Earth.

What a place, you know, what a place.

It's where we all are.

It is day nine of the Atlas Obscura holiday advent calendar and it is leading not up to the holidays

but the return of new episodes at the end of January. But this week we are going to explore some classic episodes about the extremes of Earth,

about how life came to form on this strange planet that we all live on.

And today we're going to play one of my favorite episodes of all time

about one of my favorite places of all time. It's this place that shows just how

massive and mysterious and wondrous microbial life can be.

We're going to speak with a sea captain who witnessed something only whispered about

in sailor lore and a satellite expert named Steve Miller like the guy with the band but not him

who became a kind of space hunter on a mission to find mysterious glowing microbial sea monsters. We are heading out into the middle of the ocean

to drift among the Milky Seas, this glowing patch of water the size of Connecticut.

It is all just kind of pure microbial magic and I hope you enjoy it. Like all good sea stories, this one starts on a dark night, aboard a big ship,

hundreds of miles out to see.

John Brienne, the captain of an oil tanker called the S.S. Lima, and his wife

Brenda, were standing up on the deck. It was such a lovely evening.

We were actually just taking some time out,

chatting with the officer of the watch,

and just enjoying what was a particularly calm night.

And there was no moon. I remember that. There was no moon.

The Lima was sailing south through the Arabian Sea. There was no land in sight, just glassy water,

...