students, and they get to do all the fun things in the lab. And so I’m happy. If I’ve got mud under my nails, I’m a happy camper, so– [CHUCKLES]

FLORA LICHTMAN: This isn’t just Victoria’s deepest dive in the Alvin submersible. It’s also one of the Alvin submersible’s deepest dives. Alvin’s been in operation for decades, but it was just retrofitted so it could go deeper than it ever has before. This is its maiden scientific voyage. But so far in this cruise, the sub hasn’t gotten much time in the water.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: I was supposed to be diving in the Alvin submersible today, but sadly, we are dealing with 30 knot winds and lots of whitecaps.

FLORA LICHTMAN: You can hear the thud of the waves on the ship.

[THUD]

VICTORIA ORPHAN: The whole ship vibrates when the waves hit it. It’s a full-body experience out here.

FLORA LICHTMAN: It’s been stormy. And when it’s too wavy, it’s not safe to put the sub in the water. It took years to plan this cruise. It’s rare to get access to this sub, so it sucks to be benched. And you can hear the disappointment in Victoria’s voice.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Ugh. I can’t do much of anything right now because the weather is kind of crappy out.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So when the weather finally breaks, Victoria is pumped.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: All right, it’s Monday morning. It’s a beautiful day for diving, I’m happy to report. They’re rolling Alvin out of the hangar as we speak. Everybody is on the back deck, waiting with anticipation.

FLORA LICHTMAN: This cruise has four principal investigators, all women, which is unusual. And even more unusual, two of them are married to each other, Victoria and her partner, Shana Goffredi, another oceanographer. She’ll see Victoria off today, and you can hear her in the background.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: It’s getting real now.

[TICKING]

They’re getting the weights loaded up on–

FLORA LICHTMAN: The weights that will sink them to the bottom of the ocean and the weights that they’ll drop when they’re ready to come back up.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: There’s another storm that’s going to be rolling in soon, so I’m feeling a little bit of extra pressure to try to get as many of our samples as possible.

FLORA LICHTMAN: One of the big reasons to actually go to the bottom of the sea is so you can bring stuff back– animals, microorganisms, mud samples, water samples, bits of slimy rocks, anything that can be looked at, researched, studied to help us understand this mysterious ecosystem. Visits to these deep sea sites are so rare that if you make it all the way down there, you better not come back empty-handed.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: There’s no worse feeling of disappointment, coming up to the surface and having to tell people that (LAUGHING) you didn’t bring any samples back or– [LAUGHS]

[CHEERING]

All right, they just called Nick up, our pilot. Starting to get a little bit of that nervous energy and some butterflies. And I’m so, so excited to finally get back into the sub. Hard to believe that’s going to be home for the next nine hours.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Nine hours with two other people in a metal globe about the size of an SUV. There are computer screens all around, five viewports to look out, and a hatch in the floor where you store your pee bottles.

The sub is sitting on the back deck of the Atlantis, under an A-frame that will hoist it into the water. Victoria walks up a ladder and over a little bridge to the sub. The team cheers as Victoria, her colleague, Ekin Tilic, and Alvin pilot Nick O’Sadcia embark.

[CHEERING]

Everybody has been waiting for this day. It’s why they’re all here. It’s a buoyant moment, so it’s easy to forget that going over three miles down, way deeper than the Titanic’s resting place, for example, to icy waters with skull-crushing pressures, comes with risks.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: I almost don’t want to talk about it. There’s always a level of superstition with– [CHUCKLES] getting entangled is the biggest concern because a lot of these ghost nets and things like that are not mapped.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What’s a ghost net?

VICTORIA ORPHAN: It’s old fishing gear that has been lost and is basically floating around. And there’s a lot of fishing up in that area.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hmm. If you did get entangled in a net, what happens? Why is that so bad?

