Speaker 1: Oh hi, hey, it's the second place pie at the
Speaker 1: bakeoff Alley Ward and here we are with a deep
Speaker 1: dark exploration for you of some frickin' caves. Let's get musty,
Speaker 1: Let's get into the hole as fast as we can,
Speaker 1: all right, this guest is a well decorated and lauded
Speaker 1: nat geo explore, a paleoclimate researcher, a caver. And they
Speaker 1: studied physical geography at the University of Birmingham in the UK,
Speaker 1: studying microclimatology of caves, and then got a PhD at
Speaker 1: the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol.
Speaker 1: They're now an assistant professor of paleoclimatology at the University
Speaker 1: of Innsbruck. And she has explored caves all over the world,
Speaker 1: including in the remote reaches of Greenland. And we'll hear
Speaker 1: about those adventures in a minute. But first, thank you
Speaker 1: to all the patrons who support the show for a
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Speaker 1: where you can submit questions we may read on the show.
Speaker 1: You can also wear your ologies merch to find other
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Speaker 1: have not heard, if you're looking for a kid friendly episode,
Speaker 1: we have started a new show called Smologies that you
Speaker 1: can find anywhere you get podcasts. That's a linked in
Speaker 1: the show notes. And also thank you to everyone who's
Speaker 1: ever written a review. They helped so much. I have
Speaker 1: read them all and to prove it, I pick a
Speaker 1: fresh plucked one. And this week it's from Katie Holyfield
Speaker 1: who wrote that they always feel like they are smarter, kinder,
Speaker 1: and more understanding after listening. Also, they had a dream
Speaker 1: that they met me at a bakery and that I
Speaker 1: helped them pick out the perfect pastry and that we
Speaker 1: became best friends. Katie Hollyfield can't go wrong with an
Speaker 1: almond croissant unless you're allergic to almonds or dairy or
Speaker 1: you have Celiac. Let's get down into it. Let's get
Speaker 1: dirty with the word spielology, which comes from once again
Speaker 1: the Greek. It always comes from Greek, pretty much always spilio,
Speaker 1: meaning caves. And in this episode we're going to cover
Speaker 1: everything you ever wanted to know, like how deep does
Speaker 1: something have to be to really be a cave? How
Speaker 1: dark is it really down there? Do cavers ever lose
Speaker 1: their damn minds? What's the longest this guest has lived
Speaker 1: in a cave? Huge crystal formations, stalactites, stalagmites, cave clouds,
Speaker 1: show caves. Who counts as a spelunker. What ancient climate
Speaker 1: science can tell us about our current kind of sticky situation?
Speaker 1: Cave diving, cave rescues, creepy caves, gated caves, haunted caves.
Speaker 1: Old school versus new school mapping and why nothing beats
Speaker 1: the Longing for the underground With Professor Explorer, paleoclimatologist and
Speaker 1: yes bilologist, Doctor Gena Moseley pacodermatology, cryptozoology, lithology, nanotechnology, meteorology, pathology, seriology, steleology.
Speaker 2: I'm Gina Mosley, and.
Speaker 1: I use she Do you refer to yourself as a
Speaker 1: speleologist or is that a term that only people who
Speaker 1: are not cave people like to use.
Speaker 2: That's quite a funny question.
Speaker 3: Now, I do consider myself as peliologist also a paleoclimatologist,
Speaker 3: so there's kind of two branches of science that I'm
Speaker 3: working with. And something that I often hear kind of
Speaker 3: American audience. It uses the term spilunka which is a
Speaker 3: term that British cavers generally don't tend to use.
Speaker 1: I have to say I feel like someone who's a spilunkers.
Speaker 1: I think of them as someone who could go down
Speaker 1: just for sport or thrills, or because they like to
Speaker 1: be terrified. But a spieleologist definitely seems like you're down
Speaker 1: there with a clipboard, you're collecting data, you're measuring stuff.
Speaker 3: I guess it depends who you're talking to, but yeah,
Speaker 3: everyone everyone identifies a little bit differently, I guess, even
Speaker 3: in their own sports.
Speaker 1: Just to say notes. So I was a big ignorant
Speaker 1: mess to this, but I just found out that in
Speaker 1: the UK some people call caving potholing because it's like
Speaker 1: going in a pothole, but that may just refer to
Speaker 1: the exploration of more vertical caves, whilst spilunking is about
Speaker 1: checking out horizontal caves. But then I learned that calling
Speaker 1: someone a spilunker is like saying that they're a cave poser.
Speaker 1: And this dates back nearly forty years when the editor
Speaker 1: of the magazine American Caving Accidents, which subscribe me immediately,
Speaker 1: once wrote the term spilunker denotes someone untrained and unknowledgeable
Speaker 1: in current exploration techniques, and caver is for those who
Speaker 1: are trained and knowledgeable. And some cavers they have bumper
Speaker 1: stickers that say cavers rescue spilunkers. What just when you
Speaker 1: thought caves were at their darkest? Who more shade?
Speaker 3: I would say speleologists are going into caves. Some study,
Speaker 3: for instance, the geology or the formation of the caves.
Speaker 3: Others might be studying biology, or others might be doing
Speaker 3: the exploration and the mapping. Those people would also be
Speaker 3: speleologists as well.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: People are going into a cave or going into this field.
Speaker 1: Is there a big chance that you really dig caves?
Speaker 1: Like you really like going and them?
Speaker 3: Oh, I thought you meant the other kind of digging
Speaker 3: there removing sales and stuff, which peliologists do love to
Speaker 3: do as well. I have to say, you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: generally speaking, people that really want to go into caves
Speaker 3: really yeah dig caves as you say, and jokes aside.
Speaker 3: There are people that spend their free time digging out
Speaker 3: sediment and boulders because they're so driven by trying to
Speaker 3: find that next bit of cave passage that nobody has
Speaker 3: ever seen before them, that they spend weeks, months, years,
Speaker 3: decades literally diging caves to try and find the passages beyond.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do people in your field have any idea how
Speaker 1: much of the caving systems out there have been like
Speaker 1: uncovered and how much are just completely unknown to us?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a question that often comes up.
Speaker 3: I would say, from a truly scientific perspective, we've got
Speaker 3: no idea how much is yet to be discovered?
Speaker 1: Okay, cool, cool, cool cool.
Speaker 3: However, other people would say, take the average amount of
Speaker 3: known cave in limestone, for instance, and then look at
Speaker 3: how much limestone is on Earth, and then guess how
Speaker 3: much there is left to be discovered, for instance, and
Speaker 3: that would be a huge amount. But as a kind
Speaker 3: of true let's say scientist, I'm not going to have
Speaker 3: a guess at that really, So.
Speaker 1: Even spieleeologists have no idea. And I find this thrilling,
Speaker 1: like when you have one of those dreams that I
Speaker 1: have all the time that your house has an undiscovered room,
Speaker 1: like you open up the medicine chest and then suddenly
Speaker 1: there's another house in there where you see tiktoks of
Speaker 1: people who find catacombs underneath their farmhouses, And to think
Speaker 1: the earth has those all over the Dare place are
Speaker 1: a lot of the caves. Are they limestone or are
Speaker 1: there granite caves or are there obsidian caves or do
Speaker 1: they typically happen only in a certain type of rack.
Speaker 3: No. Caves are basically holes in the ground, and essentially
Speaker 3: they're mostly found in limestone. This is because limestone's quite
Speaker 3: easy to dissolve with a very weak acid. So as
Speaker 3: soon as you have some water and it mixes with
Speaker 3: carbon dioxide in a soil, it becomes very slightly acidic,
Speaker 3: and then that allows for dissolution of limestone and that
Speaker 3: ultimately is what forms the majority of caves. But indeed
Speaker 3: you can get caves inside glaciers and then they would
Speaker 3: be glacier caves. You can also find lava tube so
Speaker 3: these are caves that form from volcanic eruptions. When they're
Speaker 3: outside of the lava flow cools down and hardens, but
Speaker 3: the inside is still molten and flows through, and then
Speaker 3: when that eruption's finally finished, then you have lava tubes.
Speaker 3: Brand new ones are being formed in Iceland, you know
Speaker 3: as we speak, over the last few years. And then
Speaker 3: there's also caves in like quartzite and sandstone, so these
Speaker 3: tend to be formed through more kind of abrasive processes
Speaker 3: rather than dissolution processes like in limestone.
Speaker 1: So another type of abrasive form caved might be a
Speaker 1: sea cave, also called a literal cave or a grotto,
Speaker 1: and those form around a body of water and they're
Speaker 1: from waves lapping at the shoreline making these indentations or sandstone.
Speaker 1: Caving systems might be mechanically made from tectonic shifts, but
Speaker 1: most of the caves are called solution or cursed with
Speaker 1: a ka caves where that very lightly acidic rainwater seeps
Speaker 1: into a crack in a rock and over time eats
Speaker 1: away more and more of the rock to form these hollow,
Speaker 1: drippy systems, usually out of carbonate rocks like limestone or marble,
Speaker 1: or rock salt like halite, or from gypsum. And for
Speaker 1: more on what rock is who, you can see the
Speaker 1: Wonderful two part geology episode Wishmitti Jompson A wonder love them,
Speaker 1: but yeah, if it's a hole in a rock, you
Speaker 1: got a cave sort of.
Speaker 3: So if you can get underground and kind of get
Speaker 3: away from daylights, then it's a cave.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering how big or smart can a cave be Like,
Speaker 1: if you have a two foot depression in rock, is
Speaker 1: that a cave? Or do you have to be able
Speaker 1: to fit something specific in it, like the size of
Speaker 1: a car?
