Thai Cave Rescue | Interview with Rick Stanton | 5
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Today, we wrap up our series on the rescue of 12 boys and their soccer coach trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand in the summer of 2018. It was the most high-profile cave rescue in history. The whole world watched as hundreds of people descended on Mai Sai village in Thailand. There were military specialists, mountain climbers, and cave divers. Creating the rescue plan involved dozens of people, but the execution to extract the boys from Chamber 9 came down to 13 men.

an elite group of experienced cave divers. One of those divers is with me today. He and his dive partner, John, were two of the four divers who were tasked with diving out the boys through incredibly dangerous conditions. His name is Rick Stanton, and it's safe to say that without him, the boys might not have made it out alive.

Rick, welcome to Against the Odds. Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. I have to say, we're really excited to have you on the show. Going through the past four episodes, telling the listeners everything, it's just such an asset to be able to have you here explaining with your own words. Thank you. Listen, I've got a ton of questions for you. How you got into the cave diving, some of the other incredible rescues you've done. But I want to start off with actually an audio clip. And it's the moment where you and John came into the chamber. How many of you? 13.

So, Rick, that's your diving partner John's voice we're hearing in the clip. And then you chime in and say, they're all alive. That's correct. He was so focused on filming and pointing the camera that he actually wasn't counting. I was in the background counting them down.

We had no idea that they could all be alive. And I got to 13 just as he asked us those questions simultaneously and they answered. So yes, an incredible moment. I imagine, especially after going through miles of cave for hours. So when you popped up and you saw the children, what did you first feel? What did you first think?

Well, it was a little bit slower than that in real time. We dived about a mile to that point. We were literally running out of our guideline, our thread that was to lead us back to safety. And we were having a discussion about that.

Whilst we were having that discussion, we heard a voice and a voice shouted down to us. And it was quite a few minutes. We had time to take our equipment off in a relaxed manner. We still weren't sure what we were going to encounter. They were quite a long way above us and round a few corners. And then we were all set up.

I was looking, John was filming, and it was almost as if it was choreographed. And they all came around the corner, all walking, all looking relatively healthy, considering they'd been in there for nine days and had no food within that time. That's incredible. So you said the guideline was almost out. And when the guideline's almost out, that means you can't continue. So it's a bit of a miracle that they were actually there because you almost had to turn around.

We would have had to turn around and we would have gone back the next day, clearly. But for that day, literally, it was 15 feet of line left when we met them. So we're right at the very end of that line. There's a lot of fortuitous events that have gone all the way through this rescue. I had to keep on reminding myself that this was real and not fiction because it seemed unbelievable. And at that point, you obviously didn't

pick them up and take them back from there. There was a big process involving that. So when you had to turn around after finding them, how hard was it to leave the children there? Well,

Well, in a way, when we arrived, we may as well have come from another planet. We'd dived there with all the equipment. There was absolutely no chance that we could have taken them out. So in that respect, it wasn't hard to leave them because there was no chance that we could have rescued them. They were safe. We knew we'd be going back with food. We didn't even have a plan to rescue them. So we just knew that leaving them was actually the best thing and we needed to get out and

start the process of informing the others and coming up with a plan to bring them out. Yeah. Whilst we were there with them, we spent about 20 minutes with them. We were engaging with them, finding out their needs. But none of them spoke English, right? So how did you know everything was okay? Well, one, just by looking at their countenance.

One of them did speak English. He'd been to a different school and learned English. And also, it's quite easy to convey simple language by sign language and if people are willing to engage. So it was quite easy. And that's at that point. So you had to turn around and come up with a plan. What was that long swim back like underwater? What were you thinking about? ♪

Well, even before swimming out, when we got out of sight of the boys and we were putting our equipment on, there was an unusual silence between me and John and we were both presumably thinking the same thing. OK, look, we've found them, but what on earth are we going to do now? This is way beyond anything that has ever happened in the history of cave-in and cave-rescue and there was no concept of how to get them out. So I think...

