The Tim Ferriss Show - #567: A Rare Podcast at 30 Below Zero — Sue Flood on Antarctica, Making Your Own Luck, Chasing David Attenborough, and Reinventing Yourself

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Starting point is 00:03:45 that's you guys, you can get $250 off of the Pod Pro cover. That's a lot. Simply go to 8sleep.com slash Tim or use code Tim. That's 8, all spelled out, E-I-G-H-T, sleep.com slash Tim, or use coupon code Tim, T-I-M, 8sleep.com slash Tim for $250 off your Pod Pro cover. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. Well, hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to a very special episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, recorded at many degrees below zero. And my guest today, I met on the road. I did not expect to meet her, and I met her in Antarctica, Sue Flood.

Starting point is 00:04:52 Sue Flood is amazing. Sue is a photographer and former BBC filmmaker. Her work has taken her and still takes her all over the world, but she has a special passion for the wildlife and icy beauty of Antarctica, which is where we met, as I mentioned. A Durham University zoology graduate, Sue spent 11 years with the BBC Natural History Unit working on series including The Blue Planet and Planet Earth with Sir David Attenborough, we talked quite a bit about him, before turning her focus to photography. Her most recent book, Emperor, The Perfect Penguin, is absolutely spectacular. It's stunning, with a foreword by Sir Michael Palin, was published in September 2018. Check it out.

Starting point is 00:05:32 At the very least, look it up online to see some of the imagery. She has appeared on screen for the BBC, Discovery Channel, and National Geographic, been featured on the series Cameramen Who Dare, and has had her images in National Geographic, BBC Wildlife, GEO, and other distinguished publications. Her work has won many awards and competitions, including Travel Photographer of the Year, International Photographer of the Year, International Garden Photographer of the Year, and a Royal Photographic Society Silver Medal. In recognition of her photographic achievements, Sue was invited to meet Her Majesty the Queen during a special adventurers and explorers event held at Buckingham Palace. She has so many adventures to share,

Starting point is 00:06:09 so many incredible stories, and it was just an honor and a thrill, also a gas. We laughed a lot to meet Sue unexpectedly in Antarctica, and I knew that we had to sit down and record this episode. You can find her online, Sue Flood, S-U-E Flood.com, Instagram, Sue Flood Photography, Twitter, Sue Flood Photos, Facebook, Sue Flood Photos. We'll link to all of those in the show notes at tim.blog.com. And now without further ado, please enjoy a very wide-ranging and what was for me a very enjoyable conversation, a hilarious conversation with Sue Flood. Thank you for being here.

Starting point is 00:06:53 I am delighted to be here. In my cozy podcasting studio. And how would you describe where we're sitting right now? Why don't we start with that? Yeah, this is definitely not quite as cozy as I'd imagined. So we are sitting in the Weddell Sea at the most remote camp in the Antarctic right now. And we are sitting in a tent with a table made of snow and ice. And looking out the window, we can see a twin otter and some emperor penguins. So it's cool in every sense of the word. It is cool on every level.

Starting point is 00:07:31 And as I was mentioning before, we clicked, or I clicked record using the royal we already, that I've tested this gear in some very hot conditions, but never in very, very cold. So I'm watching battery very closely. Why don't we start, since you mentioned penguin, we're here, or the guests are here certainly, to see penguins. You are a penguin master of sorts. We'll get into that. Where does this word penguin come from? Oh, that's very cool. So I'm Welsh. I hail from North Wales, born in a place called St Asaph and living in a place called Llanfaval near the edge of Snowdonia. Rolls off the tongue. settled in Patagonia in South America. And pen is the word for head and gwyn is the word white.

Starting point is 00:08:37 So, penguin, whitehead. And it's thought that the first Welsh sailors who came over to South America, they saw Magellanic penguins, as they're now known, and called these birds penguin, white-headed birds. But there is still a community of people who speak Welsh in Patagonia. So there is a connection between whales and penguins. So wild. Yeah. You mentioned that as I was on my, I'm not going to say first, I'm not going to say seventh glass of wine, probably second and a half glass of wine. I was like, you got to be kidding me. And you can hear snow machines in the background. That's part of this audio verite. You mentioned the aircraft.

Starting point is 00:09:12 And this is a, what would you call this, a working camp? It's not an exact, is it a station? Is this considered a station? Not a station, but yeah, a working camp that is put up especially for the purpose. And that snow machine you hear is carting away some of the, let's say, waste that will be flown out back to South America because we have to keep this place absolutely pristine. So everything, and I mean everything, bodily products get flown back out to South America

Starting point is 00:09:38 to keep this place as beautiful as it could possibly be. It's like a Burning Man with fewer bikinis. This is true. And I wanted to have this conversation on tape because I recalled, and I have this experience every once in a while, when you and I were trekking back from the Empire Penguin colony, dragging our sleds behind us, which are attached to us at the waist. And you're telling me all these stories. And I thought, God damn it. I really wish this were being recorded. God, it bothered me so much. But we've spent a little bit of time together, certainly in close quarters. Because we have the mountain tents in which we

Starting point is 00:10:24 sleep. And then we have one structure right next to us. What is this even considered? It's almost, if people can imagine, this is not the best description, but a wine barrel laying on its side, cut it in half horizontally, and then you have the top half, you put it on top of snow. Looks something like that, but what is this considered? So this is a structure called a weather haven, and it is absolutely fantastic.

Starting point is 00:10:45 Very strong once you put it up, and metal hoops covered in a strong canvassy material. And that's our dining tent, and it gets very, very toasty in there. But then if you've got a nice warm sleeping bag, it can be really toasty in your tent. Maybe minus 20 or so, the worst. But then you get into your nice warm sleeping bag and stick on your headphones. And the only thing to disturb the silence is probably my snoring heard throughout the camp. And hopefully you have eye shades as well because it is incredibly bright here at the moment. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:11:21 24 hours a day, which has been difficult to get accustomed to. I'm not sure if you ever do, but the light prompt, every time it would peep through the cracks in my eye shades, I would pop up thinking, oh, it is morning and check the alarm and be like, no, it's one in the morning. It is technically the morning, but it's one or two in the morning. Let's pull a hard left. You mentioned this yesterday, and I thought it might be an interesting place to start the chronology. So this is going to sound strange to people listening, but tell us about the very early days of your time on this planet and HIPS. What happened to you?

Starting point is 00:12:01 Well, I was due to be born on Thursday, the 12th of August. And I was actually a day late, born on Friday, the 13th. And my poor parents were told that I would never walk. And my hips weren't formed properly. And they were told I'd always be in a wheelchair. So, you know, they were obviously devastated by that. And as a consequence, my poor dad had a lifelong aversion to Friday the 13th. But they tried this revolutionary new treatment at the time to try and build this special frame to hold my legs in a certain position,

Starting point is 00:12:40 and I was able to kind of recover. And so a couple of years later, I was toddling around and the fine physical specimen you see before you today. But you know, I often think about how lucky I've been to not turn out the way they thought I would turn out. And not long ago, as I understand it, correct my memory here, you came across that brace, which I guess is almost like a retainer

Starting point is 00:13:07 for your entire body, right? Were they like stiff suspenders that would hold your hips in a particular position? It's a little X-shaped cross with hooks on the end of it. And it would hook over my shoulders and then hook under my backside to sort of hold my legs in a certain position and my mum used to tell me it was just awful because they'd put me into this thing and I would just cry and cry and cry but they were told that they had to do this to try and you know give me a chance to to possibly walk so and yeah we unfortunately my father passed away recently and we were clearing out the house and found this little thing and my brother was saying oh check that out and I said no

Starting point is 00:13:51 I'm gonna gonna keep it and that's in my office just as a constant reminder that I've been very lucky. How much of it is a reminder of being lucky versus something else or maybe it's a combination say of overcoming adversity I don't it's a leading question of course and I'm asking but I'm wondering if you could just expand a bit on why you would want to have that at the ready as a reminder never to take anything for granted is you know I feel like I've lived a super privileged life, not in any financial sense, but in a... My mum used to say, I've lived the life of five people and I have my absolute dream job. It's what I've wanted to do since I was a kid. And as a child, I would watch David Attenborough on all these wildlife documentaries. And there were two people who really, really inspired me. One was David Attenborough. I remember seeing him crawling

Starting point is 00:14:49 around in the Rwandan jungle with mountain gorillas and thinking, wow, that's a cool job. And then also my dad, my dad used to be in the Merchant Navy. So he would have all these amazing stories from Japan and China and Burma as it was. And we had this big camp for chest he'd brought back from being at sea with kimonos and hats and headhunter swords from Borneo and all this incredibly cool stuff. And it was inspirational as a child. But yeah, I never dreamt I'd actually get to do this dream job of being a wildlife filmmaker, but I did. And it wasn't quite as simple as just signing up, was it? As I understand it, there wasn't a sign-up sheet.