Speaker 2: Oh, my goodness, what is it?
Speaker 3: I laugh because cavers could argue about that for honestly, yeah,
Speaker 3: generally speaking, a person has to be able to fit
Speaker 3: in it. There are also then debates about if you
Speaker 3: have to be kind of beyond the twilight zone, if
Speaker 3: you have to like actually get into the dark or not.
Speaker 3: And for instance, I've had a fan fantastic series of
Speaker 3: expeditions in Greenland in the last years, and the caves
Speaker 3: were exploring. There were once really big, long systems, but
Speaker 3: now they're all like chopped up and there's just like
Speaker 3: corners left of these caves and small passages and things.
Speaker 3: And people have said to me they aren't caves, you know.
Speaker 3: I get a little bit defensive of them because I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: they were caves once, but yeah, we don't get out
Speaker 3: of daylight anymore, so maybe they're not caves anymore.
Speaker 1: So the dark makes the cave. It's interesting too to
Speaker 1: think of them in that human perspective, like what a
Speaker 1: badger or a squirrel might consider a cave, might be
Speaker 1: a lot smaller, or where might consider a cave. It's
Speaker 1: like that subjective. I love the idea of spilunkers and
Speaker 1: spieleologists absolutely cut throughout arguing and getting into flame wars,
Speaker 1: heated text messages, blocking people on social media. And do
Speaker 1: you travel a lot for your work or do they
Speaker 1: have a lot of caves in I'm guessing you're based
Speaker 1: and from the UK.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm from the UK originally, but since twenty eleven
Speaker 3: I've been living in Austria because there's an excellent cave
Speaker 3: science research.
Speaker 2: Group here in the Alps.
Speaker 3: But we were also working in America in New Mexico,
Speaker 3: also in the Yucatan. There are fantastic expeditions I've been
Speaker 3: on in Borneo and India in more recent years. You know,
Speaker 3: I kind of stay closer to home, partly because you know,
Speaker 3: I'm working as a climate change scientist as well, so
Speaker 3: on a personal level, I'm reducing my travels quite a bit,
Speaker 3: and also with a young family, it's just hard to
Speaker 3: go away now, so I'm not traveling as much anymore.
Speaker 1: You can't take your three year old toddler in a
Speaker 1: backpack into a caving system. I'm guessing, well, people.
Speaker 2: Do, that's true.
Speaker 3: A few years ago, I was on a job photographing
Speaker 3: a cave with my partner and at three months old,
Speaker 3: we took our daughter into a cave. It's so funny.
Speaker 3: I have this photograph of pushing my partner's pushing pram
Speaker 3: up to the cave entrance and then she slept through.
Speaker 2: The whole thing in the cave.
Speaker 3: I was breastfeeding in a cave at one point as well.
Speaker 2: It was it was quite amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then when she got.
Speaker 3: Older, maybe at like eighteen months or something, we took
Speaker 3: her into a cave and then she kind of knew
Speaker 3: what was going on and she absolutely hated it.
Speaker 2: Really. Yeah, it was terrible. Now she wants to go again.
Speaker 3: She's kind of excited by her mommy and daddy going
Speaker 3: into caves, and she keeps saying, can we go in
Speaker 3: the cave? When are we going in the cave? So
Speaker 3: I think we have to try it again now.
Speaker 1: And is your partner as biliologist as well?
Speaker 3: He is, Yeah, yeah, and he specializes in photographing cave
Speaker 3: so he's doing the arty side of caving and I'm
Speaker 3: doing the science side of caving.
Speaker 1: Did you meet him that way?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean the caving community is fairly small, I
Speaker 3: have to say, so we all tend to know each
Speaker 3: other or know of each other in a roundabout kind
Speaker 3: of way.
Speaker 2: And it's funny.
Speaker 3: A lot of people kind of go, oh, fancy that
Speaker 3: meeting each other caving. But then but then another person said, well,
Speaker 3: it would be more weird if they met in the
Speaker 3: supermarket queue. You know. You imagine standing at the checkout
Speaker 3: and someone said, Hey, I like caving. Hey, I'm into caving.
Speaker 3: Like that would be more weird, wouldn't it.
Speaker 2: That would you?
Speaker 1: There's not that many of you, considering how many people
Speaker 1: there are on Earth. But yeah, how did you get
Speaker 1: into it?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: That is a good question.
Speaker 3: And I could talk for the rest of this time
Speaker 3: about that. But basically, I was on a family holiday
Speaker 3: and we were on this campsite and there was a
Speaker 3: guy there who was running kind of outdoor activities for
Speaker 3: the family staying on the campsite. And my mum wanted
Speaker 3: to try caving, and she said, oh, Gina, will you
Speaker 3: come with me?
Speaker 2: And I said, oh, yeah, why not?
Speaker 3: And so I went along and I was completely hooked
Speaker 3: on it from the start. And we went in this
Speaker 3: little cave called Goat Church caverin which has kind of
Speaker 3: been sacrificed to Scout groups and guide groups and beginner cavers.
Speaker 3: So there's nothing pretty to see in this cave at all,
Speaker 3: and it's small, and it's just about crawling ground in
Speaker 3: some passages underground, really, but I absolutely loved it. And
Speaker 3: then I went a few more times that week, and
Speaker 3: I would save up money from my newspaper around that
Speaker 3: I had after school, and then in the summer I'd
Speaker 3: do as much caving as I could during that one
Speaker 3: week in the summer holidays.
Speaker 1: Curiosity was burning a hollow into my boulder brain and
Speaker 1: I looked up Goat Church Cavern and it's what's called
Speaker 1: a show cave, meaning it's open to the public. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like an ambassador cave, like humans allow me
Speaker 1: to introduce you to a cave, but there are still
Speaker 1: lights inside and hand rails and usually a guide and
Speaker 1: like a gift shop so you can purchase geodes or
Speaker 1: keychains naturally. Also, Goat Church Cavern has more than just
Speaker 1: some Scout troops inside some deeper inspection. They had to
Speaker 1: scrub off some graffiti on its walls and then they
Speaker 1: found some etchings dating back maybe five hundred years, and
Speaker 1: they may have been used in rituals, so they're called
Speaker 1: witch marks. Witch Marks in a cave doesn't get mark goth. Also,
Speaker 1: let's have a real quick glossary. So what is the
Speaker 1: difference between a cave and a cavern? I had no idea.
Speaker 1: Some people say a room within a cave system is
Speaker 1: a cavern, while others insist that a cave is only
Speaker 1: a cavern if it is accessorized with spiliothems aka rock
Speaker 1: growths such as stalactites and stalagmites. But I've also read
Speaker 1: that a cavern is only the entrance of the cave
Speaker 1: where you can't see any outside light, whereas a cave
Speaker 1: is what it's called once you're in utter darkness, and
Speaker 1: especially in relation to cave diving. So just let this
Speaker 1: be a lesson. It really kind of depends on who
Speaker 1: you ask. And apparently a lot of guides joke that
Speaker 1: the difference between a cave and a cavern is two letters,
Speaker 1: maybe only Spilunker's care, although I thought maybe a cavern
Speaker 1: was one that you walked into and a cave you
Speaker 1: squeezed into and just prayed for the best, but you know,
Speaker 1: laughed at me and said, most caves there's no strolling in.
Speaker 3: I think you're the first person who has I've ever
Speaker 3: spoken to. He said, I imagine just walking into a cave,
Speaker 3: because normally most people just think about the tight, crawling,
Speaker 3: nasty bit and then they go, oh, I'm claustrophobic.
Speaker 2: I can't do that. So to imagine walking into a.
Speaker 3: Cave is quite a unique thought process.
Speaker 1: That tell the kind of caves that I've been to
Speaker 1: or help.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, yeah, it completely varies. So caves within a
Speaker 3: particular region will tend to have a particular kind of character,
Speaker 3: and that comes down to the geology and the way
Speaker 3: the caves are being formed, the climate, saying, you know,
Speaker 3: how much rainfall there is in a region or snowfall
Speaker 3: and all that sort of thing. So it depends where
Speaker 3: you are in the world, but you know, ultimately you
Speaker 3: can experience absolutely everything you want to in a cave.
Speaker 2: You can be.
Speaker 3: Crawling in really tight small spaces where you have to
Speaker 3: take your helmet off and put one arm in front
Speaker 3: of you and like push your bag ahead in order
Speaker 3: to get through. You can be head first, you can
Speaker 3: be feet first, you can be upside down. You can
Speaker 3: be on either side, or you can walk into a cave.
Speaker 3: You can climb over boulders, you can be swimming, you
Speaker 3: can go through what's called a sump where you kind
Speaker 3: of duck underneath the water, or actually dive as well
Speaker 3: if you're into cave diving, which.
Speaker 2: I am not.
Speaker 3: And then there's also a lot of technical stuff going
Speaker 3: on as well. So this is what we call single
Speaker 3: rope technique, which involves using ropes to get up and
Speaker 3: down vertical sections of cave. But yeah, you know, people
Speaker 3: go down that and then they have to climb all
Speaker 3: the way back up.
Speaker 1: And how deep of caves do cavers sail or climb
Speaker 1: down on ropes? I didn't know that word until literally today.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: One pit cave, which is Maukang in China, has an
Speaker 1: unbroken vertical shaft. It's just over five hundred meters deep,
Speaker 1: which rivals the tallest skyscrapers in the Western Hemisphere, which
Speaker 1: you know what, is trifling, quite frankly, when compared to
Speaker 1: this wandering depth of this system called the very Amconnect Cave,
Speaker 1: which descends into the earth two hundred and twenty three
Speaker 1: meters or over seventy two hundred feet, which would be
Speaker 1: nearly six empire state buildings stacked on top of each other.
