← Ologies with Alie Ward
Ologies with Alie Ward
Antarcticology (ANTARCTIC RESEARCH) with Ariel Waldman
01:13:17
Mile-thick ice. Dry, rocky valleys. Tiny creatures. Red parkas. Seal mummies. We’re going to Antarctica with National Geographic Explorer, microscopic photographer, and Antarcticologist Ariel Waldman. She hosts the gorgeous PBS series “Life Unearthed” and answers a blizzard of questions about camping in the middle of an ice sheet, hauling microscopes to the ends of the Earth, what’s living in a drop of melted snow, potty protocols, microplastics, and the research that happens on a giant continent that carries many mysteries. Also: why you should cold email someone. Like, today.
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- [00:00]
Alie Ward
Oh hey, it's the bookmark. That's just a receipt for the book. A.L.I.E. ward and buckle up. Bundle up. I'm taking you to Antarctica. Well, I'm not doing anything. I'm just asking an ologist questions and they will take you on their journey from a curious outsider to very much insider research station at the bottom of the globe. They have worked for NASA. They are a National Geographic explorer, a microscopist, a filmmaker, a TED speaker, and host of their own excellent new PBS series Life Unearthed, which debuted the very day that we chatted for this episode. We'll get right to it, but first a quick thank you to patrons@patreon.com Ologies for supporting the show for a dollar or more a month and for submitting your questions before we record. Thank you to everyone out there in ologies. Merch from ologiesmerch.com also thanks to everyone who voted for us for a Webby Award. We won the Best Science Podcast again as well as the People's Voice for Best science podcast. So New York, I will see you for the Webby Awards on May 11th. And exciting. Also heads up to anyone looking for kids safe and classroom friendly versions of Ologies, we release those in their very own feed. They're called Smallogies S M O L O G I E S and so if you want to entertain kids with facts, please find those and subscribe. Thank you to everyone who leaves reviews for Ologies which help us so much. I read them all such as this. Still defrosting one from Arugula Few who wrote I love deep diving into topics but I never have the time. As a very slow reader with dyslexia. Thank you for bringing me the joy of learning that I was missing so badly. Arigula Few thanks for being here and
- [01:34]
Bobby
I hope that you've got mittens.
- [01:35]
Alie Ward
It's about to get very chill and chilly. Oh and also thank you to sponsors of the show who make it possible for us to donate to a cause of the ologists choosing each week.
- [01:44]
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- [02:13]
Alie Ward
So ethology is the study of behavior. One reason why I love traveling with people I love is I get to see them in different settings. Here's what I don't love, though. Surprises in a vacation rental. That should be the reliable control in your experiment. That is why you should book your next day on vrbo. When a VRBO vacation rental, they have VRBO care, they have 24 hour live support for real human beings. It's included. So if something is not as described or isn't working, VRBO can step in to help make it right. So book today on the VRBO app if you know you VRBO terms apply. See verbo.com trust for details. Okay, so this ology, it's a real one, all right? I looked it up, people have used it, and it comes courtesy of bears, rather no bears. So Antarctica literally means no bears. And that's a very helpful shorthand to remember that only the northern Arctic region has polar bears. They got no bears in the frozen south. How do they know that there were no bears? Especially since the continent was not officially discovered until the 1820s. Wasn't even named Antarctica until the 1890s. It's a baby. Well, the origin of no bears is, involves the visibility of a constellation called Ursa Major or the Great Bear. So you can't see it on Antarctica, you can see it in the Arctic. So. But yeah, there's no polar bears there. We're going to get into that in a bit, but for now, just crawl under a weighted blanket, sip something just under scorching temperatures. You'll need it. And open your ears for low humidity, high latitudes, freezing temperatures, microscopes, drones, luggage limits, potty protocols, tiny creatures, microplastics, luck, patience, snow, ice, water, salt, seals, penguins, people. And the research that happens on a giant continent that carries many mysteries. With Antarctic explorer and filmmaker and antarcticologist Ariel Waltman.
- [04:29]
Bobby
You're like, I got in a cargo plane with no bathroom but a bucket. And I went and filmed an entire
- [04:35]
Alie Ward
series by myself with drones.
- [04:37]
Bobby
I'm like, yeah, who is this person?
- [04:40]
Ariel Waldman
Totally normal. Totally normal. Yeah, everyone does that.
- [04:44]
Bobby
First off, I'll have you say your first and last name and your pronouns so I can absolutely barrage you with questions afterward.
- [04:50]
Ariel Waldman
Absolutely. I'm Ariel Waldman. She her.
- [04:53]
Alie Ward
Great.
- [04:54]
Bobby
Where are you right now?
- [04:56]
Ariel Waldman
San Francisco.
- [04:57]
Alie Ward
Okay.
- [04:58]
Bobby
Do you get asked that a lot by people who expect you to be
- [05:01]
Ariel Waldman
in a research station? I do, I do, yeah. I don't think San Francisco is necessarily the expected space. They find me In. But I don't know where they expect me to be. Maybe. Yeah, in Antarctica all the time.
- [05:15]
Bobby
Where are you from originally?
- [05:16]
Ariel Waldman
Kansas City.
- [05:18]
Bobby
Not a lot of sea ice there.
- [05:20]
Ariel Waldman
No, no, but that's why, you know, after doing Antarctica, we filmed the rest of the series in the prairies, is because I have that connection to that ecosystem. And I thought there wasn't a whole lot there and turns out there is. And so I was trying to. Trying to convince my younger self that there's a lot of cool stuff there.
- [05:38]
Bobby
I feel like as someone who lives in la, I get that too. And I guess it turns out in your experience, nothing is barren then.
- [05:47]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah, not really. Yeah, maybe the South Pole, like right at the South Pole. But even then, you know, there's been some papers where people have wondered if there's been maybe little cells out there. Not proven yet, but it's pretty hard to not find life on Earth.
- [06:02]
Bobby
Were you interested in geography? Were you interested in adventure? Were you interested in tiny microorganisms?
- [06:10]
Ariel Waldman
I really.
- [06:12]
Bobby
I cannot imagine the sequence of events, the dominoes that have to fall to get someone to be exploring Antarctica.
- [06:20]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah, it's definitely some twists and turns. Growing up, I wouldn't have self identified as like a science geek. I didn't dislike it, but it just wasn't my jam. I was really into design and art and so I went to art school and got my degree in design and worked in advertising for many years, which I loved because it was really creative. And then very unexpectedly, I was watching a documentary about NASA many years ago, and they were talking to these guys at NASA about how they were figuring out how to send humans into space for the very first time. And they were talking about how they didn't know anything about spacecrafts or rockets or orbits. They were having to figure it out. And I became so inspired by this that I was like, well, I don't know anything about space exploration and I want to work at NASA. And so I sent someone at NASA a random email and I said I was fan. Never expected to hear back. Ended up getting a job at NASA from that email.
- [07:13]
Alie Ward
What?
- [07:14]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah, yeah. Utterly, completely changed my life.
- [07:17]
Bobby
How good was this email?
- [07:19]
Ariel Waldman
It was not that great. It was just like, hey, I'm a fan. If you guys ever need like a volunteer or something, like, let me know. I was a fan for like all of two weeks at that point. And they replied to me and they're like, oh, we just posted a job description today you might be interested in. And it reads like my resume at the time. They were looking for someone who had no experience at NASA because they wanted someone to help translate between communities inside and outside of NASA to collaborate. And they were looking with someone with design and advertising experience and someone who was connected to the startups in San Francisco, which I was at that point. And yeah, I applied and I got the job and it completely transformed my life because then I realized, oh, I am valuable to science as I exist today. And had I known that I could just walk in and like, work for NASA without changing my career trajectory, I would have done that long ago.
- [08:10]
Alie Ward
So Ariel chaired a council for the Innovative Advanced Concepts Program at NASA, which collaborates with, as the space agency describes it, diverse and non traditional sources to innovate technically credible concepts that could one day change the possible in aerospace. So boom, nailed it, got in.
- [08:28]
Ariel Waldman
And so working at NASA is what ultimately got me exposed to learning about people working in Antarctica because it's an analogy for Mars and icy moons in our solar system. I was like, that's really cool. I want to work in Antarctica with scientists. And that trajectory was not as simple as an email. That was. I learned about a grant that could get me to Antarctica or had a chance to get me to Antarctica. And I applied to that grant for five years and then I got the chance to go to Antarctica from that grant. And the whole thing was, yeah, about filming microorganisms because I learned about all these researchers who are just looking at all these cool animals, but no one really ever gets to see them. And the researchers don't get to really film them even though they want to. And so they're missing out on behaviors and the public is missing out on getting to see what cool creatures live in Antarctica.
