welcome to our google+ hangout
celebrating 125 years of National
Geographic a new age of exploration
starts now hello everyone we are very
excited to have you join us for this
special 125th anniversary of National
Geographic we’re celebrating with a
first for this Google hangout the first
time we’ve been linked to all seven
continents we’ve got National Geographic
explorers around the world would be
talking to and you will have a chance to
ask them questions National Geographic
started 125 years ago this very day on
our mission to inspire people to care
about the planet I’m Boyd Matson and i’m
moderating this i’m a writer journalist
explorer for National Geographic I have
not been here for all 125 years but for
a good portion of the last 20 and we
want to take you around the world now to
meet the people that have been there
some for a very long time and some very
new explorers because the future of
exploration the best part is still ahead
that’s what we’re celebrating a new age
of exploration as well as what we have
accomplished at this point we have dr.
Robert Ballard in the United States
under sea explorer joining us Jane
Goodall is here primatologist one of our
earliest National Geographic grantees
has been doing major work on protecting
and understanding chimpanzees we are
joined by Cecilia Mauricio in Peru one
of our newest archaeologists studying
past cultures and what we can learn
about the interaction between cultures
and climate Corinth occurrence
conservation biologists in India she’s
in bangalore but usually she’s out to
tracking Tigers around India Paula
kahoon boot in from Kenya follows the
director of wildlife direct and also
worked with our big cat initiative and
Mike Archer in Australia paleo biologist
who studies dinosaurs of fossil remains
including dinosaur poop I know you’re
going to have some question about
fossilized poop we also have a link to
Antarctica where our Crittercam team is
though getting that link up they’ll be
joining us shortly in the Google hangout
and we’ll be taking your quest
and so if you want to send two men you
can join us by sending questions ins on
twitter youtube or google+ new hashtag
nat geo 125 hashtag mattg or 125 with
your questions and as I said exploration
is really still out there the best part
of it and you might ask well what’s left
to explore we’ve been doing this for a
hundred and twenty-five years and people
were doing it even before so Bob what’s
left that we don’t know about that we
haven’t seen on this planet well you
know ironically most of the planet
itself I feel we’re just beginning our
explorations are starting to accelerate
with our ships of exploration now and I
expect the next generation to explore
more of Earth than all previous
generations combined using this new
advanced technology and Jane Baba course
knows that he’s in an area where a lot
of people haven’t been if you’re
exploring the ocean but what about on
land are there new things that people
can look forward to seeing or do you
just go back to old places and learn new
information about what we’re familiar
with well I think you know a lot of
young students asked me what there is
left to learn about and after fifty-plus
years we’re still learning you didn’t
the same group of chimpanzees using new
technology to learn about you can you
can on the file their genetics from DNA
samples and learn who the fathers are
but then you know just need to book
about plums and down under the soil is a
whole new world of bacteria we know
nothing about one place that we haven’t
done a lot of exploring just because of
the harsh conditions is Antarctica so we
were trying to get up the connection we
have now got the guys our Crittercam
team I see them sitting down in
Antarctica we’ve got Greg Marshall who
is the developer of the critter cam
Tyler Abernathy who does a lot of the
scientific work on the cameras making
them smaller and lighter and putting
them on different animals in Doug Krause
who is doing some leopard seal research
in Antartica hey Greg is it cold
is it cold down there guys okay Greg why
don’t you go to your white Greg go to
your computer I think you’re on mute hit
the mute button there on the computer
we’re seeing your lips move but we’re
not hearing you talk here we are in
great technology and right Eddie giveth
now we hear you so we we just got back
from our first leopard seal recapture
and we recovered our first Kirk an
appointment so what or a little a little
hot sweaty even though it’s very cold
down here this is just a little jogging
is that the critic am that you had on
the leopard seal that you’re holding up
is that the size of what you put on it
this is yeah this is the one we just
recovered and it ran over night last
night we’re trying to look at her
underwater behavior at night or hunting
behavior at night I would say you’re
working in an area where we’re really
seeing the most advances in exploration
and that’s developing new technology so
we can go back to something familiar and
and see it in a new way and following a
leopard seal where it goes it’s been
impossible before they’re fast
underwater and they’re going deep and
now we just put the camera on them and
let them take the pictures that it
absolutely this just just was not
possible before but because of you know
the investment that we make a National
Geographic the engines you can guarantee
that we work with we’re able to take
these cameras now and then ride into the
world will examine whether it’s leopard
seals or blue whales or emperor penguins
it really gives us this amazing new
insight into their behavioral ecology
that we’ve never had a chance to look at
the floor it’s only possible because of
this innovative new techno we get a lot
of questions coming in from people about
what’s left on the earth to explore
which we were hitting at before and Mike
and Australia you’re going over land and
Jane alluded to this when she said we
need to dig under the earth and that’s
what you do yeah sometimes you Thank You
mainland are you finding dinosaurs we
didn’t even know existed we’re finding
Crete
is that that leave the dinosaurs for
dead one of the the things that excites
me most apart from being in a place like
Australia where within a half an hour I
can be walking and exploring areas that
no European has ever set food on before
but certainly going into the past opens
up four dimensional worlds that we have
been even for practical purposes begun
to explore compared with the modern
world you’ve talked about finding an
amazing prehistoric creature a crocodile
we’re familiar with crocodiles but this
one climbs trees yeah some people think
that Australia’s full of reasons to be
horrified about going camping today but
back in time about 50 million years and
you wanted a really big our dad on
because these guys they were vicious
sort of dinosaur berean like crocodiles
with long recurved teeth but they
weren’t in the water staring at you they
were behind you in the forest or worse
as you say boid some of these guys were
actually in the trees ready to drop on
you from overhead the original drop
crops we had him a crocodile a giant
crocodile climbing trees if you thought
Australia had the frightening creatures
before you should have been there what
30 million years ago you would have
really been scared a terrific
exploration in the future is is going to
be done in ways that we didn’t think if
it’s not always going to be putting on
khaki and a pith helmet and going out
into the jungle oh you’re in a very
populated country in India and so how do
you keep the animals that are wild and
the billion people happy and living and
living side by side in a very crowded
area so where I work in the Western
God’s we have the highest number of
tigers and elephants in the world but we
also have 40 million people living aside
tigers and elephants and I think our big
reason why we have this is cultural
tolerance that we find in people so I
think you know going forward we need to
find ways to make sure that you you know
you address this tolerance and make sure
people’s tolerance for wildlife remains
and
sans tips because I don’t see any other
country in this world with this many
people still holding on to some of the
most spectacular species on the planet I
just reminded everyone on our Google+
Hangout that we’ve got National
Geographic explorers on all seven
continents we’ve got Africa with Paula
Cahoon bucher it you just heard from is
in India we’ve got our critter cam team
live in antarctica Bob Ballard undersea
explore in the United States Jane
Goodall in England primatologist we got
Mike Archer you’ve heard from a
paleontologist in Australia Cecilia
Mauricio archaeologists in Peru and so
we’re very excited to have all these
people together sisir you’re one of our
newer National Geographic explorers and
yet you’re looking back in time instead
of looking to the future you when you’re
when you’re digging to pre-inca cultures
you find things that will be beneficial
to how we go forward as a civilization
it’s a serious that is the past giving
us an insight into our present and our
future yes no actually my research it’s
about have to do with our actually jeje
early and environmental studies to
understand the processes of landscape
and archaeological sites in my case in
the recent where I am working there
right now it’s an ideological area 5,000
years old and the idea is to understand
why this population was there at the
time was the environment different and
because right now the data environment
is very dry very hostile for human
living so the idea is understand why and
what were the processes and and the
dynamics and the resources not swelling
Kootra that may be for all this
development development are possible so
I’m finding that what we see is not what
the last place a thousand years so 5,000
years old so that environment have to
get into a lot of processes
probably no that is not there was there
before like sharks and sea lions things
like that so it’s a whole work that is
therein we need to get up and Paula
you’re looking at our current
environment in Kenya about sort of like
what’s going on in India how people and
wildlife can coexist in Africa of course
the big part of the economy in Kenya is
making sure that the tourists come and
they want to make sure they’re still
reliance there you don’t have as many
people to deal with but how do you
convince the people that it’s good for
you to have lions is a neighbor well
Boyd Africa is a continent that is only
very recently in really taking charge of
its natural resources and problem facing
my life is just the same as what’s
happened all across the rest of the
world human development threatened my
life everywhere but it exists with while
I track what we’re trying to do is to
say yes these credible megafauna of
Africa these amazing landscapes
wilderness areas do need to be protected
and it requires a global commitment and
global action and that’s what we do with
wildlife Drake don’t working just
outside of the city of Harry I interact
with a local community of mass you
traditionally lowlands and just
yesterday we met a family that had lost
one of their sheep to lions and we’re
engaging with this community and
encouraging innovation from the people
themselves and we have a 14 year old boy
who has invented this amazing simple
light flashing system that keeps lands
away from his father’s homestead in this
simple mechanism that cost him ten
dollars to put together when he was 11
years old has now just spread right
across Kenya so what we’ve done is
actually not just provided a solution
but demonstrated that the local
community themselves actually has
delusions and so we’re moving towards
really encouraging recognizing and
rewarding a local innovation to an Asian
communities that we need wallah sounds
like he may be one of our newest
National Geographic explorers a 14 year
old boys to developed uh
on his own with no instructions or
school books or computer access to learn
how to do this develop a light system to
scare away the Lions we’re getting
questions in Jane you you spent your
life studying chimpanzees but Lauren on
google wants to know have you ever
thought what you might have done had you
not been an explorer had you not
dedicated your life to studying these
primates I would have been studying some
kind of animal because that’s what I
wanted to do from a well just that when
I was born so I’m quite sure I’d have
been studying some kind of animal but of
course one of the main things I’m doing
now let’s exactly back to the last talk
conversation that is working with young
people you around the world are in 132
countries now we have a group in in
Tanzania that are keeping elephants away
by smearing crushed up ready eppa and
elephant dung on the fences around the
crops and it’s actually eating your
plants away we got a question in from
Joe in Florida a Bob I’ll direct this to
you he said have you ever had a moment
exploring where you thought wow I might
not make it out of this situation well I
must say in my my early years of
exploration I was a perhaps a little
more reckless than I am now and I was
lucky to dodge the bullet a number of
times and enough time said I’m no I’m
not pushing so hard as I used to and I
must say that the the robotic technology
has made my kind of business working at
20,000 feet beneath the sea a lot safer
so I would say the technology came in
just women needed hey Bob you gotta
share with which we’re looking at some
footage now of your your new technology
where you send the robotic platforms
down with cameras and grasping arms and
you don’t have to go down yourself but
in the only way to be on the I don’t
even have to be on the ship anymore I
can actually do it all from
from home I can do it on my iphone I
still love it going out into the field
and I always will but I can now explore
much much more by actually staying home
now but I want you to share what it was
like in the bath of staff when you went
down in the little steel ball deep to
the bottom of the ocean and we’re
looking for deep-sea vents and things
what was it like being inside of that
going down tens of thousands of feet
well it can be scary I mean everything’s
fine when everything’s working it’s when
things don’t work that it gets scary and
then all of a sudden you realize you’re
really in a coffin with a little peep
hole in it and you’re you know you’ve
got six hours to get out of there and so
it can get very scary it’s certainly
cold yeah well what I did what had a
long time tell me about the time that
things did not go well and you hear the
creaking and noise and you’re not sure
you’re going to get back up well we were
diving in the Cayman trough on a bath of
scath and we were falling very fast and
we thought the bottom wasn’t near us yet
because we didn’t realize we were coming
down on the side of a giant volcano and
we weren’t picking it up on our sonar
and we actually just crashed into it and
that ruptured our flotation tank and all
of our floatation gasoline started
coming out we were basically bleeding
and we had to get out of there as fast
as we could but it took us six hours to
escape and that whole time we were we
were pretty quiet there’s not much to
say at that moment but hanging on will
we make it to the surface Greg in
Antarctica we just sort of threw that
out you’ve been attaching cameras to
leopard seals but people may not know a
leopard seal it’s not like the seal they
might have seen bouncing a ball off its
nose it’s a big carnivore and it can
come after you so have you ever had one
of them charged
well as it turns out i haven’t had a
leopard seals charged me this happened a
year or two ago I was working on the
other side of the Antarctic down that
law in the law suite i was i was
actually filming at this particular time
when leopard seal solving from quite a
ways away and i knew that was going to
be interested in me awesome about three
seconds later it launched himself out of
the water right at me and fortunately it
hit my tripod knocked my camera or
knocked me over but i was able to roll
away from it before it got a little too
interested that set and a leopard seal
what is that weigh 400 pounds well oh no
leopard seals a thousand pounds 1200
what’s the biggest one you seen the one
we were working on today was about 1,200
pounds and two the biggest one was close
to 1,500 pound wow so this is like a WWF
move where the leopard seal launches
itself into your face and then you roll
away so how do you catch them and put a
camera on is you normally just
incredible animal thing of these
absolutely huge nose so and kyler your
job is to be the guy who has to go and
attach the camera how do you do that
they’re your we got film of you putting
one on a whale we’re using a long pole
that’s when you need a ten-foot pole but
what do you do for the seal yeah well be
nice if we could use a ten-foot pole
with the seals unfortunately mankind a
way to do it yet so we’re taking the
critter cams we zip tie some mesh I just
a nylon mesh to the critic am and then
we epoxy the mesh into the fur on the
seals back I don’t hurt them it’s not
right on their skin it’s just we’re
using the fur to walk into the mesh with
a the epoxy but that means you have to
catch the seal first you have to hold it
down while you’re glue a camera oh yeah
there’s there’s a little bit hiccup in
that there yeah there was a step you
missed i think and doug is that why
you’re there to catch the leopard seals
yeah that’s that’s where I’m going to
come into play we’ve got a real
interesting situation down here because
we’ve been losing ice very fast these
leopard seals are now hauling out on
land near our site and because we have
better access to them we’ve developed
over the years capture protocol which me
just minutes ago completed very safely
both for the animal and for the people
involved and yeah the name of the game
is to keep the seal calm and quiet well
while we can do our work momoi and get
out of there as fast as possible and
make sure at the end that they still
have all ten fingers and ten toes uh
I’ve got a question of 43 he’s came in
from Julia and Portugal julia says I’m
18 I want to work with animals but my
parents consider it a hobby rather than
a career do you find that people don’t
understand what you do now you’ve got a
little advantage Curitiba cuz your
father was also a conservationist in
India yeah so I’m not the typical
wildlife biologist could I saw tigers
and leopards when I was two years old
but I would you know I think this is the
typical reaction most young people face
and particularly young women because you
know you’re not taken seriously for a
long time so I would you know I would
like her to just go after this and do it
if this is what she wants to do and in
Jane when you started it was really
unusual for now we’ve got as you can see
by our who we got rounded up here on our
Google hangout we got a lot of women
researchers and explorers but when you
started you were you were pioneering
that in National Geographic gave you a
grant did you find it difficult one to
convince the other scientists and
researchers that you could do the job
and and the and the people at home like
your parents well first of all my dream
of going to Africa and living with
animals began when I was 11 everybody
laughed at me girls couldn’t do that
sort of thing we didn’t have any money
except my mother who said if you really
want something and you work hard and you
never give up you find a way so I got to
and zinnia I met Louis Leakey
he managed to find a bit of money for me
start then I saw tool using and
tool-making and the geographic came into
their first-round 291 and then supported
the work for about 10 years but the
other scientists just thought of me as a
National Geographic cover girl and I
only did what I did because I had nice
legs fortunately I didn’t really want to
be a scientist I wanted to learn about
the chimpanzee and Hugo and now it came
and of course the geographic funded his
amazing photography and filmmaking cebu
finally the scientists had to agree my
worst fight was persuading people that
it wasn’t only humans who had
personalities and minds and emotions by
the way I want to tell everybody we have
a map up if you go to our map on google
you can you can see where all of our
explorers that we’re talking with today
are where they’re located around the
world and you can just click on their
spotted and it will bring up information
you can learn more about the Explorers
you can see still photos of their work
you can see videos or their work and and
get a better understanding of what
they’re doing and and maybe pick up
ideas for yourself on how you can become
a explorer or what you might want to go
and see in the world and take your part
in the new age of exploration that we’re
launching here at National Geographic
now that we’ve covered the first 125
years you have to agree that the new
geospatial mapping and GIS G yes all
this kind of stuff that is just
providing so much new information about
where to go and way to go where you go
how does that help in archaeology when
you’re doing this I’m Mike dizzy does
the new mapping give you a way of
looking without actually walking across
the ground and picking up rocks and
turning them over yeah it’s absolutely
incredible I remember that little scene
of Jurassic Park where where they use
this sort of a sounding device to
discover a Velociraptor underground well
technologies like that are actually
coming good now now we’re using
satellite data which is just knock me
out what you can
with that we found while we’ve been
working in river ously one of the most
interesting world heritage fossil
deposits in Australia we knew about 40
square kilometers I’m not bilingual any
more can a member how many miles that is
but it’s big and we thought my phone
extended the pot 2009’s we thought that
was the extent of the fossil deposits
and then one of my PhD students came in
exploring satellite data and pointed out
to us you know with a bit of a grin
mischievous grin that there was an area
even bigger than the one that the World
Heritage Site covered that we had never
set foot in and that all came from using
satellite data to to explore areas of no
human being had ever set foot in before
its magazine apollon up let me give you
a question that Matias on Google+ is
sent in since it’s in this theme of
Technology wants to know if technology
which is making exploring an exploration
better and easier and giving us new
insights but will technology make hands
on exploring in real life obsolete or we
all be able to do like Bob and sit in
our computer room and watch it on TV I
think that the really exciting thing
about technology is combining it with
the hands on you know first-hand
experience especially when it comes to
animals and even plants you know
anything that we’re working on I think
it’s just given an incredibly new depth
and new way to actually to look at
things from very different angles but I
think there’s also a really dangerous
side to technology the time seen in in
Kenya weeks in we’ve had a massive
amount of exploration using the very
same tools we might use for exploring
and mapping our forest areas or our
habitats the same technology is being
used to explore and locate natural
resources for the purpose of exploiting
it and we’re seeing these natural
resources just being you know plundered
across the country which I think this is
something that we haven’t quite gotten
to grips with how do we deal with rights
community right
landowner rights of national values and
heritage versus short-term there’s
always two sides to these stories so the
technology is me giving us new insight
and make an inspiration oh it can be
exploited for exploiting the resources
and by the way we don’t often get our
explorers connected all seven continents
at the same time so if you guys have
questions for each other feel free to
jump in and if they’re Jane if there’s
something you’ve always wanted to know
about Bob now is your chance to ask it
well I don’t know Bob I think if you and
I were sitting as we have before there’s
so much one of my passions you know what
brings you down to study any home run
like fashions is to go down under the
sea probably because of jewels burns and
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea but you
know I would just like to have time to
sit and hang out and we hope you had
some funny stories and be so many
questions I think both ways well we need
to get you Jane out on the Nautilus it’s
a it’s in Turkey right now in the
shipyard but it’ll be in the Caribbean
for the next two years so I think we
should have you come on out and go out
to sea with this and and explore with us
it’ll be a lot of fun well that would be
fun wouldn’t it yes yes and what Jane I
think Bob should go look at the
chimpanzees don’t you well I had the
wonderful opportunity to go to to where
she had done her work and were and also
I had a wonderful chance to go or dian
fossey worked I mean I love Africa I’ll
go there any time I spend a lot of time
in Kenya I man i’m an earth scientist so
i love all of Earth just happens that
seventy two percent of its underwater so
you can get me to Africa anytime dr.
