The mysteries that lie beneath

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0:43And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. And today on the show, what lies beneath? Starting with someone who spends a lot of her time beneath the Earth's surface in underwater caves. You know, most people hear the word cave diver and they picture me like jumping off of a cliff into the ocean. It's like, no, that's not it at all. I'm actually swimming through water-filled passages beneath your feet. This is cave diver Jill Heinertz. The best way for me to describe it is to think of the planet as a body.

1:30And I am swimming through the veins of Mother Earth. I've been cave diving all over the planet in underwater caves in Florida, the Bahamas, underneath the Ural Mountains in Siberia, inside lava tubes and volcanoes and even inside icebergs. Jill has hundreds of stories to tell about magical adventures she's had deep underground. But often these dives are pretty dangerous, like the one she took in January 2011 in northern Florida. I was guiding a scientist into a very small underwater cave, and it was for the purpose of sampling some algal materials that might closely resemble life we would find in outer space.

2:18The dive was going as expected, until it was time to exit the cave, which was really more like a narrow passageway. That's when Jill's diving partner got wedged in the rocks. and in the moment she got stuck, her gear became entangled in our safety line and she became wedged in this space that was about as big as sliding underneath your bed, like literally shoulders pinned to the ceiling and chest scraping along the floor. And as she became entangled and unable to swim forward, she panicked. and in that panic, just a couple of errant fin kicks stirred up everything to the point where I was literally like suspended in chocolate milk.

3:07I couldn't see anything. And I had one hand on the guideline and one hand on her and she was moving to my left and I'm stretching out my arms more and more and more until the guideline is being stressed in my right hand and she's in my left and I feel it getting tighter and tighter and tighter. Like a piano wire. And then suddenly, ping. The line separates and I have the bitter end of a guideline in my hand and my diving partner in my other hand. And I'm thinking, oh boy, we're in trouble now. The guideline is basically a rope leading back to the mouth of the cave. Yeah, if you don't have the guideline, the cave is just full of traps.

4:02You know, it's not marked by anything other than your guideline. And so you would have to re-explore in complete blackness to find your way out. So Jill started to think through all she needed to do to save them. I needed to calm down my partner. She needed to get them unstuck. I needed to patch the guideline and then work our way out of the cave. Her thoughts were racing. You know, oh my gosh, I have to get out of this cave too. Women can't die in an underwater cave. That would be international news. And then you think crazy things like, oh my gosh, I have to get home. My husband doesn't know how to do the taxes.

4:41But the important thing is just to take that deep breath and center yourself and just make the best next step towards survival and then keep doing it until you get home safe. But how deep were you into the cave, like from the mouth of it? So we were over a thousand feet back in the cave, and we had to come through several small restrictive spaces and zero visibility. And that could take you a long time. Now, I had to patch the guideline, and that needed two hands. And that's when I lost track of my partner. Where did she go? I mean, where was there to go if you're all tight and packed in like that?

5:18Well, that's the thing, eh? When you can't see, you don't know. And in the end, it took me an extra 73 minutes to get out of the cave. As I worked out of the cave, searching for her all the way out, I stopped and checked side passages. And then finally, when I got to the doorway of the cave, there she was, in the entrance. And that was the most beautiful sight I've ever seen. You know, I would have quit cave diving. I just know that would have been my last dive if she hadn't made it out. And there she was. Her mask was full of tears because she was certain that I was dead. You know, she had already called out an emergency and people were racing to the scene, probably expecting to recover my body from the cave, not to do a rescue.

6:06There are not very many rescues in underwater caves.

6:12Oh, Jill, that story is terrifying. And it makes me wonder what compels you to keep diving even after experiences like those. Well, in the discussions that I had with my husband, Robert, after that dive, it forced us both to reflect on why I do this, why I go into these places. And I believe we all have a calling. And this is mine. it's to try to illuminate complex issues about how we are connected to our water environment it's about sharing climate change information through my adventures because really everything we do on the surface of the earth gets returned to us to drink anything that happens on the surface of the earth can soak into the ground and end up in places that i swim through so i can see the results of humanity's interactions with things on top of the Earth that they might not feel are really connected with their water systems.

