October 27, 2017 • 37 mins
From plumbing to catering, everything’s a little harder in Antarctica. Will and Mango dive into everyday life on The Ice. Plus, we talk glamping on the continent, why the South Pole pole moves every year, and why the Antarctica only has one ATM. Featuring all-star Antarctica Artist-in-Residence Jynne Dilling Martin.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what, mango? What's that will? So you know I
love a good A t M story, right, Like we
we've talked about a t M so many times in
the past, Like there's the A t M in the
Vatican City and it's the only one in the world
that operates in Latin, which is pretty cool. But I
have a new favorite A t M fact that I
wanted to share. So there's actually an A t M
located in Antarctica and it's operated by Wells Fargo, and
(00:22):
it's in the Guinness Book and they call it the
world's loneliest A t M because it's the only one. Actually,
there is a second A t M on hand, and
it's hidden in a closet or something, and it doesn't
actually work. It's just there to cannibalize for the spare part.
That's sad. But what's even weird is that Wells Fargo
only services the machine once every two years, and that's
(00:44):
when Wells sends a repairment out to give the A
t M a little check up. That's crazy. So why
don't they service it more frequently? Like don't they have
to replenish the cash? Well, that's the beauty of banking
and Antarctica. There's no need for this that, you know,
the population there is so small that the money just
keeps recirculating. But learning about that a t M did
make me wonder, like, what are the other peculiarities of
(01:04):
living in Antarctica? How do everyday things like plumbing and
internet work down there? And that's what today shows all about.
So let's dive in. Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
(01:31):
Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
friend Man and sitting behind the soundproof glass vigorously shaking
a snow globe in each hand as our producer Tristan McNeil.
Where did he get those things? He's making it blizzard?
So meno, I'm gonna ask you right off the bat,
what what's your interest in visiting the South Pole? So?
I mean, it looks beautiful, but there's so many beautiful
(01:53):
places in the world, and you know, I hate the cold.
Plus some of those early expeditions to Antarctica sounded so
miserable it's kind of scared me off, I know, and
I actually want to talk a little bit about those
expeditions later. And clearly we both like warm weather because
we live in warm places, but I kind of want
to see the landscape in person at least once. So
I started looking up tours this week and I found
(02:15):
this group called White Desert Luxury Tours. Have you ever
heard of this company out because they basically, do you know,
like glamping for an arcticle? How do you glamp in Antarctica? Well?
I was reading this article in Wired, and basically White
Desert is set up these luxury camping pods and this
beautiful Mars like area of Antarctica. The pods have solar
(02:36):
panels and propane heaters, and they're eco friendly too, but
you know, to keep you safe. They're also designed to
withstand a hundred and eighty mile per hour. Well that's
how wendy it gets there. And you know the pods
are beautifully outfitted, but the whole camp must have cost
a fortune to build. Why is that? Well, remember, getting
stuff to Antarctica isn't cheap. According to the article, it
(02:57):
costs thirty eight dollars a pound to live furniture there,
and the pods themselves weigh three tons of piece, which
is insane. And and trips like that always sound like
something rich people do just because they're looking for new
ways to spend their money. It's like God's way of
telling you have too much cat Wow. You know, the
camp only services around a hundred clients a year, so
it's definitely exclusive. But you'd be in some pretty classy company.
(03:22):
So you know. Past travelers include Saudi princesses, Prince William
and also buzz Aldern wait, buzz Aldern Glans apparently so.
But you know, what you experience Antarctica is also insane.
Once your golfstream jet lands on the icy runway, you'll
get to explore neon blue ice tunnels and lakes, and
(03:42):
go on guided hikes, penguins up close, visit all these
science bases. They even take you to the South Pole.
I mean, everyone who's gone says the beauty of this
untouched land is just overwhelming. Plus you get unlimited champagne.
So I just pulled this up on my computer. Hot
showers first draped on all the dining chairs. It looks
(04:03):
so fancy. I'm I'm definitely in all right. Well, the
only catches it cost eighty tho dollars a person. But
you know, I've always said I just don't like the
cold that much, and I have to be true to myself,
so I'm out again. I didn't take long. So speaking
of hot showers, it it reminds me of this event
that takes place in Antarctica. It's called the Race around
the World. Basically, it's this fun two mile race that
(04:24):
takes place on Christmas Day at the South Pole and
it's for the scientists there. It's called around the World
because you're actually racing through every single time zone. I
didn't think about that, so you would touch every single
time Wow, that's amazing. It's pretty awesome. Then, and while
some people run the course, you can actually do it
on skis or snowmobile. But the reason I'm mentioning it
is that the prize for the winning runner is a
(04:46):
five minute hot shower. So according to Business Insider, residents
at the South Pole station are limited to to two
minute showers a week, so a bonus five minute shower
is like a huge treat. I guess that makes sense.
I mean, it's funny how you just expect things like
hot showers are everywhere by now. But you know, one
of the things that's so cool about Antarctica is how
environmentally friendly the camps are. The Treaty of Antarticle, which
(05:09):
was signed by twelve countries back in nineteen fifty nine.
It was this, It was this agreement that the land
there would be used for science and peaceful purposes. And
part of the agreement is that you can't dirty the
landscape or leave any contaminants there. In fact, if you
want to organize your own expedition to Antarctica, the process
involves three things. So first it is showing that you
(05:30):
will be completely self sufficient. Second is that you have
a good reason for being there, and third is that
you have little or no environmental impact on the land.
And there's special attention paid to this, and if you
can't lay out your plan for creating zero waste, they'll
deny you permission to go there. That's pretty interesting. So
I was actually reading about the recycling and Antarctica and
(05:51):
it's like at Portlandia levels. I saw the spreadsheet on
Boing Boing from America's McMurdo base, and they have this
matrix for where to recycle old or disposed of wood
and it's pretty intense, like pens and pencils have a
specific bin, and drained radiators have their own bin, and
mops and brooms haven't been everything is clearly charred out
(06:11):
where it goes and how it gets separated. But they
also poked fun at themselves. What do you mean by that?
So one prankster put all these jokes signs up of
what can and can't go into the bins, and they
seem to have stuck around, like there's a recycling bin.
That's where glitter. And in the rules for what's recyclable
glitter it lists red glitter, blue glitter, ground, unicorn, horn, wizards, hats,
(06:33):
and wands. But in the no section it lists no
child beauty pageant, sashes or Mariah Carey movies. And that's
fair enough. We sort of dove right into hot showers
and glitter recycling somehow. But before we talk about things
like how plumbing works, why don't we talk a little
bit about who lives in Antarctica? Definitely, but why don't
we do some local slang first? God, do you immediately
(06:55):
put us off track again? I do, like an art explains, So,
what are some of your favorites? One of my favorite
terms is city mice and also country mice, like city
my state put on the McMurdo station, while country mice
wandered to other camps and travel around. That's pretty cute.
