Jacques Cousteau

Co-inventor of the Aqua-Lung, Captain Jacques Cousteau opened the ocean to the public like no one before. An explorer, filmmaker and environmentalist, he led groundbreaking underwater expeditions, and pioneered techniques for filming beneath the waves. Through his documentaries and television series, he brought the mysteries of the sea into millions of homes, becoming known the world over for his trademark red knitted hat and his beloved ship, the Calypso. But why did the ocean mean so much to him? How did a French naval officer come to invent a device that would change humanity’s relationship with the sea? And what were the tragedies and controversies that marked the life of this charismatic adventurer? This is a Short History Of Jacques Cousteau. A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. With thanks to Doug Allan, an underwater cameraman for series such as Blue Planet, Planet Earth and Frozen Planet. Doug sadly passed in April 2026, and we dedicate this episode to his memory. Written by Nicola Raynor | Produced by Kate Simants | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Katrina Hughes | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Oliver Sanders | Assembly edit by Dorry Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw | Fact check: Sean Coleman Unlock the next two episodes of Short History Of… right now by subscribing to Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening and early access to shows across the Noiser podcast network, including Real Survival Stories and Sherlock Holmes Short Stories. Just click the subscription banner at the top of the feed, or head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions to get started. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 1:00Speaker 02

  This episode is dedicated to the late Doug Allen, our expert guest on Jacques Cousteau, who sadly died while trekking in Nepal in the weeks after our interview was recorded. One of the great wildlife cameramen of his generation, Doug devoted his life to filming the natural world with skill, bravery, and deep humanity. We were honored by his contribution to this episode, and we dedicate it to his memory.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  It is a summer morning in June 1943.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  Outside the railway station in the seaside village of Bandol on the French Riviera, a car pulls up.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Its driver, a tall, lean naval officer by the name of Jacques Cousteau, jumps out and strides towards the station. In the railway's freight yard, a wooden crate waits for him, sent by express from Paris. Cousteau signs for it and takes it to his car.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Back at the villa, where he is staying with friends and family, there is an air of anticipation. He unpacks the parcel with his two closest friends, Philippe Talier and Frederic Dumas, whose weather-beaten faces and sinewy bodies betray a love of diving as deep as Cousteau's own.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  The parcel contains a new kind of equipment, which he has co-invented with an engineer in Paris, something that might change the way humans explore the sea.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Excitedly, he lifts out three moderately-sized cylinders of compressed air, linked to a small regulator about the size of an alarm clock. From the regulator, two hoses extend, joining at a mouthpiece through which, it is hoped, a diver might be able to breathe underwater. It's been months in development, but finally it's time to test it out.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  Early the next day, the group of friends, with Cousteau's wife Simone, head out to a nearby beach.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  The men help Cousteau strap on the harness, securing the three-cylinder block to his back, and perform their final safety checks. He rinses his mask, then slides it into place and positions the mouthpiece between his lips. Staggering under the weight of the 50-pound apparatus, he wades into the sea.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Wearing her snorkel and mask, Simone slips into the water so she can keep an eye on him. Frederic Dumas, the group's best diver, remains on the shore, keeping warm and rested so he can move quickly if Jacques needs help. Just six months ago, the last trial of this compressed-air diving lung failed, thanks to issues with the exhaust mechanism. But the group are hopeful that those glitches have now been fixed.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  In the water, Cousteau sinks gently and takes a tentative breath. A faint whistle greets his inhalation, and a ripple of bubbles escapes as he lets it out. The equipment is working. He is breathing underwater.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  It has been done before, but in previous trials, there was always a hitch when the diver moved. This time over, it feels different. Cautious at first, he kicks slowly downwards, then up again. The kit remains stable, even when he experiments with somersaults and barrel rolls. As he swims, a canyon opens below him. He marvels at the green weeds, black sea urchins, and flower-like white algae. He sinks deeper than a mask and snorkel would ever allow him, taking his time in this underwater paradise.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Glancing up, past a school of silvery fish, he sees the slender shape of Simone on the surface. He waves, and the silhouette waves back.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  With plenty left in the cylinders, he swims deeper towards a cave. Once he's through the dark, narrow tunnel, it opens up, revealing a roof covered with lobsters, their heads and antennae pointing towards the entrance.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Cousteau plucks a pair from their rock face, then checks the tank. It's time to head back to the surface. Diving is hungry work, but now he has a hand-selected luxury supper to look forward to. No small thing in wartime. But this new invention, which becomes known as the aqua lung, won't just feed his family. It will change his life, and reveal the treasures of the deep to the entire world.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  Co-inventor of the aqua lung, the device that made modern underwater breathing practical, Captain Jacques Cousteau opened the ocean to the public like no one before.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  An explorer, filmmaker and environmentalist, he led groundbreaking underwater expeditions and pioneered techniques for filming beneath the waves. Through his documentaries and television series, he brought the mysteries of the sea into millions of homes, becoming known the world over for his trademark red knitted hat and his beloved ship, the Calypso.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  But why did the ocean mean so much to him? How did a French naval officer come to invent a device that would change humanity's relationship with the sea? And what were the tragedies and controversies that marked the life of this charismatic adventurer? I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is A Short History of Jacques Cousteau.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  On June 11, 1910, in a small French market town not far from Bordeaux, Daniel Cousteau and Elizabeth Durantin welcomed their second son.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  The younger brother to Pierre Antoine, Jacques is born into an affluent family. Doug Allen was an underwater cameraman for series such as Blue Planet, Planet Earth and Frozen Planet. He was also a lecturer on conservation and climate change. This interview was recorded shortly before he passed away in April 2026.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  His father was an international lawyer and his mother was the daughter of a wealthy local wine merchant and landowner. So he wouldn't bother into straitened circumstances, let's say.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  After Jacques's birth in the village his parents come from, his mother and father returned to their home in Paris.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Often ill as a child, Jacques shows his determination from an early age. During a family holiday at a Normandy seaside resort when he is four years old, he learns to swim.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  The same summer, in 1914, the First World War breaks out across Europe. Jacques's father, Daniel, loses the single client upon which his salary depends, and the family are forced to rely on Elizabeth's family money for the next four years. But when the war ends in 1918, Daniel is offered a new position, on the condition that the family travel to New York. And it's after crossing the Atlantic that the shy, young Jacques comes out of his shell.

