Speaker 1: Pushkin Hello, Revisionous History listeners. Malcolm Glabble here. We're on
Speaker 1: summer break, but we'll be back in September with four
Speaker 1: brand new episodes of the show. Meanwhile, I hope you're
Speaker 1: staying cool, and to help you with that challenge, I
Speaker 1: have a little something that will plunge you into a
Speaker 1: world of freezing cold. It's an epic tale that comes
Speaker 1: by way of my good friend and fellow Pushkin nite
Speaker 1: Tim Harford over at his podcast Cautionary Tales. He has
Speaker 1: a fantastic trilogy about Antarctica and a treacherous race between
Speaker 1: two explorers chasing one another across the frigid waste of
Speaker 1: the world's least hospitable continent. There are blizzards, dogs, frostbite, scurvy,
Speaker 1: and epic mistakes. Fortunately, the whole point of Cautionary Tales
Speaker 1: is to learn from other people's mistakes. Good the mistake,
Speaker 1: the more you can learn. After I listened to this series,
Speaker 1: I had to call Tim literally one hundred percent of
Speaker 1: that was new to me. One hundred percent. It was
Speaker 1: so great. I was like, this is fantastic. Who knew
Speaker 1: all this crazy stuff? Like, okay, before we get to
Speaker 1: more of my conversation with Tim, you should probably hear
Speaker 1: a taste of this crazy stuff. So let's listen to
Speaker 1: some of his first Antarctica story and then follow up
Speaker 1: with my chance to ask Tim all the burning or freezing,
Speaker 1: as the case may be, questions. Here's Tim with cautionary tales.
Speaker 2: In June nineteen ten, two ships set sail from Europe.
Speaker 2: One of them was captain by Robert Falcon Scott of
Speaker 2: the British Navy, representing the most powerful empire the world
Speaker 2: had ever seen. The other ship was led by Roald
Speaker 2: Amundsen of Norway, a small country that had gained its
Speaker 2: indo dedans just five years before. Both men had the
Speaker 2: same goal. They burned to be the first in history
Speaker 2: to reach the South Pole, planting their national flag. This
Speaker 2: wasn't about imperial conquest. The South Pole had no gold,
Speaker 2: or spices or slaves. It was all about the symbolism.
Speaker 2: The age of exploration was largely over. Most of the
Speaker 2: world had been thoroughly mapped, with one big exception the
Speaker 2: vast interior of the icy continent of Antarctica. No human
Speaker 2: feet had ever trodden on the Earth's most southerly point.
Speaker 2: Of course, the British wanted to be the first to
Speaker 2: reach it. Over the centuries, they'd grown used to thinking
Speaker 2: of themselves as the greatest explorers in the world. Robert
Speaker 2: Scott's British ship carried what one historian called the largest,
Speaker 2: best equipped scientific team ever sent to Antarctica. Carried three
Speaker 2: state of the art motorized sleds, along with Siberian dogs
Speaker 2: and ponies, and a crew of sixty five. This little
Speaker 2: army set sail from London in front of a crowd
Speaker 2: of the Empire's finest. The American polar explorer Robert Bartlett
Speaker 2: was there, noting that nobody had ever given him such
Speaker 2: a sendoff. There were gold lace and cock hats, and
Speaker 2: dignitaries enough to run a navy. I couldn't help comparing
Speaker 2: all this formality with the shoddy, almost sneering attitude of
Speaker 2: the American public. One of Scott's crew was almost overwhelmed
Speaker 2: by the crowd of onlookers.
Speaker 3: The cheers from the many thousands of throats barely made
Speaker 3: the air quiver on that glazing summer afternoon.
Speaker 2: Rolled Amundsen's Norwegian vessel was much smaller. It carried no
Speaker 2: motorized sleds or ponies, only dogs, and a crew of
Speaker 2: just nineteen. It sailed at midnight without ceremony or celebration,
Speaker 2: a ghost ship, slipping out into the Norwegian Fjords. Nobody
Speaker 2: in Norway was excited about Amundson's bold thrust to beat
Speaker 2: the British to the South Pole, and there was a
Speaker 2: reason for that. He had told everyone he was heading
Speaker 2: to the North Pole instead. It's hard to imagine a
Speaker 2: more uneven contest. Scott's expedition was far larger and far
Speaker 2: better funded, underwritten by the British Navy and supported by
Speaker 2: public and private donations from across the British Empire. There
Speaker 2: could be only one winner, and it was already obvious
Speaker 2: who it would be. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening
Speaker 2: to cautionary tales. Remember the biblical story of David and Goliath.