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progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Okay, Rick, I know you're someone who isn't big on the spotlight, but I think it's safe to say that you're one of the best cave divers in the entire world. And there's not a lot of people who do this. And you've broken some records, right? That's correct. We actually specialize in a sort of niche area of cave diving. You have cave diving, for example, in Florida, in the US or Mexico or Bahamas, which have

big, warm, clear. That's not really what we do, although we can. I describe ourselves as underwater potholers, underwater cavers, or the American word is spelunker. We are underwater spelunkers. I wouldn't even class myself as a diver. For example, I have no diving qualifications. We just happen to use diving equipment to achieve what we want to do in a cave. But we've been doing it for so long that

And we've always wanted to improve and extend ourselves that in the last decade, we've been going to a cave in northern Spain and diving in multiple diving sections, a total distance almost 10 kilometers. That's six miles away from the start point and spending days within the cave. Which is absolutely unbelievable. And I read somewhere that

you were first introduced to cave diving by a movie called Underwater Eiger, right? And I was checking out a little bit of that movie. And in that movie, they only go 1,800 meters. So your childhood dream, you've gone way, way, way above that. That's correct. And I have done that dive in that film. But that was a world record dive in its own right at that time in 1979. And when you first watched that movie, what drew you to that? What drew you to cave diving exactly?

I think I can sum it up by I'm of an age where I grew up watching Jacques Cousteau on the telly and diving. And I always fascinated by water or being in water, although I didn't have the opportunity to do it.

I was also, I would say I had quite an affinity with water. I call them water people or fish people, people that are happy being underwater and it's not for everybody. So I was aware that I was that type of person and I was aware of mountains and caves, but again, hadn't got the opportunity to do it. But this program brought all these facets together, the diving with a purpose, the

the camaraderie, and most importantly, exploration. There they were in Yorkshire, which is only across the country from where I lived. And people could go where no one had ever been before. And that was what identified it to me. Actually, I'm going to go back just for one quick second, because you said something interesting about not considering yourself a diver and more of an underwater spelunker. So I'm a scuba diver myself. I am a dive master with several hundred dives.

But I learned in Canada, in the North Atlantic where I'm from, there's a place called the Bay of Funday has very high tides. The situation is always a bit stressful because the visibility is low and there's tides to worry about and the water is very cold. And then I've met people who learned how to scuba dive in Mexico, for example. And it's almost two completely different sports, falling into the water with barely any equipment in Mexico and then learning how to dive in a spot with like no visibility and cold water. It's like different sports. It is. Yeah.

And some people don't understand that their limits based on their experience and training in the environment where they are. What's one of the main risks involved in cave diving that people might not think of? One I've given already is the fact that you can't just surface when things go wrong. The other ones would be getting lost and

And really, all these things can be mitigated. And getting lost is mitigated by laying a guideline. And I've already mentioned that. Always have a line, lay it well, and make sure you can follow it back to safety. People who might sort of imagine what a cave's like might think of landslides or collapses. They're very, very rare. That doesn't tend to happen often.

It's really a lot of accidents or incidents have happened before the divers left the surface, as in they've unprepared for the dive, their equipment isn't in top order, or they haven't thought about some of the things that could happen.

And let's talk about the mindset that you need to be able to be successful in these extreme environments. Well, whilst I'm sure most people of any mindset could go diving to some degree, to take it to higher levels, you clearly need to be quite analytical, logical, practical, technical, all those attributes, I guess, and calm, calm under pressure.

A lot of people who are knowledgeable may not be able to make a good decision under pressure. And I know you were a firefighter for a very long time, and I guess a burning building in an underwater cave might seem very different. But I imagine the mindset's a bit similar, right? It is quite similar. And I would say that I was a cave diver before I was a firefighter, from which I'm now retired, but I am still a cave diver. But there are very, yes, you're in a completely zero visibility environment in a fire environment.

in a building or whatever you don't know the layout and you've got to orient yourself and find your way around so another another aspect for both cave diving and firefighting would be quite a good spatial awareness yeah knowledge of where you are where you're going where you've come from yeah and in both circumstances you are often expected to rescue people yeah

That's also true, yes. I mean, my hobby of cave diving, that wasn't expected of me until we got to a certain notoriety, if you like, and we were called upon to do it. And I guess it's an honor to be called, and we've always been seen as being successful, and so that leads to further calls. But that wasn't why I took it up. That's just a consequence of our abilities and our knowledge and experience. And so you hit a certain level of notoriety, and you got that first rescue call. Yes.

