These little balls might ruin everything

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WELCOME TO HOWTOWN! Our small but mighty team (Joss Fong and Adam Cole) digs into the evidence behind commonly held facts and claims in the news. This month: we’re about to mine one of the most unexplored places on Earth — and it turns out, it’s not a desert. It’s an alien zoo.

Check out Johnny's episode on the fascinating fight over deep sea mining:    • The $16 TRILLION Race to Mine the Ocean  

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SELECTED SOURCES
An overview of biodiversity in the CCZ
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/...

That deep sea mining study with surprising CIA roots:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158...
And some interesting background: https://blogs.noc.ac.uk/jc241-smartex...

Full source list:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11...

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Chapters:
00:00 The sunken treasure
01:43 the abyss - a desert?
02:00 how big is the abyss
03:31 trillion $ trove
04:20 get a hang o’ these
05:30 methods
07:29 empire of poop
07:49 water column critters
08:40 seamount critters
9:13 gummy squirrels
9:30 angry prawn
10:06 walking squid
10:19 mystery holes
10:49 ping pong sponge
11:33 the unnamed
12:04 accumulation curves
13:15 we don’t know much
14:00 secret CIA project
15:21 deep sea mining
16:53 is it worth it?
18:01 johnny harris
19:00 rules for mining
21:12 sea shanty

The deep sea is Earth's final frontier — and in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, scientists are discovering thousands of strange, unnamed species living on the ocean floor everywhere time they drop down a camera. But this alien wilderness is under threat. As Johnny Harris explains in his video on deep-sea mining geopolitics, there's a global race to extract metals from this fragile ecosystem. In this episode, we dive into the cutting-edge science behind exploring the abyss — from ROVs and eDNA — and ask: what happens when industry collides with a world we barely understand?