Speaker 2: An Israelite shepherd boy with the humblest weapon imaginable, a sling,
Speaker 2: defeats Goliath, the Philistine champion, a fully armed man mountain.
Speaker 2: King Saul of the Israelites is against the plan. You
Speaker 2: cannot go against this Philistine, to do battle with him,
Speaker 2: for you are a lad and he is a man
Speaker 2: of war. From his youth, but David fights Goliath anyway
Speaker 2: and wins easily. Malcolm Gladwell's book David and Goliath has
Speaker 2: some interesting things to say about this fight. Goliath wasn't
Speaker 2: quite as fearsome as he seemed. He was at least
Speaker 2: six foot nine, but humans aren't built to be that big.
Speaker 2: One plausible explanation is that Goliath was suffering from a
Speaker 2: medical condition which causes the production of too much growth hormone.
Speaker 2: It also often causes double vision. Goliath looked terrifying, but
Speaker 2: he may well have had difficulty moving and difficulty focusing.
Speaker 2: In the Race to the South Pole, Robert Falcon Scott
Speaker 2: was Goliath, apparently the overwhelming favorite, but in reality in
Speaker 2: a hopeless position. Just in case you don't know how
Speaker 2: the race unfolds, Scott's mission ends in utter failure. For
Speaker 2: more than a century, people have been arguing about why.
Speaker 2: On one side of the argument to those who say
Speaker 2: Scott was terribly unlucky, in particular with the weather. On
Speaker 2: the other side of those who say Scott was an incompetent,
Speaker 2: that he chose the wrong method, took needless risks, and
Speaker 2: at critical moments he made the wrong calls. If it
Speaker 2: wasn't bad luck or bad judgment, then how else could
Speaker 2: such a well resourced expedition fail. But Goliath didn't lose
Speaker 2: because he was unlucky or because he was foolish. He
Speaker 2: lost because the apparent underdog was actually in a vastly
Speaker 2: superior position all along. We'll explore the causes of Scott's
Speaker 2: problems in a moment, but first let's describe the symptoms.
Speaker 2: His expedition was so large that Scott's ship was overloaded
Speaker 2: with men, fuel, motorized sledges, and ponies, and it nearly
Speaker 2: sank before reaching Antarctica. Conditions on ship were miserable. The
Speaker 2: crew ate their meals from a table directly underneath where
Speaker 2: the ponies were being stabled. The yellow substance that dribbled
Speaker 2: down to the cracks in the wooden deck onto their
Speaker 2: table was euphemistically called mustard. Things were hardly more comfortable.
Speaker 2: Once Scott arrived in Antarctica. The British went to a
Speaker 2: base that Scott and others had established years before on
Speaker 2: Ross Island, just off the coast of the Antarctic continent.
Speaker 2: It was further away from the South Pole than where
Speaker 2: Amonson made his base camp, and not without its dangers.
Speaker 2: One man ventured onto an ice flow to photograph some
Speaker 2: killer whales and nearly ended up as their lunch.
Speaker 3: The ship was within sixty yards, and I heard wild
Speaker 3: shouts look out, run, jump man, jump, run quick that
Speaker 3: I could not run.
Speaker 2: It was all I could do to keep my finger
Speaker 2: as I leapt from peace to piece of the rocking ice,
Speaker 2: with the.
Speaker 3: Whales a few yards behind me, snorting and blowing among
Speaker 3: the ice blocks.
Speaker 2: He made it back to safety, with Captain Scott exclaiming,
Speaker 2: my God, that was about the nearest squeak I ever saw.
Speaker 2: Then came the loading of the ship. It did not
Speaker 2: go well.
Speaker 3: We realized that the ice was getting.
Speaker 2: Very rotten, wrote one crewman, But when.
Speaker 3: A message came back from an anxious Scott to hurry
Speaker 3: with the unloading, no one had the courage or the
Speaker 3: sense to ignore it.
Speaker 2: They were unloading one of the three motorized sledges.
Speaker 3: The ship party had got the sledge down onto the ice, when,
Speaker 3: without warning, Williamson went through to his thighs. The motor
Speaker 3: sledge suddenly dipped, The ice gave way, and she fell
Speaker 3: with all her weight vertically on the rope. The rope
Speaker 3: began cutting through the thin ice. Man after man was
Speaker 3: forced to let go. The sledge is now resting on
Speaker 3: the bottom at a depth of one hundred and twenty fathoms.
