Jennifer Logronio told her story to producer Stepfanie Aguilar for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

The wind stayed for at least four hours. A strong wind that you could hear your ear having that pressure. You can see the roof of your neighbors flying around, fridge on the ground, everything, basically. The trees especially.

I’m currently residing in Siargao Island of the Philippines. I was born in Davao.

I teach freediving. I’m passionate about actually quite a few things. One of them is teaching. I鈥檓 also very passionate about giving back to nature, especially in the ocean.

When I was 19, I started moving around. First I went to Manila. It was very eye-opening for me, because coming from Davao that doesn鈥檛 have very many people, I was like, Oh wow, there’s so many things here. But then after a couple of years working there, I said to myself, I can’t do city living anymore. Then I started to check on jobs in Siargao.

Siargao is a small island down south of the Philippines. It’s a surfing capital. So I thought, OK, maybe I belong here. So I started working in one of the resorts here, and that’s when I got into surfing. I work, I surf, I work, I surf. And then COVID hit, and the resort closed. Most of the people did not have work at that moment, but that’s when I started to learn more about surfing.

It was December 16th, 2021, when another thing happened, which is the typhoon. It destroyed the whole island. No electricity, no food, no water.

Unfortunately there were not a lot of warnings coming from the government. They didn’t say anything, like 鈥淥K, you evacuate here,鈥� and whatnot. So we chose somewhere uphill, and there were around 80 people in that house. We stayed there overnight. Because it was uphill, we were scared of storm surge. We had some snacks with us, but there was not enough water.

The day after it was a beautiful sunrise, beautiful sunset, like nothing happened. After three days I left the island, because I didn’t feel very useful. I didn鈥檛 think I could help any of the people I know that were in need, not even for myself. And so I left, I went to Manila.

I felt like everyone that got out of here was carrying this weight in their heart. Because we felt guilty, leaving the island. But I couldn’t go back yet because the house was destroyed. The electricity was not back until almost two months later. And I had to continue working, I could not stop my life.

A friend of mine owns a freediving school in Batangas, that’s three hours from Manila. It’s a really nice spot for swimming, freediving, a lot of coral. I was not that interested. I was thinking, Oh, OK. I just go down and go up and that’s it. What else? Those were my thoughts. And so I did and I was like, Oh, it’s actually really challenging. Holding your breath with all the movements you need to do and equalization in the ears, it kind of made me think, Actually it’s not easy.

The challenge I had was my breath hold and equalization, basically the two big factors in freediving for you to go deeper. I started with a 30-second breath hold, and could barely reach three meters.

Most of the sports that I get into, what makes me do it is the challenging part. It kind of hits your ego in a way, like, Hm, you can’t do it. So your ego’s like, Can you not do it? You can do it. It’s a lot of self-talk. So I started doing a lot of training.

I told my friend, Hey, I wanted to learn and I wanted to teach under your school. So they agreed, like OK, you work for us, you can train, and then you can teach for us.

My very first deep dive, I hit 28 meters. I reached negative buoyancy, where your body just falls without you doing anything. We call this free falling, and I did not want to stop. That was the time that I knew that I’m gonna do more and I wanna do more.

I got back to Siargao, and you could still feel the devastating part of the typhoon. You could tell that everyone was trying to rebuild their stuff. I was here for a month, fixing our place and the things I needed to settle. But I did not want to give up freediving, because I saw so much potential in it for myself, and I liked to teach.

So I had all these big thoughts, like OK, so I’m gonna have a freediving school in Siargao and then if I get funding, I’m gonna teach all the locals, then this, so on, so forth.

Freediving kind of changed my perception in life. You learn a lot in freediving, the technicality of it. But the thing is that you can also apply it off-water, like being patient, calming down, relaxing. If off-water, let’s say if you have an argument with your boyfriend or whatnot, and you step back, relax first and then speak. Before, I was a very impulsive type, I didn鈥檛 have much patience. The thing is that it kind of makes me wonder, I don’t have a lot of patience for other things, but I have patience to do my training. So it made me think that maybe I have that patience inside of me.

I told this to myself. OK, the typhoon was a good thing and a bad thing. It was a bad thing because destroyed my island and my home. But then it was a good thing because I found something that I would never have found if it didn’t happen. I was directed to that. I was directed to freediving.

I found peace in freediving for sure. I did not need to see anything, coral or fish. It’s just the feeling that the water is accepting you, being there, not spitting you out. I’m already too grateful for it.

Jennifer Logronio is a freediving instructor and surfer based in Siargo Island, Philippines. One of her hobbies is crocheting beachwear and accessories. To learn more about her, check out her Instagram .

You can follow听The Daily Rally听辞苍听,听, or wherever you like to listen. and to be featured on the show.

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We鈥檙e living in a gilded age of adventure filmmaking, and thanks to gizmos like flying drones and undersea cameras, couch potatoes like myself can view the most heart-stopping moments in outdoor sports in gleaming high-definition. In recent years I鈥檝e watched mountaineers trudge below the skyscraper-sized ice serac on K2, surfers shred 80-foot swells off the Portuguese coast, and kayakers bob down Tibet鈥檚 raging Yarlung Tsangpo river like twigs in a brook. From the safety of my sofa, I鈥檝e often gazed at these dangerous moments caught on film and thought: boy, I鈥檇 love to be able to do that! 听

I had no such reaction while watching the latest film to enter the adventure oeuvre: Netflix鈥檚 new documentary听, which is now streaming. The film takes viewers inside the dangerous world of competitive freediving, where divers descend to the dark depths of the open ocean while holding their breath and then attempting to swim to the surface.

The Deepest Breath shows in gut-wrenching detail what happens when things go horribly wrong. Underwater cameras show divers swimming upwards, only to black out from oxygen deprivation before reaching the surface. These moments trigger a frantic reaction from life-saving personnel: safety divers grab the stricken athlete鈥檚 neck, seal off their nasal passages, yank them out of the water, and then begin performing CPR. The athlete, meanwhile, is limp and lifeless, with bugged-out eyes and blue lips. After a few moments, they jolt awake and begin coughing.

Scenes like this play out again and again in The Deepest Breath. The message is clear: near-death blackouts are as common in freediving as sprained ankles are in marathoning.

I鈥檒l be honest: these video clips now fuel my nightmares. After watching The Deepest Breath, I can say without any hesitation that I鈥檇 sooner attempt K2 in a pair of Tevas or paddle out at Nazar茅 on a boogie board than ever try my hand at freediving. While the film may not be a shining endorsement of the sport, it is still a very compelling watch. I would recommend it to anyone who can stomach repeated scenes of people appearing to drown before being resuscitated.

