Speaker 1: I guess what will what's that man go? So a
Speaker 1: few years ago I got to go in this incredible
Speaker 1: experience to Kenya and we were off the coast. It
Speaker 1: was in this place called Lamu, and I had heard
Speaker 1: we could go see dolphins, and of course, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a huge animal lover, and even though I'm not
Speaker 1: a great swimmer, I just had to go. So we
Speaker 1: go out onto the open water. It's beautiful, but the
Speaker 1: water just starts getting rougher and rougher, and as we're
Speaker 1: going you can see the dolphins getting closer. So I
Speaker 1: was getting a little excited. But also the water was
Speaker 1: just getting choppier, and We're on this little boat and
Speaker 1: my stomach is turning and I'm not usually affected by seasickness,
Speaker 1: but this was just something else. So I'm trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to control it, Like do I puke?
Speaker 1: Do I look at the horizon? Do I close my eyes?
Speaker 1: It was really really miserad not sound pleasant. So what
Speaker 1: did you end up doing? So I tried a little
Speaker 1: of all of it. Like I closed my eyes, I
Speaker 1: was trying to look at the horizon, but in the end,
Speaker 1: the boat captain just pushed me into the water, and
Speaker 1: he said the only way to get over it is
Speaker 1: to get into the water, and he was absolutely right,
Speaker 1: Like it was crazy. Luckily the water was so warm.
Speaker 1: And then, you know, I obviously had this life jacket on,
Speaker 1: but I'm in the middle of a school of dolphins
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, and I peered down and they're
Speaker 1: just swimming and playing, and it's this incredible experience but
Speaker 1: also totally terrifying because I don't swim well. But this
Speaker 1: week I was reading this thing on Jack Custo and
Speaker 1: his son was saying that even though he grew up
Speaker 1: on the clips, so you know, with Jack Custo going
Speaker 1: on these adventures, you still get seasick a little. And
Speaker 1: he said the only way you can get over it
Speaker 1: is to get into the sea like that, and so
Speaker 1: I felt a little bit calmed by that, and and
Speaker 1: also felt better about the sea captain just pushing me in.
Speaker 1: But you know, I was curious after reading that. I
Speaker 1: wanted to know more about Jack Custo's life. You know,
Speaker 1: how did he get into exploring, did he really work
Speaker 1: as a spy, and why did he and his crew
Speaker 1: always wear those red hats so grab your snorkels were
Speaker 1: about to dive in hei their podcast listeners, Welcome to
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm
Speaker 1: joined by my good friend man Guesh Ticketer and on
Speaker 1: the other side of the soundproof glass sporting this red
Speaker 1: knit hat, of course, in honor of the undersea explorer
Speaker 1: Jacques Cousto. That's our friends and producer Tristan McNeil. And
Speaker 1: I feel like he finally got one spot on this time.
Speaker 1: He did, But I actually think it might be a
Speaker 1: tribute to Steve Zizoo from The Life Aquatic, like just
Speaker 1: judging from all those Bill Murray posters behind Tristan. But
Speaker 1: you know, since they both were hats like that, why
Speaker 1: don't we just call it a duel tribute and that
Speaker 1: way another of them will be offended. You know. I
Speaker 1: actually read that in the original note from the movie,
Speaker 1: Bill Murray's character was supposed to be named Steve Cousto,
Speaker 1: and that obviously changed as the script evolved, but it
Speaker 1: still shows how big of an influence Jacque was on
Speaker 1: the movie. Yeah, and I mean not to nerd out
Speaker 1: on Wes Anderson, who does happen to have my birthday,
Speaker 1: but there's a reference to Jackusto and Rushmore, where like
Speaker 1: Max tries to build that aquarium and and he gets
Speaker 1: this book from Jackusto. So obviously he's been a hero
Speaker 1: of his for some time. Yeah, I'm curious, just I
Speaker 1: haven't checked on your your movie rankings recently. Is Rushmore
Speaker 1: still in your top five or so? Yeah, it's still
Speaker 1: one of my favorite movies. That's awesome. Well, after looking
Speaker 1: into Custo's life this past week, it's easy to see
Speaker 1: why he would be, you know, a hero to him
Speaker 1: and his inventions basically revolutionized undersea exploration in the mid
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Plus you consider the work he did in
Speaker 1: film and TV that sparked a public interest in ocean research,
Speaker 1: and it's really been difficult to match that in the
Speaker 1: decades since then. And that's before you get into all
Speaker 1: the conversation of the work that he did later in life,
Speaker 1: like you know, the time in nineteen sixty when he
Speaker 1: helped prevent the French government from dumping nuclear waste into
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean. See, I mean that's I feel like that's
Speaker 1: a pretty decent accomplishment, pretty incredible. Yeah, And there was
Speaker 1: a period there when you know, he was pretty much
Speaker 1: everywhere you looked. Yeah, of course, and and this was
Speaker 1: the day is when oceanographers could actually be rock stars.
Speaker 1: But you know that said Cousteau was kind of a
Speaker 1: tough guy to pin down. Like. He was an explorer,
Speaker 1: he was a conservationist, he was obviously an author, a filmmaker.
Speaker 1: He won apparently as many awards his Meryl Street. He
Speaker 1: was a scientist, a government spy, and I mean he
Speaker 1: was pretty much the greatest dinner guest in history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and obviously anybody with a resume like that is worth
Speaker 1: taking a closer look. So today we'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about Jacques's background, his legacy, including a few of
Speaker 1: the advances he made during his many years at sea,
Speaker 1: and then later in the episode, we'll try to figure
Speaker 1: out if the beloved explorer is actually to blame for
Speaker 1: a toxic strain of seaweed that happened to escape into
Speaker 1: the world's oceans forty years ago. And the spoiler is
Speaker 1: man he totally is. But we can get to all
Speaker 1: of that in a little bit. I feel like we
Speaker 1: need to back up a little bit. Where where do
Speaker 1: you think we should start? So, at the risk of
Speaker 1: seving hat of cessed I I do kind of want
Speaker 1: to start with the origin of those red knit caps
Speaker 1: that Tristan started to show off, because one thing I
Speaker 1: was surprised to learn this week is that divers actually
Speaker 1: wore hats like that long before Jacques Cousteau came on
Speaker 1: the scene. In fact, it was pretty standard attire among
Speaker 1: hard hat divers going all the way back to the
Speaker 1: turn of the twentieth century. Wait, you said, hard hat diver.