Speaker 2: It was a terrifying moment, and an expensive one. Scott
Speaker 2: had paid about as much for his three motorized sledges
Speaker 2: as Amondson had raised to fund his entire expedition. After
Speaker 2: months preparing depots and sheltering from the winter, Scott was
Speaker 2: ready to make his attempt at the South Pole. Despite
Speaker 2: the loss of one motor sledge, he still had two
Speaker 2: more of them, plus packs of dogs, a team of ponies,
Speaker 2: and the time honored tradition of the British Navy donning
Speaker 2: harnesses and hauling the sledges by hand with sheer British
Speaker 2: grit and endurance. The British had long experience of this
Speaker 2: man hauling of sledges in polar regions. One disastrous expedition
Speaker 2: to the Arctic in eighteen seventy five required man hauling.
Speaker 2: Here is the conclusion of a survivor. I would confine
Speaker 2: everyone who proposed such a thing in a lunatic asylum,
Speaker 2: burn every sledge in existence, and destroy the patterns long
Speaker 2: experience as I say, but the British Navy had not
Speaker 2: learned from that long experience. With the luxury of these
Speaker 2: varied modes of transport available, Scott chose to try them all.
Speaker 2: You might think that would give him flexibility. Instead it
Speaker 2: constrained him. Scott's ponies were poorly adapted to the cold,
Speaker 2: so he decided to start later in the spring. Even then,
Speaker 2: the ponies struggled. They traveled slowly, hooves sinking deep into
Speaker 2: the snow. Scott decided it would be better for the
Speaker 2: ponies to travel at night, when the colder temperatures might
Speaker 2: mean firmer conditions under their hooves. It was miserable.
Speaker 3: Huge icicles forum under the Pawney's noises during the march.
Speaker 2: Scott's two remaining motorized sledges broke down early in the expedition.
Speaker 2: Nobody on his team had the mechanical expertise to fix them,
Speaker 2: so he had to abandon them and man hauled the
Speaker 2: sledges instead. The man hauled sledges were even slower than
Speaker 2: the ponies. Scott's expedition was a patchwork caravan, on which
Speaker 2: the ponies and the dog sleds had to keep stopping
Speaker 2: to let the man hauled sledges. Keep up.
Speaker 3: The dogs do the march in three hours, and then
Speaker 3: they have little else to do for the rest of
Speaker 3: the day. The dogs are doing splendidly.
Speaker 2: When news reached Scott and his team that Amonson was
Speaker 2: racing them to the poll, they correctly surmised that he
Speaker 2: wouldn't have taken ponies and he wouldn't be man hauling
Speaker 2: any sledges.
Speaker 3: I must say that Amundsen's chance of having forestalled us
Speaker 3: looks good.
Speaker 2: After the losses, the accidents, the late start, and the
Speaker 2: slow progress, Scott's defeat was now just a matter of time.
Speaker 2: But why had such a well resourced expedition run into
Speaker 2: so many problems?
Speaker 1: Actually you'll have to subscribe to Cautionary Tales for the
Speaker 1: answer to that question and so much more. But first
Speaker 1: I got to call up Tim Harford and ask him
Speaker 1: so many burning questions or should I say, freezing questions
Speaker 1: what he learned from these Antarctic tales. Here's our conversation, Tim.
Speaker 1: I've listened to all three of your episodes, and I
Speaker 1: must say I liked him very much. I thought it
Speaker 1: was fascinating. I actually knew none.
Speaker 2: Of this at all.
Speaker 1: I couldn't yet it was all kind of a blur
Speaker 1: to me. All of these all of these explorers from
Speaker 1: long ago, and there are all these dimensions that I
Speaker 1: didn't understand. But I wanted to start with this contrast
Speaker 1: between Scott and Ahmudson. The complex thing, and the thing
Speaker 1: that makes it really fascinating is that Scott is really
Speaker 1: the innovator, isn't he.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he sees himself as the scientific innovator. He wants
Speaker 2: to He wants to break ground in terms of exploring
Speaker 2: measuring magnetic fields, discovering new aspects of the flora and
Speaker 2: fungi of Antarctica. There's this crazy side quest they do
Speaker 2: when they're trying to get a penguin egg, which is
Speaker 2: described as the worst journey in the world because they
Speaker 2: have to travel in the entire winter. I mean, it's crazy.