Starting point is 00:15:34 Certainly not. So if we go back to then, the inspiration. So you have these figures, your father, David Attenborough, probably among others, but those two primary inspiring you. When did you start and how did you start finding your way towards this job that you have now? What did the early chapter or earliest chapters look like? I had no idea how to go about it. I wrote to the BBC, to the Natural History Unit, as it's called, which is a special department in Bristol that makes all of the BBC's wildlife documentaries. And a very kindly producer there saw my letter

Starting point is 00:16:12 and bothered to reply. And of course, they get thousands of letters from people wanting to make wildlife films with David Attenborough, of course. But I went and studied zoology at university. So I went to Durham University in the UK. And this producer had said, look, you need to put something on your resume that will make us take a second look because we get lots of people with their zoology degrees or their biology degrees or whatever. So I went, managed to get onto this really cool expedition to Australia and I had to raise money to go on that and that was working for the Queensland National Parks Wildlife Service for three months, unpaid, diving on the barrier reef, doing these surveys for crown of thorns, starfish which were damaging the reef, whitewater rafting through the rainforest

Starting point is 00:17:05 and bulging this path through the rainforest, and caving in the outback in Chilago. So this was all interesting. Caving meaning cave diving? No, caving, going into caves, into this limestone cave system. That was a character-building experience. It's like, I don't like the dark and I don't like enclosed spaces. So that was a great mix. And then I also, I'd heard about a place called Bermuda Biological

Starting point is 00:17:29 Station. And they had this three-month work-study programme where you could volunteer and assist the marine biologists. So I managed to get onto that. And the three months became eight months. And it was really great experience being out there because I was able to use that time. It was an unpaid position again. So I didn't have the money to do this, but I was racking up really useful experience. I got my food and my board and built up a credit card bill. And I was assisting the marine biologists, as I say. And then there was this team who came out from the UK and they had been working excavating the Mary Rose. And the Mary Rose was Henry VIII's flagship,

Starting point is 00:18:13 so this incredible vessel that had been found and they had managed to excavate this ship. And they were now coming out, these specialists, to dive on a wreck called the sea venture which had sunk in 1609 um and so i volunteered in the days of snail mail to could i possibly help them and they took me on to go and help that team as well as working at the biostation could i bookmark this for one second sure don't lose your place okay i want to rewind to this letter that

Starting point is 00:18:45 you sent so they get thousands of letters do you recall at all what you said in this letter i'm just wondering why because it's not physically possible that the producer who received it replied to the many thousands of letters that were received what did you put in that letter do you have any idea yeah i well and i have his reply somewhere at home so it was along the lines of ever since i was a child i've watched david attenborough's documentaries he's inspired me to want to become a wildlife filmmaker i'm going off to university to study zoology i'd love to come and work for the bbc and can you give me any advice that kind of thing and this person Mike Salisbury he was he's a really kind generous guy and he it's typical of him to bother replying

Starting point is 00:19:34 and he was the producer on a lot of the big Attenborough series so things like Life of Birds Life in Cold Blood all these actually and that was with my friend miles but he'd worked on all these big key series and some of the older ones like living planet and so on that was the question to him so he receives the letter replies to the letter i want to connect a couple of dots to you arriving in australia yeah so this was, let me get this, Operation Rally? Yeah, so this was straight after university. I'm sorry, what was the producer's name again? Mike Salisbury.

Starting point is 00:20:11 Mike. So Mike, in effect, please feel free to fact check this, but said, we get a lot of people who check these several boxes, you'd best differentiate yourself. Right, absolutely. And add some special sauce. Yeah. how do you go from that to arriving in australia so this operation rally it'd been started up by prince

Starting point is 00:20:33 charles and also a guy called john blushford snell and the idea of it was to give young people a chance to do community work conservation work you, you know, character building stuff. And I come from this very tiny village in North Wales where not much happens. And a friend at university said, hey, look at this, because it was all over the TV and the papers. It was advertised for applicants. Yeah, absolutely. It was very, very popular. And, you know, wow, this seems amazing and she said let's apply and in the confident way I have I said you're never going to get onto that she's come on come on let's apply and anyway we applied so you had to fill out this form this very detailed form if you got through that you got

Starting point is 00:21:18 interviewed and I remember going into this dusty old room at university being interviewed by some equally dusty old men and thinking and they were all terribly terribly posh i guess and thinking there's no way i'm going to get through this but i did get through the interview and then you got onto what was called a selection weekend where you went away for a whole weekend and they put you through your paces yeah and you know i remember going to sleep in this tent at about 10 o'clock at night and then they wake you up at one in the morning and we got given a box with a dead rabbit and some potatoes and things to make your evening meal and you know no one wanted to touch the rabbit but you know I'd done zoology so I was happy with that and and then the pièce de résistance at the end of the weekend in a very cold November in Newcastle was to there was an outdoor swimming pool unheated

Starting point is 00:22:18 where they told us to jump in and swim a couple of lengths. And at that point, my friend Alice, who'd encouraged us to apply, she'd also got through. She promptly burst out crying, and she did not get on. And I think I was made to stir the stuff. Maybe I'm just more used to the cold. Wow. So Alice, I hope Alice gets some chocolates or Christmas cards for that push, for that nudge in that direction. Okay.

Starting point is 00:22:46 Thank you very much. That was great. I'm very glad we filled in some gaps there. So then, but a bing, but a boom, you're in Australia. You end up in Bermuda.

Starting point is 00:22:55 Yeah. This crew from the UK shows up. They, I suppose, among other things are doing wreck dives and they bring up, what was the date you said? 1609. 1609. And we were finding all these really cool things like shoes,

Starting point is 00:23:14 like these leather shoes that had been preserved from being buried in the sills. And you volunteered to do this. I did volunteer and coin weights. Because I heard that they were coming out and I thought, wow, doesn't that sound amazing? And by now, when I was at university, I knew that there was a chance of getting onto this operation rally, albeit a very small chance, I thought. And also, so I learned to dive when I was at university in the hope that I got accepted and could go and do this dive project on a barrier reef. But you know, geez, I never thought I'd get to do anything like that. It was amazing.

Starting point is 00:23:48 And I never thought I'd get to Australia. It may as well have been on the moon as far as I was concerned because I had been to France and that was it. So I was 20 years old and I'd hardly traveled. Wow. All right. So I'm trying to think here because you have as as we were i guess we were chatting yesterday and our now mutual friend om was

Starting point is 00:24:12 asking you key life lessons takeaways you mentioned carpe diem yeah because you seem very good at taking advantage of these sliding door moments where you sort of feel like opportunity sliding however you also have this long-term chance favors the prepared mind type of orientation because you did the diving in the hopes that one day if you were accepted yeah you would make the cut which you ended up yeah being able to do how do we go from that point in time, the diving that you're doing, to not to provide a spoiler, but to David Attenborough? And there's no rush. So whatever the path is direct or meandering as it may be, I'm just curious how we go from there. Well, it was quite an interesting trajectory. So by now I'd got some interesting things on my resume. You know, I'd got the experience of Bermuda, I got the experience in the Australian in Queensland with

Starting point is 00:25:12 the national parks. And so now I was writing to the BBC and saying, well, actually, now I've done this. So instead of getting rejection letters, if I applied for a job, now I was getting interviews. So, you know, first of all, it was, I'm getting through to the last couple of hundred for the job. Then it's the last 50. Then I'm down to the last 10. And I... Pause for one second. Up to that point, how many letters of communication of one sort or another had you sent to the BBC? I would write pretty regularly. And there was a, what happened, there was, you know, I'd get encouragement from people. Also, there were a couple of wildlife film festivals I would go to and I'd just go,

Starting point is 00:25:54 hi, here I am and still here. I'd love to be a researcher, but, you know, not quite getting there. And then I got to the last two for a job and i didn't get it oh and it was for this children's tv program called the really wild show but the producer guy called paul appleby he was really kind and he said look you didn't quite get the job but would you like to come and spend the day in the studio and one of the people who had interviewed me for the job it's very kind yeah it was very kind he's a nice guy and one of the people it was a board of three people interviewing me and one of them said if you're ever in bristol just let us know come for coffee in the bbc canteen and come

Starting point is 00:26:39 and tell us what you've been up to so of, of course, I pretended I was in Bristol. Happened to be. Direct path to Bristol. Exactly. So, I took a five-hour coach ride to get there. And this producer, Michael Bright, we had a coffee and he, you know, what have you been up to? What have you been doing? And he said, I don't suppose you've got any free time, have you? Because there was this researcher meant to be starting today and she just didn't turn up. And he said, you know, have've got any free time have you because there was this researcher meant to be starting today and she just didn't turn up and he said you know have you got any free time and i said absolutely and he said when could you start and i said today yesterday yeah so i was given a three day contract and yeah and then that got extended by another three days, then a few weeks. What was the project? There was a series called Wildlife on One.

