-(WIND GUSTING) -(TRANQUIL MUSIC PLAYING)
(ENGINE ROARS)
(MUSIC INTENSIFIES)
This is your first time driving in the dunes?
I've been on dunes before. Nothing like this, ever.
-ALBERT: We're still in low, right? -WILL: I hope.
-WILL: Whoo! -ALBERT: All right, Will, not too fast.
"Pay attention," is basically what you're saying.
All of that freewheeling I was doing, better cut that stuff out.
Think it's up there that it gets crazier.
Whoa. Good heavens.
-You only learn through experience. -Don't want to learn too much today.
(LAUGHS)
WILL: All right, this... this is a serious one.
(MUSIC TURNS OMINOUS)
WILL: This is ridiculous.
ALBERT: Look out, ooh!
-You ready? -I'm ready when you are.
ALBERT: Oh, my God.
WILL: Whoa, it's a steep one.
Whoo! (CHUCKLES)
I got you, I got you.
This is a story about speed.
-ALBERT: Oh, my God, Will. Whoa! -(WILL CHUCKLES)
Not how quick I'm shredding these dunes. A different sort of speed.
A hidden world where things go so fast or so slow...
we don't even know they're happening.
(MUSIC FADES)
(SOFT WIND BLOWING)
(ETHEREAL MUSIC PLAYING)
You got your real, like, Zen explorer thing happening right now.
There's, like, nothing happening here. (CHUCKLES)
-There's stuff happening here. -Mm-hmm.
You gotta be patient.
You'll see.
So here's the deal.
I'm taking Will across the oldest desert in the world.
And at each pit stop, I'm gonna use state-of-the-art technology
to try to reveal how much of the world he's actually missing.
'Cause often, nature just whizzes by too fast or creeps along too slowly
for us to even notice.
WILL: It all sounds pretty far-fetched.
But apparently, this hidden world of speed is everywhere.
Even 80 feet underwater.
(DREAMY MUSIC PLAYING)
(MUSIC FADES)
(DIVING REGULATOR HISSING)
DIVA: Comm check, one, two, three.
There are a lot of anemones. (LAUGHS)
At first glance, it looks like just hundreds of tiny anemones,
anchored to the rocks.
But film them patiently...
-(CAMERA BEEPS) -...then speed it up...
(LIVELY MUSIC PLAYING)
...and this miniature world comes to life.
Because anemones are actually animals.
And they do everything you'd expect animals to do.
They feed.
They fight.
They breed by splitting themselves in two.
And even more surprising than that...
they move...
using a weird sort of gallop.
WILL: Seems like down in Fraggle Rock, anemones have to travel to survive.
Just because those dudes look slower than a parked car,
doesn't mean they ain't moving.
Same goes for creatures that move fast as lightning.
That's what Albert and I are after next.
But to capture them,
you better have a cameraman who's quick on the draw.
The second it hits, you have to be, like, on a hair trigger.
-WILL: Hair trigger. -And you have to get it
exactly at the moment that you see it, almost predict it.
Almost predict... I have to, like, lean into it?
So it's like the Force, I have to use the Force to push this
and it's gonna record the last two seconds.
It's like recording the past. The camera records the past.
-It's rolling all the time. -It's rolling all the time,
and then when I hit, it'll record the last two seconds?
Yeah. Just because it's rolling so fast...
All right. I'm just trying to understand,
'cause I don't want to mess up the thing you got.
We're using an incredibly powerful slow motion camera
to try and capture one of the fastest muscle movements in biology.
But success is gonna be dependent on Will's reflexes.
-You ready? -Yeah.
You got it? Don't screw this up, Will.
Ooh.
(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING)
(WHISPERING) Albert, be still.
-(WHISPERING) I gotta adjust the camera. -Why are you moving?
-'Cause he's moving. He's moving. -But just be still.
He sees it. He sees it.
There we go. Okay. Ready.
Remember, get it exactly at the right moment.
(MUSIC BUILDS)
Wow!
-(CHUCKLES) -Whoa!
Damn, that's a crunchy bug.
-How are your slow reactions? -My reactions are great.
-Let's see. -My reactions are so good,
I might be before the chameleon.
I had to put it on the maximum delay.
Oh, man.
ALBERT: Wow.
I have no idea whether I got it or not.