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Two reasons. So it’s bad any time, but especially because we’re in a remote part of the world, and because we’re really deep, it makes it very challenging to get any other vehicle there to rescue you. We sort of saw this play out in real time with the Titan.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Titan, the sub that went missing for days in June 2023. Before it was found in pieces, there was this desperate race to get rescuers there.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Trying to get vehicles there that can reach those depths, it’s a concern. So the best thing is just not to have that happen. Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, things also can break, like the batteries are shorting or something like that. Those kinds of things are not great.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

FLORA LICHTMAN: But Victoria doesn’t sound nervous.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: All right, we’re here in the Alvin submersible with Ekin and Nick. He is just closing the hatch right now.

NICK O’SADCIA: Bridge cleared, the hatch is sealed. Awaiting permission to launch on your word.

FLORA LICHTMAN: This is one of the sounds of the sub, the messages back and forth with the top lab on the ship.

NICK O’SADCIA: Atlantis, Alvin, my three vent valves are open. ID light is on. Hatch is sealed.

FLORA LICHTMAN: They’re off. And at first, all is swell.

NICK O’SADCIA: I got a couple playlists and a couple podcasts for the way out.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: All right.

FLORA LICHTMAN: The music’s going. Nick cues up “That’s Life” by Sinatra. And they begin their descent. It’ll take them about two hours to get to the bottom.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Getting dark.

NICK O’SADCIA: They said there’s a lot of–

FLORA LICHTMAN: The light dims as they sink, but the mood could not be brighter.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Oh. You just never get tired of looking at this view.

NICK O’SADCIA: I know.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Anticipation.

NICK O’SADCIA: Of course, the one day the freakin’ sun comes out.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: I know. I know.

NICK O’SADCIA: As far away as possible.

FLORA LICHTMAN: They’re slowly sinking down. The bioluminescent creatures are streaking by their windows.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Deep sea fireflies.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And then the trouble starts.

NICK O’SADCIA: Looking at top left, the length of that ground just dropped at the same time.

FLORA LICHTMAN: It’s an electrical issue with the sub.

NICK O’SADCIA: Uh, I don’t know. Should I be concerned about that?

FLORA LICHTMAN: The engineers on the ship, they’re not concerned.

SPEAKER 2: Well, I’d say just keep going. Keep an eye on it. And let me know if it changes.

FLORA LICHTMAN: These things happen. Everything looks fine now. Keep on keeping on, they say.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: All right, working through some initial pre-dive issues.

FLORA LICHTMAN: They’re about half a mile down. Victoria starts getting down to business.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: I’m going to start looking at my clipboard and going through our checklist for the dive.

FLORA LICHTMAN: They go over their route once they get to the bottom.

NICK O’SADCIA: Yeah, roger that. I think our plan is to start at waypoint 4 and then work our way to waypoint 3.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And they’re sinking farther and farther away from the ship.

NICK O’SADCIA: Depth 4-0-1-3 meters.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: We’re officially past the deepest depth I have ever been. Pretty exciting.

FLORA LICHTMAN: The messages from top labs start getting difficult to make out.

NICK O’SADCIA: I can’t really hear you on this thing. I’m going to switch back to the EDO and try a different mic.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Meanwhile, they’ve almost made it to the seafloor.

NICK O’SADCIA: Depth 4-6-8-9, 200 meters off.

FLORA LICHTMAN: We’re getting close to the bottom here. There are some little jellies in the water. It’s pretty amazing to think we’re down here at almost 5,000 meters.

FLORA LICHTMAN: This is a huge moment for this whole expedition.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: It’s very exciting.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And the scientists on the ship are excited, too. So up in top lab, where they’re radioing with Alvin, the scientists are gathering.

SHANA GOFFREDI: Hi.

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s Victoria’s partner, Shana. She’s talking with one of the Alvin engineers up top.

SPEAKER 3: Hello.

SHANA GOFFREDI: We’re here to watch them hit the sea floor.

SPEAKER 3: They’re not going to hit the sea floor.

[LAUGHTER]

They’re going to hover above it softly.

SHANA GOFFREDI: Slowly hit the sea floor.