Starting point is 00:27:29 Actually, just before that, there was a... Oh, that's right. Wildlife on One, as in BBC One. BBC One. Now, back in that time, just for context, for people who are not from Motherland, not from Britain, in the case of us Yanks at least. At that time, as I recall my childhood, for instance, was it effectively, what, BBC 1, 2, 3, 4? No, it was BBC 1 and 2. 1 and 2. Yeah. And then there was ITV and Channel 4.

Starting point is 00:28:01 Channel 4. There we go. But in the sense that you're getting incredible coverage to be on BBC One. Yeah, absolutely. Hit a larger percentage of the population than people now can, younger generations would imagine. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:28:16 It's not like there are a thousand channels to choose from. No, exactly. So this was the BBC's longest running nature program at the time. So it's presented by David Attenborough. And wow, so I was getting to work with David. Getting closer, closer. Yeah, absolutely. So what did working with him look like? Was it through multiple errors? Did you have direct

Starting point is 00:28:35 communication? What was that like? That's a great question, too, because I remember phoning him up. And I imagined that there was going to be some secretary answered the phone and you know you hear his voice because hello and I said oh David hello it's Sue Flood and I'm surprised you answered the phone he said well yes I do live here and so you know I had a producer as my boss and so on and i was the researcher but occasionally i'd have to speak to him and that's still exciting because he's such a wonderful guy but yeah it was that was my first break was working on on wildlife on one and then there was

Starting point is 00:29:18 a series that was coming up with the provisional name oceans And this was going to be a series, an eight part series that was going to be a big budget series on the natural history of the oceans. And this is the series that became the Blue Planet. And one of the cameramen had told me about this and he said, you know, you should try and get a job on that because it's going to be a really, really good series. And I said, oh God god they won't get me for something like that but he said well you're a dive instructor i was a dive instructor by now and i'd worked for a smaller tv company on a series about the oceans as well so i knew my way around and yeah so i applied and then my boss alistair father Gill, Alistair was the head of the Natural History Unit.

Starting point is 00:30:05 Great name. Yeah, great English. And Alistair said, you've got the job. And I recall exactly what I said. I said, that's better than winning the lottery. And it was. It was better than winning the lottery. Even now, if you could turn back the clock,

Starting point is 00:30:21 and I had the choice between winning the lottery and working on Blue Planet, I would choose working on Blue Planet. For people who don't know or maybe just have a passing familiarity since the name has come up quite a few times with David Attenborough. Yeah. Who is David Attenborough? Just so that we can paint that picture just a little bit before we keep going. What has made him so iconic oh well he has a longevity in terms of wildlife presenters but i mean he's so much more than that he's now 95 he has inspired millions and millions and millions of people around the world he's just recently spoken at cop and And as a child, you know,

Starting point is 00:31:06 he was presenting these amazing documentaries, as he still does. But he's just an incredible communicator, and just has this constant fascination for everything. And he's not just an expert biologist, he's an expert on all sorts of things, paleontology, a type of China, amber, oh, all sorts of things. And he is a fascinating and lovely man who, as I say, he's inspired millions of people. He also used to head up BBC Two, but he was going off doing things in his 20s that were really extraordinary, going off exploring in places like New Guinea and remote parts of Indonesia and doing some very, very cool things that I recall seeing as a child. Now, for people listening, I'll play foil,

Starting point is 00:32:00 just as a stand-in for some people. I'll say, TV presenter, that's like a TV host on our side of the pond. How hard could that be? Isn't he just reading a script? Isn't that what happens? Oh, so not like that. I mean, he had many of the ideas for series, so he would come up with the idea and he would be writing the scripts. And the thing with David is he makes his job look like falling off a log, but it really isn't. It's incredibly difficult. To get to that point. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:32:32 And, you know, he just, to go into a recording studio, he's there reading the script you've hopefully written for him and he's always going to come up with some improvements. But, yeah, it's really so much more because he's always going to come up with some improvements and but yeah it's really so much more because he's out in the field and he's just as i say got this incredible enthusiasm for the subject matter and an incredible knowledge and it is absolutely infectious and anybody in the bbc natural history unit would have been inspired by him as a kid. And he can do no wrong.

Starting point is 00:33:09 And the voice. I mean, let's not forget about the voice. And here we are in Union Glacier. Or Gulbe. Or, pause, pause, snow leopard. Not snow leopard. I'm mixing up my leopards. Leopard seal.

Starting point is 00:33:23 The footage that you should. Leopard seal. But just the pacing. The pacing mixing up my leopards. Leopard seal. The footage that you should see. But just the pacing. The pacing. Yeah. He's brilliant. So outstanding.

Starting point is 00:33:31 He's absolutely brilliant. And he is so unbelievably kind and nice. And there's this great story where, because his number used to be in the phone book. And I always remember him saying how this little boy had phoned him up because his pet rabbit was ill here he is phoning up david sir david now um because he was knighted of course but it's like calling the president of the united states to be like yeah the the the traffic light at my corner isn't really doing what it's supposed to do. Exactly. And one of the, I'm jumping ahead a little here, but...

Starting point is 00:34:07 We can jump all over the place. One of my top few experiences in my life, a couple of years ago, I'd done this book, and one of the paragraphs in the acknowledgements was thanking David for all he'd done to inspire me as a kid. And I'd gone to this book launch for a friend's book, Michael Palin, and he had written this book called Erebus. And I had a copy of my book in my bag. And David was there. So the three of us had a drink together. And I said, David, please forgive me for doing this, but I'm never going to be able to do it again. And I basically took my book out and held onto his arm and read out this paragraph in the acknowledgements about what he meant to me and how it inspired me. And then I got to the end of this paragraph and slightly teary eyed. And then he gave me this big hug. Yeah, it was great.

Starting point is 00:35:01 It's so amazing. Full circle. And that book, just for people listening, I'm sure I will have already mentioned it in the intro, but which book is this? It's a book called Emperor, the Perfect Penguin. And I've been lucky to spend a lot of time with emperor penguins, which as you know now, Tim, are the biggest of all the 18th penguin species.

Starting point is 00:35:22 They're the happy feet penguin if you like and they are so spectacularly beautiful and i'd done a book mainly photo led book about emperors and why to me they were the perfect penguin and i've been photographing them over about 14 years crikey that's a long time so that was a book came out a couple years ago and literally as we're sitting here like we can look and we're looking out in between in between some structures here and we see a line yeah it's almost like cutter ants on their way back to the colony but in this case it is a line of pretty closely spaced emperor penguins yeah tobogganing could you explain what tobogganing is well they they can walk you know maybe even 100 kilometers from the edge of the

Starting point is 00:36:15 ice where they've been feeding back to the colony to feed their chicks and of course toddling along on their little legs takes them a long time but they'll flop onto their bellies and then propel themselves along using their flippers and their very strong feet. That's exactly what they're doing now. So we're just sitting here watching this trail of the most beautiful bird in the world tobogganing along on their bellies, going off to feed their chicks. It's very cool. They're a lot faster on their bellies than i would have expected they really move they really really move they're like oblong bowling balls i mean they really they really hustle and you have this beautiful photograph that you showed the

Starting point is 00:36:57 group here which is of the the track left behind which would be just completely befuddling to decipher unless you knew what was going on. Because how are they propelling themselves? They do glide. They do glide, but they use their feet. They've got really strong feet that have special lipids to help stop them freezing. Because, of course, they're standing around in the middle of winter, maybe minus 50 or so with wind chill, and the males will be incubating the eggs. So they'll be using those strong feet to propel themselves along and then using their flippers to push in the snow.

Starting point is 00:37:34 So you get this very cool track of where their belly's rubbing through the snow and then these little sharp lines either side of that. But yeah, you can never get bored of emperor penguins and you know a big one as i say the biggest of the of the penguins but the a tall one a big one would be about 1.25 meters tall which is you know pretty big yeah it is big yeah weighs 45 four ish feet tall yeah something like that you said 40 kilos yeah about yeah thereabouts and you mentioned the males incubating so the the eggs are laid then the males will stand guard and keep the egg heated by putting it into what is this they have a they have a thing called a brood pouch which is a bare

Starting point is 00:38:20 bit of skin at the bottom of their belly and they'll tuck the egg in there so the female of course lays the egg she will pass it over to the male and she'll then be zipping off to sea and leaving him to do all the work of looking after this egg during the winter but it's you know it's a really precarious thing to pass this egg in super cold temperatures over to the male. And then this big sort of flap of insulating skin goes over the top of the egg. And he's able to maintain that egg at about 34, 35 degrees, even though the outside temperature can be minus 50 centigrade. And for, just to emphasize the endurance required after that point, after the pass has been successful,

Starting point is 00:39:06 the males will stand around for, what, anywhere between two, two and a half months and lose something like 30, 40% of their body weight. Yeah, isn't that incredible? So they cannot eat for about four months from the time they're arriving back at the edge of the ice, they're finding their partner, mating, taking care of the egg, sitting on the egg for two, two and a half months. So that can be about a four-month period that they're not eating.