Spoilers ahead!听There鈥檚 a love story and tragedy at the heart of The Deepest Breath, one that 国产吃瓜黑料 reported on in 2017. The film chronicles the lives of popular divers Stephen Keenan of Ireland and Alessia Zecchini of Italy鈥攖he latter is a freediving prodigy, world champion, and world record-holder (she dove to 358 feet on March 27, 2023). By age 14, Zecchini was already toppling breath-holding records in the swimming pool, and by 18 she had become freediving鈥檚 undisputed up-and-coming star. Keenan, meanwhile, discovered the sport after spending his twenties as a rudderless globetrotter. After becoming a SCUBA instructor in the freediving hotbed of Dahab, Egypt, Keenan blossomed into a safety diver on the sport鈥檚 international circuit.

Irish filmmaker Laura McGann weaves their respective narratives together with detailed archival footage from the early parts of their lives. Along the way, McGann pulls the curtain back on the sport and its competitive nuances. Freedivers propel themselves downward for the first 90 feet or so before the ocean takes over and sucks them into the dark depths at high speed. After reaching a platform set at a prescribed depth, a diver snatches a token from the platform and begins swimming toward the surface. Once they emerge, a team of judges examines the diver鈥檚 health to determine if the attempt is good. A blacked-out diver is disqualified.

Kudos to McGann and her fancy, high-definition waterproof cameras for capturing freediving鈥檚 eerily beautiful field of play. From 50 feet below, the surface appears emerald, the depths purple. The camera makes a free dive look both exhilarating and claustrophobic鈥攍ike flying blind through a moonless sky.

Top competitors play mind games with one another鈥攖hey only announce the depth of their forthcoming dive shortly before the descent to keep competitors from scheduling deeper attempts. The sport is a constant game of one-upmanship. Divers are constantly trying to push the limits of their bodies to see who can go deeper. In this fanatical push to push the limits, athletes often find their physical barriers in tragic ways.

You see, those repeated submersions have a grim impact on the human body. During a freedive, the ocean鈥檚 pressure squeezes a diver鈥檚 lungs down to the size of a lemon鈥攔epeated dives can crush and tear the organ apart, causing bleeding, irreparable damage, and even death. That鈥檚 not the only danger. Divers sometimes get pushed off course by the current and become disoriented. This is what likely killed the sport鈥檚 most decorated female champion, Russian diver Natalia Molchanova, who vanished off the coast of Ibiza in 2015 at age 53.

The message at the heart of听The Deepest Breath seems to be that a freediver鈥檚 pursuit of the sport is a one-way ticket to an early and watery grave. Tragedy is central to the听the film and its two central characters. After meeting on the freediving scene and beginning a short courtship, Zecchini travels to Dahab to train with Keenan. She also wants to dive , an undersea cavern that supports a submerged arch, that only the best divers can swim through without running out of air.

The filmmaker captures the fateful events of Zecchini鈥檚 attempt. She descends into the Blue Hole, finds the arch, and attempts to swim through it, but then becomes disoriented and runs out of air. Keenan, meanwhile, swims down to her, grabs her hands, and hauls her weakening body upward. The effort saves Zecchini鈥檚 life, but it costs Keenan his.

Keenan went missing during the dive, and swimmers found his dead body floating at the surface a short time later. The footage shows his heroic effort.

I absolutely teared up during the film鈥檚 conclusion, which features Zecchini on camera retelling the tragedy. In this way, The Deepest Breath is similar to other excellent contemporary projects in adventure filmmaking. The best footage captures emotion and heart. And you don鈥檛 need a flying drone or an expensive waterproof camera for that.

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Tiffany Duong told her story to producer Sarah Vitak for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Everyone else is floating away, looking for sea life, pointing things out to each other, and I’m just stuck to this rock. I’m watching them get smaller and smaller. In my head, I’m just thinking, If you don’t let go of this rock, you will die here alone at the bottom of the ocean in the Galapagos.

I usually go by Tiff. I live in Islamorada in the Florida Keys. I’m an explorer and an ocean storyteller. I used to be a really unhappy lawyer.

It was downtown Los Angeles in a high rise. Concrete jungle, the whole bit. I was just like, Well, I made this decision to go to law school, which means I’m going to be a lawyer. I am a pretty type-A overachieving kind of person. I was doing really well, but, becoming sadder because success just begets more work.

I remember feeling like I had two personas, my work self and my outside-of-work self. I only felt like the real me for those two hours at the end of the day, or the two weekend days, or two weeks of vacation a year. I just felt really disconnected.

I remember sobbing under my desk at least once a week, and muffling my cries so that my coworkers wouldn’t hear it. Then getting back up and being like, Okay, well, got that out. Like a cigarette break. A sob break. And then getting back to work. I was just like a hamster on the wheel, because it wasn’t a real possibility to leave. I didn’t know there was a way to actually work and like it.

There was one day I was alone at the office working at 3:00 AM on some crazy 300-page contract. And I got an email saying, 鈥淥h, come dive the Galapagos.鈥� I was a pretty new scuba diver, and that’s an advanced destination. But I was like, You know what, this sucks. I鈥檓 just gonna go for it. So I signed up.

Then I kind of forget about it, and the trip comes up. And I’m like, Oh, OK, Well, I guess I鈥檓 going. I know nobody going on the trip. It’s the first time diving off a ship, off a liveaboard, and internationally. So it’s a lot of firsts for me. I am not even interfacing with that because I’m still probably wrapped up in whatever work I left behind.

I got to the Galapagos, and I remember the first night on the water. The ship is sailing out, and I find myself drawn to the bow of the boat. I’m standing there, Titanic-style. There’s wind rushing through my hair, the ship is cutting through the water. It’s bioluminescent, so the waves are glowing, and then there’s dolphins jumping into that, and they’re making it glow more. That glow is mirrored by the stars above. So, it just looks like you’re floating through glowy space. Then there was a volcano in the distance, glowing. It was out of this world, magnificent.

I just started crying. My soul was like, Wow, you can be happy. There’s beauty, and it’s so inspiring. And you can still feel it.

It was a lot of feelings, especially coming off of years of trying not to feel. It was cutting into my soul, and life was flowing again. I didn’t sleep a single night in my cabin. I actually took my comforter and slept on the deck because I didn’t wanna be away from that beauty for even a millisecond.

There was one dive, it’s a drift dive. That is, you have to drift with the current, so you don’t go to a set spot and sit, but the current takes you and you just let it, because it’s way too strong to fight.

I was terrified, because I’d never done a drift dive before; I’d never let the sea just take me. I remember sinking to the bottom of the sea and finding the biggest rock I could find and holding on for dear life. Everyone else is floating away, looking for sea life. And I’m just stuck to this rock, because I was thinking, I鈥檓 not gonna trust this. This is too scary.

I’m watching the rest of the group drift away, and in my head I’m thinking, If you don’t let go, you will die. You will die here alone. They’re getting smaller and smaller, and I’m like, OK, it’s now or never. If you don’t let go, you literally will be lost.