So you got any others, Yeah, gombles or tiny snowballs
that's stuck to dogs for so the d goobles when
(07:16):
you rub that loose snow off before you come inside.
And also Hollywood showers. Those are when you take a
fantasy shower that's more than the a lot of two minutes.
Oh god, all right, why do you keep bring up
showers here? You know, when I started abroad and upon
to bed in college, it was freezing and you didn't
get to take hot showers that often. So I took
like ten or eleven bucket showers during the trip, and
(07:37):
they were mostly with lukewarm water. It's strange being there,
Like I realized there's so many things I could live without.
I don't really need TV or a lot of clothes
or a lot of amenities, but hot showers. Well, when
I came back to the college, I I just stand
in the shower and praise American plumbing. I can understand that.
All right. Well, here's a bit of jargon I found
on mental flaws. It's ice shock, and that this is
(07:59):
the idea that no matter how crazy everything seems. In
an article, while you're there. It's this acknowledgement that the
rest of the world is even crazier. Alright, let's get
back to who lives there. Obviously, Antarctica doesn't have an
indigenous population. Do you know the site cool and arctica
dot com. I can't say I'm familiar with it, says
educational say that's run by a former an Arctic marine
(08:19):
biologist and now he's a school teacher and puts out
great information. But on a site he writes there around
sixty six scientific basis, of which thirty seven are occupied
year round. Around four thousand people living at Arctica during
the summer months, and that reduces to about a thousand
who over winner there. It's also rare that someone will
stay there for two winners in a row. They might
(08:40):
do one winner wrapped in two summers, but two winners
in a row tends to be bad for people's mental states. Uh.
And so the McMurdo station actually has about like a
thousand or so people during peak season though, right, yeah,
that's right. And what's funny is that I didn't quite
put together how large an Arctica is and how far
some of the bases are from one another. It's Apparently
the fifth are just continent, and because five percent of
(09:03):
it is covered in ice, the size of the continent
actually changes like according to Live Science, the quote size
varies through the seasons. Expanding sea ice along the coast
nearly doubles the continent size during the winter. Isn't that crazy?
It nearly doubles it that it is crazy, you know.
In speaking of the geography, I was stunned by the geography,
and I didn't realize that the land is basically all desert.
(09:26):
You know, the inner regions of Antarctic could get less
than two inches of precipitation each year, and this is
less than the Sahara desert. And it's also cold there.
I don't know if you knew this about Anartica. I didn't.
The Russian Vostok station there recorded the lowest temperature in
the world at negative a hundred and twenty nine point
three degrees fahrenheit. I mean, I guess it's that extra
(09:49):
point three that really gets to you. Yeah, it's cold,
but it's a dry cold. I know we're supposed to
be talking people and not penguins here, but one of
the things I thought was funny was that the male
emperor penguins are the only warm blooded animal to stay
on the continent during the freezing winters. Apparently, when the
female lays an egg, it's a very were pregnant situation,
(10:09):
like the daddy bird sits on the family egg keeping
it warm while the MoMA penguin goes out to sea
for nine weeks and and then the mom's return just
before the eggs hatch, which is because you know, male
penguins are so woke. Glad you're able to work that. Alright, Well,
I actually have a funny penguin story to talk about,
and I also want to discuss the crazy ways Chile
(10:30):
and Argentina have, you know, tried to each claim part
of Antarctica as their own territory. But before we get
to that, let's take a quick break, all right, mangoes, So,
how many times have we had a super talented poet
on the show? Has that happened before? I don't think
it's happened yet. I don't think it has either. I mean,
(10:50):
I know Tristan dabbles a little in poetry, but I mean,
between us, they're they're not the best poems. But he's trying,
he's trying hard. But We're super excited to have Jen
dilling Martin on the show today. And and as we
discussed Jen as an accomplished poet, she's an associate publisher
at Riverhead, which is one of our favorite book publishers
in the world. But that's not the reason we've got
her on today. We actually begged her to come on
(11:12):
because in two thousand and thirteen, Jen became the Antarctic
Artist in Residence and she used the six week stint
there to inspire her poetry. So Jen, welcome to Part
Time Genius. Thank you so much. So, Jen, I know
you're in pretty esteemed company as an artist in residence.
I believe Werner Herzog was also an artist there too,
But can you tell us a little bit about how
(11:33):
you got that gig and what's included? Totally, it's this
incredible grant run through the National Science Foundation that they
give to about two people a year from any discipline
at all to go make art inspired by the work
that you then get to witness being done in Antarctica. Uh.
It is a really elaborate application process that I think
(11:54):
weed's out the people who have to go through all
kinds of bureaucratic paperwork to just even apply for it,
But once accepted, you get to I mean, you get
to lead the coolest life imaginable. You get to go
to any of the base camps that interests you. You
can ask the scientists any questions you want of them.
You get to travel all around the continent. I got
(12:16):
a helicopter pilot Ryan to take me um two different
base camps and basically it's just like the most incredible
experience that I will ever have in my life. So
whatever it is you want to go and study as
an artist, you ask for and they make it all
come together for you. Wow, That's that's pretty incredible. I
will say one of the things that surprised me was
(12:36):
was all the training that you talked about in your
first few weeks there. You know how to fix the snowmobile,
how to pitch a tent and a blizzard. I'm just curious,
like were you were you expecting that and can you
talk a little bit about that experience? Absolutely, you know,
it's one of those things where it doesn't really dawn
on you, or at least I didn't dawn on me
fully until really down there, just how isolated, vulnerable you
(13:01):
are and in actually grave peril should anything go dramatically
wrong on your visit. And there can be winds so
high even in the summer season on the continent that
they cannot get planes to and from Antarctica for a
week or two at the time, so we're there to
be a very bad accident, you could be stuck with
you know, the medical facilities of you know, just like
(13:22):
a small clinic to take care of you. So um,
they're they're very rigorous even before you go down with
getting all kinds of doctor and dental records, and then
upon arrival there's just an enormous battery of trainings and
tests and um presentations to make sure you're behaving as
safely as possible and equipped for uh, you know, as
they call it, white out conditions which can arise sort
(13:44):
of in less than an hour's time out of nowhere.
So um, it is, it is. It is pretty raw
in a way that's hard to fully appreciate when we
live in a you know, within a first world nation
where help is just a simple mind one one call
a way. And yeah, I mean another thing I was
fascinated by was well I spent a little time on
(14:06):
your tumbler page which is so great. And uh, I
was fascinated by the specific gear you had to pick
up in New Zealand, and especially the bunny boots. Can
you tell us a little bit about why you had
to take special care of them on airplanes? Yeah, as
we were preparing to leave New Zealand, there was all
kinds of kind of off hand information that they were
just throwing out there. And most everyone had been down
(14:28):
in Antarctica many times, but it was my first time,
and already I was trying to digest so much new information,
and very casually the guy handing out these huge, white,
eight pounds inflatable white bunny boots said, oh, yeah, don't
forget to open the valves so your boots don't explode
on the plane. It seemed like something that maybe they
(14:49):
should have emphasized even more directly and not just muttered
as they passed them across the table to me. But
the boots are pressurized in this actually the I guess
the air air cushions inside that keep them warm. But
because you take a you know, only semi pressurized military
jet to Antarctica, the boots are in danger of exploding
(15:10):
from the pressure change on the plane. If you don't
open these little mini air valves on them. That's so crazy.