Starting point is 00:39:33 And then when the chick hatches, the first meal they get is from the father and he produces this kind of mix of protein and fat that he feeds to the chick from this special gland in his esophagus. So just an amazing life cycle that they can breed over the Antarctic winter like that. Incredibly harsh. So incredible. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by UCAN. What you eat and how you live, exercise, sleep, stress, all play an important role in how your body handles glucose. Its main form of energy, you might think of blood sugar, that is glucose. When glucose levels are steady and you avoid spikes, you're improving your metabolic

Starting point is 00:40:20 fitness. An important way to take control of your metabolic fitness is to eat and fuel with foods that help regulate blood sugar. To help enhance my own metabolic health, I was introduced to UCAN by Dr. Peter Attia, who said there is no carb in the world like it. UCAN's patented ingredient, super starch, has the remarkable ability to provide a steady release of energy without spiking blood sugar levels. I use UCAN's energy powders and low-calorie bars to maintain focus throughout long days for exercise, better performance when training, and to avoid fatigue without making metabolic compromises. When I need a Scooby snack, when I need a little pick-me-up, I reach for UCAN. UCAN has a variety of different products with super starch to help you balance your blood sugar from energy powders and bars to granola and almond butter. There's a whole suite. Check out my favorites at youcan.co. Tim. That's

Starting point is 00:41:10 ucan.co. Tim. And save 30% on your first order. That's ucan.co. Tim. So let's flash back to Blue Planet. Now you've captured, why don't you just give people a teaser of some of the firsts that you've captured. So we're going to bounce around a little bit, but then we're going to go back to Blue Planet. So what are some of the firsts that you've captured? Yeah, I've been so lucky to photograph some very cool things. So the first shoot I went on for Blue Planet with cameraman Doug Allen and Tom Fitz, we went to Monterey Bay in California. And that was to film killer whales or orca hunting grey whales as they were caught in something called a sarsap, which is a opening in the ice is too far away, they have to stay where they are. cup before they could move into the summer feeding grounds and there'd been a bit of a cold snap and in still conditions the ice can freeze very suddenly overnight the sea ice and so that ice

Starting point is 00:42:52 had encroached on them and trapped them in this hole but we were camping on the sea ice when we were filming this a bit like camping on the sea ice here but with the difference that you don't hear it kind of groaning and under your tent in such a sort of large area as we're in here you've certainly had no shortage of adventure and i want to explore a bit more the experience in monterey bay because this phenomenon of orcas hunting, which type of whale was it again? Grey whales. Grey whales. And I guess specifically, what are they referred to as? The sort of adolescent or young grey whales?

Starting point is 00:43:34 You've got mothers with their calves. So the calves are born in San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja, California, and they're going to migrate up the west coast of the States to the summer feeding grounds in Alaska. And Nancy Black, who was the biologist we worked with, she had this theory that it was the immature mothers that were taking a shortcut across Monterey Bay Canyon, this very deep water. And we knew that National Geographic had tried to film this and not been successful. And then my boss, Alistair, who I mentioned before, he gave me the task of deciding, should we go and film this? So that was obviously quite onerous, deciding, you know,

Starting point is 00:44:15 shall we spend this money to go and give it a go? And we were extremely lucky that on day three, someone reported this behaviour. And Nancy, who runs a whale watch business, and she's a biologist in California, she had never seen an attack from start to finish in the whole time she'd been watching this. So she said, this is my hunch. I know roughly when it happens, because, you know, the Blue Planet team had gone off to this marine mammal conference and had said, if anyone's got any stories that they think would be interesting for us, let us know. So this really interesting situation. And day three, we saw these killer whales hunting gray whales.

Starting point is 00:44:59 May I pause for just one second? Sure. So day three, I don't want you to lose your place. You're mentioning that the younger mothers, so the theory goes, would take their calves Straight across the bay. On the shortcut, not having the life experience of the more senior mothers who were hugging the shore. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:45:19 We know dragons be... Yeah, here be dragons. Here be dragons, exactly. And why had the... A couple of questions, you can answer them in any order. Why do you think, or perhaps you know, the National Geographic attempt had failed? And then when you're tasked with deciding go or no go, how did you think about making that decision? In other words, for instance, maybe there's not much downside to you personally in your career for if you say, let's do it and it doesn't work, it's like, well, bad luck. Maybe there are consequences, but if it actually pays off, then like the upside is huge, right?

Starting point is 00:46:01 So the two things, why did, whether it's speculation or something that you know why did Nat Geo not capture the footage and then how did you think about making the decision in terms of them not making getting the footage I think they were unlucky because they had a fantastic cameraman Mike Degree who was he was a brilliant cameraman and a wonderful person who's sadly no longer with us but he and another fantastic cameraman you know they were really good guys and they didn't manage to get it but then I thought if they're sending them to do it they obviously think it's worth a try so let's give it a go but then in terms of trying to decide you know my whole life as a wildlife filmmaker is trying to make sure that the camera team was in the right place at the right time.

Starting point is 00:46:47 And I love logistics. I love the research. And some of these behaviours, you know, if you're going to film something where an animal is, it's well known what it does. You know, maybe it's a lion going to hunt impala in Zambia or something like that. And people are seeing that regularly but when it's something that's not been filmed before you just try and have to piece together the bits of the jigsaw so I say this woman Nancy Black the biologist she knew roughly where it was happening roughly when and then you have to think about well if you're not there you're not going to

Starting point is 00:47:24 get it so let's go and give it our best shot. Work with her because she seemed to be the person and she was indeed the person who knew most about it. Get a good boat. Have a Zodiac that we could get into to go and film from. And all you can do is try. And a Zodiac is, what would you say, 12, I don't know, how many meters long? Oh, crikey. Maybe about five meters.

Starting point is 00:47:48 Yeah, so roughly 15 feet long. People have seen these before. They look, I suppose they are, are they inflated? I mean, they look inflated around the perimeter. Right. Flat on the inside. Yeah. With an outboard motor.

Starting point is 00:48:00 Yeah. More navigable. And we were, you know, sitting, and when we found this event where the killer whales were surrounding this mum and calf, and we quickly clambered into the Zodiac, I remember my mum saying when she saw a photo of this, you haven't got your life jacket on, because we got in so quickly I'd forgotten to do that. And at one point the gray whale mother was trying to shelter under our boat.

Starting point is 00:48:29 So it was, you know, as a biologist, it was incredible to see this behavior, you know, absolutely amazing behavior. And literally, the killer whales were, the orca were close enough that if I'd wanted to, I could have touched them because they were coming right around the boat but then and as a filmmaker wow this is exciting no one's fallen this before you know how incredible is that very very high octane stuff but then you know as a human being it was pretty grueling to sit and watch this poor little calf get drowned and then eventually eaten but hey killer whales have to eat not called cuddling whales so i'd love to get a bit more detail so how large are orcas compared to the calves now let me have a think about that. I would say... We can use metric, because we don't have to accommodate one of the few holdouts in the world,

Starting point is 00:49:28 aka US. I think a big male orca would be about 30 feet, 10 meters. I need to check that, but I think that's what it would be, as I recall. But the calf, I guess the calf would have been about 5 meters, 15 feet, something like that. Okay, so there's a size differential, but not as much as I would have been about 5 meters, 15 feet, something like that.

Starting point is 00:49:49 Okay, so there's a size differential, but not as much as I would have expected. Yeah, and that's the big male orcas. They can have a dorsal fin that's about 6 feet high, but the females would be smaller. Why are their dorsal fins so long? So dorsal fin for people, imagine Jaws, the shark fin cutting through the water, let's just say on the on the spine on the back that that's the dorsal fin why is the dorsal fin of the orca so long compared to the length of its body why is that i do not know the answer to that why is it so big i guess it's helping maybe it's

Starting point is 00:50:20 acting a bit like a rudder or something and And certainly, I guess if you're traveling in rough seas, other members of your pod can see you. Because if you didn't have, I'm just hazarding a guess there, because they're an interesting society. It's a matriarchal society. And when the male calves grow up, eventually they'll leave the pod. And you've got basically a group of females and calves i mean they're extraordinary animals and i've seen them do some really neat behaviors um after blue planet i went on to produce a film about killer whales we got to film some really really cool behaviors like what for example in the straits of gibraltar between the southern tip of spain

Starting point is 00:51:06 and morocco they were hunting bluefin tuna so bluefin tuna will go into the mediterranean to spawn and then about august time they're coming back out of the mediterranean at that point the fishermen are long lining for them they are are so smart. They had learnt that when they'd been milling around and you'd see them just swimming around, you know, just keeping an eye on things. And then the minute a fishing boat hooked one, they had clued in to the sound of the winch as they're winching. And as soon as they made a beeline for a boat you knew that that boat was hooked to tuna and they would just be diving on this line and then the fishermen would haul it up and it'd be big killer whale size bites out of it and um yeah i mean they're very impressive animals like uh some predators elsewhere will become attuned if they're surrounded by hunting to the sound of gunshot.