Speaker 1: And Gina elaborates on that one.
Speaker 3: The deepest cave in the world is over two kilometers deep,
Speaker 3: and that's in the Caucasus. That involves an awful lot
Speaker 3: of rope work as well. That's very vertical, but then
Speaker 3: at the bottom of that it becomes a very horizontal system.
Speaker 3: So after four days of people out sailing and camping
Speaker 3: to get down to the bottom, they then set up
Speaker 3: camp at the bottom of the cave and then they
Speaker 3: can walk from there in the horizontal passages at the bottom.
Speaker 1: Four days of going going vertical, and then you just
Speaker 1: sleep in a hammock somewhere along the way.
Speaker 3: They sleep in makeshift tents, so you know, you can
Speaker 3: just make a tent out of a foil blankets, you know,
Speaker 3: like you would have at the end of a marathon.
Speaker 3: So you can put up some washing line and string
Speaker 3: and make a kind of tent out of that, because
Speaker 3: you don't need a full on, four season every style
Speaker 3: tent to camp in a cave. You just need to
Speaker 3: keep the draft out and it needs to be lightweight
Speaker 3: because you have to carry everything, take sleeping bags down
Speaker 3: and sleeping mats, and yeah, just camp down there and
Speaker 3: then move on. So it's pretty wild. And of course
Speaker 3: then you know, you really have to plan and you know,
Speaker 3: have enough batteries and lights and all that sort of
Speaker 3: stuff as well, if you know you'll be down there
Speaker 3: for really a long time.
Speaker 1: I had to know for all of us, where do
Speaker 1: you go to the bathroom if you're okay?
Speaker 4: Oh well, that's also a big topic of conversation which
Speaker 4: I get in trouble about. Let's say the regulations are
Speaker 4: that everything should be brought out of the cave. Whether
Speaker 4: everybody adheres to that, I can't say. Got it?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 1: Got it? Okay, So some leave no tracers, dig a
Speaker 1: little hole like eight inches deep, it's called a cat hole.
Speaker 1: They do their biz and then they covered up. But
Speaker 1: due to the delicate microbial environments, cavers are held to
Speaker 1: a higher standard and are encouraged to use what are
Speaker 1: called wag bags, and those contain a solidifying powder developed
Speaker 1: by NASA, And yeah, you roll that up and you
Speaker 1: keep that at the bottom of your bag. You don't
Speaker 1: get to leave it in the cave.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Other DIY options include what is unfortunately called a burrito,
Speaker 1: and it involves a homemade kit consisting of wet wipes
Speaker 1: and a turkey roasting bag, which, when tied correctly, are
Speaker 1: pretty puncture proof. And I read too much about this
Speaker 1: and I'm going to stop now before I ruin it
Speaker 1: for burritos. Everywhere other people simply say, fuck this, Let's
Speaker 1: pretend nothing ever happened. You didn't see me, I didn't
Speaker 1: see you. That's not necessarily the way to go. Bumps
Speaker 1: the word there. But how long have you spent in
Speaker 1: a cave without surfacing?
Speaker 3: That was a week that was in Lectugea in New Mexico,
Speaker 3: which was incredible. It is one of the most beautiful
Speaker 3: caves on the planet and it's such a privilege to
Speaker 3: get to go there. Yeah, we spent a week underground
Speaker 3: and took photographs and did some exploration and mapping and things,
Speaker 3: and it was just amazing. It was incredible. And you know,
Speaker 3: when you do these things, you spend a lot of
Speaker 3: time with a handful of select people who you become
Speaker 3: very close within a short space of time. It's a
Speaker 3: really cool team bonding experience. Actually, it's really good.
Speaker 1: And when you are down there, are you collecting samples
Speaker 1: or how are you mapping something that's in the dark,
Speaker 1: that's rocky, that's underground, that might have tiny passages. What
Speaker 1: type of sciencing do you get to do down there?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean that depends on the purpose.
Speaker 2: Of the trip.
Speaker 3: So if you're there exploring and mapping, then historically that
Speaker 3: would have been done simply with a compass incliner, a
Speaker 3: tape measure and someone on a notebook and people would
Speaker 3: look around the cave. You'd have teams of two or
Speaker 3: three and you'd go from point to point and measure
Speaker 3: the distance between one point and another point. You measure
Speaker 3: the azimuth, and you measure the inclination.
Speaker 1: So in general, distances from the fixed observer at different angles,
Speaker 1: there's not going to be a quiz. It's fine.
Speaker 3: You measure how far away the left wall is, the
Speaker 3: right wall, the ceiling and the floor from where you are,
Speaker 3: and then the person on the book is actually making
Speaker 3: a sketch as you go through the cave, hopefully to scale,
Speaker 3: and in that they put all the details of where
Speaker 3: there's boulders, where there's calcite formations, where there's water, where
Speaker 3: there's bats, where there's insects, where there's passages going off
Speaker 3: in a direction, where there's holes in the floor, where
Speaker 3: there's holes in the ceiling. All these things go into
Speaker 3: that sketch map. And historically, when cavers were using, for instance,
Speaker 3: carbide lights, which these small little flames that miners used
Speaker 3: to use, they would miss sometimes passages going off because
Speaker 3: they couldn't see them with the lighting they.
Speaker 2: Had sounds very dark.
Speaker 3: So then as lightings got better over the years and
Speaker 3: people have gone back to passages that have already been mapped,
Speaker 3: so then they may see that there are other passages
Speaker 3: going off that were not seen previously, and then that
Speaker 3: then gets explored and gets added to the survey of
Speaker 3: the cave.
Speaker 2: But then also with.
Speaker 3: Time, not only as lighting improved, but obviously digital and
Speaker 3: electronic technologies have moved on, so then we moved on
Speaker 3: to having laser distance measurers, which to the distance and
Speaker 3: the inclination and ASIMU for us. And then they're connected
Speaker 3: to an Android phone or a PDA or something, and
Speaker 3: it immediately pops up on the screen and ultimately someone's
Speaker 3: still drawing, but now they're drawing on a handheld device
Speaker 3: rather than an old notepad and with a pen. And
Speaker 3: then even further on our expedition in Greenland last year.
Speaker 3: We actually took a handheld three D laser scanner and
Speaker 3: literally just walked through the cave and it mapped it
Speaker 3: for us.
Speaker 2: Now, so it is always changing.
Speaker 1: That's got to be such an advancement. Yeah, first, bieleologists,
Speaker 1: that must be huge. Do most people just do it
Speaker 1: that way? Are they kind of moving toward that digital
Speaker 1: laser or are there purists who are like, no, you
Speaker 1: have to do this by hand measurement.
Speaker 3: No, I think most people today would be using the
Speaker 3: distance laser measurer connected to an electronic device. Most people
Speaker 3: are definitely not using the three D laser scanner because
Speaker 3: for start, they're very expensive, and then you have a
Speaker 3: lot of data that you have to process, and then
Speaker 3: it ends up in a three D model, which is
Speaker 3: wonderful to look at on a screen and to use
Speaker 3: that to study the cave, but as a mapping tool
Speaker 3: to then go back to cave with a two D
Speaker 3: map in a hand, like if I was to pass
Speaker 3: it on to somebody else to say, now here's a map.
Speaker 3: If you want it for that purpose of using it
Speaker 3: to get through a cave, then a three D model
Speaker 3: isn't good for that. Then you want a two D
Speaker 3: map like a traditional one. So that's where the distance
Speaker 3: laser measurer and the PDA still comes in.
Speaker 1: And how often do caves just collapse? Because I would
Speaker 1: think that if I step foot, or rather a step
Speaker 1: my belly crawl into a cave, it would just collapse
Speaker 1: on me. I'd be buried in rubble forever. But are
Speaker 1: they pretty sturdy?
Speaker 3: Well, yes, I'm going to say yes they are. You know,
Speaker 3: when we go in a cave, it has been formed
Speaker 3: over tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 3: years with water. So I'm talking about limestone caves now
Speaker 3: as well, with you know water that's slowly dissolved away
Speaker 3: the rock that's pretty stable, it's been standing there a
Speaker 3: long time. But of course there are boulders on the
Speaker 3: floor quite often, so they've fallen from somewhere. So rockfalls
Speaker 3: do happen. And if you're going through say a bolder choke,
Speaker 3: then you know that might be loose and unstable, so
Speaker 3: that will be an area where a cave has collapsed.
Speaker 3: But it's really not common that as you're walking through
Speaker 3: a cave it just collapses on you.
Speaker 1: And if you need more robust research, on this. There
Speaker 1: are speleology traumatology epitemologists out there, and one such paper
Speaker 1: is from twenty twelve. It's titled the Epidemiology of Caving
Speaker 1: Injuries in the United States, and it reports that between
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty and two thousand and eight, there were eighty
Speaker 1: one caving fatalities, which is about three deaths per year,
Speaker 1: and the majority occurred from falling or from drowning, although
Speaker 1: in a jam that caused eighteen percent of fatalities. Just
Speaker 1: last month in northern Vietnam, one person was killed in
Speaker 1: a cave, and it's suspected that it was because of
Speaker 1: ill legal goal mining within the natural caves. So beware ye,
Speaker 1: shady excavations.
Speaker 2: Mines may be different.
Speaker 3: You know. Minds are places where humans have excavated it
Speaker 3: and are not only some tens or hundreds of years old,
Speaker 3: but on the whole. No, they don't just collapse. But
Speaker 3: that's not to say that we aren't looking out for
Speaker 3: maybe unstable ceilings or even unstable floors. I did have
Speaker 3: one experience where I was walking along a false floor
Speaker 3: and I didn't realize it and I just went through
Speaker 3: it and I only felt like half a foot or something.