The very first one. What was it for? That was for...

an incident in Mexico in 2004. There were some British soldiers who had been on an expedition to a cave there. It's sort of seen as what's called adventurous training, but they had gone underground in a cave and it had flooded. And then the water, which normally goes down in these vents, just stayed up and they were trapped there to the point that they'd run out of food. And it was seen as the only way to bring them out would be diving. Now,

the leader of this expedition had had to make some contingency plans and he had asked if I would be willing to put my name down on a list for a rescue should there be one and in no way expecting that there would be so when I got the call one morning that was whilst you wouldn't say it was out of the blue it was completely by surprise and we were within I

I don't know, 12 hours. We were on a plane to Mexico. Right away, boom. Yep. That's wild. And how many rescues have you been part of since then? It's hard. It's five or six. And some of them, of course, as we've identified, cave diving being a dangerous sport, it's a bit of an all-or-nothing sport. Some of these, of course, have been recoveries and not rescues.

But we're so specialist that most countries can deal with their own incident. It's only if it's something out of the ordinary that we get caught. It might be only once. It tends to average once every three or four years. But it's never where you want or when you want. So it'd be Arctic Norway in February or March.

Or Thailand in the rainy season. It's never somewhere pleasant at a nice time. And so when you say we, do you mean is it you and John? I'm actually referring to the three of us, but sometimes it's just two of us deployed. So it's either me or John, who sort of was working alongside in Thailand, but also Jason, another guy, Jason, who turned up in Thailand after we found the boys. He was the first of the extra people we called in. So I'm calling the three of us, John, Jason, and myself as a sort of a...

in this in terms of experience and knowledge. And that's Jason Mallinson, yeah? That is correct. You have to understand, we do this for fun. And we like exploring caves. And so we go off to these caves like Pothos, all that record cave in Spain. And it is for our own means and for fun that

And that's how we gain experience so that when we're often on these rescues, we're operating way under our sort of capability in many respects. There are other factors in play, but in terms of diving. Well, let's talk about that word fun for a second, because you're saying you're doing all this for fun. And I think someone's definition of fun might be a bit different than yours.

I just like being in a cave and I like exploring new bits of cave. So the fun to us is overcoming the logistical challenges of that particular cave. It's not just an activity that's physical, it's a thinking man's game as well. You know, designing the equipment, matching the equipment to the cave.

overcoming obstacles, logistical planning. That's one of the main things we do in these big projects like Spain is logistical planning. And if you've got an eye for that and you like doing it, that adds to the overall fun and satisfaction of a satisfactory project. I'm wondering in all your experience of these rescues and cave spelunking, as you call it, how different or more difficult was the Thai cave rescue overall?

Well, I would say that it was a huge factor of difficulty above anything we'd done before. For a start, the most number of people that we've ever had to rescue was the one in Mexico, which was six. Thailand had 13. So you had over twice as many people. The distances involved in Thailand were much greater, just under a mile, as I said, to bring them out underwater.

the fact that they were not experienced cavers. So caving has, or spelunking, has a bad press. And if things go wrong, your man on the street is likely to say, well, they got what they deserve. What do you think would happen if you went in a cave? And I think that's slightly different in the terms of Thailand because they were sort of innocent children. So that was all seen differently.

So pretty much everything in Thailand was of a magnitude greater than had ever been experienced in the world and by that nature by us as well. But it had come at the end of a very great believer in incremental steps and progress.

And Thailand happened at the end of a large number of small incremental steps. If Thailand had happened 30 years ago in my cave diving career, if you want to call it that, I probably wouldn't have had not only the experience in rescues, but the wisdom and the sort of maturity to be able to carry it out. Yeah, so much went wrong and then so much went right, it seems. It did. I've got to say the boys themselves played a

passive role in their own survival. Nine days without food. We've all seen the video. They all walked down. There was nothing wrong with them. They were stoic what was going to happen to get out. They took it in their stride and just accepted it. There was a lot of things that played into their favour just by the nature of some cultural differences and just how they are. And I think the other thing to say, there are football teams. They're a very tight-knit group.