• 8:36Speaker 03

  When he moved to New York at the age of ten, he learned to speak English fluently, and he improved his swimming, and he also did some snorkeling. Apparently, he spent a summer camp in Vermont, where he was assigned to clear debris in the lake. And he spent hours swimming around, getting things out of the water and moving them ashore. And he called that a very formative experience.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  In America, Jacques's older brother, Pierre Antoine, who is also known as PAC, the acronym of his initials, becomes his closest companion. Both strong-willed and charismatic, the brothers share a spirit of adventure, which will take them on different paths.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  In 1923, the family moves back to France. Jacques saves his allowance to buy a hand-cranked movie camera, and finds that using it gives him greater confidence and allows him to make friends more easily. At fourteen, he completes his first full-length project: filming his cousin's wedding.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  At school, however, his newfound self-assurance sometimes tips into mischief. After being expelled for breaking windows, he is sent to a boarding school 250 miles from home. It's strict, but he thrives under its discipline. And in 1929, at the age of nineteen, he graduates from high school and joins the French Navy. There, his work will bring him closer to what will become his greatest love: the sea.

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• 11:34Speaker 00

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• 12:03Speaker 02

  Cousteau trains as a gunnery officer, responsible for the weapons on a battleship, and spends a year at sea with fellow cadets on a training cruise that takes them around the world. From pearl divers in the South Pacific to the harbors of Japan, Cousteau films everything he can, returning home with reels of footage that he cuts together and shows to family and friends. But though he'll be known for his "love of the sea", for now, the restless Cousteau has his eyes on the skies. Before long, he requests a transfer to the Naval Aviation Corps so he can train as a pilot.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  By 1936, at the age of 26, he has nearly finished his flight training when he borrows his father's sports car to attend a friend's wedding. On the journey through the mountains, the headlights suddenly fail, and Cousteau crashes into a ditch. Both of his arms are badly broken, and months of painful physiotherapy follow. Though he recovers, one arm remains weak for the rest of his life.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  When he resumes duty at the naval base in Toulon on France's Mediterranean coast, he works hard to rebuild his strength.

