Oh hi, hey, it's the second place pie at the bakeoff Alley Ward and here we are with a deep dark exploration for you of some frickin' caves. Let's get musty, Let's get into the hole as fast as we can, all right, this guest is a well decorated and lauded
nat geo explore, a paleoclimate researcher, a caver. And they studied physical geography at the University of Birmingham in the UK, studying microclimatology of caves, and then got a PhD at the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol. They're now an assistant professor of paleoclimatology at the University of Innsbruck. And she has explored caves all over the world, including in the remote reaches of Greenland. And we'll hear
about those adventures in a minute. But first, thank you to all the patrons who support the show for a dollar or more a month at patreon dot com slash ologies, where you can submit questions we may read on the show. You can also wear your ologies merch to find other ologites in the wild. We have that at ologiesmerch dot com which is linked in the show notes. If you have not heard, if you're looking for a kid friendly episode, we have started a new show called Smologies that you
can find anywhere you get podcasts. That's a linked in the show notes. And also thank you to everyone who's ever written a review. They helped so much. I have read them all and to prove it, I pick a fresh plucked one. And this week it's from Katie Holyfield who wrote that they always feel like they are smarter, kinder, and more understanding after listening. Also, they had a dream that they met me at a bakery and that I helped them pick out the perfect pastry and that we
became best friends. Katie Hollyfield can't go wrong with an almond croissant unless you're allergic to almonds or dairy or you have Celiac. Let's get down into it. Let's get dirty with the word spielology, which comes from once again the Greek. It always comes from Greek, pretty much always spilio, meaning caves. And in this episode we're going to cover everything you ever wanted to know, like how deep does something have to be to really be a cave? How
dark is it really down there? Do cavers ever lose their damn minds? What's the longest this guest has lived in a cave? Huge crystal formations, stalactites, stalagmites, cave clouds, show caves. Who counts as a spelunker. What ancient climate science can tell us about our current kind of sticky situation? Cave diving, cave rescues, creepy caves, gated caves, haunted caves.
Old school versus new school mapping and why nothing beats the Longing for the underground With Professor Explorer, paleoclimatologist and yes bilologist, Doctor Gena Moseley pacodermatology, cryptozoology, lithology, nanotechnology, meteorology, pathology, seriology, steleology.
I'm Gina Mosley, and.
I use she Do you refer to yourself as a speleologist or is that a term that only people who are not cave people like to use.
That's quite a funny question.
Now, I do consider myself as peliologist also a paleoclimatologist, so there's kind of two branches of science that I'm working with. And something that I often hear kind of American audience. It uses the term spilunka which is a term that British cavers generally don't tend to use.
I have to say I feel like someone who's a spilunkers. I think of them as someone who could go down just for sport or thrills, or because they like to be terrified. But a spieleologist definitely seems like you're down there with a clipboard, you're collecting data, you're measuring stuff.
I guess it depends who you're talking to, but yeah, everyone everyone identifies a little bit differently, I guess, even in their own sports.
Just to say notes. So I was a big ignorant mess to this, but I just found out that in the UK some people call caving potholing because it's like going in a pothole, but that may just refer to the exploration of more vertical caves, whilst spilunking is about checking out horizontal caves. But then I learned that calling someone a spilunker is like saying that they're a cave poser.
And this dates back nearly forty years when the editor of the magazine American Caving Accidents, which subscribe me immediately, once wrote the term spilunker denotes someone untrained and unknowledgeable in current exploration techniques, and caver is for those who are trained and knowledgeable. And some cavers they have bumper stickers that say cavers rescue spilunkers. What just when you thought caves were at their darkest? Who more shade?
I would say speleologists are going into caves. Some study, for instance, the geology or the formation of the caves. Others might be studying biology, or others might be doing the exploration and the mapping. Those people would also be speleologists as well.
Well.
People are going into a cave or going into this field. Is there a big chance that you really dig caves? Like you really like going and them?
Oh, I thought you meant the other kind of digging there removing sales and stuff, which peliologists do love to do as well. I have to say, you know, yeah, yeah, generally speaking, people that really want to go into caves really yeah dig caves as you say, and jokes aside.
There are people that spend their free time digging out sediment and boulders because they're so driven by trying to find that next bit of cave passage that nobody has ever seen before them, that they spend weeks, months, years, decades literally diging caves to try and find the passages beyond.
Yeah, do people in your field have any idea how much of the caving systems out there have been like uncovered and how much are just completely unknown to us?
Yeah, that is a question that often comes up.
I would say, from a truly scientific perspective, we've got no idea how much is yet to be discovered?
Okay, cool, cool, cool cool.
However, other people would say, take the average amount of known cave in limestone, for instance, and then look at how much limestone is on Earth, and then guess how much there is left to be discovered, for instance, and that would be a huge amount. But as a kind of true let's say scientist, I'm not going to have a guess at that really, So.
Even spieleeologists have no idea. And I find this thrilling, like when you have one of those dreams that I have all the time that your house has an undiscovered room, like you open up the medicine chest and then suddenly there's another house in there where you see tiktoks of people who find catacombs underneath their farmhouses, And to think the earth has those all over the Dare place are
a lot of the caves. Are they limestone or are there granite caves or are there obsidian caves or do they typically happen only in a certain type of rack.
No. Caves are basically holes in the ground, and essentially they're mostly found in limestone. This is because limestone's quite easy to dissolve with a very weak acid. So as soon as you have some water and it mixes with carbon dioxide in a soil, it becomes very slightly acidic, and then that allows for dissolution of limestone and that ultimately is what forms the majority of caves. But indeed you can get caves inside glaciers and then they would
be glacier caves. You can also find lava tube so these are caves that form from volcanic eruptions. When they're outside of the lava flow cools down and hardens, but the inside is still molten and flows through, and then when that eruption's finally finished, then you have lava tubes. Brand new ones are being formed in Iceland, you know
as we speak, over the last few years. And then there's also caves in like quartzite and sandstone, so these tend to be formed through more kind of abrasive processes rather than dissolution processes like in limestone.
So another type of abrasive form caved might be a sea cave, also called a literal cave or a grotto, and those form around a body of water and they're from waves lapping at the shoreline making these indentations or sandstone.
Caving systems might be mechanically made from tectonic shifts, but most of the caves are called solution or cursed with a ka caves where that very lightly acidic rainwater seeps into a crack in a rock and over time eats away more and more of the rock to form these hollow, drippy systems, usually out of carbonate rocks like limestone or marble,
or rock salt like halite, or from gypsum. And for more on what rock is who, you can see the Wonderful two part geology episode Wishmitti Jompson A wonder love them, but yeah, if it's a hole in a rock, you got a cave sort of.
So if you can get underground and kind of get away from daylights, then it's a cave.