And the idea that these things called bunny boots are
so dangerous is amazing. The case of the exploding bunny boots.
You know, it was really fun looking at so many
of your photos from the trip, and one of the
things that struck me was just how intense the sun looks.
(15:33):
And I was curious to hear, you know, what was
it like to be in constant daylight? And was it
tough to figure out, you know, tricks that are going
to sleep each night? Totally? Yeah. You know, everyone talks
and imagines, you know, if you live in Scandinavia or Antarctica,
like how horrible must be when it's dark all the time.
But the truth is is actually equally horrible to have
it be light all the time, and not just sort
(15:54):
of light, I mean like high noon light all the time.
And um, some of might say I was actually living
in a tent, which meant there's there was just no
way for it to not be so glaringly bright, and
that light is bouncing off all the ice in the snow,
and you do, you you do start to get fatigued
and just longing for one night of real darkness and
(16:18):
sleep um, and the times that I was in kind
of a little hut or dorm situation. I got so
desperate that I actually took the wool blanket and took
kind of like some tacks and tacked it over the
window to try to block all the different cracks of
light that kept coming in. It was so kind of
enervating by several weeks deep into it, It's insane. Yeah.
(16:40):
But the other thing that happens is it's very easy
to lose track of all time because the sun isn't
moving and so um, particularly at night it was you know,
you'd be hanging out with people talking and drinking and
you would feel like, oh, it's probably like seven or
a p m. And it's actually two in the morning,
and you've totally lost track of all all paths of
of time. It does really mess with with your mind.
(17:02):
So I saw in your tumbler that you visited an
Antarctica Latin club, and I was curious, what are some
of the other fun recreational activities we might not have
heard about. Oh, totally there. It's kind of like Oberlin,
but with like weirder, really cool adults. I mean, every night,
we're probably fifteen or twenty different clubs or activities that
(17:25):
you could do that we're all just being voluntarily taught
by the awesome people of Antarctica who wanted to share
their talents and entertain each other. So everything from every
kind of sport you can imagine too, you know, knitting club,
guitar club, chess club. People would give just lectures and
presentations on things that they were themselves studying. Uh, and
(17:46):
even people not showing up for clubs were always up
to something really weird. There was this very introverted woman
who I always saw like running around with pieces of
PVC pipe and they were all laid out on this
desk and I finally stopped in to ask what was
going on, and she goes, oh, oh, you know, I'm
I'm as sending a PVC harp, Like a PVC harp.
(18:10):
She's like, oh, yes, I'm sure you haven't heard that
to say you can make a harp out of pvc. No,
I wasn't. I wasn't familiar. But I love that you
are committed to doing this down in your free time
on Intarctica. So that's pretty great. Now, do you do
you think you'll have the chance to get back anytime soon.
You know. This is the saddest thing of at least
(18:30):
the way that I went is I don't know that
I will ever get to go back again, and pretty
much any other place any of us will go in
our lives. You know, if you love it, you're like, oh,
I can't wait to go back with my sister or
my friend or my partner. But this is an experience
that I don't know that I will ever get to
go have again. So leaving was incredibly sad. Um I
(18:50):
will say, there's just an incredible global society of what
are called ice people, and it basically means that you
live on Antarctica at some point, and there's just this
deep understanding and familiarity when you meet another ice person
in the real world. And I've stayed even now, several
years later, in very very close contact with a number
(19:11):
of really dear friends I made while down there, and
I think there's something in that that connection that we
all have shared this weird world. What would you want
to experience again? Oh wow, I just the vastness and
the untouched nous, Like I've I am a big traveler
and I've been to incredible places like the Sahara, the Himalayas,
but even they just have no The sense of scale
(19:35):
in Antarctica is something so staggering and beyond anything that
I had ever witnessed in my life. And again, besides
outer space, I don't think there's anything you could see
that would make you feel just so totally dwarfed as
a human um in a way that I find totally
freeing and exciting and so beautiful to see so much
of the world that the in fact probably be the
only last part of the world that we haven't managed
(19:56):
to pave over or destroy in some way. You'll be
happy to know that in one week we've spoken with
an astronaut and now someone who's been to Antarctica. I
didn't even realize I don't even think about that, but
in in one in one week, so we we spoke
to uh astronaut Chris Hadfield from from Canada on an
episode about Canada. But you know, for all of our
(20:16):
listeners out there, I hope you'll check out Jen's book,
We Mammals and Hospitable Times. It's a It's a terrific book,
and Jen, thanks so much for joining us on part
time genius. Welcome back to part time Genius, and we're
(20:40):
talking Antarctica. So will you said you had a funny
penguin story to all I do, and that this is
from Maggie kirk Baker and it's a piece on boying boying.
But you know, in the early nineteen hundreds, as Robert
Scott was making his way to the South Pole, he
was accompanied by this surgeon named George Levic, and most
of the team's observations were printed up in the team's
official journals, all except this one section of levis notes
(21:04):
explicitly describing penguin sex. And apparently Levic witnessed penguin on
peguin acts so depraved that while he felt he had
to document them, he wrote them all in Greek rather
than English. I don't know why that makes it better,
but it's only recently that they've been discovered and added
to the journals. But on the topic of sex, maybe
(21:25):
now it's a good time to talk about No not
I was actually gonna say how Chilly and Argentina have
tried to use pregnancies to their territorial advantage. But now
I'm curious what you have to say about tender so
this is kind of a ridiculous story, but Nolan found
this bit about an American scientist who decided to log
on too Tinder and an Arctica, and at first no
(21:45):
one showed up on his radar, but when he widened
the radius, he found a match of forty five minute
helicopter right away. Unfortunately, the scientist he was chasing was
in the field and couldn't meet up, and they only
met very briefly on the day she was leaving at Arctica.
As he told the cut quote, I've yet to become
the first tender hook up in Antarctic history. But she's
(22:05):
actually coming back and we may overlap. There's still hope.
He's just a romantic I guess. I guess. So. I
mean that's got to be pretty good press for Tender though,
wouldn't you think, And you know that you can find
love or or lost whatever it is on any continent. Yeah,
But but the scientists wanted to stay anonymous because you're
not supposed to be taking up airways with social apps.