But there is no way I'm telling Albert that.
Okay.
WILL: No, I'm pretty sure I did.
He's confident.
So we slowed...
everything down by 40 times with this camera.
Let's see how quick you needed to be to get food around here.
Oh...
Oh! (CHUCKLES)
Oh, you got lucky!
Right, let's zoom in.
WILL: I'm just noticing how that acceleration builds...
and then, whoosh! Like, you just don't see any of that in real time.
ALBERT: That tongue goes from zero to 60 in just a few hundredths of a second.
That's nearly a hundred times faster than any supercar.
Which is why we just see a blur.
That blur is happening at a speed faster than our brains can actually see
-and process the data. -Yeah. Yeah.
The bigger you are, the faster life seems to be.
The smaller, the slower.
That lizard's tongue is one of the fastest movements
in the entire animal kingdom.
But there are some creatures that have figured out a way
to use speeds way beyond what their bodies are capable of.
-(WIND HOWLING) -(OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING)
DWAYNE: Each fall, billions of herring migrate into these fjords.
And they're followed by a fearsome predator.
(GASPING)
Whoa! (CHUCKLES)
It's amazing!
Problem is, orca are 20-foot-long and slow.
Herring are one foot long and fast.
(ORCA SCREECHES)
DWAYNE: So, the big whales have come up with an ingenious solution.
(ORCA SCREECHES)
DWAYNE: Something far too fast to see.
(ORCA SCREECHES)
DWAYNE: But I just might be able to hear.
-(UNDERWATER RUMBLING) -DWAYNE: That was it!
-(ORCA SCREECHING) -Whoa!
That's the sound of an orca
creating a shock wave by slapping its tail.
(SHOCK WAVE BOOMING)
DWAYNE: That pulse can travel through the water
at more than a thousand miles an hour.
And it stuns the herring,
-knocking them out cold... -(ORCA SCREECHES)
DWAYNE: ...so the orca can just scoop them up.
(ORCAS SCREECHING)
DWAYNE: Genius.
WILL: Speed isn't just about the animals though.
The water itself is working in ways we can't see.
And even in a desert, Albert's found a way to show me how.
Now, that is something I was not expecting.
ALBERT: Look at that!
That's one of the most crocodile-infested rivers in Africa.
They say there's three people a week who get bit by a crocodile on this river.
Let's not add to that. (LAUGHS)
ALBERT: And the thing is,
to see what I want to see, I have to get the perfect camera angle.
Which means that Will and I have to get to the other side of that river.
WILL: So is there a bridge or something?
-ALBERT: I got a little drone. -All right.
ALBERT: Maybe I can fly a line out to the other side,
around one of those big trees, and we can get across onto the other side
and see if we can see more of the falls. Do you wanna to do that?
Well, I hope you can do that, 'cause I have a hard time
getting my remote to put the right stuff on the TV I want.
So, if you can fly a drone with a line, I'm with you.
-(CHUCKLES) -(LAUGHS)
(GRUNTS) That should probably do it.
-Yeah. Are you ready? -WILL: Yeah.
-Watch out for the rotors. -WILL: Yeah.
ALBERT: Okay, I'm gonna go.
The idea is to fly the light line around the tree on the other side.
And then we'll use that line to pull a heavy climbing rope across.
That's some MacGyver vibes you got going. Coming down.
ALBERT: Landing.
-Good job. -WILL: Love that.
ALBERT: Now we'll tie the line around this,
pull it around. I'll go across.
Hopefully, I won't fall.
And then pull you across.
'Cause there's really, like, no room for error here.
You got me nervous.
All right.
(SIGHS)
-Looks good? Anything dangling? -Just you.
-(ALBERT LAUGHS) -(CHUCKLES)
-ALBERT: Ready? -See you on the other side.
ALBERT: Yeah.
(INTENSE MUSIC PLAYING)
WILL: I am not gonna lie.
I sometimes forget about Albert's leg, he just moves so well.
'Cause, of course, his prosthetic leg is as high-tech
as everything else about him.
-There you go. -ALBERT: Made it.
-You got me? -ALBERT: I got you.
Little further. Keep going.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)
ALBERT: Look down!
Yeah!
(MUSIC FADES)
Hey.
(CHUCKLES)
(SIGHS) Oh, that's a man-tester.