Speaker 1: What what's what's a hard hat diver? Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: real term. So it's the name for the old school
Speaker 1: diving helmets that you'd see something like in uh, like
Speaker 1: twenty leagues under the sea, and sometimes like you see
Speaker 1: picks of like Salvador Dolly holding them too. But it's
Speaker 1: those big, bulky spherical helmets with those little like glass viewports.
Speaker 1: But you know, when commercial or military divers were in
Speaker 1: their diving suits, they would wear knit hats under them
Speaker 1: for just a little bit of extra cushioning. And the
Speaker 1: divers were red ones specifically because they often would rest
Speaker 1: on the docks betwe wean their dives, and obviously they
Speaker 1: have their helmets off at this point, and the bright
Speaker 1: has just made it easier for crane operators to keep
Speaker 1: track of them and also to avoid smacking them in
Speaker 1: the heads with heavy machinery. So that's that's the reason
Speaker 1: Cousta wore a had like to avoid cranes. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: eventually wearing a red beanie just kind of became like
Speaker 1: a diving symbol on its own, you know what. Whether
Speaker 1: that was for like practical reasons or just out of
Speaker 1: the sense of tradition. But one likely reason for why
Speaker 1: the caps endured so long is that they were a
Speaker 1: way to honor this famous British diver. His name was
Speaker 1: William Walker. And I know we're talking about Sacasto today,
Speaker 1: but Walker story is pretty great and it really takes
Speaker 1: a minute. So I'm going to go on a tangent
Speaker 1: if you're okay about Yeah, sure of course. So back
Speaker 1: in the early nine it was discovered that England's Winchester Cathedral,
Speaker 1: which is one of the largest in Europe, was in
Speaker 1: danger of collapsing. Apparently, when the builders laid the foundations
Speaker 1: back in the eleventh century, they unknowingly built them on
Speaker 1: top of the Pete Bog, and sadly no one realized
Speaker 1: this until the cathedral actually started to sink. So engineers
Speaker 1: quickly determined that the cathedral could actually be saved if
Speaker 1: someone dove in into this bog and you know, went
Speaker 1: to the cathedrals foundations, removed the bottom layer of pete
Speaker 1: and then replaced it with a whole bunch of concrete.
Speaker 1: And so this is exactly what William Walker did. He
Speaker 1: was this experienced diver. He was hired from a nearby dockyard,
Speaker 1: and over the course of the next six years, Walker
Speaker 1: spent six hours a day submerged in twenty ft of
Speaker 1: pitch black water like it was so dark he could
Speaker 1: barely even see the foundations he was supposed to be underpinning.
Speaker 1: But despite the setback, Walker actually got the job done.
Speaker 1: He had a hundred fifty men top side support crew,
Speaker 1: and all told he managed to lay a staggering twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand bags of concrete and over a million concrete
Speaker 1: blocks and bricks. I mean, it's stunning. And because of
Speaker 1: that effort, the cathedral was not only saved, it actually
Speaker 1: still stands today. That really is impressive. And I'm guessing
Speaker 1: this whole time he was wearing the rednet hat while
Speaker 1: he was doing this, right, that's right. And and so
Speaker 1: Walker obviously got a amount of pressed during the ordeal,
Speaker 1: and it's likely that other divers knew of him and
Speaker 1: adopted the look in his honor, possibly even Jack Custo himself.
Speaker 1: I like how you looked him back at the end there.
Speaker 1: That was pretty pretty nicely done. All right, let's dig
Speaker 1: into the real man of the hour, which of course
Speaker 1: is Jacques Eves Cousto. And as you can imagine, Jacques
Speaker 1: was born in France near Bordeaux if you happen to
Speaker 1: be familiar with the great growing region there, and this
Speaker 1: was in nineteen ten, and his family consisted of his father,
Speaker 1: who was an international lawyer, and his mother, who was
Speaker 1: the daughter of a successful wine merchant and a landowner there,
Speaker 1: plus one older brother. So the Custo family was pretty
Speaker 1: well off. But healthwise, Jacques was actually far from it.
Speaker 1: So he suffered from anemia and this chronic stomach issue
Speaker 1: that he dealt with throughout his youth. And it really
Speaker 1: didn't slow him down that much though at least and
Speaker 1: and Jacques learned how to swim when he was just
Speaker 1: four years old, and he later credited his early swimming
Speaker 1: experience as the origin for the passion of his life.
Speaker 1: And here's what he said, about it. I was four
Speaker 1: or five years old when I became interested in water.
Speaker 1: I loved touching water. I mean, it sounds so simplistic,
Speaker 1: but I also kind of know what he's talking about,
Speaker 1: like the first time you experienced that sensation of floating,
Speaker 1: or like the effort it takes to move through something
Speaker 1: other than air, Like it's a surreal moment and it's
Speaker 1: like nothing you felt before. Yeah, and it actually reminds
Speaker 1: me of this other quote from Cousto that I like
Speaker 1: a lot. There there are so many good ones, but
Speaker 1: another one is from birth. Man carries the weight of
Speaker 1: gravity on his shoulders. He has bolted to Earth, but
Speaker 1: man has only to sink beneath the surface and he
Speaker 1: is free. Buoyed by water. He can fly in any direction, up, down,
Speaker 1: sideways by merely flipping his hand underwater. Man becomes an archangel.
