Antarcticology (ANTARCTIC RESEARCH) with Ariel Waldman

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.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alie Ward?

  Oh, hey, it's the bookmark. It's just a receipt for the book, Ally Ward, and buckle up, bundle up, I'm taking you to Antarctica. Well, I'm not doing anything. I'm just asking anologist 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 on Earth, 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 at 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

• 0:44Alie Ward?

  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. Exciting. Also, heads up to anyone looking for kid-safe and classroom-friendly versions of Ologies. We release those in their very own feed. They're called Smologies, 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

• 1:27Alie Ward?

  dyslexia, thank you for bringing me the joy of learning that I was missing so badly." Arugula Few, thanks for being here, and I hope that you've got mittens. 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 theologists choosing each week. How's your ponytail looking? Maybe like a little thinner than it used to? We've talked about this in our menopause episode. At some point, it's bound to happen to all of us. So if you're ready for thicker, fuller hair, start your free online visit today at forhers.com/ologies for personalized care. So that's F-O-R-H-E-R-S.com/ologies. Individual results may vary. Featured products include compounded drug products, which the

• 2:11Alie Ward?

  FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. Price varies based on product and subscription plan. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Oh, look. You just got added to a meeting about coordinating another meeting to prepare for the pre-meeting ahead of the follow-up meeting, which will, of course, require a recap meeting. And then another meeting. Hit your booking point? Book with Southwest and enter airplane mode.

• 2:48Alie Ward?

  Okay, so this Ologi, 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 involves the visibility of a constellation called Ursham Major or the Great Bear. So you can't see it on Antarctica. You can't see it in the Arctic.

• 3:33Alie Ward?

  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 Waldman.

• 4:30Alie Ward?

  You're like, I got on a cargo plane with no bathroom but a bucket. And I went and filmed an entire series by myself with drones. I'm like, who is this person?

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Totally normal, totally normal. Yeah, everyone does that.

• 4:45Alie Ward?

  First off, I'll have you say your first and last name and your pronouns. So I can absolutely barrage you with questions afterward.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I'm Ariel Waldman, she/her.

• 4:54Alie Ward?

  Great. Where are you right now?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  San Francisco.

• 4:58Alie Ward?

  Okay. Do you get asked that a lot by people who expect you to be at a research station?

• 5:05Speaker 02

  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.

• 5:16Alie Ward?

  Where are you from originally?

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Kansas City.

• 5:19Alie Ward?

  Not a lot of sea ice there.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  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, 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.

• 5:39Alie Ward?

  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, yeah?

• 5:49Speaker 02

  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.

• 6:03Alie Ward?

  Were you interested in geography? Were you interested in adventure? Were you interested in tiny microorganisms? I really, I cannot imagine the sequence of events, the dominoes that have to fall to get someone to be exploring Antarctica.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  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.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  And so I sent someone at NASA a random email and I said I was a fan, never expected to hear back, ended up getting a job at NASA from that email.

• 7:14Alie Ward?

  What?

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Utterly, completely changed my life.

• 7:18Alie Ward?

  How good was this email?

• 7:20Speaker 02

  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 read 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, 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.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  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.

• 8:11Alie 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.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  And so working at NASA. Is what ultimately got me exposed to learning about people working in Antarctica, because it's an analog for Mars and icy moons in our solar system. And I was like, that's really cool. I want to like 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.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  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.

• 9:21Alie Ward?

  Creatures like tardigrades, rotifers, bacteria, seed shrimp, nematodes, spirals, 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. 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?

• 9:56Speaker 02

  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 qualified. 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.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  So that immediately starts and then you're filling out endless spreadsheets for all of the equipment and supplies you need and, and having a lot of logistics emails. And so that all happens in a span of about six months or so, or at least it did for me.

• 10:52Alie Ward?

  If they're like, your triglycerides are high. Do you have an opportunity to be like, that's okay. I'll, I'll cut out butter or whatever.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Um, 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?

• 11:13Alie 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 hugely popular YouTube channel and a product line called Yetch, which is how you pronounce her last name, even though it's Swedish and it looks like kirtz.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know Simone and here's the huge bummer. So for people who know Simone, she was supposed to go to Antarctica.