- [09:20]
Alie Ward
Creatures like tardigrades, rotifers, bacteria, seed shrimp, nematodes, spiral cyanobacteria, worms and diatoms. We're going to talk more about those in a bit. But Ariel thought, well, I know microscopy and public facing art, so maybe I could help film how they behave. Might as well apply and apply and apply and apply.
- [09:44]
Bobby
And after five years, how do they let you know that you've been approved? Do they send a singing telegram? Is there a box of confetti that explodes? Is it a single email?
- [09:54]
Ariel Waldman
It's kind of a single email. I'll take it. So it's like I applied for this grant, it was the National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers grant. And I thought, well, I want to work with researchers, but I don't have a PhD. So my best chance, I figured, was to apply through this grant, since my background is in art. And yeah, it was an email. And then as soon as they email you and say, hey, congrats, you're going, then, you know, you have to PQ for Antarctica, which is physically qualify. So then you have to immediately go to doctors, get blood tests, have physical examinations to even check out if you physically qualify to go to Antarctica. It's not about being, like, super buff. It's just about making sure you don't have serious health concerns. So that immediately starts, and then you're filling out endless spreadsheets for all of the equipment and supplies you need and having a lot of logistics, emails. And so that all happens in a span of about 6 months or so, or at least it did for me.
- [10:51]
Bobby
If they're like, your triglycerides are high, do you have an opportunity to be like, that's okay, I'll cut out butter or whatever?
- [10:58]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah. I mean, I've had some test results come back and they're like, just be sure to do this. And I was like, okay, yes, I will. But, yeah, their concerns are usually on the larger side. Like, you know, do you have something that could cause you to be medevaced?
- [11:12]
Alie Ward
So on that topic, I have a really close friend who was set to head to Antarctica, but a serious health condition thwarted her whole expedition. And months prior to shipping off, she found out she had a brain tumor. She named it Brian. Now, the good news is Brian was benign. It's been seven years. She's doing well. If her story sounds familiar, it's because she was once our guest for a Gizmology episode about robots. And she has a huge, hugely popular YouTube channel and a product line called yet, which is how you pronounce her last name, even though it's Swedish and it looks like Krista.
- [11:45]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah, I know Simone. And here's the huge bummer. So for people who know Simone, she was supposed to go to Antarctica. Yes, we were going to be roommates, Literally, roommates in Antarctica. And so I arrive and. And she wasn't able to go at the last minute because of the PQ process. And so then I got a room all to myself, which was like, bonus for me. But it was sad because Simone wasn't to make it.
- [12:10]
Bobby
I understand that they sent a slide of her brain tumor Brian, though.
- [12:14]
Ariel Waldman
Yes, yes, I sneaked that with me. And so I was able to at least bring a piece of Simone with me to Antarctica. So, you know, she was there in spirit.
- [12:24]
Bobby
There was a chance where she's like, if I can't make it they might let me pick someone, would you go? And I was like, I don't think I'm qualified. I don't even have a jacket. I live in la.
- [12:32]
Ariel Waldman
Oh, you should have gone. We could have been roommate.
- [12:35]
Bobby
We could have been roommates. What else do you pack other than Simone Giertz's brain tumor to go to Antarctica?
- [12:42]
Ariel Waldman
It's both a combination of quite a lot of things and not as much as you would like. So typically you're only allowed 85 pounds of gear to go to Antarctica, but that has got to include all of your clothes for several weeks and like your boots. And it gets taken up really quickly. I was fortunate enough I was allowed £185. So that included my microscope, brought that down in a pelican case, all of my camera gear and another pelican case. So cameras, drones, you know, 360 cameras, all sorts of stuff. So, yeah, you kind of like squirrel away what you can. But all of the weight limits are highly controlled because you're on these military aircrafts and they're budgeting the weight with the cargo that they have to take down to Antarctica. And so, yeah, I fit as much camera gear as I can and then enough clothes for two months.
- [13:30]
Alie Ward
And when it comes to the show, she is alone, like on a vast plain of ice, tromping around. We'll talk more about that solitude in a bit.
- [13:39]
Bobby
And how much time were you alone? Alone? And how much time do you have a buddy or some kind of crew around you?
- [13:49]
Ariel Waldman
It's kind of half and half. So with the research team that I was embedded on, which is the McMurdo Dry Valley's long term Ecological research team, which is a mouthful to say, but say lter, you know, we would be in McMurdo Station for some of the time. So in that environment, you're like in a small town, you know, you're in what they consider a sort of mining town sort of situation. There's hundreds of people, you're living in a dorm. It's actually fairly comfortable, really. You have a cafeteria and stuff like that. But then when I was working in the dry valleys, I'd fly out on a helicopter to this area that's so Mars, like so different. And I would be out there with maybe five or six other people. We'd all be camping in tents and that would be our whole group. And so we would share meals together. But a lot of times, you know, I'm filming this documentary entirely by myself. And so what would happen is we'd wake up in the morning, we'd see each other for breakfast. My teammates would go on like a 10 mile hike, you know, sampling all these little creepy crawlies that are in the soils in Antarctica. And I would go and take my film equipment and start setting up for the day in freezing temperatures and I was really alone. So, so in the Life on Earth series on pbs, like when you see me talking to camera in Antarctica, I am literally just talking to my camera. There' nobody else around. They're not a single soul. Like I'm self filming. I'm here in the dry valleys of Antarctica because it's one of the most unique places on the entire planet. A lot of my days were completely by myself, but you at least get to have still like shared meals with a small group of people.
- [15:28]
Bobby
Did you ever have the opportunity to just scream at the top of your lungs for catharsis?
- [15:35]
Ariel Waldman
I would have. I don't know that I would. It's not really my style. Okay.
- [15:41]
Bobby
But then again, just on the off chance that someone else heard you, that would be alarming for them.
- [15:46]
Ariel Waldman
That would be not great. Not great.
- [15:48]
Bobby
Where were you in your life personally, where you took this expedition? Was there anything going on that you're just like, you know, gotta get away?
- [15:58]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah. I mean, going to Antarctica is really truly a wonderful reset button. And I do think that nearly everyone who goes to Antarctica, even as tourists, have something that's slightly life changing. I think what really changed for me during and after is I just, I no longer felt like I needed to prove myself. I was so used to being like the youngest in the room for so long, and I was so used to just having to sort of fight my way to be like, I can do this or I belong in this space. And getting that reset in Antarctica sort of taught me that I don't need to prove myself anymore. So that was definitely the big change for me. You get just a lot of time. Well, I didn't spend it, you know, screaming in the middle of nowhere. I, I, I did spend time where I'd sit on a rock and I'd just be like, instead of just focusing on the next task, which is very easy to do, like just sit and absorb this. And that was really a treat.
- [16:57]
Bobby
And you talked about freezing temperatures, which I'm sure is one of the first things that comes to mind. But you also mentioned the dry valleys that look like Mars. And your footage is astounding. It really looks like you're in the middle of Utah or some sort of desert. And evidently there's just Dusting of snow. I believe you say, can you go over some of the terrain? Because I thought it was just one gigantic ice sheet, but it turns out some of the ice sheets aren't even Antarctica. They're just kind of like a buffer around it of ice. What's going on under there?
- [17:30]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah. So Antarctica is the continent that very few people pay attention to. It's not included on most of our maps. Unfortunately, people out there in our nation don't have that. But there's a few things people need to remember about Antarctica. One is that it's larger than the US and Mexico combined. So when you're talking about Antarctica, you're talking about a huge area. And so whether it's talking about climate change or different things happening in it, something that's going to be happening, for instance, in California is going to be very different from something that's happening in New York. And the same is true in Antarctica. So the ice there is up to three miles thick in a lot of locations. Three miles at the highest locations. Yeah, yeah.
- [18:13]
Bobby
I can't even fathom that.
- [18:15]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah, yeah. So it can get super thick, and it covers 98% of the continent. So you're right. I mean, it is the majority of the continent. But the Dry Valleys is the largest patch of Antarctica that's not fully covered in snow and ice. And it's not because of climate change. It's actually because there's a mountain range that is holding back that massive ice sheet from entering that area. Area. And so it's this unique area where it's very Mars. Like, you can walk on the continent itself that's otherwise shrouded in all of that ice. And then, yeah, you've got little speckles of, like, glaciers and frozen lakes that come into the area, but you don't have the ice sheet just covering everything.