• 13:14Speaker 03

  One of the recuperative measures to get his arms better was to take up swimming. And so he started swimming, and it was at that point that he met another French lieutenant called Philippe Talier, who became a huge influence on his life. Talier was also a keen swimmer, but he was developing underwater goggles, a means of seeing when you were swimming, looking underwater. And he let Cousteau borrow those one day for swimming. And that was another transformational point. Cousteau actually looked underwater and saw what the Mediterranean was like.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Beneath the water, Cousteau discovers a hidden world: forests of kelp and waving seaweed, and fish in colors he has never seen before. It is love at first sight.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  Not long afterwards, another encounter will change the course of his life. While staying with his family, he attends a party at the apartment of Henri Melchior, head of Air Liquide, a company that produces compressed air stored in steel cylinders. There, he meets seventeen-year-old Simone Melchior. Fluent in French and Japanese and raised in a naval family, she shares Cousteau's love of the sea.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  The Melchior family, to which Simone belonged, they were French elites with money to match. And many of Simone's male relatives were admirals in the French Navy. So Jacques, again, by dint of sheer good fortune, found himself circulating in some very influential companies as far as the Navy was concerned. But the pair of them, definitely, they had a shared interest in the ocean.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  In 1937, Cousteau marries Simone, and they settle in southern France near the naval base at Toulon. The following year, their son, Jean-Michel, is born. At Toulon, Cousteau works as an artillery instructor, but whenever he can, he swims in the Mediterranean. Philippe Talier introduces him to a diver named Frederic Dumas, nicknamed "Diddy." Dumas can hold his breath to dive as far as sixty-five feet underwater, practicing what today is referred to as "free diving." The three of them dub themselves "The Sea Musketeers", with the water-loving Simone as an honorary member.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  With his enthusiasm for cinematography still going strong, Cousteau finds ways to protect his camera underwater, such as sealing it inside a glass jar. Encouraged by his friends, he also begins diving, reaching depths of up to fifty feet. Having grown up on the books of Jules Verne, author of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the young adventurers push themselves further each day, aspiring to become what they call "men fish." But their dives leave them craving more time to explore the depths.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  By the 1930s, divers are experimenting with compressed air systems that allow them to breathe underwater for limited periods. But the available equipment is heavy and restrictive. Cousteau and his colleagues test these early designs, but their shortcomings quickly become clear. In one experiment, Cousteau loses consciousness after breathing an unsafe level of oxygen.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Another key challenge is that divers must manually regulate the flow of air from the tank, releasing it in careful bursts. What is needed, Cousteau believes, is a mobile device capable of adjusting the airflow automatically. The possibility of moving freely beneath the surface becomes a burning ambition. But in September 1939, the wider world has more urgent plans.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  Germany invades Poland, and France alongside Britain declares war.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  While his friends are reassigned to duties in other parts of the country, Cousteau remains stationed at Toulon.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  In May 1940, France is invaded by the Nazis, with whom the French sign an armistice the following month. With German troops occupying Paris and the north, the government retreats south.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  For Cousteau and Simone, these anxious times are lightened by the happy arrival of their second son Philippe, named after his father's good friend Philippe Thalie.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  A couple of years later, Cousteau is posted to a base in Marseille. That spring, he finds a 35-millimeter movie camera in a junk shop. With help from his friends, he begins adapting it for use in the sea.