7:14But I can assure you, I see the connections. I swim through them.

7:21From waterways tunneling below us to ecosystems that only exist deep in the soil, we rarely give much thought to what's happening beneath the Earth's surface. But there are some amazing mysteries and opportunities waiting to be discovered if we're brave enough to go down and take a look. So today on the show, stories and ideas about what lies beneath and how appreciating underground worlds could change how we live above ground. For Jill Heiners, diving into caves can feel like time travel. Exploring these voids in the planet is so important because these are like museums of natural history. I mean, we can work with scientists and unravel interesting information about Earth's past climate.

8:14We can learn about ancient civilizations that have used these as portals to another world. And these are also places where there is life. Here's Jill Heinerth on the TED stage. It turns out that caves are repositories of amazing life forms, species that we'd never knew existed before. Many of these life forms live in unusual ways. They have no pigment and no eyes in many cases. And these animals are also extremely long-lived. In fact, animals swimming in these caves today are identical in the fossil record that predates the extinction of the dinosaurs. So imagine that. These are like little swimming dinosaurs.

9:00What can they teach us about evolution and survival? I also get to work with paleontologists and archaeologists in places like Mexico, in the Bahamas, and even in Cuba, looking at cultural remains and also human remains in caves. And they tell us a lot about some of the earliest inhabitants of these regions. So Jill, when you're looking for a new place to dive, how do you know where to go? Like, is there, I don't know, a secret map for cave divers that has like X's in the jungle in Mexico? Or do you ever think like, do you have a hint? Like, you're like, I think there's going to be a cave here.

9:42And do you ever stumble upon one? I mean, we still use some pretty crude research methods in order to find places where we might find caves. I mean, I do everything from looking at old archival maps and comparing them to current maps. I look at writings. Like, I've read back as far as some of Alexander the Great's accounts of traveling through the western desert of Egypt. Really? But we also look at Google Maps and look for sinkholes. And, you know, different cave divers will cooperate with others in exploration as well. So we'll sort of tag team exploration efforts and share our results with each other as we explore something new.

10:23My very favorite project of all was over 15 years ago when I was a part of a team that made the very first accurate three-dimensional map of a subterranean surface. This device was actually creating a three-dimensional model as we drove it. We also used ultra-low frequency radio to broadcast back to the surface our exact position within the cave. So I swim under houses and businesses and bowling alleys and golf courses, and even under a Sonny's barbecue restaurant. Our water planet is not just rivers, lakes, and oceans, but it's this vast network of groundwater that knits us all together. It's a shared resource from which we all drink.

11:11we don't really talk much about what's going on beneath the ground other than well sewer systems or in florida they're starting to understand when it rains and the water doesn't go anywhere because there's so little drainage that sort of permeability between what's above and what's beneath. Do you think of them as being separate worlds or do you really see them as interconnected in some ways? No, I see the whole planet as interconnected. I mean, I've traveled through the plumbing of the planet. I've traveled even through the man-made plumbing of the planet, exploring urban caves in stormwater systems.

11:54In fact, I went on one journey where we paddled up the Wekaiva River, this incredibly beautiful natural resource in Florida, to find the source of the Wekaiva. Well, the source of the Wekaiva is a Best Buy parking lot. Really? Yeah, we literally traveled through the storm sewer systems and climbed a ladder and popped up in a Best Buy parking lot. It's like, wow, you know, this incredible natural environment full of beautiful wildlife and birds and fish is being served by, you know, the water that's running off this parking lot, collecting, you know, heavy metals off the brakes of cargos and everything else.

12:35And when you're walking through that stormwater conduit, you're seeing the greasy, horrible stuff that will end up in that river. So I'm literally in the sustenance, the water that fuels the industries that we rely on. So it's this incredible journey where I get to go inside and see the health of the planet and wonders of places that nobody else has ever taken pictures of before. That's Jill Heinert. Her book is called Into the Planet, My Life as a Cave Diver. You can see her full talk at TED.com. On the show today, what lies beneath? I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

13:20We'll be right back.

