Journalists From The United States

"Reports of human rights atrocities in Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Turkey are growing, with victims speaking out on forced disappearances and murder. [...] The gutting of and the ongoing jailing of critical journalists — there were more than 80 behind bars at the last count — means that with the exception of a handful of oppositional online news sites, the abuses go unreported."

"It's going to a lot harder to kill an animal that's able to speak its name."

"Japan and Iceland... want to keep hunting sperm whales, and are petitioning to do that... [I]f we're able to prove their intelligence and their capacity for communication we might be able to establish them some... rights."

"A group of scientists, acoustic engineers and free divers have... the goal of trying to crack the sperm whale communication code in the next 2 years. ...We're going to use and AI algorithms... We're already doing this with mice... bats..."

"In the next 10 years the U.S. ...is going to spend $100 million looking for signs of intelligent non-human life in the skies. But there's already intelligent non-human life... on our planet deep beneath the sea. It's been trying to reach out to us for thousands of years... [W]e should start talking back."

"[F]or the first time... in human history we have the technology and... methods to... understand these animals and crack into their code..."

"The animals are usually very wary of scuba but... they saw something similar to themselves. ...[W]hales also have mammalian dive reflexes. That's how they're able to dive down to 8,000 feet for 90 minutes..."

"[T]he divers were able to commune with these animals for hours... and get footage that no one else has ever gotten."

"[T]he lowest recorded heart rate [of a free diver]... was 7 beats per minute... about 1/2 of someone in a ..."

"The whales welcomed them into their pods, started shooting them with echolocation to figure out what they were, and then started shooting them with... communication clicks. ...[T]his lasted for a series of days ..."

"[A]fter around 30 feet... the water stops buoying you... and starts dragging you down to the sea floor. ...[T]he deeper ...the more your body changes. ...Your organs allow for the free flow of fluids so they don't collapse. Your brain waves slow down. Your heart rate will slow to about 1/3 its resting rate."

"The sperm whale's brain is about 6 times the size of ours... They've had it for 15 million year longer... We've had our current size brain around 200,000 years."

"But they could not crack the communication code. To do that you have to get below the surface. You have to see these animals... to gauge their behavior."

"[A] few years ago a French researcher and a Belgian freediver... thought "What if we try freediving with whales? Maybe we could get close enough... and start communicating...""

"Lilly... wanted to... figure out the communication code. He said these animals are by far the most intelligent... on the planet. They have a form of communication that is far more sophisticated than ours. But you can't quite put a 60 foot long whale into a lab."

"[M]y doctor... told me, "A breathing class could help." ...strengthen my failing lungs, calm my frazzled mind, maybe give me perspective."

"Back in the 60s... John Lilly had a lab... dedicated to solving the dolphin communication problem..."

"So for the past 50 years we've been... studying these animals from the deck of a boat. Now this is very limiting. You can't see... you... have to put... s off the deck... But... they've found... that... sperm whales have dialects... they can shoot this click communication in focused sound beams to other whales across great distances... [T]hese sperm whales can cram 1600 micro-clicks into a single second... and move discreet frequencies around..."

"He had a dolphin telephone... and he would listen in as these dolphins would have these very complex conversations..."

"[I]f we're able to understand just the rudiments of this communication, we may be able to save them. ...70% of the population is gone, and it's declining very quickly."

"He... had dolphin English language immersion workshops... where... an intern [would] grant dolphins sexual favors if they learned English words, and this... worked."

"I swam with these animals about 4 years ago. Some friends and I had heard that off the coast of Sri Lanka these huge congregations of s would gather in March and April."

"These animals came up to us, welcomed us into their pods and started showering us with these clicks."

"I found out later that these clicks are actually used for communication. These animals also use them to see in the deep ocean. ...It's a form of called echolocation."

"[T]hese clicks are so loud you can actually feel them in your body. Your body starts heating up after a few minutes."

"At sixty feet... The heart beats at half its normal rate. Blood starts rushing... toward the more critical... core. ...The senses numb, the synapses slow. The brain enters a heavily meditative state."

"At three hundred feet... pressure... is ten times that at the surface. ...The organs collapse. The heart beats at a quarter of its normal rate, slower than... in a . Senses disappear. The brain enters a dream state."

"They're able to see better with sounds than we are able to see with our eyes."

"If you compare the ocean to the human body... current exploration... is equivalent to snapping a photograph of a finger..."