• 18:02Speaker 03

  He invented or made underwater housings for different cameras. And of course, a pair of them were quite well placed because we were both officers in the French Navy and they had access to the workshops in the dockyards that they were based in. I often wonder how many of his early housings were done as favors by the people in the workshops who maybe weren't supposed to be working on these one-offs for Cousteau, but they just had some spare time and so they would machine down some components.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  That summer, reunited with his family and the Sea Musketeers, Cousteau works on a film capturing his friend's spearfishing, which he titles Eighteen Meters Down.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  But in November, Cousteau and his family are woken in the night by the roar of aeroplanes overhead. On the radio, they learn that Adolf Hitler has ordered the invasion of southern France. German and Italian forces are now moving in.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  In response, the French Navy scuttles its own fleet on the southern coast to prevent the ships from falling into enemy hands. Italian troops, allied with the Germans, garrison the town, and Simone prepares to flee to Paris with the children, hoping it will be safer there. In Toulon, Cousteau learns that the ship to which he was posted has been destroyed. Now, a sailor without a vessel, he is soon approached by a contact from the French Resistance. A navy man with knowledge of photography is a valuable asset to the underground network. Understanding the deadly consequences of being caught, he rises to the challenge and is soon undertaking his first missions.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  It is a cold winter's day in 1942. Jacques Cousteau studies himself in a mirror in the bathroom of a Resistance-run restaurant. The insignia of an Italian naval officer glints faintly in his reflection. He adjusts the cap a fraction. He is as ready as he'll ever be.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Nodding at his contact in the restaurant, he picks up his dispatch case and steps out into the street, walking towards the Italian naval headquarters in the dockyard. Built in wind-bleached stone, its narrow windows are dark except for flickers of movements inside. From a flagpole hangs the Italian naval flag, and guards stand at the entrance, rifles slung over their shoulders.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Cousteau moves towards them, and the stolen uniform does its work. They glance at the insignia and look away. He crosses the threshold of the building. Inside, the sounds of the city are more muffled. A narrow corridor stretches ahead, and he recalls his instructions and tries a door.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  First time lucky.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  Inside the empty room, maps bloom across the walls with the Mediterranean etched in intricate detail. Custot helps himself to a folder of maps and takes them to a desk beneath a green shaded lamp. From his dispatch case, he produces his precious Leica camera. He pauses, listening to a murmur of voices in the corridor beyond the door. But the sound soon fades, and he gets to work photographing the documents. Capturing enemy intelligence, gun emplacements, and stockpiles of ammunition.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Suddenly he hears footsteps approaching, and a shadow crosses the frosted glass. There is a loud exchange in Italian just outside the door, and Custot has just enough time to slide the camera back into his case before the handle is rattled.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  But it stills as swiftly as it started, and whoever it is moves on. Custot swallows hard. His luck might not hold. It is time to go.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  Fastening his dispatch case with the Leica safe inside, he returns the folder to its place, then exits the room, shuts the door, and leaves the building.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  Even an intrepid explorer like him recognizes risk when he sees it, and he's in no doubt about the consequences of mistakes on a mission like this. He has just survived, arguably, the most dangerous ten minutes of his life.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  After the war, Custot is awarded the Légion d'Honneur, France's highest order of merit, in recognition of his courageous service to the Resistance. But before the conflict is over, Simone has a brainwave. She asks her father if he knows anyone at Air Liquide who might be able to help her husband in his mission to breathe underwater.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  So it is that Custot meets a quiet engineer by the name of Emil Gagne.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  He shows Cousteau a small device called a demand regulator, which is designed to release compressed gas only when required.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  Intrigued, Cousteau immediately sees how such a mechanism might be adapted for diving, and the pair begin adapting the regulator for underwater use. But their first attempt, in January 1943, works only when Cousteau is horizontal. As soon as he dives with his head down and his feet up, he can barely draw a breath.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Gagnon makes some adjustments to the design, and six months later, in June 1943, Cousteau enters the Mediterranean to test the modified apparatus.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  It is a resounding success. He is able to spend around half an hour breathing freely as he explores underwater. His dream of becoming a man fish has come true.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  And he was developing all these things right under the eyes of the Nazis. It was remarkable how he managed to do it, and he has a wonderful description of when he had the working Aquilon in his hands. He and Thélier were able to dive under the water, and while the rest of France was struggling for food, they would come back with armfuls of lobsters that they had caught underneath the Mediterranean using their new equipment. And they themselves were able to pass these lobsters round to their friends and live a much better standard in a way than a lot of France was doing at the time.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  Cousteau sends word back to Gagnon in Paris to apply for a patent and asks for two similar prototypes for Thélier and Dumas. The pair call their invention the Aquilon. It is a device that will open up the underwater world to ordinary people.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  Effectively democratized diving. It meant that diving went out to anyone who could swim virtually, could learn to dive. And so the invention of the Aquilon, the invention of SCUBA, SCUBA stands for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. The invention of SCUBA was definitely one of Cousteau's greatest achievements.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  Soon, Cousteau and his friends begin to clock up hundreds of dives between them. Simone becomes the world's first female SCUBA diver, and even the children have the opportunity to try out their father's new equipment in shallow waters.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  The sea musketeers begin exploring local shipwrecks and bring treasures back to the surface: crockery, silverware, even bottles of pre-war perfume. But there are hazards in this new world too, with injuries sustained from razor-edged clams and scorpion fish.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Thrilled with their new discoveries, they experiment with how deep they can go. Duma eventually clocks in at 210 feet. This record-breaking depth introduces them to the so-called "rapture of the deep," a strange euphoria brought on by inhaling nitrogen under pressure, now known as nitrogen narcosis.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Their adventures are recorded in a film titled "Epave," or "Shipwrecks." When it is shown to a room full of admirals in Toulon, they immediately recognize the military potential of the aquilon and place an order for 10 of them.

• 26:28Speaker 00

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• 26:58Speaker 01

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• 27:27Speaker 02

  In May 1945, the war in Europe finally comes to an end. But the celebrations don't last long for Cousteau, because shortly afterwards, he receives news that his brother, Pak, has been arrested as a Nazi collaborator.