• 11:53Alie Ward?

  Yes.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  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 able to make it.

• 12:11Alie Ward?

  I understand that they sent a slide of her brain tumor, Brian, though.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  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.

• 12:25Alie Ward?

  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.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Oh, you should have gone. We could have been roommates.

• 12:36Alie Ward?

  We could have been roommates. What else do you pack other than Simone Yech's brain tumor to go to Antarctica?

• 12:43Speaker 02

  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's 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 pounds. And so that included my microscope, brought that down in a Pelican case, all of my camera gear in 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

• 13:25Speaker 02

  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.

• 13:31Alie 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. And how much time are you alone alone? And how much time do you have a buddy or some kind of crew around you?

• 13:51Speaker 02

  It's kind of half and half. So with the research team that I was embedded on, which is the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research Team, which is a mouthful to say, but I'll say L T E R. 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

• 14:36Speaker 02

  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 is nobody else around. There are 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

• 15:20Speaker 02

  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.

• 15:30Alie Ward?

  Did you ever have the opportunity to just scream at the top of your lungs for catharsis?

• 15:36Speaker 02

  I, I would have. I don't know that I would. It's not really my style.

• 15:43Alie Ward?

  But then again, just on the off chance that someone else heard you, that would be alarming for them.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  That would be not great. Not great.

• 15:50Alie Ward?

  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?

• 15:59Speaker 02

  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, the big change for me. You get just a lot of time. Well,

• 16:43Speaker 02

  I didn't spend it, you know, screaming in the middle of nowhere. 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.

• 16:58Alie Ward?

  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 a light 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?

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Antarctica is a continent that very few people pay attention to. It's not included on most of our maps, unfortunately.

• 17:38Speaker 03

  Some people out there in our nation don't have maps.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  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.

• 18:09Alie Ward?

  Three miles?

• 18:11Speaker 02

  At the highest locations, yeah.

• 18:12Alie Ward?

  Oh, I can't even fathom that.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  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. 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 glaciers and frozen lakes that come into the area. But you don't have the ice sheet just covering everything.

• 18:55Alie Ward?

  Is that ice sheet slowly grinding down the mountain? Or how does that work?

• 19:00Speaker 02

  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.

• 19:23Alie 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. How does that compare to Europa?

• 19:46Speaker 02

  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 the 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

• 20:27Speaker 02

  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.

• 20:43Alie Ward?

  So an ice planet or an ice moon is like, imagine like a peanut M&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. 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, bro, you're not going to be drilling three miles.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  Right? 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 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 three feet.

• 22:04Alie Ward?

  What are you eating?

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Eating?

• 22:06Alie Ward?

  Yeah. How do you get yourself up a glacier? I would just be like Cliff Bar in an IV bag.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  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. Great. You know, mac and cheese, M&M's, 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.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  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.

• 23:11Alie Ward?

  You're getting some good pre-apocalypse training, though.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Got 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.

• 23:26Alie Ward?

  Treasure.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 23:28Alie Ward?

  Absolute treasure. I would eat that now and I live a mile from a 7-Eleven, but.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's fine.

• 23:35Alie Ward?

  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.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  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 maggots or anything. And so they don't decompose. So you have these mummies of seals and penguins in the dry valleys

• 24:34Speaker 02

  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 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,

• 25:19Speaker 02

  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.

• 25:35Alie Ward?

  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?

• 25:43Speaker 02

  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 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.

• 26:22Alie Ward?

  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?

• 26:34Speaker 02

  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

• 27:16Speaker 02

  the Antarctic winter is really, really small for now.

• 27:20Alie Ward?

  What about some sort of melting permafrost? Is there a Last of Us cordyceps? Is there some sort of? Thing that's gonna come out and cannibalize our brains?

• 27:33Speaker 02

  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's 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.

• 28:07Alie 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?

• 28:50Alie Ward?

  Should We Worry?" dot, dot, dot, question mark. 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.

• 29:22Alie Ward?

  We'll keep an eye on it. We're gonna monitor the situation.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  Well, going back in time a little bit.

• 29:28Alie Ward?

  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.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:40Alie Ward?

