This program is sponsored by the Kavli Foundation based in Los Angeles, California.

The Kavli Foundation is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity. I'm Alan Alda, and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating.

We discovered more life in the oceans than all the planets and stars in the universe.

It's amazing.

You can look at that water and it looks like pure crystal clear water

is because our visual acuity can't see these tiny organisms.

Before the tools that we developed are shotgun sequencing,

the world of microbiology was seen either through the lens of a microscope or by what

would grow in culture.

And it turns out probably 99% of the life forms on the planet won't grow in the existing culture conditions that scientists used.

So they assumed it didn't exist because they couldn't see it.

That's Craig Venter.

In the 1990s, he launched a privately funded effort

to beat the federally funded project

in sequencing the first human genome,

which many in the genetics community at the time called a brazen

stunt, but in the year 2000, the race was declared a tie.

For much of the past 20 years, he's been roaming the world's oceans in his yacht

sampling the DNA from the literally billions of microorganisms that live there

largely undetected and he had adventures doing it with a few little brushes with local law enforcement along the way.

This is really going to be interesting for me because I'm getting used to talking to people who have done

one or two extraordinary things, but you've done a string of extraordinary things.

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