The Debrief is joined by David Abel, director of the documentary In The Whale, to tell one of the most extraordinary survival stories you will ever hear. In June 2021, Cape Cod lobster diver Michael Packard plunged into the waters off Provincetown on a routine dive, only to be caught inside the mouth of a humpback whale, trapped in total darkness for around 30 seconds, certain he was about to die, before the whale surfaced and spat him back out. David takes the team inside how it happened, how Packard survived, and why he questioned the story himself before every detail checked out. He also reveals the part most people never hear: what the sudden, dizzying wave of global fame did to a fiercely private man who just wanted to keep diving.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Debrief is joined by shipwreck survivor Matt Lewis, author of Last Man Off, to relive one of the most harrowing survival stories imaginable. In June 1998, Matt was a 23-year-old marine biologist on his first assignment, aboard the fishing trawler Sudur Havid in the brutal waters off Antarctica, when a winter storm overwhelmed the boat and the pumps failed. He told us how the officers on board froze into inaction, and how he jumped into action to coordinate the evacuation and get the crew into the life rafts. Matt describes the nightmare that followed, adrift in a raft flooded with sub-zero seawater, and how 17 of the 38 crew did not make it home. It is a gripping, sobering account of disaster, leadership and sheer will to live, from the man who was, quite literally, the last man off.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In November 2012, two fishermen set off from the coast of Mexico. Only one came back, 438 days later, having drifted almost 7,000 miles across the Pacific, the longest open-ocean survival in recorded history. The Debrief is joined by journalist Jonathan Franklin, who tracked down survivor Salvador Alvarenga and wrote the book documenting the whole ordeal. Jonathan takes the team through how it began, a routine trip that a storm turned into a nightmare, and what happened to Alvarenga’s young, barely-experienced crewmate out on the water. He explains how he fact-checked a story almost too extraordinary to believe, what kept Alvarenga alive through months of total isolation, and the strange mental tricks that stopped him losing his mind. Then the moment everything changed: after 438 days, land.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.