Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, And it's a good old
Speaker 2: fashioned barn burner whiz banger of an episode. I ran
Speaker 2: out of weird colloquialism.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, just now, didn't you hear? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 3: but I just figured you were still doing them in
Speaker 3: your head.
Speaker 2: No, I was frantically grasping for another one in my
Speaker 2: head and it was just dust and a tumbleweed.
Speaker 3: So this is sort of continuing our underwater series we'll
Speaker 3: call it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is so stuff you should know. We've done,
Speaker 2: like stuff that's like much more specific about the general
Speaker 2: category that we're talking about. And now we're finally doing
Speaker 2: the general category.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we did the diving, Bell did the butterfly, We
Speaker 3: did we did cave diving. In fact, Cave Diving was
Speaker 3: released as a as a select just this year. Yes,
Speaker 3: such a good one. And uh, do I need to
Speaker 3: remind you about the other related episode. I forgot about that.
Speaker 3: I'll get you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember, I remember the Scuba Cat episode. Didn't
Speaker 2: you interview Scuba Cat?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, I mean for those of you who don't know.
Speaker 3: The short version is many many years ago. In the
Speaker 3: very early days of the podcast, occasionally we were sort
Speaker 3: of told to do certain things, and two of them
Speaker 3: really stand out to me. One of them was Scuba
Speaker 3: Cat I know what I Know you do, which was
Speaker 3: this guy who trained his cat to scuba dive. And
Speaker 3: it's literally like a a blurb or maybe a little
Speaker 3: fluffy news piece at the end of a of a
Speaker 3: news program and there like do a stuff you should
Speaker 3: know episode on this cat and this guy. Why though,
Speaker 3: do you remember did they just want page views or something.
Speaker 2: I guess, or else that guy happened to be friends
Speaker 2: with you know, whoever owned the company at the time.
Speaker 3: All right, So there, I think there was an article
Speaker 3: on the website we worked for and they were probably
Speaker 3: just trying to drive people to that. So we did
Speaker 3: one on scuba Cat. I would really love that just
Speaker 3: to be scrubbed. But then the archive, well, way to
Speaker 3: go bringing it up.
Speaker 2: Then what was I going to say, Chuck, wasn't this
Speaker 2: thing in like a little submarine kind of is Isn't
Speaker 2: that what the scuba diving was?
Speaker 3: I don't think so. I think he built him a
Speaker 3: little little outfit. Oh okay, wow, a little thing with
Speaker 3: like a you know, a big bubble mask.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's worth an episode.
Speaker 3: We could redo it. We should two thousand and eight redus.
Speaker 3: What's the other one you want to I know we're
Speaker 3: going to say it.
Speaker 2: I we could say at the same time. I think
Speaker 2: he's going.
Speaker 3: To be three two one innovators. Yeah, what can you
Speaker 3: do with an Altoid's den? Yeah?
Speaker 2: For real, Like, I don't know how that one came
Speaker 2: up either, but we were instructed to do an episode
Speaker 2: on tenovators and they were interesting, but not episode length.
Speaker 3: Interesting even when they were six minutes long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a tenovator, Just for those of you who
Speaker 2: don't know, they take Altoid tens and they do things
Speaker 2: with them like turn them into radios. Maybe they hold
Speaker 2: coins instead of altoids. It's just repurposation. And yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: it's repurposing an altoidenovation.
Speaker 3: Very well boy. And we always talk about Jackhammers in
Speaker 3: the sun like that's because we're literally too ashamed to
Speaker 3: even mention those other two. But here they are. Go
Speaker 3: listen to them. Just quickly wanted to say I got
Speaker 3: back from Mexico and I did not scuba dive, I snorkeled,
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's fun, and I didn't. I mean, I
Speaker 3: love the experience, but I learned that I and especially
Speaker 3: my daughter are free divers. Oh yeah, she couldn't do it. Man,
Speaker 3: We got her, I mean, she loves to swim more
Speaker 3: than anything. And we got her in all the gear,
Speaker 3: put her in the water, and she was bitch to
Speaker 3: fit quite frankly.
Speaker 2: Oh like, she couldn't breathe through the tube.
Speaker 3: She does it in pools like it just you know,
Speaker 3: when you're eight, things happen and you can't explain why
Speaker 3: a kid will dig in. But she wasn't into it.
Speaker 3: We were very frustrated, did not handle it well. She
Speaker 3: asked to get back on the boat. She got back
Speaker 3: on the boat and cried, while we scuba are sorry, snorkeled.
Speaker 3: We're like, we're out here, we're gonna do it. You know,
Speaker 3: you'll be okay. And then once we were done, she
Speaker 3: asked the scuba guys or the snorkel guys, can I
Speaker 3: just get in with my mask and free dive? And
Speaker 3: it was in Mexico. They're like, sure, right, and she
Speaker 3: did and she turned into a dolphin and I recounted
Speaker 3: this on Instagram. It took some great pictures of her
Speaker 3: just swimming like no kid has ever loved swimming before,
Speaker 3: and it was just a big lesson for everybody.
Speaker 2: I know what happened, though, I think, unless I'm misreading it,
Speaker 2: she got claustrophobic from having to breathe through that tube.
Speaker 3: Now she does it all the time in pools. What
Speaker 3: it was I think was wearing the life fest keeping
Speaker 3: her up on the surface.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, well you left that little detail out.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean that's part of snorkeling. Is you gotta
Speaker 3: vest on so that keeps you up top? And she
Speaker 3: was like, no, no, no, I belong down there. My
Speaker 3: home is the sea. As funny Prince Billy.
Speaker 2: Says, I got youa okay, well that makes a lot
Speaker 2: more sense. I guess I was just projecting onto her
Speaker 2: because I used to get claustrophobic trying to breathe through
Speaker 2: a snorkel.
Speaker 3: Well, a lot of people on Instagram supported that and said,
Speaker 3: you know, I have a hard time with this equipment too,
Speaker 3: and I love to swim, but it was really that lifefest.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, well we finally established the root cause.
Speaker 3: Then yeah, but here we go with scuba.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I guess okay, So what does SCUBA stand for?
Speaker 3: Chuck? Self contained, underway, breathing, uh, situation, appomattics, appomatics, apparatus.
Speaker 2: That's right, scuba. It's actually like an acronym, but it's
Speaker 2: so used, so widely used now it's a lower case word.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure really, yeah, I mean like it's not
Speaker 2: nobody does it with capitals and periods or anything like that.
Speaker 2: It's just lower It's a word. It's its own word.
Speaker 2: Now it's almost lost its meaning as far as like
Speaker 2: the acronym goes. And yet it's gained so much meaning
Speaker 2: over the years because as scuba has been around for
Speaker 2: over the decades, more and more people have found the
Speaker 2: joy of going underwater.
Speaker 3: And I heard you laugh at me, by the way.
Speaker 2: And breathe if you breathe fully underward, no snorkel, Like
Speaker 2: your head is nowhere near the surface of the water,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't need to be like significantly distant from
Speaker 2: the water. It can just be like a foot below
Speaker 2: the water. But you're breathing underwater. It's an amazing feeling,
Speaker 2: for sure, and a lot of people have discovered that
Speaker 2: over the years and said, scuba is the life for me.
Speaker 3: Well, as of December twenty nineteen, you had scuba dived once. Yep.
Speaker 3: Have you done it since? No?
Speaker 2: And I'm actually a little troubled because I read that
Speaker 2: you're supposed to go like three or four open water dives,
Speaker 2: and I only went on one. So I've been under
Speaker 2: the impression that I've been certified to scuba dive all
Speaker 2: this time, and I'm like, I, is that true. I
Speaker 2: can't remember where my card is or anything. So I
Speaker 2: wonder if I actually wasn't fully certified or satisfied, I
Speaker 2: would find it very dissatisfying if that were true.
Speaker 3: Well, do you want to do it again? Because I
Speaker 3: didn't get a good read on you in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: Maybe I didn't know you then, like I know, you know.
Speaker 2: Maybe because I before. The reason I didn't like is
Speaker 2: because I got it made me seasick, like the air
Speaker 2: mixture did not sit well with me, and then getting
Speaker 2: on the boat in between dives made it even worse.
