Welcome to Planet Sleep. I'm your host, Josh, and in tonight's episode. I'm going

to be taking you to one of the most remote, yet beautiful locations in the entire world.

Tonight we'll be visiting the Galapagos Islands.

Before we go though, I want you to take a moment to relax. Close your eyes if you need to,

and just take some deep breaths in through the mouth and out through the nose. It's important to

center yourself and prepare our minds for this most relaxing journey.

Now that we're relaxed, let's go.

Winding sea currents converge in the eastern Pacific, waves crash along the coast of volcanic rock,

where overcast skies match the acromatic crust of a curious archipelago before you.

A chain of islands only colors rest upon strewn vegetation and the rare wildlife that

colonizes its shores, a remote birthing ground, a beautiful beacon of evolution,

where Mother Nature rolled the dice on the table of life. Here rallies the ancient tortoises,

international seedlings, and the birds whose slight variation in beak size cracked the

code of our own biological history. The Galapagos, and its breath of intrigue,

exists as the planet's greatest natural experiment.

Formed by the unrelenting volcanic activity deep below the ocean surface,

the Galapagos Islands emerge from the Pacific waters some 14 million years ago.

From the hot womb of the earth, intense heat and pressure forced a land of new life

out into the cold, cold world. A hot spot beneath tectonic plates release magma through the small

fissures. The bursting gourds of new rocks spewed their molten heat between the cracks as the

cool ocean water solidified each bit of crust. Here, meager underwater islands developed at first,

constantly billowing under the spew of magma. Until the formations grew large enough to finally

...