Speaker 3: But of course it could have been It could have
Speaker 3: been worse.
Speaker 1: Have you ever found anything or anyone in a cave.
Speaker 3: Or anything or anyone any like snakes and bats and things. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's not uncommon to find like sheep and dogs and
Speaker 3: things in caves that you know, they often get rescued.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure how many people have like disappeared into caves,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know what you mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that's not so common.
Speaker 1: I have to say, is it good to go on
Speaker 1: a buddy says, like as a team just for safety?
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. A body system's always good. Also, you know,
Speaker 3: telling people on the surface where you're going, even if
Speaker 3: there's you know, several of you going. It's always good
Speaker 3: to have a call out on the surface so people
Speaker 3: can know when to expect you back in case something.
Speaker 2: Does go wrong. But of course some people do also
Speaker 2: go on their own. Yeah. I don't, but people do,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: That's wise, It makes sense. And if you're not sure
Speaker 1: how to get started caving, you can ask the internet
Speaker 1: some cursory questions. Now, the Bureau of Land Management has
Speaker 1: this wonderful safety guide with all kind of hot steamy tips.
Speaker 1: I never would have known, and I'm going to link
Speaker 1: this on our website. I'm also going to read them
Speaker 1: to you with my mouth, so it says, here are
Speaker 1: the tips. Leave word with someone stating what cave you
Speaker 1: will be visiting in an approximate return time. Never go
Speaker 1: caving alone. Always have three to four people in a group.
Speaker 1: Each person in the group must have three independent light
Speaker 1: sources and extra batteries. Matches, candles, and glowsticks are not
Speaker 1: considered light sources. Wear a helmet, preferably an approved one
Speaker 1: to protect against low ceilings and some falling rocks. Use
Speaker 1: a chin strap to prevent losing your helmet and light.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't call you a buffoon here, but it could.
Speaker 1: It also says to mount your main source of light
Speaker 1: on your helmet to free your hands for climbing. Wear
Speaker 1: sturdy footwear such as boots that protect the ankle and
Speaker 1: have non leather, non skid, non marking souls. Bring gloves,
Speaker 1: Bring knee pads if necessary. If you're going into the
Speaker 1: cave for an extended period of time, carry water and
Speaker 1: food for each person. Stay within your abilities and experience
Speaker 1: level to avoid injuring yourself and to avoid damaging the cave.
Speaker 1: Also avoid drowning by not entering gypsum caves or other
Speaker 1: storm during type of caves. If there is a thread
Speaker 1: of rain, always watch for and avoid poisonous creatures such
Speaker 1: as snakes and insects. So grab a friend or three
Speaker 1: and get caving. Maybe you'll even spot a dead bird
Speaker 1: or in a live spider. Also, now that I've asked
Speaker 1: most of my terror bas questions, we can get to
Speaker 1: more of the science. And as a paleochromatologist, you mentioned
Speaker 1: how old some of these caves are and maybe up
Speaker 1: to hundreds of thousands of years old. What do you
Speaker 1: study when it comes to paleoclimate What are you able
Speaker 1: to discern from these old caving systems versus what we've
Speaker 1: got going on right now.
Speaker 3: So I'm studying climate change that happened in the past,
Speaker 3: So this isn't anthropogenically forced climate change. This would be
Speaker 3: natural climate change that's happened over Earth's history basically. And
Speaker 3: to do that, I work with calcite mineral deposits. So
Speaker 3: these are small pieces of calcium carbonate that get deposited
Speaker 3: by water within caves, and most people might be familiar
Speaker 3: with them as like stalactites or stalagmites that form from
Speaker 3: the ceiling or on the ground. So stalactite with a
Speaker 3: CEA forms on the ceiling and the stalagmite with a
Speaker 3: G forms on the ground. Hey, yeah, that's how you remember.
Speaker 1: That's great, I was.
Speaker 3: Going to ask.
Speaker 1: So a chronical formation hanging from the ceiling is usually
Speaker 1: composed of years of mineral deposits from dripping water crystallizing
Speaker 1: onto itself and hanging kind of like an icicle from
Speaker 1: the ceiling. Stalactite or since it has two teas in
Speaker 1: that word, you can think of top. Now, if water
Speaker 1: is dripping and the minerals are forming a stack and
Speaker 1: it's on the ground, that's a stalagamite. So go forth,
Speaker 1: win some bar trivia, spill a little beerround the floor
Speaker 1: for me, or really for a doctor genomously it's apeleiologist,
Speaker 1: and why does she study them? It's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: And these stalactites and stalagmites form from water that has
Speaker 3: traveled from the ocean where it's evaporated and then traveled
Speaker 3: through the atmosphere. It's then fallen as precipitation, be that
Speaker 3: rainfall or snow for instance. It's passed through soil above
Speaker 3: the cave and then dissolve the limestone above the cave,
Speaker 3: and then as it's enter the cave, it's deposited a
Speaker 3: small amount of calcium carbonate and brought with it a
Speaker 3: signature of that entire transport process that it's been on.
Speaker 3: So the state of the ocean, the atmosphere, the vegetation
Speaker 3: above the cave, how active the soil is, and these
Speaker 3: sorts of things that all gets trapped within the different
Speaker 3: layers of the stalagmite, a bit like tree rings in effect,
Speaker 3: except that this is layers of rock that are forming.
Speaker 2: Getten bigger and bigger and bigger.
Speaker 3: And so then I come along and I take samples
Speaker 3: with permission, we collect stalagmites and or cause of stalagmites,
Speaker 3: and actually leave the stalagmite intact in the cave and
Speaker 3: just take a core out of the middle of it,
Speaker 3: for instance, so that we don't destroy the esthetics of
Speaker 3: the cave. And then I can analyze the changes in
Speaker 3: the chemistry through the stalagmite, and then that tells me
Speaker 3: about the state of the climate and the environment at
Speaker 3: the time. But then to put that into perspective, we
Speaker 3: have to know when that stalagmite was forming in order
Speaker 3: to put that climate and environmental record in the context
Speaker 3: of some time period in the past, and this could
Speaker 3: be the last few thousands, tens of thousands of years,
Speaker 3: and it can even go back millions of years if
Speaker 3: you have some caves are that old.
Speaker 1: What has shocked you that you've done with your research?
Speaker 1: Did you get any conclusions of results or analysis that
Speaker 1: you really weren't expecting?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean this is what drives us on with science,
Speaker 3: right to find those answers and the more surprising ones
Speaker 3: normally give you a headache for a short while or
Speaker 3: a long while, but that's kind of what's exciting really,
Speaker 3: then talking about it and working it out. I think
Speaker 3: there's a couple of ones to pull out. One is
Speaker 3: a Devil's Hole in Nevada, which is a project I
Speaker 3: worked on some years ago. And Devil's Hole is famous
Speaker 3: for other reasons. It is a small fracture in the
Speaker 3: desert in the Amagosa Desert, and there are mupfish that
Speaker 3: live within the cave and there they've got a population
Speaker 3: of less than one hundred and they only live in
Speaker 3: this one particular cave in Nevada. Now this is yeah,
Speaker 3: I know, crazy, Hey, we don't work in that cave
Speaker 3: because the pup fisher there and obviously that highly protected.
Speaker 2: But next door there is a Devil's.
Speaker 3: Whole number two cave, and basically you up sail down
Speaker 3: and you've reached that aquifer underneath the desert, and for
Speaker 3: like hundreds of thousands of years, calcite has been precipitating
Speaker 3: out of that aquifer, out of the ground water and
Speaker 3: onto the cave wall. So this is a different kind
Speaker 3: of deposition. It's not a stalek type or a stalek knite.
Speaker 3: It's actually called mamillary calcite. But ultimately it's the same
Speaker 3: kind of idea.
Speaker 1: Where is that that name come from? Mamillary? Is it
Speaker 1: kind of like mounds like boobs? Like how there's mamatus clouds.
Speaker 3: I never thought of it that way, but maybe, and
Speaker 3: I don't know the answer second MAUNDI yeah, so possibly
Speaker 3: like cloudy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, mammillaries are rounded knobs of calcite that appear on
Speaker 1: the ceiling and walls. And yes, these cave formations look
Speaker 1: like knockers honestly, kind of hot ones and definitely were
Speaker 1: named after boobs. But according to the National Speleological Society,
Speaker 1: mammillaris also called cave clouds are carbonate coatings that form
Speaker 1: underwater in cave pools whose water is super saturated with
Speaker 1: calcium carbonate. And Gina told me that she has done
Speaker 1: research on Devil's Whole Cave number two, and it's an
Speaker 1: important one because in the late seventies early eighties it
Speaker 1: was in Devil's Hole that they obtained the very first
Speaker 1: long climate record from a cave. But the paleoclimate data,
Speaker 1: which went back up to a half a million years,
Speaker 1: covered all these different ice ages and then warm periods
Speaker 1: and an ice age and then a warm period and
Speaker 1: an ice age, like going in and out these big
Speaker 1: climate change cycles. But the cycles seemed off and it
Speaker 1: wasn't until further research decades later done by Gina and
Speaker 1: her team that they discovered that some of the dating
Speaker 1: methods used decades earlier interacted with the groundwater, making the
Speaker 1: dates off. And they were the culprit for thinking that
Speaker 1: the Earth's cycles were a little off. And for more
Speaker 1: on that you can see Genus paper reconciliation of the
Speaker 1: Devil's Whole climate record. So thanks Devil's Whole number two
Speaker 1: mammillary speliothempaleoclimatology.