• 27:42Speaker 03

  Pierre was born four years earlier than Jacques. But the big divergence came during the war because Pack effectively became a German collaborator. He supported the Nazis, wrote a lot of propagandist stuff for them. And after the war, Pack was actually condemned today as a collaborator. But I think Cousteau has some influence and managed to get that death sentence commuted to life imprisonment. And Pack in the end stayed 10, 12 years in prison and then was released. And I suspect that they had very little to do with each other after that point. So you couldn't have had a greater contrast between the two wars that the two brothers fought.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  The brothers largely remain estranged until Pack's death a decade or so later, in 1958. Meanwhile, not long after the war, the French Navy creates what it calls the underwater research group to teach sailors to dive. Talier, as the most senior officer, is the commander, and Cousteau is his deputy. Largely left to their own devices, the group is tasked with clearing French harbors of mines and sunken wrecks. Yet there is still time for filmmaking and for satisfying their growing curiosity about the underwater world. The men egg each other on, attempting to break new records despite the known risks.

• 29:08Speaker 03

  In terms of the medical effects of being deep, that had actually been discovered back in Victorian times particularly. When they were building tunnels under rivers, you often used to have to pressurize the tunnel where you were building it to stop water seeping in from the outside. And they knew that if workmen worked for a day down under pressure, then they just brought them up. The workers would often complain of stiffness in their joints and things like that. And that effectively is what you call getting the bends, which is where you work under pressure. Nitrogen dissolves into your blood, into your joints. And while you come up, you have to come up slowly to let that excess gas escape from you. So to some extent, Cousteau was working with long-established medical principles.

• 29:54Speaker 03

  But when you go into keeping people underwater, for example, how deep can you dive? Then they were definitely pushing on.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  In 1947, attempting a new depth record, the team loses one of their own. A diver called Maurice Farg reaches 385 feet, but loses consciousness underwater. It is the aquilung's first fatality.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Yet despite the tragedy, demand for Cousteau's invention continues to grow. Before long, the aquilung is being sold not only across Europe, but also in the United States and Canada.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  With publicity building, Cousteau hires his father as a business agent. When Cousteau's senior helps set up a screening of his son's short films, a magazine editor makes inquiries about the Frenchman who can breathe underwater. The resulting seven-page feature in Life magazine, featuring the diver's dramatic photos of sharks, reaches more than 10 million readers. A week later, Cousteau accepts an offer from Universal Studios of $11,000 for his first four documentaries.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  But for that, he needs a vessel of his own, and soon the perfect solution is found.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  The wooden-hulled Calypso began its life during the Second World War as a British minesweeper.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  He didn't buy it himself. It was a billionaire from the Guinness family who actually leased it to him for 1 euro for a year. And then at the end of it, he acquired it completely for himself. And he fitted it out as the perfect expedition diving vessel. He modified bits of the structure, but he made it a place where he could roam the world with his team of divers. He went from Antarctica to Tasmania to the Mississippi River.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  The Cousteaus remortgage their house to help renovate the Calypso, and Simone sells her jewelry to raise more funds. Cousteau refits the vessel for exploration, adding a bulbous bow with eight viewing windows for filming underwater.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  He takes three years' leave from the Navy and assembles a team of divers, including Dumas. On the evening before they depart, the crew gather around the small galley table for dinner.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Their captain, Cousteau, makes a toast to their new adventure, closing with his motto "Il faut aller voir." "We must go and see for ourselves."

• 32:25Speaker 02

  On November 24, 1951, the Calypso sets out on its first expedition to the Red Sea, a narrow stretch of water between northeastern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Cousteau cheerfully describes it as "a nice hot bathtub full of sharks."

• 32:43Speaker 02

  In its warm waters, the crew encounter dazzling coral reefs and identify previously unknown species. The following year, he discovers a 2,000-year-old Greek shipwreck off the coast of Marseille, from which he recovers ancient ceramics. He also now establishes the French Office of Undersea Technology in Toulon, a centre dedicated to inventing and improving diving equipment and underwater technology. With the help of Dumas, he also begins writing about his adventures. The resulting book, The Silent World, becomes a New York Times bestseller.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  The Silent World really was the book that launched Jacques into the public sea and the public recognition. When that was published in 1953, it was an international bestseller. It sold millions of copies and became a phenomenon, and it really lifted Cousteau into the realms.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  The success of The Silent World allows the Calypso's voyages to become more ambitious. The crew ventures into the Persian Gulf, where some of the time is spent surveying the seabed for oil companies. It is demanding work, but pays for what will become the first full-length underwater film in colour.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  The film showcases the treasures of the ocean, porpoises leaping through the waves, and jojo, a large group of fish who loves to be fed scraps. But it also captures the camaraderie of the men as they play cards and share bottles of wine. Nicknamed "The Shepherdess," Simone is adored by the crew, and the Cousteaus' sons join their parents on their holidays from boarding school. In 1956, the resulting film, also titled The Silent World, wins the Palme d'Or, the highest prize at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as the Oscar for Best Documentary.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  But the film, which includes footage of the crew blowing up coral reefs and harpooning fish, is not without its critics.