They were a tiny group before they went in, whilst they were in, and then afterwards. Adding a daily vitamin to your routine to help support your energy, sleep or fitness goals is one of the simplest things you can do for yourself.

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So paint a picture of what it was like on the ground when you arrived in Thailand. There were literally hundreds of people there, right? I've even heard thousands in the sort of park clearing where we arrived. We turned up, all our gear was in a pickup truck. We were in a minibus. There were just people milling around everywhere. It was raining. It was dark. There was thick mud on the ground. Chaos is the word. And there didn't seem to be any order or any semblance of order. But I

I think it's fair to say that had this rescue occurred in any country of the world, be it America, any European country, Australia, any developed country, there also would have been chaos. And even though many countries have rescue services, this was so far out there, no one would have really known what to do and how to solve it. So I think the chaos can be excused to many large extent.

And if you were to think back to that period of chaos in the beginning when no one really quite knew what to do, it was a world first, this kind of event. Is there any particular moment that sticks out in that chaos? Well, I'm going to call it luck, but it wasn't luck for the people involved. On our first full day in the cave, we encountered some water pump workers that were trapped and we had to rescue them there and then. So,

We created a bit of order out of the chaos because no one knew they were missing and also demonstrated our capabilities very early on. And so that put a spotlight upon us. And one of your first missions in the cave when you were going to explore, what were the conditions like? There was very fast flowing water, really fast. John and I are both kayakers and some of the skills you know about being in a fast flowing river, not being pinned on rocks.

and not to be swept off your feet, keeping on the inside of bends, were all played a part in those first few days when the water was really high. And of course, the visibility of the water was at the best six inches, six inches. When you were getting sloshed around by that coffee...

water what were you feeling where we were attempting not to be sloshed around and been in control but no one had been in that cave whilst it was under a monsoon flood because it just didn't make sense so it really people didn't understand what happened when it flooded and

From our point of view, we knew it was a horizontal passage. We knew the whole cave would be flooded. And we actually assumed at those early stages that it would all be flooded to the roof and it would be quite likely that the boys would all be dead. And who played the key roles there? The currents are very strong.

And that plan has to come together. How did that go? It was almost impossible to dive. But to give them credit, the Thai seals didn't give up and said they were going to continue. The water levels dropped when it stopped raining, which was the key thing. It stopped raining. Another fortuitous event.

The water levels dropped and they started lane line. Then there were some other divers lane line. And then it was sort of an ad hoc arrangement of teams going in over the course of two days to place the dive lines until eventually we reached the buoys.

And then when you did reach the boys, obviously a new plan needed to happen, a plan to get them out. What was that like? What were the discussions like there? Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of discussion. Initially, the Thai SEALs said they'd take over, but that didn't seem very likely. This didn't just happen miraculously overnight. It took two or three days to evolve the plan completely.

to extricate the boys. But I think our greatest ally and advocate there were the American Air Force guys from the Special Tactics Squadron who'd been based in Japan. And their second in command, Master Sergeant Derek Anderson, would listen to our plans and then sort of feed them to the ties to give them more gravitas and more importance. Because

I don't think the ties really, two middle-aged men in civilian clothes, they found it hard to take us seriously. Yeah. But when our plan was being conveyed by the Americans who were there to, not to do the rescue, but to oversee what was going on, what was credible and feedback information, say, look, you should do this. This is the best thing.

concept that we can see that's going to work. And so they really were a huge support to us. And thankfully, we talk a lot about how everything went right, which is incredible. But let's talk about a few things that could have gone wrong. So what were some of the things that were avoided, thankfully avoided? So

So the boys were put into full face masks, which keeps the mask very securely on their face. You can't dislodge it like a normal scuba mask. But there's no redundancy on that. If something had failed in the gas they were breathing...

There was no redundancy for that. So we just had to rely on that technology working. But that was tempered against the fact that it was going to be very hard to dislodge that mask. I think that was the crucial thing. If you'd have dislodged the mask and then had been surrounded by water, they'd have ingested it and...