Speaker 1: So I saw this quote too, and it's from right
Speaker 1: after he learned to swim, right. Yeah, he was four
Speaker 1: years old and he was like, finally I'm free. I'm
Speaker 1: an archangel now. And he was kind of a weird kid,
Speaker 1: I guess. But back to his childhood. Let's just fast
Speaker 1: forward to about nineteen twenty when his family lived in
Speaker 1: New York while Mr Cousteau was practicing law, so they
Speaker 1: lived there for about two years, and it was during
Speaker 1: that time that Jacques learned to speak English, and he
Speaker 1: also got plenty of practice swimming and snorkeling at this
Speaker 1: summer camp that he attended in Vermont, and it's actually
Speaker 1: there that Jacques gets his very first taste of diving.
Speaker 1: So the camp had launched this effort to clean up
Speaker 1: a nearby lake, and Jock volunteered to dive to the
Speaker 1: bottom to help clear away the debris that was there.
Speaker 1: And once again, this early experience proved formative for Jacque,
Speaker 1: who quickly fell in love with being underwater. You know,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that he didn't own any goggles at
Speaker 1: the time, and I guessing on a plus, I there
Speaker 1: probably wasn't all that much worth seeing at the bottom
Speaker 1: of a dirty lake, so I guess he didn't need
Speaker 1: those goggles. Yeah, But I mean, Jacques was completely hooked
Speaker 1: after this experience. So when his family returned to France
Speaker 1: and nineteen twelve, they settled in the Mediterranean city of Marseilles,
Speaker 1: which was not far from the Italian border, and so
Speaker 1: this allowed Jacques to continue snorkeling, and you know this
Speaker 1: is right there along the city's coast. Also, not to
Speaker 1: boggy down with too many origin stories, but this is
Speaker 1: also around the time that Jacques bought a used movie
Speaker 1: camera and then he proceeded to take apart and reassemble
Speaker 1: it so he could learn how it works. So he
Speaker 1: was a very curious kid in terms of, you know,
Speaker 1: how things were built and everything. So we've already got
Speaker 1: this boy who loves exploring underwater and who now has
Speaker 1: an interest in both mechanics and filmmaking. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: his trajectory in life really seems to have taken shape
Speaker 1: pretty early on. Actually yeah, I mean, I I think
Speaker 1: it looks that way in hindsight, but at the time
Speaker 1: Jack didn't seem to have his designs on a career
Speaker 1: at sea at all, and certainly not as a researcher.
Speaker 1: He actually got pretty terrible grades in high school and
Speaker 1: he didn't show any interest in academics. He also acted
Speaker 1: out a lot as a teenager, like apparently he went
Speaker 1: on a windows smashing spree at one point, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't long after that that his parents decided to send
Speaker 1: him away to this super strict boarding school in northeast France.
Speaker 1: And so did this experience straighten him up or what? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it actually did. The school it's in, I'll say so,
Speaker 1: and it seemed to do the trick for Jock because
Speaker 1: he did well in and out of school from then on,
Speaker 1: you know, he finished his studies, he attended to college
Speaker 1: in Paris and and then in nineteen thirty he was
Speaker 1: accepted to the French Naval Academy and that's where he
Speaker 1: trained for a couple of years before finally being commissioned
Speaker 1: as a second lieutenant. After that, things went pretty smoothly.
Speaker 1: For the next few years. Jock actually got to sail
Speaker 1: the world as a gunnery officer. He traveled to exotic
Speaker 1: ports in the Indian and South Pacific oceans. He captured
Speaker 1: what he found there on video actually, and and then
Speaker 1: in with a little bit of prospective under his belt,
Speaker 1: Jock finally decided on what he wanted to do for
Speaker 1: his life's career. He wanted to be a naval aircraft
Speaker 1: pilot aircraft. So after all this tooling around and see,
Speaker 1: he wanted to fly and not sail. It's it's just
Speaker 1: seems weird, but I mean that that obviously didn't happen,
Speaker 1: So so what changed his mind? So he had a
Speaker 1: bit of a tragedy. Unfortunately, in nineteen thirty six, just
Speaker 1: before his training was finished, John could borrowed his dad's
Speaker 1: sports car to attend to friend's wedding, I guess, And
Speaker 1: on the way back that evening, he was going a
Speaker 1: bit too fast around one of the bends in the
Speaker 1: road and all of a sudden, his headlights shorted out,
Speaker 1: and you know, Custo had this massive accident. He did survive,
Speaker 1: but not without breaking like a dozen bones and fracturing
Speaker 1: both arms. Um, we're still His right arm became so
Speaker 1: badly infected that surgeons actually thought the best option was
Speaker 1: to amputate it. And you know, Custo insisted that his
Speaker 1: arm be left intact no matter how bad the infection got.
Speaker 1: But I mean, obviously he recovered, as we know from
Speaker 1: seeing him in later years. So so why didn't he
Speaker 1: go back to piloting? So the damage to his arms
Speaker 1: was just too severe, Like there was no way he
Speaker 1: could have flown a plane in combat after that. But
Speaker 1: the accident provided Jock the opportunity to get reacquainted with
Speaker 1: the hobbies he loved as a child, so he actually
Speaker 1: spent the next several months swimming daily in the Mediterranean
Speaker 1: as a way to strengthen his arms and to make
Speaker 1: the sessions more enjoyable for himself. He borrowed this early
Speaker 1: pair of swimming goggles from a friend, and this was
Speaker 1: honestly the first time he'd done this, and it literally
Speaker 1: opened Jock's eyes to the underwater mysteries all around him,
Speaker 1: and from then on he pretty much spent as much
Speaker 1: time as he could just taking in the strange and
Speaker 1: colorful plants and animals that he found on the sea floor.