Speaker 2: So I was like, I don't feel like doing this
Speaker 2: over again, but I think enough times past that it's
Speaker 2: possible I would try it again.
Speaker 3: Well, I want to get certified now, for sure. I
Speaker 3: did anyway before and we thought we'd wed our beaks
Speaker 3: with snorkeling. The big problem I had, man was the fins.
Speaker 3: I mean, there were a lot of currents, and I
Speaker 3: just I felt like I couldn't go and get anywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And then at the end, when Ruby was free diving,
Speaker 3: I did the same thing. I took off all my
Speaker 3: stuff except for my mask, and I went down there
Speaker 3: and I was like, all right, well this is I
Speaker 3: feel like I can swim again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all It takes a lot of getting used
Speaker 2: to because it is it's meant to help you, and
Speaker 2: it does if you are familiar with it and comfortable
Speaker 2: with it, but if not, it's all encumbrance. It makes
Speaker 2: everything difficult. And like, yes, you just want to take
Speaker 2: it all off and just free dive, like you're.
Speaker 3: Saying, yeah, Emily was cruising around, but you know, we
Speaker 3: saw a little my first like coral that I've ever seen,
Speaker 3: like live coral, and it was beautiful and you know,
Speaker 3: the little stripey bright fish and I was I was
Speaker 3: in there with those guys for the first time, and
Speaker 3: it was it was remarkable and amazing.
Speaker 2: Was it a dory or a nemo that you saw.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know. It had I think yellow stripes.
Speaker 3: I don't think it was technically a clownfish, although maybe
Speaker 3: they're all types of clownfish. I'm not sure what's a clownfish.
Speaker 3: I think like a dory or a nemo. I saw
Speaker 3: this one big thing that was like the size of
Speaker 3: a dinner plate. Another big flat guy. Wow, he was cool.
Speaker 3: And then Emily saw sea turtle, which I did not see.
Speaker 3: And then we also saw their efforts to you know,
Speaker 3: with artificial reefs, with like these PVC sort of pyramids
Speaker 3: that they were building down there. God blood anyway, people, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: this coral wasn't in great shape. It was in parts,
Speaker 3: but other parts were not great and that was sad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can thank the fossil fuel industry for that.
Speaker 2: That's right, So Chuck. One thing that I had no
Speaker 2: idea about with researching this scuba episode is that it
Speaker 2: actually the scuba phenomenon, I guess you could call it
Speaker 2: dates back to the mid nineteenth century, and it's not
Speaker 2: like somebody had an idea and then one hundred years
Speaker 2: later somebody actually created it. Someone in the eighteen sixties
Speaker 2: actually created the first scuba equipment.
Speaker 3: That's right. Are you going to say his name? You're
Speaker 3: gonna make me do it, but I'll say the first name,
Speaker 3: mid Benoir, Okay.
Speaker 2: And it's a rook way roll or rock and Roll's
Speaker 2: that what that means? I don't think so, but it
Speaker 2: looks when you pronounce it, it sounds a lot like
Speaker 2: rock and roll.
Speaker 3: Yeah, rooke and or roll.
Speaker 2: Rookoy roll yeah, rock and roll.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So he's obviously French, and he was not trying
Speaker 3: to figure out a way to recreationally dive in the ocean.
Speaker 3: He was trying to figure out a way to help others,
Speaker 3: rescue workers rescue people in collapsed minds because these things
Speaker 3: would get filled up with nasty gases. And he was like, well,
Speaker 3: I think I can invent the system that allows these
Speaker 3: rescuers to go down there and breathe safely so they
Speaker 3: can save these people. And he called that first one
Speaker 3: a regulator for equalization of compressed gas A little on.
Speaker 2: The noise, A regulator, sure, sure, so I guess it
Speaker 2: was a little verbose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or a demand regulator. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the reason it was a demand regulator, and this
Speaker 2: is the this is the big deal like you could
Speaker 2: feed somebody air continuously, but you're gonna use up a
Speaker 2: lot of air. You might overinflate their lungs accidentally, which
Speaker 2: is that it could be a problem with novices in scuba.
Speaker 2: But a demand regulator means that you're only sucking in
Speaker 2: that compressed air when you're breathing in. When you exhale,
Speaker 2: that air is no longer coming into your mouth, into
Speaker 2: your gullet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's on demand, like the best movies.
Speaker 2: And this guy along with a guy named Auguste Deni
Speaker 2: Rouse Denay Rose dene Rouse, it was in there that
Speaker 2: last one I think nailed it. But I think so
Speaker 2: Ben Waughan Augos, let's call him. That they got together
Speaker 2: and figure out how to turn this not just into
Speaker 2: a mind safety equipment piece of equipment, but actually to
Speaker 2: use it to breathe underwater. So they put the whole
Speaker 2: compressed air thing in like a backpack. I get the impression.
Speaker 2: It was like a fabric bag holding the compressed air.
Speaker 2: They put that demand regulator on, and they were working underwater,
Speaker 2: untethered from any boat, using the first genuine scuba in
Speaker 2: the eighteen sixties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was like the first Legit diving suit. Essentially,
Speaker 3: they had lead sold shoes and they had weights hanging
Speaker 3: under your arms. At first, there was still no mask.
Speaker 3: They had used a nose clip, but then a year
Speaker 3: later in eighteen sixty six, they brought about the first mask,
Speaker 3: which was a copper helmet with a single window that
Speaker 3: they called the groin because it was French for pig
Speaker 3: snout and it kind of looks like a pig snout, Okay,
Speaker 3: And they won for this. For their efforts, they won
Speaker 3: the begold medal at the eighteen sixty seven World's Fare
Speaker 3: called the aerophoor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they called it the aerophor, right. So, but again,
Speaker 2: the thing about this is like you're like, yeah, I've
Speaker 2: seen those before, Like there was a haunted one on
Speaker 2: Scooby Doo. There's an air hose coming out of the helmet. No,
Speaker 2: that's the distinction. There's no air host. They were untethered
Speaker 2: to anything. They could roam as free as they wanted
Speaker 2: on the seafloor.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: So fast forward a few years, geez, about seventy Yeah,
Speaker 2: about seventy years there was another person who had a
Speaker 2: very similar idea. What was his name, Christian Lamberton.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well there was a guy in the twenties, eve
Speaker 3: La Prio, okay, who and Dave helped us out with this.
Speaker 3: Dave duck this guy up and it was sort of
Speaker 3: one of the first sort of modern takes on a
Speaker 3: scuba system. But the air still wasn't on demand at
Speaker 3: that point. They adjusted the airflow like as they went along,
Speaker 3: and then Christian Lambertson came along in nineteen fifty four
Speaker 3: and did a couple of things. Well, actually he came
Speaker 3: along in nineteen thirty nine with the Lambertson Amphibious Respirator
Speaker 3: Unit or the LaRue. Didn't rename it scuba until nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty four. But this was a rebreather. It still wasn't
Speaker 3: the same thing. He had a CO two filter and
Speaker 3: he was trying to pitch it to the military. He's like,
Speaker 3: he was an American guy. He's like, look, this thing's
Speaker 3: got no bubbles. So he pitched it to the Navy, like,
Speaker 3: you know, you can sneak up on people in other words, sure,
Speaker 3: And he pitched it to the Navy. They rejected it.
Speaker 3: And then the OSS which the US had at the
Speaker 3: time the Office of Strategic Services, would eventually become not
Speaker 3: become the CIA, but sort of become the CIA yeah more. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and they the OSS loved it and like their underwater
Speaker 3: unit like started using this lamberts and scuba unit, even
Speaker 3: though it still wasn't a it was a rebreather and
Speaker 3: we'll talk about all that stuff soon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is more advanced than scuba. So this guy
Speaker 2: basically just created the more advanced version of scuba out
Speaker 2: of the gate, you know.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is very interesting. And his invention was so
Speaker 2: successful that it was used from the fifties to the
Speaker 2: eighties by the US military. Yeah, unchanged kind of like
Speaker 2: you know, you see like those mid to late eighties
Speaker 2: movies and the cars are still look like they're from
Speaker 2: the seventies because nobody updated their stuff until that four
Speaker 2: Tourist came out in nineteen eighty eight and RoboCop.