I'm wondering how big or smart can a cave be Like, if you have a two foot depression in rock, is that a cave? Or do you have to be able to fit something specific in it, like the size of a car?
Oh, my goodness, what is it?
I laugh because cavers could argue about that for honestly, yeah, generally speaking, a person has to be able to fit in it. There are also then debates about if you have to be kind of beyond the twilight zone, if you have to like actually get into the dark or not. And for instance, I've had a fan fantastic series of expeditions in Greenland in the last years, and the caves
were exploring. There were once really big, long systems, but now they're all like chopped up and there's just like corners left of these caves and small passages and things. And people have said to me they aren't caves, you know. I get a little bit defensive of them because I'm like, well, they were caves once, but yeah, we don't get out of daylight anymore, so maybe they're not caves anymore.
So the dark makes the cave. It's interesting too to think of them in that human perspective, like what a badger or a squirrel might consider a cave, might be a lot smaller, or where might consider a cave. It's like that subjective. I love the idea of spilunkers and spieleologists absolutely cut throughout arguing and getting into flame wars,
heated text messages, blocking people on social media. And do you travel a lot for your work or do they have a lot of caves in I'm guessing you're based and from the UK.
Yeah, I'm from the UK originally, but since twenty eleven I've been living in Austria because there's an excellent cave science research.
Group here in the Alps.
But we were also working in America in New Mexico, also in the Yucatan. There are fantastic expeditions I've been on in Borneo and India in more recent years. You know, I kind of stay closer to home, partly because you know, I'm working as a climate change scientist as well, so on a personal level, I'm reducing my travels quite a bit, and also with a young family, it's just hard to go away now, so I'm not traveling as much anymore.
You can't take your three year old toddler in a backpack into a caving system. I'm guessing, well, people.
Do, that's true.
A few years ago, I was on a job photographing a cave with my partner and at three months old, we took our daughter into a cave. It's so funny. I have this photograph of pushing my partner's pushing pram up to the cave entrance and then she slept through.
The whole thing in the cave.
I was breastfeeding in a cave at one point as well.
It was it was quite amazing.
Yeah.
And then when she got.
Older, maybe at like eighteen months or something, we took her into a cave and then she kind of knew what was going on and she absolutely hated it.
Really. Yeah, it was terrible. Now she wants to go again.
She's kind of excited by her mommy and daddy going into caves, and she keeps saying, can we go in the cave? When are we going in the cave? So I think we have to try it again now.
And is your partner as biliologist as well?
He is, Yeah, yeah, and he specializes in photographing cave so he's doing the arty side of caving and I'm doing the science side of caving.
Did you meet him that way?
Yeah? I mean the caving community is fairly small, I have to say, so we all tend to know each other or know of each other in a roundabout kind of way.
And it's funny.
A lot of people kind of go, oh, fancy that meeting each other caving. But then but then another person said, well, it would be more weird if they met in the supermarket queue. You know. You imagine standing at the checkout and someone said, Hey, I like caving. Hey, I'm into caving. Like that would be more weird, wouldn't it.
That would you?
There's not that many of you, considering how many people there are on Earth. But yeah, how did you get into it?
Oh?
That is a good question.
And I could talk for the rest of this time about that. But basically, I was on a family holiday and we were on this campsite and there was a guy there who was running kind of outdoor activities for the family staying on the campsite. And my mum wanted to try caving, and she said, oh, Gina, will you come with me?
And I said, oh, yeah, why not?
And so I went along and I was completely hooked on it from the start. And we went in this little cave called Goat Church caverin which has kind of been sacrificed to Scout groups and guide groups and beginner cavers. So there's nothing pretty to see in this cave at all, and it's small, and it's just about crawling ground in
some passages underground, really, but I absolutely loved it. And then I went a few more times that week, and I would save up money from my newspaper around that I had after school, and then in the summer I'd do as much caving as I could during that one week in the summer holidays.
Curiosity was burning a hollow into my boulder brain and I looked up Goat Church Cavern and it's what's called a show cave, meaning it's open to the public. It's kind of like an ambassador cave, like humans allow me to introduce you to a cave, but there are still lights inside and hand rails and usually a guide and like a gift shop so you can purchase geodes or keychains naturally. Also, Goat Church Cavern has more than just
some Scout troops inside some deeper inspection. They had to scrub off some graffiti on its walls and then they found some etchings dating back maybe five hundred years, and they may have been used in rituals, so they're called witch marks. Witch Marks in a cave doesn't get mark goth. Also, let's have a real quick glossary. So what is the difference between a cave and a cavern? I had no idea.
Some people say a room within a cave system is a cavern, while others insist that a cave is only a cavern if it is accessorized with spiliothems aka rock growths such as stalactites and stalagmites. But I've also read that a cavern is only the entrance of the cave where you can't see any outside light, whereas a cave is what it's called once you're in utter darkness, and especially in relation to cave diving. So just let this be a lesson. It really kind of depends on who
you ask. And apparently a lot of guides joke that the difference between a cave and a cavern is two letters, maybe only Spilunker's care, although I thought maybe a cavern was one that you walked into and a cave you squeezed into and just prayed for the best, but you know, laughed at me and said, most caves there's no strolling in.
I think you're the first person who has I've ever spoken to. He said, I imagine just walking into a cave, because normally most people just think about the tight, crawling, nasty bit and then they go, oh, I'm claustrophobic.
I can't do that. So to imagine walking into a.
Cave is quite a unique thought process.
That tell the kind of caves that I've been to or help.
Yeah, sure, yeah, it completely varies. So caves within a particular region will tend to have a particular kind of character, and that comes down to the geology and the way the caves are being formed, the climate, saying, you know, how much rainfall there is in a region or snowfall and all that sort of thing. So it depends where you are in the world, but you know, ultimately you can experience absolutely everything you want to in a cave.
You can be.
Crawling in really tight small spaces where you have to take your helmet off and put one arm in front of you and like push your bag ahead in order to get through. You can be head first, you can be feet first, you can be upside down. You can be on either side, or you can walk into a cave. You can climb over boulders, you can be swimming, you can go through what's called a sump where you kind of duck underneath the water, or actually dive as well if you're into cave diving, which.
I am not.
And then there's also a lot of technical stuff going on as well. So this is what we call single rope technique, which involves using ropes to get up and down vertical sections of cave. But yeah, you know, people go down that and then they have to climb all the way back up.
And how deep of caves do cavers sail or climb down on ropes? I didn't know that word until literally today.
Now.
One pit cave, which is Maukang in China, has an unbroken vertical shaft. It's just over five hundred meters deep, which rivals the tallest skyscrapers in the Western Hemisphere, which you know what, is trifling, quite frankly, when compared to this wandering depth of this system called the very Amconnect Cave, which descends into the earth two hundred and twenty three meters or over seventy two hundred feet, which would be nearly six empire state buildings stacked on top of each other.