- [18:54]
Bobby
Is that ice sheet slowly grinding down the mountain, or how does that work?
- [18:59]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah, so as the ice moves throughout Antarctica, it grinds it. And people have mapped, of course, under ice lakes, subglacial lakes, river systems and things like that that are happening under the ice, because you do get that ice rock interaction. And so it is grinding on it. But you get to also see that, you know, in any location that has a glacier, they really just carve the land as they go through.
- [19:22]
Alie Ward
And so all of this ice rock drama is happening at the bottom of the world or the top or whatever, because what if we're floating upside down in this giant universe? What even is right side up? Jupiter has at least 115 moons, and one of them is an ice orb named Europa. Saturn has an ice moon, too. Enceladus.
- [19:42]
Bobby
How does that compare to Europa?
- [19:45]
Ariel Waldman
So with Europa and Enceladus, you know, icy moons in our solar system, you have a very thick icy shell, and then you have a rocky core. And the thing that's slightly different is it's suspected in Europa and Enceladus, there's an ocean between that ice and rock. Now, it might not go around the full rocky core. It might be like ocean in some parts and not in others. But that's where you're getting a lot of interesting things. So there are places in Antarctica where you get subglacial lakes. So you get that sort of similar thing of, like, you've got rock, then you've got water, then you've got ice. And all of the microorganisms that are able to survive under those layers of ice without sunlight or anything are getting their energy from the rocks. So, like from the sulfur or other chemicals in the rocks, and that's how they're able to survive. And in that way, Antarctica is really an analog for icy moons in our solar system because it has at least some distinct areas that are similar like that.
- [20:42]
Alie Ward
So an ice planet or an ice moon is like, imagine like a peanut M and M, Right. The rocky core is peanut, chocolate is water, and then the candy coating is an icy shell. Antarctica has a similar layering. What's living where? People like Ariel are sorting that out.
- [21:02]
Bobby
When it comes to doing that research, you're out there doing the microscopy on samples that are collected. How on earth do you even approach the problem of how thick the ice is in some places to figure out what's going on underneath that? Because, bruh, you're not going to be drilling three miles, right?
- [21:22]
Ariel Waldman
No, I haven't gone to the subglacial lakes. That would be cool. But the ones I study, thankfully, aren't that deep. So some of the creatures I study, like tardigrades, will hike up a glacier, and then at the top of the glacier, we'll drill into it about like three feet or so. And we do that because all of these little creatures, like tardigrades get blown on top of the glacier and then get frozen inside of the glacier, and yet they still survive. So they're actually living embedded in a glacier maybe three feet down and just having, like, their best life encased in. In ice. But yeah, hiking up the glacier is really, really challenging. But then when you need to drill it, yeah, you're only going like 3ft. Eat.
- [22:02]
Alie Ward
What are you eating?
- [22:04]
Ariel Waldman
Eating, yeah.
- [22:05]
Bobby
How do you get yourself up a glacier? I would just be like Clif Bar in an IV bag.
- [22:14]
Ariel Waldman
I mean, I don't eat a whole lot when I hike, but I mean, you're always constantly snacking in Antarctica because you can't have huge meals because if you need to then go on a hike, you're going to be completely bloated. So there's just lots of snacks and they're all like dried goods that are expired by many years in some cases. So most of the food we eat in the camps in Antarctica is expired by multiple years and you're always going like, oh, this one's only expired by two years.
- [22:44]
Alie Ward
Great.
- [22:44]
Ariel Waldman
Mac and cheese, M&MS. Oreos, like your go tos. You're trying to decide which one is the most recently expired and then you're also trying to decide which ones will not taste disgusting. Like if you taste something and it has no flavor, you've won. If you taste something and it really tastes like it expired, which happens like this disgust is terrible.
- [23:09]
Bobby
You're getting some good pre apocalypse training though.
- [23:12]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah, yeah. Get used to eating expired dried goods. I was really excited last time because I found a pack of peanut M&M's that was only eight months expired and I was like, yes, treasure. Yeah, exactly.
- [23:26]
Bobby
Absolute treasure. I would eat that now.
- [23:29]
Alie Ward
And I live a mile from a
- [23:30]
Ariel Waldman
7 11, but yeah, it's fine. Yeah.
- [23:34]
Bobby
Well, can you tell me a little bit about what lives in Antarctica, other than you for a few months here and there, but I can't even fathom. I understand there's penguins, I understand there's some seals, obviously tardigrades, but other than that I got nothing in a trivia game.
- [23:51]
Ariel Waldman
So around the sea ice, yeah, you get like penguins, you get seals, you get orcas, you get cool sea spiders and all sorts of things. But further inland, where I work in the Dry Valleys, then you're in a weird place where penguins and seals cannot survive. And in fact it's so strange because any penguins or seals that mistakenly end up in the Dry Valleys end up dying there. They can't survive, but then they get mummified. So then there's not a lot, but there's a few carcasses around the Dry Valleys that have been mummified because it's so cold and it's so dry and there's no, you know, maggots or anything. And so they don't decompose. So you have these mummies of seals and penguins in the dry valleys that have been there decades and look as if they died a week ago or something. So what does live in the dry valleys? And what I based the Life on Earth series on is all of the micro animals. So the tardigrades that look like. Like gummy bears with claws and rotifers, which have these roomba like heads that they use to sweep in food, Nematodes, which are tiny little worms that have different personalities and cyanobacteria. And so you have this whole ecosystem where the dominant players are like some of the big tardigrades or the big lions or something. And so I really wanted to make a nature series that featured micro animals as the big kings of the jungle, so to speak, in Antarctica, because in this region, they are. And you just don't see that in nature documentaries. They don't usually show all of this microscopic wildlife that we're surrounded by all the time. And so I'm trying to sort of showcase that there's a whole scale of wildlife that we're not used to seeing.
- [25:34]
Bobby
Do they change their behaviors once they're taken out of the ice? Do you have to put them on some real bonkers freezer packs?
- [25:42]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah, definitely. I mean, the temperature control is. It's not as difficult. You know, you can keep them a little bit more cold and you can keep them happy like that. The larger challenge is, for a lot of traditional microscopy, you're putting little animals that have claws that use them to climb over moss and other things, and you're putting them on glass, because it's a glass microscope slide. They do struggle a little bit. So it's. It's always a balance of trying to make a microscope slide that's clear enough that you can actually see the creatures and they're not embedded in soil, but give them enough of their environment there so that they can actually have their natural movements.
- [26:20]
Bobby
And would all the wildlife on Antarctica be considered an extremophile, or is that a different type of classification? Like, if they can go dormant for 10 years?
- [26:32]
Ariel Waldman
I mean, extremophile, you know, some people might argue it one way or another, but ultimately it really just means can you survive an extreme environment that other creatures would struggle to survive in? And so I would say all of the microorganisms in Antarctica, 100% are extremophiles, because they're not only able to survive the cold and the dry, but they're also able to survive the Antarctic winter, which is six months of darkness. Yikes. Really frigid temperatures. And then come back to life. And most of them do go into suspended animation and then pop back. And that's how they're able to survive. And that's the reason we haven't seen, you know, invasive species in that area of Antarctica, because even if they came in, the likelihood that they could survive the Antarctic winter is really, really small. For now.
- [27:18]
Bobby
What about some sort of melting permafrost? Is there a last of us cordyceps? Is there some sort of of thing that's going to come out and cannibalize our brains?
- [27:32]
Ariel Waldman
I would say unlikely. There are people studying viruses in Antarctica, but a lot of the things that can be defrosted were tailored to an ecosystem that no longer exists. And so if you get like an old virus popping back because a glacier is melting or the permafrost is melting, it's not a zombie apocalypse movie. It's like a, that thing is probably going to be really short lived because it was tailored to live in a very different environment than it exists today. So I'm not too worried about that. But it is fascinating that people are studying, you know, those sorts of microorganisms.