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14:58Ready to bring your visions to life? Learn how at AmazonBusiness.com. This message comes from Dell Technologies. Dell AI PCs are newly designed to help you do more faster. That's the power of Dell AI powered by Intel Core Ultra processors. Upgrade today by visiting Dell.com slash deals. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. And on the show today, what lies beneath? As the prayer goes, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Sometimes it's hard to hear, but eventually we'll all return to the earth. Which means one of two default options, usually. Burial in a casket, or for more and more people, cremation.

15:50So cremation is extremely popular and it's rising in popularity very quickly. So I think two years ago, it hit 50 % of Americans choosing cremation. And it's expected to rise up to, you know, 70, 80 % in the next decade or so. This is Katrina Spade. She's a bit of an expert in what is broadly called death care. And she says there are a couple reasons why cremation has gotten so popular. Imagine, for one, the cemeteries that our families might have been buried in, we probably have moved away from. And so there's less of a place-based desire to be buried in one family plot, for example. The other reason is that cremation is much cheaper than conventional burial.

16:35By conventional burial, Katrina means a body filled with embalming fluid, put in a casket that's placed in the ground, surrounded by a concrete liner. And then I think it's true that folks think that cremation is more environmentally friendly than conventional burial. But put together the manufacture and transport of all of that stuff that goes with a conventional burial and compare it to cremation, which uses fossil gas to burn the body and emits particulates and mercury and carbon into the atmosphere. And in fact, they're really on par with each other from a carbon footprint standpoint. Katrina started learning about all these environmental problems while she was an architecture student.

17:19and I didn't like the wastefulness of it. Even aside from like the pollution, I thought, you know, I might have something left to give back when I die, like whatever is in this husk of a body. And so why burn it up? And I knew about natural burial, which is where a body is like laid into a grave, usually in just a shroud or a wood or a cardboard sometimes coffin. And it's really about returning to the earth. And I thought, that's beautiful. And yet, I love living in cities. And I hate the idea that if you live in a city like so many in the world do, you'd have to leave it after you die in order to choose an environmentally beneficial choice.

18:02So I was thinking about this and what would the urban equivalent to natural burial be? What would it mean to return to the earth but stay in my city? So those were the very first inklings of this idea. Katrina Spade explains her idea on the TED stage. Back in architecture school, I was thinking about all this. And I set out on a plan to redesign death care. Could I create a system that was beneficial to the earth, that used nature as a guide rather than something to be feared? Something that was gentle to the planet. That planet, after all, supports our living bodies our whole lives. And while I was mulling this all over, over the drawing board, the phone rang.

18:51It was my friend Kate. She was like, hey, have you heard about the farmers who are composting whole cows? And I was like, hmm.

19:06Turns out that farmers and agricultural institutions have been practicing something called livestock mortality composting for decades. Mortality composting is where you take an animal high in nitrogen and cover it with co-composting materials that are high in carbon. It's an aerobic process, so it requires oxygen, and it requires plenty of moisture as well. In the most basic setup, a cow is covered with a few feet of wood chips, which are high in carbon, and left outside for breezes to provide oxygen and rain to provide moisture. In about nine months, all that remains is a nutrient-rich compost.

19:47The flesh has been decomposed entirely, as have the bones. I know. So I would definitely call myself a decomposition nerd, but I am far, far from a scientist. And one way you can tell this is true is that I often call the process of composting magic.

20:14So basically, all we humans need to do is create the right environment for nature to do its job. It's like the opposite of antibacterial soap. Instead of fighting them, we welcome microbes and bacteria in with open arms. These tiny, amazing creatures break down molecules into smaller molecules and atoms, which are then incorporated into new molecules. In other words, that cow is transformed. It's no longer a cow. It's been cycled back into nature. See? Magic. You can probably imagine the light bulb that went off in my head after I received that phone call. I began designing a system based on the principles of livestock mortality composting that would take human beings and transform them into soil.

21:12Turning humans into soil. This notion came to you back in grad school and you were like, I'm going to do this. I am going to figure out how to compost bodies. And over several years, you did research, you recruited advisors, and then you tested your idea. Yeah, so there was no question in my mind that we could compost humans. We had done, we partnered with Washington State University and the soil science department there to do a pilot project where we composted six humans who had donated their bodies to that work. And that was to prove it was safe and effective. We couldn't just say, oh, well, you know, we do this with cows.