I guess, like the Internet's this prize commodity down Antarctica
(22:27):
and netflixing or using apps isn't really possible because it
takes too much bandwidth. But let's talk Chilian Argentina. That's
a bummer. You can't use Netflix there. I didn't know that,
all right, So so so back to this topic. So
we've already set Antarctica doesn't really have towns, but Chile
and Argentina have each set up the closest thing to that.
So Chile has VLAs Astraeas and Argentina has Esperanza. Both
(22:51):
areas have between fifty and eighty people living there during
the winters. They both have schools, gyms, medical facilities. But
as The New York Times points, both of these so
called towns were clear attempts to lay claim to Antarctica,
you know, should the Antarctic Treaty be renegotiated, and the
fact that the two countries are regional rivals only made
the situation worse. Like when Pinochet made a visit to
(23:13):
Antarctic in the nineteen seventies, Argentina felt like they were
losing the upper hand, so soon after his visit they
quietly sent a pregnant woman and her third trimester so
she could give birth to the first quote native Antarctica.
And according to Alice Obscura, the joke was that you know,
after they heard this, Chile started sending down couples to
conceive the first baby in the region, since you know,
(23:36):
some people think that birth starts a conception there, but
it's Argentina who's taken it the farthest. In Argentina, it's
illegal to show a map of the country that doesn't
include the section of Antarctica that they consider. There's biz
so I a should want to switch gears and talk entertainment.
But before we do that, should we talk about why
we're both so terrified to the continent, And that's you
(23:57):
know some of those early explorer stories, well, the early
explorer stories are definitely terrifying. And not only were they
wearing things like well clothing which really just absorbed the
snow and kept them damn but but they couldn't stop
being cold, like this guy absolutely Cherry Garrard, who sailed
with Captain Scott to the South Pole. He said this
about his teeth quote, the nerves of which had been
(24:20):
killed split to pieces from the chattering. His account in
the Antarctic trip was titled the worst journey in the World. Yeah,
he definitely wasn't glancing and you don't have to go
that far back to see how dangerous it can be.
Like in two thousand and fourteen, the British Halley six
Research Station lost its power and that is terrifying. There
(24:40):
the closest help was like eighteen hundred miles away in
the Falkland Islands. There was no sun, the temperature was
negative sixties seven degrees fahrenheit, and the winds were crazy.
The only thing that worked was a single satellite phone.
But the staff somehow managed to patch the problem in
nineteen hours and get limited elect fristity back. Of course,
(25:01):
they kind of dismissed it as being a you know,
not that big of a deal, and the station's electrician tweeted,
got Internet, lots of Yorkshire tea and a big cattle. Really,
what more do you need? Well? I love that he
was so calm. I was chatting with Noland, our researcher,
about this, and he was saying, the worst story he
read was about this Australian explorer Douglas Mawson. This is
(25:21):
back in and I'm gonna tell the story here. So
Mawson's this superstar geologist and he turns down Robert Scott's
expedition to lead his own. But his story is so tragic.
His timing was horrible, right, like, the blizzards were constant,
and winds off the coast where anywhere between fifty and
two hundred miles per hour. He split up his group
(25:43):
into different assignments, and he led a three man party
to map the far eastern shore. This was the most
difficult journeys. He was trying to map glaciers hundreds of
miles away, and so everything terrible happens. They're making about
three hundred miles out pretty smoothly, and then some weird
superstitious things up in like this petrol, which is this
bird you never see this far inland, comes out of
(26:04):
nowhere and just crashes into their sled and one of
the huskies eats her young one of his colleagues gets snowblindness.
Then a hundred fifty ft crevice opens up and swallows
that colleague. Yeah, as well as like their supplies and
a dog, elements are just against them. Then there's more snowblindness,
their dogs die, They run out of food, so they
(26:25):
have to eat their dogs. Masson's other colleague falls sick
and he carries them along, even though he has a
fever and dysentery. And despite all his best efforts and
trying to carry him, the pal passes away. So Masson's
basically alone at this point, and he's weak and damaged too,
but he somehow makes it to this cash of supplies
at this location called Aladdin's Cave, and when he's there,
(26:47):
another blizzard comes through and he's trapped for five more days.
But when he finally makes it back to camp to
meet up with the other teams, it's just in time
to see that the expedition ship has left for Australia.
The crew had actually waited for him, but now he's
from the ship's sail away and he has to stay
in Antarctica for another winner before he returns home. And
then the commercial ends and it says, come to Antarctica.
(27:09):
I mean, that is miserable, And you're right, the elements
just feel so raw and vicious. But I think we
should lighten this up a little bit with some events
to put on your calendar if you're headed to Antarctica.
So al right, here's a few of them. If you
like music, there's ice Stock, which is Antarctica's woodstock. There's
barbecue in bands and people in costumes. There there's also
(27:29):
Freezing Man, which is Antarctica's burning Man midwinter Day, is
a big deal. It's his celebration held halfway through The
Miserable Winner, when everyone huddles and watches the shining. Apparently
I don't know why they do this. Then there's the
Ross Cup, where once a year the Americans play scientists
from New Zealand and rugby and of course the Kiwi's
always slaughter the Americans and you know, personally because they
(27:51):
actually know how to play rugby. But also they do
that intimidating hawka dance that we've seen before. This is,
you know, all before they hit the field. That's pretty great.
And there's one other tradition I actually love, and it's
the moving of the South Pole. How does that work. Well,
it's because the ice shifts and so the marker for
the south pole moves about twenty five or thirty feet
every year. So there's this big ceremony that everyone from
(28:13):
the South Pole station attends and the south pole is
recalibrated and then a new pole is placed in that location.
Those are also fun. So I also looked into some
of the more standard things you could do, like people
play cards and board games, Argentina also just set up
this new movie theater. This might be part of their
ploy to seem like it's a real town, because they
also bring directors and actors there to talk about the films,
(28:35):
and they premiere new movies which are all subtitled for visitors.
But all the bases also have some version of the
three hundred club, which is where you sit in a
sauna that's three hundred degrees hotter than the temp outside,
then you run through the snow naked or do a
polar plunge, and then rush back in. I guess it's
supposed to be exhilarating. I just I've never understood the
whole like polar bear plunge thing that happens in so
(28:57):
many places, and it just sounds even worse here. So
I was reading on slate there's an Antarctic saying that
if it's twenty below and the wind ain't blowing, it
ain't bad. It sounds bad though, Yeah, I can't say
that I would agree with that statement. But the strangest
mundane thing I found that's actually no longer There was
a two lane bowling alley at McMurdo station. Can you
imagine bringing all that wood down in materials to build
(29:19):
a bowling alley. It's yeah, it's kind of insane, but
I found the photos on Laughing Squid. The alley was
built in ninety one and lasted for almost fifty years.
It's funny. It used this Brunswick manual pin set system
where an employee had to pick up the fallen pins
by hand and also send your bowling bowl back to
you down this ramp, and when they finally tore it
(29:39):
down in two thousand nine, it was the only manual
pin set system of that type left in the world.