-(CHUCKLES) -(LAUGHS)
-Jeez. -ALBERT: You glad we did it?
WILL: Oh, yeah. You're always happy you did it afterwards.
In a movie, my stuntman would've did that. (LAUGHS)
-ALBERT: No stuntman here. -(WILL LAUGHS)
ALBERT: No stuntman here.
WILL: Truth be told, Albert doesn't need a stuntman.
My man here just takes it all in his stride.
And more power to him.
'Cause you'd have thought losing a leg would've stopped him in his tracks.
It's incredible when you can look back at a single moment
and realize just how important it was. (CHUCKLES)
I was riding along with a friend in a vehicle...
and then in an instant, everything begins to slow down,
all reality seemed to shift.
Boom!
I lost my leg in that car accident.
But technology has helped me be able to define my own limitations.
You know, strangely, I don't actually feel like
I've lost anything, I actually feel like I've gained.
It transformed who I am.
It gave me insights into a reality that I wouldn't have seen otherwise.
-(WILL GROANING) -ALBERT: Okay.
-Let's build the camera rig right here. -WILL: Whoo!
You got a lot of high-tech gear.
ALBERT: Well, we're trying to capture some pretty extreme speeds.
Let's not forget what we're up to here. We're trying to see the invisible.
-ALBERT: How's the image? -WILL: It's gorgeous.
ALBERT: Great, ready when you are.
Action.
ALBERT: Close up and slowed down...
you see the waterfall for what it really is.
(DROPLETS CRASHING)
ALBERT: Millions...
of tiny explosions.
Watch even closer, and you see that each droplet is constantly changing shape.
The biggest ones turn into parachutes and then blow apart.
Okay, now let's change speed
and look at the whole waterfall, but in time-lapse.
WILL: Wow, that's beautiful. It's totally different.
ALBERT: Just look at those ravines!
WILL: All of those tiny explosions have completely smoothed out.
When you look at it like that...
it almost is obvious that the water is sawing the rocks away.
Right? When you look at it like that.
It's like, "Oh, yeah. Obviously, that's cutting the rock."
At this speed, we are literally seeing how the face of the Earth changes.
It's a completely different experience of it.
There's one more stop on this crazy trip.
To see something even Albert's cameras can't reveal.
But apparently, we can only get there
by leaping into a giant hole in the ground.
Because of course we do.
Coming down.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)
(MUSIC FADES)
WILL: Wow.
This is crazy.
It's huge.
So, it's like there's a cave that goes around back there,
and a cave that goes back there.
In all of the hours it took us to get here,
not for one moment did it look like there was anywhere
that you could go scuba diving.
(BOTH LAUGH)
ALBERT: Just goes to show you.
Can you tell anything about what might be under the water based on what's out here?
Well, I think there's only one way to find out.
And that's by going in, right?
I bet we can get down around here and maybe enter in over here?
WILL: I'm not entirely sure how Albert gets me to agree to this stuff.
He's like, "Trust me, Will. Trust me. This isn't dangerous."
Mm-hmm.
-ALBERT: You feel good? -Yeah. Just pop down and pop up.
ALBERT: Okay. Ready?
(EERIE MUSIC PLAYING)
ALBERT: This is one of the biggest underground lakes in the world.
At least 600 feet deep.
And this is why we came here.
Stalactites. One of the slowest-growing things on the planet.
By measuring them, we can go back in time.
Each inch takes a thousand years to grow.
Meaning this one has been here
for more than 150,000 years.
But these stalactites, they're not just old.
They're time capsules.
As stalactites form, drip by drip...
tiny fragments of air and soil get trapped inside.
(ICE CRACKING)
ALBERT: Snapshots of our planet that stretch
way back before us humans were here.
Every drought...
every flood...
every ice age...
every forest fire is timestamped and recorded forever.
The speed that the Earth has changed...
captured on the ultimate time-lapse camera.
-ALBERT: Whoo-hoo! -Yeah.
ALBERT: That was incredible.
That's ridiculous, I didn't think it was gonna be that deep.
(BOTH LAUGH)
-It just kept going. -(ALBERT SIGHS)
Okay, it was scary.
-I'm going to be honest. (LAUGHS) -(LAUGHS)
-I'm gonna keep it real. -Oh, man.
I'm gonna keep it real. It was terrifying.
