What is up my fellow adventurers? It's day eight of our advent calendar and day three of our Life on Earth Week.

As we ease into 2024, it's definitely a time

when you start thinking about making

better choices, about restarting various things.

But it's also a time when it's worth thinking about starting.

And I don't mean new habits, I mean life itself.

You are alive.

This is a miracle.

You are the creation of this multi billion year-long process that started in hot bubbling waters on this once wildly inhospitable planet.

As we think about new beginnings,

let's go to one of these extreme places.

Let's go to a place where life maybe began,

with producers Sarah Wyman and Manola Morales. We are heading to Laguna del Diemante,

one of the harshest environments in the world, and a place that gives us a window into this early beginning. So before you beat

yourself up over missed New Year's resolutions, just remember you used to be a

microbe.

Just going for a walk and breathing

is a wild celebration of 4 billion years of life.

Go easy on yourself.

All right, I hope you enjoy the episode.

Okay, you want to come with me to and this leg by your imagination? Okay, close your eyes.

You've been bouncing around in the back seat of a 4 by 4 truck for more or less seven hours.

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