geologist by training Bob well I’m a
geologist and I think of the earth is
the biggest organism of all I think of
earth is a living creature but most of
its underwater
but I travel all over the land part two
so I love the whole enchilada Cecilia
well if you could tuck if you could join
one of our other explorers here who
would you most want to follow around for
a week and see what they’re doing if you
weren’t doing archaeology and Peru can I
can I can I choose all of them yes one
we go with everyone this is amazing
Eminem and I’m very excited and very
honored to be part of it I’m enjoying
enjoying this very much okay now Greg
you get to go all over the world you and
the critter cam team you and kyler
because you put these cameras not just
on leopard seals and not just by the way
Greg and the team put them on pinguin
say so some of those underwater shots
you saw in march of the penguins after
Geographics Crittercam team but we got a
question from Bridget on Google this is
for you Greg and the team what’s the
most difficult animal you’ve ever worked
with so it doesn’t have to be in
Antarctica what’s the most difficult
animal well you know until until today I
would have said that leopard seals are
the most difficult but it turns out that
Doug has got it got it sort of nail so
leopard seals are no longer on the
height of my list looks like it talking
yeah you’ve uh you put them on sharks
and you have one guy he used to swim up
to the Sharks even tiger sharks and
clamped Lee Crittercam on without having
the shark constrained
so they car picture frozen nrt what a
surprise a picture froze in Antarctica
how unusual who would have expected that
down there that took cold continent
frozen continent impala do you why
you’re working with the big cat
initiative do you actually have to get
out on the ground and approach the lines
to study them you need some eye sight on
them it’s not all done with technology
you have to follow them around see where
they’re going what they’re doing no I I
don’t think I would want to walk around
with the Lions um and when lyons are
outside of the protected areas they’re
extremely shy they’re quite fearful of
people so it’d be very hard to get
yourself to them inside the national
parks is very easy because they’re very
calm they know they’re safe so most of
our work is done but by observations of
lions inside the parks reports that come
from the communities that we work with
we’ve given them cameras they take
photographs of lions and they you know
tell us when they see them and when they
have incidents with Kim Yoo Lian
conflict in a big part of what you’re
doing with wildlife direct is making
sure that the Rangers get their stories
up about particular animals they’re
following whether it’s lions or or any
other of the wildlife in Kenya and
they’re posting it people can follow
these these Rangers they can help
support the Rangers and follow
particular animals and they it’s almost
real time being there without having to
take the malaria pills is essentially
what you’re allowing people to do well
it’s an opportunity for people who care
about why life in Africa to actually
interact with those people at the front
line at the front line listen to the
stories and participate and support them
if they want to and is created the whole
new communities for conservation of
people who can be sitting in New York
and supporting somebody for example in
Zimbabwe and working on big cats in
Zimbabwe or elephant sadabs wanna and
Rick yeah so why life direct is not just
Rangers support there there are
scientists and communities as well is
Bob still there I’m trying to look at ya
there I see Bob Bob we got a question
from Adam on
Google he wants to know what might lie
in the unexplored oceans that we haven’t
seen do you have any guesses and which
and let me expand on that a little bit
and say do you ever go looking for one
thing and find something else to totally
shocked sure you weren’t that wasn’t
even part of the mission but suddenly
it’s a bigger discovery than what you
went to look for you know those are the
big home runs you’re always you’re
always hoping for and I’ve been lucky
I’ve been at this 53 years now and and
the discovery of hydrothermal vents for
example in the giant tubeworms ten feet
tall we had no idea they were there or
when we found black smokers or lost city
I mean they’re the real answer to the
question is when they say what do you
think you’re going to discover next the
honest answer is I haven’t got and I
haven’t got a clue because if I really
knew I wouldn’t be a discovery so that’s
what’s really exciting is to go looking
for one thing and find something else
that’s much much more important and I
just love that and I can’t get enough of
it so with our new ship of exploration
constantly exploring now working with
other ships to bring them into the inner
space center this year we’ll have six
ships exploring in real time coming into
the exploration room and I just can’t
wait to see what they find a critter you
got started as we mentioned earlier than
most people in being an explorer because
your father was a conservation as how
young were you when he took you out to
track Tigers for the first time hi I’m
told I was one I remember things from
the time was about two years old yeah
two years old tracking Tigers will you
do that with your kid yeah I have a
five-year-old and she’s seen two
leopards into wolves this year so it
seems like it continues on and our
excitement you know I mean carries on so
other way corinthia was our 10,000th
grantee at National Geographic we make
grants we have been we obviously if
we’ve got out more than 10,000 now over
the years
to fund research and exploration around
the world she was number ten thousand
for some of her work she’s doing with
Tigers studying them and to inspire
people to follow along as you’re one of
the new explorers is it important they
get started early or can you switch
careers midstream do you think and and
become an explorer I think you can you
can switch careers anytime you want and
I actually didn’t want to be a biologist
of any kind i wanted to be a lawyer or
an architect and when i went to do my
undergrad in the US is when i found my
way back what my roots were so i think
if you I mean if you really passionate
about stuff it doesn’t matter what age
you are you know do it I think what’s
really really important is to address
the fact that our children now in the
developed countries are spending less
and less unless out there in nature amor
amor I’m doing virtual and they’re
losing they walk past amazing things
without even seeing them and this to me
is very very uncertain and vast I spent
much of my time working with youth with
our region shoot program which does
begin preschool and goes all the way
through University what do you see in
the countries where the the chimpanzees
are do they do the kids walk by them
there and ignore them too because
they’re well I’ve always been here and
we don’t think of the minis think
anything special or is it possible to
inspire them to say this is important we
protect and preserve what we’ve got now
we are we have our program in all
villages around the chimp area go be
work in Tanzania Uganda DRC
congo-brazzaville Gavin and Sierra Leone
and in all those places we involve the
young people they’re not actually
watching the chimps which are quite
dangerous they’re fascinated by them
learning about them and just as in Kenya
they’re learning that that there are
males who live with this world like and
how important the wild creatures are
arcus tourism of course in Tanzania is
very important to and other countries
want to develop it
and cecilia in peru do you think is
archaeology a feel that it appeals to
people do you are you inspiring younger
generations to say let’s go look at the
past is that of interest yes I think so
when I was with my undergrad in Peru the
word some jumpy for some women deciding
actually now the amount of students
doing archaeology were selling
archaeology it’s a larger there are more
and more people interested in in the
past in preserving our our ideological
type and in because I think this is so
something important for us because so
probably our ships three as I said was
discovered by account because we the
cultures that existed before the Inca
they did a half writing so and thanks to
archaeology we were discovering what was
our history before the Incas for
Hispanics and got something shoots for
formation at you my cup we got a
question from Billy on YouTube about
what impact do you think social media
has on exploration is that does it help
oil in your field yes certainly it has a
tremendous amount and i think it’s it’s
a reflection of the public’s interest in
in living as well as prehistoric animals
we do find that the amount of media
coverage that attends explorations of
this kind makes it easier for
governments to actually give research
grants because they can then rationalize
what they’ve done to the public because
demonstrably the public is interested in
what’s happening so this kind of
research that we’re all involved in
really is helped by media coverage I
think what National Geographic is doing
at the moment for example in picking up
an interest in the possibility of
bringing extinct animals back to life
there will be a big
involvement of this in the next few
months and it’s a very exciting area and
you can imagine the media coverage
suddenly thinking hey these things don’t
have to stay extinct they might actually
come back to life that explosion will in
turn help get research funds invested
into these areas and more discoveries
will be memory i’m just going to put my
head back on it just spun around when
you said bringing a sneak creatures back
to life in fact mike is you want to stay
tuned hang out there google+ hangout
it’s going to get exciting because
Mike’s going to talk about a specific
project he’s got coming up but this is
we got explorers coming in and dropping
out so I want to say goodbye thanks to
occur if he’s been joining us Cecilia in
Peru a Corinthian India Paula in Kenya
they’re going to leave us now mike is
going to stay with us Jane is going to
stay with us we’ll have some more
explorers coming in Bob do you have a
few more minutes you can hang out thank
you just a few I’ve got to start
exploring some more okay so we’re going
to keep you just a few more minutes this
is not only is it National Geographic so
125th anniversary it’s a bob Ballard’s
of 22nd wedding anniversary this weekend
so congratulations Bob just a lily a
personal no thank you very much I met my
wife is you know at National Geographic
she was in a special projects and I
became one and that’s why I want to say
is the biggest congratulations to
blahblah for putting up with you for 22
years so there that’s harder than
exploring in the jungles for 22 years
believe me sao paulo ker if II Syria
thank you very much for joining us Mike
stick around in fact Mike since you
brought it up explain how you’re taught
you’re trying to bring back the
Tasmanian tiger from extinction how is
that possible well I don’t know if it is
possible yet but we certainly took great
strides down that path this was this was
against the wisdom if you like the
conventional wisdom of non exploring
geneticist who said this was impossible
but much that was regarded as impossible
10 or 20 years ago is suddenly starting
to become very
possible I’m involved in another project
we called the Lazarus project and we’ve
not only got the the DNA back of this
animal we have this animal actually
being produced now as embryos so we’re
steadily walking down this path I hope
there’s going to be a very exciting
outcome but of course as I discovered
when I had the when I attended the
workshop of National Geographic there
are many people around the world
exploring similar initiatives of this is
an extremely exciting time interfacing
prehistoric discoveries with the modern
world you’re saying that we may have a
Jurassic Park come to life that’s a
potential new field of exploration that
is the new age of exploration absolutely
and it goes it goes beyond that void
because one of the other areas that’s
being explored at the moment is asking
while we’re losing wildlife in the world
at a terrifying rate the question has
been asked can we re wild the world with
things that have been lost from one
place by introducing them from another
can we enrich the biodiversity of the
planet by understanding what was there
before and what we might be able to
reconstitute with some very careful
research we can reconstitute an
environment if we can preserve the
environment I mean that’s the
frightening thing that huge areas are
just being destroyed and you know the
hope is yes the resilience of nature
give nature a chance and I was just
reading about this plant that was
discovered so little piece of the plant
was discovered in an ice age ground
squirrels nest way down below the
permafrost in Siberia and the plant was
reconstituted from three living cells so
what’s possible in this field is is
enormous but you know I’m fighting to
save the creatures we have those are the
ones I’m passionate about so it’s much
easier to save the ones we have in
trying to bring back one
that no longer exists I think it boy Jay
such a great environment our habitat for
humans as well as these animals right to
Mike yeah it is true but I guess one of
the realities of James working with and
struggling with all the rest of us are
doing the same thing Africa has these
problems in Australia it’s becoming
almost a mantra to say that
unfortunately wildlife is no longer safe
in the wild as we steam incorrigibly
unable to stop destroying natural
environments um we have we come to a
crossroads and we have to ask the
explorers who are in this area have to
ask are we just going to let these
things go because we don’t seem to have
the willpower or the the commitment to
conserve those environments or do we
recognize that problem and start
exploring parallel strategies to keep
biodiversity alive while we come to our
senses and there are so many new
initiatives that are being explored up
I’m an advocate in Australia for example
of keeping some Australian animals as
pets instead of just introduced cats and
dogs many of them I’ve had about 25
native animals as pets from quals to all
sorts of things there are more wonderful
cleaner fun than cats and dogs and yet
it’s illegal to keep them while those
same animals are steadily going extinct
in Australia I think we have to explore
new strategies as well as new areas on
the planet for maintaining the
biodiversity that we’re steadily losing
a bob when people look at the ocean they
think there’s something feel big we
don’t have to worry about that that can
absorb anything we’ve dumped into it
what’s your take after going around and
looking at it from the top and the
bottom and from every side and every
angle well you know the deep sea is by
definition extremely deep and and
isolated and protected the problem is
it’s it’s not that’s not where the
problem is the problem is in the shallow
water coral reefs coastal regions that’s
where the decimation is going and that’s
quite honestly where your greatest
diversity is and some of the most
cutiful creatures on the planet
are the shallow water ones close to
humans so the good news is the deep seas
that is doing very well the bad news is
it you know that’s not the coolest place
in the world for some of the most
beautiful creatures so my concern is
really what’s happening in the coastal
zones as more and more humans moved back
towards the ocean and that’s where the
conflict is years ago you had a dream of
having this ship that you’ve now
developed it has the the deep diving
vehicles and the cameras and the lights
it was at that time it was almost
science fiction when you thought of it
now you’ve got this ship that you can go
and you can sit at home and look at the
computer screen and see the pictures
that are being taken from the bottom of
the ocean have you started to think what
the next stage of development is going
to be if you will more than likely the
next stage will be where there is where
the ships are automated that actually
you don’t need crews to run the ships
they’re more like sending probes to Mars
having said that I still love the ocean
I still love to swim in it and sail on
it and Recreation it but when it comes
to going to work and exploring
seventy-two percent of our planets in
total darkness I think we’re going to be
moving more and more into remotely
operated underwater drone systems and
and then enjoy I enjoy right now I look
over my shoulder and I’m looking at it
the wetlands and can Connecticut
actually I actually like being on land a
lot for a guy who spent so much of his
time in the ocean he’s a landlubber at
heart a bob thanks for joining us here
on a google hangout go and enjoy the
rest of your 22nd wedding anniversary
weekend and thanks for sharing some
about the explorations you’ve done and
what you’re looking forward in the order
to in the future of exploration thanks a
lot on to that I’ll head off and thanks
a lot keep exploring bye bye bye 125
years we’ve been sending people like Bob
Ballard and Jane Goodall who’s with us
and a mic Archer and now we’ve got some
of our new guests we’ve got Kenny broad
does understand a little different way
does it cave diving with a scuba gear
specially designed scuba gear okay
are you all right how are you I’m
looking good so you still have a all the
exploring you’ve done you still haven’t
found your hair I see that’s a Albert
Lin Albert are you there Albert research
scientist and engineer we’ve been
talking about how technology is changing
exploration and social media is changing
it nobody’s doing that more than Albert
Lin is done in Mongolia we’ll talk to
you a minute about your project welcome
Albert good to see you and explorations
taking place in all kinds of way aziz al
becerra is doing it as a cultural
educator so when National Geographic
looks at the New Age of Exploration
we’re looking at it in a different way
he joins us from Jerusalem by the way
where he is bringing the Palestinians
and the jewish population together in
cultural tours in ways you wouldn’t
imagine you’re going to want to hear
from him and ask questions for him the
Jane let me go back to you for just a
minute because we’re getting a lot of
questions for you and the biggest one
wants to know how did you feel the first
time that chimp interacted and sometimes
we put up video and I think the most
famous shot of you is a chimp reaching
out with a finger going right towards
your face was that the first moment of
real interaction with the chimpanzee
after you’d been studying them know the
first one came with year old David
Greybeard the first gym to lose his fear
of me and actually let me assume we want
to do that now because we know that
human diseases can be trying to make
their two kids because we’re
biologically almost identical but back
then when the chimpanzees didn’t running
away when David allowed me to room him
when one day he reached out and took a
fruit from my hand he didn’t want it and
then gently squeezed my fingers which is
a sign of reassurance and then as you
say when old flow actually let her
infant precious infant come up and reach
out to catch me those big wandering eyes
I mean it were moments that I think
really enabled me to carry on with this
study its own its 54th year which is
pretty amazing
yes it is let’s just do some quick
questions for everybody will go fairly
quickly here when you’re out in the
field Jane what’s the longest you’ve
ever gone without a shower haha we have
a make there is no problem at all you
just jump in the lake at the end of the
day there’s no need boom without a
shower once the longest you’ve had to go
without a shower in Australia Mike no
two months but then in the I guess in
the middle of that I was able to jump in
a board rain which is about fifty
percent mud it felt better than the two
months without any wet at all I didn’t
know israelian showered yeah two months
is just sort of regular yeah that’s the
English the experience decided we’ll
hear different than the English yeah so
Kenny since you do most of your work in
the water i guess you shower every time
you jump in that’s right that’s right
what’s the line what’s the most
discomfort you do you have to camp out
by some of these kenny explores in
underwater caves and in blue holes do
you have to sleep on the ground when
you’re near one of these places if it’s
very isolated yeah i guess a lot of
times for we start the cave diving at
the bottom of a deep cave so for
instance in mexico i believe we spent
about twenty one days underground before
we even started diving so you’re living
at different at different levels
underground so you’ll set up a camp
where you’re going back and forth every
day then eventually started living at
that camp and shuttling your lower and