Speaker 3: So that was one super cool like sciting thing that
Speaker 3: we kind of found out, I guess in recent years.
Speaker 1: And do these caves because they're I guess protected from
Speaker 1: the atmospheric elements, even though things like leached down into them.
Speaker 1: Do they act as kind of a time capsule or
Speaker 1: are they just as dynamically changing as everything on Earth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they are very dynamic, but they're definitely working as
Speaker 3: a time capsule because that water leads that calcium carbonate
Speaker 3: deposits not in all caves, but in the right scenario
Speaker 3: it will, and then those records can last for hundreds
Speaker 3: of thousands and millions of years. Then then that is
Speaker 3: a record that's kept underground, away from the elements on
Speaker 3: the surface. And you think about when a big ice
Speaker 3: sheet comes through, or a glacier or something that just
Speaker 3: ball dozes everything out of the way right and everything
Speaker 3: that was in its path before it, and then it retreats,
Speaker 3: and then you have a nice record of when the
Speaker 3: last glacier came through. But caves kind of sit there
Speaker 3: kind of quietly recording the you know, what's going on
Speaker 3: on the surface, but from underground. But indeed they are
Speaker 3: also very dynamic as well. And if you go somewhere,
Speaker 3: say in the tropics where there's you know, a monsoon
Speaker 3: every year and huge amounts of water passing through the cave,
Speaker 3: huge floods going through the cave. Then you know obviously
Speaker 3: that the record within the cave will also constantly be
Speaker 3: in change and in flux.
Speaker 1: And how are peeu climatologists and spulalogists, how are they
Speaker 1: relating that to the climate change that's happening now or
Speaker 1: are you just looking at paleo paleo, way way way back.
Speaker 2: It depends where people are working.
Speaker 3: Essentially, some people are working on very modern, very young records.
Speaker 3: We call it sub annual resolution. So if a stalagmite
Speaker 3: is growing fast enough, with the chemical methods that we
Speaker 3: have today, the analytical methods, we can get multiple data
Speaker 3: points for one year of growth within the stalagmite. And
Speaker 3: then if that record, say a few hundred years old
Speaker 3: or a few thousand years old, then we can we
Speaker 3: can have a very high resolution record that captures the
Speaker 3: more recent changes. That's one aspect of kind of answering
Speaker 3: that question. But then the other aspect is in terms
Speaker 3: of paleoclimatology, the reason we study it is to improve
Speaker 3: our understanding of how the air system works. In the
Speaker 3: first place, so we know we're heading towards a warmer world.
Speaker 3: So if we look at times in the past when
Speaker 3: it was warmer through other processes related to the Earth
Speaker 3: orbit around the Sun, for instance, or times in the
Speaker 3: past when there was naturally more carbon dioxide in the
Speaker 3: atmosphere than today, then we can tap into those periods
Speaker 3: in the past and learn from them, learn about the
Speaker 3: weather systems, learn about how high sea level was, basically
Speaker 3: the different workings of the environmental system on Earth at
Speaker 3: times in the past when either it was already warmer
Speaker 3: than today, when greenhouse gas concentrations were higher than today,
Speaker 3: or even times in the past when the climate has
Speaker 3: changed very quickly, So then we get an idea of
Speaker 3: how fast sea level is even capable of rising. You know,
Speaker 3: these kinds of ideas. So that's kind of what we're
Speaker 3: doing as paleoclimatologists, trying to improve our understanding of boundary conditions, mechanisms,
Speaker 3: rates have changed, these sorts of things, which then go
Speaker 3: into predictive models for the future to help us improve
Speaker 3: what we could expect to happen in the future.
Speaker 1: How do appeal your climatology? Just speak about folks who
Speaker 1: might think, Hey, there's been ice ages, there's been warmer periods,
Speaker 1: this is just another cycle and it's not anthropogenic. Is
Speaker 1: there just a big sigh in a face palm or
Speaker 1: how does that handle scientifically?
Speaker 3: Oh, you should have seen my reaction when you ask
Speaker 3: that question.
Speaker 2: Just yeah, there is a little bit of that.
Speaker 3: But you know, all we can do is just keep
Speaker 3: on with our mission of explaining, yes, there have been
Speaker 3: ice ages in the past, and yes the climate has
Speaker 3: always been changing, and yes, that's how we know that
Speaker 3: what's happening today is completely not natural.
Speaker 2: We know what should be happening, and we also know what.
Speaker 3: The consequences are of what's happening today by looking at
Speaker 3: all the periods in the past, so it doesn't deter
Speaker 3: us necessarily, and we can only keep working with that
Speaker 3: message of why we know it's not natural today and
Speaker 3: why we also know this is really bad news for
Speaker 3: the future if we don't do something about it.
Speaker 1: Right, I imagine there must be a lot of news
Speaker 1: headlines that in opinion pieces that just really would get
Speaker 1: your goat. But that's amazing that you just soldier on
Speaker 1: and keep doing the work you're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Can I ask you some questions from listeners. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: of course before we do, we like to just flutter
Speaker 1: some coin into a cause. And this week Gina selected
Speaker 1: the British Cave Rescue Council, which promotes the exchange of
Speaker 1: information between member rescue organizations to help get more cavers
Speaker 1: in peril safe and sound above the ground. Now you
Speaker 1: can find out more about the British Cave Rescue Council
Speaker 1: at the link in the show notes. And think you
Speaker 1: to sponsors the show for making that possible. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: dig deep and unearth all of your curiosities.
Speaker 5: Dandeman asked, Hey, Ali, big hole fan here, I had
Speaker 5: a question if there are separate experts for like ice caves,
Speaker 5: Like are they clique or are they the same like
Speaker 5: cave experts as their rocky caves.
Speaker 3: Oh that's great.
Speaker 2: No they're not clique. No, they're definitely not clique.
Speaker 3: But yes, there are different experts because you know, it's
Speaker 3: a different science study in eiter, study in rocks, and
Speaker 3: we can't all be experts in everything, and we may
Speaker 3: all meet up together every few years at a very
Speaker 3: big conference and hangout and stuff, but ultimately, yeah, there
Speaker 3: are different experts. I would say and it's not to
Speaker 3: say that we can't you work together and branch out
Speaker 3: and that sort of stuff, But yeah, there's definitely different
Speaker 3: experts for different topics. That makes sense.
Speaker 1: Now, what about long caves you wanted to know specifically,
Speaker 1: Josie Brutherford, Mouse Paxton, TV, Carol Young, Sharon and first
Speaker 1: time question asker Marina Ramirez.
Speaker 3: A lot of big and long caves are found in
Speaker 3: the topics, for instance, in China in Borneo, but then
Speaker 3: you go to the Yucatan, for instance, and there are
Speaker 3: hundreds of miles of underground caves that you would need
Speaker 3: to dive to get through most of them, and that's
Speaker 3: a very different geology and that's sustained as well. But
Speaker 3: the longest cave in the world at the moment, I
Speaker 3: believe is Mammoth Cave in the USA, And so it
Speaker 3: comes down to the geology basically and the climb.
Speaker 1: And yes, Mammoth Cave in Kentucky is not fronting with
Speaker 1: the name Mammoth. It really is the biggest known cave
Speaker 1: system and as of twenty twenty two, cavers have explored
Speaker 1: four hundred and twenty six miles of it. And Courtney Hudson,
Speaker 1: a listener is based in France and asked about caves
Speaker 1: at elevation, and it turns out that in central Peru
Speaker 1: there is a limestone cave called Kokama Chai that is
Speaker 1: over sixteen thousand feet or nearly five thousand meters above
Speaker 1: sea level. You got to get that high to go low.
Speaker 1: And these caves at elevation also in seismic zones. And
Speaker 1: you may like that, but friends, I don't. And also
Speaker 1: since absolute zero people asked me, but the scariest cave
Speaker 1: in my mind may be in southern Colorado, not only
Speaker 1: because it's at high elevation and it's slippery, and it's
Speaker 1: a very crisp thirty five degrees fahrenheit in there, and
Speaker 1: there have been a lot of falls and rescues, but
Speaker 1: also people have found human skellies in there. This is
Speaker 1: called Spanish Cave. One of the skellies was said to
Speaker 1: have been dressed in armor and wearing a chain around
Speaker 1: its neck. Also, some people say that they've found gold
Speaker 1: hidden in there. I'm just saying it sounds like a
Speaker 1: great place to die of a heart attack if nothing else. Now,
Speaker 1: I said I would stop being scared earlier, and I
Speaker 1: lied to you. You mentioned scuba diving, and Aaron Ryan asked,
Speaker 1: they're from Vancouver. They were wondering, as a scuba diver,
Speaker 1: what is it about cave diving that makes it so
Speaker 1: much more dangerous and so much scarier than regular ocean diving?
Speaker 1: Do cave divers? Are they able to know where their
Speaker 1: twists and turns are and where these really narrow passages are?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is a fantastic couple of books written by
Speaker 3: Rick Stanton and John Valanthem, who were involved in the
Speaker 3: Thai cave rescue a few years ago. Yeah, and I
Speaker 3: recommend there is as incredible reads to learn about the
Speaker 3: mind of a cave diver.
Speaker 1: I have to say you can see Rick Stanton's aquanat
Speaker 1: the Inside story of the Thai Cave Rescue, A Life
Speaker 1: Beneath the Surface and or Thirteen Lessons that Saved Thirteen
Speaker 1: lives the Thaie Cave Rescue by John Lathan. And even
Speaker 1: if you are a cave diver, not all caves are
Speaker 1: the same, of course, or are the waters.