(BOTH LAUGH)
WILL: That's about as epic an undertaking as I've ever...
-(ALBERT CHUCKLING) -WILL: (CHUCKLING) ...been a part of.
What's crazy is the terrain.
You just never expect that's under the ground.
-(ALBERT CHUCKLING) -WILL: Like, you just... (CHUCKLING)
It's like, how did that get under there?
All the way along, from the moment I woke up...
to being in this car,
everything that we experienced
was different than what I thought it was gonna be...
to the point that I could see how my perception
would have limited my experience if I wasn't following you.
And Namibia does that to me a lot.
It's just different than I thought it was gonna be.
Whatever my frame of reference has been for caves and water and sand,
Namibia is destroying, at every turn,
what I think something is going to be.
Yeah, nature reveals itself in the most incredible ways, right?
Yeah, for sure. Now, that's the better way to say what I wanted to say.
-ALBERT: You can use it. -"Nature reveal..." I can have it?
-Thank you. -ALBERT: Yeah, go for it.
-I'm gonna put it on a t-shirt. Yeah. -ALBERT: Do it, yeah.
"Nature reveals itself in such a beautiful way."
And we're not finished yet.
Nature has more revealing to do.
Nowhere more beautifully...
than on the biggest salt flats in the world.
(FLAMINGOS HONKING)
(SERENE MUSIC PLAYING)
WILL: Those four and a half thousand miles
can reveal speed on an even more epic scale.
JHEISON:
WILL: Once a year, the arrival of the rains...
-(THUNDER BOOMS) -...transform the vast salt flats...
into a mirror so large it seems to reflect everything.
(JHEISON SPEAKING IN SPANISH)
JHEISON:
WILL: During the day, it's otherworldly.
(CAMERA BEEPS)
WILL: But it's when night falls
that the true magic of this cosmic mirror is revealed.
WILL: A time-lapse shows us the stars in motion.
But lock the camera to the Milky Way,
and you get to see what's really going on up there.
The movement is actually us.
Our planet spinning on its axis at 1,000 miles an hour.
We can also tell that we're racing through the solar system...
at 67,000 miles an hour.
And we're not even out of second gear yet.
Our entire galaxy is spinning about its center.
By this time tomorrow,
we will have hurtled more than ten million miles through space.
Which is frighteningly fast.
But the Milky Way is so huge, it's gonna take us 200 million years
to go all the way around.
Which sounds painfully slow.
And the craziest thing of all...
despite being hurled through space at incomprehensible speeds...
we can't feel any of it.
(SOFT WIND BLOWING)
WILL: So, is nothing happening here...
or is the whole world invisibly moving?
Albert's camera has the answer.
(SAND GRAINS RUSTLING)
ALBERT: You see, Will, if we track the grains,
you can watch how they bounce.
That bouncing is happening across this whole dune.
WILL: That's crazy.
It's like it's moving like the ocean.
ALBERT: When we see all this, these little waves marching towards us,
-it's happening. -Yeah.
It's just happening at a much slower pace, beyond our perception.
-And if we zoom out further... -Wow!
WILL: The whole desert is in motion right under our feet.
And the fact that it's constantly on the move
is the reason it's stayed a desert for so long.
Nothing else can get a foothold here.
No plants can anchor their roots.
No animals can arrive to eat the plants.
No town can build foundations.
So, this desert is unchanging
because it's always, always moving.
So, the appearance of permanence...
is based on the power of its impermanence.
You like that? That was just a little... Just tossing a little poetry at you.
-That was a big one, though. -(LAUGHS)
Our world is like a series of clockwork cogs,
all turning at different speeds.
Some too slow for us to see.
Others, too fast.
But all of them in constant motion.
The animals around us...
the land beneath us...
and the universe above.
Each is moving at its own pace...
on its own cog.
It's tempting to think that what we see is all there is.
But every minute of every day,
there are other realities living alongside us.
-Each one as perfect and precious as ours. -ALBERT: Whoo!
(BOTH LAUGH, CHEER)
WILL: Next time, the hidden world is actually inside me.
Hello! My name is Will!
In a crazy, frozen wilderness,
it's time to see if I've got what it takes to be a true explorer.
-(SIGHS) You didn't kill me. -(CHUCKLES)
-You didn't kill me.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
(ADVENTUROUS MUSIC PLAYING)