If buying a home feels out of reach, you might have more options than you think.

You might be able to, especially if you have a little bit of money saved up,

and if you qualify for a low-down payment mortgage, maybe even with some down payment assistance,

it definitely could be a possibility for you.

Listen to the Life Kit podcast from NPR for first-time homebuyer tips.

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

When it comes to the ocean, some species get more attention than others.

There's a lot of interest in excitement, including for me, of whales.

Sharks and dolphins also tend to get a lot of love. But marine

biologist Drew Harvel fell in love with a different group in the ocean. Really, it's the

invertebrates that make the gears turn round in terms of function and how the ocean works. These unsung

icons of the sea have no backbones, and there's a lot of them. There are over 34 phyla of marine invertebrates, from sponges to corals to octopus to sea stars.

And as such a big group, they're pretty versatile.

Invertebrates live everywhere, from the bottom to the top, from shallow water to deep water, from attached to the

bottom and in the plankton. So they're everywhere in the ocean.

Drew was so fascinated with spineless creatures that she wrote a whole book about these ancient

critters and how their long evolutionary histories have led to some interesting biology.

I think of them as kind of biological impossibilities, sort of like, you know, Superman

flying or having invulnerable skin, right?

For an animal to photosynthesize, that's legitimately a superpower.

And it's not the only one.

Across these marine invertebrates, there's a whole bunch of superpowers,

...