Speaker 3: It also depends again where you train, So for instance,
Speaker 3: if you're training in the Yucatan or the Bahamas, where
Speaker 3: the caves there are also got beautiful, pristine, clear blue waters,
Speaker 3: but it's very easy to kick up silt and not
Speaker 3: have very beautiful pristine waters anymore. Obviously, you know, they
Speaker 3: always have a line that they have to follow in
Speaker 3: case that happens. But then if you train in the UK,
Speaker 3: as you would find out from reading these books, basically
Speaker 3: you don't see anything from the very start. It's all
Speaker 3: just muddy and nasty and horrible.
Speaker 1: Oh dear, oh dear.
Speaker 3: And these cave divers very much were dry cave as
Speaker 3: to start to it, so they really understood cave systems first,
Speaker 3: and where caves go, and how caves form, and where
Speaker 3: you find their way on and these sorts of things
Speaker 3: before they turned to cave diving. And only then once
Speaker 3: they turned to cave diving, and they're finding their way
Speaker 3: through the dark, you know, without really an escape route
Speaker 3: is you know, because there's a ceiling above your head.
Speaker 3: Then in these cases they're just the most fabulous people
Speaker 3: in caves. Basically they know how caves work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to give you this shortest summary of
Speaker 1: what happened in that northern entire cave in that late
Speaker 1: June of twenty eighteen, leading to a mission that the
Speaker 1: rescuers themselves have called experimental and hideous. So a soccer team,
Speaker 1: the Wild Wars Boys, aged eleven to sixteen. They were
Speaker 1: headed to a nearby cave after practice in their uniforms
Speaker 1: with their assistant coach in his mid twenties to have
Speaker 1: a little birthday party for one of the boys. Now,
Speaker 1: the caves are usually closed for a few months during
Speaker 1: the monsoon season in July and August, but it was
Speaker 1: a week before July they were open. It was late June.
Speaker 1: They figured they'd be fine. Obviously we know they were not.
Speaker 1: So a monsoon rips along. It floods the cave while
Speaker 1: they're in there, and they have to try to find
Speaker 1: the small dry incline as shelter as the water comes
Speaker 1: pouring in. Now, this cave, it's called the Cave of
Speaker 1: the Great Sleeping Lady. It's poorly mapped. It's at least
Speaker 1: six miles long, and over ten thousand volunteers joined the
Speaker 1: rescue efforts. They tried to drain the caves, They tried
Speaker 1: to drill in through the side. Divers eventually got to
Speaker 1: them and gave them supplies and mylar blankets and checked
Speaker 1: on them. And all these people hatch plants to get
Speaker 1: them out. Now, they were over two and a half
Speaker 1: miles from the entrance flooded, and they were under two
Speaker 1: thousand feet of rock. Drilling wasn't going to happen. What
Speaker 1: ended up working is that they had to anesthetize these
Speaker 1: boys and the coach with a combination of ketamine and
Speaker 1: xanax to guide them underwater masked with divers through these
Speaker 1: flooded narrow passageways. All the boys were saved, along with
Speaker 1: the coach, who apparently was at one time a Buddhist
Speaker 1: monk and was able to keep the kids calm with meditation,
Speaker 1: which is honestly the best advertisement for meditation I can
Speaker 1: possibly think of. However, one Thai Navy seal died during
Speaker 1: the rescue and another ended up perishing a year later
Speaker 1: from a blood infection contracted during the rescue, and I
Speaker 1: was looking into this really sadly. Last year one of
Speaker 1: the boys who had moved to the UK on a
Speaker 1: soccer scholarship died, which was ruled a suicide. Also, there
Speaker 1: was some drama with the guy who bought the Twitter
Speaker 1: website who said that he would build a submarine, but
Speaker 1: obviously they were like, dude, it is literally safer to
Speaker 1: give children a horse tranquilizer and drag them underwater for
Speaker 1: several hours. Thank you, though, now for more details, nat
Speaker 1: Gio made a documentary called The Rescue that even though
Speaker 1: you know, the outcome is still beautiful and nerve wrecking,
Speaker 1: and I just can't believe that it wasn't a bigger tragedy.
Speaker 1: So hats off to everyone who is capable of cave diving.
Speaker 1: I'm not one of you, and I'm glad you are
Speaker 1: now speaking of such things. A few of you patrons
Speaker 1: were a little spooked by caves, Andy Guarnaccia and Lucy Antonelli.
Speaker 1: They wanted to know, in Lucy's words, is that map
Speaker 1: of all the missing people in the US, with all
Speaker 1: the caves matching up real? Are people being taken into
Speaker 1: the caves? Caves are so fucking scary, Lucy says. And
Speaker 1: I asked Snopes, who said that those maps aren't just
Speaker 1: of missing persons, They are of missing persons who quote
Speaker 1: vanished under strange circumstances near national parks, which is why
Speaker 1: they may bear such an uncanny resemblance to the cave maps.
Speaker 1: So don't worry about it now. Many of you wondered
Speaker 1: about safety, though, including first time question askers Rachel Robinson
Speaker 1: and Heliaphobes or spolunka Phobes Magzaroni, first time question asker,
Speaker 1: Eric Masterson, Clover, Valerie Kitty Ashley, Rocket, Mariah Shemel, The
Speaker 1: Joyful Spitfire, Sean Thomas Kane, Kareem Godraltz, Jacob Shepherd, Caro
Speaker 1: Young and Mariah Walser and Stephen Moxley, who wanted to
Speaker 1: know how do professionals stay safe in new and unexplored
Speaker 1: cave systems? And Stephen says stories like the Nutty Putty
Speaker 1: Cave terrify me. And just a side note, the two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine Nutty Putty Incidant in Utah, in which
Speaker 1: a man named John Edward Jones was stuck upside down
Speaker 1: in an unmapped and narrow passageway and ultimately died due
Speaker 1: to the physical strain on his body that resulted in
Speaker 1: the cave being closed, with him still entombed as a memorial.
Speaker 1: But through all this, patron, Addie Capello, I can hear you, Addie,
Speaker 1: screaming at me right now because you asked, how do
Speaker 1: we help battle the scary awful cave stigma. I'm a
Speaker 1: wildlife biologist, they write, and I'm always trying to fight
Speaker 1: the fears with good education. Now we've already heard some
Speaker 1: stats on caving deaths. Turns out perhaps they're lower than
Speaker 1: we would all think. And Gina has been on multiple
Speaker 1: continents caving, sometimes hiking in days at a time to remote,
Speaker 1: uncharted locations. Is caving really that scary or are we
Speaker 1: just on edge because of these rare but really gripping stories.
Speaker 1: As someone who works in caves and explores these things
Speaker 1: and goes through these narrow passages in the dark and
Speaker 1: maps them, do you feel like you are braver in
Speaker 1: your everyday life? No, because I feel like what you
Speaker 1: do is the bravest job, like in the world.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: No, I'm doing what I absolutely love.
Speaker 3: You know. I started when I was a teenager, so
Speaker 3: so for me, it's not brave at all. Now, you know,
Speaker 3: you should see me on a ski slope. I'm just like,
Speaker 3: I can't ski to save life. I hate it and
Speaker 3: I'm so scared and petrified. I just cannot stand it
Speaker 3: at all. And now I have to teach my three
Speaker 3: year old daughter it's see next winter, which I'm not
Speaker 3: looking forward to. Yeah, I don't see it.
Speaker 1: It's being brave, not at all well beg to disagree.
Speaker 1: Biscuits and gravy first time question asker and Zach Everett
Speaker 1: also first time question osker. They asked about if you've
Speaker 1: heard of the Lorree caverns in Shenandoah, Virginia that have
Speaker 1: a playable stalactite organ, but a lot of people, like Maria,
Speaker 1: first time question asker wants to know about cave acoustics
Speaker 1: why they're so hauntingly beautiful? What is it about acoustics
Speaker 1: in caves, like, why are they so beautiful? And what
Speaker 1: does it sound like in them?
Speaker 3: I guess we need a sound engineer to answer that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, right, But yeah, no, I totally get it
Speaker 2: though well as well.
Speaker 3: It's you know when you walk into a huge cathedral
Speaker 3: or an opera house, it's the same thing right there.
Speaker 3: They're just these big, huge spaces that are kind of
Speaker 3: they're obviously purpose built for that. So then caves are
Speaker 3: just Mother Nature's doing that. But I guess there must
Speaker 3: be something similar to being in a cathedral or a
Speaker 3: concert all.
Speaker 1: I guess so, PBS News Hour, you just heard that
Speaker 1: clip from them. They did a lovely piece on this organ,
Speaker 1: which is known as the largest musical instrument in the
Speaker 1: world as it spans three and a half acres inside
Speaker 1: a cave and it sounds travel all within the sixty
Speaker 1: four acre cavern in Virginia. And now it's not really
Speaker 1: an organ because it's actually a percussive instrument with dozens
Speaker 1: of these natural formations, some carved to get just the
Speaker 1: right sound, setting off different notes. When they're struck with
Speaker 1: a mallet, and with a cave which is made of nice, hard,
Speaker 1: usually smooth rock, that sound can continue bouncing from surface
Speaker 1: to surface, sustaining the notes in that glorious reverb that
Speaker 1: we all love about a cave, love it so much.
Speaker 1: How often do spilologists when they're alone in a cave
Speaker 1: with a group do the echo oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: Even if I'm in a tunnel with my daughter on
Speaker 3: the bike, I go ooh, you know, like this and
Speaker 3: just listen to the echo yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And especially if.
