Victor Vescovo – Solo Dive to the Titanic, Cloning Humans & Reviving Extinct Animals (Video)

In this 13 October 2025 published video, host Shawn Ryan talks with Victor L. Vescovo, a private investor with over thirty years of experience in a variety of complex business situations. He co-founded private equity firm Insight Equity in 2002 with his business partner, Ted Beneski and raised over $1.5 billion in equity capital across four funds. In 2023, he departed Insight in order to focus on his own investments with new capabilities to support industrial startups, life sciences, and other areas of venture capital and special situations.

Victor received his bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, a Master’s Degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and received an MBA from Harvard Business School where he graduated as a Baker Scholar. Additionally, Victor served 20 years in the U.S. Navy Reserve as an intelligence and targeting officer, retiring in 2013 as a Commander.

In 2017, Victor completed the “Explorer’s Grand Slam” which requires climbing the highest peak on all seven of the world’s continents including Mt. Everest and skiing at least 100 kilometers to the North and South Poles. He piloted the first repeated dives to the ocean’s deepest point, Challenger Deep, in the Pacific’s Mariana Trench – now fifteen times, and in August 2019 became the first person to visit “The Five Deeps,” the deepest point in all five of the world’s oceans. Victor has now personally explored the bottom of seventeen deep ocean trenches and has made three dives to the Titanic including the only solo dive ever made there. He and his team also discovered and surveyed the two deepest shipwrecks in the world: the USS Johnston in 2021 and the deepest, the USS Samuel B. Roberts at 22,600 feet, in 2022. In 2025, the US Navy announced that T-AGOS 26, a new ocean surveillance vessel of the Explorer class, would be named after him.

He is also a commercially rated, multi-engine jet, glider, seaplane, and helicopter pilot, a certified submersible test pilot, and recently flew into space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, becoming the first person in history to climb Mount Everest, dive to the bottom of the ocean, and visit space.

https://youtu.be/2xoAAjORXlM

00:00 Introduction and Welcome
02:15 Victor’s Timepiece and Adventures
04:22 Gift Exchange and Patreon Q&A
09:25 Exploration, Genetics, and Discovery
23:50 Military and Academic Career
41:34 Investing in Innovation and Technology
49:10 Exclusive Club of Global Explorers
50:29 Submersible Tech and Ocean Access
51:52 The Debate Over Deep-Sea Mining
57:48 China’s Metal Supply Chain Dominance
01:03:39 Titanic Dive and Deep-Sea Missions
01:09:13 China’s Population Decline and Global Impact
01:28:48 Discovering Deep Sea Wrecks
01:34:04 Reaching the Ocean’s Deepest Points
01:40:01 DNA and Bioluminescence in Deep-Sea Creatures
01:42:01 Challenges in Deep Ocean Exploration
01:50:05 Underwater Lakes and Unique Formations
02:00:23 High-Altitude Mountaineering and the “Grand Slam”
02:09:28 Space: The Final Frontier
02:14:03 Reflections on Life, Death, and Spirituality
02:19:40 The Future of Ocean Mapping
02:23:34 PSYOP and Psychological Operations