And Gina elaborates on that one.
The deepest cave in the world is over two kilometers deep, and that's in the Caucasus. That involves an awful lot of rope work as well. That's very vertical, but then at the bottom of that it becomes a very horizontal system. So after four days of people out sailing and camping to get down to the bottom, they then set up camp at the bottom of the cave and then they can walk from there in the horizontal passages at the bottom.
Four days of going going vertical, and then you just sleep in a hammock somewhere along the way.
They sleep in makeshift tents, so you know, you can just make a tent out of a foil blankets, you know, like you would have at the end of a marathon. So you can put up some washing line and string and make a kind of tent out of that, because you don't need a full on, four season every style tent to camp in a cave. You just need to keep the draft out and it needs to be lightweight because you have to carry everything, take sleeping bags down and sleeping mats, and yeah, just camp down there and
then move on. So it's pretty wild. And of course then you know, you really have to plan and you know, have enough batteries and lights and all that sort of stuff as well, if you know you'll be down there for really a long time.
I had to know for all of us, where do you go to the bathroom if you're okay?
Oh well, that's also a big topic of conversation which I get in trouble about. Let's say the regulations are that everything should be brought out of the cave. Whether everybody adheres to that, I can't say. Got it?
So?
Got it? Okay, So some leave no tracers, dig a little hole like eight inches deep, it's called a cat hole. They do their biz and then they covered up. But due to the delicate microbial environments, cavers are held to a higher standard and are encouraged to use what are called wag bags, and those contain a solidifying powder developed by NASA, And yeah, you roll that up and you keep that at the bottom of your bag. You don't get to leave it in the cave.
Now.
Other DIY options include what is unfortunately called a burrito, and it involves a homemade kit consisting of wet wipes and a turkey roasting bag, which, when tied correctly, are pretty puncture proof. And I read too much about this and I'm going to stop now before I ruin it for burritos. Everywhere other people simply say, fuck this, Let's pretend nothing ever happened. You didn't see me, I didn't see you. That's not necessarily the way to go. Bumps
the word there. But how long have you spent in a cave without surfacing?
That was a week that was in Lectugea in New Mexico, which was incredible. It is one of the most beautiful caves on the planet and it's such a privilege to get to go there. Yeah, we spent a week underground and took photographs and did some exploration and mapping and things, and it was just amazing. It was incredible. And you know, when you do these things, you spend a lot of time with a handful of select people who you become very close within a short space of time. It's a
really cool team bonding experience. Actually, it's really good.
And when you are down there, are you collecting samples or how are you mapping something that's in the dark, that's rocky, that's underground, that might have tiny passages. What type of sciencing do you get to do down there?
Well, I mean that depends on the purpose.
Of the trip.
So if you're there exploring and mapping, then historically that would have been done simply with a compass incliner, a tape measure and someone on a notebook and people would look around the cave. You'd have teams of two or three and you'd go from point to point and measure the distance between one point and another point. You measure the azimuth, and you measure the inclination.
So in general, distances from the fixed observer at different angles, there's not going to be a quiz. It's fine.
You measure how far away the left wall is, the right wall, the ceiling and the floor from where you are, and then the person on the book is actually making a sketch as you go through the cave, hopefully to scale, and in that they put all the details of where there's boulders, where there's calcite formations, where there's water, where there's bats, where there's insects, where there's passages going off in a direction, where there's holes in the floor, where
there's holes in the ceiling. All these things go into that sketch map. And historically, when cavers were using, for instance, carbide lights, which these small little flames that miners used to use, they would miss sometimes passages going off because they couldn't see them with the lighting they.
Had sounds very dark.
So then as lightings got better over the years and people have gone back to passages that have already been mapped, so then they may see that there are other passages going off that were not seen previously, and then that then gets explored and gets added to the survey of the cave.
But then also with.
Time, not only as lighting improved, but obviously digital and electronic technologies have moved on, so then we moved on to having laser distance measurers, which to the distance and the inclination and ASIMU for us. And then they're connected to an Android phone or a PDA or something, and it immediately pops up on the screen and ultimately someone's still drawing, but now they're drawing on a handheld device
rather than an old notepad and with a pen. And then even further on our expedition in Greenland last year. We actually took a handheld three D laser scanner and literally just walked through the cave and it mapped it for us.
Now, so it is always changing.
That's got to be such an advancement. Yeah, first, bieleologists, that must be huge. Do most people just do it that way? Are they kind of moving toward that digital laser or are there purists who are like, no, you have to do this by hand measurement.
No, I think most people today would be using the
distance laser measurer connected to an electronic device. Most people are definitely not using the three D laser scanner because for start, they're very expensive, and then you have a lot of data that you have to process, and then it ends up in a three D model, which is wonderful to look at on a screen and to use that to study the cave, but as a mapping tool to then go back to cave with a two D map in a hand, like if I was to pass it on to somebody else to say, now here's a map.
If you want it for that purpose of using it to get through a cave, then a three D model isn't good for that. Then you want a two D map like a traditional one. So that's where the distance laser measurer and the PDA still comes in.
And how often do caves just collapse? Because I would think that if I step foot, or rather a step my belly crawl into a cave, it would just collapse on me. I'd be buried in rubble forever. But are they pretty sturdy?
Well, yes, I'm going to say yes they are. You know, when we go in a cave, it has been formed over tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years with water. So I'm talking about limestone caves now as well, with you know water that's slowly dissolved away the rock that's pretty stable, it's been standing there a long time. But of course there are boulders on the floor quite often, so they've fallen from somewhere. So rockfalls
do happen. And if you're going through say a bolder choke, then you know that might be loose and unstable, so that will be an area where a cave has collapsed. But it's really not common that as you're walking through a cave it just collapses on you.
And if you need more robust research, on this. There are speleology traumatology epitemologists out there, and one such paper is from twenty twelve. It's titled the Epidemiology of Caving Injuries in the United States, and it reports that between nineteen eighty and two thousand and eight, there were eighty one caving fatalities, which is about three deaths per year, and the majority occurred from falling or from drowning, although
in a jam that caused eighteen percent of fatalities. Just last month in northern Vietnam, one person was killed in a cave, and it's suspected that it was because of ill legal goal mining within the natural caves. So beware ye, shady excavations.
Mines may be different.
You know. Minds are places where humans have excavated it and are not only some tens or hundreds of years old, but on the whole. No, they don't just collapse. But that's not to say that we aren't looking out for maybe unstable ceilings or even unstable floors. I did have one experience where I was walking along a false floor and I didn't realize it and I just went through it and I only felt like half a foot or something. But of course it could have been It could have been worse.