Speaker 3: You're in a group that's exploring. That could be an
Speaker 3: exploring the cave for the very first time no one's
Speaker 3: been in there, but also exploring for the first time
Speaker 3: for yourselves, like you don't know the cave but other
Speaker 3: people have been there and you can sense this big
Speaker 3: passage beyond and you shouting you listen, Yeah, that is amazing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: we love that.
Speaker 1: Amber McIntyre had a great question, how do deep caves
Speaker 1: have oxygen? Do they have an air supply and do
Speaker 1: you ever have to bring oxygen with you?
Speaker 3: Ah, that's a good question. It's not necessarily related to
Speaker 3: the deepness of a cave. So caves tend to be
Speaker 3: really quite well ventilated actually, you know, especially if there's
Speaker 3: water going down through there that brings oxygen with it
Speaker 3: and stuff. You know, there's normally lots of different entrances
Speaker 3: to a cave, just not that humans can get into
Speaker 3: all of them, but there will be holes and fishes
Speaker 3: and so then there's pressure differences, there's circulation within a cave.
Speaker 3: So generally speaking, oxygen is not really an issue. It
Speaker 3: can be an issue in perhaps more shallow caves where
Speaker 3: so there's a farm above which which is not uncommon,
Speaker 3: especially in the UK, and then you get a load
Speaker 3: of farm waste that's rotting in a cave. That can
Speaker 3: cause what we call bad air or you know, machinery
Speaker 3: or something that's leaked into a cave, and it is
Speaker 3: possible to have what's called bad air in a cave,
Speaker 3: which is high two levels essentially or basically poor oxygen levels,
Speaker 3: and you tend to get headaches, feel a bit breathly,
Speaker 3: and it can be quite serious. It can be quite
Speaker 3: dangerous if you don't realize early enough that something's going on.
Speaker 3: And especially if you go in a cave and there's
Speaker 3: a lot of dead and rotten vegetation, that's normally a
Speaker 3: clear sign that the air might not be so good,
Speaker 3: and definitely to be a bit careful about how long
Speaker 3: you might spend there.
Speaker 1: Let's say yeah, yeah, yeah about and Anna Lie and
Speaker 1: some others had questions about microclimates, such as Elie Brown,
Speaker 1: Leona Schuster, first time question askers, wildlife Tech, grease Sharing,
Speaker 1: Hallness Rory, and Alyssa Elliott. And Rory asked why is
Speaker 1: it so cold and wet? Annie wants to know how
Speaker 1: do caves maintain a consistent temperature once you hit a
Speaker 1: certain level. There's these ones in Alabama that stay fifty
Speaker 1: nine degrees no matter the temperature outside. How does that happen?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, the general consensus is caves record the mean
Speaker 3: annual air temperature on the surface. That's not always a case,
Speaker 3: because there can also be like airflows and things, so
Speaker 3: it's not strictly speaking, but generally they record the mean
Speaker 3: annual air temperature. And the reason they do that is
Speaker 3: because they're kind of equilibrated to the rock. So once
Speaker 3: you get so far into a cave, the rock is
Speaker 3: not change in temperature. So on long time scales with
Speaker 3: like big climate change, then that rock will change temperature,
Speaker 3: but like on a daily like timescale or even season
Speaker 3: or timescale, the rocks deep underground are not change in temperature,
Speaker 3: and so the cave air temperature is just kind of
Speaker 3: like equilibrating with the rock. Really.
Speaker 1: A ton of people wanted to note about crystals like
Speaker 1: sand Kieran geosase. Christina Weaver wanted to know how often
Speaker 1: do caves have those gigantic crystals in them or is
Speaker 1: that photoshop?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, you have to look up Leccher Gear,
Speaker 3: which is the cave in New Mexico that I mentioned.
Speaker 3: No cave can have giant crystals. I mean stalk mites
Speaker 3: for a start, are a form of crystal. But I
Speaker 3: know the ones they're on about. They're thinking of lecture
Speaker 3: gear where there's these huge, great pig chandeliers, and then
Speaker 3: there's some other ones in Middle East and stuff as well,
Speaker 3: but they're not super common, like every time you go
Speaker 3: in a cave, you're not going to come across a
Speaker 3: room with a big chandelier in it.
Speaker 2: We do know they exist, and.
Speaker 3: They are in a few places around the world, so
Speaker 3: they're not so completely like sparse.
Speaker 1: Some of those pictures just looks so fake. It just
Speaker 1: is like these huge shooting wands of crystals when they
Speaker 1: came out a few years ago, people looked tiny and
Speaker 1: it just looked like Superman caves of just gorgeous crystals
Speaker 1: that definitely looked like photoshops.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Nika Cave is definitely not photoshops. And I'm
Speaker 3: just looking it up now. Ah yeah, two hour Mexico.
Speaker 3: They are huge crystals and they are There are people
Speaker 3: in the photos and the crystals are many times taller
Speaker 3: than the person and that they are correct. That is true. Yep.
Speaker 1: So these glowing white crystals are longer than a school
Speaker 1: bus and like three feet thick and jut out at
Speaker 1: every angle and they've formed over so so many years
Speaker 1: from this magma heated water saturated with minerals like gypsum
Speaker 1: to form these selenite crystals, and I know that you
Speaker 1: want to go there, maybe you want to take some
Speaker 1: great fit picks. Don't even think about hanging out in there, though,
Speaker 1: because not only is it situated in a lead and
Speaker 1: silver mine, but the cavern itself is over one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty degrees fahrenheit and can be up to ninety
Speaker 1: nine percent of humidity. The photos though astounding, so trippy. Oh,
Speaker 1: speaking of col dB, first time question asker wanted to know,
Speaker 1: will you actually start hallucinating after like ten minutes in
Speaker 1: a pitch black cave or is that a myth?
Speaker 3: I think that's a myth.
Speaker 2: No, okay, no, no, no, I don't think so.
Speaker 3: I mean we always do a fun thing with the
Speaker 3: fresh as you know, when you take people in a
Speaker 3: cave for the first time, we always do the turn
Speaker 3: off the headlights and you know, put your hand in
Speaker 3: front of your face and like there's absolutely no chance
Speaker 3: of seeing anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: You know, you kind of think that your eyes would
Speaker 3: get used to the dark like they always do on
Speaker 3: the surface, but no, they don't. You just never see anything.
Speaker 3: It's just super cool. But no, I don't know if
Speaker 3: anyone hallucinating.
Speaker 1: That's good, that's a good thing. A lot of people
Speaker 1: are talking about specific caves that they went to, and
Speaker 1: like South Dakota, Kelly Chiva wanted to know as no
Speaker 1: question from Kiey Chavez. They're from New Mexico, home with
Speaker 1: the famous Carlsbad caverns, they malpased, lava tubes, the Talis formation.
Speaker 1: They want to know, are we perhaps the lucky estate
Speaker 1: in terms a variety of caves?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well yeah in New Mexico. That's why you've got
Speaker 3: Letigia so yeah. Oh, you know, they're already in this
Speaker 3: realm of like caver competitiveness. So we've are caves better
Speaker 3: than your caves, which is the same all over the world.
Speaker 2: Funnily enough, you certainly have.
Speaker 3: Some incredible caves, yeah, in New Mexico, and you should
Speaker 3: be very proud of them, definitely, and I believe there's
Speaker 3: a lot of legislation in place to protect them as well,
Speaker 3: which is fabulous news.
Speaker 1: Well, on that note, a bunch of people wanted to
Speaker 1: know about conservation looking at you. Stephen knighton Sedoni asked
Speaker 1: Madison Wolferre and Sarah in Montana and riologists as to
Speaker 1: caves have Special Environmental Protection. Katie Noble wanted to know
Speaker 1: why is it illegal to touch the walls of some caves?
Speaker 1: What happens if you do touch a cave? And Faith
Speaker 1: Stemmler wants to know if there's any proper cave etiquette
Speaker 1: that people should observe.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, these are great questions. So of course, you know,
Speaker 3: there's the don't leave anything in there that shouldn't be left,
Speaker 3: you know, take photographs and nothing else. That kind of
Speaker 3: like general rules of being in the wilderness. Anyway, as
Speaker 3: I kind of touched on, if we are camping in
Speaker 3: caves and everything should be brought out, it's all human
Speaker 3: waste should really be brought out of a cave. When
Speaker 3: it comes to sampling for you know, science, like what
Speaker 3: I do, I also very much appreciate and I acknowledge
Speaker 3: that taking stalagmites is also questionable, which I appreciate, but
Speaker 3: we also try and do that as minimally as possible.
Speaker 3: We either take samples that are already broken, or we
Speaker 3: take cause of samples and lead the main thing intact,
Speaker 3: or we do pilot work to make sure that we
Speaker 3: know the age of a sample before it gets taken.
Speaker 3: So this is also why some science takes a long time.
Speaker 3: It takes years because we do preliminary analysis first to
Speaker 3: see if the sample is going to answer the scientific
Speaker 3: question that we have.
Speaker 2: And then in other caves there's things like the.
Speaker 3: Microbiology might be so super important. In some caves this
Speaker 3: is a big issue, especially in like New Mexico in
Speaker 3: the Carlsbad region. The microbiology there is so special that
Speaker 3: it's really important that you don't like touch the water
Speaker 3: or touch the walls, because you might contaminate that very
Speaker 3: unique microbiological system that has been living in that cave
Speaker 3: for millions or billions of years, you know, So that's
Speaker 3: really critical not to contaminate it in that case. So
Speaker 3: caves are really special, they're really unique. Anything that lives
Speaker 3: there has adapted to live in the dark in those
Speaker 3: stable environments, you know, away from the surface, and of
Speaker 3: course anything that we do down there is quite invasive.