• 34:42Speaker 03

  Cousteau was a visionary, but he also had his moments of controversy. The Silent World has a scene in it, which is really quite disturbing now, where the Calypso is plowing through the ocean, and it comes across a pond of sperm whales. Unfortunately, and totally by accident, they hit one of the calf sperm whales, and that sperm whale was injured. And shortly after, some sharks came in. They were attracted by the blood coming from the sperm whale, and they ended up killing the sperm whale baby. And at that point, the Cousteau team decided that the sharks were the killers, and there are shots of them hauling these sharks on board Calypso, and just basically clubbing them to death.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  Despite the controversies, the film propels Cousteau to worldwide fame. With an innate sense of charm and style, he is a natural in front of the camera.

• 35:36Speaker 03

  The French people bring elegance and élan to what they do. They do things in a different way. He was a wonderful showman, he was a wonderful visionary, but he had a real knack of knowing what the public wanted.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  In the late 1950s, Cousteau takes on the directorship of Monaco's Oceanographic Museum, and helps develop a revolutionary underwater vehicle nicknamed the Diving Saucer, for its resemblance to the classic UFO shape.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  But soon, his busy mind turns to greater challenges. He begins to imagine a world where humans can live underwater, and sets out to make it a reality.

• 36:17Speaker 03

  There were two big frontiers through the 60s. There was going to space with NASA and there was going underwater. And while the moon mission was the big aim for NASA, Cousteau was the visionary who took things into the underwater realm. In 1962, he spoke about this being the dawn of what he called Homo Aquaticus. And he actually envisioned people living under the sea, partly as humans, but there was also experiments into, for example, they flooded the lungs of mice with super-oxygenated water and found that these mice could live underwater, no problem. So Cousteau, I think, had this idea of let's look at a different form of humans,

• 37:01Speaker 03

  a different way of human beings actually living underwater.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  The first step in this ambitious journey is a project called Corn Shelf 1. It is a watertight capsule, the size of a large bedroom, which sits at around 33 feet below the surface of the coast of Marseille. The aquanauts, as they are known, are under daily medical supervision. And with air pumped in, they enter and exit through a hole in the floor, known as the moon pool. The air pressure inside the chamber prevents the water from flooding in.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  And it was just a very simple cylinder, which was put into the water in the Mediterranean, down to a depth of 10 metres, and two people lived in it for a week. So he decided to take that to the next stage, and he designed Corn Shelf 2, which was a much bigger thing. That was really like a village underneath the sea.

• 38:01Speaker 02

  In the Red Sea of the coast of Sudan, Corn Shelf 2 features two separate residences. At 100 feet, the deep cabin is home to just two aquanauts for a week. The bigger habitat, close to the surface at 33 feet, is called Starfish House. Taking its name from its shape, it is a two-storey structure with everything from air conditioning to sun lamps to a garage for the diving saucer. There, five aquanauts live and work for a month. Air is pumped from the Italian cargo ship Rizaldo, though the smaller Calypso ferries supplies from the shore. And visitors from the Rizaldo can pop to the underwater village for a visit.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  It is July 1963, a swelteringly hot day. Off the coast of Sudan, Simone Cousteau stands on the deck of Rizaldo, preparing to dive. She shifts her weight under the cylinder on her back. After getting a final once-over from a crew member, with her fins in one hand, she begins to descend the ladder on the side of the ship.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  When the water reaches her chest, she rinses out her mask, pulls it on and fits her mouthpiece, taking a testing breath. Then, slipping on her fins, she surrenders to the cool water.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  Immediately, the noises of the world above disappear, replaced by just the steady rhythm of her own breathing through the aqua lung. Kicking away, she begins her descent. The Red Sea opens in astonishing clarity. The reef below rises to meet her, a garden in motion, with coral growing in multiple shapes and forms. Every inch is vivid with life. Antheas flicker past in clouds of orange, and a pair of brilliant butterfly fish glide by. Below her, the continental shelf dips away into deeper blue. She exhales and lets herself sink a little more,