lower so you’re about you know almost
almost 5,000 feet underground and that’s
where you start the diving so you you
you may go days in a like a camping out
situation yeah it’s kind of the cheapest
deepest motel around as some people say
boid if i can just bring you back to the
showers in a Scalia it’s something just
occurred to me that the one and only
time that I had a very unusual shower in
Australia as I was trying to capture a
tree kangaroo they don’t look strong but
they are and I had it
the tail as it was scooting up a large
tree and I thought I would be able to
keep it on the ground I didn’t it in
fact went off the tree with me hanging
on its tail but its last message to me
was to let loose and give me my first
and only golden shower it’s another is
fillion ways getting a shower the candle
is gone wow we have many students who
bring showers like Jim baby well
chimpanzees don’t they they not only
shower you don’t they throw their poop
at your chain though the world one stove
the suits that love throwing poop
because they want anything to get
interaction with these beastie people
that grin at them all day
research but you also go out in the
field you’ve done a lot of climbing and
fieldwork what’s the longest you’ve gone
without a shower uh uh you know probably
about a month because Mongolia happens
to be quite a dry place a lot of a lot
of the time so it’s been it’s been up to
a month at times and it’s kind of
difficult because in Mongolia you know
and when somebody said hello to you they
want to give you a kiss a lot of times
instead of giving you a kiss they’ll
they’ll smell you they’ll sniff your
face because your soul is represented in
you know in your smell according to the
traditions of the Mongolian people so
after a month of not shower and your
soul smells a little bit more authentic
there they’re getting the true essence
of you they they’re looking deep within
you yeah but makes it when they see a
month of them coming out you know it the
same you know I would be being a lot of
trouble if I if I didn’t take this
moment or opportunity to tell Jane that
my 12 year old neighbor across the
street ran out this morning specifically
to make sure that I told you that you’re
her hero and you know her name is poorly
oh and she she spends most of her time
volunteering at the wildlife communities
around our neighborhood and it really
makes me you know think about why for
example why I spend my time as an
engineer running around not showering in
Mongolia trying to do things that are
based is based on exploration and it has
to do with that same moment of
inspiration for me when I was a kid and
for her you know she’s going to go on
the Conservation Wildlife Research
because of the influence that you had on
her but for me it’s the heroes of
National Geographic like Alexander
Graham Bell one of the founders national
graphic was an engineer and replying
technology out you know in interesting
ways so I just had to put that plug in
there before we moved on to more shower
stories because she made sure that I say
that I’m glad you actually put that Mary
yeah say hello to her for me and tell
her to be sure to look roots and shoots
oh r g because she can take part night
in china where in mongolia yeah she’s
well she’s been a lot of time already
listening to you speak i think her
mother takes except she can to your when
you’re up to yourself
I it’s it’s this idea that the New Age
of Exploration has as much to do with
curiosity as it has to do with
responsibility right and I think you
really shepherded that in and it’s a
it’s why I’m here I understand that
Kenny we may not have your connection
for very long so let me just go to you
for a couple of moments explain because
you want to go down and see we talked a
lot about technology here how you can
send robotics down or or take satellite
photos to look at areas but you to get
into an underwater cave is the best way
still to go down there yourself yeah
luckily there’s still good job security
for everyone out there he’s looking for
for a job because you can’t replace the
human you still can’t replace a human
with a remote operated vehicle with you
know submarines with ground-penetrating
radar for most of the sorts of cave
diving cave exploration it’s just the
manual dexterity that the actual
decision making in a complex you know
complex decision making when you’re in a
maze with zero visibility you just can’t
run it from the surface so it’s it’s one
of these it’s an art combined with a
skill where you we just haven’t been
able to replace ourselves yet which
makes you may go down for extended
periods of time are you using
rebreathers yeah Wow you to stay down
for hours at a time yeah I mean one of
the what we try to do is use the
simplest technology possible and I
really am a technological Luddite it
took me about five times longer than the
rest of the participants and the Hangout
to figure out how to get on google
properly so i was doing but you know so
I mean technology’s changing diving for
instance just yesterday I was diving for
my friends iphone but it dropped off a
bridge and actually we couldn’t find the
iphone and on the way out we found
someone else’s iphone it’s a rescue
mission for an iphone the rescue mission
for iphone butts in cave diving in truth
it’s the simplest technology that you
can get away with it should you want to
use but now rebreathers and some dive
computers are allowing us to really
extend exploration both in time and in
depth so I do I do acknowledge it but it
comes with an ink
he’s in a danger in danger when you’re
relying on computers underwater and just
to reiterate what Kenny does but if
you’re if you’re a scuba diver you know
if something goes wrong you’re diving
out in the Caribbean at 40 50 60 feet I
you’ve got enough air that you can just
shoot to the surface in this crystal
blue water and look up oh there’s a
service and I go you’re in a cave you
might be down 300 feet but worse than
that you might be a mile into it so if
you were to try to go straight up your
bump your head on the limestone why
you’re applying that’s what happened
yeah yeah well you popped it a lot so
why the risk when does what makes an
exploration worth extreme risk you know
I think we we each have we like to
justify what we do that we make rational
decisions I’m doing this for science I’m
doing this so we better understand water
resource management I’m doing it to
collect samples to reconstruct past
climate and those are all I would say
Post hoc explanations for what we do and
it’s great I can justify it but the
truth is there’s just something I think
genetic that drives us to want to see
what’s around the next corner and if
that corner happens to be underground
happens to be underwater you some of us
are attracted to those types of
environments and I’m sure if you had a
psychologist they could give you you
know they could make a fortune on you
they could make a fortune on the couch
right 47 wouldn’t exactly maybe it was
something that happened to me during the
birthing process and by the way when you
go into these caves to find your way out
you string a line it’s like on a fishing
reel of lion that you have to string out
so you can grab a hold the line and
follow your follow your way out once you
get in there because it can be you can
lose your lights you can silt it up and
you’re not know where you are so there’s
there’s some extreme risk still involved
in exploration even though we’ve got all
the new technology and high-tech devices
and rebreathers allow stay underwater
longer there is still a bit of the day
the glamour the romanticism of
old-fashioned exploring to be an
explorer yeah let me do a sport can I
just sorry just to follow up just to
make sure something is very
clear it really is there’s frontiers and
decades more of physical exploration to
do an underwater caves but please don’t
go in there without the proper training
it is not like open water diving in any
way shape or form so for anyone
listening it takes a whole different set
of equipment configuration training and
a lot of that’s really it’s as much a
mental game and kind of getting in the
right psychological mindset and
practicing breathing exercises so please
for anyone out there you know I’m glad
to point them in the right direction for
the training but don’t go in an
underwater cave even a few feet because
you’ll turn around and see that you
can’t see your way out yeah I’ve been
through the beginning cave diving
training and it’s intense and it’s
essential to understanding just how
dangerous it is and and it it makes you
more cautious and more aware of what
you’re doing so yeah don’t do that
without the proper training Aziz now
this is a complete new kind of
exploration of what you’re doing and you
with some people say it’s impossible
bringing Jews and Palestinians together
to go learn about each other what’s the
reaction there in Jerusalem to this idea
as you say that’s a new it’s a new
exploration I think when when I got the
phone call even I was surprised about
becoming an explorer so no I think it’s
it’s important whenever you see you know
we talked about saving the world saving
the planet but we also have to remember
if we don’t save our values and our
morals and who we are as a people and
kill each other for reasons that are not
worthy then we have failed in our
exploration so I see Palestinians and
Israelis I grew up here grab Palestinian
and we so similar yet we don’t know
anything about each other and my first
time meeting Israelis I grew up
Palestinian I was so fascinated by
learning different things and having
that interaction that you know you can
call it exploring the enemy in in some
ways and being able to know each other
makes you less likely to want to kill
each other makes your looks likely to
want to do something against each other
so this is this is what I’m trying to do
and it goes great I’ve had Israelis and
Palestinians kids playing soccer with
each other we’ve had them going and
learning about each other history visit
each other homes eating with each other
learning about each other and it’s
fascinating to see how people become
friends so quickly and you may have the
most amazing story of how anyone became
an explorer we’ve heard how some of our
people here on our Google hangout today
were inspired to go into this work but I
don’t know if anyone else was brought to
it by country music you explain how that
happened how country music made you an
explorer yes I love country music and it
makes me the weirdest Palestinian ever
over the meebo we have this Middle
Eastern at all nobody relates to me here
with that no I I grew up in in a family
that was very we didn’t meet anybody on
the other side my brother was killed
when I was 10 years old and so that made
me very much gone to extreme when i was
18 i went to study Hebrew in an open
which is where shoes who moved to Israel
go to study and we started talking I
didn’t want to talk to anybody i was
sure i’m gonna learn hebrew without
talking to the people there which was
very smart but the slowly you know they
force us into conversations and made us
ask questions about what we like and I
was a big fan of country music and I
talked a couple people there who knew
who Johnny Cash is which to me was
already awesome thing and it was a
through music naughty through politics
not it through you know when we started
talking about music and that took us so
going out for coffee and then getting to
know each other and it was amazing it’s
it’s totally opposite of what you think
often we think it starts with we have to
agree in politics we have to agree and
how things work and who you are who I am
to state once day it’s not it’s relating
to people as a human being that comes
first The Legend of Johnny Cash grows
his influence lives on this is
incredible we have obviously we have
people sending in questions and by the
way you can send in questions to our up
google hangout on Google+ you
tube and Twitter just use the hashtag
natgeo 125 but we also have some evil on
video in London you have some questions
Daniel pet and London archaeologist
joins us and Catrin Schmidt and Norwich
UK is also here question Karine you have
a question for any of our explorers yeah
sure um I was wondering because I had
these moments already in my life when
you realize that dedicating your life to
nature and science was the right thing
to do I repeat that question one more
time Catrin I’m sorry i was wondering at
what time or at what moment in your life
you realize that dedicating your life to
nature and science was the right thing
to do okay at the moment you realize
that dedicating your life to nature and
science was the right thing to do Jane
when was that for you as I said I just
grew up knowing that I wanted to work
with animals and live with them and I
talks about them so something I knew all
my life but the decision that a sort of
moment that came to me was the life
change when i left the forests and
started traveling around the world
trying to save whatever i could the
natural world where all the trees had
gone I once knew Oh 1986 1986 when you
realized that the changing environment
Mike when did you decide you wanted to
dig through fossilized dinosaur poop it
was very easy for me actually I found
that was not comfortable with people i
think i was born the wrong species
actually I my friend I was much more
comfortable with turtles and snakes and
possums so I think from about the age of
11 I pretty much turned my back on
humanity and decided they were animals
were much more interesting and that
included the course the fossil animals
nothing dog is that a is that a
schnauzer there is that a kangaroo no
actually this is noodle dish noodle and
we’re not allowed to keep native animals
here in Australia so this is my
concession I should
paint noodle with stripes so at least I
can think I’ve got my i’ll assign back
here or just to put a patch on it make
him a marsupial hey Albert what about
you was there a time when you said
alright this is what I want to do I know
I’m on the right path um yeah you uh you
know it started out for me is kind of a
personal journey to find out more about
myself and I grew up as a as an
asian-american in a society where a lot
of my own history wasn’t really taught
to me in school so when I grew up I
really wanted to learn more about it and
there was another point in my life when
as an engineer I was finishing a PhD in
India in material science and
engineering and I didn’t know what I was
going to do and somebody one of a very
close friend of mine basically came up
to me and said I was trying to go what I
would do for work and how take all my
life and my friend just asked me what
would you do if you didn’t have to worry
about money what would you do if you
really just didn’t have to worry about
survival like that what would you
dedicate your life to and within a week
I was on the road traveling towards you
know towards Asia and eventually into
Mongolia with the idea that somehow
technology that I learned about my
career would be applied to whatever in
my curiosity of my human exploration
would be as well and so basically that
point I sold everything I had and moved
into my car and started started trying
to do something a little bit different
and what and I don’t think we’ve
actually detailed what it is that Albert
does which is really different not the
idea they wanted to try to find Genghis
Khan’s tomb reputed to be and she would
imagine large and famous but never
discovered and it might be in places
where the Mongolians don’t necessarily
sacred site your special sites they
don’t want people just going around
digging up and so you develop technology
to let anybody be an explorer if you
want to know how to be an explorer you
can actually help Albert do
crowdsourcing you you post pictures and
people look on them and try to spot
anomalies explain how this works however
well it means it’s a combination of two
things you touched upon both the idea
that you know
that these lands are so sacred right so
some of the technologies that we develop
our to look without having to dig the
mongolian shaman believe that he can
disturb the tomb of Genghis Khan that
you’ll cause this this curse you know
this crystal because his spirit still
oversees their people and the world for
that matter I mean there wasn’t this
idea of boundaries barriers and balls
Mongolia was that they were all one
people across the planet underneath the
sky and so they believed that his spirit
which was the founder of that nation was
still overseeing or totally was
overseeing their people and that if you
disturbed where he’s buried then we
gonna cause some trouble some really bad
trouble so how do you look with that
dating so we came up with you know a
series of ideas and we applied
technologies that were used for you know
for for surveying construction sites and
we applied them to you know this these
mountains and try to look without
without digging right the second part is
we don’t know where exactly this to
might even be it’s in this huge vast
country where or those massive
landscapes where people haven’t really
even been allowed to go to for over a
hundred years in fact there’s this one
area which has been since the time of
Jenga skon forbidden to travel to
outside of the royal family for anybody
else was a role family so how do you
identify those few anomalies in this
vast landscape and so we tried to use
satellite imagery we tried to use other
you know types of data that can look
down on the earth when we found was
there’s so much information out there I
mean there’s so much data out there that
there’s almost an impossible task of
going through it and that also is part
of the frontiers of exploration because
you know satellite imagery now has the
ability for us to look at any corner to
the planet and try to investigate but
there’s every there’s so many corners so
how do you find them and so we asked the
public to look at little segments of
satellite imagery and tell us what they
saw in them and we added all those those
little comments together and we’re still
adding them together and we’re finding
that people agree upon certain things
that look abnormal and we travel out to
those places on horseback or you know by
foot sometimes this is very difficult to
travel out there and we’re using that
idea that a new pair of eyes can see
something if you’ve been looking at for
a long time you might have
missed you just you’ve got them so
entrenched in and looking at this map
that you’ve missed something but you
bring new eyes n fresh eyes and
different eyes they might spot an
anomaly and if a bunch of them agree the
night let’s go take a closer look and i
just added up the stats about how much
time people have spent on this you know
and you know we look at everybody
contributing us as an equal valued part
because all those little data points are
very very important to us but when you
add up all their cliques and all the
time that they spent helping us out it’s
a collective of 18 years of human effort
looking at satellite imagery you know
all crammed into one little data source
said that we asked them to do so 18yo
would have taken 18 years I’m constantly
staring at the satellite imagery to be
able to do what you know what the
community wants happen and what a period
of a year yeah exactly period of one
year done of 18 years reduced to one we
got a question from Matthew on google
for all of you that you’ve been to so
many amazing places in your careers and
believe me I know this is going to be
hard to do but if you got one that
stands out is the most beautiful or
peaceful or just do you have a favorite
spot you like to go to Kenya you have a
favorite spot yeah those are tough
questions all the time and it tends to
be the last one that I was at but
there’s still a couple you know what it
is for me I think it’s not a spot it’s
being being underwater takes me into a
different kind of psychological realm
and it’s this overall sensation maybe
it’s the lack of gravity maybe it’s
because there’s no email cell phones no
offense no Google you can actually just
you know digitally disconnect and just
gonna in in every way shape or form and
just be completely focused on the task
at hand so for me it it can be almost
anywhere where there’s no oxygen no
light how’s that FNB last of most people
there’s no oxygen in no life no light I
would also say Kenny does like diving
though in the Caribbean and the blue
holes that’s because when he comes to
the surface their little drinks with
umbrellas in a very minimal
that’s part of the attraction aziz do
you have a favorite place in all your
travels it’s hard that i’m i love the
Middle East and I know it’s not the most
peaceful as you know but it’s it’s very
the history the culture that existed the
different cultures I mean there are
groups that live here that people think
they are extending in Syria the syriac