I was screaming internally. Finally I was like, Ahhhh. And I let go. I didn’t even push off or anything, I just opened my fingers slightly and the current took me. The moment it did, all of my fears vanished. It felt like I was flying. It was so light and freeing.

Then I remembered, Oh, we’re all actually here because we’re looking for whale sharks, we are looking for this magic animal. So we rode this invisible underwater highway, looking for whale sharks. It was the first time I really felt stoke in my life, and I was filled with excitement and joy.

My life has changed from that moment in every way possible. I was wound up and so in control of that life. I had to learn to let go.

I almost didn’t get back on the plane to Los Angeles. I was like, I need to have this happiness in my life. I can’t keep not feeling. I did ultimately get back on the plane, and as it was landing, I made this vow to myself. I said, Tiff, promise nothing will ever be the same.

Then I was like, OK, I鈥檓 gonna hold myself to that.

I went back to work, and within a month, I quit without a plan. I was thinking, We have to figure this out. I just cannot tolerate not feeling alive anymore.

I moved to do a four-month-long diving internship in Islamorada. It鈥檚 been five years, and I have not left.

One of the things that has helped me the most in this journey is realizing I’d rather disappoint everyone else than disappoint myself. Holding true to that has guided me into many different evolutions of myself since then, and with each one, I feel like I become more authentic and more confident and more real.

You can’t always control where life’s gonna take you, and if you stop trying to, you might actually end up somewhere better. Just try to figure out your next best step, because from that vantage point, you might see a different path forward, a better one, a truer one. What lies out in the blue might be more magical than what you’re leaving behind.

If it excites you and scares you at the same time, it probably means you should do it. Because that internal voice is trying to guide you back to yourself.

Tiffany Duong is an explorer and storyteller. She left corporate law to campaign for our planet. Now, she writes, speaks, and leads from wild places all around the world. Follow her on and @tiffmakeswaves.

You can follow听The Daily Rally听辞苍听,听,听, or wherever you like to listen, and nominate someone to be featured on the show听.

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On June 23, 2018, twelve members of the Wild Boars, a youth soccer team based in the jungled mountains of northern Thailand, and their young assistant coach parked their bikes in the mouth of Tham Luang Cave after practice. The cave network was dry when they entered, but as they traveled more than a mile on foot into its dark, dank limestone recesses, a monsoon descended. It was the first major storm of the wet season, and it caught everyone on the ground by surprise. There was no time for officials to close the cave, and by the time they found the boys鈥� bikes, Tham Luang was already flooded.

The subsequent 18-day search and rescue operation was an unprecedented collaboration involving Thai government officials, Thai Navy SEALs, members of the U.S. Air Force, local farmers, Thai hydrologists and engineers, and, most famously of all, . The entire country of Thailand tuned into this story from day one. Although it appeared the boys were almost certainly dead, the nation held out hope. Once the boys were found alive, hundreds of reporters and thousands of volunteers from around the world joined the scrum outside the cave, and millions of people across the globe became invested in the boys鈥� fate. So it was exhilarating when, despite the stacked odds and the many ever-shifting perils, every last one of the Wild Boars was pulled out of the cave alive.

Talk about a Hollywood ending.

The day after the coach and the last of the boys were rescued, filmmaker Jon Chu, whose film Crazy Rich Asians would soon become a global hit, that put his industry on notice: 鈥淚 refuse to let Hollywood the Thai Cave rescue story! No way. Not on our watch. That won鈥檛 happen or we鈥檒l give them hell. There鈥檚 a beautiful story abt human beings saving other human beings. So anyone thinking abt the story better approach it right & respectfully.鈥�

Four years later, those Hollywood offerings are finally streaming. , a National Geographic documentary by Free Solo directors Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi, hit theaters in September 2021 and is now on Disney+. , a feature film directed by Ron Howard and starring Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell, dropped on Amazon Prime on August 5. And now , a limited series executive produced by Chu, is being released by Netflix on September 22. Finally, rumors are circulating that the streaming giant is also working on a documentary about the events.

While it remains to be seen if the public has an appetite for this much Thai cave content four years after the fact, I found it fascinating that so many top writers, filmmakers, and stars were attracted to the material. What was it about this story that captivated them, despite all the competition? And did any of them get it right?

William Nicholson, the two-time Oscar-nominated screenwriter, was following the rescue from a distance like everybody else in the summer of 2018, but when he was first approached to write Thirteen Lives he didn鈥檛 see drama in the happy ending. Then he dug into the details of what happened and realized how improbable the rescue was, and saw there was a very compelling movie to be made.

Thirteen Lives centers on two middle-aged English cave divers involved in the effort: retired firefighter Rick Stanton (Mortensen) and technology consultant John Volanthen (Farrell). They take over the underwater search and rescue operation from the Thai Navy SEALs, who lacked the relevant cave diving chops required to find the kids. That鈥檚 not a knock on the Thai navy鈥擴.S. Navy SEALs don鈥檛 have that capability either.

鈥淗ere鈥檚 these divers,鈥� Nicholson says. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e old, they鈥檙e amateurs, nobody pays them, they鈥檙e grumpy, and yet they are the only people who can do this particular job. And they go in, and they finally find the kids and make videos of them. And they come out and everybody cheers, and everybody鈥檚 happy. But these guys know the truth that all these kids are dead.鈥� Navigating Tham Luang鈥攚ith its many hazards, currents, and low visibility was difficult for even the accomplished cave divers, and they knew that diving those kids out of that cave would be exceedingly dangerous and perhaps impossible.

Stanton and Volanthen possess the dry humor and brazen lack of fashion sense found in most tech dive shops, and the dialogue is appropriately spare, too. It鈥檚 an intense yet understated film. Nothing is over-explained. You get the sense that Howard and Nicholson, and even Farrell and Mortensen鈥攚ho deliver captivating but restrained performances鈥攚ere content to stay out of the way.

鈥淚t kind of fell into a dramatic structure by itself,鈥� Nicholson says. While the divers were busy trying to find the kids and devise a workable rescue plan, rain was still falling, and the water was rising. The only way to bring down the water levels was to flood and ruin the rice crop of local family farmers. 鈥淭hen in the three days of the actual rescue, they鈥檙e racing the return of the rain. They get out most of the kids, and literally on the night before the end, down comes the rain. You couldn’t create a more ticking clock than that.鈥�

In scope, Thirteen Lives closely mirrors National Geographic鈥檚 documentary The Rescue which also mostly focuses on the divers. Because P.J. van Sandwijk, an accomplished documentary producer turned Hollywood player, produced both films after successfully negotiating for the rights to Stanton鈥檚 and Volanthen鈥檚 stories.