Speaker 3: So we just have to step back and remind ourselves
Speaker 3: that this is a very unique place and we have
Speaker 3: to be as conservation minded as possible.
Speaker 1: Are a lot of caves just open to people or
Speaker 1: are only select ones that seem more stable and less
Speaker 1: delicate in terms of that microbiology or is it like
Speaker 1: if there's a caving, go in it.
Speaker 3: No, it depends where you are in the world. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of caves in for instance, in the UK,
Speaker 3: you can just go in them. They're actually in guide
Speaker 3: books and things. I don't recommend it if you're not experienced,
Speaker 3: but you know, there's a lot of caves that don't
Speaker 3: have gates on and there's actually nothing to stop you.
Speaker 3: But like I say, I don't recommend it. Then in
Speaker 3: other places there may be gates on caves and you
Speaker 3: need to know the right person or have access to
Speaker 3: the key to get in there.
Speaker 1: For various reasons, I did a very innocent search on
Speaker 1: how to get keys to explore caves, thinking it would
Speaker 1: probably lead to some resources for parks to parts or
Speaker 1: spieleeological associations, But all passageways toward that information led to
Speaker 1: message boards saying things like okay, so today I got
Speaker 1: two keys to caves from a toad and from a
Speaker 1: chest and keyfrog make a noise that sounds like coins
Speaker 1: being dropped when they move around, and you need bone
Speaker 1: keys in order to open doors and chests ogres and
Speaker 1: that same dungeon drop those keys. So maybe for newbies,
Speaker 1: you can as a first step, stay home and you
Speaker 1: can explore through the multiplayer Nakara Blade Point game, or
Speaker 1: you can start with publicly accessible caves out of doors, or.
Speaker 3: Then there's there's show caves as well, which of course
Speaker 3: are a great place if you just want to get
Speaker 3: underground and just get an idea of what it's like
Speaker 3: to be in a cave. And then if you find
Speaker 3: octually that you do quite like being in a cave
Speaker 3: and this is something for you, then get in touch
Speaker 3: with you know, your local grotto or caving community, and
Speaker 3: there are very welcoming and friendly bunch. I'm sure they'd
Speaker 3: be happy to have any newcomers along that they can
Speaker 3: show off their favorite caves too. And then you get
Speaker 3: to go in the really cool places that need a key.
Speaker 1: But you want to you want to make sure you
Speaker 1: get the right pals and get some experience. Josie Rutherford
Speaker 1: wanted to know what is the most famous cave in
Speaker 1: pop culture and Kendall m wants to know if you
Speaker 1: have a favorite horror movie that takes place in a cave.
Speaker 1: Madison Armine wants to know what you think of the
Speaker 1: movie descents I can read. You have to calm down,
Speaker 1: or if you prefer cave documentaries, if you have a
Speaker 1: favorite cave documentary, great.
Speaker 3: The most famous cave in pop culture? Oh my goodness,
Speaker 3: I don't know. Yeah, I mean all cavers love it
Speaker 3: like a cheesy horror film in a cave, you know,
Speaker 3: because we sit there and we sit there and like
Speaker 3: laugh at everything and like tear it apart. So we're
Speaker 3: actually the worst people to watch a cave and film
Speaker 3: with because actually we treat it like a documentary, which
Speaker 3: of course it's not. And yeah, I love a good
Speaker 3: cave in documentary as well, though there's always a limit
Speaker 3: with what a documentary can do in terms of how
Speaker 3: do I say this, It's not the same experience as
Speaker 3: going in a cave basically, you know, there's always limits
Speaker 3: to filming and if there's a big film crew and
Speaker 3: all these sorts of things, and it's just it's just
Speaker 3: not going to be the same really as if you're
Speaker 3: actually in the cave yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The smells, the snugness, the humidity, the lack of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: Philip Dunson had a great question about navigation. How do
Speaker 1: cave explorers crawl through the tiny tunnels the first time?
Speaker 1: Not knowing if it opens up on the end with
Speaker 1: no way of turning around, it always seems terrifying.
Speaker 2: They say, yeah, I'll give it a go, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It was much later in Austria as we were
Speaker 1: wrapping this up and a fellowspieleologist joined our meeting, a
Speaker 1: very sleepy and precious one who is having a tough
Speaker 1: time sleeping. And it's okay if she's in the background, okay,
Speaker 1: it's a family affair.
Speaker 3: She's a caver too, so she's got pepper pick so hopefully.
Speaker 1: Perfect last questions I can ask her always really easy.
Speaker 1: You can say in the one sentence, hardest thing about
Speaker 1: your job, favorite thing about your job.
Speaker 3: Oh, the hardest thing about my job is leaving my
Speaker 3: daughter Madeline behind, who you can hear crying and bround.
Speaker 3: And the best thing about my job is getting to
Speaker 3: visit places that very few people on this planet gets
Speaker 3: the opportunity to see it. That's such a privilege. And
Speaker 3: then to research these places and answer incredible questions and
Speaker 3: just spend that time with great colleagues, you know, trying
Speaker 3: to piece things together and work it out, like I
Speaker 3: absolutely look. But when we get into a great conversation,
Speaker 3: for a few hours and just like, look at graphs
Speaker 3: and data.
Speaker 1: Well, you're the bravest person I know, even if you
Speaker 1: don't think so, I can't. I'm in awe. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for talking to me and spending this time
Speaker 1: to get to know your life and caves.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you so much, Elie.
Speaker 2: It's been fun, it's been really good.
Speaker 1: Just thank you.
Speaker 2: Oh amazing.
Speaker 1: Okay, I will turn off recording. You can in today,
Speaker 1: so ask dynamite people some deep questions because it can
Speaker 1: lead you down some real rabbit holes. Now, thank you
Speaker 1: so so much, doctor Jena Mosley for joining us today
Speaker 1: and sharing all that knowledge. You can find out more
Speaker 1: about her work linked in the show notes, as well
Speaker 1: as her charity of Choices linked. More links will be
Speaker 1: up at our site via aliward dot com slash ologies
Speaker 1: slash Speliology linked to the show notes. We are at
Speaker 1: ologies on Twitter and our ex I Can't Stop and Instagram,
Speaker 1: and I'm at ali Ward on both. We also have free,
Speaker 1: amazing kid friendly versions of ologies called smologies. Those are
Speaker 1: also out once a week. They're on their own show feed.
Speaker 1: You can search Smologies wherever you get your podcasts. You'll
Speaker 1: see a new green logo by artist Bonnie Dutch, who
Speaker 1: is also available for great commissions and pet portraits. You
Speaker 1: can search out Bonnie Dutch bo Ni Dutch online to
Speaker 1: find her. Aaron Talbert admins the Ologies podcast Facebook group.
Speaker 1: Aveline Malick makes our professional transcripts Kelly ar Dwyer does
Speaker 1: the website, and while Dilworth is our scheduling producer, Susan
Speaker 1: Hale is our director of managing everything and also did
Speaker 1: additional research on this episode. Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio
Speaker 1: edits and Jake Chafe takes over as lead editor for
Speaker 1: this episode as Mercedes is out exploring the world for
Speaker 1: the week, and additional editing help was provided by Legally
Speaker 1: Wedded Jarrett Sleeper of the Webby award winning mind Jam Media.
Speaker 1: Nick Thorburn made the music. And if you stick around
Speaker 1: till the end of the episode, I tell you a secret.
Speaker 1: And this week my secret is that I have gotten
Speaker 1: more into since the last couple years. I just feel like, Ooh,
Speaker 1: I like this little perf I get a lot of
Speaker 1: like perfume samples and I'm like, ooh, what's this And
Speaker 1: there's this one scent It's called near ROLLI and It's
Speaker 1: kind of like a lemon blossom, you know, when you
Speaker 1: walk past, like an orange blossom or a lemon blossom tree,
Speaker 1: and you go, I want to have if that's so bad.
Speaker 1: It's like that. It's that smell. And I found this perfume.
Speaker 1: It was the rollly scented.
Speaker 2: It's so good.
Speaker 1: It smells so citrusy, and I couldn't place what it
Speaker 1: smelled like. For a couple of days, I was like,
Speaker 1: it's so good, but what There's something nostalgic, And then
Speaker 1: I realized, I don't know if they still make them,
Speaker 1: But when I was a kid, they had these air
Speaker 1: fresheners that you could put anywhere called stick ups. I
Speaker 1: think there were like these little discs like as big
Speaker 1: around as like the top of a soda can, and
Speaker 1: you could just stick them under the toilet and they'd
Speaker 1: give a nice fragrance. There was a lemon stick up
Speaker 1: that smells exactly like this perfume, and the perfume mellows
Speaker 1: it becomes softer, but when you first spray it, it
Speaker 1: smells exactly like a toilet airfreshener from decades ago. And
Speaker 1: every time I sprayed, I gotta go. It's gonna get different.
Speaker 1: It's going to change. And now I should look up
Speaker 1: whether or not they still make those refresheners.
Speaker 3: I wonder if they do.
Speaker 1: Are you still listening, are you still here? I don't know,
Speaker 1: I am. Let's look it up. I don't. Oh they
Speaker 1: do stick ups. They make them. They're made my air
Speaker 1: Wick sparkling citrus. I should order some and and really
Speaker 1: see how similar they are. This perfume was not inexpensive.
Speaker 1: It was a bit of a treat to myself on
Speaker 1: a very low week, and so I should get it
Speaker 1: and see. But yeah, I still love it. It just
Speaker 1: smells like the toilet sometimes. Okay, bye bye, pacadermatology, homeology
Speaker 1: or no zoology, lithology, technology, meteorology, pathology, anthology, seriology, elinology.
Speaker 2: Enjoy the Cave.