Starting point is 00:52:05 Yes. Grizzlies and so on. Question about orcas. So in the case of Monterey Bay, are they, this is going to sound stupid probably, are they hunting the gray whale calves to primarily eat? Are they teaching their young how to hunt? And, well, let's start there. Is it, is it? A bit of both. Yeah. A bit of both. And Nancy had this theory that what they were doing was eating the tongue and leaving the rest of it. And we were able to film that and show it was, that was the case. So what happens, they've got this thick layer of blubber,

Starting point is 00:52:49 but the killer whales were going in sort of through under the jaw, under the soft palate, and they drowned the calf by jumping repeatedly on top of it and holding it under and ramming into the side of it. And then they were actually eating the tongue. And once they'd done that, they'd leave it and then just swim away. And Doug, the cameraman and he got into the water and was able to actually film this slightly gruesome carcass of the whale which then sank to the bottom of the ocean and then would be feeding other creatures so again all part of

Starting point is 00:53:18 nature's great cycle albeit a bit sad to witness so if they're just consuming the delicacy of the tongue, which is true for humans also, if you look at some history of, say, some Native American tribes would regularly just remove the tongue of the bison and leave the rest, of course, which would then get consumed by other things. But what is your theory of what primarily was happening in that case? Was it teaching hunting? Was it sport? Was it simply sport? There was definitely an element of teaching hunting, and we were able to show that with the footage we got

Starting point is 00:53:51 because there was a particular matriarch that had a very noticeable little notch in her fin, so you could see that she was leading the attacks, if you like. But then she would hang back, and you could see her and the other adult females hanging back and letting the calves go in and kind of have a go, if you like. So there was definitely an element of teaching. And, you know, I've seen that with orca in other places. Up in Alaska, for example, they were hunting maganzas so these sea ducks would be swimming around on the surface and then the whales

Starting point is 00:54:27 would swim underneath them get hold of their feet and just pull them under just pulling them under for a few seconds and letting them go so these birds were flustered

Starting point is 00:54:38 and flopping around and then they'd come up and do it again just like playing and then of course eventually they'd drown these poor ducks. But they are, they're smart animals.

Starting point is 00:54:47 They're smart animals. Coming back to the size of the dorsal fin, I like that the signaling theory is most, in the hunting that you've observed, how much of it is coordinated group hunting, almost like a wolf pack or something like that, versus solitary hunting? more so the the former and there was a fantastic film made by david and liz paracook some years ago gosh about

Starting point is 00:55:14 20-25 years ago called wolves of the sea and they are just that wolves of the sea that coordinated hunting in a pack and the different types of killer whales residents that hang around in one place they tend to eat fish there's transients that hang more offshore and they tend to eat marine mammals and then there's an offshore type that's a bit of a mix of the two but yeah i i really enjoyed um them. My one regret is I haven't got in the water with them yet, but one of these days. Is it, what is the danger level in getting in the water with orcas? There's never been a case of a person being killed in the wild by an orca.

Starting point is 00:55:59 I mentioned that place near Tarifa in Spain where, you know, they're coming out of the med after spawning. And one of the stories after spawning and one of the stories that I just loved was they'll have these great big pens where they're catching the fishermen are catching the tuna and if they're not in great condition they'll put them into the pens to kind of fatten them up if you like for later in the season and this guy's his job was to repair these nets make sure they're in good condition no, no holes in them if someone's caught it on their propeller or something. And he was there in the water in his dive gear, sort of sewing up this net with a bit of rope.

Starting point is 00:56:35 And he became aware that someone's watching him and he turned and looked over his shoulder. And there's this killer whale just sitting at his shoulder watching him repair this net which yeah that would give you not spooky at all not spooky at all that would give you a wee bit of a fright but god what a thrill and and you'd mentioned also i'll give you a visual cue and maybe you could if you remember i love this story. It takes it to a whole different level. I love this. So, there's a cameraman called Andrew Penica in New Zealand who worked on this Killer Whale film with me. And he was telling a story about his friend diving in the Pornite Islands in New Zealand, which is this absolutely brilliant dive spot.

Starting point is 00:57:21 And this guy's swimming around. And then all of a sudden snags his leg as he thought and he thought he'd caught it on some you know fishing gear or something like that and he turns around and there's this orca this killer whale that's basically holding his calf between its jaws and just gently squeezing his wetsuit with its teeth sort of well this doesn't look like it's going to taste too nice and just let him go but yeah that would be a i think you'd probably feel quite wide awake after that experience yeah no no extra coffee needed after that time wow so incredible what would you like to do if you got in the water with workers

Starting point is 00:58:05 what would your dream scenario be i would like to photograph them but then equally it's you know nice to not have a camera and just sit and observe them because as i say they no one has been killed by one and we did have the intention when we were filming the monterey bay sequence that we'd get in the water but then we decided not to do that because they were really kind of thrashing around when they were hunting the gray whales. And I think there's probably a very good chance you might have got injured just in the melee.

Starting point is 00:58:35 This is as good a layup of a segue as I could hope for. They might as well use this opportunity. The divorce whale. The divorce whale. The divorce will. Oh, dear God. Well, so Doug, who I mentioned earlier, Doug Allen, Doug is a fantastic, fantastic documentary cameraman. But as I always tell him, not such a fantastic husband.

Starting point is 00:58:58 But anyway, he proposed to me when we were adrift on a piece of ice in the Canadian high Arctic during the making of The Blue Planet with the classic line, if we get rescued, will you marry me? As I always tell him, probably he thought he was going to die to do that. later when we were working on planet earth we were filming humpback whales in tonga in the south pacific which is definitely my favorite shoot from my time with the bbc and we spent 10 weeks filming humpbacks and the humpback whales that are in the southerly latitudes when the winter approaches in the antarctic they're going to move to northerly climbs to have their calves so places like tonga where you've got shallow warm protected waters anyway we were filming them and i was i we were both in the water he's filming the mum and calf

Starting point is 00:59:59 and i'm filming him filming the mum and calf for the sequence for Discovery Channel. And you're quite close. And I was quite close. And I looked over the top of the camera and realised I was way closer to the calf because I was on a very wide angle lens. And the calf was kind of flopping around because it didn't have the control that the mum had. And, you know, the mum's 45 feet long, 15 metres long, and the calf was about 15 feet five meters weighing about a ton and this calf basically bumped into me with its tail i mean certainly not being aggressive or

Starting point is 01:00:34 anything just because it didn't have the control the mother did i mean bump is uh perhaps an understatement yeah because i was filming at the time this was all caught on camera and it just really felt like i'd been hit with a sledgehammer and i thought straight away i've broken my leg so i stuck my head above the water and shouted to doug i've broken my leg normally i would clip the video camera on before i get in the water but this day I hadn't because we'd gotten the water very quickly. So I was just holding the video camera and that was slightly negatively buoyant. So it started sinking. Anyway, given the choice between rescuing me with the potential broken leg or the camera, sadly, there was no contest. So I was not in any doubt before the incident that Doug preferred his camera to me, but I was definitely left in no doubt at all after that event. So I always joke and call

Starting point is 01:01:33 that the divorce whale. So we are divorced for a number of reasons, but that I think was a nail in the coffin, but we do get on much better now. I'll get my own back one of these days. You've had tremendous success in your career. What are some of the most common mistakes or any mistakes that you see in novices who are trying to become, or are, but just in the early stages of being wildlife photographers we can start with that category you need to walk a fine line between being determined but not too pushy no one wants a pain in the ass hopefully i'm not but but you need to want to do that job more than anything else in the world because it is absolutely all-consuming and I don't have kids and there are a very small number of people who

Starting point is 01:02:36 have made a success of this career who do have kids but it is a very small number but yeah you just have to want to do it to the exclusion of practically everything else but i did i did want to do that and it's just been a fabulous life getting to do what i absolutely love now you are remarried yeah and you you know I was chatting with some other folks on this trip also just curious as to how the relationships work like what the kind of agreements are since some people here I don't know what your split looks like but they'll spend you know 200 plus days of the year on the road and their significant other is not on the road. Yes.