In previous projects, Chin and Vasarhelyi have leaned on their most unique selling point: that Chin can physically get to places that are well beyond the abilities of other cinematographers, and then return with jaw-dropping material. The Rescue is more of a straight-ahead documentary. It blends archival footage, revealing interviews, and well-made underwater reenactments. Chin and Vasarhelyi sifted through hundreds of hours of news coverage to pin their story together.

However, in both Thirteen Lives and The Rescue, the kids and their coach, who was orphaned as a young boy and raised in a Buddhist monastery, are relegated to the background. This is despite the fact that they all maintained an incredible amount of faith and composure through the most harrowing of experiences鈥攊n part, by leaning on meditations and chants led by the coach. If that鈥檚 what Chu was worried about when he sent his Tweet鈥攜et another movie succumbing to the tired white savior trope鈥攊t has a lot more to do with access than interest or awareness on the part of the filmmakers.

In the aftermath of the actual event, one of the trapped boy鈥檚 parents set up a trust to represent the Wild Boars and their families in future film rights negotiations. That mattered because most of these kids were 13 and 14 at the time, and in Thailand you remain a minor until you鈥檙e 20 years old. SK Global, the company that produced Crazy Rich Asians, secured those rights, tapped Chu to executive produce their series, and then . As a result, Chin, Vasarhelyi, Howard, and Nicholson were boxed out.

鈥淚t normally doesn’t work like that in nonfiction because it鈥檚 journalism,鈥� says Chin. 鈥淏ut we navigated it as best we could.鈥� In the end, he and Vasarhelyi zoomed in on the cave divers鈥攖aking pains to make sure that all the gear and techniques were dialed in to the last detail for their reenactments鈥攁nd their risky plan to retrieve the Wild Boars. They are gifted adventure filmmakers, after all, and The Rescue is yet another banger.

There鈥檚 a maxim in journalism: the later you are, the smarter you have to be. I wouldn鈥檛 go so far as to call Netflix鈥檚 Thai Cave Rescue smarter than The Rescue or Thirteen Lives, but it does benefit from being able to feature the perspective of the 12 boys (Titan, Tee, Phong, Adul, Biw, Dom, Night, Nick, Mix, Note, Pim, Namhom) and their beloved Coach Ek. 鈥淛ohn Chu wanted to be true to the story and start where the story started, which was with the boys,鈥� says Dana Ledoux Miller, an American screenwriter who has worked in television writers rooms for ten years. Miller was called in by Michael Russell Gunn, a writer and producer on Billions, to write and create the series together. 鈥淚t started with local officials who were doing their best under extraordinary circumstances and it grew from there. We really tried to capture the magic that is northern Thailand.鈥�

I鈥檝e reported from Northern Thailand several times. In fact, I reported on this very rescue, and in my opinion, Gunn and Miller鈥檚 series successfully bottled the magic. This was thanks in no small part to their all-Thai crew, including director Baz Poonpriya, and the deep level of research that went into creating the series. Gunn and Miller, neither of whom are Thai or Asian for that matter (Miller is part Samoan), interviewed the boys and their families extensively with the help of translators, and delved into the Thai government鈥檚 archives. They shot the series in Thailand, and some scenes were even filmed in the first two chambers of the real Tham Luang cave and the boys鈥� actual homes. They cast local people in lieu of professional actors to fill the roles of some of the boys and their parents. To decorate the shrine outside the cave for a pivotal scene, one of the mothers turned up with the same offerings they鈥檇 prepared when their boys were trapped inside.

In the first episode alone, five different ethnic dialects are used, and throughout the series the local Buddhist-Animist culture is featured prominently. Some episodes have the look and feel of a foreign film. However, aside from standout performances by Papangkorn Lerchaleampote (Coach Ek)鈥攁 rising star in Thailand who tragically died during the editing process鈥攁nd renowned Thai actor Thaneth Warakulnukroh (Governor Narongsak), the acting is spotty.

The action is too. The team behind the Netflix series made a deal with Dr. Richard Harris, the cave diving anesthetist known as Doc Harry who is the only person alive with the combination of skills that could have made the rescue possible, and who put his medical license on the line to do it. But he doesn鈥檛 turn up until the second to last episode. Even then, Thirteen Lives鈥�in which Harris is played by Joel Edgerton鈥攕erves that slice of the story better. The Rescue includes interviews with the man himself, which is even more compelling. That鈥檚 the trouble with focusing on so many scenes where the divers are not. Although time with Coach Ek and the boys is always well-spent in Thai Cave Rescue, there are a few too many logistics meetings where the threat of expository dialogue hovers like so many storm clouds. (A side note for Netflix: scuba and tech divers use air tanks, not oxygen tanks.)

And yet, in the final act of each of these three projects, when the rain is falling harder than ever, the dams and diversions are failing, and the last of the boys is carried out from the cave alive, it鈥檚 hard not to be moved. Because no matter which way you examine it from, or where the story is centered, the lessons of this improbable rescue come through.

鈥淭o be honest, I was worried that if this story was told from an eye of an outsider, the story will change in its essence,鈥� says Poonpriya, who directed two episodes of the Netflix series including the pilot, and is known as one of Thailand鈥檚 best filmmakers. 鈥淗owever, I came to understand that the richness of the story has encouraged all the productions鈥攚hether it be the documentary, the series, or other treatments of the rescue鈥攖o be done with heart and attention to detail.鈥�

In other words, here was an irresistible adventure tale that could have easily been sensationalized, or mishandled in a way that was offensive to the Thai people, and yet all three treatments produced compelling and thoughtful entertainment that actually complement one another. That couldn鈥檛 have happened without the sensitivity and skill of the filmmakers and the power of the rescue itself. 鈥淚t stands for something,鈥� Nicholson says. 鈥淲hy did 10,000 people descend on those caves, saying, 鈥業 will do anything? What do you want me to do? Clean the latrine, cook, sweep, push water around? Whatever you want, I鈥檒l come and do it.鈥� I truly believe that people鈥檚 deepest instinct is to cooperate, to work together to make things better for everybody. And it鈥檚 not a message we鈥檙e given enough.鈥�

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To portray the hero of the Thai cave rescue in the new film Thirteen Lives, the Hollywood star had to go deep鈥攍iterally. Mortensen plays the part of Rick Stanton, the legendary British cave diver who helped lead the rescue of 12 boys and their soccer coach from the far reaches of a flooded cavern in northern Thailand. The actor鈥檚 preparation included months of conversations with Stanton and a harrowing cave-diving adventure of his own. In this episode, producer Paddy O鈥機onnell talks with both men about what it takes to endure the mental and physical challenges of swimming through dark, tight spaces, where just one mistake can kill you.

This episode was brought to you by Costa Sunglasses, designed to help you make the most of your time on the water. Find the frame for your pursuit at .