  Incorrect, but. I blame Santa because if he winters at the top of the earth, what do you mean he built his house and 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 landmass that is Antarctica hasn't always been at the bottom of the marble of earth.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  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

• 30:47Speaker 02

  of the world, but also the continent itself moved down there.

• 30:50Alie 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 eight feet 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 16,000 feet. So down really is up sometimes. When 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?

• 31:31Speaker 02

  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 of different species. And you get mylnesium 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.

• 31:56Alie Ward?

  I know.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  They are definitely like the kings of the jungle, so to speak.

• 32:00Alie Ward?

  We have a tardigrade episode with the most charming person, Dr. Paul Bartels, that you will love.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  And then you have other tardigrades, though, like actinococcus, 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.

• 32:33Alie Ward?

  Well, you mentioned moss, and I can't even picture a plant on Antarctica. What are we dealing with botanically?

• 32:40Speaker 02

  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.

• 33:09Speaker 04

  Delicious.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Now, the peninsula of Antarctica, which is very far away from where I normally work, is seeing a lot more of what you expect. 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.

• 33:55Alie Ward?

  Wow.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  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.

• 34:12Alie Ward?

  And just for some quick geography, Antarctica, it's 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 1,000 kilometers. Now, the US-run McMurdo Station and New Zealand's 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. No one country owns Antarctica.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 34:56Alie Ward?

  Is it like a time share?

• 34:57Speaker 02

  I haven't thought of it as a time share. 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 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.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  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. A long, long time ago, it was like seals and whales and blubber. Today, it's krill.

• 35:55Alie Ward?

  The US hasn't been like drill, baby, drill yet?

• 35:58Speaker 02

  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 Allan 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.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  And so they can actually analyze the old atmosphere in those bubbles and tell you how old the ice is.

• 36:46Alie Ward?

  Can I ask you 1 million questions from listeners who know that you're coming on?

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Oh my god. Yeah, sure.

• 36:52Alie Ward?

  The hard part about interviewing you is I want to ask you a million science questions as well as Antarctic lifestyle questions.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  I'm game.

• 37:01Alie 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 Ariel's microscopy work with a donation to the San Francisco Microscopical 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

• 37:41Alie Ward?

  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 at aliwar.com/ologies/anarchatology. So thank you to sponsors of Ologies who make their donation possible. How's your ponytail looking? Maybe like a little thinner than it used to? We've talked about this in our menopause episode. At some point, it's bound to happen to all of us. So if you're ready for thicker, fuller hair, start your free online visit today at forhers.com/ologies for personalized care. So that's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash ologies. Individual results may vary. Featured products include compounded drug products,

• 38:25Alie Ward?

  which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. Price varies based on product and subscription plan. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. If you haven't heard me gushing about Squarespace for years, it's an all-in-one website platform. Whether you're trying to grow a business you have or if you're just a baby business getting started, it has everything you need. That's where I secured my domain name. It helped me build a professional site. I can update it so easily. I've been using Squarespace since before Ologies existed. After procrastinating for years, I literally built my website in one EP. They have templates, they have flexible editing tools. Squarespace also makes it easy to share your work. You can book clients, you can get paid.

• 39:09Alie Ward?

  They have built in tools for scheduling and invoicing and email all in one place. Whenever someone I know needs a website, whether they're a scientist that needs to put their work up or someone who's just starting a business, I'm like, dude, Squarespace. So head to squarespace.com/ologies for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code OLOGIES to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You can do it.

• 39:36Speaker 01

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• 40:49Alie Ward?

  Okay, questions poured in from all over the globe about the land at the bottom of the globe, such as this one from patron Mukta.

• 40:58Speaker 06

  Hello, my name is Mukta and I'm from India. Does Antarctica get earthquakes? Are there volcanoes under Antarctica that can potentially blow it apart? Thank you.

• 41:10Alie Ward?

  What seismically is happening there? Anything rumbling under there?

• 41:15Speaker 02

  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 Station 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 checking 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.

• 41:50Alie Ward?

  Don't mind me. Are there certain organisms that really thrive in that environment? Like these hydrothermal vents under the sea?

