Picture a massive rocky spear thrusting from the churning ocean, taller than the Empire State Building, isolated and pounded by rough seas, presumed for decades to be completely barren. Then a shocking discovery revealed it was a fortress sheltering a ghost species the world thought had been dead for 80 years. We dive into Ball's Pyramid, the tallest volcanic stack on Earth, a story of human endurance, deep geological time, and an impossible biological life raft.

We trace its origins as the eroded plug of a 6.4-million-year-old volcano sitting on the drowned continent of Zealandia, the century of terror it inspired in colonial navies, and the extreme climbers who finally conquered it. We unpack the rediscovery of the Lord Howe Island stick insect, presumed extinct since rats invaded in 1918, found surviving as just 24 individuals under a si ...