Have you ever found anything or anyone in a cave.
Or anything or anyone any like snakes and bats and things. Yeah, it's not uncommon to find like sheep and dogs and things in caves that you know, they often get rescued.
I wasn't sure how many people have like disappeared into caves, you know what I mean?
Yeah, I know what you mean.
Yeah, no, that's not so common.
I have to say, is it good to go on a buddy says, like as a team just for safety?
Yeah, definitely. A body system's always good. Also, you know, telling people on the surface where you're going, even if there's you know, several of you going. It's always good to have a call out on the surface so people can know when to expect you back in case something.
Does go wrong. But of course some people do also go on their own. Yeah. I don't, but people do, you know.
That's wise, It makes sense. And if you're not sure how to get started caving, you can ask the internet some cursory questions. Now, the Bureau of Land Management has this wonderful safety guide with all kind of hot steamy tips. I never would have known, and I'm going to link this on our website. I'm also going to read them to you with my mouth, so it says, here are the tips. Leave word with someone stating what cave you will be visiting in an approximate return time. Never go
caving alone. Always have three to four people in a group. Each person in the group must have three independent light sources and extra batteries. Matches, candles, and glowsticks are not considered light sources. Wear a helmet, preferably an approved one to protect against low ceilings and some falling rocks. Use a chin strap to prevent losing your helmet and light. And it doesn't call you a buffoon here, but it could. It also says to mount your main source of light
on your helmet to free your hands for climbing. Wear sturdy footwear such as boots that protect the ankle and have non leather, non skid, non marking souls. Bring gloves, Bring knee pads if necessary. If you're going into the cave for an extended period of time, carry water and food for each person. Stay within your abilities and experience level to avoid injuring yourself and to avoid damaging the cave. Also avoid drowning by not entering gypsum caves or other
storm during type of caves. If there is a thread of rain, always watch for and avoid poisonous creatures such as snakes and insects. So grab a friend or three and get caving. Maybe you'll even spot a dead bird or in a live spider. Also, now that I've asked most of my terror bas questions, we can get to more of the science. And as a paleochromatologist, you mentioned how old some of these caves are and maybe up
to hundreds of thousands of years old. What do you study when it comes to paleoclimate What are you able to discern from these old caving systems versus what we've got going on right now.
So I'm studying climate change that happened in the past, So this isn't anthropogenically forced climate change. This would be natural climate change that's happened over Earth's history basically. And to do that, I work with calcite mineral deposits. So these are small pieces of calcium carbonate that get deposited by water within caves, and most people might be familiar with them as like stalactites or stalagmites that form from
the ceiling or on the ground. So stalactite with a CEA forms on the ceiling and the stalagmite with a G forms on the ground. Hey, yeah, that's how you remember.
That's great, I was.
Going to ask.
So a chronical formation hanging from the ceiling is usually composed of years of mineral deposits from dripping water crystallizing onto itself and hanging kind of like an icicle from the ceiling. Stalactite or since it has two teas in that word, you can think of top. Now, if water is dripping and the minerals are forming a stack and
it's on the ground, that's a stalagamite. So go forth, win some bar trivia, spill a little beerround the floor for me, or really for a doctor genomously it's apeleiologist, and why does she study them? It's pretty cool.
And these stalactites and stalagmites form from water that has traveled from the ocean where it's evaporated and then traveled through the atmosphere. It's then fallen as precipitation, be that rainfall or snow for instance. It's passed through soil above the cave and then dissolve the limestone above the cave, and then as it's enter the cave, it's deposited a small amount of calcium carbonate and brought with it a signature of that entire transport process that it's been on.
So the state of the ocean, the atmosphere, the vegetation above the cave, how active the soil is, and these sorts of things that all gets trapped within the different layers of the stalagmite, a bit like tree rings in effect, except that this is layers of rock that are forming.
Getten bigger and bigger and bigger.
And so then I come along and I take samples with permission, we collect stalagmites and or cause of stalagmites, and actually leave the stalagmite intact in the cave and just take a core out of the middle of it, for instance, so that we don't destroy the esthetics of the cave. And then I can analyze the changes in the chemistry through the stalagmite, and then that tells me about the state of the climate and the environment at
the time. But then to put that into perspective, we have to know when that stalagmite was forming in order to put that climate and environmental record in the context of some time period in the past, and this could be the last few thousands, tens of thousands of years, and it can even go back millions of years if you have some caves are that old.
What has shocked you that you've done with your research? Did you get any conclusions of results or analysis that you really weren't expecting?
Yeah, I mean this is what drives us on with science, right to find those answers and the more surprising ones normally give you a headache for a short while or a long while, but that's kind of what's exciting really, then talking about it and working it out. I think there's a couple of ones to pull out. One is a Devil's Hole in Nevada, which is a project I worked on some years ago. And Devil's Hole is famous
for other reasons. It is a small fracture in the desert in the Amagosa Desert, and there are mupfish that live within the cave and there they've got a population of less than one hundred and they only live in this one particular cave in Nevada. Now this is yeah, I know, crazy, Hey, we don't work in that cave because the pup fisher there and obviously that highly protected.
But next door there is a Devil's.
Whole number two cave, and basically you up sail down and you've reached that aquifer underneath the desert, and for like hundreds of thousands of years, calcite has been precipitating out of that aquifer, out of the ground water and onto the cave wall. So this is a different kind of deposition. It's not a stalek type or a stalek knite. It's actually called mamillary calcite. But ultimately it's the same kind of idea.
Where is that that name come from? Mamillary? Is it kind of like mounds like boobs? Like how there's mamatus clouds.
I never thought of it that way, but maybe, and I don't know the answer second MAUNDI yeah, so possibly like cloudy.
Yeah, mammillaries are rounded knobs of calcite that appear on the ceiling and walls. And yes, these cave formations look like knockers honestly, kind of hot ones and definitely were named after boobs. But according to the National Speleological Society, mammillaris also called cave clouds are carbonate coatings that form underwater in cave pools whose water is super saturated with
calcium carbonate. And Gina told me that she has done research on Devil's Whole Cave number two, and it's an important one because in the late seventies early eighties it was in Devil's Hole that they obtained the very first long climate record from a cave. But the paleoclimate data, which went back up to a half a million years, covered all these different ice ages and then warm periods and an ice age and then a warm period and an ice age, like going in and out these big
climate change cycles. But the cycles seemed off and it wasn't until further research decades later done by Gina and her team that they discovered that some of the dating methods used decades earlier interacted with the groundwater, making the dates off. And they were the culprit for thinking that the Earth's cycles were a little off. And for more on that you can see Genus paper reconciliation of the
Devil's Whole climate record. So thanks Devil's Whole number two mammillary speliothempaleoclimatology.