Speaker 1: When it was time to return his friends goggles, he
Speaker 1: actually decided to craft his own pair for something he
Speaker 1: just happened to have lying around, a pair of aircraft
Speaker 1: pilot goggles. Wow, I mean it sounds like he really
Speaker 1: turned things around after the crash. Yeah, he did, and
Speaker 1: that new outlook extended to his love life as well.
Speaker 1: So in ninety seven, just a year after the crash,
Speaker 1: Jack married a woman he had met at a cocktail
Speaker 1: party earlier that year. Her name was Simone Melchore, and
Speaker 1: she and Jacques stayed together for fifty three years until
Speaker 1: her death in and the couple also had two sons
Speaker 1: together Jean, Michelle and Philippe. Both of them joined their
Speaker 1: parents on many expeditions when they were young. Well, that
Speaker 1: was what was so interesting, like reading about him as
Speaker 1: a kid or seeing some of the old films and
Speaker 1: things like that. I mean, his wife and kids pretty
Speaker 1: much lived with him on the trick out research ship.
Speaker 1: And that goes back to the fifties or so, doesn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the ship was the Calypso. And it's actually a funny name,
Speaker 1: like if you think about it, Um Custo got the
Speaker 1: name for this c nymph character in Homer's Odyssey. So
Speaker 1: in the story, Odysseus washes up on Calypso's island, and
Speaker 1: when she finds him, she and chanced to adventure to
Speaker 1: make him forget about his wife, Penelope, the one he'd
Speaker 1: been trying to get home to, and so Calypso basically
Speaker 1: keeps him there as a prisoner for seven years, and
Speaker 1: the whole time Penelope is just waiting and hoping that
Speaker 1: he finally makes it back to her someday. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of strange to name a boat that you sail
Speaker 1: around on with your wife and kids that same name.
Speaker 1: I think you made one mistake though I thought Calypso
Speaker 1: comes from Pirates of the Caribbean, the film series. We'll
Speaker 1: correct that later. But all right, we're getting ahead of
Speaker 1: ourselves here, because an awful lot happened between Custo's wedding
Speaker 1: and the time the Calypsos set sail, including the invention
Speaker 1: of the aqua lung, and of course a little something
Speaker 1: we called World War two. Yeah, definitely a lot to
Speaker 1: talk about. But let's take a quick break first and
Speaker 1: then we'll get back into it. You're listening to part
Speaker 1: time genius, and we're talking about French oceaneering legend and
Speaker 1: scuba pioneer Jacques Cousteau. All right, Mago, So let's talk
Speaker 1: about the war years and what those were like for Cousteau,
Speaker 1: because I remember he was serving as a gunnery office
Speaker 1: in the French Navy when the fighting began, and this was,
Speaker 1: of course, in nineteen thirty nine. Yeah, and from what
Speaker 1: I read, that was a really difficult time for Jacques
Speaker 1: emotionally because suddenly his country was at war with the
Speaker 1: Italians right next door. Like he'd had so many friends
Speaker 1: over there and and now he was on board the
Speaker 1: ships that were attacking their naval bases, and he clearly
Speaker 1: felt conflicted, you know, wishing war in the Mediterranean against
Speaker 1: all these people he'd grown up with, right, And so
Speaker 1: then a year later France surrendered to Anti Germany and
Speaker 1: the Italian occupation began. So it's a pretty rough going
Speaker 1: there in those early years. And thankfully, once Paris felt
Speaker 1: Custo was able to flee with his family to this
Speaker 1: small town near the Swiss border and they lived there
Speaker 1: peacefully for the next few years. And in fact, this
Speaker 1: period of relative safety was when Jacques began to focus
Speaker 1: on that underwater exploration and beginning to do some research,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was really the beginning of of
Speaker 1: of what would make this huge career. That's true, but
Speaker 1: we should also mention that it's not like Cousto was
Speaker 1: just on holiday up there, because following francis surrender, he
Speaker 1: actually joined the French resistance movement and he began working
Speaker 1: against Italy's intelligence services, so basically spying on Italian troops,
Speaker 1: kind of keeping track of their movements, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And then after the war, Custo returned to work for
Speaker 1: the French Navy to help clear underwater mind So really
Speaker 1: all the years of underwater excursions and scuba stuff that
Speaker 1: we're talking about, that's all happening in between these long
Speaker 1: running series of military operations he was involved in. So basically,
Speaker 1: if you weren't impressed enough already, keep in mind that
Speaker 1: all the ocean research and these technical breakthroughs like that
Speaker 1: was really his side gig during World War Two exactly.
Speaker 1: And it's strange to think about, but it's true. You know,
Speaker 1: Custo is living in the heart of occupied France during
Speaker 1: the darkest days of the war, and he somehow managed
Speaker 1: to turn them into some of the most productive years
Speaker 1: of his life. It is truly impressive in in particular
Speaker 1: that ended up being this pivotal year for Custo. First,
Speaker 1: it was in the town where he had fled. He
Speaker 1: had actually met this fellow explorer named Marshall Echok, and
Speaker 1: together that year they made the first underwater film. It's
Speaker 1: called eighteen meters Deep but sorry, it's the first French
Speaker 1: underwater film, and and they shot at themselves in the
Speaker 1: waters around this group of islands in the French Mediterranean.
Speaker 1: And this was really the first step in what we
Speaker 1: become this very long career of underwater filmmaking for Custo.
Speaker 1: That wasn't the only life changing thing he did in
Speaker 1: three because that's also the year that Custo co invented
Speaker 1: the aqua lung with this French engineer named Emil Gun.