- [28:06]
Alie Ward
First off, technically, before you write me, the only thing that can cannibalize our brains is us. And indeed we are the biggest threat to our species. But According to a 2025 article from the UN's environmental program titled dubiously, Could Microbes locked in Arctic ice for millennia unleash a wave of deadly Diseases? The Arctic, which, remember, is the North Pole area, is warming four times faster than the rest of the globe, with thawing permafrost potentially setting free some ancient bacteria and viruses. There was a 2021 paper in the journal Environmental Sustainability. It's even more dubiously titled Climate Change Melting Cryosphere and Frozen Pathogens, Should We Worry? Honestly, the ellipses is what freaks me out the most because it implies like some trailing off thought, like disassociated, pondering deep set enough to make it into the title and the peer review process. But yeah, that paper said an estimated four sextillion microbes are released annually due to thawing permafrost. So that is a number four with 21 zeros annually. We'll keep an eye on it. I'm gonna monitor the situation.
- [29:24]
Bobby
Well, going back in time a little bit, I'll confess that when I was a kid and I would draw a globe, I would draw Antarctica and then I would draw another Antarctica on the top of the globe, I just figured the North Pole also looked like that. Yeah, incorrect.
- [29:39]
Alie Ward
But I blame Santa because if he winters at the top of the Earth. What do you mean? He built his house in a global production manufacturing facility on a shifting ice flow, but nothing is permanent. That's why you should cut bangs. You should call out of work sick and go on a roller coaster. Even the land mass that is Antarctica hasn't always been at the bottom of the marble of Earth.
- [30:01]
Ariel Waldman
Antarctica, at one point during the Jurassic period, was actually a tropical beach near the equator. That's why you get all sorts of, like, great fossils in Antarctica of, you know, dinosaurs and other things, because it was a Jurassic beach. And you can see the sandstone from that Jurassic beach still in Antarctica that's now exposed. It moved south and became what we know today, but it was not always at the bottom of the Earth. And that relates to a lot of the life you find there. So a lot of the microscopic life in the Dry Valleys has been isolated for around 20 million years. But to your point, you know, in the North Pole, we don't have a continent there. It's ice. So we've got this weird combination of Antarctica being very icy because it's at the bottom of the world, but also the continent itself moved down there.
- [30:49]
Alie Ward
And when you're thinking of northern ice versus a southern continent covered in and surrounded by ice, try to fathom that the North Pole is covered in about 8ft thick of ice, and the South Pole over a mile thick in some places. Now, at the Northern Pole, that sea ice, it's sea level. But elevations on the continent of Antarctica can reach 16,000ft. So down really is up sometimes when
- [31:17]
Bobby
it comes to the ecosystem there, who is eating whom? Like, what does the circle of life tend to be? And I know it's a huge continent and it's a broad question, but what did you take away from it?
- [31:30]
Ariel Waldman
I can speak to the microorganisms, and there are so many different species of tardigrades across the world. But in Antarctica and in the Dry Valleys, there's a couple different species. And you get Milnesium tardigrades that are predator tardigrades. They eat bacteria and moss, but they also eat, you know, nematodes and smaller tardigrades, which is terrifying to think about tardigrade eating another tardigrade. I know they are definitely like the kings of the jungle, so to speak.
- [31:59]
Alie Ward
We have a tardigrade episode with the most charming person, Dr. Paul Bartels, that you will love.
- [32:05]
Ariel Waldman
And then you have other tardigrades, though, like Achatonkus, that is an herbivore, only eats moss only eats bacteria. And so you really have, you know, these mini ecosystems where you do have meat eaters, so to speak, and your herbivores. And you can sort of see what does it take for an ecosystem to get started, what does it take for it to be sustainable over time? And you can see it at its kind of most fundamental level.
- [32:32]
Bobby
Well, you mentioned moss, and I can't even picture a plant on Antarctica. What are we dealing with botanically?
- [32:39]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah, so in the Dry valleys, you don't have any vascular plants, so, you know, grasses are things that you would come to expect. But you have microscopic moss. So you can see these tiny little moss leaves. You have microbial mats, which aren't plants, but they're this slimy layer cake of different microorganisms, you know, together. And you get photosynthesis at the sort of the top of the microbial mat, and you get all these other weird organisms eating each other in sort of like this food chain action through this slimy layer cake. Delicious. Now, the Peninsula of Antarctica, which is very far away from where I normally work, is seeing a lot more of what you would expect. That you can see some vascular plants there, you can see huge moss beds. And of course, that part of Antarctica is experiencing the most amount of global warming. In the Dry Valleys, you have an area that is slowly starting to become warmer and wetter, and it isn't as dire as in the peninsula, but you have something where you've got these frozen lakes in the Dry valleys that have been frozen year round for thousands and thousands of years, and you have these entire microscopic communities and ecosystems that live in these frozen lakes. But those lakes are expected to lose their ice and not be frozen year round in just 10 to 40 years.
- [33:54]
Alie Ward
Wow.
- [33:55]
Ariel Waldman
So definitely our lifetime. And it's expected and forecasted that those microbial communities that have been protected by that layer of ice for so long are probably going to churn up and experience a fundamental change into that ecosystem.
- [34:11]
Alie Ward
And just for some quick geography, Antarctica, it's of kind, kind of shaped like Australia. But imagine if you're looking at Australia on a map, pretend that's Antarctica on the upper left side. There's a dingle dangle peninsula that stretches up to kind of poke South America in the butt, but it falls short by a thousand kilometers. Now, the US run McMurdo Station and New Zealand Scott Station lie kind of in the middle of the bottom of the continent. And technically they're on a little tiny island, Ross island in the Ross Sea. And it was named for an explorer from the mid-1800s who didn't know that it was an island, but he got the honor nonetheless.
- [34:51]
Bobby
No one country owns Antarctica.
- [34:54]
Ariel Waldman
Correct.
- [34:55]
Bobby
Is it like a timeshare?
- [34:58]
Ariel Waldman
I haven't thought of it as a timeshare. So you have this International Antarctic Treaty, and you have a lot of the major countries involved in it who have Antarctic stations. So you have Russia and China, but you also have of Italy and other countries involved in it. And yeah, no one owns Antarctica. There are countries that would like to claim that they own a piece of it, but it's not internationally recognized. And through the international treaty, you have sort of a checks and balances system, because Antarctica is only supposed to be used for science and not military purposes. And other countries can come check in on other countries stations unannounced. And so that sort of helps keep everything in check down there. But China and Russia have been blocking making new protected areas because they're interested in krill fishing. You know, long, long time ago, it was like seals and whales and blubber. Today, it's krill.
- [35:54]
Bobby
The US hasn't been like, drill, baby, drill yet.
- [35:57]
Ariel Waldman
No. No, we have not. Except for subglacial lakes for science and trying to discover the oldest ice on the continent, which also involves drilling. But there's a couple of different ways to go about it. One way is drill as deep as you can get down there. But that's really difficult. So I know the American effort to do that, called Coldex, goes to this really unusual part of Antarctica known as the Allen Hills. But you can drill kind of sideways into the ice and get really old ice because it's getting pushed out instead of down. You know, a lot of what you can do is when you drill ice cores, what you see in them are all these tiny little bubbles. And those bubbles are little bubbles of old atmosphere. And so they can actually analyze the old atmosphere in those bubbles and tell you how old the ice is.
- [36:45]
Bobby
Can I ask you 1 million questions
- [36:47]
Alie Ward
from listeners who know that you're coming on?
- [36:49]
Ariel Waldman
Oh, my God, yeah, sure.
- [36:51]
Bobby
The hard part about interviewing you is I want to ask you a million science questions as well as Antarctic lifestyle questions.
- [36:59]
Ariel Waldman
I'm game.
- [37:00]
Alie Ward
Let me see. Okay. Okay, folks, before we jump into the shock water of your curiosity, let's gather some cash for a worthy cause. And this week, we would love to support. Support Ariel's microscopy work with a donation to the San Francisco Microscope Society, community of aspirational amateur and professional microscopists. And the society says they welcome people of all age or backgrounds from those who have not used a microscope to those who have been working with them for decades. And the San Francisco Microscopical Society is also a proud fiscal sponsor of Life Unearthed on PBS and tax deductible donations that write Order of magnitude films in the donation will go towards both the nonprofit and to Ariel Waldman's ongoing film projects to illuminate microscopic wildlife, and you can find out more about them in the link in our show notes or on our website@aliewar.com ologies anarchticology so thank you to sponsors of ologies who make their donation possible.
- [37:55]
Bobby
Let me tell you what your mom doesn't need. She doesn't need a bath bomb.
- [37:58]
Alie Ward
Here's what I get for pretty much
- [38:00]
Bobby
everyone I love an aura frame.