So that was one super cool like sciting thing that we kind of found out, I guess in recent years.
And do these caves because they're I guess protected from the atmospheric elements, even though things like leached down into them. Do they act as kind of a time capsule or are they just as dynamically changing as everything on Earth.
Yeah, they are very dynamic, but they're definitely working as a time capsule because that water leads that calcium carbonate deposits not in all caves, but in the right scenario it will, and then those records can last for hundreds of thousands and millions of years. Then then that is a record that's kept underground, away from the elements on
the surface. And you think about when a big ice sheet comes through, or a glacier or something that just ball dozes everything out of the way right and everything that was in its path before it, and then it retreats, and then you have a nice record of when the last glacier came through. But caves kind of sit there kind of quietly recording the you know, what's going on on the surface, but from underground. But indeed they are
also very dynamic as well. And if you go somewhere, say in the tropics where there's you know, a monsoon every year and huge amounts of water passing through the cave, huge floods going through the cave. Then you know obviously that the record within the cave will also constantly be in change and in flux.
And how are peeu climatologists and spulalogists, how are they relating that to the climate change that's happening now or are you just looking at paleo paleo, way way way back.
It depends where people are working.
Essentially, some people are working on very modern, very young records. We call it sub annual resolution. So if a stalagmite is growing fast enough, with the chemical methods that we have today, the analytical methods, we can get multiple data points for one year of growth within the stalagmite. And then if that record, say a few hundred years old or a few thousand years old, then we can we can have a very high resolution record that captures the
more recent changes. That's one aspect of kind of answering that question. But then the other aspect is in terms of paleoclimatology, the reason we study it is to improve our understanding of how the air system works. In the first place, so we know we're heading towards a warmer world.
So if we look at times in the past when it was warmer through other processes related to the Earth orbit around the Sun, for instance, or times in the past when there was naturally more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than today, then we can tap into those periods in the past and learn from them, learn about the weather systems, learn about how high sea level was, basically the different workings of the environmental system on Earth at times in the past when either it was already warmer
than today, when greenhouse gas concentrations were higher than today, or even times in the past when the climate has changed very quickly, So then we get an idea of how fast sea level is even capable of rising. You know,
these kinds of ideas. So that's kind of what we're doing as paleoclimatologists, trying to improve our understanding of boundary conditions, mechanisms, rates have changed, these sorts of things, which then go into predictive models for the future to help us improve what we could expect to happen in the future.
How do appeal your climatology? Just speak about folks who might think, Hey, there's been ice ages, there's been warmer periods, this is just another cycle and it's not anthropogenic. Is there just a big sigh in a face palm or how does that handle scientifically?
Oh, you should have seen my reaction when you ask that question.
Just yeah, there is a little bit of that.
But you know, all we can do is just keep on with our mission of explaining, yes, there have been ice ages in the past, and yes the climate has always been changing, and yes, that's how we know that what's happening today is completely not natural.
We know what should be happening, and we also know what.
The consequences are of what's happening today by looking at all the periods in the past, so it doesn't deter us necessarily, and we can only keep working with that message of why we know it's not natural today and why we also know this is really bad news for the future if we don't do something about it.
Right, I imagine there must be a lot of news headlines that in opinion pieces that just really would get your goat. But that's amazing that you just soldier on and keep doing the work you're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Can I ask you some questions from listeners. Yeah, and of course before we do, we like to just flutter
some coin into a cause. And this week Gina selected the British Cave Rescue Council, which promotes the exchange of information between member rescue organizations to help get more cavers in peril safe and sound above the ground. Now you can find out more about the British Cave Rescue Council at the link in the show notes. And think you to sponsors the show for making that possible. Okay, let's dig deep and unearth all of your curiosities.
Dandeman asked, Hey, Ali, big hole fan here, I had a question if there are separate experts for like ice caves, Like are they clique or are they the same like cave experts as their rocky caves.
Oh that's great.
No they're not clique. No, they're definitely not clique.
But yes, there are different experts because you know, it's a different science study in eiter, study in rocks, and we can't all be experts in everything, and we may all meet up together every few years at a very big conference and hangout and stuff, but ultimately, yeah, there are different experts. I would say and it's not to say that we can't you work together and branch out and that sort of stuff, But yeah, there's definitely different experts for different topics. That makes sense.
Now, what about long caves you wanted to know specifically, Josie Brutherford, Mouse Paxton, TV, Carol Young, Sharon and first time question asker Marina Ramirez.
A lot of big and long caves are found in the topics, for instance, in China in Borneo, but then you go to the Yucatan, for instance, and there are hundreds of miles of underground caves that you would need to dive to get through most of them, and that's a very different geology and that's sustained as well. But the longest cave in the world at the moment, I believe is Mammoth Cave in the USA, And so it comes down to the geology basically and the climb.
And yes, Mammoth Cave in Kentucky is not fronting with the name Mammoth. It really is the biggest known cave system and as of twenty twenty two, cavers have explored four hundred and twenty six miles of it. And Courtney Hudson, a listener is based in France and asked about caves at elevation, and it turns out that in central Peru there is a limestone cave called Kokama Chai that is over sixteen thousand feet or nearly five thousand meters above sea level. You got to get that high to go low.
And these caves at elevation also in seismic zones. And you may like that, but friends, I don't. And also since absolute zero people asked me, but the scariest cave in my mind may be in southern Colorado, not only because it's at high elevation and it's slippery, and it's a very crisp thirty five degrees fahrenheit in there, and there have been a lot of falls and rescues, but also people have found human skellies in there. This is
called Spanish Cave. One of the skellies was said to have been dressed in armor and wearing a chain around its neck. Also, some people say that they've found gold hidden in there. I'm just saying it sounds like a great place to die of a heart attack if nothing else. Now, I said I would stop being scared earlier, and I lied to you. You mentioned scuba diving, and Aaron Ryan asked,
they're from Vancouver. They were wondering, as a scuba diver, what is it about cave diving that makes it so much more dangerous and so much scarier than regular ocean diving? Do cave divers? Are they able to know where their twists and turns are and where these really narrow passages are?
Yeah, there is a fantastic couple of books written by Rick Stanton and John Valanthem, who were involved in the Thai cave rescue a few years ago. Yeah, and I recommend there is as incredible reads to learn about the mind of a cave diver.
I have to say you can see Rick Stanton's aquanat the Inside story of the Thai Cave Rescue, A Life Beneath the Surface and or Thirteen Lessons that Saved Thirteen lives the Thaie Cave Rescue by John Lathan. And even if you are a cave diver, not all caves are the same, of course, or are the waters.