Speaker 1: All Right, so let's give a little bit of background
Speaker 1: on on why that's important, because it's not like the
Speaker 1: aqua lung was the first breathing apparatus ever made, or
Speaker 1: of course even the first scuba gear, right m hmm,
Speaker 1: Like the hard hat diving suits we talked about earlier
Speaker 1: had been around for almost hundreds of years by that time,
Speaker 1: you know, And actually Leonardo da Vinci created designs for
Speaker 1: a diving suit way back in the early sixteenth centuries,
Speaker 1: so the idea of breathing underwater definitely was not new.
Speaker 1: That's weird. I'm curious that, Like, do you know what
Speaker 1: da Vinci had come up with. Yeah, it was basically
Speaker 1: this um dual snorkel system, but with these really long snorkels,
Speaker 1: Like he suggested making a boy out of cork so
Speaker 1: that it would flow, and then attaching these long cane
Speaker 1: tubes to either side, so the diver below could I
Speaker 1: guess breathe through the submerged ends. But you know what
Speaker 1: the best part of Da Vinci's design is, and I
Speaker 1: had never realized this before. It's that Da Vinci actually
Speaker 1: came up with this bag that the diver would wear
Speaker 1: so that he wouldn't pee straight into the water. And
Speaker 1: you gotta love the priorities there. Yeah, I mean, you
Speaker 1: get it. But anyway back to because Stow, no that
Speaker 1: I don't either. But you know, he's got a few
Speaker 1: years worth of diving under his belt and he absolutely
Speaker 1: loved it. But you know, over time he started to
Speaker 1: get frustrated with the limitations of the diving equipment. He
Speaker 1: couldn't travel as deep as he wanted, and he couldn't
Speaker 1: stay under for anywhere near as long as he would
Speaker 1: have liked. And at that point, the best thing on
Speaker 1: the market was a self contained underwater breathing apparatus or
Speaker 1: scuba as we call it, that had been invented about
Speaker 1: twenty years earlier by another Frenchman. So divers already had
Speaker 1: this option of wearing air tanks on their backs instead
Speaker 1: of like the heavy helmets with the air tubes that
Speaker 1: kept them kind of tethered to the surface. But the
Speaker 1: problem was that the first scuba gear it actually lacked
Speaker 1: any kind of regulator, so there was no way to
Speaker 1: control the airflow to the driver, and that meant that
Speaker 1: the air supply was used up super quickly because it
Speaker 1: was being released in this constant stream, and so dive
Speaker 1: times were just actually limited to a few minutes at
Speaker 1: the best. Huh. I could see why that would definitely
Speaker 1: put a damper on this experience for Cousto, especially when
Speaker 1: he wanted to dive as deep as he possibly could.
Speaker 1: And it's tough to go that far when evenly got
Speaker 1: ten or twenty minutes worth of air, right, And and
Speaker 1: that's ultimately what Cousteau was looking to do. Like like,
Speaker 1: he reached out to his friend Emil, and a year earlier,
Speaker 1: I guess in two, Emil had invented this demand regulator
Speaker 1: to control the gas flow in engines, and Custo thought
Speaker 1: the valve like that he had invented might also have
Speaker 1: applications for diving. And he figured that if you could
Speaker 1: just modify the valve a little, it could supply air
Speaker 1: only when a diver was breathing in, and then it
Speaker 1: would conserve the air supply and and allowed the diver
Speaker 1: to stay underwater for longer. So Cousteau took his idea
Speaker 1: to his friend, and in ninety three they co invented
Speaker 1: and patented the on demand diving regulator, or as they
Speaker 1: called it, aqualung. I guess this would later serve as
Speaker 1: an inspiration for a Jethro Tull song. But you know,
Speaker 1: Cousteau was clearly thrilled about this invention, and this is
Speaker 1: what he said at the time. Quote from this day forward,
Speaker 1: we would swim across miles of country no man had known,
Speaker 1: free and level with our flesh, feeling what the fish
Speaker 1: scales know. I mean, it's kind of a great and
Speaker 1: weird quote. At the same time, I mean, Custo definitely
Speaker 1: put his newfound freedom to use once the war ended.
Speaker 1: So you've asked forward a little bit to nineteen He
Speaker 1: joined with these fellow divers and a group of scientists
Speaker 1: to explore this Roman shipwreck that was off the coast
Speaker 1: of Tunisia. And this was actually the first underwater archaeology
Speaker 1: operation to use scuba equipment, so it was really the
Speaker 1: birth of this brand new field. And then in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen fifties, Custo and his team decided to take
Speaker 1: the next step and they devoted their lives full time
Speaker 1: to underwater exploration. There was only one problem with this
Speaker 1: is that they would need lots of money to fund
Speaker 1: those expeditions, and unfortunately they didn't have any money. So,
Speaker 1: you know, Custo started reaching out to all kinds of
Speaker 1: French science institutions as well as like potential private donors. Well,
Speaker 1: he eventually struck gold with this wealthy British philanthropist named
Speaker 1: Thomas Lowell Guinness. Againness also happened to be a member
Speaker 1: of Parliament, so he was connected in so many different ways.