• 40:08Speaker 02

  the pressure tightening briefly around her ears before releasing as she equalizes. She swims on, glancing at her compass. Not far now.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  At last, she glimpses the vivid yellow of Starfish House, an airtight capsule standing on stilts-like legs on the seabed, bubbles streaming from its air supply.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Letting herself into the cage-like structure at the basement, Simone climbs a ladder through the circular moon pool, where water gives way to air.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  There, as she hauls herself onto the platform, her movements grow heavier with the return of gravity. A half-dressed diver greets her and steps in to help, unbuckling her tank and easing the weight from her shoulders. After rolling down her wetsuit, she heads next door to the living area. There she finds the men sitting around a small table with cigarettes in their hands, wearing only shorts to keep cool. After exchanging greetings and pausing to tickle their green parrot under the beak, she pinches a smoke from one of them and slips through to the kitchen.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  Through a small window, movement catches her eye. A triggerfish hovers just outside, watching them. The cook tells her he's trained it to come to the moon pool for food. When they wander over, it's already there waiting for them.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  They drop a few scraps into the water and watch it snap them up. Simone laughs. Calling through to the men, she asks them to send a message up to the riserva that she'll stay the night in one of the visitor berths. After all, why would she choose the surface over this magical underwater paradise?

• 42:05Speaker 02

  With footage taken from his extraordinary habitats, Cousteau makes a documentary called World Without Sun. It airs just before Christmas in 1964 and wins him his second Oscar.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  By now, the oil companies are eager to learn how much deeper humans can live. So, a year later, Corn Shelf 3 is launched. A spherical structure over 300 feet deep. It is anchored just off the coast of France.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Though the six men have comfortable lodgings, they are breathing a mixture 98% helium and 2% oxygen, which affects their voices to such a degree that conversation is rendered almost impossible. Their senses of taste and smell are also dulled.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Though the experiment provides valuable insights into deep-sea living, it is costly and complex. In April 1966, CBS airs a one-hour TV special on Cornshelf 3, which is narrated by the film star Orson Welles. But a producer on the documentary decides there's more mileage in Cousteau's adventures, and not long after, ABC Television acquires the first series of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau for $4.2 million.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  The first episode, Sharks, premieres in 1968 and features footage of one of Cousteau's divers riding a 60-foot whale shark.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  Though the series is a hit, Captain Cousteau and his crew of gung-ho adventurers sometimes take things a little too far.

• 43:40Speaker 03

  He did one or two things which must have been debatable even at the time. I remember one of the episodes of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau where he took two young fur seal pups from a thinker's ruchery in South Africa and took them on board the Calypso with this idea of seeing how they would adapt to being with humans, which is a mad idea. It never worked. They just kept biting people and they had to be kept in cages all the time. And I think eventually they were let loose in another part of the world where, to be honest, the chances of survival were tiny. Now, that's the sort of thing that, you know, even at the time, there must have been people thought, "This is a mad idea, Shark. You know, it'll make a storyline through one of your programmes, but let's not go there." On the other hand, it was transmitted at the time

• 44:25Speaker 03

  and it's more an indication of the sort of ethics of filmmaking at the time, which have moved on since then. So, it's that old question of judging someone by the historical standards of the day, let's say.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  The popular television show runs for eight years, ending in 1976, by which time the tall, thin Frenchman in his trademark knitted red hat, together with his plucky crew, is known all over the world.

• 45:03Speaker 00

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• 46:02Speaker 02

  In the late 60s and early 70s, Cousteau and his divers begin to notice a deterioration in the world's oceans.

• 46:10Speaker 03

  I think it's easy to forget just how pristine the Mediterranean was when Cousteau was born and between the wars, before it all began to get industrialized around the edge and things. So Cousteau was very aware of the riches in the Mediterranean, and then he was one of the first people to go and explore places like the Red Sea and further abroad. So he saw the oceans as a lovely period in history. And if you can draw a parallel between Cousteau and David Attenborough, for example, anyone who has seen the world the way that they have since the mid-50s to today, you cannot help but become aware of the human influence on the oceans.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  In 1973, Cousteau founds a nonprofit organization, the Cousteau Society, to protect the oceans and restore marine habitats. With offices in New York and Los Angeles, and the French branch, Le Keep Cousteau, in Paris, it offers membership to the general public. Jacques serves as chairman, with his son Philippe as vice-president.

• 47:13Speaker 03

  Philippe, from early on, was definitely going to be Cousteau's heir and successor. And the pair of them were very, very close. Although they did have some heated arguments, Philippe became more involved with the making of the films. The undersea world of Jacques Cousteau became more of a character in them.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  It is, in part, Philippe's influence that helps Cousteau develop a stronger focus on the environment. Together, he and his father speak to governments and the general public about the urgent need to reduce pollution and protect the planet.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  Cousteau's life is now one of a busy, international star. Though he is not always strong at managing his finances, his charismatic personality enables him to continue attracting funding for his work.