It also depends again where you train, So for instance, if you're training in the Yucatan or the Bahamas, where the caves there are also got beautiful, pristine, clear blue waters, but it's very easy to kick up silt and not have very beautiful pristine waters anymore. Obviously, you know, they always have a line that they have to follow in case that happens. But then if you train in the UK, as you would find out from reading these books, basically
you don't see anything from the very start. It's all just muddy and nasty and horrible.
Oh dear, oh dear.
And these cave divers very much were dry cave as to start to it, so they really understood cave systems first, and where caves go, and how caves form, and where you find their way on and these sorts of things before they turned to cave diving. And only then once they turned to cave diving, and they're finding their way through the dark, you know, without really an escape route is you know, because there's a ceiling above your head. Then in these cases they're just the most fabulous people
in caves. Basically they know how caves work.
Yeah, I'm going to give you this shortest summary of what happened in that northern entire cave in that late June of twenty eighteen, leading to a mission that the rescuers themselves have called experimental and hideous. So a soccer team, the Wild Wars Boys, aged eleven to sixteen. They were headed to a nearby cave after practice in their uniforms with their assistant coach in his mid twenties to have
a little birthday party for one of the boys. Now, the caves are usually closed for a few months during the monsoon season in July and August, but it was a week before July they were open. It was late June. They figured they'd be fine. Obviously we know they were not. So a monsoon rips along. It floods the cave while they're in there, and they have to try to find the small dry incline as shelter as the water comes pouring in. Now, this cave, it's called the Cave of
the Great Sleeping Lady. It's poorly mapped. It's at least six miles long, and over ten thousand volunteers joined the rescue efforts. They tried to drain the caves, They tried to drill in through the side. Divers eventually got to them and gave them supplies and mylar blankets and checked on them. And all these people hatch plants to get them out. Now, they were over two and a half miles from the entrance flooded, and they were under two
thousand feet of rock. Drilling wasn't going to happen. What ended up working is that they had to anesthetize these boys and the coach with a combination of ketamine and xanax to guide them underwater masked with divers through these flooded narrow passageways. All the boys were saved, along with the coach, who apparently was at one time a Buddhist monk and was able to keep the kids calm with meditation, which is honestly the best advertisement for meditation I can
possibly think of. However, one Thai Navy seal died during the rescue and another ended up perishing a year later from a blood infection contracted during the rescue, and I was looking into this really sadly. Last year one of the boys who had moved to the UK on a
soccer scholarship died, which was ruled a suicide. Also, there was some drama with the guy who bought the Twitter website who said that he would build a submarine, but obviously they were like, dude, it is literally safer to give children a horse tranquilizer and drag them underwater for
several hours. Thank you, though, now for more details, nat Gio made a documentary called The Rescue that even though you know, the outcome is still beautiful and nerve wrecking, and I just can't believe that it wasn't a bigger tragedy. So hats off to everyone who is capable of cave diving. I'm not one of you, and I'm glad you are now speaking of such things. A few of you patrons were a little spooked by caves, Andy Guarnaccia and Lucy Antonelli.
They wanted to know, in Lucy's words, is that map of all the missing people in the US, with all the caves matching up real? Are people being taken into the caves? Caves are so fucking scary, Lucy says. And I asked Snopes, who said that those maps aren't just of missing persons, They are of missing persons who quote vanished under strange circumstances near national parks, which is why they may bear such an uncanny resemblance to the cave maps.
So don't worry about it now. Many of you wondered about safety, though, including first time question askers Rachel Robinson and Heliaphobes or spolunka Phobes Magzaroni, first time question asker, Eric Masterson, Clover, Valerie Kitty Ashley, Rocket, Mariah Shemel, The Joyful Spitfire, Sean Thomas Kane, Kareem Godraltz, Jacob Shepherd, Caro Young and Mariah Walser and Stephen Moxley, who wanted to know how do professionals stay safe in new and unexplored
cave systems? And Stephen says stories like the Nutty Putty Cave terrify me. And just a side note, the two thousand and nine Nutty Putty Incidant in Utah, in which a man named John Edward Jones was stuck upside down in an unmapped and narrow passageway and ultimately died due to the physical strain on his body that resulted in the cave being closed, with him still entombed as a memorial.
But through all this, patron, Addie Capello, I can hear you, Addie, screaming at me right now because you asked, how do we help battle the scary awful cave stigma. I'm a wildlife biologist, they write, and I'm always trying to fight the fears with good education. Now we've already heard some stats on caving deaths. Turns out perhaps they're lower than we would all think. And Gina has been on multiple continents caving, sometimes hiking in days at a time to remote,
uncharted locations. Is caving really that scary or are we just on edge because of these rare but really gripping stories. As someone who works in caves and explores these things and goes through these narrow passages in the dark and maps them, do you feel like you are braver in your everyday life? No, because I feel like what you do is the bravest job, like in the world.
Now.
No, I'm doing what I absolutely love.
You know. I started when I was a teenager, so so for me, it's not brave at all. Now, you know, you should see me on a ski slope. I'm just like, I can't ski to save life. I hate it and I'm so scared and petrified. I just cannot stand it at all. And now I have to teach my three year old daughter it's see next winter, which I'm not looking forward to. Yeah, I don't see it.
It's being brave, not at all well beg to disagree. Biscuits and gravy first time question asker and Zach Everett also first time question osker. They asked about if you've heard of the Lorree caverns in Shenandoah, Virginia that have a playable stalactite organ, but a lot of people, like Maria, first time question asker wants to know about cave acoustics why they're so hauntingly beautiful? What is it about acoustics in caves, like, why are they so beautiful? And what does it sound like in them?
I guess we need a sound engineer to answer that.
Yeah, right, right, But yeah, no, I totally get it though well as well.
It's you know when you walk into a huge cathedral or an opera house, it's the same thing right there. They're just these big, huge spaces that are kind of they're obviously purpose built for that. So then caves are just Mother Nature's doing that. But I guess there must be something similar to being in a cathedral or a concert all.
I guess so, PBS News Hour, you just heard that clip from them. They did a lovely piece on this organ, which is known as the largest musical instrument in the world as it spans three and a half acres inside a cave and it sounds travel all within the sixty four acre cavern in Virginia. And now it's not really an organ because it's actually a percussive instrument with dozens of these natural formations, some carved to get just the
right sound, setting off different notes. When they're struck with a mallet, and with a cave which is made of nice, hard, usually smooth rock, that sound can continue bouncing from surface to surface, sustaining the notes in that glorious reverb that we all love about a cave, love it so much. How often do spilologists when they're alone in a cave with a group do the echo oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Even if I'm in a tunnel with my daughter on the bike, I go ooh, you know, like this and just listen to the echo yeah yeah.
And especially if.