SPEAKER 3: Yeah. They’re not there yet.

SHANA GOFFREDI: I know.

SPEAKER 3: They’re getting there.

SHANA GOFFREDI: We know. We can tell. But it’s close.

I must admit, I pay more attention to the submersible when Victoria is in it. [LAUGHS]

FLORA LICHTMAN: Picture them huddled around this speaker at the top of the ship, listening to these dispatches from deep below.

NICK O’SADCIA: About 10 meters off.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: All right. We should start to see something. About 10 meters off the bottom. You can start to hear the thrusters go. Nick’s starting to navigate us. I think I see some muddy bottom down there.

NICK O’SADCIA: OK.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Yep, there’s a sea cucumber. Surprising lot of life down here. Some beautiful little stalked, flowered crinoids.

FLORA LICHTMAN: They’re these deep-sea invertebrates with long, fluffy, pedally arms, kind of, like, miniature palm trees blowing in the breeze.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Oh, man. It’s beautiful.

FLORA LICHTMAN: It’s a celebratory moment that does not last long because when Nick powers up the robotic arm that they’ll use to collect creatures, something goes wrong.

NICK O’SADCIA: My port manipulator power switch on the control bus, the breaker is breaking. I can’t power on my port manip right now.

FLORA LICHTMAN: This is a huge problem. The port manipulator is the sub’s primary tool for collecting samples. Collecting samples is the primary objective of this trip.

SPEAKER 3: Yeah, roger. Understood. Stand by. That’s not good.

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s not good, he says.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: OK.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Victoria immediately goes into troubleshoot mode.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: No push pouring?

FLORA LICHTMAN: And it’s not just Victoria. More than three miles up, on the top deck of the ship, Victoria’s partner Shana is also brainstorming workarounds, I mean, literally asking the exact same questions at the exact same moment.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: How about the Niskins? Can you–

SHANA GOFFREDI: Can you reach the Niskin bottles or anything?

VICTORIA ORPHAN: The bio tubes?

SHANA GOFFREDI: But we can’t open the bio box.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: And the suction?

SHANA GOFFREDI: And you can get the slurp?

NICK O’SADCIA: I think I could do the slurp, yeah.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So this sucks, but it’s not the end of the world.

SHANA GOFFREDI: Slurp is an option.

FLORA LICHTMAN: They can still try to pick up some stuff. They can cruise around and survey the area. So Shana goes to lunch, and Alvin goes on to its destination.

NICK O’SADCIA: [Radio sounds] We’re heading up slope, do what we can with the starboard manipulator.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Well, we’ve got a Alvin with a broken wing. [LAUGHS] Definitely disappointing. But the good news is we can still drive. And we are still in hot pursuit of some methane seeps.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So they’re looking for these spots where methane is bubbling out, and there are some telltale signs.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Clam beds– that would give us some indication that there’s methane seeping.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Tubeworms or frenulats also live in these methane seep spots. You can picture stalks with swoops of red hair. They were on the wish list to find and bring back, at least before Alvin’s arm broke.

NICK O’SADCIA: Depth 4-9-0-0 heading to waypoint 3.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So they’re cruising along, scoping seep spots when suddenly there’s another problem with the sub. The lights go out. The computers go dark. The video system goes down. Nick, the pilot, is trying to figure out the issue. You can hear him furiously flipping switches.

[SWITCHES CLICKING]

This is not normal. Nick talks first.

NICK O’SADCIA: OK, I just browned out. I’m going to secure the video system and proceed with what we got here.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Victoria and Ekin stay quiet. They look at each other, their eyes wide. Nick tries to reassure them that everything is OK.

NICK O’SADCIA: Everything’s good.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Everything’s good, he says.

NICK O’SADCIA: I promise.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I promise. And then suddenly–

SPEAKER 3: You said you had a brownout. What do you mean by that?

FLORA LICHTMAN: –the recording stops.

[RECORDING STOPS]

It’s silent.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Up on the boat, Shana returns to the top lab.