• 42:01Speaker 02

  That's a good question. I know that like going under the sea around McMurdo Station, you get really, really rich forms of life. So, you know, you get all these amazing seals and sea spiders and all these like cool things that you get to see. I had the chance to go under the ice without becoming a diver, which was an incredible experience. 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 ob tube, Observation Tube. And you get to actually sit underneath the sea ice, the sea ice above you illuminated like really bright,

• 42:45Speaker 02

  and then all of the creatures underneath.

• 42:48Speaker 07

  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.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  It really illuminated just how amazing and full of life under the ice is in Antarctica, because I 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.

• 43:31Alie 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 earthnology 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 legroom. 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

• 44:13Alie Ward?

  to Antarctica because that would wreak a bit of havoc on just everything. You know who can survive, though? As we learned in the Diptorology 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 anti-freeze strategy. And they are the only native, fully terrestrial animal on Antarctica. And a four-millimeter 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 pinupetology episode with Dr.

• 44:56Alie Ward?

  Lewis Huckstadt 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 tube.

• 45:12Alie Ward?

  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 Foot, Marion Porter, Cat, Bug in a Rug, Julie Marie and Waylow 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.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  So with the sea ice around McMurdo Station, you're talking like negative 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 wet suit. So it's pretty intense.

• 46:03Alie Ward?

  So yeah, a totally sealed dry suit with layers of warm clothes underneath. And then you just go hang out under 10 feet of 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 hiking to the pole? Evelyn, Eva Mara, Alice Rubin, Thoroposaurus Jazz, all wanted to know, how's the bathroom? What goes on there?

• 46:42Speaker 02

  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. Yeah.

• 47:13Alie Ward?

  You're welcome.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know exactly where.

• 47:16Speaker 05

  I'll take it.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  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.

• 48:00Alie Ward?

  No.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  And then the next person who comes could overflow that can. I have heard about that happening and was absolutely terrified of that happening.

• 48:10Alie Ward?

  No.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  So yeah, fun facts of going to the bathroom in Antarctica. Yeah.

• 48:15Alie Ward?

  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.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  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 other people. So fun facts.

• 48:36Alie Ward?

  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.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 48:45Alie Ward?

  I thought this was an interesting question. Erin Duberry, Protect Trans Lives, Weet's Howl, Jen Alvarez, Mouse Paxton, Nick's Rider, Adi Kapello, wanted to know, Erin said, what did you find or experience that you didn't expect?

• 49:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, great question. One was that ob tube experience where I didn't know I was going to spend time, you know, 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, you know, 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 and just...

• 49:33Speaker 02

  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 the 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.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  And just an appreciation for just how strange life is on earth, I think, is what it really drilled into me.

• 50:22Alie 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 Chihuli 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. 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?

• 51:08Speaker 02

  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 stunned 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

• 51:51Speaker 02

  nematodes go into a sort of suspended animation too.

• 51:54Alie Ward?

  And if this enthralled you, you may love our thermophysiology episode with Dr. Shane Campbell-Staten, 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.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  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 without a huge amount of damage.

• 52:54Alie Ward?

  I feel like you know billionaires and like Brian Johnson are like, how can I use this to biohack myself immortal?

• 53:02Speaker 02

  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.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Give me a call.

• 53:14Speaker 02

  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.

• 53:57Speaker 02

  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 TUN 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 right.

• 54:15Speaker 04

  What's going on here?

• 54:16Speaker 02

  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 not as consistent, or maybe, you know, they were on a icier part of your sample versus a 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.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  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.

• 55:09Alie Ward?

  Speaking of surviving the cold, obviously, Belle, aspiring garbage archaeologist, Addie Capello, Helsin Lin, Olivia Lester, Molly Fretazio, Goblin Prince, Andrea Delvin, and Hallie Ragusa wanted to know, Hallie asked, how much does it cost to stay warm? Do you just hit up the local mountain equipment store and be like, hello, one warm jacket, please? Or do you have to go to the fancy Antarctica jacket store? Helsing asked, why are the high vis jackets in Antarctica this deep red color instead of the usual neon orange or neon yellow, like on construction sites? So when it comes to gearing up, what's the protocol?