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We all know what it feels like to run out of oxygen鈥攐r at least, what it feels like to feel like we鈥檙e running out of oxygen. In reality, the breathlessness we experience during hard exercise, or at high altitude, or when simply holding our breath, has more to do with too much carbon dioxide in the blood than with too little oxygen. As the feats of elite freedivers show鈥攍ike holding a single breath for 鈥攐ur limits aren鈥檛 what they seem.

I鈥檝e long been fascinated by studies of , what defines their limits, and how those skills may translate to other environments like high altitude. But their abilities are so outlandish that it feels like studying another species. So I was particularly interested to see that looked at breath holding in regular people with no prior training in it. The study is very straightforward, taking measurements of heart rate and oxygen levels while volunteers hold their breath, and it offers a revealing picture of how the body copes with a shortage of oxygen鈥攁nd what can go wrong.

The research was performed at Ghent University in Belgium, by Janne Bouten, Jan Bourgois, and Jan Boone. (I鈥檓 assuming scientists in Belgium are assigned to different departments by alphabetical order.) They asked 31 volunteers (17 men, 14, women) to hold their breath for as long as possible three times in a row, with two minutes break each time. Typically people get better and better in repeated breath holds, in part because their spleens are squeezing more oxygen-carrying red blood cells into circulation. During the third and final breath hold, they took continuous measurements of parameters including heart rate, oxygen levels in the brain, and oxygen levels in the leg muscles.

Humans, like other mammals, have a 鈥渄iving response鈥� that kicks in when you hold your breath, with the goal of making sure your brain always has enough oxygen. As the researchers point out, if your circulation stops abruptly, you鈥檒l be unconscious within 30 seconds and suffer irreversible damage within two to ten minutes. The diving response is enhanced if your face is submerged in water, but it happens even on dry land. Your heart rate drops, and the blood vessels leading to non-essential parts of the body like your leg muscles constrict in order to redirect crucial blood (and oxygen) to the brain.

The subjects held their third breath for an average of two minutes and 37 seconds, which strikes me as incredibly good for normal untrained people. Maybe doing three breaths in a row is the secret; or maybe I鈥檓 just weak. Anyway, here鈥檚 what the average heart rate response looked like. The data is only shown for the first 60 seconds (on the left) and the last 60 seconds (on the right), which allows them to plot everyone鈥檚 data together even though they lasted differing amounts of time. The gray area indicates when they started and stopped the breath hold.

On the far left, you can see the blue dots (which represent the average value) increasing as the subjects prepare for the breath hold. This may be because they鈥檙e getting excited or apprehensive, and may also be the result of taking some deep breaths in preparation. The subjects were specifically forbidden from hyperventilating before the breath hold (which blows off a bunch of carbon dioxide, allowing you to hold your breath for longer), but they were given a 30-second warning and a 10-second countdown, and told to take a deep but not maximal breath right before starting. Within about ten seconds after starting the breath hold, heart rate is dropping. It ends up decreasing by 27 beats per minute, reaching its low point after 83 seconds on average. This is fairly similar to what you see in elite free divers, except they reach their minimum heart rate within 30 to 60 seconds.

You鈥檒l notice a series of red dots, and another series of white dots. There are two individuals who quit early; one of them fainted, and the other got dizzy and was on the verge of fainting. More on them below.

The next parameter is tissue oxygenation in the leg muscles, as measured with , which basically involves shining infrared light through the skin and measuring how much is absorbed by oxygen-rich hemoglobin. Here the picture is pretty straightforward: oxygen levels in the muscles start dropping within five seconds, and keep dropping until the subjects start breathing again. This is what you鈥檇 expect, because the blood vessels are constricting to shift blood flow away from the extremities to the brain.

The final piece of the puzzle is where things get interesting. Brain oxygenation was also measured with near-infrared spectroscopy:

Here you see an initial decrease in brain oxygen levels, perhaps related to the sudden drop in blood pressure associated with the start of a breath hold. But within about five seconds, the drop reverses and brain oxygen levels start to climb鈥攁nd in fact go on to reach levels about four percent higher than baseline after about a minute. This is a pretty good indication of how powerful the brain鈥檚 self-protective wiring is: you hold your breath, and it gets more oxygen rather than less.

That happy state of affairs doesn鈥檛 last forever, though. Even as more and more blood gets shunted to the brain, that blood is carrying less and less oxygen as the breath hold proceeds, so gradually your levels of brain oxygen begin to decline. That decline continues until, eventually, you give up. On average, brain oxygen dropped by about five percent by the time the subjects gave up. Interestingly, that鈥檚 about the same level you see in elite freedivers after two and a half minutes. That means the freedivers aren鈥檛 significantly better at maintaining their brain鈥檚 oxygen levels. Instead, the difference seems to be that they鈥檙e willing to keep enduring the unpleasant urge to breathe for longer. Other research has found that freedivers are capable of holding their breath until their brain oxygen levels drop so low that they lose consciousness鈥攁 very dangerous situation if it happens underwater.

Which brings us back to the two subjects who fainted or came close to it. If you look again at the graph of brain oxygen levels, you can see that their data is way out of whack compared to everyone else鈥檚. They have a steep drop, then manage to compensate for a little while, but the drop resumes and very soon their brain oxygen levels are so low that they reach the border of consciousness. For the red dots, the muscle oxygen data suggests that this subject had a weak response in constricting blood flow to the muscles. That means he or she kept pumping blood to the extremities and didn鈥檛 get enough to the brain. For the white dots, the data doesn鈥檛 give any hints about what went wrong, but the result was the same: not enough oxygen to the brain.

One of the rationales for the study was that some researchers and coaches have advocated forms of breath-hold training to improve athletic or altitude performance. Since most previous breath-hold research used trained freedivers, it wasn鈥檛 clear whether the brain鈥檚 self-protection mechanisms would kick in for novices. The new data indicates that it鈥檚 okay, but the two fainters also show that caution is needed: the researchers suggest that everyone should be familiar with the warning signs of fainting (most notably dizziness), and not perform breath-hold training alone.

For more Sweat Science, join me on and , sign up for the , and check out my book .

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Ever since reading James Nestor鈥檚 2014 book , I鈥檝e been fascinated by the scarcely believable feats of freedivers. Plunging 335 feet below the surface of the ocean and making it back on a single breath, or simply holding your breath for , clearly requires a very special set of skills and traits.

But until a recent conference talk, I鈥檇 never considered whether those same characteristics might be useful in other settings where oxygen is scarce鈥攕uch as the thin air of high-altitude trekking and mountaineering. At the 听in Amsterdam last month, Erika Schagatay听of Mid Sweden University gave a presentation that summed up more than two decades of freediving research. The twist that caught my attention: understanding what makes a good freediver could be useful for predicting and perhaps even mitigating altitude sickness.