SHANA GOFFREDI: And I came back after lunch, and no joke, every single Alvin ops person was in top lab. They had the blueprints out for Alvin.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Shana’s heart starts beating fast. She’s pacing. She finds out that one of the sub’s two batteries has gone out.

SHANA GOFFREDI: I’ve been using Alvin for 30 years. I’ve never had the power go out in Alvin. That would have been so scary.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And on top of that, the communication system with the ship cut out.

SHANA GOFFREDI: So you call regularly for a depth and status update, especially when something like this has gone on. And there was no reply.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

FLORA LICHTMAN: It’s a tense situation. The sub is down to one battery. Its power supply is cut in half. Now, even if that remaining battery went out, there are emergency batteries on board as a failsafe to get them back to the ship. But at this moment, no one’s exactly sure why these problems are happening. So it’s stressful. And for Shana, the person in that sub isn’t just her colleague, it’s her life partner.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Of course, my blood pressure and my heart rate is racing. It’s not like I thought I wouldn’t see her again. I was just afraid that she was afraid, I guess.

FLORA LICHTMAN: But if Victoria was afraid, that was not the feeling she was radiating.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

A few minutes after the brownout, Victoria turned the recorder back on. She had cut it off to let her submates freak out privately. They were back in contact with the ship, too, and Nick calls up.

NICK O’SADCIA: OK, I’m going to start driving up, just to get off the bottom. As I mentioned, I don’t see a reason to continue, especially without a port manipulator.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Nick is ready to go back up.

NICK O’SADCIA: Honestly, I think we should just end at that.

FLORA LICHTMAN: The sub is having problems. He knows the only way to fix them is to go to the surface. But then something happens that I really, really did not expect. Victoria pipes up.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Obviously, safety is definitely what we are prioritizing here, and we’ll follow your lead. But if we could get something to bring up from the deep sea before we return to the surface, that would be great.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And to me, this is the most revealing part of the dive. Victoria, a person who would never bungee jump, a person who says they do not like risk, starts to mount a quiet campaign to keep Alvin down at the bottom of the sea just a little longer.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: I mean, it’s– I’m all for it if you’re for it. But it’s totally up to you.

NICK O’SADCIA: I mean, it would just be observation.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Yes.

NICK O’SADCIA: OK.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Nick says, OK, sure. We can look around quickly, but I’m not going to try to grab anything. That takes a long time. It takes power.

NICK O’SADCIA: Top lab, we’re just going to go to waypoint 3. We’re not going to try and sample anything. We’re just going to investigate it. And then after that, we’re going to head home.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So that’s the plan. But listen to Victoria delicately and methodically lay the groundwork for bringing back samples.

NICK O’SADCIA: If I had my port manipulator, I’d be all over them.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Think about the pilot crud you’d get if you could gently pick a sea daisy with your starboard nip.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And in this moment, I got a window into Victoria, into another way to be a badass explorer. This is confidence without swagger, cool-headed but warm to her colleagues, and a willingness to push just a little bit on everyone’s comfort zone, including her own, to make this trip worthwhile. And it’s infectious.

NICK O’SADCIA: Like, if we saw something that was the most incredible thing ever, I would try.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And then something incredible pops into the viewport– the tubeworms they’ve been looking for all along.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Whoa, there are some friendly lights, right in front of us.

NICK O’SADCIA: Oh, nice.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: This, the little redheads.

[WHIRRING]

NICK O’SADCIA: If I sampled one of those, would I be a hero?

VICTORIA ORPHAN: You would.

NICK O’SADCIA: Can I put it in a bio tube?

VICTORIA ORPHAN: You sure can. You can put it wherever you want, Nick.

FLORA LICHTMAN: It’s easy to forget that mere minutes ago, this sub lost power. All the lights went off. All the computers went dark.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: All right. Nick’s going to try for the Hail Mary. Crinuloid grab.

EKIN TILIC: I’m not going home with–

FLORA LICHTMAN: They get in position. Nick reaches out with the little manipulator that’s not designed to pick up tubeworms, and he gets it.