You're in a group that's exploring. That could be an exploring the cave for the very first time no one's been in there, but also exploring for the first time for yourselves, like you don't know the cave but other people have been there and you can sense this big passage beyond and you shouting you listen, Yeah, that is amazing. Yeah, yeah, we love that.
Amber McIntyre had a great question, how do deep caves have oxygen? Do they have an air supply and do you ever have to bring oxygen with you?
Ah, that's a good question. It's not necessarily related to the deepness of a cave. So caves tend to be really quite well ventilated actually, you know, especially if there's water going down through there that brings oxygen with it and stuff. You know, there's normally lots of different entrances to a cave, just not that humans can get into all of them, but there will be holes and fishes and so then there's pressure differences, there's circulation within a cave.
So generally speaking, oxygen is not really an issue. It can be an issue in perhaps more shallow caves where so there's a farm above which which is not uncommon, especially in the UK, and then you get a load
of farm waste that's rotting in a cave. That can cause what we call bad air or you know, machinery or something that's leaked into a cave, and it is possible to have what's called bad air in a cave, which is high two levels essentially or basically poor oxygen levels, and you tend to get headaches, feel a bit breathly, and it can be quite serious. It can be quite dangerous if you don't realize early enough that something's going on.
And especially if you go in a cave and there's a lot of dead and rotten vegetation, that's normally a clear sign that the air might not be so good, and definitely to be a bit careful about how long you might spend there.
Let's say yeah, yeah, yeah about and Anna Lie and some others had questions about microclimates, such as Elie Brown, Leona Schuster, first time question askers, wildlife Tech, grease Sharing, Hallness Rory, and Alyssa Elliott. And Rory asked why is it so cold and wet? Annie wants to know how do caves maintain a consistent temperature once you hit a certain level. There's these ones in Alabama that stay fifty nine degrees no matter the temperature outside. How does that happen?
Yeah, So, the general consensus is caves record the mean annual air temperature on the surface. That's not always a case, because there can also be like airflows and things, so it's not strictly speaking, but generally they record the mean annual air temperature. And the reason they do that is because they're kind of equilibrated to the rock. So once you get so far into a cave, the rock is
not change in temperature. So on long time scales with like big climate change, then that rock will change temperature, but like on a daily like timescale or even season or timescale, the rocks deep underground are not change in temperature, and so the cave air temperature is just kind of like equilibrating with the rock. Really.
A ton of people wanted to note about crystals like sand Kieran geosase. Christina Weaver wanted to know how often do caves have those gigantic crystals in them or is that photoshop?
Oh yeah, no, you have to look up Leccher Gear, which is the cave in New Mexico that I mentioned. No cave can have giant crystals. I mean stalk mites for a start, are a form of crystal. But I
know the ones they're on about. They're thinking of lecture gear where there's these huge, great pig chandeliers, and then there's some other ones in Middle East and stuff as well, but they're not super common, like every time you go in a cave, you're not going to come across a room with a big chandelier in it.
We do know they exist, and.
They are in a few places around the world, so they're not so completely like sparse.
Some of those pictures just looks so fake. It just is like these huge shooting wands of crystals when they came out a few years ago, people looked tiny and it just looked like Superman caves of just gorgeous crystals that definitely looked like photoshops.
Yeah, the Nika Cave is definitely not photoshops. And I'm just looking it up now. Ah yeah, two hour Mexico. They are huge crystals and they are There are people in the photos and the crystals are many times taller than the person and that they are correct. That is true. Yep.
So these glowing white crystals are longer than a school bus and like three feet thick and jut out at every angle and they've formed over so so many years from this magma heated water saturated with minerals like gypsum to form these selenite crystals, and I know that you want to go there, maybe you want to take some
great fit picks. Don't even think about hanging out in there, though, because not only is it situated in a lead and silver mine, but the cavern itself is over one hundred and thirty degrees fahrenheit and can be up to ninety nine percent of humidity. The photos though astounding, so trippy. Oh, speaking of col dB, first time question asker wanted to know, will you actually start hallucinating after like ten minutes in a pitch black cave or is that a myth?
I think that's a myth.
No, okay, no, no, no, I don't think so.
I mean we always do a fun thing with the fresh as you know, when you take people in a cave for the first time, we always do the turn off the headlights and you know, put your hand in front of your face and like there's absolutely no chance of seeing anything.
Yeah, it's amazing.
You know, you kind of think that your eyes would get used to the dark like they always do on the surface, but no, they don't. You just never see anything. It's just super cool. But no, I don't know if anyone hallucinating.
That's good, that's a good thing. A lot of people are talking about specific caves that they went to, and like South Dakota, Kelly Chiva wanted to know as no question from Kiey Chavez. They're from New Mexico, home with the famous Carlsbad caverns, they malpased, lava tubes, the Talis formation. They want to know, are we perhaps the lucky estate in terms a variety of caves?
Yeah, well yeah in New Mexico. That's why you've got Letigia so yeah. Oh, you know, they're already in this realm of like caver competitiveness. So we've are caves better than your caves, which is the same all over the world.
Funnily enough, you certainly have.
Some incredible caves, yeah, in New Mexico, and you should be very proud of them, definitely, and I believe there's a lot of legislation in place to protect them as well, which is fabulous news.
Well, on that note, a bunch of people wanted to know about conservation looking at you. Stephen knighton Sedoni asked Madison Wolferre and Sarah in Montana and riologists as to caves have Special Environmental Protection. Katie Noble wanted to know why is it illegal to touch the walls of some caves? What happens if you do touch a cave? And Faith Stemmler wants to know if there's any proper cave etiquette that people should observe.
Oh yeah, these are great questions. So of course, you know, there's the don't leave anything in there that shouldn't be left, you know, take photographs and nothing else. That kind of like general rules of being in the wilderness. Anyway, as I kind of touched on, if we are camping in caves and everything should be brought out, it's all human
waste should really be brought out of a cave. When it comes to sampling for you know, science, like what I do, I also very much appreciate and I acknowledge that taking stalagmites is also questionable, which I appreciate, but we also try and do that as minimally as possible. We either take samples that are already broken, or we take cause of samples and lead the main thing intact, or we do pilot work to make sure that we know the age of a sample before it gets taken.
So this is also why some science takes a long time. It takes years because we do preliminary analysis first to see if the sample is going to answer the scientific question that we have.
And then in other caves there's things like the.
Microbiology might be so super important. In some caves this is a big issue, especially in like New Mexico in the Carlsbad region. The microbiology there is so special that it's really important that you don't like touch the water or touch the walls, because you might contaminate that very unique microbiological system that has been living in that cave for millions or billions of years, you know, So that's really critical not to contaminate it in that case. So
caves are really special, they're really unique. Anything that lives there has adapted to live in the dark in those stable environments, you know, away from the surface, and of course anything that we do down there is quite invasive. So we just have to step back and remind ourselves that this is a very unique place and we have to be as conservation minded as possible.