Speaker 3: It's like that, what a great movie.
Speaker 2: You know. In the eighties they were like, this is
Speaker 2: this is an old timey rebreather.
Speaker 3: We need to update this, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So there was a that's almost like a separate track.
Speaker 2: Like Christian Lambertson was very much dedicated to inventing this
Speaker 2: stuff for the military. He invented a more advanced version
Speaker 2: of scuba call a rebreather, which we'll talk about. Like
Speaker 2: you said, the much more familiar version of the scuba
Speaker 2: story kind of went in parallel and started a few
Speaker 2: about the same time as Christian Lambertson. And it was
Speaker 2: a pair of French guys who up to Christian Lamberson,
Speaker 2: they were running the scuba world. And it was Jacques
Speaker 2: Cristeau and Emil Gagnum, and those two together are the
Speaker 2: ones who gave the world scuba.
Speaker 3: That's right. I saw Gagnan then also saw he was
Speaker 3: French and it was Gagnon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, it's just I didn't want to attempt it.
Speaker 2: I'm so tired of failing.
Speaker 3: Oh no. So they got together, like you said, and
Speaker 3: they kind of took Roquai roll. Yeah. Yeah, they took
Speaker 3: his old arm demand regulator and said, all right, I
Speaker 3: think we can update this thing. Gaignon and World War
Speaker 3: two had invented a regulator that used cooking gas to
Speaker 3: feed into the carburetor of a car because the Germans said,
Speaker 3: we're taking all your gas Paris, and so he sort
Speaker 3: of retrofitted a way to make a car work. And
Speaker 3: Cusseau was like, this is brilliant. We can use this
Speaker 3: for scuba.
Speaker 2: And he's like, you want to huff cooking gas underwater?
Speaker 2: He's like, no, no, we're gonna We're not going to
Speaker 2: use the cooking gas gagnin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and also scuba hasn't been so named yet. It
Speaker 3: was still probably about ten years before that, so they
Speaker 3: called it the to Jethrow Tolls de Light the Aquaalong.
Speaker 2: Now I had an idea, and I don't know, maybe
Speaker 2: I can convince you right here and we'll go back
Speaker 2: and edit this part out of anytime we said aqualogue.
Speaker 2: Just playing that one little riff, Yeah, exactly. I think
Speaker 2: that we could get away with it. After hearing the
Speaker 2: intellectual property episode, I think we could get away with
Speaker 2: just that little bit.
Speaker 3: Well, at the very least, you could play my mouth version,
Speaker 3: because that's pretty and clear.
Speaker 2: All right, we'll look into it in the edit.
Speaker 3: It's funny our old pal friend of the show, Paula Tompkins,
Speaker 3: every time the word aquaalong comes up, he gets upset,
Speaker 3: well not upset, but makes a point of why did
Speaker 3: Jethro Tol put that one line in there? It snot
Speaker 3: as running down as notes. That line really bugs him,
Speaker 3: does it? Yeah, it's pretty funny.
Speaker 2: I've not heard that one. Yeah, anytime I think of
Speaker 2: Paula F. Tompkins, I think Kik Cake Boss.
Speaker 3: It's good stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they didn't call it scuba yet, Custa didn't. They
Speaker 2: call it the aqua Loong like you said, right, And
Speaker 2: but it was the same thing. It was what you
Speaker 2: if you go and take up this of scuba now,
Speaker 2: it's essentially what you're doing, like what Cousteau was using.
Speaker 2: And the reason it caught on is because he made
Speaker 2: a movie called The Silent World that was released in
Speaker 2: what fifty six, nineteen fifty six, and it was an oscar.
Speaker 2: It was an amazing documentary and I was watching Hi,
Speaker 2: I'm like, Wow, there's some amazing wreck diving scenes in there,
Speaker 2: but it's also hilarious. One guy like pulls the door
Speaker 2: off of the hinges of a shipwreck to get into
Speaker 2: the shipwreck. They're just totally like vandalizing this ship.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But I was also at the same time thinking, like
Speaker 2: all that audiences have never seen something like this.
Speaker 3: That's it. That was the ticket with Silent World, that
Speaker 3: was there had not been a lot of underwater photography
Speaker 3: and it blew mines in nineteen fifty six. Not only
Speaker 3: did it when the Oscar it was the first Golden
Speaker 3: Palm winner, it can for a documentary. Yeah, and stayed
Speaker 3: that way until Michael Moore won for Fahrenheit nine to eleven.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, and it grossed in today thirty three million bucks.
Speaker 3: Oh not bab as a documentary. That's a theatrical doc
Speaker 3: that's really really good money for sure. And also just
Speaker 3: to finish up on going on. Sure, he was not
Speaker 3: happy with that first version, so in fifty eight he
Speaker 3: finally released what was called the Aqua Master Regulator and
Speaker 3: sold a million of those up until like nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 3: That was like the go to regulator, gotcha.
Speaker 2: So yeah, these guys essentially created the recreational version of scuba,
Speaker 2: introduced it to the world through The Silent World, and
Speaker 2: sat back and took kudos from that point on. And
Speaker 2: if you watch The Silent World, it bears a strong
Speaker 2: resemblance to The Life Aquatic with Steve Zizu.
Speaker 3: No mistake.
Speaker 2: And one other thing about Jacques Cousteau, I didn't realize
Speaker 2: he worked for the French Resistance as a matter of
Speaker 2: fact during World War Two.
Speaker 3: Well, Dave, we're gonna have to do one on him
Speaker 3: because Dave sent us this material. It was like, please please, please,
Speaker 3: let me do one on Jacks and we went. Now.
Speaker 2: Speaking of Dave, also Chuck. You know he has his podcast,
Speaker 2: Bible Time Machine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's about Bible stuff, but you don't have to
Speaker 3: like you know, it's from like a historical perspective.
Speaker 2: It's highly accessible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. I know.
Speaker 2: But he had a blockbuster guest on the other day. Actually,
Speaker 2: I think it came out a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 2: He had John Cleese and he interviewed him about the
Speaker 2: life of Brian John Cleese.
Speaker 3: How did that happen? I couldn't get a John Cleese
Speaker 3: on movie Crush.
Speaker 2: I don't know how. They must have their ministers or
Speaker 2: friends or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was great, So big congrats to Dave on
Speaker 3: the John cleece epp exactly.
Speaker 2: And if you like John Cleese and you like Dave,
Speaker 2: go listen to him talking to one another.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Shall we take a break.
Speaker 2: I think it's high time we finally made it through
Speaker 2: the first section.
Speaker 3: All right, we'll be right back. All right, So we're back,
Speaker 3: and we're going to talk a little bit about the
Speaker 3: different types of scuba diving that you can do. There's
Speaker 3: the aforementioned open water diving that you talked about. That is,
Speaker 3: you know, it's the most common one. It's what you
Speaker 3: think about when you think about going on vacation, somebody
Speaker 3: taking you out in a boat, throwing that gear on
Speaker 3: you and saying, have a lot of fun, everybody.
Speaker 2: But it can also it doesn't have to take place
Speaker 2: on vacation or even in a tropical locale, or even
Speaker 2: in like a sea or an ocean. It can take
Speaker 2: place in a lake. Sure, it can take place in
Speaker 2: a quarry as long as I think that I'm not kidding,
Speaker 2: as as long as there's no what they call ceiling
Speaker 2: over you, there's nothing between you and the surface of
Speaker 2: the water, that's considered open water diving. And that's the
Speaker 2: far and away the most common recreational diving.
Speaker 3: That's right. And you can go down if you're certified,
Speaker 3: and we'll get to the certification. You can go down
Speaker 3: to one hundred feet with your advanced open water certification.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well with the main one, the first one that
Speaker 2: you get, just the regular open water diving certification at
Speaker 2: sixty feet.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I wasn't sure if that was official. You
Speaker 3: got to go back for the extra forty feet. You
Speaker 3: want an extra forty it's gonna cost you.
Speaker 2: So there's also night diving is another one fun, same thing,
Speaker 2: but at night, and there's apparently a whole different world
Speaker 2: out there in the ocean at night, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I love so swimming at night in the ocean,
Speaker 3: but I can't do it.