21:52We had to prove it worked with humans. And so after that pilot program, you launched a company called Recompose. What does it offer? What we do at Recompose is place each individual body into a vessel, a stainless steel container that's about eight feet long and four feet tall. And it's housed in a hexagonal array. So if you look at this vessel system from the front, it looks a little bit like a beehive. And inside of each vessel is one human body laid into a bed of wood chips, alfalfa, and straw and cover it with more of the same. And then over the course of a month, that vessel, we provide oxygen to the vessel via a fan system.

22:39We're kind of constantly aerating that plant material, which is what provides the perfect environment for microbial activity. And those microbes, by the way, they're on us right now as we speak. And they're in the air and they're on the wood chips. So we don't have to inoculate them into the vessel. They just exist naturally. And they'll break the body down and the wood chips and straw in about 30 days. What does it turn into? Does it look like soil? It looks a lot like soil or maybe a little more like a compost that you would buy at a nursery. In 30 days? That fast? Well, I should, no, not quite.

23:18So it's about six weeks total. After 30 days, we remove the soil, and then all of the material goes into what we call a cure bin. And so curing is a fancy way of saying compost is drying out and finishing its process. So for another two to four weeks, the soil is cured, and then it's ready to go back to families. And if families would rather, they can donate it to conservation efforts. i'm i'm still pretty flabbergasted by your process here uh your system to compost humans but like once the process is finished like how much soil is there well because we use so much plant material to cocoon the body in the final result is a cubic yard of soil and that's three feet by three feet by three feet.

24:08That's a lot. Oh yeah. It fills a pickup truck. And it's really interesting because over the years I've noticed this like push and pull between the ritual and the meaning and the sort of natural side of things. And then the industrial side, like when, when we have families, when they want the soil, we say, okay, well, you're going to need a pickup truck or you're going to need a trailer of this size. And so then they, you know, pull up with their trailer and we forklift the soil in and there's this kind of moment of sometimes it's of levity a little bit because it's like oh this was my person once and now it's a huge amount of soil that I can go use and start that that orchard if I want.

24:52What is human compost like? Are you going to grow super crunchy apples if you use our soil? Like what are we like as soil? I was certain that human compost must be special. And it turns out, in fact, the compost we make is pretty good, but we shy against calling it spectacular. It's just really good compost. I don't know why that makes us sad, but I don't know. Maybe I thought our big brains would make it particularly nutritious or something. Nope. But it is worth noting that when you look at the avoidance of pollution from cremation and conventional burial. And then you couple that with the sequestration of carbon that happens when you compost wood chips, alfalfa, and the body.

25:39We're saving about a metric ton of carbon per person. I mean, it's very different than lowering a casket into the ground and everybody wearing black and then throwing dirt over it and then leaving that person behind. I remember one of the first funerals I went to, there was something incredibly sad about leaving the person. It felt like, but now he has to stay there in the ground away from us. I can't explain it. You know, I was a child, but there was something, it just didn't feel kind. But I don't know if you've heard that from other people. Well, there's a couple of things that feel to me a little bit different than that experience, which sounds hard by the way.

26:26One is that we do mark the moment where we lay the body into the vessel because it's the minute that this transformation is going to begin. And so our staff will do what we call a laying in ceremony where the body is on a cradle in front of the vessel. We lay plant material on the body. We then load the body into the vessel. And, you know, the closing of that vessel door isn't totally unlike the burial, I guess, in a lot of ways. I think the difference for me is that we have like a dozen staff people working in this facility. We have this array of hexagonal vessels. They're white and inside of most of them is a body decomposing.

27:12And there's this kind of liveliness about the place in a way. So really, I mean, And we like to, on the day when we're laying someone in, we often play the music their family said they loved. So sometimes we'll have like Bob Marley going in the background. And so I think there's something about this, the place where this is happening and knowing that the transformation does end and a new person joins the hive, if you will. That is a little bit more lively than your typical cemetery, perhaps. I have to imagine that while there are people who are very supportive of your work, there must also be people who are not Katrina.