people and you learn so much from these
communities i love the the middle east
and again I know it’s not known for
being peaceful but I I would advise
everybody to come to here and and if you
go there take one of those easiest tours
you offer these to the public right
people from yes you can come with
National Geographic to we have an
expedition now to Israel Palestine to
learn the conflict the
israeli-palestinian conflict and the
history and archeology we decided we
wanted to do something different instead
of the normal tours where you only learn
about one thing we trying to put
everything together you’ll learn about
thousands of years of history you’ll
learn about the israeli-palestinian
conflict and you’ll learn how to become
a peacemaker and a conflict resolution
person or you’re you’re just getting
immersed in a new kind of exploration
you can be taking a vacation and be an
explorer if you take one of these trips
with disease and Mike and Australia is
your favorite place in Austria you spend
a lot of time living in the United
States where’s your favorite place yeah
yeah I couldn’t say it is the United
States I’m gonna do I grew up in
Appalachia and I certainly have
wonderfully fond memories of making
moonshine and plank and banjos in
Appalachia alright have to play the the
places that really plug my heart strings
with Patagonia the remote areas in
Patagonia northern China the the
rainforests in Borneo are magical but at
the end of the day when my nose is
buried in in prehistoric world that are
25 million years old and the strangest
creatures are peeping back that’s what
gets my adrenaline running and I would
think you’d find the strangest some of
the strangest ones in Australia even
though the the prehistoric creatures
because that’s a land chunk that broke
off from
antartica what 38 million years ago has
been floating out there kind of isolated
and animals developed in a different way
and that’s the fascinating thing about
Australia I mean all day since we have
green on and it’s a she’s a
primatologist is there anything that
went along the lines of a primate and
one of the apes in Australia is there a
comparison it’s ironic when the first
explorers in Australia European
explorers saw a koala they thought it
was a primate so there were crossovers
people couldn’t relate to the
strangeness of Australian animals so
they they tried to sort of overlay
expected creatures on everything they
saw the you know the thylacine became
the Tasmanian wolf and so on but the
reality is there are no primates and
this is a huge mystery to us I mean are
primates on a northern doorstep of
Australia crashed into Asia about 15
million years ago up when New Guinea
we’ve had a sort of an opportunity for
primates to get in Australia but apart
from the human type of primate none of
them ever did ah and I introduced Daniel
eptin in London and then I left him and
forgot to get his question Daniel know
you’ve got a question for some of our
explorers good evening good thank you
very much some of your explorers already
touched on this question already and you
talked about your inspiration I’d like
snow goose inspiring you now you’re an
established Explorer or researcher and
whether the economy compact is the the
crisis now is actually impacting on your
work whether it’s making me hard
especially gardens field yeah the great
question um Jane do you look today to
anybody else who’s out there doing work
and get inspired by what they’re doing
well what I really get inspired by today
is some of the young people who some of
them really really have to struggle to
get where they get and they’re
determined to get out in the field and
they’re determined to do what they want
to do and seeing them succeeded I’m
seeing them so enthusiastic and excited
about what they’re doing I think that’s
that’s my greatest inspiration
Aziz um this I think my inspiration
changed year by year I’m inspired by
this year specifically by my friends in
Syria I’ve been working in Syria for a
few years and seeing what’s happening
there and specifically my colleague hint
Kabbalah to the Syrian human rights
person who’s been trying to bring the a
low lights and the Christians and the
Shiites and listen knees together and
end this conflict it through coalition
and peacebuilding and she’s been through
inspiration for me Albert do you have
anybody that looked to and say I got to
keep going this is great work day I
think I’m brought it up in the beginning
when I cut in and was talking to Jane
about my little neighbor across the
street but every time I see her light up
with stories of exploration they make me
realize that you know there’s actually
something really good about what we’re
doing and I think that you know her and
her friends and my son and anybody
wouldn’t let me look at why we’re doing
all this there’s got to be more than
just ourselves since our huge
generations so I think that’s what it
does for me but also if Kenny you know
Kenny’s always been a bit of an expert
you know I did agree to me as well
because he’s just always having so much
fun with everything it’s always saying
such a goofball but doing the crazier
things that he is getting before you
whether you know it or not you are your
inspiration and you’re giving us let me
flip this question around the other way
are there times you get discouraged and
you think Kenny that well none of this
is making a difference yeah I mean I
make a lot of jokes but I’m kind of a
deeply cynical person in many ways and
sometimes I do feel that way but then I
I I hear stories like azizi story or
people who have overcome some incredible
obstacles you know born into horrendous
situations and have done amazing things
I look at myself and say don’t be don’t
be so pathetic you know I I was you know
born lucky in many ways into you know a
stable situation decent economic
situation so I you know I say you that
rise me to try to do better quite
frankly and and the other thing is now I
have two little kids and I’m surrounded
by small kids and I do a lot of projects
or with kids and that really is a
motivator and you see how smart and
truly good people are out there and that
kind of wipes away my cynicism for for a
while so it’s you know people like Aziz
and a lot of them you know the natgeo
family actually you know when we all get
together once a year in Washington it’s
almost like getting a boost of
adrenaline that runs through 4 for the
whole year through yeah absolutely we
just brought yeah go ahead okay because
you know there’s a whole group of
explorers at National Geographic that
are on the screen that you know I think
are who we feed off of Fred now for
example my main partner in Mongolia
Freddy Hebert he’s an archeology fellow
in National Geographic and he and I
Mongolia you know when were together we
feed off of each other’s excitement and
while he’s an archeologist I’m an
engineer coming up with ways of try and
approach new challenges and it’s it’s
that personal friendship among each
other that I think is the most exciting
and while we’ve gone to all seven
continents today to talk to some of our
National Geographic explorers this is
this is just a little inch deep of what
we do here as I said we’ve given out
over 10,000 a grant people we work with
some we call explorers and residents I’m
emerging explorers young explorers and
they’re out there on it in multiple
numbers on every continent all the time
doing work and doing the most amazing
fascinating stuff it is the New Age of
Exploration it’s it’s ahead of us we’ve
we’ve taken pictures of the Earth and
Google puts them up you can you the
pictures are so good now you can go down
and see what your neighbors are
barbecuing on the grill that’s how
detail they are say no if you want to go
over and invite yourself to dinner but
there’s more to know than that even
looking at things we’ve looked at before
by Gabbert’s doing if you look at with
more eyes you can see it in a different
way and make new discoveries mike is it
ever is it ever like it’s just another
day at the office for you or or is it
always something that keeps you
motivated to show up and being or what
you do every day
look any excuse to get out into the bush
or wild areas or interact with a wild
animal I’ll drop anything to have that
happen neta includes wild students I’m
the whole group are really interesting
there’s so many things to do I don’t
regret mortality on the other hand it
really annoys me that I’ve only got one
life to spend exploring all the
interesting things that are out there
waiting to be found I am an explorer
junkie there’s no question about it you
get that way a bit and it just means
that’s your fix I have to get out of
this chair and out of the house on a
regular basis or I’m in trouble and it’s
just one of those things you get hooked
on this we’ve gotten as I said we’ve
gotten a lot of questions in on there
that people can send in via Google or
Twitter or Facebook a one of them
Kennedy specifically from you from
Andrea who wants to know in these caves
in these tight situations if you ever
been stuck yeah I’ve been stuck a couple
times never obviously for for too long
there’s a couple things one water is
sort of the universal solvent so if you
can keep calm eventually you can wiggle
your way one way or another if you’re
diving with someone else we have signals
so I don’t know if you can see but if we
cross our legs back and forth it might
mean pull us out if you put them
together means push so we’ve got some
signal but I always you know we dive
alone quite a bit but I try to dive with
other people and I try to dive with
people who are bigger than me I try to
know that can push ya places they go in
the hole first ah that’s that’s even
better they get straight they if they
made it through then I know I’ll have no
problem i just got to get in front of
them on the way out makes you want to
dive with me yeah that’s right I’m
looking I’m looking I’m always looking
for a large framed I Parker’s okay and
sometimes I since I’ve done a little
cave diving I know you actually had to
take off your gear shove it through the
hole in front of you and then you come
through or you go through first and pull
the gear and after you yeah a lot of a
lot of times because I mean it sound it
may I acknowledge it might sound
completely ridiculous but you do that
but you
you open up you might push through a
hole that’s you know not much bigger
than a basketball but then you come out
into a room where you can land three 747
side by side and you don’t know what
you’re going to find whether it’s you
know paleontological remains whether
it’s cave formations that help us
reconstruct past climate I mean you just
don’t know these are time capsules and
what’s around the corner is always
amazing we’ve talked to and this
question keeps coming up a lot of people
want to know about the most dangerous
thing or the time when you were the most
scared or the most concerned about what
might happen we’ve we’ve asked some of
the other members of our Explorer team
of what they’ve gone through the disease
I thought because you’re doing a
different kind of exploration but it is
equally fraught with potential for peril
have you ever had moments where you
looked around and said now I’ve gotten
myself into a situation where I’m gonna
have to be very careful too many times
but it kind of gives me the adrenaline
so it doesn’t scare I’ve been probably
in areas of crossfire shootings things
50 60 100 times they can’t count the
last time though that was like this I
was working in Afghanistan and I was
working on a project with the former
president rabbani in Afghanistan and
right after I left him he was blown up
and assassinated and at the moment I
thought yeah I could have been there
when that happened but I went back a
month later so obviously if i’m being
too stubborn and sometimes irrational
but i enjoy the i enjoy the danger
element of my work I’m going exercise if
you realize the importance of your work
the work is the most important part and
I think at the end of that I it’s
dangerous because somebody has to do it
and it’s you either gonna do something
about it to change it or not my next my
next trip is going to be to the Syrian
border to Turkey to the Syrian burger to
work with the refugees there and the
area that we’re going to get swamped
quite a bit but I think you have to
overcome fear to be able to do what you
to do by the way we’re getting a lot of
questions for this session so we really
thank all of you will refer to you as
our new explorers those of you who are
watching this because clearly you’re
interested in this planet if you’re
tuned into this google hangout google+
hangout and we do these every month so
check it out we don’t always do it with
people on all seven continents at the
same time but thank you for joining us
and be sure enough tune in each month to
the session I think the next one is
coming up in February februari eight in
fact in fact on februari eighth we’re
going to be talking with archaeologist
guillermo de onda from a ancient Mayan
cave he may be looking for those pages
of the Mayan calendar that didn’t turn
up after 2012 because we’re still here
but we’ll find out what he’s doing in
the cave in Mexico so check out that
google session and daniel as long as
you’re still up there do you have
another question you like to ask before
we go a lot to us go a bit more about
the social media based around your
search for Genghis Khan I work with
digital media in London looking crowd
sourcing as well it’s always had a big
impact but are you managed to reach
people to food new media as well some
audience and reach them on the social
networks in different countries yeah
well you asked you asked how how did I
get people to participate is that what
you’re asking what are you getting more
people to participate using social media
for your project or is it just free
publicity and word of mouth sort of how
do you get the people to sign on and
help do the crowdsourcing how are they
hearing about it you know it’s actually
partly because National Geographic has
such a strong online presence you know
the digital media group is has been
doing a lot of really amazing things but
also I think that in general people are
just curious and excited to participate
in a way that that they haven’t been
able to do before so it wasn’t that hard
to recruit participants you know I mean
the last 125 years exploration is in
some ways been held as almost an elite
sort of thing wait we’re only a coveted
few get to go into the field and I think
the next hundred and twenty-five years
can be far different in which you know
everybody’s going to be necessary and
making a difference and so when we
opened up this website can we allow
people to participate it wasn’t like
they had to recruit people were hungry
to go and participate you know and I
really think that’s going to apply in
all sorts of exploration all across the
board and that in some ways is you know
the frontier part but it’s how do we
work together now in order to combine
that curiosity with the responsibility
let me mention the if you saw any of the
promotion there was a lot of promotion
for this particular Google hangout
because it’s a big deal is the first all
7 comments link together with explorers
from National Geographic on all seven
continents celebrating our 125th
anniversary which we look at as just at
the beginning we’re ready to launch the
New Age of Exploration if you saw some
of the publicity for it you may have
noticed the Jim Cameron James Cameron
the director and NASA Geographic
Explorer underwater explorer was going
to be with us from Australia but he was
working on a project for Astra
Geographic that’s got him tied up and
with the time change he couldn’t make it
but were Australia more than well
represented with the presence of a mic
Archer so Mike thanks for joining us and
talking about dinosaurs and Crocs and
trees jumping out of trees just and lets
us all be glad that as I said we weren’t
around in Australia 38 million years ago
and I just bring them back here he’s
gonna bring him back yeah you bring back
the Tasmanian tiger Jane wants to know
if you’re gonna bring back the clocks
jumping out of the trees oh look don’t
tempt me oh yeah we sometimes think you
know compared with Africa that that the
bush in Australia is a little bit tame
we don’t have things at the moment that
they gobble you up when you turn your
back on so yeah a couple of things like
that would make life much more
interesting here now you don’t have
things that will eat you you’ve got
things though there will poison you
you’ve got all those venomous creatures
that have been the subject of many
National Geographic specials the most
venomous creatures on the planet in
Australia ah it’s true technically we’ve
got the most poisonous snake in the
world we got to the only spider that’ll
nail you in a couple of hours but you
don’t see these things I mean it’s a big
bit of hype actually about Australia
this is one of the thymus most gentle
comments on the planet perhaps
well no I have to even say even more so
than Antarctica there’s no leopard see
and say that it’ll swallow you up when
you stare over in the over the edge of
the continent yeah you don’t see them
coming i think that’s what you mentioned
you don’t see those spiders those blue
ringed octopus the what have you got
that you got the Box jelly the Box jelly
the hundreds of the tiger snake started
oh yeah yeah we know em all but I’ve
been bitten by a few of these things and
I’m still hear them say I was there
recently and it was great but then
you’ve also got bondi beach outside of
Sydney so what more could you ask one of
the most beautiful cities in the world
hey thanks to all of you for joining us
for this google+ hangout it’s been a
great step of session talking to people
on all seven continents and google+
national geographic we do this every
month with as i say 10 or 12 explores at
once but you get to know them in depth
and don’t forget you can go on google
and look at the map where you can see
where all of these people are where
they’re doing their work click on the
dot and you can bring up information
about explorers see pictures and a video
of what they’re doing in the field the
exciting stuff they’ve done and and what
is coming up in the future you’ve all
you’ve made me up me want to go out more
come hang out with you in the field
which we will be doing I and by the way
we talk to all these people on our radio
show as well National Geographic weekend
so you tune in every up every Sunday
noon eastern on serious or XM satellite
you can follow us on iTunes we’re a free
podcast so tune in to National
Geographic weekend and we have in-depth
conversations with all of these
explorers and I think you can see we
want you you watching this to be
explorers to the best way to begin join
us here national geographic society
become a member go to National
Geographic calm find out how to become a
member don’t forget februari eight the
next google+ hangout so guys thank you
for spending a little time with us on
this sunday and getting us inspired to
explore more Jane you’ve been an
inspiration to all of us for many years
and and then Aziz you’re starting
Yeah right more recently but just as
inspiring the stories of of what you’re
doing and what’s your accomplishment so
thanks to all of you see you on the next
one of these thank you bye everybody bye
bye Oh James Jane yes you still there I
can’t let you go sorry give us a chimp
greeting this is the big moment
everybody wants to hear you do the chimp
say goodbye in chimpanzee well it’s a
greeting really they don’t say goodbye
but the greeting to all of you it will
pretend that’s from Hawaii where hello
means goodbye in there Aloha means both
Thank You Jay thanks to everyone’s ISA
Alberta Kenny Mike and a pleasure thank
you it’s in here thank you
celebrating 125 years of National
Geographic a new age of exploration
starts now hello everyone we are very
excited to have you join us for this
special 125th anniversary of National
Geographic we’re celebrating with a
first for this Google hangout the first
time we’ve been linked to all seven
continents we’ve got National Geographic
explorers around the world would be
talking to and you will have a chance to
ask them questions National Geographic
started 125 years ago this very day on
our mission to inspire people to care
about the planet I’m Boyd Matson and i’m
moderating this i’m a writer journalist
explorer for National Geographic I have
not been here for all 125 years but for
a good portion of the last 20 and we
want to take you around the world now to
meet the people that have been there
some for a very long time and some very
new explorers because the future of
exploration the best part is still ahead
that’s what we’re celebrating a new age
of exploration as well as what we have
accomplished at this point we have dr.