Speaker 1: But Custo told him about his plans to make undersea
Speaker 1: documentaries and to introduce the world to the wonders of
Speaker 1: the deep, and Guinness just love this idea, and so
Speaker 1: here's what he decided to do to help. He bought
Speaker 1: a decommissioned mind sweepership from the war and this was
Speaker 1: one that had already been converted to use is like
Speaker 1: a car ferry or something like that, and and he
Speaker 1: leased at too Custo for a symbolic price of one
Speaker 1: franc per year. And that's how Custo came to own
Speaker 1: the world famous Calypso for one franc. That's amazing and
Speaker 1: it's pretty awesome, except now he had this like giant,
Speaker 1: like hundred foot hundred fifty ft like car ferry, but
Speaker 1: he doesn't still seem to have much money to equip
Speaker 1: or staff it, right, Yeah, that's true. And so the
Speaker 1: team was was pretty much at a loss for how
Speaker 1: to solve that, and they pretty much tried everything they could,
Speaker 1: Like Custo begged the government for grant money. He hassled
Speaker 1: manufacturers for free equipment. There was even one time when
Speaker 1: his wife Simone sold her jewels just so they could
Speaker 1: buy fuel to keep the ship at sea. And all
Speaker 1: of this worked well enough for a while, and you know,
Speaker 1: Custo was able to gradually restructure the ship and transform
Speaker 1: it into this state of the art research vessel. You know,
Speaker 1: he go back to him being so interested in the
Speaker 1: mechanics and all of this, I'm sure, but was you know,
Speaker 1: came in handy in this process and they haven't had
Speaker 1: this support base for diving on the ship, helipad and
Speaker 1: the special storage for equipment like the one and two
Speaker 1: men mini subs that he developed all by himself. But
Speaker 1: the team's biggest break after all of this, and the
Speaker 1: thing that really allowed him to keep financing their research
Speaker 1: was Cousto's media exposure, so throughout the fifties, he and
Speaker 1: his fellow divers began publicizing their efforts and stories for
Speaker 1: Time and National Geographic, and Custo co authored a biographical
Speaker 1: book for their early school but adventures. It was called
Speaker 1: The Silent World, and it was this huge financial hit.
Speaker 1: They sold more than five million copies over the years,
Speaker 1: and it included the first ever suggestion that whales were
Speaker 1: able to communicate with each other using echolocation. And the
Speaker 1: team even knew how to build on that success because
Speaker 1: like just a few years later, Cousto made his first
Speaker 1: color movie documentary about the ocean. It's called The Silent World,
Speaker 1: and it actually one best documentary oscar in ninety seven.
Speaker 1: The movie turned out to be another big turning point
Speaker 1: for Custo's team and really for diving in general, because
Speaker 1: at the time very few people had seen undersea footage before,
Speaker 1: so the movie was really like this revelation for people
Speaker 1: who had no idea what the plants or the animals
Speaker 1: and the ocean even looked like. Yeah, it was actually
Speaker 1: fun reading about how after this film came out, scuba
Speaker 1: sales like went through the roof because you've got all
Speaker 1: these people who are suddenly interested in trying diving for themselves,
Speaker 1: and you know, once again, Cousto knew exactly how to
Speaker 1: capitalize on this, so he channeled all that money and
Speaker 1: public interest into these new expeditions, until finally he was
Speaker 1: such a well known figure that the BBC and ABC
Speaker 1: here in the US just went ahead and gave him
Speaker 1: his own primetime TV show. Oh I know about this.
Speaker 1: It was actually called The Undersea World of Jack Cousteau,
Speaker 1: and it kind of followed the real life exploits of
Speaker 1: him and his crew for I want to say, like
Speaker 1: nine seasons right like that. That's pretty impressive for like
Speaker 1: a French nature series. Absolutely, and it was it was
Speaker 1: this series that really made Custo a household name throughout
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties. You know, in the same way
Speaker 1: that The Silent World had introduced movie goers to the
Speaker 1: underwater world, the TV show gave viewers their first glimpse
Speaker 1: at humans interacting with ocean creatures like in a way
Speaker 1: they'd never really seen before. And you know, they got
Speaker 1: to see them swimming with dolphins or being pulled along
Speaker 1: by giant sea turtles. And so I'm sure it was
Speaker 1: just fascinating for people to be able to watch for
Speaker 1: the first time. Yeah, it's amazing. But I also do
Speaker 1: want to be careful that we don't paint to Rosie
Speaker 1: a picture of Custo, because for all the incredible achievements,
Speaker 1: he definitely made a few really weird mistakes over the years,
Speaker 1: and honestly, some of them are just two bizarre not
Speaker 1: to talk about. I think that's that's fair to say. Well,
Speaker 1: before we get into that, let's take one more quick break,
Speaker 1: all right, Mango, So what dodgy aspect of Jacques Cousto's
Speaker 1: life do you think people would be most surprised to learn? Well,
Speaker 1: the one I was most stunned by, but it was
Speaker 1: I guess, his darkest secret, which is that Becausto actually
Speaker 1: had a secret second family that he hid from the
Speaker 1: public for decades. Um one year after his first wife, Simone,
Speaker 1: died from cancer, Cousto actually shocked the world by revealing
Speaker 1: that he had been having this long running affair with
Speaker 1: a French woman named Francine Triplet, and they had had
Speaker 1: two secret children together during the eights and once the
Speaker 1: fair was out in the open, Custo married Triplet, though
Speaker 1: they still tried to keep it as quiet as possible
Speaker 1: for obvious reasons. Wow. I mean, I know when pop
Speaker 1: culture French husbands have a reputation for keeping mistresses, but
Speaker 1: having secret kids and actually getting married is it seems
Speaker 1: like it's another level. But anyway to think that Simone
Speaker 1: sold for jewels to fuel his ships, that's that's a
Speaker 1: tough one. Yeah, you know, it's always confusing to me
Speaker 1: when people have two families to like, like one family
Speaker 1: feels like so much work. I can't imagine like trying
Speaker 1: to keep to them going. I read this story about
Speaker 1: William Shawn who was this legendary editor of The New Yorker,
Speaker 1: and he had two families, but he kept his apartments
Speaker 1: the exact same, so that when he reached for the
Speaker 1: remote in one or he went to get a notepad
Speaker 1: in the other, like, it was basically in the same
Speaker 1: place in both settings, which is just so crafty. You know,
Speaker 1: his second family is probably the biggest scandal of Cousto's life,
Speaker 1: So I guess at least, you know, it is good
Speaker 1: that his wife wasn't around to see the fallout from it. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's that's interesting. Well, the next thing I want to
Speaker 1: talk about is a lot less scandals than a secret family,
Speaker 1: but it is a whole lot weirder, I actually think
Speaker 1: because in the nineteen sixty interview with Time, Jacques Cousto
Speaker 1: predicted that humans would one day be able to breathe underwater,
Speaker 1: like actually breathe underwater like fish. He apparently thought that
Speaker 1: medical science would get to a point where you could
Speaker 1: have a reversible surgery that would let you alternate between
Speaker 1: lungs for life on land and gills for life underwater.