Starting point is 01:03:26 Could you just tell us a bit more about that? My husband, Chris, he and I were at primary school together. So we met, we were 10, then didn't see each other for 37 years. A dear friend of mine, Judith Owen, she's a fabulous singer-songwriter and I'd been to stay with her and her husband, Harry Shearer, in Santa Monica and photographed Judith's album. Chris had seen a post I'd made about this, and then he said, you know, wow, that's what an amazing voice this woman's got. And we had got back in touch. I invited him to go to the gig. And that's how we remet after all this time. But he is not good in the cold. Whereas Doug was, you know, the world's leading polar cameraman.

Starting point is 01:04:13 It's a bit of a contrast there. So I think he wishes he'd married the tropical specialist. But he absolutely loves being at home. He loves being at home. And of course, we've just had lockdown. So we've been at home together for almost a couple of years. And amazingly, he seemed to have enjoyed spending that time with me. But yeah, I'm going to be away a lot probably the next couple of years, trying to make up for a bit of lost time and revenue. But, you know, it's what I do for a job. And I need to be able to go to these places and do these things because it's what i do for a job and i need to be able to go to these places and do these things because it's what makes me tick so it actually works out really really well because it's it's funny someone was joking about having a you know a home husband and a work husband because

Starting point is 01:04:57 you know i like working in the cold and have friends i can do that with and and then chris likes being back home in front of the log fire in north wales that sounds like uh he and my girlfriend would get along when i first shared the description of this trip and i sent it to her and if she could sleep in a sauna not to be confused with this what is it um sauna sauna yes we had some confusion earlier i do not speak the queen's english what's the sauna tim yeah yes what is that sounds sounds vaguely foreign the response that she gave me when i shared it and i sent a very enthusiastic so i was i was downtown working a very enthusiastic email it's like this is even more amazing than I possibly could have imagined

Starting point is 01:05:46 all these caps and then we talked about it later she said yeah I really hope you have the best time you should go and this is not for me she's probably on holiday with Chris they might be sitting in front of a log fire I think so

Starting point is 01:06:03 we're on some tropical island somewhere how many people who are in relationships do you meet They might be sitting in front of a log fire. I think so. We'll set a tropical island somewhere. How many people who are in relationships do you meet who have an opposite, as you do in a sense, versus someone who perhaps understands because they do the same type of work? Because I've met some of both here. Is there a breakdown that you've seen or just in your experience that's an interesting one isn't it i think that for me it definitely works better being married to someone who's the opposite than doing someone who's got similar passions because it's the sort of job where you have to be very driven you know you can't think

Starting point is 01:06:44 i'm going to stay in the tent today when the polar bear's off doing something exciting outside. You know, the longest we had in one spell filming was 36 hours because there was this interesting behavior going on. So you need to be… 36 hours of continuous filming? Yeah, yeah. That's a lot.

Starting point is 01:07:01 But that was super rare, and that was this polar bears hunting beluga whales thing. So you have to be prepared to put up with discomfort. But then the really cool thing about my job now is since I decided to leave the BBC, because, you know, I wanted to go out on a high after planet Earth. Getting out at the top like Rocky Marciano? Oh, absolutely. Just with smaller biceps, possibly. Yeah, no, I did. It was just such an amazing experience. And by now I'd had 11 years working on these David Attenborough series. And this had been my absolute dream as a child. And I just thought, well, I've been doing photography as part of my job.

Starting point is 01:07:45 So I've been promoted to assistant producer, associate producer, then producer and director. And I thought, you know what, I'm actually enjoying photography more than being a producer. So I decided to see if I could make a go of that. Now, quick interjection, because I enjoyed your presentation the other day. Time really blurs here, by the way, like time dilation and contraction. It's very hard to know like how tired you are or awake you are. I'm sure you figure it out over time. But for me, I'm like, oh, I'm so hungry and tired and it's probably 11 in the morning. Oh wait, it's one in the morning. It's very confusing to my circadian

Starting point is 01:08:22 rhythm. But when i was watching your presentation a couple days ago it feels like a couple days ago uh you mentioned that your photographs were sort of inching their way centimetering their way closer to the covers of magazines yeah right so that was was that also part of the reason you decided you know yes it was i think i have i, I think there's a shot. I think there's a pretty good shot here. Yeah. Unintended, I guess.

Starting point is 01:08:50 Well, you know, in the same way that as a kid, I thought if I don't give it a go to try and work with David Attenborough, and that was what going back to that Operation Rally project in Australia, what that gave me was the confidence to at least try. And if I didn't succeed, at least I tried, you know, better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all kind of thing. And then same with this idea of the photography. So I, as you mentioned, I got a shot of a great

Starting point is 01:09:20 white shark on the cover of the BBC Wildlife magazine, and then I got it on the cover of a great white shark on the cover of the BBC wildlife magazine and then I got it on the cover of a National Geographic magazine and then I had another shot on the back cover of the National Geographic magazine and I thought well you know I'm getting a bit closer here so let's give it a go if it doesn't work out at least I tried I won't be sitting here wondering if I just succeeded so I handed in my notice and I had a really good bit of luck the next day, although the old thing of you make your own luck, right? So I was asked the following day, did I want to join this Russian icebreaker that was going to the North Pole? And they asked me, did I want to do that? And I was going to go and speak about polar bears and other arctic wildlife because

Starting point is 01:10:05 i just finished this film about polar bears so that led to me doing seven trips to the north pole by nuclear icebreaker and getting to have some wonderful experiences working on the ship now quick quick question what does nuclear icebreaker mean icebreaker i understand what what is the so rather than running on um diesel or whatever it runs on nuclear power and the russians have a number of can you hear those emperor penguins in the background isn't that great another reason that you don't sleep normally here this is right i mean the other night about three in the morning, there was one clearly standing right outside my tent and about two foot from my head and then suddenly started calling, which was a rude awakening. Just to build on that, so people can fully appreciate, these emperor penguins do not have, as I understand it, any terrestrial predators. So when they are out of the water, we briefly mentioned leopard seal.

Starting point is 01:11:10 We can maybe come back to that, but people can certainly Google it and see some crazy imagery. On land, they are utterly unafraid. I mean, you can still freak them out if you move too quickly or something, but I guess some of the staff here call them the inspectors. Yeah they'll come right up to you and check you out absolutely it's really incredible yeah and uh you know there are very strict guidelines about how close you can approach them so you know no closer than five meters etc but of course if you sit still and wait they'll come and check you out and it's it's just experience. I mean, one time I carried my camera bag out to the colony and it was a really cold day. It was minus 22 centigrade. And I laid down, I put my head on the camera bag and was just listening to the chicks. I actually fell asleep while I was listening to them and my hand was stretched out on the snow and I woke up, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes later

Starting point is 01:12:08 and my arm's on the snow with my glove on and there was this little emperor penguin chick with its little flipper stretched out on my hand right next to me. But yeah, going back to the iceberg, I mean, I had seven trips on those and lockdown has given me the chance to think about how I want to slightly change how I'm working so flying less you know cutting my carbon footprint which has obviously been very easy in the last year and a half because I've

Starting point is 01:12:38 hardly been anywhere but you know flying less and it was very cool in September, a couple of months ago, I was asked to join a hybrid electric ship going to the North Pole. This is this amazing ship, which new design and owned by Ponant, the French company. So I'm going to be working with them the next couple of years. So it's really lovely to be able to find this hybrid electric ship running on liquefied natural gas and battery power and just doing things in a very different luxurious way hurrah well you also mentioned in a very quiet way right which which is i suppose obvious once you say it but you're mentioning

Starting point is 01:13:18 that you're on deck and being able to take these amazing photographs of polar bears because the ship is so quiet and you actually had to ask some fellow passengers to pipe down because their voice was the loudest. Yeah, it was louder than the ship. It was amazing. So we were able to stand there photographing this mother and cub, you know, playing around in the snow, clambering over the ice, rolling behaving completely naturally not affected by our presence it was yeah absolutely wonderful so being able to sort of tweak the way you're doing your job is really important one of the things that i've seen you doing here with some mutual friends is going through photographs discussing photography what type of feedback do you give most frequently when you are interacting with people, say, at a camp like this? What are some of the things that people perhaps don't pay

Starting point is 01:14:11 enough attention to or things that are missed by folks who come here? Because many people who come here are experienced, not necessarily well-trained, but experienced photographers. I'm one of the few people here who isn't carrying equipment. How do those feedback slash teaching sessions go? That's one of the things actually that since I left the BBC that I've really enjoyed doing is teaching people and getting that feedback from people who watch these documentaries as opposed to just being with people who make them. And I realized that actually being with people who make them and I realised that actually being with people and getting them to observe the natural world and tell them about animal behaviour and help them capture

Starting point is 01:14:52 it with their cameras or their iPhones or whatever you know that's something that I really really enjoy doing so and that's led to a number of whether it's working for different travel companies or private individuals where I'm taking them on location and doing that for them or maybe making a book of their trip, that sort of thing. I love doing that and get them to look for the little moments that make a special photograph not just it's standing there but you know what is there about the scene in front of you that you can capture and turn into a special moment what might be an example something like emperors you know when when you're watching them so because i've been fortunate to to photograph them so much you can tell when an adult has paired up with its own chick you know it's coming back

Starting point is 01:15:59 from feeding at the colony it's walked now at the moment we're about 10 miles from the edge of the ice. So it's walked about 10 miles to come and bring food to the chick. And they locate their chick amongst thousands of birds by calling to it and they will find their chick. That sort of thing.