Speaker 2: I just like, I'm just I'm scared of dark water.
Speaker 3: I get it, dude. Even an ocean swimming person like
Speaker 3: myself was out in this water last week at night
Speaker 3: and fine, having fun, but at a certain point I
Speaker 3: was like, huh and then it's like I'll just casually
Speaker 3: swim back in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I would have started out with that, huh, Right,
Speaker 2: It took me a little while. Yeah, but it does
Speaker 2: sound pretty cool. Like if you're not afraid of dark water,
Speaker 2: then of course just that would be a great time
Speaker 2: to scuba dive. It's a little more dangerous though than
Speaker 2: regular open water diving because you can get lost very easily.
Speaker 2: So most of the time you're tethered to the boat,
Speaker 2: so you can find your way back.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: What about drift diving? This sounds like you did the
Speaker 2: reverse of this snorkeling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, drift diving is you know, oceans have those strong currents,
Speaker 3: or certainly if you're in a river, and I think
Speaker 3: the point of drift diving is to get dropped into
Speaker 3: one of these currents and off you go.
Speaker 2: Like those sea turtles and finding Nemo.
Speaker 3: Yeah were they sea turtles?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were riding like that underwater current. It was
Speaker 2: like a highway that you could get on and.
Speaker 3: Just zip off. I haven't seen that in a while.
Speaker 2: I haven't either, but apparently it made a really strong
Speaker 2: impression on it.
Speaker 3: It sounds like it.
Speaker 2: So it's cool because you don't have to expend as
Speaker 2: much energy, which is like, well, who cares. Actually scuba
Speaker 2: diving requires a lot of energy. It's really hard work,
Speaker 2: so to save yourself any effort or energy is pretty great.
Speaker 2: And then also because you're working hard, you're breathing harder,
Speaker 2: so you're actually using more oxygen without a current than
Speaker 2: you are with a current, which means you can conceivably
Speaker 2: stay down longer because you.
Speaker 3: Have more air. Yeah. That sounds great, Sure it does.
Speaker 2: That's why people love it.
Speaker 3: You got technical diving, which is an umbrella term for
Speaker 3: most kinds of advanced diving that we're going to continue
Speaker 3: to talk about here, and maybe we should just talk
Speaker 3: about those because most of these next few fall under
Speaker 3: technical diving, first of which is wreck diving. You can
Speaker 3: go out and swim around a legit sunken battleship or ship,
Speaker 3: either one that was naturally sunk or well nothing naturally
Speaker 3: sinks I guess like that, or so not supposed to
Speaker 3: at least, but you know, like one that was sunk
Speaker 3: in battle or one you know. Now, they go out
Speaker 3: there and don't use PBC like I saw, right, I
Speaker 3: saw these little PBC pyramids. They will sink a full
Speaker 3: ship and say, all right, do your work coral, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and they do it to form coral reefs. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, also it's just something interesting for
Speaker 2: divers to come look at too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I don't think you're I think you've got
Speaker 3: to be pretty advanced. Actually, if you want to swim
Speaker 3: through like the kitchen or something like that, Yeah, generally
Speaker 3: you're just sort of swimming around it, right.
Speaker 2: You can do just regular basic open water certification diving
Speaker 2: around it, like you said, on top of it. When
Speaker 2: you want to go in it, you better add several
Speaker 2: years to your diving experience. It's it's extraordinarily dangerous because
Speaker 2: there's all in a shipwreck, there's all all sorts of
Speaker 2: things you get caught on and get stuck on. You
Speaker 2: can get lost if the ship's big enough and dark enough.
Speaker 3: No, thank you exactly.
Speaker 2: And like all of the other technical diving, it has
Speaker 2: a ceiling. There's something between you and the surface that
Speaker 2: would impede you from going up to the surface if
Speaker 2: you needed to. That's when really makes it so dangerous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that sounds interesting and fun, but I'm
Speaker 3: gonna stick to no ceiling.
Speaker 2: I like watching videos of it. It makes my toes curl,
Speaker 2: but because you know, it used to be above the surface.
Speaker 3: But I wouldn't.
Speaker 2: I don't think I would want to wreck dive either,
Speaker 2: but I like watching wreck diving videos.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you got your deep diving, which requires deep dive certification,
Speaker 3: and I believe you can go down to one hundred
Speaker 3: and thirty one feet and beyond if you're you know,
Speaker 3: if you really get those certifications in order and you've
Speaker 3: got the wherewithal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think when you go and get your first
Speaker 2: deep diver certification. The most they want you to go
Speaker 2: down as one hundred and thirty feet forty meters, right,
Speaker 2: But then I think with experience and like you hook
Speaker 2: up with other deep divers, then you start going further
Speaker 2: and further down.
Speaker 3: But that's what's they make funny you at dinnert exactly.
Speaker 2: But they they I mean, just the extra thought and
Speaker 2: preparation and all the extra things that can go wrong
Speaker 2: with a deep dive. It's amazing even if there's nothing
Speaker 2: over you, between you and the surface, just being down
Speaker 2: that deep as it can be very dangerous and forty
Speaker 2: meters you're like, I mean, that doesn't seem like that deep.
Speaker 2: There's like the Titanics at like twelve thousand feet or
Speaker 2: something crazy like that. That's significant because your body's not
Speaker 2: designed to be down forty meters that many atmospheres below
Speaker 2: sea level.
Speaker 3: No, and we'll get to decompression sickness and all coming out.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about it here. How about that?
Speaker 3: Oh, that sounds like a great idea. Actually that sounds
Speaker 3: exactly as how we discussed it. Sure, so you've probably
Speaker 3: heard of the bins. Yeah, that's sort of the common
Speaker 3: name for decompression sickness. And that is a It can
Speaker 3: be pretty rough. Apparently, it can be very painful. It
Speaker 3: can be fatal, and it's caused by nitrogen bubbles. Nitrogen.
Speaker 3: Nitrogen bubbles in your blood, in your bloodstream. That's the
Speaker 3: problem with the bins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the air we breathe has like seventy eight
Speaker 2: seventy two percent nitrogeny eight seventy eight percent nitrogen, twenty
Speaker 2: one percent oxygen. The rest is trace stuff, right, and
Speaker 2: that nitrogen typically at sea level or even you know,
Speaker 2: higher than sea level. But whatever, I think, I just
Speaker 2: made this more complicated than I needed to. But then
Speaker 2: nitrogen typically goes through our body and where we expire
Speaker 2: it breathe it out, it does nothing. It doesn't react
Speaker 2: with anything. It's too hard to chemically deconstruct and use
Speaker 2: for something else. It requires too much energy, so we
Speaker 2: just pass it through. But when we're down breathing the
Speaker 2: nitrogen that stays in our body at any given time,
Speaker 2: when we're below surface, below sea level, it turns into
Speaker 2: a gas and permeates our blood stream. But as we
Speaker 2: go up, if that gas isn't absorbed slowly into our tissues,
Speaker 2: it will form bubbles, just like when you open a pop,
Speaker 2: a soda, a coke, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 2: It's inside, there's no bubbles. But when you open it
Speaker 2: up and introduce air and change the air pressure, the
Speaker 2: atmospheric pressure inside the can, all that gas turns into
Speaker 2: bubbles carbonation of CO two, carbonation, and that would be
Speaker 2: the same thing that happened in your tissues and joints.
Speaker 2: And that is not something that you want to happen.
Speaker 3: No, if you want a topo chico or a soda
Speaker 3: or a nice frothy beer, you want that then carbonated.
Speaker 3: You don't want your insides of your body carbonated.
Speaker 2: No, you definitely don't, because it's agonizing. Apparently sailors named
Speaker 2: it the bends because you be doubled over in agony.
Speaker 2: That does not sound great. And then on top of
Speaker 2: it just being extraordinarily painful, it can kill you in
Speaker 2: some some circumstances. So there's they've figured out that you
Speaker 2: actually you can stay down at a certain depth for
Speaker 2: a certain amount of time, and then if you do,
Speaker 2: you're going to have to do what are known as
Speaker 2: decompression stops on the way back up.