"Scientists call it the mammalian dive reflex or...the Master Switch of Life, and they've been researching it for... fifty years. ...[C]oined by Per Scholander ...it refers to variety of physiological reflexes in the brain, lungs, heart [etc.] that are triggered the second we put our face in the water. The deeper... the more pronounced... Ancient cultures... employed it... to harvest sponges, pearls, coral and food hudreds of feet below the surface of the ocean..."

"We're born of the ocean. ...At the fifth week of a fetus's development, its heart has two chambers, a characteristic shared by fish."

"Human blood has a chemical composition startingly similar to seawater."

"Other than ... freediving is the most dangerous adventure sport in the world."

"Inside of these clicks is encoded information... a secret language..."

"An infant will reflexively breaststroke when placed underwater and comfortably hold his breath... longer than many adults."

"[B]est of all, divers will tell you, "It's open to everyone.""

"[B]reathing... allows us these levers into systems that we can't otherwise control. ...[T]he is supposed to be beyond our control. ...When you breath a certain way, you can influence ...functions and you can start taking control of these other elements of your body, as Wim is showing... [N]ot only the nervous system, but with immune function. All of this was supposed to be impossible until he showed up and said "...test me"..."

"Even if someone has a pulse-ox or... a monitor, you can breath in certain ways and instantly see what it does to your body."

"People who say that this is a placebo effect don't understand that this is a biological function that you're taking control of... [I]f you can elicit such a strong response in a couple of minutes, imagine what you can do in a couple of days."

"[] was able, on command, to make his heart beat 300 times a minute. ...[I]t was so fast, they were looking at the EKG readout, and they said, "He's stopped his heart." Then they looked... a little closer and said "No, it's beating 300 times a minute." ...[T]hen he would snap out of it."

"[Y]our body wants to be in balance... the right amount of CO2 and oxygen for optimum delivery, and that's what the nose helps you to do."

"Most people take breathing for granted. ...James Nestor's new book about how breathing properly can transform your physical and mental health, feels eerily well-timed. It lays out how we breath incorrectly or at least fail to maximize our potential."

"[Varying the temperature] on... the same hand, one area was grey and the other was red. ...It was at the Menninger Clinic... and a Navy physicist [Elmer Green] did these tests. It was reported in The New York Times. ...They haven't found [anyone else] who had the powers of . I think Wim's about as close as we've gotten..."

"Just look at freedivers... [A]t the World Freediving Championship [Seventh AIDA Individual World Championship] in Greece... [Y]ou see these people [of all sizes] from all walks of life,.. something like 30 countries had representatives... [T]hese people weren't born with these enormous lungs... They did this by... breathing and expanding their lung capacity. ...Once they explained to me ...the benefits ...go beyond just diving deep. It can allow us to heal our bodies (problems). It can allow super-endurance. It can allow us to do all these things that we've been told are medically impossible. ...I didn't believe them. ...I spent several years... talking to people at Stanford, Harvard... the leaders in the field in... this research, and what they'd told be is absolutely true."

"[T]he nose... produces... nitric oxide... a that plays an essential role in oxygen delivery and also helps battle... viruses, bacteria and other pathogens."

"[T]his is all happening in the nose. In slowing down that air all of these other functions allow us to gain 20% more oxygen breathing through the nose than... through the mouth."

"So you can breath less and get more by breathing through the nose."

"The nose is really the first line of defense."

"Mr. Nestor claims 90% of people breathe incorrectly. ...As for why we breathe through our mouths, he traces the trouble to our diets. ...[S]oft, processed foods ...leave our jaws and facial bones underworked and smaller ...Nearly every cliché of the Western Spritual Quest makes an appearance ...He's a bit wide-eyed in repeating claims from self-proclaimed... "pulmonauts"... who can supposedly kill E. coli, or cure hemorrhoids and , or treat and and ... Mr. Nestor slaps down... curing cancer. But... purge[s] a schizophrenic woman's hallucinations... [W]hile there's no reason to doubt... that his breathing exercises improved his life, the real question is why... so much. ...Placebos have real, documented medical benefits ...[H]e never grapples with the effect as a plausible explanation ..."

"You can overbreath. When people at a gym or... jogging... [through heavy panting] you're offloading... too much CO2. You're causing constriction in your circulation. ...If you were to breath 30 deep breaths, you'll feel some tingling in your head... maybe your fingertips... your toes will get cool. That's not from an increase in oxygen, it's the opposite... a decrease in circulation."