NICK O’SADCIA: In the tube. I got one.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Yeah! High five. Yeah. [LAUGHS]

NICK O’SADCIA: That was probably the most absurd way to sample that.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Excellent.

NICK O’SADCIA: But it worked.

FLORA LICHTMAN: The worm is grabbed and bagged, and Victoria seems delighted.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Good news is we’re not coming up empty-handed. And hopefully we’ll have an uneventful return to the ship–

NICK O’SADCIA: [CHUCKLES]

VICTORIA ORPHAN: [CHUCKLES] –as Nick laughs. [CHUCKLES]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

FLORA LICHTMAN: When they make it back to the boat, you can hear a relief in everyone’s voices.

SHANA GOFFREDI: We’re glad you’re back.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Shana’s there to greet them.

SHANA GOFFREDI: I was pretty happy to see her when she got back on board, I have to say. [LAUGHS] I definitely think we hugged a lot longer than we would normally.

Never want to hear “brownout.”

VICTORIA ORPHAN: Yeah. You can set all the lights and–

FLORA LICHTMAN: When I first listened to the recording of this dive, the question that kept sloshing around in my head was, what was this like for Victoria? I mean, she seemed so cool, but the experience seemed so scary. I caught up with Victoria a few days after the dive. She was still on the ship. And she said, yeah, it was scary, particularly when communication got cut off with the ship.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: I had never really spent much time thinking about the importance of the noise in the sub. And when that went away, it really did feel like we were alone. This is like the lifeline to the ship. But when it seemed like things were a little bit more stable and calm, I just asked whether or not it was possible to salvage anything from this dive before immediately heading back to the surface.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I heard that part. And I was pretty shocked.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: [LAUGHS]

FLORA LICHTMAN: Because I would have been like, elevator up, please.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: So I guess, I can tell you my thinking at that point. And that is, we had already been dealing with horrible weather. The rest of the week looked really sketchy for diving. And so this could be our shot.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Their shot to understand this mysterious place, a place that has a rudder on our atmosphere, a place that Victoria has dedicated her life to studying.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

VICTORIA ORPHAN: I’m all about just the joy of observation and the opportunity to go to this very remote world. That has always been such an amazing thrill for me. And just my training from graduate school on is, just don’t ever leave the bottom without something, right? Because it’s such an investment. You want to try to eke out every last possible sample.

FLORA LICHTMAN: It makes sense in that context. It took four years to plan this expedition. Getting sub time is rare and expensive. Who knows when another person might be back at this place? But at the same time, it’s a rare trait to be able to hold on to the 20,000 league view, even when your sub is on the fritz at the bottom of the sea. And it’s the kind of person you probably want in your vessel when things go wrong.

SHANA GOFFREDI: She rarely gets ruffled. She’s been that way the entire time I’ve known her.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Here’s Shana again.

SHANA GOFFREDI: And so she’s usually the one in the relationship that diffuses everything that’s stressful. So if you picked anyone to be in this situation, it should be Victoria.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: But we really made the most of that one tubeworm, and–

FLORA LICHTMAN: It does seem like it. Yeah.

VICTORIA ORPHAN: It turned out to be pretty cool. So this was a male tubeworm. And it had these cool, almost weed-like sperm that are shaped like little arrows. And they get jammed. [LAUGHS] I don’t know. It was really cool, so–

[LAUGHTER]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

FLORA LICHTMAN: The Leap is a production of the Hypothesis Fund. Victoria volunteers on the Hypothesis Fund’s scientific advisory board. This show is hosted by me, Flora Lichtman, and produced by Annette Heist. Editing by Devon Taylor, Pajau Vangay, and David Sanford. Fact-checking by Nicole Pasulka. Mixing and scoring by Emma Munger. Music by Joshua Budo Karp. Special thanks to Dan Utter and Rebecca Wipfler for the excellent additional recordings on the ship. And thanks to you for listening.

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