- [38:02]
Alie Ward
It's the perfect Mother's Day gift to capture the chaos that you've put her through through and the memories that came with it. You can upload pictures to it. You can add other people to upload pictures to it. And then she has this frame and it's all of these memories of the
- [38:17]
Bobby
life you've built together.
- [38:18]
Alie Ward
You can even preload the photos before the frame ships so it arrives already filled with your favorite memories and a
- [38:26]
Bobby
custom message that can be added to
- [38:28]
Alie Ward
create like a moment during the unboxing. It's ready to enjoy joy unique to her.
- [38:34]
Bobby
It's so thoughtful and it's a gift that feels one of a kind that
- [38:38]
Alie Ward
she will literally use every day. You know what Jared did today? He pointed at the aura frame and he said oh, remember that?
- [38:43]
Bobby
And I looked over.
- [38:44]
Alie Ward
It was our wedding day. The next picture. Our dog in a hat. I love it. Named Number one by Wirecutter. You can save on the gifts mom loves by visiting auraframes.com for a limited time. Listeners can get $25 off their best selling Carver Matte frame with a code Ologies that's a U R A frames.com promo code Ologies support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.
- [39:11]
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- [40:44]
Ariel Waldman
why have
- [40:44]
Bobby
we asked our contractor we found on
- [40:46]
Alie Ward
angie.com to be our kid's legal guardian? Because he took such good care when redoing our basement that we knew we
- [40:51]
Bobby
could trust him to care for our
- [40:53]
Ariel Waldman
kids, all eight of them, should something happen to us.
- [40:56]
Alie Ward
Are you my dad now?
- [40:59]
Ariel Waldman
No, sorry.
- [41:00]
Bobby
I do basements, connecting homeowners with skilled
- [41:05]
Ariel Waldman
pros for over 30 years.
- [41:06]
Bobby
Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home projects@angie.com okay.
- [41:13]
Alie Ward
Questions poured in from all over the globe about the land at the bottom of the globe, such as this one from patron Mugdha.
- [41:22]
Ariel Waldman
Hello, my name is Mugdha and I'm from India.
- [41:25]
Alie Ward
Does Antarctica get earthquakes? Are there volcanoes under Antarctica that can potentially blow it apart?
- [41:32]
Ariel Waldman
Thank you.
- [41:34]
Bobby
What seismically is happening there? Anything rumbling under there?
- [41:38]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah, I mean, so Antarctica is part of the Earth and so it's privy to the same sort of geologic forces as anywhere else. So McMurdo Stat is right practically at the base of Mount Erebus, which is the southernmost active volcano. And it has an active caldera that's constantly smoking down there. And, you know, it's a bit intimidating, but it's there and it's just kind of chugging away. But it's really cool to actually be at a station where you're next to, like, this active volcano that's not expected to hurt anyone. But yeah, it's just kind of smoking away down there. Don't mind me.
- [42:15]
Bobby
Are There certain organisms that really thrive in that environment. Like these hydrothermal vents under the sea.
- [42:25]
Ariel Waldman
That's a good question. I know that going under the sea around McMurdo Station, you get really, really rich forms of life. So you get all these amazing seals and sea spiders and all these cool things that you get to see. I had the chance to go under the ice without becoming a diver, which was an incredible. There's something that they do at McMurdo Station where they will embed a metal pipe in nine feet thick of ice in the sea ice. And you can crawl down this really tiny metal pipe through the sea ice. And then at the bottom, there's windows around this. This is called the obtube observation tube. And you get to actually sit underneath the sea ice. The sea ice above you illuminated like really bright. And then all of the creatures underneath. This is probably the coolest thing in McMurdo station. This is just amazing to be in this tiny little tube just sitting beneath the ice. This is definitely life under the ice. And getting up and close and personal with it is just an incredible experience. It really illuminated just how amazing and full of life under the ice is in Antarctica. Because I was was like, why would anyone dive in sub freezing waters? And then I went into this weird pipe and was able to see under the ice myself. And I was like, oh my God, this is nuts. I mean, there's a ton of life there. So yeah, there's a whole lot.
- [43:55]
Alie Ward
And footage from this excursion shows seals and fish. But no polar bears? Nope. Again, they were never there in the first place. In fact, if you heard our arsenology episodes all about bears, Antarctica has been separated from other continents by this vast Southern Ocean for about 45 million years, which is before polar bears even evolved. They've been around for about 30 million years. Even if they wanted, polar bears couldn't just get to the Antarctic. It's pretty far for a swim. There's no direct flights with that kind of extra leg room. So Grace and Addie, who asked this distinction about the polar bears. There you go. And no, we can't move all the polar bears who are on literal thin ice ice to Antarctica because that would wreak a bit of havoc on just everything. You know, who can survive, though? As we learned in the dipterology episode with Bry the Fly Guy, a flightless Antarctic midge fly, they live as babies under the ice for two years. They desiccate 70% of their body's water as an antifreeze strategy. And they are the only native fully terrestrial animal on Antarctica and a 4.4millimeter wingless fly that only emerges as an adult for 10 days of their lives. Just to have an orgy. Does anything go so hard? No, nothing else can go that hard. But there are plenty of seals in the Antarctic. And please enjoy our pinnipedology episode with Dr. Louis Huxtut for all the info about them and their weird teeth and their sweet little noses and exceptional ability to outlast other creatures. Ariel saw and heard some of them from the observation too tube as well as spotted a few primates under the ice. They were human divers on the other side of the glass that she worked with, but that was just with the naked eye. Patron Storm asked, how are the microscopic creatures not freezing? And Adam Foote, Marianne Porter, Cat, Bug in a rug, Julie Marie and WH also wanted to know. Bug in a Rug asked, can they tell us about some crazy microorganisms that survive under the ice? How old can individuals get? How are they surviving? What the heck is going on down there? They wanted to know.
- [46:06]
Ariel Waldman
So with the sea ice around McMurdo Station, you're talking like -2 Celsius, but it doesn't freeze because of course it's salt water. So if you're a diver, you're getting into sub freezing temperatures and it's the salt that keeps it liquid. But yeah, you're going in with a dry suit because you would freeze solid with a wetsuit. So it's pretty intense.
- [46:27]
Alie Ward
So yeah, a totally sealed dry suit with layers of warm clothes underneath and then you just go hang out under 10ft of water ice. Don't drink a lot of water because it's not an easy jaunt to the potty. Even on land, where Ariel and her team might be camping in near zero degree weather with a tiny 5% humidity, there aren't a ton of creature comforts such as Keenan said, let's be real, what's the bathroom situation, especially for people
- [46:55]
Bobby
hiking to the Pole? Evelyn, Eva, Mera, Alice Rubin, Thoroposaurus, Jess all wanted to know how's the bathroom? What goes on there?
- [47:05]
Ariel Waldman
So going to the bathroom is a whole thing in Antarctica. So by international treaty, Antarctica is a leave no trace continent. And so all of the human waste across all of Antarctica, it is up to each country to ship that waste back to its point of origin, back to the country to be disposed of. You can't leave anything on the continent. So for the US that means all of the human waste gets put on a cargo ship that goes to LA and gets disposed of around The LA area. Oh, yeah.
- [47:37]
Bobby
You're welcome.
- [47:38]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah. I don't know exactly where I'll take it. When we're camping in the Dry Valleys, we have outhouses. We are going to the bathroom in buckets. You know, we put a nice toilet seat around the bucket so at least, you know, we're not totally, you know, cavemen or whatever. Going number one in the Dry Valleys is interesting. So if you need to sit down to pee, you pee into a coffee can, like a large coffee can. And that coffee can has a handle on it. And you take that coffee can and then you pour it into the urinal, which goes into a large drum. So if you can stand up, you get to pee in the urinal. But if you can't, you have to pee in a coffee cup and remember to put it in the urinal. If you do not remember to pour your coffee can into the urinal, your pee can freeze overnight and then the next person who comes could overflow that can. I have heard about that happening and was absolutely, you know, terrified of that happening. So, yeah, fun facts of going to the bathroom in Antarctica.
- [48:38]
Bobby
Yeah, it feels like going to the bathroom in a car or like what they put delivery drivers through in order to make all their quotas.
- [48:46]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah. When you're out on a hike, you always bring your water bottle and your pee bottle and then at the end of your expedition, you have to, you know, wash out your pee bottles before you go because those get reused for fun facts.
- [48:59]
Bobby
What a way to grapple with the fact that you also are an animal, that you're just. You just have these little animal needs.
- [49:07]
Ariel Waldman
Yep.