Robert Ballard in the United States
under sea explorer joining us Jane
Goodall is here primatologist one of our
earliest National Geographic grantees
has been doing major work on protecting
and understanding chimpanzees we are
joined by Cecilia Mauricio in Peru one
of our newest archaeologists studying
past cultures and what we can learn
about the interaction between cultures
and climate Corinth occurrence
conservation biologists in India she’s
in bangalore but usually she’s out to
tracking Tigers around India Paula
kahoon boot in from Kenya follows the
director of wildlife direct and also
worked with our big cat initiative and
Mike Archer in Australia paleo biologist
who studies dinosaurs of fossil remains
including dinosaur poop I know you’re
going to have some question about
fossilized poop we also have a link to
Antarctica where our Crittercam team is
though getting that link up they’ll be
joining us shortly in the Google hangout
and we’ll be taking your quest
and so if you want to send two men you
can join us by sending questions ins on
twitter youtube or google+ new hashtag
nat geo 125 hashtag mattg or 125 with
your questions and as I said exploration
is really still out there the best part
of it and you might ask well what’s left
to explore we’ve been doing this for a
hundred and twenty-five years and people
were doing it even before so Bob what’s
left that we don’t know about that we
haven’t seen on this planet well you
know ironically most of the planet
itself I feel we’re just beginning our
explorations are starting to accelerate
with our ships of exploration now and I
expect the next generation to explore
more of Earth than all previous
generations combined using this new
advanced technology and Jane Baba course
knows that he’s in an area where a lot
of people haven’t been if you’re
exploring the ocean but what about on
land are there new things that people
can look forward to seeing or do you
just go back to old places and learn new
information about what we’re familiar
with well I think you know a lot of
young students asked me what there is
left to learn about and after fifty-plus
years we’re still learning you didn’t
the same group of chimpanzees using new
technology to learn about you can you
can on the file their genetics from DNA
samples and learn who the fathers are
but then you know just need to book
about plums and down under the soil is a
whole new world of bacteria we know
nothing about one place that we haven’t
done a lot of exploring just because of
the harsh conditions is Antarctica so we
were trying to get up the connection we
have now got the guys our Crittercam
team I see them sitting down in
Antarctica we’ve got Greg Marshall who
is the developer of the critter cam
Tyler Abernathy who does a lot of the
scientific work on the cameras making
them smaller and lighter and putting
them on different animals in Doug Krause
who is doing some leopard seal research
in Antartica hey Greg is it cold
is it cold down there guys okay Greg why
don’t you go to your white Greg go to
your computer I think you’re on mute hit
the mute button there on the computer
we’re seeing your lips move but we’re
not hearing you talk here we are in
great technology and right Eddie giveth
now we hear you so we we just got back
from our first leopard seal recapture
and we recovered our first Kirk an
appointment so what or a little a little
hot sweaty even though it’s very cold
down here this is just a little jogging
is that the critic am that you had on
the leopard seal that you’re holding up
is that the size of what you put on it
this is yeah this is the one we just
recovered and it ran over night last
night we’re trying to look at her
underwater behavior at night or hunting
behavior at night I would say you’re
working in an area where we’re really
seeing the most advances in exploration
and that’s developing new technology so
we can go back to something familiar and
and see it in a new way and following a
leopard seal where it goes it’s been
impossible before they’re fast
underwater and they’re going deep and
now we just put the camera on them and
let them take the pictures that it
absolutely this just just was not
possible before but because of you know
the investment that we make a National
Geographic the engines you can guarantee
that we work with we’re able to take
these cameras now and then ride into the
world will examine whether it’s leopard
seals or blue whales or emperor penguins
it really gives us this amazing new
insight into their behavioral ecology
that we’ve never had a chance to look at
the floor it’s only possible because of
this innovative new techno we get a lot
of questions coming in from people about
what’s left on the earth to explore
which we were hitting at before and Mike
and Australia you’re going over land and
Jane alluded to this when she said we
need to dig under the earth and that’s
what you do yeah sometimes you Thank You
mainland are you finding dinosaurs we
didn’t even know existed we’re finding
Crete
is that that leave the dinosaurs for
dead one of the the things that excites
me most apart from being in a place like
Australia where within a half an hour I
can be walking and exploring areas that
no European has ever set food on before
but certainly going into the past opens
up four dimensional worlds that we have
been even for practical purposes begun
to explore compared with the modern
world you’ve talked about finding an
amazing prehistoric creature a crocodile
we’re familiar with crocodiles but this
one climbs trees yeah some people think
that Australia’s full of reasons to be
horrified about going camping today but
back in time about 50 million years and
you wanted a really big our dad on
because these guys they were vicious
sort of dinosaur berean like crocodiles
with long recurved teeth but they
weren’t in the water staring at you they
were behind you in the forest or worse
as you say boid some of these guys were
actually in the trees ready to drop on
you from overhead the original drop
crops we had him a crocodile a giant
crocodile climbing trees if you thought
Australia had the frightening creatures
before you should have been there what
30 million years ago you would have
really been scared a terrific
exploration in the future is is going to
be done in ways that we didn’t think if
it’s not always going to be putting on
khaki and a pith helmet and going out
into the jungle oh you’re in a very
populated country in India and so how do
you keep the animals that are wild and
the billion people happy and living and
living side by side in a very crowded
area so where I work in the Western
God’s we have the highest number of
tigers and elephants in the world but we
also have 40 million people living aside
tigers and elephants and I think our big
reason why we have this is cultural
tolerance that we find in people so I
think you know going forward we need to
find ways to make sure that you you know
you address this tolerance and make sure
people’s tolerance for wildlife remains
and
sans tips because I don’t see any other
country in this world with this many
people still holding on to some of the
most spectacular species on the planet I
just reminded everyone on our Google+
Hangout that we’ve got National
Geographic explorers on all seven
continents we’ve got Africa with Paula
Cahoon bucher it you just heard from is
in India we’ve got our critter cam team
live in antarctica Bob Ballard undersea
explore in the United States Jane
Goodall in England primatologist we got
Mike Archer you’ve heard from a
paleontologist in Australia Cecilia
Mauricio archaeologists in Peru and so
we’re very excited to have all these
people together sisir you’re one of our
newer National Geographic explorers and
yet you’re looking back in time instead
of looking to the future you when you’re
when you’re digging to pre-inca cultures
you find things that will be beneficial
to how we go forward as a civilization
it’s a serious that is the past giving
us an insight into our present and our
future yes no actually my research it’s
about have to do with our actually jeje
early and environmental studies to
understand the processes of landscape
and archaeological sites in my case in
the recent where I am working there
right now it’s an ideological area 5,000
years old and the idea is to understand
why this population was there at the
time was the environment different and
because right now the data environment
is very dry very hostile for human
living so the idea is understand why and
what were the processes and and the
dynamics and the resources not swelling
Kootra that may be for all this
development development are possible so
I’m finding that what we see is not what
the last place a thousand years so 5,000
years old so that environment have to
get into a lot of processes
probably no that is not there was there
before like sharks and sea lions things
like that so it’s a whole work that is
therein we need to get up and Paula
you’re looking at our current
environment in Kenya about sort of like
what’s going on in India how people and
wildlife can coexist in Africa of course
the big part of the economy in Kenya is
making sure that the tourists come and
they want to make sure they’re still
reliance there you don’t have as many
people to deal with but how do you
convince the people that it’s good for
you to have lions is a neighbor well
Boyd Africa is a continent that is only
very recently in really taking charge of
its natural resources and problem facing
my life is just the same as what’s
happened all across the rest of the
world human development threatened my
life everywhere but it exists with while
I track what we’re trying to do is to
say yes these credible megafauna of
Africa these amazing landscapes
wilderness areas do need to be protected
and it requires a global commitment and
global action and that’s what we do with
wildlife Drake don’t working just
outside of the city of Harry I interact
with a local community of mass you
traditionally lowlands and just
yesterday we met a family that had lost
one of their sheep to lions and we’re
engaging with this community and
encouraging innovation from the people
themselves and we have a 14 year old boy
who has invented this amazing simple
light flashing system that keeps lands
away from his father’s homestead in this
simple mechanism that cost him ten
dollars to put together when he was 11
years old has now just spread right
across Kenya so what we’ve done is
actually not just provided a solution
but demonstrated that the local
community themselves actually has
delusions and so we’re moving towards
really encouraging recognizing and
rewarding a local innovation to an Asian
communities that we need wallah sounds
like he may be one of our newest
National Geographic explorers a 14 year
old boys to developed uh
on his own with no instructions or
school books or computer access to learn
how to do this develop a light system to
scare away the Lions we’re getting
questions in Jane you you spent your
life studying chimpanzees but Lauren on
google wants to know have you ever
thought what you might have done had you
not been an explorer had you not
dedicated your life to studying these
primates I would have been studying some
kind of animal because that’s what I
wanted to do from a well just that when
I was born so I’m quite sure I’d have
been studying some kind of animal but of
course one of the main things I’m doing
now let’s exactly back to the last talk
conversation that is working with young
people you around the world are in 132
countries now we have a group in in
Tanzania that are keeping elephants away
by smearing crushed up ready eppa and
elephant dung on the fences around the
crops and it’s actually eating your
plants away we got a question in from
Joe in Florida a Bob I’ll direct this to
you he said have you ever had a moment
exploring where you thought wow I might
not make it out of this situation well I
must say in my my early years of
exploration I was a perhaps a little
more reckless than I am now and I was
lucky to dodge the bullet a number of
times and enough time said I’m no I’m
not pushing so hard as I used to and I
must say that the the robotic technology
has made my kind of business working at
20,000 feet beneath the sea a lot safer
so I would say the technology came in
just women needed hey Bob you gotta
share with which we’re looking at some
footage now of your your new technology
where you send the robotic platforms
down with cameras and grasping arms and
you don’t have to go down yourself but
in the only way to be on the I don’t
even have to be on the ship anymore I
can actually do it all from
from home I can do it on my iphone I
still love it going out into the field
and I always will but I can now explore
much much more by actually staying home
now but I want you to share what it was
like in the bath of staff when you went
down in the little steel ball deep to
the bottom of the ocean and we’re
looking for deep-sea vents and things
what was it like being inside of that
going down tens of thousands of feet
well it can be scary I mean everything’s
fine when everything’s working it’s when
things don’t work that it gets scary and
then all of a sudden you realize you’re
really in a coffin with a little peep
hole in it and you’re you know you’ve
got six hours to get out of there and so
it can get very scary it’s certainly
cold yeah well what I did what had a
long time tell me about the time that
things did not go well and you hear the
creaking and noise and you’re not sure
you’re going to get back up well we were
diving in the Cayman trough on a bath of
scath and we were falling very fast and
we thought the bottom wasn’t near us yet
because we didn’t realize we were coming
down on the side of a giant volcano and
we weren’t picking it up on our sonar
and we actually just crashed into it and
that ruptured our flotation tank and all
of our floatation gasoline started
coming out we were basically bleeding
and we had to get out of there as fast
as we could but it took us six hours to
escape and that whole time we were we
were pretty quiet there’s not much to
say at that moment but hanging on will
we make it to the surface Greg in
Antarctica we just sort of threw that
out you’ve been attaching cameras to
leopard seals but people may not know a
leopard seal it’s not like the seal they
might have seen bouncing a ball off its
nose it’s a big carnivore and it can
come after you so have you ever had one
of them charged
well as it turns out i haven’t had a
leopard seals charged me this happened a
year or two ago I was working on the
other side of the Antarctic down that
law in the law suite i was i was
actually filming at this particular time
when leopard seal solving from quite a
ways away and i knew that was going to
be interested in me awesome about three
seconds later it launched himself out of
the water right at me and fortunately it
hit my tripod knocked my camera or
knocked me over but i was able to roll
away from it before it got a little too
interested that set and a leopard seal
what is that weigh 400 pounds well oh no
leopard seals a thousand pounds 1200
what’s the biggest one you seen the one
we were working on today was about 1,200
pounds and two the biggest one was close
to 1,500 pound wow so this is like a WWF
move where the leopard seal launches
itself into your face and then you roll
away so how do you catch them and put a
camera on is you normally just
incredible animal thing of these
absolutely huge nose so and kyler your
job is to be the guy who has to go and
attach the camera how do you do that
they’re your we got film of you putting
one on a whale we’re using a long pole
that’s when you need a ten-foot pole but
what do you do for the seal yeah well be
nice if we could use a ten-foot pole
with the seals unfortunately mankind a
way to do it yet so we’re taking the
critter cams we zip tie some mesh I just
a nylon mesh to the critic am and then
we epoxy the mesh into the fur on the
seals back I don’t hurt them it’s not
right on their skin it’s just we’re
using the fur to walk into the mesh with
a the epoxy but that means you have to
catch the seal first you have to hold it
down while you’re glue a camera oh yeah
there’s there’s a little bit hiccup in
that there yeah there was a step you
missed i think and doug is that why
you’re there to catch the leopard seals
yeah that’s that’s where I’m going to
come into play we’ve got a real
interesting situation down here because
we’ve been losing ice very fast these
leopard seals are now hauling out on
land near our site and because we have
better access to them we’ve developed
over the years capture protocol which me
just minutes ago completed very safely
both for the animal and for the people
involved and yeah the name of the game
is to keep the seal calm and quiet well
while we can do our work momoi and get
out of there as fast as possible and
make sure at the end that they still
have all ten fingers and ten toes uh
I’ve got a question of 43 he’s came in
from Julia and Portugal julia says I’m
18 I want to work with animals but my
parents consider it a hobby rather than
a career do you find that people don’t
understand what you do now you’ve got a
little advantage Curitiba cuz your
father was also a conservationist in
India yeah so I’m not the typical
wildlife biologist could I saw tigers
and leopards when I was two years old
but I would you know I think this is the
typical reaction most young people face
and particularly young women because you
know you’re not taken seriously for a
long time so I would you know I would
like her to just go after this and do it
if this is what she wants to do and in
Jane when you started it was really
unusual for now we’ve got as you can see
by our who we got rounded up here on our
Google hangout we got a lot of women
researchers and explorers but when you
started you were you were pioneering
that in National Geographic gave you a
grant did you find it difficult one to
convince the other scientists and
researchers that you could do the job
and and the and the people at home like
your parents well first of all my dream
of going to Africa and living with
animals began when I was 11 everybody
laughed at me girls couldn’t do that
sort of thing we didn’t have any money
except my mother who said if you really
want something and you work hard and you
never give up you find a way so I got to
and zinnia I met Louis Leakey
he managed to find a bit of money for me
start then I saw tool using and
tool-making and the geographic came into
their first-round 291 and then supported
the work for about 10 years but the
other scientists just thought of me as a
National Geographic cover girl and I
only did what I did because I had nice
legs fortunately I didn’t really want to
be a scientist I wanted to learn about
the chimpanzee and Hugo and now it came
and of course the geographic funded his
amazing photography and filmmaking cebu
finally the scientists had to agree my
worst fight was persuading people that
it wasn’t only humans who had
personalities and minds and emotions by
the way I want to tell everybody we have
a map up if you go to our map on google
you can you can see where all of our
explorers that we’re talking with today
are where they’re located around the
world and you can just click on their
spotted and it will bring up information
you can learn more about the Explorers
you can see still photos of their work
you can see videos or their work and and
get a better understanding of what
they’re doing and and maybe pick up
ideas for yourself on how you can become
a explorer or what you might want to go
and see in the world and take your part
in the new age of exploration that we’re
launching here at National Geographic
now that we’ve covered the first 125
years you have to agree that the new
geospatial mapping and GIS G yes all
this kind of stuff that is just
providing so much new information about
where to go and way to go where you go
how does that help in archaeology when
you’re doing this I’m Mike dizzy does
the new mapping give you a way of
looking without actually walking across
the ground and picking up rocks and
turning them over yeah it’s absolutely
incredible I remember that little scene
of Jurassic Park where where they use
this sort of a sounding device to
discover a Velociraptor underground well
technologies like that are actually
coming good now now we’re using
satellite data which is just knock me
out what you can
with that we found while we’ve been
working in river ously one of the most
interesting world heritage fossil
deposits in Australia we knew about 40
square kilometers I’m not bilingual any
more can a member how many miles that is
but it’s big and we thought my phone
extended the pot 2009’s we thought that
was the extent of the fossil deposits
and then one of my PhD students came in
exploring satellite data and pointed out
to us you know with a bit of a grin
mischievous grin that there was an area
even bigger than the one that the World
Heritage Site covered that we had never
set foot in and that all came from using
satellite data to to explore areas of no
human being had ever set foot in before
its magazine apollon up let me give you
a question that Matias on Google+ is
sent in since it’s in this theme of
Technology wants to know if technology
which is making exploring an exploration
better and easier and giving us new
insights but will technology make hands
on exploring in real life obsolete or we
all be able to do like Bob and sit in
our computer room and watch it on TV I
think that the really exciting thing
about technology is combining it with
the hands on you know first-hand
experience especially when it comes to
animals and even plants you know
anything that we’re working on I think
it’s just given an incredibly new depth
and new way to actually to look at
things from very different angles but I
think there’s also a really dangerous
side to technology the time seen in in
Kenya weeks in we’ve had a massive
amount of exploration using the very
same tools we might use for exploring
and mapping our forest areas or our
habitats the same technology is being
used to explore and locate natural
resources for the purpose of exploiting
it and we’re seeing these natural
resources just being you know plundered
across the country which I think this is
something that we haven’t quite gotten
to grips with how do we deal with rights
community right
landowner rights of national values and
heritage versus short-term there’s
always two sides to these stories so the
technology is me giving us new insight
and make an inspiration oh it can be
exploited for exploiting the resources
and by the way we don’t often get our
explorers connected all seven continents
at the same time so if you guys have
questions for each other feel free to
jump in and if they’re Jane if there’s
something you’ve always wanted to know
about Bob now is your chance to ask it
well I don’t know Bob I think if you and
I were sitting as we have before there’s
so much one of my passions you know what
brings you down to study any home run
like fashions is to go down under the
sea probably because of jewels burns and
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea but you
know I would just like to have time to
sit and hang out and we hope you had
some funny stories and be so many
questions I think both ways well we need
to get you Jane out on the Nautilus it’s
a it’s in Turkey right now in the
shipyard but it’ll be in the Caribbean
for the next two years so I think we
should have you come on out and go out
to sea with this and and explore with us
it’ll be a lot of fun well that would be
fun wouldn’t it yes yes and what Jane I
think Bob should go look at the
chimpanzees don’t you well I had the
wonderful opportunity to go to to where
she had done her work and were and also
I had a wonderful chance to go or dian
fossey worked I mean I love Africa I’ll
go there any time I spend a lot of time
in Kenya I man i’m an earth scientist so
i love all of Earth just happens that
seventy two percent of its underwater so
you can get me to Africa anytime dr.