• 55:48Speaker 02

  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 Antarctic. It's called the CDC and does not stand for it's Clothing Distribution Centre. 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 is you have to get yourself and you're on the hook to buy that yourself. That's not provided to you.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  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, it was expensive. Yeah, I had to go to REI and all these other stores and figure out like, how do I do this? I learned about merino wool and how important that is. And then I also learned that nearly all of the cold weather stuff is made for men. And I asked about women's clothing when I went to these stores and they were like, oh, well, we've got yoga pants.

• 57:01Alie Ward?

  Oh, my God.

• 57:02Speaker 02

  It's still to this day where it's like some glacier hiking boots or something. And they have like maybe one option 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 it's just ridiculous at this point.

• 57:27Alie Ward?

  That's unreal to me, but also, yes. The fact that the all-female spacewalk had to be scrubbed because they're like, nah, we didn't have two suits that fit a smaller body 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 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.

• 58:12Alie Ward?

  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?

• 58:30Alie Ward?

  These folks buy decommissioned official research parkas and then they refurbish them. So you can own a very good condition big red parka for like 1,600 or you can get a fair condition 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 touched 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 coats 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

• 59:12Alie Ward?

  spike my anxiety, Marie Kirby, mini mini and tortellini hot wanted to know, how do you deal with medical emergencies? Well, Hallie 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? It's a good question. 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.

• 59:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:54Alie Ward?

  Because he was the only qualified one. But what happens in health emergencies? Or death?

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Medevac, in the US Antarctic program and most Antarctic programs, you are not allowed to go to Antarctica if you're pregnant, if you're even remotely a little pregnant. That's not a thing. You can't do that. So 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. 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.

• 1:00:38Alie 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 Emilio Marcos de Palma Morela, who forever remains in the Guinness Book of World Records for that distinction. Juan Pablo Camacho Martino, 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.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  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 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

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  have a whole crew that's sacrificing their life to get them out. So they try to minimize that as much as possible. And if someone were to die in Antarctica, which again is, uh, 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. It'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 tragedy happening.

• 1:02:34Alie Ward?

  Yeah, I would say just toss me in the valley with the seals. Maybe put me sitting up.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, just mummify.

• 1:02:42Alie Ward?

  Yeah, with like maybe a little sign that's like, welcome, it's chill. And it's just me, the eternal welcomeer. I'd love that.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  That would be creepy as hell.

• 1:02:50Alie Ward?

  I'd love it, though, because I'd be dead. But what about people who want to go there? Erin Ryan from Vancouver, Canada, which I'm like, isn't it cold enough there? But they want to know.

• 1:02:59Speaker 06

  My question is, how does one go to the Antarctic as a tourist?

• 1:03:05Alie Ward?

  And perhaps Erin would like to carpool with fellow patrons who asked, including Fiona Dupre, Guido, Ion Den Noel, and Planet Sai Lorraine, who says, "It's literally my dream to go to Antarctica for the yearly meteorite search."

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:03:51Alie Ward?

  And that's the dead of summer, which is confusing for those of us in the northern hemisphere.

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  You know, you pay 10 grand, you're on a ship for seven to 10 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 100,000 tourists in a single Antarctic season a couple of 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 current state of tourism. If you want to pay like 100 grand, you can fly in and actually land on the continent itself

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  and camp out there in these small camps that are packed up each year so that they're not leaving a footprint behind.

• 1:04:46Speaker 04

  What else you got?

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  The other options 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 a part of Antarctica that very few people do on like the tourism sort of tours. And right now is when the US Antarctic program and other ones are advertising those jobs.

• 1:05:30Speaker 02

  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,

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  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 science, maybe in this area.

• 1:06:26Alie Ward?

  But also put yourself out there and not wait for someone to come and handpick you necessarily. Just show your interest, I think is super important.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:06:40Alie Ward?

  Yeah. You mentioned really quick electricians. I imagine solar is great for half the year and then it's really shitty for the other half.

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:47Alie Ward?

  The lovely Alice Rubin, who wanted to know, how is electricity generated?

• 1:06:51Speaker 02

  Solar is great for the summer work. New Zealand has a number of wind turbines and I think they primarily use. The US program mirrors the US while we do get some electricity through sustainable sources like solar and wind. There's other things that are using 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 are using diesel or something. It's not all space age. It does mirror the US. And that's sort of what you get in Antarctica is you go to different stations and it sort of mirrors the state of those different nations.