Oh man, that's kind of a kind of a shame.
So so why did they end up tearing it down. Well,
eventually the wood on the lanes wore down, and replacing
the bowling alley was just too expensive. So they've turned
it into a curling club, and I would guess that
ice is a little bit easier to maintain. And you
know what I found really interesting was just how much
(30:01):
responsibility bartenders have an antarctic I mean, it's actually kind
of an important job. Why is that, Well, obviously, people
want to drink, I mean there's little else to do,
so having a good bar keep is comforting. But you know,
even though people aren't driving drunk, they're real dangerous to
drinking and Antarctica. I was reading this account of a
scientist who worked as the volunteer bartender at Club nineties
(30:23):
south and this is a bar at the South Pole station,
And this is how he's quoted in the Guardian. It
says I made it a point of honor to be
the last person to leave the club each night. I
learned to spot the signs that someone was likely to
wander drunkenly into the Antarctic night. And I heard too
many stories of people returning to base with hypothermia and frostbite.
My theory was it's easier to recover from too much
(30:45):
drinking than to grow back a missing limb. I was
happy only when everyone was safely tucked up and accounted for,
even if it meant leaving them passed out on the
bar's couch. I mean, with that blinding snow, it's supposedly
really easy for people to get lost. I I read
this account from the National History Museum where the scientists
talked about how he and a colleague walked just two
(31:07):
yards to get snow samples, and they thought they were
walking parallel to this seismic tunnel, and then they crossed
it and almost fell in, and they weren't even slashed.
They were like totally sober. So I'm really glad the
bartender has taken upon themselves to watch over the patrons.
But by the way, the strangest thing I read about
drinking in an article was that people often go outside
to be sick, but the stuff freezes as soon as
(31:29):
it touches the ice, so people are expected to clean
up after themselves with pick axes to chip that frozen
grossness away and then throw it out all right. Well,
on the flip side of that, one thing I didn't
expect to find an Antarctica was so many beautiful churches, definitely.
So I saw this gallery of seven churches in Antarctica
at messy Nessy Chick, and they were all gorgeous. My
(31:51):
favorite was this beautiful Russian Orthodox church that's a wooden structure,
like you wouldn't think that would last through those winds,
but it's somehow survived. It's like the other miracle on
ice exactly. I mean, they are all sorts of these churches.
There's there's a Catholic church that was built in an
ice cave. This Bulgarian church that's basically under the snow,
you know, except for the church bell, and it's kind
(32:13):
of a sweet thing that they ring it with some frequency,
you know, especially when you consider it was built for
a four member Bulgarian team. There's some inner faith churches,
you know. The priest is happy to conduct both Buddhist
and be High services as well. Well. I think we've
covered where to get sazzled and where to get saved.
But I know we want to talk about why plumbers
are the real heroes of Antarctica, or at least I do.
(32:34):
So let's take a quick break and then discuss Welcome
back to Part time Genius. Now, before the break, Mango,
you were making some pretty big statements about plumbers and Antarctica.
(32:54):
I was reading about Brendan Hopkins, who's this Australian plumber
at the Casey Station, and he was talking about how
he's tricked out the pipes so they don't freeze in
this crazy climate. I mean, that's an important thing, and
so for most of the pipes, water is constantly running
through them, but that isn't the case with the sewer lines,
so it's really complicated when you hit the flush like.
To keep the sewer pipes from freezing, his team runs
(33:16):
these electric cables around the pipes just to heat the pipes.
And because no waste can be left in Antarctica, he's
built this crazy wastewater treatment plant that filters the waste
multiple times with microbes. And there's even this additive that
he uses to help package and reduce the way so
it can be shipped off the continent. He has this
pager set up just to watch the sewer systems at
(33:37):
all times, because fixing it is an enormous task. But
the one perk that the electricians and plumbers get is
taking turns brewing beer while they're supposedly sworn enemies in
their natural habitat. According to Brendan, they get along swimmingly
in Antarctica. It's pretty fun, you know. I actually think
being a chef down there is pretty darn heroic as well.
(33:57):
In fact, it's an honor to be chosen to look
at the Concordia base there, you know, since you actually
have to win a lottery to work at the French
and Italian base. But before you can even put your
name and you have to demonstrate a mastery of numerous
international cuisines, and you have to be a work course.
I mean you're making all three meals a day by
yourself for the crew there. But the cook seems to
(34:18):
love the high pressure environment and the food is top notch.
Lonely Planet calls it the best cuisine in Antarctica, with
the seven course Sunday lunches being the absolute highlight. Well,
speaking of absolute highlights, you know what time it is?
Time for the PTG fact off, Let's do it. H
(34:42):
Do you know that Antarctica is one of the best
places in the world to find meteor rights? Apparently that
snow white landscape is perfect for finding space junk. I
mean everywhere else in the world it's so much more difficult.
That's interesting. Well I've got one here. So Metallica once
played a concert in Antarctica and they did this just
to be the first band to play on all seven continents.
Pretty impressive. Uh yeah, and Metallica is so cool. Do
(35:05):
you know what small icebergs are called. I don't. They're
called growlers. They're usually the size of a grand piano
or a truck. And if you want to upgrade to
a medium sized iceberg, those are called burgie bits, Burgie
bits nice. Well. According to Australia's government site, doctors who
winter in Antarctica must have their appendix removed before traveling there.
(35:25):
That's because they don't want anyone having appendicitis while they're Oh,
that's crazy. So this summer in Edinburgh geographic survey found
ninety one volcanoes hiding two kilometers under the ice and Antarctica.
It's apparently the largest volcanic region on Earth. All right, Well,
when scientists discovered a new species of yeti crab living
in the thermal vents under Antartica, they were so impressed
(35:47):
with its hairy chest that they named it for David Hasselhoff.
It's affectionately known as the Hoff crabf crab. I've actually
seen that critter, and I think it's way better looking
than its namesake. But I do love that fact. So
why don't you take home today's trophy? I can do that,
all right, Well, that's it for today's show. If you
have any Antarctic facts you're dying to tell us, don't forget.
(36:08):
You can always drop us a line on our seven
Fact hot line one eight four four pt Genius or
email us at part time Genius at how stuff works
dot com. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks again for listening.
(36:32):
Part Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works
and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do
the important things we couldn't even again to understand. Tristan
McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme
song and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland
does the exact producer thing. Gayluesier is our lead researcher,
with support from the research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve Jeff Cook gets the
(36:54):
show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you
really really like what you've heard, if you could leave
a good review for us? Did we did? We forget Jason?