Speaker 1: So like in his vision slash fantasy for this, like,
Speaker 1: would we have underwater colonies? Because I mean, if it
Speaker 1: requires surgery to switch back and forth, I'm guessing he
Speaker 1: was picturing something more permanent than just like a like
Speaker 1: a two week vacation or something. Yeah, I mean he
Speaker 1: was actually thinking long term with this, and can you
Speaker 1: can imagine like for him that would have been exciting
Speaker 1: to just be able to live underwater. But in that interview,
Speaker 1: this is what he says about the cultural shift he
Speaker 1: thought would come from having gills. He said, everything that
Speaker 1: has been done on the surface will sooner or later
Speaker 1: be done underwater. It will be the conquest of a
Speaker 1: whole new world. I mean, I feel like that's just
Speaker 1: a line from like Aquaman, like like maybe something a
Speaker 1: bad guy would say. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if
Speaker 1: that had been said at some point. But you know,
Speaker 1: speaking of things that sound like they were ripped from
Speaker 1: a comic book, did you know that Jacques Cousto may
Speaker 1: have been responsible for releasing a mutant seaweed strain that
Speaker 1: continues to smother ocean floors to this day. So I
Speaker 1: heard you mentioned this earlier, and I'm so curious that
Speaker 1: it almost sounds too ridiculous to be true though. All right, well,
Speaker 1: let me just kind of explain what happened here and
Speaker 1: then then you can decide what you want to believe
Speaker 1: on this one. So all right, So it all started
Speaker 1: in nineteen nine when this marine biologist named Alexander Maynez
Speaker 1: went diving off the southern coast of France and made
Speaker 1: this shocking discovery. So what he found was that the
Speaker 1: seabed throughout the region had become covered in this toxic
Speaker 1: tropical algae. When that was you know, really shouldn't have
Speaker 1: been able to thrive like that in the cold Mediterranean water.
Speaker 1: And it was later determined that the tropical seaweed was
Speaker 1: growing at twice the speed of the region's indigenous plants,
Speaker 1: and even worse than that. Even though the seaweeds toxin,
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't lethal the humans or the animals,
Speaker 1: it made the plant taste terrible. And so this meant
Speaker 1: that nothing in the area wanted to eat the invasive species,
Speaker 1: and as a result, it was able to spread, I
Speaker 1: mean pretty much unchecked. And so Alexander knew that like
Speaker 1: if nothing was done, the tropical seaweed would take over
Speaker 1: and the Mediterraneans wildlife would either have to move somewhere
Speaker 1: else or potentially face starvation. So he decided to bring
Speaker 1: his concerns to one of Europe's leading marine research organizations,
Speaker 1: which was the Monaco Oceanographic Museum, and he thought for
Speaker 1: sure that the museum would want to help solve the problem,
Speaker 1: but to his surprise, actually the director insisted that the
Speaker 1: seaweed had floated in naturally from the tropics and probably
Speaker 1: wasn't as dangerous as it seemed. And so here's where
Speaker 1: things get interesting, because the invasive algae that supposedly floated
Speaker 1: in from the tropics, DNA testing later showed that it
Speaker 1: was actually an artificial human bread strain that was somehow
Speaker 1: released into the Mediterranean. What's like, I don't even know
Speaker 1: what that means exactly. Apparently this was man made and
Speaker 1: you know, if that weren't suspicious enough, researchers also found
Speaker 1: that the earliest known infestation site for the seaweed happened
Speaker 1: to be directly below the Monaco Ocean, a graphic museum. Wow,
Speaker 1: so the plot thickens. But you know, where does Jockosteau
Speaker 1: figure into all of this? Like, is he the one
Speaker 1: behind that strain? No? I mean that part is actually
Speaker 1: still kind of a mystery. And researchers eventually followed the
Speaker 1: trail to a zoo and stud guard Germany, which had
Speaker 1: imported the strain from the Pacific and then used it
Speaker 1: to decorate their tropical fish tanks because apparently, and this
Speaker 1: is something I actually never heard before, but some zoos
Speaker 1: and aquariums used to have a really hard time getting
Speaker 1: seaweed to survive and the artificial environment of a fish tank.
Speaker 1: And so for this German zoo in the seventies, the
Speaker 1: solution turned out to be, you know, this imported tropical seaweed,
Speaker 1: which for whatever reason flourished in the way that other
Speaker 1: plants never seemed to be able to. So then what
Speaker 1: happens exactly like the zoo eventually dumped their tanks in
Speaker 1: the ocean, and this seaweed made its way to the Mediterranean.
Speaker 1: Like didn't you say you thought the strain was men made?
Speaker 1: The Yeah it was. And and the thinking here is
Speaker 1: that maybe, just maybe the chemicals and the lights that
Speaker 1: were used in the aquarium tanks caused the plant to
Speaker 1: mutate into this more invasive species than the kind that
Speaker 1: was originally found in the wild. And since aquariums all
Speaker 1: over the world began using the tropical strain once they
Speaker 1: heard about the Zoo's success, there's really no way of
Speaker 1: knowing exactly where the mutant batch came from or who
Speaker 1: dumped it into the open water. But since the Monaco
Speaker 1: Museum is considered the first known infestation site, there's a
Speaker 1: good chance that it actually did come for there. And
Speaker 1: so here's the thing. Based on the evidence, the most
Speaker 1: likely time for all of us to have happened was
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen eighties. And guess who was running
Speaker 1: the museum in the early nineteen eighties, So I guess
Speaker 1: this whole ecologic disaster like like it must have happened
Speaker 1: on Custo's watch, is what you're saying. Yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like I should have had that big set up and
Speaker 1: be like, Nope, it actually wasn't Cousto, But it wasn't.