• 1:07:33Alie Ward?

  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?

• 1:07:48Speaker 02

  It is just wind. This was actually a really big challenge when making the Life on Earth series on PBS. So we had 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, nothing. And that was really challenging. And I think he ultimately found some field recordings by George Vlad that were made high up somewhere in Chile or something that had no vegetation. But that was a really big challenge. And so yeah,

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  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 utterly, utterly quiet and also utterly sort of smellless. 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.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  When I come back to New Zealand, that's like in the middle of their summer from Antarctica. I get off the plane and I go, oh, finally, fresh air. And I realized 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.

• 1:09:38Alie 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 Febreeze, leave it at home. Mother Earth does not need it. What else does she beg us to pump the brakes on? Brain Shenanigans, Molly, Valby Listening and first time question asker Stella, the turtle-loving lesbian in Stella's words asked, are you finding microplastics when you're looking at microscopic life under the ice? Microplastics, you see any?

• 1:10:17Speaker 02

  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 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 like 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 microplastics is understanding their origin,

• 1:11:02Speaker 02

  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?

• 1:11:14Alie 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 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

• 1:11:59Alie Ward?

  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 bummer's coming. What was the, I can't even imagine, what's the hardest part about working down there?

• 1:12:15Speaker 02

  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 filmed a documentary before in my life. That was the hardest because it is freezing.

• 1:12:33Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:34Speaker 02

  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 gonna do it in Antarctica for the first time, and I'll just do it all myself. No crew, no problem. I was like, wow, I am going to fail. I was just freaking out. And I, yeah, I didn't know if I was gonna 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.

• 1:13:16Alie Ward?

  Well, you underestimated yourself because it's a beautiful series.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:13:19Alie Ward?

  And here we are. What about, 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?

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, it's got to be the op tube of like just being suspended between a sea ice ceiling and a seafloor full of life and hearing these seals making these weird, almost techno sort of sounding calls and everything.

• 1:13:51Speaker 02

  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

• 1:14:10Alie Ward?

  I was just gonna say.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  Otherwise, super beautiful.

• 1:14:13Alie Ward?

  I was gonna say, best life experience for some and absolute nightmare for other to be underneath the sea ice.

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:20Alie Ward?

  Thank you so, so much for being here all the way from Antarctica. You will forever be a hero of mine. Just like, you did what?

• 1:14:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, thank you so much. This was wonderful.

• 1:14:31Alie Ward?

  Congratulations again.

• 1:14:35Alie 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 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 Microscopals Society as well as studies on our website. We are at Ologies on Instagram and Facebook. I'm at @Allyward on both. We have Ologies merch up

• 1:15:18Alie Ward?

  at ologiesmerch.com. Smologies, S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S, are shorter kid-friendly episodes and their own feed. Just subscribe by looking up Smologies wherever you get podcasts. Tell a friend. And to submit questions ahead of time, just join our Patreon at patreon.com/ologies for as little as a dollar a month. Erin Talbert, Admins, Geology's Podcast, Facebook group. Malick makes our professional transcripts. Kelly Ardwire does the website. Making sure our boats leave on time is scheduling producer Noel Dilworth. Managing director is our captain, Susan 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.

• 1:16:03Alie Ward?

  And this week it's that I went to Spain. I mentioned in the second cannabis episode that I was recording some of the sides from a rented house with all my in-laws and I was whispering them at like four 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 one and then sleeping until nine. Y'all, I'm going to bed at 9:30 PM. I'm waking up at six 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.

• 1:16:46Alie Ward?

  There's stuff all around you and living on your face. Mm, bye bye. Pachydermatology, homeology, cryptozoology, lithology, nanotechnology, meteorology, geology, nephology, seriology, histology.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  There are few places harder to get to in this world, but there aren't anywhere it's harder to live.

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  Oh, look. You just got added to a meeting about coordinating another meeting to prepare for the pre-meeting ahead of the follow-up meeting, which will, of course, require a recap meeting and then another meeting. Hit your booking point. Book with Southwest and enter airplane mode.