geologist by training Bob well I’m a
geologist and I think of the earth is
the biggest organism of all I think of
earth is a living creature but most of
its underwater
but I travel all over the land part two
so I love the whole enchilada Cecilia
well if you could tuck if you could join
one of our other explorers here who
would you most want to follow around for
a week and see what they’re doing if you
weren’t doing archaeology and Peru can I
can I can I choose all of them yes one
we go with everyone this is amazing
Eminem and I’m very excited and very
honored to be part of it I’m enjoying
enjoying this very much okay now Greg
you get to go all over the world you and
the critter cam team you and kyler
because you put these cameras not just
on leopard seals and not just by the way
Greg and the team put them on pinguin
say so some of those underwater shots
you saw in march of the penguins after
Geographics Crittercam team but we got a
question from Bridget on Google this is
for you Greg and the team what’s the
most difficult animal you’ve ever worked
with so it doesn’t have to be in
Antarctica what’s the most difficult
animal well you know until until today I
would have said that leopard seals are
the most difficult but it turns out that
Doug has got it got it sort of nail so
leopard seals are no longer on the
height of my list looks like it talking
yeah you’ve uh you put them on sharks
and you have one guy he used to swim up
to the Sharks even tiger sharks and
clamped Lee Crittercam on without having
the shark constrained
so they car picture frozen nrt what a
surprise a picture froze in Antarctica
how unusual who would have expected that
down there that took cold continent
frozen continent impala do you why
you’re working with the big cat
initiative do you actually have to get
out on the ground and approach the lines
to study them you need some eye sight on
them it’s not all done with technology
you have to follow them around see where
they’re going what they’re doing no I I
don’t think I would want to walk around
with the Lions um and when lyons are
outside of the protected areas they’re
extremely shy they’re quite fearful of
people so it’d be very hard to get
yourself to them inside the national
parks is very easy because they’re very
calm they know they’re safe so most of
our work is done but by observations of
lions inside the parks reports that come
from the communities that we work with
we’ve given them cameras they take
photographs of lions and they you know
tell us when they see them and when they
have incidents with Kim Yoo Lian
conflict in a big part of what you’re
doing with wildlife direct is making
sure that the Rangers get their stories
up about particular animals they’re
following whether it’s lions or or any
other of the wildlife in Kenya and
they’re posting it people can follow
these these Rangers they can help
support the Rangers and follow
particular animals and they it’s almost
real time being there without having to
take the malaria pills is essentially
what you’re allowing people to do well
it’s an opportunity for people who care
about why life in Africa to actually
interact with those people at the front
line at the front line listen to the
stories and participate and support them
if they want to and is created the whole
new communities for conservation of
people who can be sitting in New York
and supporting somebody for example in
Zimbabwe and working on big cats in
Zimbabwe or elephant sadabs wanna and
Rick yeah so why life direct is not just
Rangers support there there are
scientists and communities as well is
Bob still there I’m trying to look at ya
there I see Bob Bob we got a question
from Adam on
Google he wants to know what might lie
in the unexplored oceans that we haven’t
seen do you have any guesses and which
and let me expand on that a little bit
and say do you ever go looking for one
thing and find something else to totally
shocked sure you weren’t that wasn’t
even part of the mission but suddenly
it’s a bigger discovery than what you
went to look for you know those are the
big home runs you’re always you’re
always hoping for and I’ve been lucky
I’ve been at this 53 years now and and
the discovery of hydrothermal vents for
example in the giant tubeworms ten feet
tall we had no idea they were there or
when we found black smokers or lost city
I mean they’re the real answer to the
question is when they say what do you
think you’re going to discover next the
honest answer is I haven’t got and I
haven’t got a clue because if I really
knew I wouldn’t be a discovery so that’s
what’s really exciting is to go looking
for one thing and find something else
that’s much much more important and I
just love that and I can’t get enough of
it so with our new ship of exploration
constantly exploring now working with
other ships to bring them into the inner
space center this year we’ll have six
ships exploring in real time coming into
the exploration room and I just can’t
wait to see what they find a critter you
got started as we mentioned earlier than
most people in being an explorer because
your father was a conservation as how
young were you when he took you out to
track Tigers for the first time hi I’m
told I was one I remember things from
the time was about two years old yeah
two years old tracking Tigers will you
do that with your kid yeah I have a
five-year-old and she’s seen two
leopards into wolves this year so it
seems like it continues on and our
excitement you know I mean carries on so
other way corinthia was our 10,000th
grantee at National Geographic we make
grants we have been we obviously if
we’ve got out more than 10,000 now over
the years
to fund research and exploration around
the world she was number ten thousand
for some of her work she’s doing with
Tigers studying them and to inspire
people to follow along as you’re one of
the new explorers is it important they
get started early or can you switch
careers midstream do you think and and
become an explorer I think you can you
can switch careers anytime you want and
I actually didn’t want to be a biologist
of any kind i wanted to be a lawyer or
an architect and when i went to do my
undergrad in the US is when i found my
way back what my roots were so i think
if you I mean if you really passionate
about stuff it doesn’t matter what age
you are you know do it I think what’s
really really important is to address
the fact that our children now in the
developed countries are spending less
and less unless out there in nature amor
amor I’m doing virtual and they’re
losing they walk past amazing things
without even seeing them and this to me
is very very uncertain and vast I spent
much of my time working with youth with
our region shoot program which does
begin preschool and goes all the way
through University what do you see in
the countries where the the chimpanzees
are do they do the kids walk by them
there and ignore them too because
they’re well I’ve always been here and
we don’t think of the minis think
anything special or is it possible to
inspire them to say this is important we
protect and preserve what we’ve got now
we are we have our program in all
villages around the chimp area go be
work in Tanzania Uganda DRC
congo-brazzaville Gavin and Sierra Leone
and in all those places we involve the
young people they’re not actually
watching the chimps which are quite
dangerous they’re fascinated by them
learning about them and just as in Kenya
they’re learning that that there are
males who live with this world like and
how important the wild creatures are
arcus tourism of course in Tanzania is
very important to and other countries
want to develop it
and cecilia in peru do you think is
archaeology a feel that it appeals to
people do you are you inspiring younger
generations to say let’s go look at the
past is that of interest yes I think so
when I was with my undergrad in Peru the
word some jumpy for some women deciding
actually now the amount of students
doing archaeology were selling
archaeology it’s a larger there are more
and more people interested in in the
past in preserving our our ideological
type and in because I think this is so
something important for us because so
probably our ships three as I said was
discovered by account because we the
cultures that existed before the Inca
they did a half writing so and thanks to
archaeology we were discovering what was
our history before the Incas for
Hispanics and got something shoots for
formation at you my cup we got a
question from Billy on YouTube about
what impact do you think social media
has on exploration is that does it help
oil in your field yes certainly it has a
tremendous amount and i think it’s it’s
a reflection of the public’s interest in
in living as well as prehistoric animals
we do find that the amount of media
coverage that attends explorations of
this kind makes it easier for
governments to actually give research
grants because they can then rationalize
what they’ve done to the public because
demonstrably the public is interested in
what’s happening so this kind of
research that we’re all involved in
really is helped by media coverage I
think what National Geographic is doing
at the moment for example in picking up
an interest in the possibility of
bringing extinct animals back to life
there will be a big
involvement of this in the next few
months and it’s a very exciting area and
you can imagine the media coverage
suddenly thinking hey these things don’t
have to stay extinct they might actually
come back to life that explosion will in
turn help get research funds invested
into these areas and more discoveries
will be memory i’m just going to put my
head back on it just spun around when
you said bringing a sneak creatures back
to life in fact mike is you want to stay
tuned hang out there google+ hangout
it’s going to get exciting because
Mike’s going to talk about a specific
project he’s got coming up but this is
we got explorers coming in and dropping
out so I want to say goodbye thanks to
occur if he’s been joining us Cecilia in
Peru a Corinthian India Paula in Kenya
they’re going to leave us now mike is
going to stay with us Jane is going to
stay with us we’ll have some more
explorers coming in Bob do you have a
few more minutes you can hang out thank
you just a few I’ve got to start
exploring some more okay so we’re going
to keep you just a few more minutes this
is not only is it National Geographic so
125th anniversary it’s a bob Ballard’s
of 22nd wedding anniversary this weekend
so congratulations Bob just a lily a
personal no thank you very much I met my
wife is you know at National Geographic
she was in a special projects and I
became one and that’s why I want to say
is the biggest congratulations to
blahblah for putting up with you for 22
years so there that’s harder than
exploring in the jungles for 22 years
believe me sao paulo ker if II Syria
thank you very much for joining us Mike
stick around in fact Mike since you
brought it up explain how you’re taught
you’re trying to bring back the
Tasmanian tiger from extinction how is
that possible well I don’t know if it is
possible yet but we certainly took great
strides down that path this was this was
against the wisdom if you like the
conventional wisdom of non exploring
geneticist who said this was impossible
but much that was regarded as impossible
10 or 20 years ago is suddenly starting
to become very
possible I’m involved in another project
we called the Lazarus project and we’ve
not only got the the DNA back of this
animal we have this animal actually
being produced now as embryos so we’re
steadily walking down this path I hope
there’s going to be a very exciting
outcome but of course as I discovered
when I had the when I attended the
workshop of National Geographic there
are many people around the world
exploring similar initiatives of this is
an extremely exciting time interfacing
prehistoric discoveries with the modern
world you’re saying that we may have a
Jurassic Park come to life that’s a
potential new field of exploration that
is the new age of exploration absolutely
and it goes it goes beyond that void
because one of the other areas that’s
being explored at the moment is asking
while we’re losing wildlife in the world
at a terrifying rate the question has
been asked can we re wild the world with
things that have been lost from one
place by introducing them from another
can we enrich the biodiversity of the
planet by understanding what was there
before and what we might be able to
reconstitute with some very careful
research we can reconstitute an
environment if we can preserve the
environment I mean that’s the
frightening thing that huge areas are
just being destroyed and you know the
hope is yes the resilience of nature
give nature a chance and I was just
reading about this plant that was
discovered so little piece of the plant
was discovered in an ice age ground
squirrels nest way down below the
permafrost in Siberia and the plant was
reconstituted from three living cells so
what’s possible in this field is is
enormous but you know I’m fighting to
save the creatures we have those are the
ones I’m passionate about so it’s much
easier to save the ones we have in
trying to bring back one
that no longer exists I think it boy Jay
such a great environment our habitat for
humans as well as these animals right to
Mike yeah it is true but I guess one of
the realities of James working with and
struggling with all the rest of us are
doing the same thing Africa has these
problems in Australia it’s becoming
almost a mantra to say that
unfortunately wildlife is no longer safe
in the wild as we steam incorrigibly
unable to stop destroying natural
environments um we have we come to a
crossroads and we have to ask the
explorers who are in this area have to
ask are we just going to let these
things go because we don’t seem to have
the willpower or the the commitment to
conserve those environments or do we
recognize that problem and start
exploring parallel strategies to keep
biodiversity alive while we come to our
senses and there are so many new
initiatives that are being explored up
I’m an advocate in Australia for example
of keeping some Australian animals as
pets instead of just introduced cats and
dogs many of them I’ve had about 25
native animals as pets from quals to all
sorts of things there are more wonderful
cleaner fun than cats and dogs and yet
it’s illegal to keep them while those
same animals are steadily going extinct
in Australia I think we have to explore
new strategies as well as new areas on
the planet for maintaining the
biodiversity that we’re steadily losing
a bob when people look at the ocean they
think there’s something feel big we
don’t have to worry about that that can
absorb anything we’ve dumped into it
what’s your take after going around and
looking at it from the top and the
bottom and from every side and every
angle well you know the deep sea is by
definition extremely deep and and
isolated and protected the problem is
it’s it’s not that’s not where the
problem is the problem is in the shallow
water coral reefs coastal regions that’s
where the decimation is going and that’s
quite honestly where your greatest
diversity is and some of the most
cutiful creatures on the planet
are the shallow water ones close to
humans so the good news is the deep seas
that is doing very well the bad news is
it you know that’s not the coolest place
in the world for some of the most
beautiful creatures so my concern is
really what’s happening in the coastal
zones as more and more humans moved back
towards the ocean and that’s where the
conflict is years ago you had a dream of
having this ship that you’ve now
developed it has the the deep diving
vehicles and the cameras and the lights
it was at that time it was almost
science fiction when you thought of it
now you’ve got this ship that you can go
and you can sit at home and look at the
computer screen and see the pictures
that are being taken from the bottom of
the ocean have you started to think what
the next stage of development is going
to be if you will more than likely the
next stage will be where there is where
the ships are automated that actually
you don’t need crews to run the ships
they’re more like sending probes to Mars
having said that I still love the ocean
I still love to swim in it and sail on
it and Recreation it but when it comes
to going to work and exploring
seventy-two percent of our planets in
total darkness I think we’re going to be
moving more and more into remotely
operated underwater drone systems and
and then enjoy I enjoy right now I look
over my shoulder and I’m looking at it
the wetlands and can Connecticut
actually I actually like being on land a
lot for a guy who spent so much of his
time in the ocean he’s a landlubber at
heart a bob thanks for joining us here
on a google hangout go and enjoy the
rest of your 22nd wedding anniversary
weekend and thanks for sharing some
about the explorations you’ve done and
what you’re looking forward in the order
to in the future of exploration thanks a
lot on to that I’ll head off and thanks
a lot keep exploring bye bye bye 125
years we’ve been sending people like Bob
Ballard and Jane Goodall who’s with us
and a mic Archer and now we’ve got some
of our new guests we’ve got Kenny broad
does understand a little different way
does it cave diving with a scuba gear
specially designed scuba gear okay
are you all right how are you I’m
looking good so you still have a all the
exploring you’ve done you still haven’t
found your hair I see that’s a Albert
Lin Albert are you there Albert research
scientist and engineer we’ve been
talking about how technology is changing
exploration and social media is changing
it nobody’s doing that more than Albert
Lin is done in Mongolia we’ll talk to
you a minute about your project welcome
Albert good to see you and explorations
taking place in all kinds of way aziz al
becerra is doing it as a cultural
educator so when National Geographic
looks at the New Age of Exploration
we’re looking at it in a different way
he joins us from Jerusalem by the way
where he is bringing the Palestinians
and the jewish population together in
cultural tours in ways you wouldn’t
imagine you’re going to want to hear
from him and ask questions for him the
Jane let me go back to you for just a
minute because we’re getting a lot of
questions for you and the biggest one
wants to know how did you feel the first
time that chimp interacted and sometimes
we put up video and I think the most
famous shot of you is a chimp reaching
out with a finger going right towards
your face was that the first moment of
real interaction with the chimpanzee
after you’d been studying them know the
first one came with year old David
Greybeard the first gym to lose his fear
of me and actually let me assume we want
to do that now because we know that
human diseases can be trying to make
their two kids because we’re
biologically almost identical but back
then when the chimpanzees didn’t running
away when David allowed me to room him
when one day he reached out and took a
fruit from my hand he didn’t want it and
then gently squeezed my fingers which is
a sign of reassurance and then as you
say when old flow actually let her
infant precious infant come up and reach
out to catch me those big wandering eyes
I mean it were moments that I think
really enabled me to carry on with this
study its own its 54th year which is
pretty amazing
yes it is let’s just do some quick
questions for everybody will go fairly
quickly here when you’re out in the
field Jane what’s the longest you’ve
ever gone without a shower haha we have
a make there is no problem at all you
just jump in the lake at the end of the
day there’s no need boom without a
shower once the longest you’ve had to go
without a shower in Australia Mike no
two months but then in the I guess in
the middle of that I was able to jump in
a board rain which is about fifty
percent mud it felt better than the two
months without any wet at all I didn’t
know israelian showered yeah two months
is just sort of regular yeah that’s the
English the experience decided we’ll
hear different than the English yeah so
Kenny since you do most of your work in
the water i guess you shower every time
you jump in that’s right that’s right
what’s the line what’s the most
discomfort you do you have to camp out
by some of these kenny explores in
underwater caves and in blue holes do
you have to sleep on the ground when
you’re near one of these places if it’s
very isolated yeah i guess a lot of
times for we start the cave diving at