Jason who
Guess what, mango? What's that will? So you know I
love a good A t M story, right, Like we
we've talked about a t M so many times in
the past, Like there's the A t M in the
Vatican City and it's the only one in the world
that operates in Latin, which is pretty cool. But I
have a new favorite A t M fact that I
wanted to share. So there's actually an A t M
located in Antarctica and it's operated by Wells Fargo, and
(00:22):
it's in the Guinness Book and they call it the
world's loneliest A t M because it's the only one. Actually,
there is a second A t M on hand, and
it's hidden in a closet or something, and it doesn't
actually work. It's just there to cannibalize for the spare part.
That's sad. But what's even weird is that Wells Fargo
only services the machine once every two years, and that's
(00:44):
when Wells sends a repairment out to give the A
t M a little check up. That's crazy. So why
don't they service it more frequently? Like don't they have
to replenish the cash? Well, that's the beauty of banking
and Antarctica. There's no need for this that, you know,
the population there is so small that the money just
keeps recirculating. But learning about that a t M did
make me wonder, like, what are the other peculiarities of
(01:04):
living in Antarctica? How do everyday things like plumbing and
internet work down there? And that's what today shows all about.
So let's dive in. Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
(01:31):
Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
friend Man and sitting behind the soundproof glass vigorously shaking
a snow globe in each hand as our producer Tristan McNeil.
Where did he get those things? He's making it blizzard?
So meno, I'm gonna ask you right off the bat,
what what's your interest in visiting the South Pole? So?
I mean, it looks beautiful, but there's so many beautiful
(01:53):
places in the world, and you know, I hate the cold.
Plus some of those early expeditions to Antarctica sounded so
miserable it's kind of scared me off, I know, and
I actually want to talk a little bit about those
expeditions later. And clearly we both like warm weather because
we live in warm places, but I kind of want
to see the landscape in person at least once. So
I started looking up tours this week and I found
(02:15):
this group called White Desert Luxury Tours. Have you ever
heard of this company out because they basically, do you know,
like glamping for an arcticle? How do you glamp in Antarctica? Well?
I was reading this article in Wired, and basically White
Desert is set up these luxury camping pods and this
beautiful Mars like area of Antarctica. The pods have solar
(02:36):
panels and propane heaters, and they're eco friendly too, but
you know, to keep you safe. They're also designed to
withstand a hundred and eighty mile per hour. Well that's
how wendy it gets there. And you know the pods
are beautifully outfitted, but the whole camp must have cost
a fortune to build. Why is that? Well, remember, getting
stuff to Antarctica isn't cheap. According to the article, it
(02:57):
costs thirty eight dollars a pound to live furniture there,
and the pods themselves weigh three tons of piece, which
is insane. And and trips like that always sound like
something rich people do just because they're looking for new
ways to spend their money. It's like God's way of
telling you have too much cat Wow. You know, the
camp only services around a hundred clients a year, so
it's definitely exclusive. But you'd be in some pretty classy company.
(03:22):
So you know. Past travelers include Saudi princesses, Prince William
and also buzz Aldern wait, buzz Aldern Glans apparently so.
But you know, what you experience Antarctica is also insane.
Once your golfstream jet lands on the icy runway, you'll
get to explore neon blue ice tunnels and lakes, and
(03:42):
go on guided hikes, penguins up close, visit all these
science bases. They even take you to the South Pole.
I mean, everyone who's gone says the beauty of this
untouched land is just overwhelming. Plus you get unlimited champagne.
So I just pulled this up on my computer. Hot
showers first draped on all the dining chairs. It looks
(04:03):
so fancy. I'm I'm definitely in all right. Well, the
only catches it cost eighty tho dollars a person. But
you know, I've always said I just don't like the
cold that much, and I have to be true to myself,
so I'm out again. I didn't take long. So speaking
of hot showers, it it reminds me of this event
that takes place in Antarctica. It's called the Race around
the World. Basically, it's this fun two mile race that
(04:24):
takes place on Christmas Day at the South Pole and
it's for the scientists there. It's called around the World
because you're actually racing through every single time zone. I
didn't think about that, so you would touch every single
time Wow, that's amazing. It's pretty awesome. Then, and while
some people run the course, you can actually do it
on skis or snowmobile. But the reason I'm mentioning it
is that the prize for the winning runner is a
(04:46):
five minute hot shower. So according to Business Insider, residents
at the South Pole station are limited to to two
minute showers a week, so a bonus five minute shower
is like a huge treat. I guess that makes sense.
I mean, it's funny how you just expect things like
hot showers are everywhere by now. But you know, one
of the things that's so cool about Antarctica is how
environmentally friendly the camps are. The Treaty of Antarticle, which
(05:09):
was signed by twelve countries back in nineteen fifty nine.
It was this, It was this agreement that the land
there would be used for science and peaceful purposes. And
part of the agreement is that you can't dirty the
landscape or leave any contaminants there. In fact, if you
want to organize your own expedition to Antarctica, the process
involves three things. So first it is showing that you
(05:30):
will be completely self sufficient. Second is that you have
a good reason for being there, and third is that
you have little or no environmental impact on the land.
And there's special attention paid to this, and if you
can't lay out your plan for creating zero waste, they'll
deny you permission to go there. That's pretty interesting. So
I was actually reading about the recycling and Antarctica and
(05:51):
it's like at Portlandia levels. I saw the spreadsheet on
Boing Boing from America's McMurdo base, and they have this
matrix for where to recycle old or disposed of wood
and it's pretty intense, like pens and pencils have a
specific bin, and drained radiators have their own bin, and
mops and brooms haven't been everything is clearly charred out
(06:11):
where it goes and how it gets separated. But they
also poked fun at themselves. What do you mean by that?
So one prankster put all these jokes signs up of
what can and can't go into the bins, and they
seem to have stuck around, like there's a recycling bin.
That's where glitter. And in the rules for what's recyclable
glitter it lists red glitter, blue glitter, ground, unicorn, horn, wizards, hats,
(06:33):
and wands. But in the no section it lists no
child beauty pageant, sashes or Mariah Carey movies. And that's
fair enough. We sort of dove right into hot showers
and glitter recycling somehow. But before we talk about things
like how plumbing works, why don't we talk a little
bit about who lives in Antarctica? Definitely, but why don't
we do some local slang first? God, do you immediately
(06:55):
put us off track again? I do, like an art explains, So,
what are some of your favorites? One of my favorite
terms is city mice and also country mice, like city
my state put on the McMurdo station, while country mice
wandered to other camps and travel around. That's pretty cute.
So you got any others, Yeah, gombles or tiny snowballs
that's stuck to dogs for so the d goobles when
(07:16):
you rub that loose snow off before you come inside.
And also Hollywood showers. Those are when you take a
fantasy shower that's more than the a lot of two minutes.
Oh god, all right, why do you keep bring up
showers here? You know, when I started abroad and upon
to bed in college, it was freezing and you didn't
get to take hot showers that often. So I took
like ten or eleven bucket showers during the trip, and
(07:37):
they were mostly with lukewarm water. It's strange being there,
Like I realized there's so many things I could live without.