Schagatay鈥檚 initial research interest was in what she calls 鈥減rofessional鈥� freedivers, as opposed to recreational or competitive freedivers. These are people who dive for fish and shellfish, just as their ancestors have for uncountable generations: like听the Ama pearl divers in Japan, and the Bajau subsistence fishers in the Philippines and Malaysia. The latter group do repeated dives to about 50 feet, and occasionally go as deep as 130 feet, with such short recoveries that they spend about 60 percent of their time underwater. Over the course of a nine-hour day, they might spend as much as , not breathing.

These diving populations, Schagatay听and others have found, share three distinctive characteristics with successful competitive freedivers, who take part in contests around the world sanctioned by , the international freediving authority:

• Big lungs:听滨苍听听of 14 world championship freedivers, vital capacity鈥攖he maximal amount of air you can expel from your lungs鈥攚as correlated with their competition scores. The three best divers in the group had an average vital capacity of 7.9 liters, while the three worst averaged just 6.7 liters. And it鈥檚 not just genetic: Schagatay found that an 11-week program of stretching increased lung volume by nearly half a liter.
  听
• Lots of red blood cells: Divers听do tend to have higher levels of hemoglobin, the component of red blood cells that carries oxygen. That鈥檚 probably a direct result of their diving. Even if you just do a series of 15 breath holds, you鈥檒l have a surge of natural EPO an hour later, which triggers red blood cell formation.

  But there鈥檚 a more direct and immediate way of boosting your red blood cell count: squeezing your spleen, which can store about 300 milliliters of concentrated red blood cells. Seals, who are among the animal kingdom鈥檚 most impressive divers,听actually store about half their red blood cells in their spleens, so they don鈥檛 waste energy pumping all that extra blood around when it鈥檚 not needed. When you hold your breath (or even just do ), your spleen contracts and sends extra oxygen-rich blood into circulation. Not surprisingly, spleen size 听freediving performance.

• A robust 鈥渕ammalian diving response鈥�:听When you hold your breath, your heart rate drops by about 10 percent, on average. Submerge your face in water, and it will drop by about 20 percent. Your peripheral blood vessels will also constrict, shunting precious oxygen to the brain and heart. Together, these oxygen-conserving reflexes are known as the mammalian diving response鈥攁nd once again, the strength of this response is correlated with competitive diving performance.

These three factors help you deal with a complete cessation of breathing for a few minutes. Do they have any relevance to prolonged exposure to a mild decrease in oxygen, like you experience in the mountains? That鈥檚 what Schagatay and her colleagues have been exploring in a series of studies involving Sherpas, trekkers, and Everest summiters in Nepal.

In , they followed 18 trekkers to Everest Base Camp at 17,500 feet (5,360 meters). Sure enough, the trekkers with the biggest lungs, the biggest spleens, and the biggest reduction in heart rate during a breath-hold were the least likely to develop symptoms of acute mountain sickness.

The size of the spleen isn鈥檛 the only thing that matters鈥攊ts benefits depend on a strong squeezing response to get all the red blood cells out. In of eight Everest summiters, they found that three repeated breath holds prior to the ascent caused spleen volume to squeeze, on average, from 213 milliliters to 184 milliliters. After the ascent, the same three breath holds caused the spleen to squeeze down to 132 milliliters. Prolonged exposure to altitude had strengthened the spleen鈥檚 diving response. In fact, there鈥檚 also evidence that simply arriving at moderate altitude will cause a sustained mild spleen contraction, as your body struggles to cope with the oxygen-poor air.

Some of these adaptations are clearly genetic. Both Sherpas and Bajau freedivers have bigger spleens than other closely related populations, presumably thanks to generations spent either high in the mountains or underwater. But Schagatay doesn鈥檛 believe it鈥檚 all genetic. After all, Sherpas who no longer live at altitude have bigger spleens than Nepalese lowlanders, but not as big as Sherpas who still live at altitude. Along with other traits like the diving reflex, it鈥檚 something that improves with training, she believes.

What can you do with this information in practice? Here鈥檚 some data from the Everest Base Camp study, showing the percent decrease in heart rate during a one-minute breath-hold. The participants are divided into three groups, based on their Lake Louise Questionnaire (LLQ) scores, a measure of acute mountain sickness during the trek. Those with the highest scores鈥攖he sickest, in other words鈥攂arely have any reduction in heart rate; those with the lowest scores averaged about 18 percent lower:

To test your own heart-rate decrease during a one-minute breath hold, you鈥檇 need a proper heart-rate monitor, since the relevant data point is the lowest instantaneous rate听you reach by听the end of the minute. It鈥檚 just one factor among many, but it might give you some indication of whether you鈥檙e likely to suffer from altitude illness on a trek, which could help inform your decision about how aggressive an itinerary to follow or whether you want to take Diamox prophylactically. (This particular study was done in Kathmandu, at 4,800 feet, so it鈥檚 possible that the predictions would be different at sea level鈥攇rist for a future study.)

Even more intriguing is the possibility that you can train these responses. For example, in , Schagatay and her colleagues found that two weeks of 10 maximal breath holds per day strengthened the diving response, producing a quicker and more pronounced drop in heart rate. The next step: figuring out whether this type of improvement would make any practical difference to trekkers.

The bigger takeaway, for me, is the idea that freediving isn鈥檛 as crazy and unnatural a pastime as I initially thought when I first read Deep. The mammalian dive reflex originates way back in our evolutionary history鈥攊t鈥檚 what Per Scholander, one of the first scientists to study it, called 鈥渢he master switch of life.鈥� And if Schagatay is right, the circuitry that enables us to go deep is also what enables us to make it to the top of Mount Everest鈥攂ecause, as she puts it, we were born to dive.

For more Sweat Science, join me on 听and , sign up for the , and check out my book .

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In his new book听听($28, Little, Brown and Company), journalist听Bill Streever says that he has an agenda, right off the bat. He wants to tempt people to go diving, to think differently about what might be happening under the water鈥檚 surface. 鈥淚 wanted readers to embrace the part of our world that is shrouded by depth,鈥� he writes.听

The book is broadly about the science and history of underwater exploration, from 17th-century submarines to today鈥檚 freedivers. But Streever, who is also听an obsessive diver and听lives on a boat, drills down to the human scale, too. He starts with a gripping story of the 1960s exploration of the Marianas Trench听and the fear and anxiety听divers and scientists felt when they tried to get to the deepest point on the planet. He explains the ways we鈥檝e figured out how to manage听water and air over time鈥攖he hows of deep-sea diving鈥攂ut it鈥檚 also about the whys听and what drives people to push themselves farther听under water.听

Streever,听and his history as a diver, is very much a part of the story, and he鈥檚 fascinated by the quirks and evolution听of the sport: how freedivers train听and what Aristotle thought about early diving bells. But he鈥檚 also thinking about the future听and how both science and love for a place can contribute to protecting the struggling ocean. He ends the book with renowned marine biologist Sylvia Earle听and her plea for divers, or anyone who cares about the water, to do something about it.听

Streever鈥檚 is one of two new books that look听at how recreation听can translate to a deeper relationship with the sea. 听($27, Penguin Random House), a memoir about fishing on Martha鈥檚 Vineyard from competitive surfcaster, fishing guide, and fish taxidermist Janet Messineo, also describes an obsession听with unknown vastness, whether stalking striped bass or mapping the ocean floor, is the most interesting part of both books.

