What do the Titanic and a pair of ship’s cooks have to do with one of Earth’s greatest climate mysteries? In this episode, two remarkable stories become the gateway to understanding El Niño—one suggesting how the climate phenomenon may have quietly influenced history, the other showing how cooks aboard a research vessel spotted the signs of a major El Niño before the scientists themselves.
In the second part of our series, we narrate the scientific detective story that finally united two seemingly unrelated discoveries: the warming of the Pacific Ocean known as El Niño and Gilbert Walker’s mysterious Southern Oscillation. Listeners follow the breakthrough that revealed these were not separate phenomena but two parts of the same global climate engine, transforming our understanding of weather across the world.
Hosts: Jacob Koshy and Sobhana K Nair
Producer and editor: Jude Weston
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Published – July 20, 2026 06:42 pm IST