the bottom of a deep cave so for
instance in mexico i believe we spent
about twenty one days underground before
we even started diving so you’re living
at different at different levels
underground so you’ll set up a camp
where you’re going back and forth every
day then eventually started living at
that camp and shuttling your lower and
lower so you’re about you know almost
almost 5,000 feet underground and that’s
where you start the diving so you you
you may go days in a like a camping out
situation yeah it’s kind of the cheapest
deepest motel around as some people say
boid if i can just bring you back to the
showers in a Scalia it’s something just
occurred to me that the one and only
time that I had a very unusual shower in
Australia as I was trying to capture a
tree kangaroo they don’t look strong but
they are and I had it
the tail as it was scooting up a large
tree and I thought I would be able to
keep it on the ground I didn’t it in
fact went off the tree with me hanging
on its tail but its last message to me
was to let loose and give me my first
and only golden shower it’s another is
fillion ways getting a shower the candle
is gone wow we have many students who
bring showers like Jim baby well
chimpanzees don’t they they not only
shower you don’t they throw their poop
at your chain though the world one stove
the suits that love throwing poop
because they want anything to get
interaction with these beastie people
that grin at them all day
research but you also go out in the
field you’ve done a lot of climbing and
fieldwork what’s the longest you’ve gone
without a shower uh uh you know probably
about a month because Mongolia happens
to be quite a dry place a lot of a lot
of the time so it’s been it’s been up to
a month at times and it’s kind of
difficult because in Mongolia you know
and when somebody said hello to you they
want to give you a kiss a lot of times
instead of giving you a kiss they’ll
they’ll smell you they’ll sniff your
face because your soul is represented in
you know in your smell according to the
traditions of the Mongolian people so
after a month of not shower and your
soul smells a little bit more authentic
there they’re getting the true essence
of you they they’re looking deep within
you yeah but makes it when they see a
month of them coming out you know it the
same you know I would be being a lot of
trouble if I if I didn’t take this
moment or opportunity to tell Jane that
my 12 year old neighbor across the
street ran out this morning specifically
to make sure that I told you that you’re
her hero and you know her name is poorly
oh and she she spends most of her time
volunteering at the wildlife communities
around our neighborhood and it really
makes me you know think about why for
example why I spend my time as an
engineer running around not showering in
Mongolia trying to do things that are
based is based on exploration and it has
to do with that same moment of
inspiration for me when I was a kid and
for her you know she’s going to go on
the Conservation Wildlife Research
because of the influence that you had on
her but for me it’s the heroes of
National Geographic like Alexander
Graham Bell one of the founders national
graphic was an engineer and replying
technology out you know in interesting
ways so I just had to put that plug in
there before we moved on to more shower
stories because she made sure that I say
that I’m glad you actually put that Mary
yeah say hello to her for me and tell
her to be sure to look roots and shoots
oh r g because she can take part night
in china where in mongolia yeah she’s
well she’s been a lot of time already
listening to you speak i think her
mother takes except she can to your when
you’re up to yourself
I it’s it’s this idea that the New Age
of Exploration has as much to do with
curiosity as it has to do with
responsibility right and I think you
really shepherded that in and it’s a
it’s why I’m here I understand that
Kenny we may not have your connection
for very long so let me just go to you
for a couple of moments explain because
you want to go down and see we talked a
lot about technology here how you can
send robotics down or or take satellite
photos to look at areas but you to get
into an underwater cave is the best way
still to go down there yourself yeah
luckily there’s still good job security
for everyone out there he’s looking for
for a job because you can’t replace the
human you still can’t replace a human
with a remote operated vehicle with you
know submarines with ground-penetrating
radar for most of the sorts of cave
diving cave exploration it’s just the
manual dexterity that the actual
decision making in a complex you know
complex decision making when you’re in a
maze with zero visibility you just can’t
run it from the surface so it’s it’s one
of these it’s an art combined with a
skill where you we just haven’t been
able to replace ourselves yet which
makes you may go down for extended
periods of time are you using
rebreathers yeah Wow you to stay down
for hours at a time yeah I mean one of
the what we try to do is use the
simplest technology possible and I
really am a technological Luddite it
took me about five times longer than the
rest of the participants and the Hangout
to figure out how to get on google
properly so i was doing but you know so
I mean technology’s changing diving for
instance just yesterday I was diving for
my friends iphone but it dropped off a
bridge and actually we couldn’t find the
iphone and on the way out we found
someone else’s iphone it’s a rescue
mission for an iphone the rescue mission
for iphone butts in cave diving in truth
it’s the simplest technology that you
can get away with it should you want to
use but now rebreathers and some dive
computers are allowing us to really
extend exploration both in time and in
depth so I do I do acknowledge it but it
comes with an ink
he’s in a danger in danger when you’re
relying on computers underwater and just
to reiterate what Kenny does but if
you’re if you’re a scuba diver you know
if something goes wrong you’re diving
out in the Caribbean at 40 50 60 feet I
you’ve got enough air that you can just
shoot to the surface in this crystal
blue water and look up oh there’s a
service and I go you’re in a cave you
might be down 300 feet but worse than
that you might be a mile into it so if
you were to try to go straight up your
bump your head on the limestone why
you’re applying that’s what happened
yeah yeah well you popped it a lot so
why the risk when does what makes an
exploration worth extreme risk you know
I think we we each have we like to
justify what we do that we make rational
decisions I’m doing this for science I’m
doing this so we better understand water
resource management I’m doing it to
collect samples to reconstruct past
climate and those are all I would say
Post hoc explanations for what we do and
it’s great I can justify it but the
truth is there’s just something I think
genetic that drives us to want to see
what’s around the next corner and if
that corner happens to be underground
happens to be underwater you some of us
are attracted to those types of
environments and I’m sure if you had a
psychologist they could give you you
know they could make a fortune on you
they could make a fortune on the couch
right 47 wouldn’t exactly maybe it was
something that happened to me during the
birthing process and by the way when you
go into these caves to find your way out
you string a line it’s like on a fishing
reel of lion that you have to string out
so you can grab a hold the line and
follow your follow your way out once you
get in there because it can be you can
lose your lights you can silt it up and
you’re not know where you are so there’s
there’s some extreme risk still involved
in exploration even though we’ve got all
the new technology and high-tech devices
and rebreathers allow stay underwater
longer there is still a bit of the day
the glamour the romanticism of
old-fashioned exploring to be an
explorer yeah let me do a sport can I
just sorry just to follow up just to
make sure something is very
clear it really is there’s frontiers and
decades more of physical exploration to
do an underwater caves but please don’t
go in there without the proper training
it is not like open water diving in any
way shape or form so for anyone
listening it takes a whole different set
of equipment configuration training and
a lot of that’s really it’s as much a
mental game and kind of getting in the
right psychological mindset and
practicing breathing exercises so please
for anyone out there you know I’m glad
to point them in the right direction for
the training but don’t go in an
underwater cave even a few feet because
you’ll turn around and see that you
can’t see your way out yeah I’ve been
through the beginning cave diving
training and it’s intense and it’s
essential to understanding just how
dangerous it is and and it it makes you
more cautious and more aware of what
you’re doing so yeah don’t do that
without the proper training Aziz now
this is a complete new kind of
exploration of what you’re doing and you
with some people say it’s impossible
bringing Jews and Palestinians together
to go learn about each other what’s the
reaction there in Jerusalem to this idea
as you say that’s a new it’s a new
exploration I think when when I got the
phone call even I was surprised about
becoming an explorer so no I think it’s
it’s important whenever you see you know
we talked about saving the world saving
the planet but we also have to remember
if we don’t save our values and our
morals and who we are as a people and
kill each other for reasons that are not
worthy then we have failed in our
exploration so I see Palestinians and
Israelis I grew up here grab Palestinian
and we so similar yet we don’t know
anything about each other and my first
time meeting Israelis I grew up
Palestinian I was so fascinated by
learning different things and having
that interaction that you know you can
call it exploring the enemy in in some
ways and being able to know each other
makes you less likely to want to kill
each other makes your looks likely to
want to do something against each other
so this is this is what I’m trying to do
and it goes great I’ve had Israelis and
Palestinians kids playing soccer with
each other we’ve had them going and
learning about each other history visit
each other homes eating with each other
learning about each other and it’s
fascinating to see how people become
friends so quickly and you may have the
most amazing story of how anyone became
an explorer we’ve heard how some of our
people here on our Google hangout today
were inspired to go into this work but I
don’t know if anyone else was brought to
it by country music you explain how that
happened how country music made you an
explorer yes I love country music and it
makes me the weirdest Palestinian ever
over the meebo we have this Middle
Eastern at all nobody relates to me here
with that no I I grew up in in a family
that was very we didn’t meet anybody on
the other side my brother was killed
when I was 10 years old and so that made
me very much gone to extreme when i was
18 i went to study Hebrew in an open
which is where shoes who moved to Israel
go to study and we started talking I
didn’t want to talk to anybody i was
sure i’m gonna learn hebrew without
talking to the people there which was
very smart but the slowly you know they
force us into conversations and made us
ask questions about what we like and I
was a big fan of country music and I
talked a couple people there who knew
who Johnny Cash is which to me was
already awesome thing and it was a
through music naughty through politics
not it through you know when we started
talking about music and that took us so
going out for coffee and then getting to
know each other and it was amazing it’s
it’s totally opposite of what you think
often we think it starts with we have to
agree in politics we have to agree and
how things work and who you are who I am
to state once day it’s not it’s relating
to people as a human being that comes
first The Legend of Johnny Cash grows
his influence lives on this is
incredible we have obviously we have
people sending in questions and by the
way you can send in questions to our up
google hangout on Google+ you
tube and Twitter just use the hashtag
natgeo 125 but we also have some evil on
video in London you have some questions
Daniel pet and London archaeologist
joins us and Catrin Schmidt and Norwich
UK is also here question Karine you have
a question for any of our explorers yeah
sure um I was wondering because I had
these moments already in my life when
you realize that dedicating your life to
nature and science was the right thing
to do I repeat that question one more
time Catrin I’m sorry i was wondering at
what time or at what moment in your life
you realize that dedicating your life to
nature and science was the right thing
to do okay at the moment you realize
that dedicating your life to nature and
science was the right thing to do Jane
when was that for you as I said I just
grew up knowing that I wanted to work
with animals and live with them and I
talks about them so something I knew all
my life but the decision that a sort of
moment that came to me was the life
change when i left the forests and
started traveling around the world
trying to save whatever i could the
natural world where all the trees had
gone I once knew Oh 1986 1986 when you
realized that the changing environment
Mike when did you decide you wanted to
dig through fossilized dinosaur poop it
was very easy for me actually I found
that was not comfortable with people i
think i was born the wrong species
actually I my friend I was much more
comfortable with turtles and snakes and
possums so I think from about the age of
11 I pretty much turned my back on
humanity and decided they were animals
were much more interesting and that
included the course the fossil animals
nothing dog is that a is that a
schnauzer there is that a kangaroo no
actually this is noodle dish noodle and
we’re not allowed to keep native animals
here in Australia so this is my
concession I should
paint noodle with stripes so at least I
can think I’ve got my i’ll assign back
here or just to put a patch on it make
him a marsupial hey Albert what about
you was there a time when you said
alright this is what I want to do I know
I’m on the right path um yeah you uh you
know it started out for me is kind of a
personal journey to find out more about
myself and I grew up as a as an
asian-american in a society where a lot
of my own history wasn’t really taught
to me in school so when I grew up I
really wanted to learn more about it and
there was another point in my life when
as an engineer I was finishing a PhD in
India in material science and
engineering and I didn’t know what I was
going to do and somebody one of a very
close friend of mine basically came up
to me and said I was trying to go what I
would do for work and how take all my
life and my friend just asked me what
would you do if you didn’t have to worry
about money what would you do if you
really just didn’t have to worry about
survival like that what would you
dedicate your life to and within a week
I was on the road traveling towards you
know towards Asia and eventually into
Mongolia with the idea that somehow
technology that I learned about my
career would be applied to whatever in
my curiosity of my human exploration
would be as well and so basically that
point I sold everything I had and moved
into my car and started started trying
to do something a little bit different
and what and I don’t think we’ve
actually detailed what it is that Albert
does which is really different not the
idea they wanted to try to find Genghis
Khan’s tomb reputed to be and she would
imagine large and famous but never
discovered and it might be in places
where the Mongolians don’t necessarily
sacred site your special sites they
don’t want people just going around
digging up and so you develop technology
to let anybody be an explorer if you
want to know how to be an explorer you
can actually help Albert do
crowdsourcing you you post pictures and
people look on them and try to spot
anomalies explain how this works however
well it means it’s a combination of two
things you touched upon both the idea
that you know
that these lands are so sacred right so
some of the technologies that we develop
our to look without having to dig the
mongolian shaman believe that he can
disturb the tomb of Genghis Khan that
you’ll cause this this curse you know
this crystal because his spirit still
oversees their people and the world for
that matter I mean there wasn’t this
idea of boundaries barriers and balls
Mongolia was that they were all one
people across the planet underneath the
sky and so they believed that his spirit
which was the founder of that nation was
still overseeing or totally was
overseeing their people and that if you
disturbed where he’s buried then we
gonna cause some trouble some really bad
trouble so how do you look with that
dating so we came up with you know a
series of ideas and we applied
technologies that were used for you know
for for surveying construction sites and
we applied them to you know this these
mountains and try to look without
without digging right the second part is
we don’t know where exactly this to
might even be it’s in this huge vast
country where or those massive
landscapes where people haven’t really
even been allowed to go to for over a
hundred years in fact there’s this one
area which has been since the time of
Jenga skon forbidden to travel to
outside of the royal family for anybody
else was a role family so how do you
identify those few anomalies in this
vast landscape and so we tried to use
satellite imagery we tried to use other
you know types of data that can look
down on the earth when we found was
there’s so much information out there I
mean there’s so much data out there that
there’s almost an impossible task of
going through it and that also is part
of the frontiers of exploration because
you know satellite imagery now has the
ability for us to look at any corner to
the planet and try to investigate but
there’s every there’s so many corners so
how do you find them and so we asked the
public to look at little segments of
satellite imagery and tell us what they
saw in them and we added all those those
little comments together and we’re still
adding them together and we’re finding
that people agree upon certain things
that look abnormal and we travel out to
those places on horseback or you know by
foot sometimes this is very difficult to
travel out there and we’re using that
idea that a new pair of eyes can see
something if you’ve been looking at for
a long time you might have
missed you just you’ve got them so
entrenched in and looking at this map
that you’ve missed something but you
bring new eyes n fresh eyes and
different eyes they might spot an
anomaly and if a bunch of them agree the
night let’s go take a closer look and i
just added up the stats about how much
time people have spent on this you know
and you know we look at everybody
contributing us as an equal valued part
because all those little data points are
very very important to us but when you
add up all their cliques and all the
time that they spent helping us out it’s
a collective of 18 years of human effort
looking at satellite imagery you know
all crammed into one little data source
said that we asked them to do so 18yo
would have taken 18 years I’m constantly
staring at the satellite imagery to be
able to do what you know what the
community wants happen and what a period
of a year yeah exactly period of one
year done of 18 years reduced to one we
got a question from Matthew on google
for all of you that you’ve been to so
many amazing places in your careers and
believe me I know this is going to be
hard to do but if you got one that
stands out is the most beautiful or
peaceful or just do you have a favorite
spot you like to go to Kenya you have a
favorite spot yeah those are tough
questions all the time and it tends to
be the last one that I was at but
there’s still a couple you know what it
is for me I think it’s not a spot it’s
being being underwater takes me into a
different kind of psychological realm
and it’s this overall sensation maybe
it’s the lack of gravity maybe it’s
because there’s no email cell phones no
offense no Google you can actually just
you know digitally disconnect and just
gonna in in every way shape or form and
just be completely focused on the task