Speaker 3: That's right in your way. You gotta know how deep
Speaker 3: are you gotta stop when you're supposed to. You got
Speaker 3: to hang out for a little body, give your body
Speaker 3: a chance to equalize the pressure, and then you go
Speaker 3: up a little bit more and then do it again.
Speaker 3: And obviously this is all completely regulated by your dive instructor.
Speaker 3: They're telling you what to do, unless you know you're
Speaker 3: out there on your own and your like super experience,
Speaker 3: you know how to do all this stuff. But they're
Speaker 3: telling you how much time you need to spend at
Speaker 3: what depth to ascend safely. Just to give you, Dave
Speaker 3: dug up this kind of fun fact about the I
Speaker 3: think the deepest scuba dive on record was over a
Speaker 3: thousand feet by an Egyptian diver named Ahmed Geber and
Speaker 3: fourteen minutes down I imagine you just you've seen the
Speaker 3: videos of those deep divers where they just put on
Speaker 3: the gear and they have some sort of a weight
Speaker 3: and they just get dragged to like the bottom of
Speaker 3: the ocean very quickly. It took fourteen minutes to get
Speaker 3: down that deep, but it took fourteen hours to safely
Speaker 3: decompress on the way back up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just slowly. I mean, that's that's crazy.
Speaker 3: It's a long time. So yeah, a lot.
Speaker 2: Of the deeper dives, are you spend way more time
Speaker 2: doing decompression stops than you do actually doing your dive, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: So you have to like calculate this stuff. There's tables,
Speaker 2: there's dive computers that we'll talk about, but you have
Speaker 2: to before you go into the water. You need to
Speaker 2: know exactly how long you're going to be down there,
Speaker 2: exactly what depth you're going to be at, And then
Speaker 2: you have to know, based on those two factors, how
Speaker 2: well many decompression stops you have to make in at
Speaker 2: what depth back up on the way back up that
Speaker 2: you need to stop at.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Two words you're never going to hear scuba diving
Speaker 3: are wing it? That's right? You don't want to wing it? Maynah, No,
Speaker 3: you definitely don't. You got altitude diving. So if all
Speaker 3: this talk of going down, down, down and different pressures
Speaker 3: and things makes sense, then it would make sense that
Speaker 3: if you're diving in a lake, super super high above
Speaker 3: sea level, that that would change things too, and it does.
Speaker 3: If you're more than a thousand feet above sea level,
Speaker 3: it's going to be a different experience. So you know
Speaker 3: they're going to know what they're doing there too. As
Speaker 3: far as you know how you're going to decompress and
Speaker 3: going down when you're actually high up.
Speaker 2: Right, which it's strange, You're like, Okay, you're actually high up.
Speaker 2: But because you're underwater and all that extra water pressure
Speaker 2: it has apparently you're more exposed to decompression sickness at
Speaker 2: high altitude dives than you are a below sea level.
Speaker 2: You remember very famously in the Firm two things. The
Speaker 2: Firm introduced the world to red stripe beer and the
Speaker 2: awareness that you can't scuba dive and fly in the
Speaker 2: same twenty four hour period.
Speaker 3: And my cousin and my uncle who lived in Memphis
Speaker 3: at the time and were very briefly in that movie.
Speaker 2: Oh really were they the person on the beach?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: My cousin was a little girl at the time, My
Speaker 3: cousin autumn, and she was like a full screenshot of
Speaker 3: her and another kid at the big company party early on.
Speaker 3: And then my uncle Steve, who you've met that lives
Speaker 3: out near San Francisco, he had like he was trying
Speaker 3: to be an actor at the time. He had a
Speaker 3: speaking line. I think, if I'm not mistaken, he came
Speaker 3: into an office and said something about, you know.
Speaker 2: These pretzels are making me thirsty.
Speaker 3: I think that was it. Anyway, I didn't know red
Speaker 3: stripe was that in the firm, Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2: No one knew what red stripe was until then, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden it was like the Hippus beer
Speaker 2: on the planet because the.
Speaker 3: Eighties were so shallow.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's altitude diving and our little side trip
Speaker 2: on the firm. There's also cavern diving and cave diving,
Speaker 2: which are usually.
Speaker 3: Put hand in hand. Yeah, we covered those.
Speaker 2: They definitely do connect. But really, cavern diving is just
Speaker 2: not really going all the way into a cave, and
Speaker 2: once you are out of the light, you are now
Speaker 2: cave diving. If you're in the light, you're cavern diving,
Speaker 2: And so that means things like Saint OTE's and Springs
Speaker 2: qualify as cavern diving. There's easy access to the surface,
Speaker 2: whereas with cave diving.
Speaker 3: If you've gone and.
Speaker 2: Listened to that episode, there is no access to the
Speaker 2: surface and you are completely out of your mind to
Speaker 2: even try it once.
Speaker 3: That's right. It's our episode from December twenty nineteen, Cave
Speaker 3: Diving Colon Totally.
Speaker 2: Nuts yep, appropriately named.
Speaker 3: Yet Ice diving. Yeah, you can actually go dive in
Speaker 3: the cold, cold water under thick ice and go see
Speaker 3: those animals like penguins and seals and things.
Speaker 2: Apparently there's a place called Romu Quarry in Estonia that
Speaker 2: has good ice diving, but in the summer. The big
Speaker 2: draw is there's a sunken underwater prison there in the quarry.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you can swim around those bars on the
Speaker 2: on the windows and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: It's pretty neat. Oo sounds spooky, it does.
Speaker 2: So what about the gear, Chuck? If you say, Okay,
Speaker 2: I like this, I want to go ice diving, I
Speaker 2: want to go cave diving.
Speaker 3: On do it all?
Speaker 2: What do I need to get? Josh and Chuck, Well,
Speaker 2: I say, we tell everybody what to get.
Speaker 3: What do you say, Well, you got to get an
Speaker 3: oxygen tank. No, no, no, you're not supposed to say
Speaker 3: oxygen tank because it's not oxygen. It's a scuba tank
Speaker 3: or it's a cylinder. And like we said, it's filled
Speaker 3: and not with just oxygen. It's air that you breathe.
Speaker 3: You got to breathe like you normally breathe. Right, So
Speaker 3: it's going to be twenty one percent oxygen seventy eight
Speaker 3: percent nitrogen in those trace gases. They want to give
Speaker 3: you a experience like you're used to as far as
Speaker 3: breathing goes, sure, unless you do something called enriched air
Speaker 3: diving that's got thirty two percent oxygen and less nitrogen
Speaker 3: which they called nitros thirty two, and this lets you
Speaker 3: stay down there a little bit longer and you don't
Speaker 3: apparently at all, I have to make those decompression stops.
Speaker 2: I know, I'm sure that there's a depth in a time,
Speaker 2: at depth that you would have to make decompression stops,
Speaker 2: but they're there. It's much deeper and much more time
Speaker 2: before you would have to. That's my impression.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right.
Speaker 2: There's also a BCD and a BCD in addition to
Speaker 2: your tank. Your cylinder is probably the most second most
Speaker 2: important piece of equipment for scuba diving. And the reason
Speaker 2: why is because this is a little inflatable or very
Speaker 2: importantly deflatable vest that you wear that, if you use
Speaker 2: it properly, allows you to hover completely motionless, like during
Speaker 2: your dive, and if you're really good at it, you
Speaker 2: can use it to like back out of a place
Speaker 2: upward or downward. There's just a lot of really neat
Speaker 2: things you can do using this buoyancy control device. And
Speaker 2: if you can't do it, then you might start going
Speaker 2: up to the surface, you might be stuck on the bottom.