- [49:09]
Bobby
I thought this was an interesting question. Erin Dewberry Protect trans lives we at Towell Jen Alvarez Mouse Paxton Nick's rider Addy Capello wanted to know, Aaron said, what did you find or experience that you didn't expect?
- [49:24]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah, great question. One was that obtube experience where I didn't know I was going to spend time hearing and seeing seals under the ice as if I was a diver. Other things are, I don't know, they're not as impactful, but they were impactful to me. So I'm there filming microorganisms, micro animals, seeing what I can see. And for me, it was really the first time I came across really beautiful huge diatoms which are microalgae that's encased in glass. Glass and just so beautiful. It looks as if someone sculpted this intricate jewelry in like triangles and circles and squares and star like things. It looks as if a human made them they're just so beautiful. And I really wasn't ready for just. Just that beauty and seeing that under the microscope, I got really, really excited about that. And it was something that made a big impact on me just in terms of appreciating just all the different life down there. And that while charismatic life is often this stuff that's got arms and legs and moving, there's also just. I mean, there's creatures made of glass, like, all over the world, but also in Antarctica. And they're utterly beautiful. And just an appreciation for just how strange life is on Earth, I think, is what it really drilled into me.
- [50:46]
Alie Ward
I mean, imagine tiny, tiny glass baskets and fragile orbs and Slinkies and things that look like checks but made out of microscopic crystal all jumbled together with shards like magic wands. I mean, some creatures in these parts look like giant water spiders. And then you're telling me Mother Nature is a microscopic glass crafter like Dale Chihuly hopped up on Celsius with a pair of tweezers. I don't get it. And how is anything even alive? I need answers, so do you.
- [51:20]
Bobby
Kat, first time question asker wanted to know about that microalgae. How do they survive that? How much light can get through the ice? And how do they survive the darkest parts of the year?
- [51:31]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah, so different creatures have different mechanisms. But a lot of the creatures that I study, the microorganisms, have a way of going into suspended animation. So with tardigrades, they go into like a ton state. And you know what a lot of these creatures are able to do is they're able to expel all of the water in their body and then come back to life when there's like enough water, enough oxygen, better temperatures around. So if you could imagine as humans squeezing us out, wringing out all the water from our body, and then pouring water back on us and expecting our form to come back and that we wouldn't be like just the most hideous, disgusting thing that you've ever seen. That's essentially what tardigrades do, and rotifers do it. And nematodes go into a sort of suspended animation, too.
- [52:17]
Alie Ward
And if this enthralls you, you may love our Thermophysiolog episode with Dr. Shane Campbell Staton, also a PBS host of the show Human Footprint. He's amazing. We talk all about wood, frog blood and extremophiles and why your feet are cold. We'll link it in the show notes. But as Ariel observed, those microscopic worms and rotifers and tardigrades have some clever adaptive tricks that would help so much on winter days when the bus is late.
- [52:46]
Ariel Waldman
So it's this combination of being able to expel water when it comes back, still have their body back in its form. And a lot of that happens because of, you know, antifreeze like proteins and things that they have in their bodies that are able to preserve a lot of the basic structures that they need to pop back. It's really just incredible to watch. You can watch this happen under a microscope very easily and it's something that, you know, a lot of people are still researching so that we can better learn how they're able to come back with that out a huge amount of damage.
- [53:18]
Bobby
I feel like, you know, billionaires and like Brian Johnson are like, how can I use this to biohack myself immortal?
- [53:26]
Ariel Waldman
Yes, yes. Yeah, hit me up for studying, you know, weird little creatures for funding season two and all sorts of things, you know. Yeah, come to me, send me an email, give me a call. So while it's definitely possible, so it's like we know the science and we know it's possible they could be frozen and possibly come back to life thousands of years later, it hasn't been as well peer reviewed as it should be. But a lot of these creatures, they only survive for several weeks, like maybe a couple of months or so. So their lifespans are rather short. But it's that incredible ability for them to, you know, power down over an Antarctic winter, pop back to life six months later, that they can extend their life from two months to decades, which is just incredible. But I mean, there's also an asterisk on that that I always want to say, because people are like, tardigrades are the most indestructible things. You can kill them in a couple of different ways. One way is if you flash freeze them, you don't give them a heads up that they're losing oxygen, that things are getting cold, they don't have any time to adapt to go into their 10 stage. They will die like anything else. So if you flash freeze a tardigrade, it's not going to survive. They need to get a heads up that things are not, not right.
- [54:39]
T-Mobile Advertiser
What's going on here?
- [54:40]
Ariel Waldman
The second thing is that, you know, they go into these suspended animations and I have got some in my freezer and I defrost them sometimes that have come from Antarctica. But, you know, maybe 50% come back to life so they 100% can survive as a species through going through this. But it's not 100% survival rate. Some might die through that experience and others might pop back to life. But if your techniques were, were not as consistent, or maybe they were on a icier part of your sample versus more soil, that might affect their survival rate. So, I mean, this is the fun of science, right, Is trying to figure out like, okay, what is causing this to happen. But the reality is, yeah, it's not 100% survival rate. So you're not going to definitively have a tardigrade go into suspended animation and have them come back to life. You'll get a significant portion of them coming back to life, which is really impressive on its own.
- [55:33]
Bobby
Speaking of surviving the cold, obviously Bell, aspiring garbage archaeologist Adi Capello, Helsin Lynn, Olivia Lester, Molly Frattasio, Goblin Prince, Andrea Delvin and Halle Ragusa wanted to know. Hallie asked, how much does it cost to stay warm?
- [55:50]
Alie Ward
Do you just hit up the local
- [55:51]
Bobby
mountain equipment store and be like, hello, one warm jacket please, or do you have to go to the fancy Antarctica Jack jacket store? Helsing asked, why are the high vis jackets in Antarctica this deep red color
- [56:03]
Alie Ward
instead of the usual neon orange or
- [56:05]
Bobby
neon yellow like on construction sites? So when it comes to gearing up, what's the protocol?
- [56:12]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah, no, great question. So all of your external gear, so you've got your snow pants, you've got your red parka, you've got your big boots, bunny boots, all of that comes from essentially a quartermaster in New Zealand when you're going to McMurdo Station. So there's the Antarct. It's called the CDC and does not stand for it's clothing distribution center. You show up in New Zealand, they've got all your sizes, you get everything external parka, the gloves, the hat, et cetera. But all of your layering underneath, your base layer, your mid layer, all of that, you have to get yourself and you're on the hook to buy that yourself. That's not provided to you. So for me, who had been in California for so long, I didn't have any cold weather gear at all. So when I went to Antarctica. Oh God. God, it was expensive. Yeah. I had to go to like REI and all these other stores and figure out like how, how do I do this? I learned about merino wool and how important that is. And then I also learned that like nearly all of the cold weather stuff is made for men. And I, I asked about, you know, women's clothing when I went to these stores and they were like, oh, well, we've got like yoga pants.
- [57:24]
Bobby
Oh my God.
- [57:25]
Ariel Waldman
It's still to this day where it's like some glacier hiking boots or something and they have like maybe one if you're lucky for women. And then it's like, oh, here's the eight options for men. So it's like all of these sporting goods stores and everything and these athletic stores are like, women like yoga and men like extreme cold sports. And it was so upsetting because, I mean, it's just ridiculous at this point.
- [57:51]
Bobby
That's unreal to me. But also, yes, the fact that like the all female spacewalk had to be scrubbed because they're like, we didn't have two suits that fit a smaller body
- [58:01]
Alie Ward
is so our lead editor Mercedes let me know that Ariel's rage is not unique. Mercedes, who's done fieldwork in cultural resource management archaeology, encountered the same gear injustice and said mocking her outfitters, oh, you're a small woman who wants to shovel dirt in hot buggy weather. Never heard of that. But we've got a great selection of nursing scrubs for you. Mercedes remembers being particularly peeved that the only good women's work site socks were pink and purple and at least 30% more expensive than men's socks. So she bought men's socks out of spite even though they were way too big. And she concludes, it's nine years later and I'm still mad about it and now I'm mad for both of them. Now if you have the opposite problem and you would like to stay the hell away from the bottom of the earth, but you want to wear something that has done a stint down there, may I Recommend the site antarcticsurplus.com these folks buy decommissioned official research parkas and then they refer to back. So you can own a very good condition big red parka for like 1600 or you can get a fair conditioned bargain for 700. And yeah, these are genuine big reds from the brand Canada Goose. But if you would like one that might not smell like krill or a boat and you don't need the bragging rights of a jacket that touch the ends of the earth on the back of a scientist, you can just shop for a brand new expedition model for like two grand. Oh, and these cones are, are that signature crimson because it's the most visible in a whiteout, which is a spookier fact than I wanted to learn. Speaking of things that spike my anxiety, Marie Kirby Mini, Mini and Tortellini Hot. Wanted to know how do you deal with medical emergencies? Well, Halle Ragusa got straight to the point asking, what happens if you die in Antarctica? Do you get left. Do they just take your frozen body home and let you thaw? That's a good question.
