Boring Facts About Blue Whales to Fall Asleep To

In this calm and deliberately boring episode, you'll listen to hundreds of quiet facts about blue whales, the largest animals ever known to have lived, longer than a basketball court and heavier than a small ship. We take a slow and unhurried look at what a blue whale actually is and how something so enormous manages to live, since it feeds almost entirely on some of the smallest creatures in the sea. Along the way, we cover how it swims slowly through the open ocean, how it takes in a mouthful of water larger than its own body and strains out tiny shrimp-like krill through comb-like plates of baleen, and how it breathes at the surface through blowholes before diving into the deep. We look gently at the remarkable facts of its scale, from a heart the size of a small car to a call louder than a jet engine that can travel across an entire ocean, and at the blue whale's slow, unhurried life of long migrations, gentle feeding, and raising a single calf. There are many overlooked details, including why the biggest animal on Earth eats such small food, how whales rest half their brain at a time so they can keep breathing, why they were once hunted to the edge of disappearing, and how slowly they have been recovering since. Nothing here is dramatic, and nothing needs to be remembered. Tonight, as you listen, you can simply rest inside the thought that even the most ordinary subject contains more quiet details than anyone could ever notice at once.