Speaker 2: It takes a lot of practice, but when you get
Speaker 2: it right, you can really gracefully and really smoothly move
Speaker 2: through the ocean.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean that's the videos you see. No one
Speaker 3: does videos of you and snorkel fins going I can't
Speaker 3: swim in these things, or my daughter crying on a boat,
Speaker 3: or somebody floating up bobbing up and down with their
Speaker 3: BCD being a pia. Yeah, exactly, you know, pia. Oh,
Speaker 3: I see it, I got it all. Just looks like
Speaker 3: all you do is just jump in that water and
Speaker 3: you're just immediately perfectly floating and meeting nemo. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think that's a really great point, Chuck, because
Speaker 2: it takes a lot of practice at this. Nobody goes
Speaker 2: into scuba diving and it's just a natural at it
Speaker 2: because we're not naturals at scuba diving. It's something you
Speaker 2: have to learn. You have to practice that, but once
Speaker 2: you do, it's very rewarding.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I look forward to it. You got your regulator
Speaker 3: which we talked about that different people help perfect over
Speaker 3: the years, and that is going to regulate that flow
Speaker 3: of the pressurized air into your mouth. They differ a
Speaker 3: little bit, but generally you have the first stage part
Speaker 3: that's the one that actually attaches to the scuba tank
Speaker 3: and is going to do that first sort of pressure
Speaker 3: reduction to make sure you're not getting blasted out. Then
Speaker 3: you've got your demand valve or the second stage that
Speaker 3: goes into the mouthpiece that you're using to breathe, and
Speaker 3: you're going to have a second mouthpiece. It's almost like
Speaker 3: a backup parachute, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a really great way to put it. If
Speaker 2: you are out on a dive with a buddy, which
Speaker 2: you always want to be on a dive with the buddy,
Speaker 2: and your buddy's air runs out, you have a second
Speaker 2: mouthpiece that accesses your air that you both can use
Speaker 2: as you start going back up. You can save your
Speaker 2: buddy's life with the additional hose pretty good.
Speaker 3: Or I'd imagine if something went wrong with your own, right.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess, but that would mean that you're actual
Speaker 2: like your mouthpiece or something broke and you could use
Speaker 2: the other one. Sure, if that happened. If something went
Speaker 2: wrong with your air, no, it would be just as
Speaker 2: useless as your other one.
Speaker 3: You know what happened when I was snorkeling what I
Speaker 3: snorkeled for a few minutes and I went to put
Speaker 3: that thing back in my mouth and it wasn't there.
Speaker 3: It fell off. I was like, hey, dude, I'm not
Speaker 3: feeling one. I can't there a do I have a
Speaker 3: mouthpiece and a snorkel? And he would no, and then
Speaker 3: he went, I see it, it's on the bottom. Let
Speaker 3: me go get it. I guess it just became a
Speaker 3: glipped or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I forgot they are I think they do come
Speaker 2: in pieces.
Speaker 3: Then well, no, this this was the tube, the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see. So you just had it attached to
Speaker 2: your mask and it just fell away.
Speaker 3: I see fell away.
Speaker 2: Speaking of masks, Chuck, By the way, you can have
Speaker 2: a single lens mask or a dual lens mask.
Speaker 3: Did you know that. Yeah, I've also got for and
Speaker 3: I was gonna take it down there, one of those
Speaker 3: full face snorkel deals, which I have used in swimming
Speaker 3: pools and they're quite fun. But I did not take it.
Speaker 3: But I do like the idea of sort of the
Speaker 3: old school single lens.
Speaker 2: I do too. But the great thing about a dual
Speaker 2: lens is if you wear glasses and you have two
Speaker 2: different prescriptions for your eyes, you can get prescription lenses
Speaker 2: for your mask, which I had one of those. It's
Speaker 2: really neat.
Speaker 3: It's helpful.
Speaker 2: Although you can also just wear contacts like a normal person.
Speaker 3: Do you still have those that mask?
Speaker 2: Don't know where it is.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't have it handy, so I'm not sure where.
Speaker 3: Well, your prescription might have changed anyone. You should just
Speaker 3: get a new one. It's true.
Speaker 2: I just wear contacts now, I could use any mask.
Speaker 3: Oh that's true. What else, Well, we got the spins.
Speaker 3: You don't call them flippers because they're going to make
Speaker 3: fun of you. So you got those fins, and they
Speaker 3: are pretty standard. They're the ones that I saw mostly
Speaker 3: were split fins, and they are just there's no getting
Speaker 3: around it. Those things are awkward to swim in if
Speaker 3: you're not used to them. I felt just like I
Speaker 3: was stepping on my It's kind of like we're in
Speaker 3: snow skis. It just felt very awkward.
Speaker 2: Well, also, in addition to being awkward, you can really
Speaker 2: accidentally tear up coral or do all sorts of stuff
Speaker 2: if you're not you know, adept at using your fins,
Speaker 2: or you're not aware of where your body is. So
Speaker 2: it is, it is. It's not just you to add
Speaker 2: trouble with fins.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my toe on my left foot kept cramping up too.
Speaker 2: Man, It's not a terrible experience.
Speaker 3: It was. It was great once I took those things off,
Speaker 3: so one of them.
Speaker 2: So, scuba diving is a very expensive hobby. It's an
Speaker 2: expensive upfront, it's expensive during, it's expensive after. It's just
Speaker 2: an expensive hobby. And one of the things that has
Speaker 2: the most expense is a one time well expense is
Speaker 2: your dive computer.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's essentially a giant watch that gives you all the
Speaker 2: data you need for your dive. And I saw I
Speaker 2: did not know this, but Apple has one coming out
Speaker 2: called the Oceanic Plus, which looks pretty awesome. It's probably
Speaker 2: going to be a million dollars. But there's much more
Speaker 2: like affordable dive computers slash watches available and they're all
Speaker 2: going to basically tell you the same stuff, right I hope.
Speaker 3: So, I mean they're going to tell you, you know,
Speaker 3: how deep you are, how deep it gets below you,
Speaker 3: how much air you've got in that tank, how cold
Speaker 3: or hot the water is, your compress your decompression status.
Speaker 3: This is the Yeah, like all the it just says chili.
Speaker 3: You know, all the stuff that you need to know
Speaker 3: about your ascension when you're going back up to the
Speaker 3: top is going to be there. And you know, as
Speaker 3: far as whether or not to invest is a purchase
Speaker 3: with all this stuff, it's up to you. Like I would,
Speaker 3: I would say, go out and give it a shot.
Speaker 3: And if you really really love it, and it's the
Speaker 3: kind of thing where you're like, well, hey, I know
Speaker 3: every year we go to this island, and you know,
Speaker 3: it might be worth it to go ahead and invest
Speaker 3: in buying your own stuff. Probably not the tanks and
Speaker 3: all that, but the mask and the snorkel and the
Speaker 3: fins and maybe a dive watch and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the dive watch also. I mean, like if
Speaker 2: you're going on a dive that's you know, led by somebody,
Speaker 2: that dive master is probably going to have the dive
Speaker 2: computer and you don't really need your own because the
Speaker 2: dive master is going to tell you where you go
Speaker 2: and win. But I mean they're pretty slick apparently they'll
Speaker 2: tell you to slow down if you're a sending too fast,
Speaker 2: where to stop, when to stop. It's just it's pretty neat.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine what they did before dive computers. It
Speaker 2: just must have been exponentially more dangerous than it is
Speaker 2: today with dive.
Speaker 3: Computers, I would imagine. And as far as investment goes,
Speaker 3: the same goes for your wetsuit, even if it's you know,
Speaker 3: if you're going down, even if the water it's a
Speaker 3: hot day and the water feels warm, it can you
Speaker 3: know the water's gonna get colder, and you may want
Speaker 3: that wetsuit and you wetsuits are awkward and weird too, so,
Speaker 3: but they work if you find it. If you find
Speaker 3: a good wetsuit that fits, and you're going to be
Speaker 3: doing it a lot, maybe buy your wetsuit. Yes, and
Speaker 3: I mean, or if you don't like putting your stuff
Speaker 3: in things that other people's stuff has been in.
Speaker 2: Here exactly because those are very tight fitting for a reason.
Speaker 2: You let a little water in there, and then your
Speaker 2: body warms the water, and the warm water keeps your
Speaker 2: body warm in return. They work really well. There's also
Speaker 2: the dry suit for water below fifty degrees and you
Speaker 2: might say, well, then when do you need a wetsuit?
Speaker 2: Apparently water is warm as eighty degrees farent height can
Speaker 2: give you hypothermia if you're in there long enough.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so even if the water feels warm and you
Speaker 2: get in, you still probably want a wetsuit while you're
Speaker 2: scuba diving.
