diff --git a/brozzler/worker.py b/brozzler/worker.py
index 2ad4eea..eb1e5b6 100644
--- a/brozzler/worker.py
+++ b/brozzler/worker.py
@@ -296,9 +296,13 @@ class BrozzlerWorker:
     def _get_page_headers(self, page):
         # bypassing warcprox, requests' stream=True defers downloading the body of the response
         # see https://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/user/advanced/#body-content-workflow
-        with requests.get(page.url, stream=True) as r:
-            page_headers = r.headers
-        return page_headers
+        try:
+            with requests.get(page.url, stream=True, verify=False) as r:
+                page_headers = r.headers
+                return page_headers
+        except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:
+            self.logger.warning("Failed to get headers for %s: %s", page.url, e)
+            return {}
 
     def _needs_browsing(self, page_headers):
         if (
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 9b753a1..18a4e0c 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ def find_package_data(package):
 
 setuptools.setup(
     name="brozzler",
-    version="1.5.53a1",
+    version="1.5.53a2",
     description="Distributed web crawling with browsers",
     url="https://github.com/internetarchive/brozzler",
     author="Noah Levitt",