Speaker 2: He's doing technological innovation. He has these three motorized sleds,
Speaker 2: which I think partly paved the way for tanks in
Speaker 2: the First World War. And people who think that Scott
Speaker 2: is awesome emphasize all of this ambition, all of the
Speaker 2: things he was trying to do. But of course Amonson
Speaker 2: just wanted to use the best possible way to get
Speaker 2: to the South Pole first, and actually that was innovative
Speaker 2: in some small ways that the precise design of the
Speaker 2: sled and the kind of containers that won't leak, But
Speaker 2: it was basically using techniques that have been used in
Speaker 2: Greenland by indigenous people for well, I mean, we don't
Speaker 2: know how long, a very long time.
Speaker 1: This is actually what I loved about the story is
Speaker 1: that it's so incredibly contemporary because Scott is really the
Speaker 1: kind of He's the Silicon Valley startup who gets an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of venture funding and proceeds to blow it
Speaker 1: all on a series of ideas and solving problems in
Speaker 1: our problems. And Emerson is the kind of bootstrap entrepreneur
Speaker 1: in the Middle Country that no one's paying attention to,
Speaker 1: who's forced to use the tried and true. The original
Speaker 1: sin sounds like is the fact that Scott was given
Speaker 1: everything he wanted.
Speaker 2: Everything he wanted, plus a lot of baggage he didn't want,
Speaker 2: all kinds of interference and all kinds of people telling
Speaker 2: him they wanted to do this, and they wanted to
Speaker 2: do that, and they wanted to achieve all of these
Speaker 2: great things, which means he can't focus. But yeah, he's
Speaker 2: got far too much. He's got far too much money,
Speaker 2: he's got far too many people. His ship nearly sinks
Speaker 2: simply because it's so overlaiden. There's just so much on
Speaker 2: it that it's nearly capsized by a storm on the
Speaker 2: way to the Antarctic. But Amonson, meanwhile, is not only
Speaker 2: is no one paying attention to him, he's actively engaging
Speaker 2: in disinformation. He's lying to he's even lying to his
Speaker 2: own crew about where he's going. He's telling people he's
Speaker 2: going north and he's actually going south. Yeah, And I
Speaker 2: love the way that you've phrased this is he's a
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley startup because for me, I'm thinking he's a
Speaker 2: British Navy guy. He's kind of a government man. He's
Speaker 2: a military man. He's very bureaucratic. But you're you're seeing
Speaker 2: some a different quality in him and a different problem
Speaker 2: that he's facing.
Speaker 1: He's given everything he wants, and then he as a result,
Speaker 1: he has lots of things he doesn't want. Those two
Speaker 1: things are linked. That's what happens when you get everything
Speaker 1: you want. It's the careful what you wish for problem?
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The things he don't want are a consequence of getting
Speaker 1: everything he wants in the beginning, he has so many
Speaker 1: people who are pitching in to quote unquote help him
Speaker 1: that he ends up being burdened by all of their expectations,
Speaker 1: which is another Silicon Valley kind of conundrum. The venture
Speaker 1: capitalist gives you fifty million dollars and then has a
Speaker 1: seat at the table and complicates your vision with all
Speaker 1: their sense of where you should be going.
Speaker 2: The funder the bench capitalist in this particular case is
Speaker 2: a guy called Sir Clements Markham, who is just this
Speaker 2: incredibly British, incredibly intimidating fellow. I've got this portrait of
Speaker 2: him and it looks to me like the expression on
Speaker 2: his face is like the photographer has just broken wind,
Speaker 2: and he just looks so unhappy that someone is daring
Speaker 2: to point a camera at him. And he was just
Speaker 2: pulling the strings at the Royal Geographical Society in London
Speaker 2: for decades. He's so tight with Scott and Scott's family
Speaker 2: that Scott names his son Peter after Sir Clements, and
Speaker 2: Scott is clearly terrified of him. And it's one of
Speaker 2: these you know, he put Scott where he is and
Speaker 2: he can put him right back again if he wants to.
Speaker 2: And Sir Clements, who's never been to the Antarctic, who's
Speaker 2: got no idea what it's like down there, just has
Speaker 2: these views. There's obviously there should be no dogs. Everybody
Speaker 2: who knows anything about arctic exploration knows you should use
Speaker 2: dogs for any number of reasons. I explain in the
Speaker 2: in the episodes. But Sir Clements is sitting there in
Speaker 2: London going no nosky, no dogs, and Scott's kind of
Speaker 2: got to do what he says.