Starting point is 01:16:21 So much more poetic than that. It is. And they have, I guess someone was saying they're bi-harmonic so it more poetic than that it is it is and they have i guess someone was saying they're bi-harmonic so it's it has a very particular sound it's fantastic sound and then the chicks are calling to the adults and oh it's just lovely but you know you can see if that adult is with its chick because when it is it'll snuggle in close to it and then you can see when it's about to feed it so i'm able to say to people look you see that one over there that's its chick it's not a stranger if you like and then

Starting point is 01:16:51 it will stand there and regurgitate its meal of you know fish squid krill to the chick which is a lot more photogenic than i'm making it sound but you know being able to do that kind of thing and and help people see little bits of behavior is a cool thing to do same when i'm taking people on safari you know if you see a leopard and you can anticipate what that leopard's going to do because i take people on safari to zambia every year and watching marine mammals in alaska whatever it is, it's just trying to get the detail and trying to help them tell a story with their photos. So if you have one, I suppose, very large component, which is sort of your Venn diagram of strengths of helping people anticipate or perhaps

Starting point is 01:17:37 first just see the behaviors, right? Yeah. So certainly you have your books. Are there any other books that you've gifted most to other people? I actually gifted one recently. A friend of mine, Ian Dawson, he trains mountain rescue people, mountain rescuers in Scotland. And he was working with me at the North Pole and he'd never seen a polar bear before. He absolutely fell in love with the environment. And I gifted him a book called Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez.

Starting point is 01:18:10 Have you read that? This is on my to-read list. So, Of Wolves and Men by Barry Lopez. Right, yes. It's one of my favorite non-fiction books I've read in the last 10 years. And Arctic Dreams. I was just saying on the way here in the airplane that I wished I had Arctic Dreams. So, I haven't read it yet. It is a magical book.

Starting point is 01:18:27 And yeah, I gifted that to Ian and I know he loved it. And that is a great read. You have to immediately dash off. Well, perhaps not now, but when you get back to civilization. Yeah, that's a really beautiful book. And I bought that for quite a few people. And there's also a fabulous book on polar bears called, imaginatively enough, Polar Bears,

Starting point is 01:18:49 something like their ecology behavior, something like that by Ian Sterling. And Ian is the world's leading polar bear biologist who is a fantastic person. And I've had some amazing experiences with him going tagging polar bears and just yeah so that's another brilliant book and having worked a lot with the inuit in the canadian high arctic i've got quite a large collection of books about arctic stuff whether it's wildlife or the unit

Starting point is 01:19:19 themselves or polar art and so on so we'll link to all these for folks in the show notes afterwards. So we'll give that URL a little bit later. But I'm curious about polar bears. I've never seen a polar bear. And I was chatting with some folks here. We have a lot of staff from Alaska. We have folks from Baffin Island. And a number of them have commented,

Starting point is 01:19:44 because I was asking about grizzly bears as well, about how small grizzly bears seem compared to polar bears, which is kind of mind-boggling for me to even ponder, because I've seen grizzly bears and they're by no means, they don't strike me as small. And I'm wondering why polar bears are so huge, because you'd think their task of hunting seems to be much more difficult than, say, a grizzly bear. I'd say so, yeah. So wouldn't it make more sense that to sustain a larger body requiring more calories would be better suited to the environment of the grizzly bear as opposed to the arctic so why are polar bears so huge what am i missing well for starters they have to be able to survive a few months without food when the sea ice breaks up because they need sea ice as a hunting platform to hunt for amongst other things ring seals which are the most numerous seal in

Starting point is 01:20:42 the world that's their favorite prey but they can also hunt other seals sorry rustling a bit there because i'm sitting here in my parka my head's getting pretty chilly need a little fur around the face yeah also you've maybe seen footage in documentaries where they could they'll pound the ice and break through the ice to break into a seal layer so they can break through several inches of snow and ice. So they've got to be pretty hefty to do that. That's right. Yeah, so the seals, the ring seals, will build a little snow layer under the ice and they'll be in there with their pup.

Starting point is 01:21:18 And then the polar bears will walk along and they'll be able to sniff the seal through the ice and then pound on that. So the seal layer, it's effectively a burrow of sorts? It's called a subnivian lair. So it's like a little lair under the snow. So they will come up from the ocean and there'll be a hole kind of into this little den, this little pocket. And then there's a, I think the word is aglu,

Starting point is 01:21:43 this little tiny little hole which is open to the air where they can breathe and you know both the inuit and bears can spot this quite how i'm not sure still and then the other thing is that they will as well as being you know pounding through the ice and as i mentioned you know there'll be a pregnant female when she goes into the maternity den when the ice breaks up. She's going to be in that for a few months. So they give birth to the cub and it'll be about the size of a guinea pig. And she'll be in the maternity den with that cub for about three months before they emerge out in about March, April time. So she's got to have the subcutaneous fat for her to last that time. And actually, there's a really cool fact. I managed to get this into this film I made about polar bears with Ian Sterling and David Attenborough. So in 1990, oh gosh, I think it was 93, it might be 98, Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines. And when that, you think what the heck's that got to

Starting point is 01:22:53 do with polar bears, right? So when Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines, it threw up huge amounts of volcanic ash into the atmosphere. And that obviously stopped some of the solar radiation getting through. So the following spring, temperatures were about one and a half degrees cooler than normal. And that meant that the sea ice stayed longer than it would usually, maybe an extra couple of weeks. And so that meant the polar bears, including the females, they were able to feed up a lot more on ring seals, put on more weight, so that when they went into those maternity dens, they were able to basically have more cubs or hang on to their cubs,

Starting point is 01:23:40 and the cubs were in healthier condition. So they actually called the bears that emerged that spring the Pinatubo bears. Isn't that incredible? So this volcano in the Philippines was directly linked to the success of those bears. Polar bear cubs. Isn't that cool? That is amazing. I love that.

Starting point is 01:23:58 And also, actually, polar bears, he came out with this great statistic that polar bears being affected by forest fires, you think, what's that all about? But in the southern Hudson Bay population of polar bears, which are the most southerly population, unusually, sometimes they'll be digging maternity dens into riverbanks where there are tree roots and so on, which will kind of hold the substrate together. But when there's a forest fire, then that will burn the tree, and then that is affecting how well that den can hold together. Anyway, all sorts of interesting facts about polar bears, and here we are in the Antarctic. Wrong pole. Wrong pole. Yeah, I accidentally, Antarctica is a real hassle to spell with your thumbs on an iPhone.

Starting point is 01:24:48 So I told a friend of mine, I was going to the Arctic to see penguins. And he's like, you might want to just double check and make sure you're going in the right direction. I said, okay, I will. Well, I'll tell you what, you sleep a lot better in a tent on the sea ice in the Antarctic than you do in the Arctic. Oh, I bet. Because there's a couple of occasions where we've been woken up in the tents by polar bears. And in fact, Doug, my ex, who we heard about with the divorce whale,

Starting point is 01:25:12 Doug was filming polar bears with an Inuit friend and they were in the tent around about March time and it was pretty chilly. So he's kind of huddled in a sleeping bag and his feet were pressed against the wall of the tent and he was woken up by a polar bear pouring his feet through the wall of the tent. So he woke up Andrew, our Inuit friend, and said, hey, we've got a bear in camp. And Andrew said, just open the tent and it'll run away.

Starting point is 01:25:38 And he said, no, you open the tent. You open the tent. Oh, my God. Yeah, no thanks. I'll let you do that. You seem confident. Yeah, no thanks. I'll let you do that. You seem confident. Yeah, where'd you think all this grey hair came from? Does that actually work?

Starting point is 01:25:53 It did work, yeah. They unzipped the tent and the bear ran away. That's so strange to me, because I've also seen footage of bears smacking on windows and trying to get in. Yeah, absolutely. people are fairly regularly killed by them but you know the first time we ever went to the arctic I will never forget it as long as I live so you know I've got

Starting point is 01:26:16 pretty big feet and I was able to stand and put both of my feet inside one paw print and have a bit of space around the outside. They're so big. Yeah, they are. It's really incredible. And very impressive. Speaking of boots, I'm in these boots. Are your little toasty feet? Well, they're rated down to, I guess, negative 100 Fahrenheit, and my toes are cold.