The results of that would be obvious. The other thing is, of course, panic is the biggest killer. From our experience with dealing with the pump rescue workers and from various practices we've undertaken back here in the UK, we knew that we had to mitigate against panic. And eventually it became accepted that the boys were going to be sedated. And that was a crucial moment. In fact, that was the only sensible way that they were going to come out.

Yeah. Panic kills in these situations. And even with the, uh, the plan and the full face masks and, uh, the sedation, there was a number that was thrown around as far as the percent chance that it would actually succeed. What was that number? Well,

I mean, I heard the Dr Richard Harris say that it was going to be impossible and he expected lots of deaths. The Air Force guy thought 50%. We wouldn't give a number because it was untried and untested. All we knew was it seemed hugely unlikely that we'd have 13 consecutive successes. There were so many things that could go wrong that that didn't seem likely. We were going to have to accept success.

some collateral damage, but we wouldn't put a number on it. So it all hinged on the fact that nobody knew what would happen to people sedated underwater. That had never been accomplished before. So there was an element of unknown there. But clearly we weren't going to just process people one after the other to their death. That was not going to happen. If there'd have been a few incidents early on,

we would have had to go back and rethink the whole process. I mean, people talk about only 50% going to come out. We wouldn't have accepted that and would have stopped the process way before then. And what were you personally most worried about for the rescue? Had there been a death, I think it would have been tragic for the person that was carrying that boy out.

I issued instructions to all the four people carrying the boys, myself being one of them, that if something were to happen, you just had to keep swimming with that boy and get them out. And that would have been tragic for any of the people involved. And thankfully, it didn't come to that. Did the fact that the people inside the cave, they were children, did that change anything for you or any of the rescue divers? Some of the rescue divers are fathers.

But by the time we come to the rescue, we're thinking about this very dispassionately. And actually, the fact they were children made it a lot easier. They were smaller. They were lighter. They were much easier to handle. There was just one of us swimming one of them. That was so much easier than if they'd all been Western adults. As I said, they were willing to accept the plan and stoic in their acceptance and just went along with it. I think all those things...

because they were children, actually made it easier for us. And there were 13 divers total who were part of the mission, and the four lead divers were part of the British Cave Rescue Council, right?

That's correct, yes. And so the British are pretty proficient at cave diving then? Well, the British Cave Rescue Council is a volunteer organisation that oversees cave rescue in Britain. It's not just diving, it's all cave rescue. The basic premise of cave rescue in England and areas of the world where caving is an established activity is the only people that can rescue cavers are other cavers. So we have these amateur organisations...

and they're regionally based, and the British Cave Rescue Council oversees all those rescue organisations. We're not a body amongst ourselves, John, Jason and myself. It is amateur, it is voluntary. We're just three individuals that happen to have these skills, and the British Cave Rescue Council give us some credence and acceptability and organisational backup. Without them, it would be impossible to do what they arranged.

transport and insurance and communications and logistics back home. So the 13 divers carried out the buoys and how many did you take up personally? To clarify, it was only four divers. There

There was a corps of four which carried out the boys. And it was one diver, one boy for three days. There was only 12 operating at any other time. The other six, well, you had Dr. Richard Harris and his sidekick dealing with the medical side of things. And then actually the Walter in the cave, by the time the rescue was being conducted,

had lowered enough that some areas where we'd swum through previously were now walking over boulders which added another tier of complexity in that you needed to put the boys in a stretcher and walk them along so there were people involved in that and various other what we would call a canal passage so the water isn't fully up to the roof where we had to swim the boys and that's where we could change cylinders or do other procedures on them where we had the support divers stationed.

And that's another element as well, the constantly changing conditions. I mean, you kind of had to have a constantly changing plan as well, yeah? Well, the water was always in our favour, I guess, because it was always going down. But on the last day, it rained all the last night and we were possibly expecting a flood and we had to consider what we would do then. But the support divers, the support team was really there, yeah, literally as in the support, especially the guys in Chamber 7-8, which had to carry the unconscious boys 150 yards across.

Hoover Rocks. And when you think back to one of those dives, is there any particular moment that you remember most? Well, I think it has to be the first day when everything was untried and tested. I was the last of the four to carry the boy. I had seen some of the procedure, but suddenly all our planning on paper and all our dispassionate talks all suddenly evolved.