at hand so for me it it can be almost
anywhere where there’s no oxygen no
light how’s that FNB last of most people
there’s no oxygen in no life no light I
would also say Kenny does like diving
though in the Caribbean and the blue
holes that’s because when he comes to
the surface their little drinks with
umbrellas in a very minimal
that’s part of the attraction aziz do
you have a favorite place in all your
travels it’s hard that i’m i love the
Middle East and I know it’s not the most
peaceful as you know but it’s it’s very
the history the culture that existed the
different cultures I mean there are
groups that live here that people think
they are extending in Syria the syriac
people and you learn so much from these
communities i love the the middle east
and again I know it’s not known for
being peaceful but I I would advise
everybody to come to here and and if you
go there take one of those easiest tours
you offer these to the public right
people from yes you can come with
National Geographic to we have an
expedition now to Israel Palestine to
learn the conflict the
israeli-palestinian conflict and the
history and archeology we decided we
wanted to do something different instead
of the normal tours where you only learn
about one thing we trying to put
everything together you’ll learn about
thousands of years of history you’ll
learn about the israeli-palestinian
conflict and you’ll learn how to become
a peacemaker and a conflict resolution
person or you’re you’re just getting
immersed in a new kind of exploration
you can be taking a vacation and be an
explorer if you take one of these trips
with disease and Mike and Australia is
your favorite place in Austria you spend
a lot of time living in the United
States where’s your favorite place yeah
yeah I couldn’t say it is the United
States I’m gonna do I grew up in
Appalachia and I certainly have
wonderfully fond memories of making
moonshine and plank and banjos in
Appalachia alright have to play the the
places that really plug my heart strings
with Patagonia the remote areas in
Patagonia northern China the the
rainforests in Borneo are magical but at
the end of the day when my nose is
buried in in prehistoric world that are
25 million years old and the strangest
creatures are peeping back that’s what
gets my adrenaline running and I would
think you’d find the strangest some of
the strangest ones in Australia even
though the the prehistoric creatures
because that’s a land chunk that broke
off from
antartica what 38 million years ago has
been floating out there kind of isolated
and animals developed in a different way
and that’s the fascinating thing about
Australia I mean all day since we have
green on and it’s a she’s a
primatologist is there anything that
went along the lines of a primate and
one of the apes in Australia is there a
comparison it’s ironic when the first
explorers in Australia European
explorers saw a koala they thought it
was a primate so there were crossovers
people couldn’t relate to the
strangeness of Australian animals so
they they tried to sort of overlay
expected creatures on everything they
saw the you know the thylacine became
the Tasmanian wolf and so on but the
reality is there are no primates and
this is a huge mystery to us I mean are
primates on a northern doorstep of
Australia crashed into Asia about 15
million years ago up when New Guinea
we’ve had a sort of an opportunity for
primates to get in Australia but apart
from the human type of primate none of
them ever did ah and I introduced Daniel
eptin in London and then I left him and
forgot to get his question Daniel know
you’ve got a question for some of our
explorers good evening good thank you
very much some of your explorers already
touched on this question already and you
talked about your inspiration I’d like
snow goose inspiring you now you’re an
established Explorer or researcher and
whether the economy compact is the the
crisis now is actually impacting on your
work whether it’s making me hard
especially gardens field yeah the great
question um Jane do you look today to
anybody else who’s out there doing work
and get inspired by what they’re doing
well what I really get inspired by today
is some of the young people who some of
them really really have to struggle to
get where they get and they’re
determined to get out in the field and
they’re determined to do what they want
to do and seeing them succeeded I’m
seeing them so enthusiastic and excited
about what they’re doing I think that’s
that’s my greatest inspiration
Aziz um this I think my inspiration
changed year by year I’m inspired by
this year specifically by my friends in
Syria I’ve been working in Syria for a
few years and seeing what’s happening
there and specifically my colleague hint
Kabbalah to the Syrian human rights
person who’s been trying to bring the a
low lights and the Christians and the
Shiites and listen knees together and
end this conflict it through coalition
and peacebuilding and she’s been through
inspiration for me Albert do you have
anybody that looked to and say I got to
keep going this is great work day I
think I’m brought it up in the beginning
when I cut in and was talking to Jane
about my little neighbor across the
street but every time I see her light up
with stories of exploration they make me
realize that you know there’s actually
something really good about what we’re
doing and I think that you know her and
her friends and my son and anybody
wouldn’t let me look at why we’re doing
all this there’s got to be more than
just ourselves since our huge
generations so I think that’s what it
does for me but also if Kenny you know
Kenny’s always been a bit of an expert
you know I did agree to me as well
because he’s just always having so much
fun with everything it’s always saying
such a goofball but doing the crazier
things that he is getting before you
whether you know it or not you are your
inspiration and you’re giving us let me
flip this question around the other way
are there times you get discouraged and
you think Kenny that well none of this
is making a difference yeah I mean I
make a lot of jokes but I’m kind of a
deeply cynical person in many ways and
sometimes I do feel that way but then I
I I hear stories like azizi story or
people who have overcome some incredible
obstacles you know born into horrendous
situations and have done amazing things
I look at myself and say don’t be don’t
be so pathetic you know I I was you know
born lucky in many ways into you know a
stable situation decent economic
situation so I you know I say you that
rise me to try to do better quite
frankly and and the other thing is now I
have two little kids and I’m surrounded
by small kids and I do a lot of projects
or with kids and that really is a
motivator and you see how smart and
truly good people are out there and that
kind of wipes away my cynicism for for a
while so it’s you know people like Aziz
and a lot of them you know the natgeo
family actually you know when we all get
together once a year in Washington it’s
almost like getting a boost of
adrenaline that runs through 4 for the
whole year through yeah absolutely we
just brought yeah go ahead okay because
you know there’s a whole group of
explorers at National Geographic that
are on the screen that you know I think
are who we feed off of Fred now for
example my main partner in Mongolia
Freddy Hebert he’s an archeology fellow
in National Geographic and he and I
Mongolia you know when were together we
feed off of each other’s excitement and
while he’s an archeologist I’m an
engineer coming up with ways of try and
approach new challenges and it’s it’s
that personal friendship among each
other that I think is the most exciting
and while we’ve gone to all seven
continents today to talk to some of our
National Geographic explorers this is
this is just a little inch deep of what
we do here as I said we’ve given out
over 10,000 a grant people we work with
some we call explorers and residents I’m
emerging explorers young explorers and
they’re out there on it in multiple
numbers on every continent all the time
doing work and doing the most amazing
fascinating stuff it is the New Age of
Exploration it’s it’s ahead of us we’ve
we’ve taken pictures of the Earth and
Google puts them up you can you the
pictures are so good now you can go down
and see what your neighbors are
barbecuing on the grill that’s how
detail they are say no if you want to go
over and invite yourself to dinner but
there’s more to know than that even
looking at things we’ve looked at before
by Gabbert’s doing if you look at with
more eyes you can see it in a different
way and make new discoveries mike is it
ever is it ever like it’s just another
day at the office for you or or is it
always something that keeps you
motivated to show up and being or what
you do every day
look any excuse to get out into the bush
or wild areas or interact with a wild
animal I’ll drop anything to have that
happen neta includes wild students I’m
the whole group are really interesting
there’s so many things to do I don’t
regret mortality on the other hand it
really annoys me that I’ve only got one
life to spend exploring all the
interesting things that are out there
waiting to be found I am an explorer
junkie there’s no question about it you
get that way a bit and it just means
that’s your fix I have to get out of
this chair and out of the house on a
regular basis or I’m in trouble and it’s
just one of those things you get hooked
on this we’ve gotten as I said we’ve
gotten a lot of questions in on there
that people can send in via Google or
Twitter or Facebook a one of them
Kennedy specifically from you from
Andrea who wants to know in these caves
in these tight situations if you ever
been stuck yeah I’ve been stuck a couple
times never obviously for for too long
there’s a couple things one water is
sort of the universal solvent so if you
can keep calm eventually you can wiggle
your way one way or another if you’re
diving with someone else we have signals
so I don’t know if you can see but if we
cross our legs back and forth it might
mean pull us out if you put them
together means push so we’ve got some
signal but I always you know we dive
alone quite a bit but I try to dive with
other people and I try to dive with
people who are bigger than me I try to
know that can push ya places they go in
the hole first ah that’s that’s even
better they get straight they if they
made it through then I know I’ll have no
problem i just got to get in front of
them on the way out makes you want to
dive with me yeah that’s right I’m
looking I’m looking I’m always looking
for a large framed I Parker’s okay and
sometimes I since I’ve done a little
cave diving I know you actually had to
take off your gear shove it through the
hole in front of you and then you come
through or you go through first and pull
the gear and after you yeah a lot of a
lot of times because I mean it sound it
may I acknowledge it might sound
completely ridiculous but you do that
but you
you open up you might push through a
hole that’s you know not much bigger
than a basketball but then you come out
into a room where you can land three 747
side by side and you don’t know what
you’re going to find whether it’s you
know paleontological remains whether
it’s cave formations that help us
reconstruct past climate I mean you just
don’t know these are time capsules and
what’s around the corner is always
amazing we’ve talked to and this
question keeps coming up a lot of people
want to know about the most dangerous
thing or the time when you were the most
scared or the most concerned about what
might happen we’ve we’ve asked some of
the other members of our Explorer team
of what they’ve gone through the disease
I thought because you’re doing a
different kind of exploration but it is
equally fraught with potential for peril
have you ever had moments where you
looked around and said now I’ve gotten
myself into a situation where I’m gonna
have to be very careful too many times
but it kind of gives me the adrenaline
so it doesn’t scare I’ve been probably
in areas of crossfire shootings things
50 60 100 times they can’t count the
last time though that was like this I
was working in Afghanistan and I was
working on a project with the former
president rabbani in Afghanistan and
right after I left him he was blown up
and assassinated and at the moment I
thought yeah I could have been there
when that happened but I went back a
month later so obviously if i’m being
too stubborn and sometimes irrational
but i enjoy the i enjoy the danger
element of my work I’m going exercise if
you realize the importance of your work
the work is the most important part and
I think at the end of that I it’s
dangerous because somebody has to do it
and it’s you either gonna do something
about it to change it or not my next my
next trip is going to be to the Syrian
border to Turkey to the Syrian burger to
work with the refugees there and the
area that we’re going to get swamped
quite a bit but I think you have to
overcome fear to be able to do what you
to do by the way we’re getting a lot of
questions for this session so we really
thank all of you will refer to you as
our new explorers those of you who are
watching this because clearly you’re
interested in this planet if you’re
tuned into this google hangout google+
hangout and we do these every month so
check it out we don’t always do it with
people on all seven continents at the
same time but thank you for joining us
and be sure enough tune in each month to
the session I think the next one is
coming up in February februari eight in
fact in fact on februari eighth we’re
going to be talking with archaeologist
guillermo de onda from a ancient Mayan
cave he may be looking for those pages
of the Mayan calendar that didn’t turn
up after 2012 because we’re still here
but we’ll find out what he’s doing in
the cave in Mexico so check out that
google session and daniel as long as
you’re still up there do you have
another question you like to ask before
we go a lot to us go a bit more about
the social media based around your
search for Genghis Khan I work with
digital media in London looking crowd
sourcing as well it’s always had a big
impact but are you managed to reach
people to food new media as well some
audience and reach them on the social
networks in different countries yeah
well you asked you asked how how did I
get people to participate is that what
you’re asking what are you getting more
people to participate using social media
for your project or is it just free
publicity and word of mouth sort of how
do you get the people to sign on and
help do the crowdsourcing how are they
hearing about it you know it’s actually
partly because National Geographic has
such a strong online presence you know
the digital media group is has been
doing a lot of really amazing things but
also I think that in general people are
just curious and excited to participate
in a way that that they haven’t been
able to do before so it wasn’t that hard
to recruit participants you know I mean
the last 125 years exploration is in
some ways been held as almost an elite
sort of thing wait we’re only a coveted
few get to go into the field and I think
the next hundred and twenty-five years
can be far different in which you know
everybody’s going to be necessary and
making a difference and so when we
opened up this website can we allow
people to participate it wasn’t like
they had to recruit people were hungry
to go and participate you know and I
really think that’s going to apply in
all sorts of exploration all across the
board and that in some ways is you know
the frontier part but it’s how do we
work together now in order to combine
that curiosity with the responsibility
let me mention the if you saw any of the
promotion there was a lot of promotion
for this particular Google hangout
because it’s a big deal is the first all
7 comments link together with explorers
from National Geographic on all seven
continents celebrating our 125th
anniversary which we look at as just at
the beginning we’re ready to launch the
New Age of Exploration if you saw some
of the publicity for it you may have
noticed the Jim Cameron James Cameron
the director and NASA Geographic
Explorer underwater explorer was going
to be with us from Australia but he was
working on a project for Astra
Geographic that’s got him tied up and
with the time change he couldn’t make it
but were Australia more than well
represented with the presence of a mic
Archer so Mike thanks for joining us and
talking about dinosaurs and Crocs and
trees jumping out of trees just and lets
us all be glad that as I said we weren’t
around in Australia 38 million years ago
and I just bring them back here he’s
gonna bring him back yeah you bring back
the Tasmanian tiger Jane wants to know
if you’re gonna bring back the clocks
jumping out of the trees oh look don’t
tempt me oh yeah we sometimes think you
know compared with Africa that that the
bush in Australia is a little bit tame
we don’t have things at the moment that
they gobble you up when you turn your
back on so yeah a couple of things like
that would make life much more
interesting here now you don’t have
things that will eat you you’ve got
things though there will poison you
you’ve got all those venomous creatures
that have been the subject of many
National Geographic specials the most
venomous creatures on the planet in
Australia ah it’s true technically we’ve
got the most poisonous snake in the
world we got to the only spider that’ll
nail you in a couple of hours but you
don’t see these things I mean it’s a big
bit of hype actually about Australia
this is one of the thymus most gentle
comments on the planet perhaps
well no I have to even say even more so
than Antarctica there’s no leopard see
and say that it’ll swallow you up when
you stare over in the over the edge of
the continent yeah you don’t see them
coming i think that’s what you mentioned
you don’t see those spiders those blue
ringed octopus the what have you got
that you got the Box jelly the Box jelly
the hundreds of the tiger snake started
oh yeah yeah we know em all but I’ve
been bitten by a few of these things and
I’m still hear them say I was there
recently and it was great but then
you’ve also got bondi beach outside of
Sydney so what more could you ask one of
the most beautiful cities in the world
hey thanks to all of you for joining us
for this google+ hangout it’s been a
great step of session talking to people
on all seven continents and google+
national geographic we do this every
month with as i say 10 or 12 explores at
once but you get to know them in depth
and don’t forget you can go on google
and look at the map where you can see
where all of these people are where
they’re doing their work click on the
dot and you can bring up information
about explorers see pictures and a video
of what they’re doing in the field the
exciting stuff they’ve done and and what
is coming up in the future you’ve all
you’ve made me up me want to go out more
come hang out with you in the field
which we will be doing I and by the way
we talk to all these people on our radio
show as well National Geographic weekend
so you tune in every up every Sunday
noon eastern on serious or XM satellite
you can follow us on iTunes we’re a free
podcast so tune in to National
Geographic weekend and we have in-depth
conversations with all of these
explorers and I think you can see we
want you you watching this to be
explorers to the best way to begin join
us here national geographic society
become a member go to National
Geographic calm find out how to become a
member don’t forget februari eight the
next google+ hangout so guys thank you
for spending a little time with us on
this sunday and getting us inspired to
explore more Jane you’ve been an
inspiration to all of us for many years
and and then Aziz you’re starting
Yeah right more recently but just as
inspiring the stories of of what you’re
doing and what’s your accomplishment so
thanks to all of you see you on the next
one of these thank you bye everybody bye
bye Oh James Jane yes you still there I
can’t let you go sorry give us a chimp
greeting this is the big moment
everybody wants to hear you do the chimp
say goodbye in chimpanzee well it’s a
greeting really they don’t say goodbye
but the greeting to all of you it will
pretend that’s from Hawaii where hello
means goodbye in there Aloha means both
Thank You Jay thanks to everyone’s ISA
Alberta Kenny Mike and a pleasure thank
you it’s in here thank you
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