- [59:53]
Bobby
But, you know, when it comes to body stuff, too. A few people asked about health emergencies. Magda Megan Ratcliffe wanted to know what happens if someone is born in Antarctica or if someone is pregnant there or. There have been tales of appendicitis. We got a lot of people who asked about this. That lore of the researcher who had to take out his own appendix.
- [60:17]
Ariel Waldman
Oh, yeah.
- [60:17]
Bobby
Because he was the only qualified one. But what happens in. In health emergencies or death?
- [60:25]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah. Medevact. In the US Antarctic Program and most Antarctic programs, you are not allowed to go to Antarctica if you're pregnant. If. If you're even remotely a little pregnant. That's not a thing. You can't do that. So that. That's one thing. So no one's having babies and stuff in Antarctica regularly. However, there have been stories of other countries who have explicitly, you know, flown women down there to have babies so that they can, like, claim, oh, you know, we own this part of Antarctica. Antarctica, of course, that's not recognized, that's not recommended. And they're doing it as a stunt, and they're doing it in the middle of summer when it's easy to get flights in and out.
- [61:02]
Alie Ward
This is very true. And in the late 1970s and early 1980s, some South American countries, including Chile and Argentina, intentionally populated the continent with tiny millennials, the first of whom was Emilia Marcos de Palma Morella, who forever remains in the Guinness Book of World Records for that distinction. Juan Pablo camacho Martin, born 1984, has the honor and psychological burden of knowing he's the first human conceived on Antarctica. His friends have named him El Penguino or the Penguin, but I'm sure his therapist just calls him Juan or hey, buddy.
- [61:38]
Ariel Waldman
But medical emergencies, you know, they can happen in the summer, they can happen in the winter. They're much more serious in the winter because it's complete darkness. There's a flight gap where everyone who's in Antarctica wintering over, you know, there's no flights in or out for. For several months because of how difficult it is. The weather gets way worse, and it's complete darkness. But over the years, there have been instances where there's been a serious enough case where, you know, either the New Zealand Air Force or the US Air Force had to fly down in the middle of winter and medevac someone out. Thankfully, all those, you know, missions were successful, but they're really harrowing because not only do you have someone in a medical emergency situation, but you have a whole crew that's sacrificing their life to get them out. So they try to minimize that much as possible. And if someone were to die in Antarctica, which again is people try to be evaluated as best we can to make sure they're not on the verge of dying, but you've got to send a plane down and get them out. There's not like a regular ship. You can just ship them back on. Usually it's a flight. And flights are pretty tricky in Antarctica, where the weather can change rapidly and you can have conditions and you just never want to be in a situation where your rescue crew is going to risk their own lives more than they need to so that you don't have further, further traged happening.
- [62:58]
Alie Ward
Yeah, I would say just toss me in the valley with the seals.
- [63:03]
Bobby
Maybe put me sitting up.
- [63:04]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah, just mummify.
- [63:06]
Bobby
Yeah, with like, maybe a little sign that's like, welcome. It's chill and it's just me, the eternal welcomer. I'd love that.
- [63:13]
Ariel Waldman
That would be creepy as hell.
- [63:14]
Bobby
I'd love it, though, because I'd be dead. But what about people who want to go there? Aaron Ryan from Vancouver, Canada, which I'm like, isn't it cold enough there?
- [63:22]
Alie Ward
But they want to know, my question
- [63:24]
Ariel Waldman
is, how does one go to the
- [63:26]
Alie Ward
Antarctic as a tourist? And perhaps Aaron would like to carpool with fellow patrons who asked, including Fiona Dupre, Guido Ayan Den Noel and Planet Psy Lorraine, who says, it's literally my dream to go to Antarctica for the yearly meteorite search.
- [63:42]
Ariel Waldman
So, I mean, tourism is always, I don't know, it's always got that push and pull. And I never have a great answer for it either way because I don't. I don't want to gatekeep any location. But at the same time, like, yeah, tourism has an impact and you want to minimize it. So I don't have an easy answer there, but if you want to go to Antarctica, there's kind of two main routes. I'll say three main routes to go. As a tourist, it's really just about money. If you've got about 10 grand, you can hop on a ship and those ships go to Antarctica typically from November to February or March. March.
- [64:15]
Alie Ward
And that's the dead of summer, which is confusing for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere.
- [64:19]
Ariel Waldman
You know, you pay ten grand, you're on a ship for seven to ten days, you get to go around the edge of Antarctica, if it's a smaller boat, you can take a little Zodiac boat and see penguins and stuff. Tourism is just exploding in Antarctica, for better or worse. And so a lot of people are experiencing Antarctica that way. But it is really, it's a money thing. A couple of years, the record for number of tourists in a single season was shattered. There was over a hundred thousand tourists in a single Antarctic season a couple years ago. And that's expected just to grow. So the tourism of Antarctica is rapidly, rapidly increasing. And so that's kind of the, the current state of tourism. If you want to pay like a hundred grand, you can fly in and actually land on the continent itself and camp out there in these small camps that are packed up each year so that they're not leaving a footprint behind.
- [65:09]
National Debt Relief Advertiser
What else you got?
- [65:10]
Ariel Waldman
The other option is to go to Antarctica. And I think this one's, the more accessible one is, you know, all of these Antarctic stations by these different countries, they need support staff, they need electricians, they need IT people, they need plumbers, they need people to wash the dishes. And so a lot of people go to Antarctica because they look at the job openings for these Antarctic programs and they apply and they get the job. And that actually, to me, it's way better than being a tourist because, you know, you get to actually be involved in supporting science. You get to have a community there. You get to experience, experience a part of Antarctica that very few people do, unlike the tourism sort of tours. And right now is when the U.S. antarctic Program and other ones are advertising those jobs. And So I would 100% try that out and see if you get an interview from it, because they need all sorts of people if you're wanting to contribute to science and you have something to offer. And in my case, it was like being a microscopist. Start talking to the researchers who regularly go down to Antarctica. Tell them that you're a fan of what they're working on and that maybe you want to talk to them about, you know, if they could use help in a certain science area or a certain communication area, doesn't mean they're going to be like, yeah, hop on the plane with me. You're probably beginning a multi year relationship with researchers that's genuine. That may lead to you collaborating with those researchers, but in those cases you need to approach it with, you know, a sense of being humble and having an idea of like, where you want to contribute and being okay with having like, just a legitimate conversation about, like, hey, I would love to get involved in Antarctic Stuff science, maybe in this
- [66:48]
Bobby
area, but also put yourself out there and not wait for someone to come and hand pick you necessarily. Just show your interest, I think is super important.
- [66:56]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah, show your interest and just don't expect that you're going to get like a ticket to Antarctica that year. You know, you're beginning a multi year thing. Yeah.
- [67:04]
Bobby
You mentioned really quick electricians.
- [67:06]
Alie Ward
I imagine solar is great for half
- [67:09]
Bobby
the year and then it's really shitty
- [67:10]
Alie Ward
for the other half.
- [67:11]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah.
- [67:11]
Alie Ward
The lovely Alice Rubin, who wanted to know how is electricity generated?
- [67:14]
Ariel Waldman
Solar is great for the summer work. New Zealand has a number of wind turbines and I think they primarily use those. The U.S. program mirrors the U.S. while we do get some electricity through sustainable sources like solar and wind, there's other things that are using, you know, propane and more gases and stuff. And so that's why some people have equated going to McMurdo station as feeling like you're part of a mining town, because you do have vehicles that, you know, are using diesel or something. You know, it's not all space age. It does mirror the US and that's sort of what you get in anti Antarctica is, you know, you go to different stations and it sort of mirrors the state of those different nations.
- [67:57]
Bobby
Last listener question I thought was great. Savannah Stark, Andy Pepper and Amy Martin wanted to know. Savannah asked, is it quiet in Antarctica? And Amy asked, once away from the bases and the shore life, what is the sound of Antarctica? Is it just wind?