I don't really need TV or a lot of clothes
or a lot of amenities, but hot showers. Well, when
I came back to the college, I I just stand
in the shower and praise American plumbing. I can understand that.
All right. Well, here's a bit of jargon I found
on mental flaws. It's ice shock, and that this is
(07:59):
the idea that no matter how crazy everything seems. In
an article, while you're there. It's this acknowledgement that the
rest of the world is even crazier. Alright, let's get
back to who lives there. Obviously, Antarctica doesn't have an
indigenous population. Do you know the site cool and arctica
dot com. I can't say I'm familiar with it, says
educational say that's run by a former an Arctic marine
(08:19):
biologist and now he's a school teacher and puts out
great information. But on a site he writes there around
sixty six scientific basis, of which thirty seven are occupied
year round. Around four thousand people living at Arctica during
the summer months, and that reduces to about a thousand
who over winner there. It's also rare that someone will
stay there for two winners in a row. They might
(08:40):
do one winner wrapped in two summers, but two winners
in a row tends to be bad for people's mental states. Uh.
And so the McMurdo station actually has about like a
thousand or so people during peak season though, right, yeah,
that's right. And what's funny is that I didn't quite
put together how large an Arctica is and how far
some of the bases are from one another. It's Apparently
the fifth are just continent, and because five percent of
(09:03):
it is covered in ice, the size of the continent
actually changes like according to Live Science, the quote size
varies through the seasons. Expanding sea ice along the coast
nearly doubles the continent size during the winter. Isn't that crazy?
It nearly doubles it that it is crazy, you know.
In speaking of the geography, I was stunned by the geography,
and I didn't realize that the land is basically all desert.
(09:26):
You know, the inner regions of Antarctic could get less
than two inches of precipitation each year, and this is
less than the Sahara desert. And it's also cold there.
I don't know if you knew this about Anartica. I didn't.
The Russian Vostok station there recorded the lowest temperature in
the world at negative a hundred and twenty nine point
three degrees fahrenheit. I mean, I guess it's that extra
(09:49):
point three that really gets to you. Yeah, it's cold,
but it's a dry cold. I know we're supposed to
be talking people and not penguins here, but one of
the things I thought was funny was that the male
emperor penguins are the only warm blooded animal to stay
on the continent during the freezing winters. Apparently, when the
female lays an egg, it's a very were pregnant situation,
(10:09):
like the daddy bird sits on the family egg keeping
it warm while the MoMA penguin goes out to sea
for nine weeks and and then the mom's return just
before the eggs hatch, which is because you know, male
penguins are so woke. Glad you're able to work that. Alright, Well,
I actually have a funny penguin story to talk about,
and I also want to discuss the crazy ways Chile
(10:30):
and Argentina have, you know, tried to each claim part
of Antarctica as their own territory. But before we get
to that, let's take a quick break, all right, mangoes, So,
how many times have we had a super talented poet
on the show? Has that happened before? I don't think
it's happened yet. I don't think it has either. I mean,
(10:50):
I know Tristan dabbles a little in poetry, but I mean,
between us, they're they're not the best poems. But he's trying,
he's trying hard. But We're super excited to have Jen
dilling Martin on the show today. And and as we
discussed Jen as an accomplished poet, she's an associate publisher
at Riverhead, which is one of our favorite book publishers
in the world. But that's not the reason we've got
her on today. We actually begged her to come on
(11:12):
because in two thousand and thirteen, Jen became the Antarctic
Artist in Residence and she used the six week stint
there to inspire her poetry. So Jen, welcome to Part
Time Genius. Thank you so much. So, Jen, I know
you're in pretty esteemed company as an artist in residence.
I believe Werner Herzog was also an artist there too,
But can you tell us a little bit about how
(11:33):
you got that gig and what's included? Totally, it's this
incredible grant run through the National Science Foundation that they
give to about two people a year from any discipline
at all to go make art inspired by the work
that you then get to witness being done in Antarctica. Uh.
It is a really elaborate application process that I think
(11:54):
weed's out the people who have to go through all
kinds of bureaucratic paperwork to just even apply for it,
But once accepted, you get to I mean, you get
to lead the coolest life imaginable. You get to go
to any of the base camps that interests you. You
can ask the scientists any questions you want of them.
You get to travel all around the continent. I got
(12:16):
a helicopter pilot Ryan to take me um two different
base camps and basically it's just like the most incredible
experience that I will ever have in my life. So
whatever it is you want to go and study as
an artist, you ask for and they make it all
come together for you. Wow, That's that's pretty incredible. I
will say one of the things that surprised me was
(12:36):
was all the training that you talked about in your
first few weeks there. You know how to fix the snowmobile,
how to pitch a tent and a blizzard. I'm just curious,
like were you were you expecting that and can you
talk a little bit about that experience? Absolutely, you know,
it's one of those things where it doesn't really dawn
on you, or at least I didn't dawn on me
fully until really down there, just how isolated, vulnerable you
(13:01):
are and in actually grave peril should anything go dramatically
wrong on your visit. And there can be winds so
high even in the summer season on the continent that
they cannot get planes to and from Antarctica for a
week or two at the time, so we're there to
be a very bad accident, you could be stuck with
you know, the medical facilities of you know, just like
(13:22):
a small clinic to take care of you. So um,
they're they're very rigorous even before you go down with
getting all kinds of doctor and dental records, and then
upon arrival there's just an enormous battery of trainings and
tests and um presentations to make sure you're behaving as
safely as possible and equipped for uh, you know, as
they call it, white out conditions which can arise sort
(13:44):
of in less than an hour's time out of nowhere.
So um, it is, it is. It is pretty raw
in a way that's hard to fully appreciate when we
live in a you know, within a first world nation
where help is just a simple mind one one call
a way. And yeah, I mean another thing I was
fascinated by was well I spent a little time on
(14:06):
your tumbler page which is so great. And uh, I
was fascinated by the specific gear you had to pick
up in New Zealand, and especially the bunny boots. Can
you tell us a little bit about why you had
to take special care of them on airplanes? Yeah, as
we were preparing to leave New Zealand, there was all
kinds of kind of off hand information that they were
just throwing out there. And most everyone had been down
(14:28):
in Antarctica many times, but it was my first time,
and already I was trying to digest so much new information,
and very casually the guy handing out these huge, white,
eight pounds inflatable white bunny boots said, oh, yeah, don't
forget to open the valves so your boots don't explode
on the plane. It seemed like something that maybe they
(14:49):
should have emphasized even more directly and not just muttered
as they passed them across the table to me. But
the boots are pressurized in this actually the I guess
the air air cushions inside that keep them warm. But
because you take a you know, only semi pressurized military
jet to Antarctica, the boots are in danger of exploding
(15:10):
from the pressure change on the plane. If you don't
open these little mini air valves on them. That's so crazy.
