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.

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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.

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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.

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What if you could create an app simply by describing what you wanted? Vibe coding is the use of conversational AI to build apps, websites, and software. The Debrief is joined by cybersecurity expert Tanya Janca, better known as SheHacksPurple, to explain what vibe coding actually is, and what can go wrong when non-technical creators launch products with vulnerabilities they do not know exist. She reveals what a software “crash” can look like, whether AI will fix the security problems it is helping create, and whether governments can realistically keep pace.

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The Debrief is joined by true-crime filmmaker Joe Berlinger, the man behind Netflix’s The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare. In November 2022, four university students were found murdered inside an off-campus house in Moscow, Idaho. Joe takes us inside the investigation, the evidence and the extraordinary scrutiny surrounding the case. He explains how social media transformed the story, why misinformation spread so rapidly, and what happens when millions of online spectators begin treating a real murder investigation like a mystery they can solve.

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Nearly 30 years after Tupac Shakur was murdered, a jury has finally found someone guilty. Journalist Cathy Scott, who covered the case from the night Tupac was shot, explains who Keffe D is, how his own words helped convict him, and why justice took so long.

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The Debrief sits down with 26-year-old Loic De Marie, who has been diagnosed as a psychopath, for a rare and unsettling look inside how he actually experiences the world. Loic takes the team back to his youth, the moment he first understood he was different, and the incidents that made his family realise something more serious was going on. He speaks with striking bluntness about relationships and whether he can genuinely love, how he makes sense of grief and heartbreak, and where, if anywhere, he finds joy. He describes how he used to manipulate people (especially women) and just how conscious he was of doing it, and what it's like to feel no fear. Dane and Shaan were left terrified and fascinated in equal measure…

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Every year, somewhere between two and five trillion dollars in dirty money is washed through the global financial system. The Debrief is joined by Robert Nordlander, who spent 20 years as a Special Agent with IRS Criminal Investigation, one of the world's most elite financial crime units. Robert explains what the unit actually does, and walks the team through what it takes to track dirty money through somewhere like Zhao Wei's Golden Triangle zone in Laos, a 39 square mile enclave one man effectively runs as his own country. He also gets into whether crypto has made hiding money easier or harder, how both criminals and investigators are now racing to out-use each other with AI, and what strings to pull at to track dirty money.

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