• 48:01Speaker 03

  I think he had a wicked sense of fun, a wicked sense of humour, and he wasn't knowingly cruel to anyone. He just liked to be the centre of things. He knew that, filmically, he had to be the centre of things, because that was what people expected. Sometimes he might just be on set or be on vacation for one or two days, then he's off again to some conference talking about things. And so, those who knew him well on the ship, they maybe had a wise smile to themselves, "Well, here comes the star, helicoptering in for a couple of days." But that's what happens on many, many films today.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  In 1977, he receives an environmental prize from the United Nations in recognition of his contributions to conservation. But, two years later, tragedy strikes.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  While his wife is pregnant with their second child, Philippe crashes, landing his seaplane on the Tagus River in Portugal. Though the others on board survive, Philippe's body is swept away by the water, and is not found for three days. Utterly heartbroken, Cousteau can't bring himself to identify his son's body, and he sends Philippe's older brother, Jean-Michel, to do it.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Philippe is buried at sea, 25 miles off the Portuguese coast. Afterwards, Cousteau speaks to reporters about the importance of finding someone to continue his work. But he never talks about his beloved son in public again.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Finding a way through his grief, he returns to exploration, filming in the Amazon and the Mississippi, and retracing the roots of great explorers such as Christopher Columbus. Simone retreats to her beloved Calypso, spending long periods alone as the couple live increasingly separate lives. But Jacques begins a lengthy affair with a woman named Francine Triplet, a young flight attendant he met during his travels. The relationship deepens, and he has a secret second family with her.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  In 1990, shortly after being diagnosed with an aggressive cancer, Simone passes away. Her ashes are scattered over the Sea of Monaco, but Cousteau does not leave it long before marrying Francine, a move which creates an irreparable rift with his surviving son.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Yet despite the fractures in his personal life, Cousteau's passion for protecting the oceans does not fade, even in his 80s. When companies begin discussing plans to mine Antarctica for oil and minerals, Cousteau begins a worldwide campaign to stop them. He meets with political leaders and collects more than a million signatures on an international petition. To raise awareness, he makes a film, Liliput in Antarctica, traveling to the icy continent with six children from different countries. His efforts contribute to the establishment of a lasting ban on mining on the continent and its designation as a place of scientific research.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Continuing with his mission, he advocates for every child's right to inherit an uncontaminated planet, and eventually the wording of his Bill of Rights for future generations is approved by the UNESCO General Conference. It is Cousteau's final triumph.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  As if foreshadowing his decline, the calypso sinks in 1996 in Singapore in a collision with a barge. One of his team manages to salvage the wrecked boat to bring her home. But before she reaches France, Cousteau suffers a heart attack and dies on June 25, 1997, at the age of 87 in Paris.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  By the end of his life, he has been awarded every honour his home country can bestow. At his funeral at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, President Jacques Chirac leads a thousand mourners, calling Cousteau “an enchanter who represented the defence of nature, modern adventure, and the dreamy part at the heart of all of us”.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  Jacques Cousteau reshaped humanity’s relationship with the sea. Through his pioneering films, inventions, and expeditions, he brought the hidden world of the oceans into public view. As a leading voice for marine conservation, he helped to protect the fragile environment he had spent his life exploring.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  Though his early work was marked by some controversial decisions and his later years by his complicated personal life, Cousteau’s enduring achievement was to make the oceans not just a place of discovery, but a cause worth defending.

• 52:44Speaker 03

  He embodies adventure under the sea, and he is still the name that comes to mind when so many people talk about where they got their inspiration from the sea. Jacques Cousteau will come up. And it’s because his films are still out there on the internet, his books are still out there and available, and because his principles are stronger than ever about the need to look after the oceans.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  Next time on Short History, we’ll bring you a short history of punk.

• 53:23Speaker 05

  Punk plays a pretty long game, I think, in terms of the impact that, if we're talking the British context, Sex Pistols have just in terms of inspiring a whole generation of musicians to come up with really constantly evolving and interesting and exciting forms of music and musical presentation. It opened up a space for lots of people who previously probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to do creative things and to do creative things in ways that fundamentally changed the culture of Britain and the world.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  That's next time.

• 54:05Speaker 02

  You can listen to the next two episodes of Short History of right now, without waiting and without adverts, by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Just hit the link in the episode description or head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions to unlock more episodes today.

• 54:22Speaker 00

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