For more than 70 years oceanographers and scientists searched for the wreckage of the most famous ship in recent history - the Titanic. Then in 1985 Robert Ballard was on a classified US Navy mission to locate sunken nuclear submarines in the North Atlantic when he made the discovery of a lifetime. But finding the Titanic is just one of Robert’s many astonishing deep-sea expeditions; his discoveries have rewritten the book of life itself. He tells Outlook’s Clayton Conn how he believes his dyslexia gives him an edge to find the things others can’t on the ocean floor.

His memoir is called Into the Deep.

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Credit: Emory Kristof/National Geographic Image Collection, Robert Ballard and Martin Bowen/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Gabriel Scarlett/National Geographic Image Collection, Rob Lyall/National Geographic Image Collection

Presenter: Clayton Conn

Producer: Clayton Conn and Mariana Des Forges