Starting point is 01:26:40 Oh, dear. No, it's okay. They're not frost-nibbed or frost-bitten, but I... But your backside will be soon. Yeah, my ass. I don't know if I can even feel my ass anymore. Sue, where can people find you online? They can find me on my lovely new website, which is just sueflood.com. Flood like lots of water. Sueflood.com and then, you know, Twitter and Instagram,

Starting point is 01:27:05 Suflood Photography or Suflood Photos. And yeah, love to hear from you. We will link to everything in the show notes at tim.blogs.com slash podcast.

Starting point is 01:27:14 So please check it out. You have to see Sue's work. It's just spectacular. It's really, and it's not just the expertise and the patience and the endurance and the creative eye that is reflected in the work. It's also the spectrum of your photography.

Starting point is 01:27:35 I mean, it's not just, even if it were solely in, say, Antarctica, it would still be amazing but you operate and have been able to capture such incredible visuals in so many different environments with so many different animals it's very impressive i must say thank you thanks so much but you know my mom tim she always used to say how come you're so patient with animals and not with people what's your what's your answer there they don't talk back yeah something something like that and um yeah it's a lot easier to be uh patient with a i don't know a polar bear or a leopard than some some people but yeah it's thank you for that lovely comment and you know it's a massive privilege to do what i do for a job and I never forget it and you know the great thing is going back to full circle to when I was at school because um when I was about 15

Starting point is 01:28:32 I was asked by a teacher at school what do you want to do when you leave school and I said I want to make wildlife films with David Attenborough and was told, nobody gets to do that. How about cooking? Which was obviously a non sequitur. And a few years ago, I was invited back to my school to hand out prizes on prize giving day and give a speech in Chester Cathedral. So I was able to tell that story and say, you know, if you have a dream to pursue something pursue it because you know i was never the smartest i was never the hardest working but i knew what i wanted to do and i'm too stubborn to give up so that's probably the secret of some of the success but it's a privilege to a get to do it and b talk to you about it so thank you it's great i mean what what a

Starting point is 01:29:25 spectacular environment i can't think of the next time that i'll have a chance to sit in a snow slash ice lounge in this sort of half spherical tent it's like being inside the top half of a 20-sided die for any dnd nerd nerds out there. This ice table that has been created. It's pretty fancy. And I am very impressed that the gear has actually lasted this long. And I also want to give credit where credit is due. We have Hannah to thank for many things, keeping us alive and running this camp,

Starting point is 01:29:59 being very high on the list. But also, just to humanize you a little bit, she was telling a story because we were kind of huddled around the oven in there that i guess it was a previous trip where there was a daily practice of sitting down and she would say maybe you can fill in the gaps here sue you have to tell us three good things about yourself because you're so bad at it. She did say that and she brought it up the other day. Yeah, that is not my high suit. I have constant imposter syndrome, constant. And so Hannah punished me by trying to get me to say three nice things about myself. But it's funny, you make me think, Tim, there was this event.

Starting point is 01:30:44 I'm still astonished that i was invited to this event at buckingham palace to go and meet the queen as a result of my photography and my first reaction when i got this was this was someone playing a joke on me yeah and it wasn't and i just find that remarkable and i've got one of my photos hanging on the wall of Buckingham Palace, which, wow. I mean, the Queen, good grief. And I did the world's worst curtsy, which was having watched American football on TV. It would not have looked out of place at an American football match or a rugby scrim in Wales. But anyway, it was a rare chance for me to wear a dress.

Starting point is 01:31:24 That doesn't happen very often. That and when I got married, I think it was the last time. Amazing. Well, to a great many adventures had and a great many adventures to come. It's really wonderful to spend time with you. You've been so generous with everyone here. Oh, thank you. It's really wonderful to see how excited you still are to engage with the work being out there and sitting out there and listening to the penguins and watching the penguins as i have been has always gone hand in hand with watching you

Starting point is 01:31:57 on your side crawling around crawling around in penguinuano doing the little, come on, come on, the little hand beckoning to get the… Yeah, and I often talk to, you know, I'll often talk to wildlife because, you know, whether it's a, you'll often catch something's attention if you're in the water with a humpback whale or something, you can start singing down your snorkel or, you know, something where you're going to catch something's attention. Catch their attention. So now next thing we have to do is we have to go to the Arctic together. Then we can do a podcast about more polar bear stories. I'm into it. I'm very, very into it. As long as I don't have to be the one unzipping the tent.

Starting point is 01:32:41 I'm all for it. Yeah. And there won't be a tent. There'll be a luxury icebreaker. I'm all over it yeah and there won't be a tent there'll be a luxury icebreaker i'm all over it don't worry i'll bring i'll bring the i'll bring my podcast studio with me which for those who obviously can't see this it's just an h6 zoom sitting on my thigh it's the only warmth that i'm currently getting and let's not forget your special hat. Oh, yes, yes. And then I have a banya, a Russian banya hat, a sauna hat, which insulates your head, especially if you're bald like I am, so you don't turn your ears into Chinese dumplings when you're in these things.

Starting point is 01:33:20 And it turns out to be perfect for an ice table when you want to put your gear down without destroying it. No expense spared. No expense spared. Why hand me down Russian banya hat? And I would say this has been a great success. So thank you again, Sue. Hey, thank you.

Starting point is 01:33:37 Absolutely loved it. And I really appreciate the opportunity. And yeah, look forward to the Arctic next. North Pole, here we come. North Pole, here we come. North Pole, here we come. And everybody, check it out, suflood.com. And we'll link to all the socials. You're on all the various networks and so on.

Starting point is 01:33:54 Where are you most active on social media? Probably Instagram. Instagram. What is your Instagram handle? Suflood Photography. Or is it Suflood Photos? I'm just blanking.

Starting point is 01:34:06 We'll put the right one in. Pretty easy to find. Suflud PH and then it will pop right up.

Starting point is 01:34:12 So check it out everybody. I can't recommend it highly enough. And Sue, what a gift your work

Starting point is 01:34:18 and your teaching is. So thank you again for that. I'm cringing here now. I know. You're saying

Starting point is 01:34:23 something nice. I know. It's nice things. Nice things. Nice things. And well deserved. And to so thank you again for that I'm cringing here now I know it's nice things nice things and well deserved and to everybody listening I'm going to go warm up my body

Starting point is 01:34:33 and my feet and my rear side with some hot coffee, hot instant coffee I love, I wouldn't say it's shitty but I really enjoy hot instant coffee. Yeah, you need to get over that. There's something about it.

Starting point is 01:34:47 I need to get over that. Where's my cappuccino machine when I need it? Yeah, well, you know, I'm from Long Island. No one ever accused me of being too high class. So I'm showing my true colors. And everybody listening, thank you so much for listening. Until next time, be safe, be be adventurous let someone else unzip the tent and you'll be able to find everything at tim.blog slash podcast for links to everything we've

Starting point is 01:35:12 discussed and and just one more thing boys and girls this is an afterward i forgot to mention something and that is in fe February of 2021, Sue won the climate change category in the science photographer of the year contest, which was run by the Royal Photographic Society. And this image is pretty stunning. It's beautiful. Also shocking in some ways. And you just have to Google North Pole underwater Sioux flood and the image will pop right up. And I recommend checking it out. Thanks for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again.

Starting point is 01:35:50 Just one more thing before you take off. And that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter my super short newsletter called five bullet friday easy to sign up easy to cancel it is basically a half page that i send out every friday to share the coolest things i've found or discovered or have started

Starting point is 01:36:16 exploring over that week it's kind of like my diary of cool things it often includes articles i'm reading books i'm reading albums albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the

Starting point is 01:36:45 weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. My God, am I in love with Eight Sleep. Good sleep is the ultimate game changer. More than 30% of Americans struggle with sleep, and I'm a member of that sad group. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep, and heat has always been my nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, putting them back on, and repeating ad nauseum, but now I am falling asleep in record time, faster than ever. Why? Because I'm using a simple device called the Pod Pro Cover by 8sleep. It's the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced but most user friendly solution on the market. I polled all of you guys on social media about the best

Starting point is 01:37:46 tools for sleep, enhancing sleep, and Eight Sleep was by far and away the crowd favorite. I mean, people were just raving fans of this. So I used it and here we are. Add the Pod Pro cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55 degrees Fahrenheit or as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. It also splits your bed in half so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. My girlfriend runs hot all the time. She doesn't need cooling. She loves the heat.

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #567: A Rare Podcast at 30 Below Zero — Sue Flood on Antarctica, Making Your Own Luck, Chasing David Attenborough, and Reinventing Yourself

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #567: A Rare Podcast at 30 Below Zero — Sue Flood on Antarctica, Making Your Own Luck, Chasing David Attenborough, and Reinventing Yourself

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