- [68:11]
Ariel Waldman
It is just wind. This was actually a really big challenge when making the Life on Earth series on pbs. So we had, you know, sounds that we captured in Antarctica that I captured in Antarctica. But sometimes you need to fill in some of the sounds because they're just not recorded at high enough quality. And so my sound engineer, Nathan Moody, he struggled because he had to find field recordings of wind going across rocks with zero vegetation, like no moss, no trees, no nothing. And that was really challenging. And I think he ultimately found some field recordings by George Flad that were, like made, you know, high up somewhere in Chile or something that had like no vegetation. But that was a really big challenge. And so, yeah, it's mostly wind and the sound of your own footsteps. And I've come to really love the sound of my footsteps because you just get to really hear your footsteps across ice and snow and soil and different types of that. And you get to appreciate those sounds in a way that you don't normally get to. And so it is, it is utterly, utterly quiet. It and also utterly sort of smell less. You know, like a lot of people say, oh, isn't Antarctica the freshest air you've ever had? And it's like, yeah, but also when you think about fresh air, your concept of it might be distorted by Earth. So in Antarctica, yeah, you're probably smelling the freshest air, but that means you're smelling nothing. When I come back to New Zealand, that's like in the middle of their summer, summer from Antarctica, I get off the plane and I go, oh, finally, fresh air. And I realize my concept of fresh air is like the grass and the trees and being able to smell like the flowers through the air. And so it really messes with your senses of what we consider fresh. And it turns out like a lot of our concepts are based in being in like a lush earth.
- [70:02]
Alie Ward
I looked up the most common air freshener smells and yeah, sure enough, they're usually plants. Lavender, pine, citrus, tropical fruits. None of the top 10 scents are the frigid, lonely expanse of Antarctica. But if you are heading to the continent to see penguins or to do research, just please don't bring the Febreze. Leave it at home. Mother Earth does not need it. What else does she beg us to pump the brakes on? Brain shenanigans. Molly Valmy listening and first time question asker Stella, the turtle loving lady lesbian, in Stella's words, asked, are you finding microplastics? When you're looking at microscopic life under
- [70:38]
Bobby
the ice, microplastics, you see any.
- [70:41]
Ariel Waldman
You know, we do see microplastics. I think the challenge always with microplastics is trying to discern are they coming from us? You know, did it literally come off my jacket yesterday because I'm there or is it blown in from elsewhere? So I think a lot of people, when they think of microplastics, they think, oh, it's so terrible. We've polluted every, everything it's been blown onto here. And that's certainly true probably for parts of it because we've been able to see that like ash from wildfire smoke ends up in Antarctica. So we have proof that stuff in the atmosphere ends up in Antarctica. At the same time, if you're not doing rigorous enough work, you might be saying, oh, look at this bad microplastic. Well, it was from your jacket yesterday or something. So to me that's the challenge. And sort of delight in microplastic plastics is understanding their origin because I think that really impacts how we think about microplastics, is like, are we finding plastic in a lot of places? Because that's where people are going. Or is it because it came from a whole another side of the world or not?
- [71:37]
Alie Ward
And don't worry, many Antarctic researchers are on it. You can see the 2025 science of the Total Environment paper titled Prevalence and Consequences of Microscopic Ingestion in the World's Southernmost Insect, Belgica Antarctica, which discusses discusses that midge we talked about earlier. But the University of Kentucky research team found that in the Antarctic, midge microplastic exposure was non lethal, though it did reduce fat stores, which could impact survival longer term. And compared to other insects, the rates of microplastic ingestion were low. And in natural environments, the microplastic ingestion was observed, but it was rare. But the lead author of the study told a Yale school and the environment reporter recently that, quote, you work with this incredible little insect that lives where there are no trees, barely any plants, and you still find plastic in its guts. And continued, that really brings home how widespread the problem is. Hey, let's keep the bummers coming.
- [72:32]
Bobby
What was the I can't even imagine. What's the hardest part about working down there?
- [72:39]
Ariel Waldman
I mean, for me, it was certainly trying to decide, trying to film a docu series by myself with no crew in freezing temperatures when I had never felt filmed a documentary before in my life. That that was the hardest because it is freezing.
- [72:57]
Bobby
Yeah.
- [72:58]
Ariel Waldman
And I put myself up to this. And when I landed on the Runway in Antarctica after having like gotten a grant to do this and everything, I was like, I'm an idiot. Like, what the hell? Like, I'm like, what the hell did I put myself up to? Like, who says, yeah, I've never filmed a documentary before and yeah, I'm going to do it in Antarctica for the first time and I'll just do it all my myself, no crew, no problem. I was like, wow, I am going to fail. I was just freaking out and I didn't know if I was going to pull it off. So I'm really glad the series ended up on PBS because for a long time I was just like, I am an idiot for trying to pull this off. It was really hard.
- [73:39]
Bobby
Well, you underestimated yourself because it's a beautiful series. And here we are. What was one of the most beautiful things that you saw or something that will a memory from down there that'll just stay with you forever?
- [73:53]
Ariel Waldman
I mean, yeah, it's got to be the obtube of like just being suspended between a sea ice ceiling and a sea floor full of life and hearing these seals making these weird almost techno sort of sounding calls and everything. And it's just you in a metal pipe suspended in the middle of the ocean with no one else around. And you're seeing the fish and you're seeing, you know, all these weird creatures and it is surreal and it'll stay with me forever because you're just there alone and yeah, terrible place to be if you're claustrophobic. But otherwise. I was just gonna say otherwise. Super beautiful.
- [74:36]
Bobby
I was gonna say best life experience for some an absolute nightmare for other to be underneath this sea ice.
- [74:43]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah.
- [74:44]
Bobby
Thank you so so much for being here all the way from Antarctica.
- [74:48]
Alie Ward
I.
- [74:48]
Bobby
You will forever be a hero of mine. Just like you did.
- [74:52]
Alie Ward
What?
- [74:53]
Ariel Waldman
Yeah. No, thank you so much. This was wonderful.
- [74:55]
Bobby
Oh, congratulations again. Oh my God.
- [74:59]
Alie Ward
So ask adventurous people asinine questions because they would go to the ends of the earth to get the knowledge and share it clearly. So thank you so much to Ariel Waldman for chatting with me and for me making your gorgeous series Life Unearthed with Ariel Waldman on pbs. Ariel's social media handles are so efficient. Just her name, Ariel Waldman. So go find and add her. Tell her how much you love her work. Huge congrats on the PBS show. So much beautiful footage and a look at sites we'd never get to see. So well done. We have a ton more links up on our website and in the show notes there's a link to the San Francisco Microscopy Society as well as studies on our website. We are at ologies on Instagram and Facebook. I'm liw word on both. We have ologies merch up@ologiesmerch.com Smologies S M O L o G I E s are shorter kid friendly episodes in their own feed. Just subscribe by looking up smallogies where we get podcasts, tell a friend and to submit questions ahead of time just join our patreon@patreon.com Ologies for as little as a dollar a month. Aaron Talbert, admin Zoologies podcast Facebook group Avileen Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly R. Dwyer does the website. Making sure our boats leave on time is scheduling producer Noel Dilworth, managing director is our captain Sus Hale and putting our audio under the scope each week our editors Jake Chaffee and lead editor and too big of sock owner, understandably Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn made the theme music. And if you stick around to the very end, you know I may tell you a secret. And this week it's that I went to Spain I mentioned in the second cannabis episode that I was recording some asides from a rented house with all my in laws and I was whispering them at like 4 in the morning. But I'm still jet lagged. I've been home a week and I'm blissfully, wonderfully jet lagged. Like I haven't gotten back into the habit of accidentally staying up until 1 and then sleeping until 9. Y', all, I'm going to bed at 9:30pm I'm waking up at 6 and I'm going on hikes. This is glorious. I hope it never stops. Which reminds me, we do have an episode coming up on bedtime. Procrastination. That's so good. Okay, that's coming soon. Thanks for listening. Watch the PBS show. It's beautiful. Get a microscope. There's stuff all around you and living on your face. Bye.
- [77:13]
Bobby
Bye. Pachydermatology, Homeology, Cryptozoology, Litology, Nanotechnology, Meteorology Cold
- [77:22]
Alie Ward
Factology Mapology, Serology, Selenology. There are few places harder to get to in this world, but there aren't any where it's harder to live.
- [77:39]
Ariel Waldman
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- [77:54]
Angie Hicks
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