Speaker 3: We mentioned the rebreather earlier that was sort of invented
Speaker 3: early on by Lambertson but then perfected later. But this
Speaker 3: is what you do if you don't well for a
Speaker 3: few reasons, but one reason, if you don't want those
Speaker 3: bubbles coming out, you can get a rebreather. That is
Speaker 3: exactly what it sounds like. It's going to capture the
Speaker 3: air that you're exhaling, scrub that CO two off of it,
Speaker 3: and then add back in the oxygen to make it
Speaker 3: breathable air again. And you know the military disease. If
Speaker 3: you're an underwater photographer, you might want to use these,
Speaker 3: and it allows you to dive longer, and you know,
Speaker 3: if you want to stay down there for a while,
Speaker 3: rebreather might be for you. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Apparently the record of staying down using a rebreather is
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty five hours. My guy named Saddam
Speaker 2: al Kalini. Yeah, pretty pretty impressive. So I say we
Speaker 2: take our second break and come back and talk a
Speaker 2: little bit more about scuba. Okay, Chuck. So if you
Speaker 2: are going to go scuba diving and you don't have
Speaker 2: a certification, you go get in the water, the scuba
Speaker 2: police will probably arrest.
Speaker 3: You no matter where you are in the world.
Speaker 2: True or false.
Speaker 3: That's false. And it kind of surprised me that there
Speaker 3: are no laws per se or not even per se,
Speaker 3: there are no laws that you have to have a license.
Speaker 3: It's just sort of one of those things where A
Speaker 3: it's really really really really smart to do that so
Speaker 3: you know what you're doing safely, and B I would
Speaker 3: dare say almost any dive outfit in the world will
Speaker 3: require that you have that. Maybe there's some super janky ones,
Speaker 3: and I don't know if i'd get on one of
Speaker 3: those boats. If they're like, like, nah, you don't need
Speaker 3: a card, who cares? You don't want I wouldn't. I
Speaker 3: wouldn't go with that. So they're going to ask you
Speaker 3: for your card because they're.
Speaker 2: Risks even to fill up your tank. If you show up,
Speaker 2: they'll ask to see your certification your card.
Speaker 3: Oh so you don't just run off and then you know,
Speaker 3: do your own solo dive.
Speaker 2: I guess, I guess. I think it's just like they
Speaker 2: just want to make sure that nobody who isn't trained
Speaker 2: is scuba diving, and that's a good way to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so if you want to get certified, there's a few
Speaker 2: ways to do it. One of the most popular ways
Speaker 2: to do it is is called Discover Scuba, and it's
Speaker 2: a very shortened abbreviated version of the sort of certification
Speaker 2: process where you go to like a resort and you
Speaker 2: take like a less than an hour of classroom time,
Speaker 2: you go into the pool, you do a test dive,
Speaker 2: and then you go, you know, down to the beach
Speaker 2: and get in the water and scuba around. It's probably
Speaker 2: where other people are snork. It's very low risk and
Speaker 2: you're not fully certified after that, but it's enough for
Speaker 2: you to go enjoy scuba on vacation without having to
Speaker 2: go get certified first.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're not going to be super deep. You're probably
Speaker 3: not going to be out with like a good coral
Speaker 3: reef or anything either. You never know, I guess you
Speaker 3: never It depends on where it is. But you know this,
Speaker 3: we run a boat for you know, twelve thirteen minutes,
Speaker 3: like kind of hauling out into the ocean to get
Speaker 3: to this one neat or are they right off the
Speaker 3: beach Sometimes sometimes yeah, they can be what do I know?
Speaker 2: I mean that's surfers will get tangled up in coral
Speaker 2: sometimes it can be a real hazard.
Speaker 3: Well, those are deep water surfers.
Speaker 2: So that's the most basic way to get certified, and
Speaker 2: again you're not actually certified. The basic certification, the open
Speaker 2: water certification usually takes a few days to complete, at
Speaker 2: least just even the first part. There's classroom time. They
Speaker 2: call it theoretical where you're learning the thing. The guy
Speaker 2: who I took lessons from said that you spend the
Speaker 2: first hour learning how to scuba dive and the rest
Speaker 2: of the time learning how to stay alive while you
Speaker 2: scuba dive, because it's actually not that hard to scuba dive.
Speaker 2: A lot of it requires practice, like inflating your BCD
Speaker 2: and achieving neutral buoyancy, but it's really just just it's
Speaker 2: not hard to understand. It's hard to remember what to
Speaker 2: do when you're panicking underwater, so that you don't do
Speaker 2: the wrong thing, and that's really the bulk of the
Speaker 2: classroom time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going to cost you, it depends, but you
Speaker 3: know it's generally around five hundred bucks. You Again, you
Speaker 3: know you can do it whenever you want. If you
Speaker 3: want to go down on your vacation and spend time
Speaker 3: doing this, you can do that. But you're on vacation, like,
Speaker 3: it's probably smart to go ahead and get it done
Speaker 3: before you get down there, so you can just hit
Speaker 3: the water. And in every state in the country, like
Speaker 3: the least water like state in the country, has scuba
Speaker 3: classes you can take.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because again you can be certified in like a
Speaker 2: quarry and basically any state has at least a flooded quarry,
Speaker 2: if not a lake, you could be certified. And for
Speaker 2: open water you only have to be ten years old.
Speaker 2: There's no maximum age. But this is really important. If
Speaker 2: you have a pre existing condition, you want to talk
Speaker 2: to your doctor about whether or not you should scuba dive,
Speaker 2: because again, you are exerting yourself way more than you
Speaker 2: think you're going to and if you say, have a
Speaker 2: heart condition or something like that, it can actually trigger
Speaker 2: a heart.
Speaker 3: Attack in you.
Speaker 2: And even without the exertion just the difference in atmospheric
Speaker 2: pressure on your insides can accidentally trigger a heart attack
Speaker 2: in you too, So it's it's definitely not something that
Speaker 2: you want to just take lightly if you have a
Speaker 2: pre existing condition.
Speaker 3: No, I can't imagine any more terrifying than cardiac arrest.
Speaker 3: Under the ocean. That's pretty bad for sure. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: guess in the ocean. You're not under the ocean. Under
Speaker 3: the sea, so you have to know how to swim, though,
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that's a given, but we should
Speaker 3: say it. You're gonna be certified for life, which is
Speaker 3: kind of cool. You're gonna get your little card for
Speaker 3: you to misplace, and generally these days you can you
Speaker 3: can have that stuff online on apps and things like
Speaker 3: that through pa d P a d I Professional Association
Speaker 3: of Diving Instructors. That's kind of the big daddy, the
Speaker 3: Big Patty rather But there's also n aUI now E
Speaker 3: the National Association of Underwater Instructures, and also SSI Scuba
Speaker 3: Schools International, and they can all certify you. But like
Speaker 3: I said, Patty sort of the biggest one. And you're
Speaker 3: gonna spend a lot of time early on with this
Speaker 3: course learning the stuff like you've talked about, like most
Speaker 3: of this is done you can do online at your
Speaker 3: house and over the course of you know, five to
Speaker 3: ten hours, learn all the stuff. Learn the hand signals,
Speaker 3: learn the terminology, learn the equipment, and kind of all
Speaker 3: the basics that don't involve actually getting in the water.
Speaker 2: Yes, but if you have the time and the wherewithal
Speaker 2: the go take classroom instruction for the first part. Like
Speaker 2: in the classroom, you should take that opportunity because you
Speaker 2: will be hanging around the local scuba community. You'll be
Speaker 2: immersed in it, rather than showing up the first time
Speaker 2: for your what's called your confined water dive, which is
Speaker 2: essentially where you put all the stuff you learned in
Speaker 2: the classroom to use in a swimming pool in the
Speaker 2: back of the scuba shop.
Speaker 3: So you'll know them and they can say, go, Josh, you.
Speaker 2: Got this proxactly. If they don't know you, they'll be like,
Speaker 2: you probably have this.
Speaker 3: We can't really say either way. Yeah, I have no
Speaker 3: emotional attachment to you though, so either fail or pass,
Speaker 3: I don't care.
Speaker 2: So I told you early on that having like just
Speaker 2: even a little bit of water over your head while
Speaker 2: you're breathing underwater is amazing and that's your first experience,
Speaker 2: and that confine water dive in the swimming pool, it's amazing.