I'm swimming here with a living child and I have 100% responsibility for them. And that's when it hits home what is actually going on. And then to compound that for the worst, the first one I carried wasn't breathing very well, was hardly breathing. And I called back to Dr. Richard Harris and he was quite dismissive at the time. He knew there was something wrong, but he didn't want to scare me. And he said, just keep going. Mm-hmm.

And when we got through the first dive, there was clearly something wrong. And he needed some quite serious intervention. Let's talk about that for a quick second. The estimations weren't good, like 50%. We heard 80%, all these percentages of fatality. And then you go in there, you have a boy, the boy's not doing well. How do you keep it together?

Well, by this point, I mean, Harry was essentially right. I just had to keep going until the point where we could get him through the first dive and then re-evaluate things. I understood there was nothing I could do about it at that time underwater. We just had to hope. You need to understand that the underwater route was so complex and you couldn't see that I was more task-loaded with navigation and avoiding awkward bits. I didn't have enough energy to give to the boy at that point.

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So on the third day, the final boy comes out. What was the mood like there? A very high euphoria moment, of course.

And someone had snuck in a large bottle of Jack Daniels. And everyone was smiling and happy. We hadn't expected 100% success, as I've said, yet we had achieved it. We'd under-promised, over-delivered. I would love for you to explain what that moment was like when everyone looked around and said, oh my God, we actually did it. Well, it's almost, I guess, disbelief and relief that that's it, we're done, we don't have to go back. There was a lot of smiling faces.

We're not known for being over-emotional or portraying our emotions, but there was a lot of smiley faces. Well, exactly, right? Because emotion is not something that the luxury you can't have when you're saving boys in a cave or anywhere, right? This emotion holds you back and you stop using your brain. But you must have been exhausted coming out of that cave. Yes, so I'm the oldest of the group. At the time of the rescue, I was 57 years old. That week, I swam...

It was a mile to the boys and I went to the boys five times in that week. So that's sort of effectively 10 miles of swimming underwater, often carrying somebody. So it is hard work and quite draining because you're obviously having to think a lot with your navigation and where you are. So mentally draining as well as physically draining. Yeah.

Yeah, sounds like you were in that bottle of Jack Danielson, didn't you? So have you seen the boys since the rescue? I have seen the boys once. I was in Thailand. I was in the region. I asked to see them. It was at the monastery close to where they live. It was somewhat managed and orchestrated by the Thai government. It wasn't

completely natural I think I got more reaction from them when we were at a distance and I was outside and they were turning up to the event than the a little bit awkward whilst whilst there with all the attention on both sides but yes I have seen them and some of the parents were there but there is a language barrier of course

Yeah. But I imagine body language still speaks volumes, right? Yes, absolutely. Yes. I know you said, I mean, cave divers aren't the most emotional group, but was there emotion that day, the reunification? It was probably eight months on. So I think I've rationalized everything by then. I don't think so on either side. I,

I think they just, the TIE have raised a very matter of fact. They've had their incident. They've dealt with it and got over it. I think that's how they feel about it. And I'm probably the same. Well, you know better than anyone that a lot of these rescues don't really end well. Do you think there was something special about the TIE Cave Rescue that made it all possible? Was it the people, the collaboration, the

maybe the grit of the rescuers? Clearly all of those things. I've spoken already about the boys and how they've played quite an important yet passive part in their own survival and then rescue. Thai governmental ministers identifying that they needed specialist help and calling that in. That was a pivotal moment for the whole event. But I think really, largely, it's the

you know, us in terms of the diving rescue, having gained all that experience and being able to put it together, there was nothing technical. There's no high tech solution you can buy from a top shelf and bring to play to affect a rescue like this. It was all largely done with very ordinary equipment, but it was the massive amount of experience and expertise and

that wound together to make it possible. Yeah, like you said, the incremental skill set you built up over the years of breaking records and rescuing. You know, there were lots of people on the site and some other factors into play. I'm not going to talk too much about the pumping, but there were other things like diverting water. Just even the people that fed us, we turn up in a foreign country and we were fed by the local people and, you know, food was forthcoming. Just things like that. An army doesn't march on an empty stomach. Mm-hmm.