Messineo takes a slightly different tack to show how she developed her relationship with the ocean. While finding purpose through time spent outside isn鈥檛 a new premise for a book, her in-depth听look into the macho world of surfcasting, and how she became a part of it in the seventies, is novel. She was one of the first women fishing for stripers and other big fish听on the Atlantic coast, but her path there was winding and unexpected, starting with a tough, mill-town childhood.听A听trip to California chasing LSD dealers with a bad-news ex-husband eventually brought her to the Vineyard. She shares the lifetime of early mornings it took to learn the subtleties of surfcasting,听the flashes of luck involved in听landing a monster fish, and how she nearly drowned听in leaky waders and was听dragged offshore by strong catches.

Casting into the Light occasionally gets bogged down in the details, but it鈥檚 a glimpse into the听obsessive world of surfcasting,听chasing huge striped bass, and the low-key past of a now-fancy island. The best parts are when Messineo听gets into the tight, wild fishing community living on the margins of a resort town. The taxidermy tidbits don鈥檛 hurt either, like asking her neighbor to fell a pigeon with a slingshot for her to practice on, and mounting听fish for Spike Lee.

The two books are thoughtful in different ways. Streever pulls together stories that show听his evolving appreciation for the sea, to demonstrate听how important and misunderstood the ocean is. Messineo twists the kaleidoscope of her own life on the shore to give a long-range view of her love for the sport and the fish and the sea. 鈥淐ome April, the first time I get my fishing rod out of it鈥檚 winter storage and stand in surf up to my thing to cast, I exhale. I feel as though I鈥檝e been holding my breath for the last five months,鈥� she writes. They鈥檙e both about trying to understand the ocean, but they both acknowledge the catch: that we never really can.听

Two More New Ocean-Oriented Books听

鈥淲ild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean,鈥�听by Joy McCann

Australian environmental-historian McCann gives a of the Antarctic Ocean, the world鈥檚 least-known body of water. It鈥檚 full of polar-explorer stories and current environmental risks, and it鈥檚 nice to feel like there are parts of the world that still hold mystery.

鈥淓at Like a Fish: My 国产吃瓜黑料s as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer,鈥澨齜y Bren Smith

The ocean holds a ton of potential for sustainable agriculture, and Smith, who runs what he calls one of the first sustainable , makes a for it. He tells the story of how aquaculture pulled him away from the adrenaline of commercial fishing听and the role he thinks it can play in the future.

The post These Books Explain the Draw of the Ocean appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

The answer: It depends on the rules.

As the Daily Mail explains, humans set breath-holding records in water because they 鈥渃an hold their breath twice as long underwater as they can on land.” The reason: the 鈥渄iving reflex,鈥� in which the body slows its heart rate and metabolism in order to conserve oxygen and energy when submerged in cold water. The pulse rate in an untrained diver, the Daily Mail says, will decrease 10 to 30 percent when underwater. But professional divers can reduce theirs by more than 50 percent.

This brings us to records. The event in question鈥攈olding one鈥檚 breath underwater for as long as possible without moving鈥攊s officially called 鈥渟tatic apnea,鈥� and there are two ways static apnea records are kept: for dives performed after breathing in pure oxygen, and for dives performed without pure oxygen.

The Guinness Book of World Records allows divers to hyperventilate for up to 30 minutes with pure oxygen before they submerge for their record attempt. This practice, Discovery News reports, helps the body expel carbon dioxide, buying time before carbon dioxide levels become toxic. Boosting oxygen stores, on the other hand, buys time before oxygen levels fall too low, which leads to brain and tissue damage.

Current Breath Holding World Records

of 24 minutes 37 seconds.听

• In 2012, German freediver Tom Sietas held his breath underwater for 22 minutes and 22 seconds, besting Dane Stig Severinsen鈥檚 previous Guinness record by 22 seconds.
• The women鈥檚 record is 18 minutes, 32.59 seconds, set by Brazillian Karoline Meyer in 2009. Prior to the attempt, she hyperventilated with oxygen for 24 minutes.
• The International Association for the Development of Apnea, which records all freediving world records, does not allow the use of pure oxygen before a static apnea attempt. The current non-oxygen aided records stand at 11 minutes, 35 seconds for men (St茅phane Mifsud, 2009) and 8 minutes, 23 seconds for women (Natalia Molchanova, 2011).

Severinsen has said that he hasn鈥檛 suffered any brain damage from his breath-holding record attempts. Still, Discovery News notes, 鈥渟tudies of freedivers have turned up abnormalities in brain scans and markers that suggest brain damage. No one knows what the long-term consequences will be of feats like these.鈥�

Watch Severinsen’s Guinness World Record Breath Hold

Wonder what a static apnea record-setting attempt looks like? Check out this Discovery video of Severinson鈥檚 22-minute breath hold:

How Do Humans Compare to Other Breath-Holding Mammals?

When it comes to our mammal brethren, homo sapiens听are no match for aquatic creatures. The unheralded Cuvier’s beaked whale has a . That tops the list of whales and seals, the gold-medal standard for breath holders. Many species can comfortably hold their breath for over 100 minutes including Elephant seals, Sperm whales, and Weddel seals.

For land mammals, the surprise champion is鈥攇et ready for it鈥攖he sloth! , making them adept underwater explorers. Beavers have a good showing as well, clocking in at 15 minutes.

The average human can hold their breath for about two minutes, though most of us would struggle to get one minute without practice. Don’t feel bad though. Dolphins can only last about seven to ten minutes, which is far less than the human world record (the dolphin world record is currently unknown).

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Global experts on how outdoor athletes stumble, trip, twist, crash, snap, pop, tear, and occasionally croak in hard-to-reach places , courtesy of the University of Colorado鈥檚 sports medicine department. The mission? Bring practitioners up to speed on the many methods we鈥檝e invented to destroy our bodies, so they can be prepared when they wheel in another human pretzel in a helmet. Here鈥檚 a primer.

Deep Diving

At a depth of 30 meters, a diver鈥檚 lung volume is a quarter of what it is at the surface and, like a sperm whale, continues to compress the deeper you go. For a dive of 100 meters, your tank is a complicated mix of gases that鈥檚 only 10 percent oxygen. If you breathed that same air at the surface, you鈥檇 die. Dive deeper than 400 feet and you need a battery of tanks with specific gas mixture recipes. Get it wrong and you die. All of which is why, while 100-meter dives are now routine, only three people have dived deeper than 800 meters and lived.

