Tight Squeeze

Endless Thread

WBUR

Reddit, Technology

4.1 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2020

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You might not think about caves in the same breath as you do the deep ocean or outer space, but you probably should. There are approximately 70,000 caves in the United States alone, but the vast majority are inaccessible to the public. That means rare, delicate ecosystems have developed for tens of thousands of years in complete isolation from human contact. That is, until cavers travel deep underground through impossibly small spaces to find them. Join the Endless Thread team as we dive into the claustrophobia-inducing world of caving.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Produced by the island at WBUR Boston.
0:12.0	Subreddit community, sweaty palms.
0:15.0	Post title, why did I watch this?
0:18.0	Post content, a video, choppy editing and adventure cam footage of two people climbing into a tiny opening in a rock face.
0:28.0	Gray painted above the opening, the words, hellhole.
0:41.0	The video is claustrophobia inducing.
0:44.0	It is a vertical maze of tight squeezes through holes in rock that goes on forever.
0:50.0	And the people in the video can barely get through.
0:54.0	This hole is literally the size of my foot.
0:58.0	Like my foot touches the top and the bottom of it.
1:01.0	Yeah.
1:02.0	That's f***ing it.
1:03.0	You think?
1:04.0	Can you like this video post on Reddit got a ton of comments.
1:07.0	Things like, thanks for tonight's nightmare and I got stressed out just watching this.
1:12.0	And you couldn't pay me any amount to get me to do this.
1:16.0	But to actual cavers as they're called, hellhole is known as IXL cave.
1:22.0	And it's not scary.
1:23.0	If anything, it's a reminder of how a beautiful thing can be ruined by too much information in the hands of too many people.
1:36.0	So yeah, IXL is a cave in Santa Cruz.
1:39.0	And in some areas, we have what are called sacrificial caves.
1:44.0	And they're caves that the location is very well publicized.
	...

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