Speaker 1: He could have even been the one to unknowingly release
Speaker 1: the algae. But of course the Monaco Museum flatly denies
Speaker 1: all of this and maintance there's no connection whatsoever. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the seaweed is actually still there today, and in recent
Speaker 1: years it's cropped up in the harbors and coral reefs
Speaker 1: around Australia southern California too, so it is kind of
Speaker 1: all over the place. So you know, at this point
Speaker 1: it's probably time to worry less about who started the
Speaker 1: problem and more about how to actually fix it. Also,
Speaker 1: I mean, like Custo has done so much it's it's
Speaker 1: hard to imagine it would really hurt his legacy, and
Speaker 1: probably not. I mean, his work has led to so
Speaker 1: many marine discoveries and inspired so many future explorers that
Speaker 1: he probably gets a pass on this one, I guess.
Speaker 1: And you know that's before you even consider the conservation
Speaker 1: work that's been done through his nonprofit, the Cousteau Society,
Speaker 1: which is something he formed himself back into. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: he was obviously an overachiever, as we've probably shown today,
Speaker 1: but I would still say his greatest achievement was opening
Speaker 1: so many people's eyes to just how beautiful and mysterious
Speaker 1: and strange the ocean really is. I mean, it's really
Speaker 1: difficult to get people to open themselves to the unknown,
Speaker 1: but that's exactly what Jack Gusteau did through his work.
Speaker 1: He showed them reasons to care about the ocean. That's
Speaker 1: a great point. And you know, like I read this week,
Speaker 1: roughly of all the space on Earth where life can survive,
Speaker 1: he's actually underwater. We've only fully explored about five per
Speaker 1: cent of that, and you know, when you think about it,
Speaker 1: the number was even lower than that before Cousteau came along,
Speaker 1: and now, hopefully, thanks to his example, a little continue
Speaker 1: to go up from there. Because of Cousto's work proved anything,
Speaker 1: it's that exploring the oceans is the way for humans
Speaker 1: to fall in love with them, and from there, the
Speaker 1: hope is that if we love them, then we'll also
Speaker 1: do our best to take care of them too. And
Speaker 1: it may sound a little bit corny, but you know,
Speaker 1: here's hoping it does sound corny, we get to the
Speaker 1: fact off from here, all right, let's do it. So
Speaker 1: here's something kind of fun. Off the coast of Florida.
Speaker 1: There's this underwater Museum of Art and it's the first
Speaker 1: underwater museum in the US. In addition to like the
Speaker 1: artwork they've got there, they've got like a dear giant
Speaker 1: skull a pineapple, which I thought was initially like a
Speaker 1: tribute to SpongeBob, but apparently it's just a beautiful pineapple. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's also this model of Jock Cousto's scuba mask, and
Speaker 1: it is pretty cool because the sculptures are sixty ft
Speaker 1: deep and it's in this artificial reef where all types
Speaker 1: of reef fish and turtles and other animals just swim
Speaker 1: through and seems really beautiful. All right, Well, here's one
Speaker 1: I wasn't expecting. Apparently Fidel Castro was a huge fan
Speaker 1: of Cousto, so in when Custo asked to come through
Speaker 1: and research Cuba system for managing their lobster population, Castro
Speaker 1: actually went aboard custos ship and ate dinner on board
Speaker 1: the Calypso and the pair, I guess got along so well.
Speaker 1: That mental Philoss reports on this Castro allowed the diver
Speaker 1: to liberate eighty political prisoners. Also, Custo's team became the
Speaker 1: first non Cubans to pass through Guantanamo Bay since the
Speaker 1: Cuban missile crisis. That's pretty impressive. So one of the
Speaker 1: things I'm always fascinated about is how Custo helped stop whaling.
Speaker 1: He actually called up and personally made please to a
Speaker 1: number of heads of states to get the International Whaling
Speaker 1: Commission to pass this moratorium on commercial whaling. This was
Speaker 1: in six and that's actually helped protect multiple species over
Speaker 1: the years. All Right, Well, Cousto apparently didn't always come
Speaker 1: across as an environmentalist. In fact, in the beginning he
Speaker 1: was more of a spear fisherman and an adventurer. And
Speaker 1: you can actually see this in some of his early films,
Speaker 1: Like there's this horrific scene in the Silent World where
Speaker 1: the calypso collides with a baby sperm whale and then,
Speaker 1: thinking that it's near death, they also shoot the sharks
Speaker 1: that starts circling the whale. So this obviously isn't a
Speaker 1: good look for Cousto, and so when the group decided
Speaker 1: to remaster the film. Twenty years later, they decided to
Speaker 1: edit out those ugly scenes, but according to reports, Custo
Speaker 1: absolutely refused to let that happen. He said, it was true,
Speaker 1: and it shows how far we've come and how dreadful
Speaker 1: humans can be if we don't curtail ourselves. So on
Speaker 1: one hand, it's a little like Steve z Zoo from
Speaker 1: The Life Aquatic, like wanting to go out and kill
Speaker 1: a shark. And on the other hand, it really is amazing,
Speaker 1: like you'd show your warts and all in the hopes
Speaker 1: that others could learn that we can all change. You know.
Speaker 1: I just love how Jack Custo's appreciation for this. He
Speaker 1: just grew more and more over the years. And I
Speaker 1: do think you get a trophy for pointing to that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, he led an incredible life and it's fun
Speaker 1: to try to learn from it. But all right, well,
Speaker 1: I think that's it for today's show. So from Gabe, Tristan, Mango,
Speaker 1: and me, thanks so much for listening. M