Everyone was pulling together. And what were the weeks and months like after for you? I imagine there was a tsunami of press. Yes, you've identified that I'm not a great self-publicist and I'm really not a great fan of the press. But yeah, pretty much overwhelming. When we landed in Heathrow, we had to do a press conference.

I was hugely hungover from the party. I was jet-lagged. But that all seemed to go okay. I suppose what happened afterwards is a metaphor for the rescue. There's initially chaos, and then you somehow find a clear path and a hierarchy through that chaos, and you can identify what you want to do. And there are clearly opportunities which have presented themselves, and some of them I've taken. I say that I'd used up a whole year's thinking in that one project

two and a half weeks that I was there and I wasn't really able to concentrate or make important decisions for quite a few months whilst I was sort of, I like the word, I use this for when I go away and then come back and I think it's applicable here, re-entry, coming back to your normal life. It took a while. There were other things like honorary degrees and awards and medals and ceremonies and

All good. Everything good. And you've got a book coming out soon, right? I have. It's called Aquanaut. It will be published in the UK in

July I believe it's not just about the Thailand rescue there's a braided narrative it starts off with me learning to cave dive and through that is the Thailand rescue so it's the back story to Thailand as much as it is about Thailand so it's the adventures and the fun and the exploration and the tragedies I've had along diving with my friends many of those two important ones being John Philantham and Jason Mullinson who are in Thailand how we accrued the experience

and the knowledge to therefore be called to Thailand in the first place. And then when we were there to put all that knowledge into play and be able to pull it off. So the book describes all of those things. And you said it was called Aquanaut. And when was it released again? It's released in July of this year.

by Michael Joseph. They are acquiring world rights. I don't know when there'll be book rights in America, but presumably by the end of this year or early next year for your American listeners. Okay, great. And there's also a movie in the works, right? Yeah, there's a movie that's going to be shooting at the end of March in Australia. It's directed by Ron Howard, who directed Apollo 13. Oh, wow. Which is quite applicable because

The Thailand rescue has been compared to other great rescue events that captured the world. And of course, Apollo 13 was one of them. So I think in terms of directorship, we're in good hands. In fact, I'm going there next week to act as a consultant for sort of set and scene and script consultant and help my actor play me as accurately as possible.

That must be a strange circumstance to help somebody be you. It's quite unnerving because they can play a better me than I can.

Yeah, I imagine. And does it have a name yet? It's called, I believe it's called 13 Lives. That is the title, not a working title. 13 Lives. And it's been funded by MGM. Well, that's incredibly exciting. Very much so. And also there's a documentary that's been put together for National Geographic, which should be coming out sometime later this year. So there's quite a few media events, the book, the film and the documentary all

sort of appearing roughly the same time. And you had mentioned that the rescue captured the hearts and imaginations of people much like the Apollo 13 mission. And how do you feel about that? Do you think it's true? I do think it's true. We were aware that it was world news when we were out there. What we hadn't engaged with while we were there, and possibly just as well, was how emotionally invested people were in the whole incident. And I think...

in a way there's a trend for reality TV and in a way this was the ultimate in reality TV and the outcome even from the experts even our friends in the caving world and cave rescue world were uncertain of the outcome very much so and of course it could have had a tragic ending and people were all praying for the survival of those boys and became as I said emotionally invested in it

books and movies and podcasts. And now this obviously is a massive film. So it must be an incredible feeling to be part of something that, again, captured the hearts of the entire world. Very much so. I mean, I'm immensely proud of being involved and being a large part in it being successful. I could not be prouder. And that really, in a way, sort of justifies how I've lived my life, which was all sort of led by

I know it's a cliche, all led to this, that moment. Well, Rick, I know you don't do these very often. So thank you. And for not doing these very often, this was excellent. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate it. This was our interview episode with Rick Stanton and the final episode in our series, The Thai Cave Rescue. If you like our show, please give us a five-star rating and a review. Subscribe to Against the Odds on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, the Wondery app, or wherever you're listening right now.

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