Speaker 2: It's also kind of boring because they're like, what does
Speaker 2: this hand signal mean? Or show me how you can
Speaker 2: inflate or deflate your BCD that kind of stuff. You're
Speaker 2: just showing that you know what to do as a novice.
Speaker 2: And then after that, if you pass that part, you
Speaker 2: go do your open water dives, which is the real deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like you said at the very beginning, you
Speaker 3: need to get four to six of those under your belt,
Speaker 3: depending on the certification program. You've only done the one,
Speaker 3: but they don't all have to be in the ocean.
Speaker 3: You don't have to wait un till you go to
Speaker 3: the Bahamas or whatever. You can do that at a
Speaker 3: nearby lake or that what do you keep talking about,
Speaker 3: the reservoir quarry, the Quary's You can do it there
Speaker 3: if you know that they have it set up there.
Speaker 3: And basically you're just gonna practice with someone there, learning
Speaker 3: how to get that ear pressure equalized and like you said,
Speaker 3: the buoyancy and just kind of getting it all down
Speaker 3: pat because what you're really looking to do when you
Speaker 3: finally go out to that coral reef is not be
Speaker 3: hassled and feel very comfortable and at ease and know
Speaker 3: what you're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of people do the classroom and
Speaker 2: the confined water dive at home and then go do
Speaker 2: their open water dives on vacation. So you can start
Speaker 2: at the coral reef if you want. But what you're
Speaker 2: saying makes a lot of else as well too. For sure.
Speaker 2: There's a big question about all this. And from what
Speaker 2: I read, the certifying companies or agencies or whatever they're called,
Speaker 2: the bodies, they don't like to talk about the inherent
Speaker 2: risks of scuba like they acknowledge it is a risky activity.
Speaker 2: It's riskier than staying at home knitting, but it's probably
Speaker 2: even riskier than is generally thought of. It's a dangerous
Speaker 2: thing to do, and you should know that going into it.
Speaker 3: For sure. Yeah, I mean not to scare anyone off.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm trying to scare people off.
Speaker 3: Danger is relative term. It's a relative term. But about
Speaker 3: one hundred people in North America die annually scuba diving,
Speaker 3: compared to forty six people last ski season in the US.
Speaker 3: But there are a lot more skiers than scuba divers,
Speaker 3: So that's about one hundred I'm sorry, another one hundred
Speaker 3: internationally scuba diving. So that's a fatality every two hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dives compared to a fatality per one million skiers.
Speaker 2: But the scarier way to look at it is that
Speaker 2: fatality rate is three point four to four point two
Speaker 2: per one hundred thousand divers because many divers go on
Speaker 2: more than one dive a year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I mean that's a low number to me still,
Speaker 3: But like I said, everyone has their own risk tolerance.
Speaker 2: It is apparently if you go scuba diving and you
Speaker 2: aren't alone, you're with somebody who knows what they're doing,
Speaker 2: and that person that's taking you, the dive master, is
Speaker 2: not a risk taker, you're probably.
Speaker 3: Going to be totally fine.
Speaker 2: It's it's the foolishness is what skews those numbers, because
Speaker 2: something like forty percent of scuba fatalities came after a
Speaker 2: diver got separated from their buddy, and an additional fourteen
Speaker 2: percent came from people who were on solo dives like
Speaker 2: they didn't they purposely didn't go with anybody, They just
Speaker 2: went and scuba dive by themselves. That is a very dumb,
Speaker 2: reckless thing to do going dives. Fifty yeah, fifty four
Speaker 2: percent was these people didn't have a buddy with them.
Speaker 2: So if you have a buddy with you scuba diving,
Speaker 2: which they say you always should have, like that just
Speaker 2: completely changes your risk exposure just based on those statistics.
Speaker 3: And they don't even have to be your buddy.
Speaker 2: No, they're just called that. You can really dislike each other.
Speaker 2: As long as they don't want to actively harm you,
Speaker 2: you're probably going to be safe with them.
Speaker 3: I mean, I would want someone to like me, at
Speaker 3: least they we don't have to be best friends, but
Speaker 3: at least pretend, right, Yeah, like I want them. I
Speaker 3: want to know that they care about me.
Speaker 2: Well, OK, all right, that's a lot to ask. Okay,
Speaker 2: I do have one more thing before we go. I
Speaker 2: know we've gone really really long. But one of the
Speaker 2: things that as a common cause of death or at
Speaker 2: least injury is something you wouldn't think of. If you're
Speaker 2: panicking and you like say your air runs out, you're triggered,
Speaker 2: you start swimming upward. First of all, you can get
Speaker 2: the bends, but you're probably holding your breath because you're underwater.
Speaker 2: That's what your body and your brain tells you to do.
Speaker 2: That's a terrible thing to do because as you get
Speaker 2: closer to the surface, your lungs are filled with air,
Speaker 2: and that air is now expanding beyond the capacity of
Speaker 2: your lungs, so you can pop your lungs. You can
Speaker 2: also create bubbles that go into your arteries and creates
Speaker 2: uh and it's it's just a bad jam. So there's
Speaker 2: actually something called the SISA, which is a controlled emergency
Speaker 2: swimming ascent where you basically swim upward slowly as your
Speaker 2: panic mind can do while you're exhaling the whole way,
Speaker 2: so that when you reach the surface, you don't have
Speaker 2: a lung full of air.
Speaker 3: Pretty neat, Pretty neat. Baby's Got the Bins. That's a
Speaker 3: great album name. I think Radiohead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Baby's Got the Bens. It was the It was
Speaker 2: the EP that followed Okay.
Speaker 3: Computer No, the Bins was their full length LP.
Speaker 2: I know, this is the EP that they were testing
Speaker 2: all the material out on.
Speaker 3: Oh Okay, I Got you Okay. So I just couldn't
Speaker 3: figure out if you knew it was an actual song.
Speaker 2: I did, but I'd forgotten when I was making the joke.
Speaker 2: So for all intents and purposes, I didn't know. Uh,
Speaker 2: you got anything else?
Speaker 3: Just one more radiohead test, let's hear it. No I
Speaker 3: got nothing.
Speaker 2: Okay, that means then it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 3: Just a couple of kombucha corrections for us. This is
Speaker 3: someone named Frederick over By Peterson overb overb Okay, how
Speaker 3: do you know that?
Speaker 2: Because there's a really great reporter named Peter Overbe, and
Speaker 2: I think there's also I think his brother Dennis overbye
Speaker 2: maybe and they spell it that way.
Speaker 3: Be whitey okay? Well, and also probably so people don't
Speaker 3: say overbye, right.
Speaker 2: I'm sure kids say it anyway, but you know.
Speaker 3: I'm sure they do. So. Frederick brews kombucha for friends
Speaker 3: and family and wanted to share a few things that
Speaker 3: we got wrong. But very sweetly, Frederick just says, are
Speaker 3: worth adding. You don't need a Scobe to start, guys.
Speaker 3: Store bought kimbucha is actually enough if you brew your
Speaker 3: sweet tea and let it cool down, and then add
Speaker 3: a little bit of store bought kombucha drink to the tea.
Speaker 3: The kombucha you add, we'll start eating the sugar. Inform
Speaker 3: as Scobe seemingly from nowhere. So nice because it makes
Speaker 3: it super easy to get started and you don't have
Speaker 3: to seek out that Scoby from your neighborhood social media pick.
Speaker 3: That's pretty cool. And not all kombucha is related. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: all this is as beautiful as it might have been. Guys,
Speaker 3: they are not a scoby's form when making some kinds
Speaker 3: of vinegar. When making homemade apple cider vinegar, for example,
Speaker 3: a scoby can form on the top. Now, I never
Speaker 3: managed to make my own scoby from scratch, but I've
Speaker 3: seen it several places and many guides on how to
Speaker 3: do it. But it's not as easy as making kombucha.
Speaker 3: And that is Frederick Overbe Peterson.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Frederic. First of all, great name, very stately. Secondly,
Speaker 2: thank you for all the information that was great info
Speaker 2: to If you want to be like Frederick Overbe Peterson,
Speaker 2: then you can get in touch with this like they
Speaker 2: did by email. Send us an email to Stuff Podcasts
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
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