Heard: 鈥淲ith freediving, consciousness is the key to success.鈥�

The Velodrome

The biggest risks for track cyclists are to the clavicle and wrist, thanks to what the Brits call 鈥渁rgy-bargy,鈥� the elbowing and headbutting employed to fight for position in a sprint. Also, track cyclists have a hard time buying pants.

Climbing

Fifty-two percent of climbing injuries are to the fingers.

Seen: An image of a 鈥渟heathed鈥� finger was presented, in which all the skin and much of the meat from a central digit were unrolled past the knuckle and tucked up by the fingertip like a baggy knee warmer.

Rodeo

Horses are prey animals, so when a predator climbs on an unbroken horse鈥檚 back, the horse gets scared and flips over to try and squash it. Other common rodeo injuries include being stepped on hard enough to rip paisley and crack ribs, blowing an ACL while wrestling a steer to the ground, suffering an 鈥渙pen book pelvis鈥� fracture from sliding forward on the spine of a thousand-pound beast, and a new one, thanks to helmet use: When a bull鈥檚 horns strikes the helmet, it spins on the head, shredding ears like a juicer. A rodeo doc鈥檚 common refrain: 鈥淚t hurts because it鈥檚 still broken, but you鈥檙e riding anyway.鈥�

Heard: 鈥淲e determined the patient was titanium deficient.鈥�

Formula 1 Racing

The average Formula 1 driver is 5'9″ and weighs 145 pounds, withstands more Gs than a space shuttle astronaut, and will peg his heart rate at 180 beats per minute for two hours at a time. Shorter stature is a plus, because the head is the highest part of the car, but it鈥檚 still only three feet off the tarmac, where it鈥檚 exposed to deadly flying debris from wrecks.

Kite Sports

According to a crack team of European researchers, most deaths in kite sports are attributed to gusts.

Extreme Swimming

Three ways you might die:

1. You get too close to a cargo ship鈥檚 wake, which churned up cold water from below, causing hypothermia鈥攁nd you drown.

2. You drink Gatorade instead of plain water on an open-ocean swim, and the excess salt in your system stops your heart鈥攁nd you drown.

3. You forget to load buckets of blood on the chase boat to keep the piranha behind you. They catch up鈥攁nd you drown.

Skydiving

An orthopedist once jumped from a plane, hit terminal velocity of 120 miles per hour, and deployed his chute, and the forces dislocated his shoulder. While avoiding 鈥渂rowning out鈥濃�攊t鈥檚 common to toy with a loss of consciousness when the canopy decelerates you鈥攈e popped (the technical term is 鈥渞educed鈥�) his shoulder back into place mid-flight and landed safely.

Skiing

Injury rates in racing are directly linear with speeds. The downhill is more dangerous than the super-G, which is riskier than the GS, and so on. That鈥檚 weirdly obvious to a layperson, but the slalom can be rough on knees, so it took some sussing out. Also: It took 20 years for researchers to prove that ski helmets reduce head injuries by 75 percent because the early adopters of helmets were more safety conscious than most skiers.

Heard: 鈥淓ngineers are better than doctors because they fix problems, whereas doctors fix people hurt by problems.鈥�

Endurance Sports

The medical brief for the Leadville 100 is 30 pages long, includes detailed descriptions about what to do in cases of acute mountain sickness and hyponatremia (too much water, too little salt), and helps responders know the client: Type A personality; fetish-like desire to finish.

Heard: 鈥淲hat happens when you tell a runner not to run? They find another practitioner.鈥� (This joke killed it with the physical therapists.)

Olympic Ski and Snowboard Cross

At the Seoul Olympics, competitors suffered 14 season-ending injuries and four potential career-enders.

Heard: 鈥淚 fixed the tar out of that clavicle.鈥�

X Games

After a surgeon wired a freestyle snowboarder鈥檚 jaw shut, the athlete informed him that he was returning to competition. The problem? A subsequent crash could make him unable to breath. So the surgeon made him a necklace with miniature wire cutters as the pendant.

Heard: 鈥淭hese are not preferred postoperative management techniques.鈥�

Seen: Video of motocross star Eli Tomac (the son of Mountain Bike Hall of Famer John) stuffing the front wheel of his machine so hard that the twisting action of the handlebars dislocated one shoulder to the anterior and the second to the posterior.

Heard: 鈥淥oh.鈥�

Mixed Martial Arts

鈥淭he main goal of MMA is to induce a head injury,鈥� said a doc with mad jujitsu skills. On average, MMA fighters sustain 2.5 severe blows to the head鈥攁fter they鈥檝e been knocked out.

Field Management

A famed orthopedic surgeon with a background in wilderness medicine who has worked at Everest Base Camp once learned how to do a tooth extraction鈥攙ia sat phone. 鈥淢y Leatherman tool came in handy that day.鈥�

Swimming with Naegleria fowleri

Head to a stagnant pool in Texas or Florida, drink the tepid water, and the brain-eating bacteria won鈥檛 bother you. Get a little of that water in your nasal passages, though, and you鈥檙e in trouble. That鈥檚 where the little amoeba passes through to the skull cavity and eats your brain. Symptoms show up one day to two weeks after exposure鈥攁nd then you鈥檙e dead within three days. Naegleria fowleri has killed at least 300 Americans and is all over the otherwise deadly hot springs in Yellowstone. It鈥檚 also been found in Minnesota. 鈥淭he CDC likes to say it鈥檚 rare, but it鈥檚 not,鈥� says the doc who has helped raise awareness of the killer globally. 鈥淚n Africa, thousands are dying from it, but the cause of death is misdiagnosed.鈥�

Wilderness Medicine

Even the experts get it wrong. What one wilderness doc thought was a simple rash or possibly the shingles on the top of his foot was actually a horde of cutaneous larva picked up while playing beach volleyball on the banks of the Amazon.

Seen: An image of the little critters burrowing around.

Heard: 鈥淓ww.鈥�

Yoga

Forty-eight percent of yoga injuries happen to those under age 18. Teenagers and kids, Canadian researchers say, should not be doing yoga. So what then? Hockey?

First Aid

A new device called a REBOA holds the promise of saving lives from rapid blood loss. To use it in the field, simply insert a catheter into the femoral artery and up to the heart, where you occlude the aorta.

Seen: Full-screen image of a man with a stick as thick as a rattlesnake penetrating his neck.

BASE Jumping

Seventy-two percent of BASE jumpers have witnessed a death or a severe injury.

Heard: Reporter had to depart before the question 鈥渁re BASE jumpers insane?鈥� was resolved. But we鈥檙e going with 鈥測eah.鈥�

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