Are a lot of caves just open to people or are only select ones that seem more stable and less delicate in terms of that microbiology or is it like if there's a caving, go in it.
No, it depends where you are in the world. There's a lot of caves in for instance, in the UK, you can just go in them. They're actually in guide books and things. I don't recommend it if you're not experienced, but you know, there's a lot of caves that don't have gates on and there's actually nothing to stop you. But like I say, I don't recommend it. Then in other places there may be gates on caves and you need to know the right person or have access to the key to get in there.
For various reasons, I did a very innocent search on how to get keys to explore caves, thinking it would probably lead to some resources for parks to parts or spieleeological associations, But all passageways toward that information led to message boards saying things like okay, so today I got two keys to caves from a toad and from a chest and keyfrog make a noise that sounds like coins being dropped when they move around, and you need bone keys in order to open doors and chests ogres and
that same dungeon drop those keys. So maybe for newbies, you can as a first step, stay home and you can explore through the multiplayer Nakara Blade Point game, or you can start with publicly accessible caves out of doors, or.
Then there's there's show caves as well, which of course are a great place if you just want to get underground and just get an idea of what it's like to be in a cave. And then if you find octually that you do quite like being in a cave and this is something for you, then get in touch with you know, your local grotto or caving community, and there are very welcoming and friendly bunch. I'm sure they'd be happy to have any newcomers along that they can
show off their favorite caves too. And then you get to go in the really cool places that need a key.
But you want to you want to make sure you get the right pals and get some experience. Josie Rutherford wanted to know what is the most famous cave in pop culture and Kendall m wants to know if you have a favorite horror movie that takes place in a cave. Madison Armine wants to know what you think of the movie descents I can read. You have to calm down, or if you prefer cave documentaries, if you have a favorite cave documentary, great.
The most famous cave in pop culture? Oh my goodness, I don't know. Yeah, I mean all cavers love it like a cheesy horror film in a cave, you know, because we sit there and we sit there and like laugh at everything and like tear it apart. So we're actually the worst people to watch a cave and film with because actually we treat it like a documentary, which
of course it's not. And yeah, I love a good cave in documentary as well, though there's always a limit with what a documentary can do in terms of how do I say this, It's not the same experience as going in a cave basically, you know, there's always limits to filming and if there's a big film crew and all these sorts of things, and it's just it's just not going to be the same really as if you're actually in the cave yourself. Yeah.
The smells, the snugness, the humidity, the lack of it.
Yeah, yeah, you know.
Philip Dunson had a great question about navigation. How do cave explorers crawl through the tiny tunnels the first time? Not knowing if it opens up on the end with no way of turning around, it always seems terrifying.
They say, yeah, I'll give it a go, you know.
Yeah. It was much later in Austria as we were wrapping this up and a fellowspieleologist joined our meeting, a very sleepy and precious one who is having a tough time sleeping. And it's okay if she's in the background, okay, it's a family affair.
She's a caver too, so she's got pepper pick so hopefully.
Perfect last questions I can ask her always really easy. You can say in the one sentence, hardest thing about your job, favorite thing about your job.
Oh, the hardest thing about my job is leaving my daughter Madeline behind, who you can hear crying and bround. And the best thing about my job is getting to visit places that very few people on this planet gets the opportunity to see it. That's such a privilege. And then to research these places and answer incredible questions and just spend that time with great colleagues, you know, trying to piece things together and work it out, like I
absolutely look. But when we get into a great conversation, for a few hours and just like, look at graphs and data.
Well, you're the bravest person I know, even if you don't think so, I can't. I'm in awe. Thank you so much for talking to me and spending this time to get to know your life and caves.
Oh, thank you so much, Elie.
It's been fun, it's been really good.
Just thank you.
Oh amazing.
Okay, I will turn off recording. You can in today, so ask dynamite people some deep questions because it can lead you down some real rabbit holes. Now, thank you so so much, doctor Jena Mosley for joining us today and sharing all that knowledge. You can find out more about her work linked in the show notes, as well as her charity of Choices linked. More links will be up at our site via aliward dot com slash ologies
slash Speliology linked to the show notes. We are at ologies on Twitter and our ex I Can't Stop and Instagram, and I'm at ali Ward on both. We also have free, amazing kid friendly versions of ologies called smologies. Those are also out once a week. They're on their own show feed. You can search Smologies wherever you get your podcasts. You'll see a new green logo by artist Bonnie Dutch, who
is also available for great commissions and pet portraits. You can search out Bonnie Dutch bo Ni Dutch online to find her. Aaron Talbert admins the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malick makes our professional transcripts Kelly ar Dwyer does the website, and while Dilworth is our scheduling producer, Susan Hale is our director of managing everything and also did
additional research on this episode. Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio edits and Jake Chafe takes over as lead editor for this episode as Mercedes is out exploring the world for the week, and additional editing help was provided by Legally Wedded Jarrett Sleeper of the Webby award winning mind Jam Media. Nick Thorburn made the music. And if you stick around till the end of the episode, I tell you a secret. And this week my secret is that I have gotten
more into since the last couple years. I just feel like, Ooh, I like this little perf I get a lot of like perfume samples and I'm like, ooh, what's this And there's this one scent It's called near ROLLI and It's kind of like a lemon blossom, you know, when you walk past, like an orange blossom or a lemon blossom tree, and you go, I want to have if that's so bad. It's like that. It's that smell. And I found this perfume. It was the rollly scented.
It's so good.
It smells so citrusy, and I couldn't place what it smelled like. For a couple of days, I was like, it's so good, but what There's something nostalgic, And then I realized, I don't know if they still make them, But when I was a kid, they had these air fresheners that you could put anywhere called stick ups. I think there were like these little discs like as big around as like the top of a soda can, and you could just stick them under the toilet and they'd
give a nice fragrance. There was a lemon stick up that smells exactly like this perfume, and the perfume mellows it becomes softer, but when you first spray it, it smells exactly like a toilet airfreshener from decades ago. And every time I sprayed, I gotta go. It's gonna get different. It's going to change. And now I should look up whether or not they still make those refresheners.
I wonder if they do.
Are you still listening, are you still here? I don't know, I am. Let's look it up. I don't. Oh they do stick ups. They make them. They're made my air Wick sparkling citrus. I should order some and and really see how similar they are. This perfume was not inexpensive. It was a bit of a treat to myself on a very low week, and so I should get it and see. But yeah, I still love it. It just
smells like the toilet sometimes. Okay, bye bye, pacadermatology, homeology or no zoology, lithology, technology, meteorology, pathology, anthology, seriology, elinology.
Enjoy the Cave.