Diving Between the Continents (Silfra, Iceland) - Smarter Every Day 161

Destin: "You wanna do it, yeah, do it." "Very good." "Hey, it's me Destin, welcome back to Smarter Every Month... day! Smarter Every Day." "If you've never had four children, you know that four children are a handful."

"Today on Smarter Every Day, my wife and I decide, well, here let me just show you what the deal is."

"Question. Question time. What is the most important relationship in our family?"

Kids: "Mom and Dad."

Destin: "Why?"

Kids: "Cause if y'all break up, we won't be a family anymore."

Destin: "Is that going to happen?"

Kids: "Nope."

Destin: "Why?"

Kids: "'Cause of strong relationships."

Destin: "Why are you saying that? Did I tell you to say that?"

Kids: "No."

Destin: "Okay, that's just the way it is?"

Kids: "Yep."

(Destin's whooshing noise and excited child's noise)

Destin: "Okay, so, today on Smarter Every Day we're going to go to Iceland because my wife and I want to go on an... (to child) "You wanna jump?" "We want to go on an anniversary adventure, somewhere we haven't been before and we don't know the culture. So after talking with John Green, who said Iceland is a really great place to go, we decided to go. So let's go get Smarter Every Day in Silfra, Iceland where you can scuba dive between the continents."

(Narrating) Kids make it really hard to travel, but every once in a while we get to go on a trip that's just us. It's like going on an adventure with your best friend. Anyway, we love Iceland as a choice because we didn't know the language, we didn't know the culture - we had to figure all that stuff out together.

One thing I really like every time I go to a new country is to experience the currency for the first time because that tells you a little bit about the people.

Destin: "Lady with funny hat is 40 dollars."

Destin: "Dude with big nose."

Tara: "80 dollars."

Destin: (shocked) "This is 80 dollars? This is not 80 dollars."

(Narrating) We usually plan everything out, but in this case we only booked one thing, which is diving at Silfra. Everything else we play by ear, which is pretty easy because Iceland is crazy beautiful. We saw geysers, we rode four-wheelers, we picked up hitchhikers, we visited several waterfalls - which, by the way, I recorded for the new channel called The Sound Traveler. If you're interested, go check it out, I think you'll really enjoy it.

Anyway, it was great, and for me, the common theme was connecting with my wife and strengthening the foundation for our family; and it's pretty easy to tell by looking at her eyes here that that seemed to work.

Right, so Iceland is cold, like really, really cold, and we're about to go diving here. This spot, for example, is just a few dozen miles from where our dive site is, and those are icebergs. I mean, they're beautiful, but like, icebergs touching this water and knowing I'm going to get into it made me appreciate seals on a completely different level.

Tara: "They can shut off blood flow to certain areas in order to preserve... vital areas. Does that make sense?"

Destin: "Yeah."

Destin: "Do you remember plate tectonics from like elementary school? We're at a place called Silfra and this is where the North American plate and the Eurasian plate, which is on the other side of this valley here, this is where they meet. And so we're about to go dive... where? Point out to me."

Tara: "Ooh. Out there, second patch of cars."

(Narrating) The North American plate and the Eurasian Plate are pulling apart and these divergent plates are what's called the mid-Atlantic ridge. Long story short, this is why we have Iceland and it's why you have both glaciers and volcanoes in the exact same area, creating some incredible rock formations. Silfra is right in the middle of this.

This is our divemaster Tebow. He explained that because Silfra is fed by glacier water that's been filtered through volcanic rock for over 30 years before it reaches the site, it's one of the highest visibility dives in the world. Just as a point of reference, this is the visibility my friend and I experienced during a shipwreck dive in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year. It's really neat, but you can only see a few meters in front of your face.

Tebow said we're going to experience over a hundred meters of visibility at Silfra, which is crazy. By the way, if Jared and I were still cold in wetsuits 80-foot below the Gulf of Mexico in summer, how on earth are Tara and I going to survive 80-foot below the icy waters of Silfra? The answer is a drysuit. Water has a thermal conductivity of 0.58 watts per meter kelvin, while air is only 0.024. That means if you're in direct contact with the water, you lose heat out of your body over 20 times faster than if you can put a small air gap between you and the water.

Because of the simple heat transfer equation, this little air gap and some fuzzy pajamas are all you need to protect yourself from rapid heat loss and hypothermia.

Destin: "Alright, so this is the first time I've ever had to stay dry before I went scuba diving because we're getting in a dry suit. And we just met Scott today, hey Scott!"

Scott: "Hey, how's it going?"

(laughter)

(narrating) It's important not to compromise the air gap, so you have a really tight seal around your wrist and neck so you don't spring a leak. The gloves and hood you put on, however, intentionally fill with water and your own body heat heats that water up, which eventually becomes somewhat tolerable.

This dive is commonly called 'The Dive Between the Continents'. Check out how beautiful this is.

(narrating) It was super fun to learn about dry suit diving together and it was even more special to do it in an incredibly awesome place like Silfra. Just like our marriage, it's two totally different forces that come together in this one spot and make something beautiful. A lot of people don't know this, but Tara has more science degrees than I do. She's a hundred percent on board with everything I do to try to get smarter, and that's huge!

I think it's clear that this channel wouldn't be possible without her support. So happy anniversary, baby. I really miss doing stuff like this with you, aaaand back to the kids... and real life.

"Okay, I hope you enjoyed this episode of Smarter Every Day. Family's important, which is why today's sponsor is Kiwi Crate. You know how this stuff works. A company approaches a YouTube channel and asks to advertise. Well this is backwards, I like this company so much because we got them for Christmas one year, and we love them, so I asked them if they would let me advertise for them on Smarter Every Day, and they said yes, so today what do we have, what are those?"

Kids: "Kiwi Crate!"

Destin: "Why are you excited about the Kiwi Crate?"

Kids: "Because they're so fun."

Destin: "Koala Crate, who's that?"

"Who's the Koala crate? Why'd you go for the blue one?"

Kids: "Because it's mine."

Destin: "A doodle crate. Okay, so anyway, Kiwi crate is a really, really cool service because it gets kids involved - they have to do things with their hands, so they have to think and then they have to do, which I'm all for on Smarter Every Day. I recommend the tinker crate, it's my favorite. However, my daughter said she likes the doodle crate. You sure you don't like the tinker crate?"

Child: "I like the doodle crate."

Destin: "She likes the doodle crate. So if you'd like to support Smarter Every Day, please consider going to kiwicrate.com/smarter and you can get a free trial. It's really cool and really worth it. Makes really good presents. That's it! I'm Destin, you're getting Smarter Every Day. Have a good one. Anything you want to say?"

Kids: "They're awesome."

Destin: "Are they really? You're not just saying this?"

Child: "It gives you more family time."

Destin: "So, all your skin, you pull it up above this seal right here and it ends up making an incredible double chin like this."

Tara: "The North American plate."

Destin: "And what is this over here?"

Tara: "The Euro-Asian plate."

Destin: "Eurasian. We've said that (laughter) can't say it. It's Eurasian, say Eurasian."

Tara: "Eurasian."

Destin: "Eurasian Plate."

"Tebow taught me how to unzip yourself."

"Haha."

Someone in the background: "If you can do that, I'll be impressed."

(sound of zipper being undone)

(small crowd cheers)

Destin: "You do know what they call a male Puffin, right?"

Tara: "No. A male Puffin."

Destin: "Puff Daddy."

Tara: "Happy anniversary."

Destin: "Happy anniversary."