Speaker 1: It's so funny that any story about English life in
Speaker 1: this period always boils down to the stupidity of the
Speaker 1: British ruling class. Sir Clement's is such a familiar figure,
Speaker 1: this kind of arrogant, pigheaded authority figure who thinks that,
Speaker 1: who has a kind of abstract notion of the way things.
Speaker 2: Ought to be, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1: Which triumphs of the way things actually are.
Speaker 2: But the interesting thing for me about Amundson is that
Speaker 2: he also has these certain bureaucratic constraints. So he's the king,
Speaker 2: is the patron of his expedition, and he's got funding
Speaker 2: from the Norwegian government and all this kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: but he just doesn't care. So he lies to the King,
Speaker 2: he lies to Parliament, he's borrowed all this money, and
Speaker 2: then he basically runs away. One of the things he's
Speaker 2: doing going to Antarctica is getting out of reach of
Speaker 2: his creditors, and it's only when they can't impound his
Speaker 2: ship that he actually tells people exactly what he's doing. So, yes,
Speaker 2: it is partly this kind of this hide bound British bureaucracy,
Speaker 2: but it is also Scott's deference to it in a
Speaker 2: way that Amondson was not int Is it for a
Speaker 2: second in any of.
Speaker 1: That, Yeah, to bring up the second Silicon Valley analogy,
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of Elizabeth Holmes in Amonson. It's
Speaker 1: faked to you make it kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, except he made it, Yeah, except.
Speaker 1: To be made it. But that idea that for someone
Speaker 1: who's attempting something incredibly difficult, that it may be necessary
Speaker 1: at some time to engage an acts of deception at
Speaker 1: the outset, or maybe a better way of saying it
Speaker 1: is that the kind of person who is focused in
Speaker 1: singular enough to pull off a feet like this, is
Speaker 1: willing to engage in deception. Doesn't have any kind of
Speaker 1: moral qualm. Nothing trumps the goal of reaching the South Pole.
Speaker 1: Everything else is secondary, including the truth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he doesn't seem to have lost any sleep
Speaker 2: over that. And I think Amonson had this very clear
Speaker 2: vision that it would all be forgiven if he succeeded,
Speaker 2: and which I suspect that to the extent that Elizabeth
Speaker 2: Holmes that Theronos had a vision of what was going on.
Speaker 2: But there's the same thing, they'll forgive me once it
Speaker 2: all works.
Speaker 1: Oh, I think she very clearly had that. Tim. I
Speaker 1: think that's absolutely much driving the whole train. There is
Speaker 1: that I can lie and cheat and deceive, because if
Speaker 1: I pull this off, I'm a hero.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about your personal feelings about
Speaker 1: the two men. I mean, it's clearly you're partial to Amudson.
Speaker 1: If you eat a choice between dining with two of them,
Speaker 1: who's your first choice for dinner tonight?
Speaker 2: Oh? Actually, I think they would both be well, they
Speaker 2: both be interesting, but they would be pretty awkward both ways,
Speaker 2: because I think they both had these huge egos. Amison
Speaker 2: is this antihero. I don't really like either of them
Speaker 2: as people. I'm excited by Amerson's daring and his willingness
Speaker 2: to get things done, and he makes sacrifices and he
Speaker 2: succeeds in the end, and Scott just seems like this
Speaker 2: tragic blunderer. But I'm not trying. I'd really want to
Speaker 2: have dinner with either of them, if I'm honest, Who
Speaker 2: would you rather? Scott?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he came away from listening to your episodes liking Amdson,
Speaker 1: and I felt very sorry for him because the world
Speaker 1: doesn't reward him in the way that he ought to
Speaker 1: have been rewarded. He's the hero.
Speaker 2: He made it look too easy, that's the problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he made it look too easy. But Scott would
Speaker 1: just be fascinating against He's so British, he's so of
Speaker 1: that period. I mean, and you would dine out on
Speaker 1: Scott's stories for the rest of your life. But if
Speaker 1: you had dinner with him, get him try And.
Speaker 2: He was a brilliant storyteller. He did that and the
Speaker 2: story was of the tragic hero, and he was writing
Speaker 2: this story of the tragic hero who's going to fail
Speaker 2: all the way along. It's almost like he knew how
Speaker 2: it was going to end. Yeah, this was so much fun.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Thank you Tim. It's a wonderful series.