And the idea that these things called bunny boots are
so dangerous is amazing. The case of the exploding bunny boots.
You know, it was really fun looking at so many
of your photos from the trip, and one of the
things that struck me was just how intense the sun looks.
(15:33):
And I was curious to hear, you know, what was
it like to be in constant daylight? And was it
tough to figure out, you know, tricks that are going
to sleep each night? Totally? Yeah. You know, everyone talks
and imagines, you know, if you live in Scandinavia or Antarctica,
like how horrible must be when it's dark all the time.
But the truth is is actually equally horrible to have
it be light all the time, and not just sort
(15:54):
of light, I mean like high noon light all the time.
And um, some of might say I was actually living
in a tent, which meant there's there was just no
way for it to not be so glaringly bright, and
that light is bouncing off all the ice in the snow,
and you do, you you do start to get fatigued
and just longing for one night of real darkness and
(16:18):
sleep um, and the times that I was in kind
of a little hut or dorm situation. I got so
desperate that I actually took the wool blanket and took
kind of like some tacks and tacked it over the
window to try to block all the different cracks of
light that kept coming in. It was so kind of
enervating by several weeks deep into it, It's insane. Yeah.
(16:40):
But the other thing that happens is it's very easy
to lose track of all time because the sun isn't
moving and so um, particularly at night it was you know,
you'd be hanging out with people talking and drinking and
you would feel like, oh, it's probably like seven or
a p m. And it's actually two in the morning,
and you've totally lost track of all all paths of
of time. It does really mess with with your mind.
(17:02):
So I saw in your tumbler that you visited an
Antarctica Latin club, and I was curious, what are some
of the other fun recreational activities we might not have
heard about. Oh, totally there. It's kind of like Oberlin,
but with like weirder, really cool adults. I mean, every night,
we're probably fifteen or twenty different clubs or activities that
(17:25):
you could do that we're all just being voluntarily taught
by the awesome people of Antarctica who wanted to share
their talents and entertain each other. So everything from every
kind of sport you can imagine too, you know, knitting club,
guitar club, chess club. People would give just lectures and
presentations on things that they were themselves studying. Uh, and
(17:46):
even people not showing up for clubs were always up
to something really weird. There was this very introverted woman
who I always saw like running around with pieces of
PVC pipe and they were all laid out on this
desk and I finally stopped in to ask what was
going on, and she goes, oh, oh, you know, I'm
I'm as sending a PVC harp, Like a PVC harp.
(18:10):
She's like, oh, yes, I'm sure you haven't heard that
to say you can make a harp out of pvc. No,
I wasn't. I wasn't familiar. But I love that you
are committed to doing this down in your free time
on Intarctica. So that's pretty great. Now, do you do
you think you'll have the chance to get back anytime soon.
You know. This is the saddest thing of at least
(18:30):
the way that I went is I don't know that
I will ever get to go back again, and pretty
much any other place any of us will go in
our lives. You know, if you love it, you're like, oh,
I can't wait to go back with my sister or
my friend or my partner. But this is an experience
that I don't know that I will ever get to
go have again. So leaving was incredibly sad. Um I
(18:50):
will say, there's just an incredible global society of what
are called ice people, and it basically means that you
live on Antarctica at some point, and there's just this
deep understanding and familiarity when you meet another ice person
in the real world. And I've stayed even now, several
years later, in very very close contact with a number
(19:11):
of really dear friends I made while down there, and
I think there's something in that that connection that we
all have shared this weird world. What would you want
to experience again? Oh wow, I just the vastness and
the untouched nous, Like I've I am a big traveler
and I've been to incredible places like the Sahara, the Himalayas,
but even they just have no The sense of scale
(19:35):
in Antarctica is something so staggering and beyond anything that
I had ever witnessed in my life. And again, besides
outer space, I don't think there's anything you could see
that would make you feel just so totally dwarfed as
a human um in a way that I find totally
freeing and exciting and so beautiful to see so much
of the world that the in fact probably be the
only last part of the world that we haven't managed
(19:56):
to pave over or destroy in some way. You'll be
happy to know that in one week we've spoken with
an astronaut and now someone who's been to Antarctica. I
didn't even realize I don't even think about that, but
in in one in one week, so we we spoke
to uh astronaut Chris Hadfield from from Canada on an
episode about Canada. But you know, for all of our
(20:16):
listeners out there, I hope you'll check out Jen's book,
We Mammals and Hospitable Times. It's a It's a terrific book,
and Jen, thanks so much for joining us on part
time genius. Welcome back to part time Genius, and we're
(20:40):
talking Antarctica. So will you said you had a funny
penguin story to all I do, and that this is
from Maggie kirk Baker and it's a piece on boying boying.
But you know, in the early nineteen hundreds, as Robert
Scott was making his way to the South Pole, he
was accompanied by this surgeon named George Levic, and most
of the team's observations were printed up in the team's
official journals, all except this one section of levis notes
(21:04):
explicitly describing penguin sex. And apparently Levic witnessed penguin on
peguin acts so depraved that while he felt he had
to document them, he wrote them all in Greek rather
than English. I don't know why that makes it better,
but it's only recently that they've been discovered and added
to the journals. But on the topic of sex, maybe
(21:25):
now it's a good time to talk about No not
I was actually gonna say how Chilly and Argentina have
tried to use pregnancies to their territorial advantage. But now
I'm curious what you have to say about tender so
this is kind of a ridiculous story, but Nolan found
this bit about an American scientist who decided to log
on too Tinder and an Arctica, and at first no
(21:45):
one showed up on his radar, but when he widened
the radius, he found a match of forty five minute
helicopter right away. Unfortunately, the scientist he was chasing was
in the field and couldn't meet up, and they only
met very briefly on the day she was leaving at Arctica.
As he told the cut quote, I've yet to become
the first tender hook up in Antarctic history. But she's
(22:05):
actually coming back and we may overlap. There's still hope.
He's just a romantic I guess. I guess. So. I
mean that's got to be pretty good press for Tender though,
wouldn't you think, And you know that you can find
love or or lost whatever it is on any continent. Yeah,
But but the scientists wanted to stay anonymous because you're
not supposed to be taking up airways with social apps.
I guess, like the Internet's this prize commodity down Antarctica
(22:27):
and netflixing or using apps isn't really possible because it
takes too much bandwidth. But let's talk Chilian Argentina. That's
a bummer. You can't use Netflix there. I didn't know that,
all right, So so so back to this topic. So
we've already set Antarctica doesn't really have towns, but Chile
and Argentina have each set up the closest thing to that.
So Chile has VLAs Astraeas and Argentina has Esperanza. Both
(22:51):
areas have between fifty and eighty people living there during
the winters. They both have schools, gyms, medical facilities. But
as The New York Times points, both of these so
called towns were clear attempts to lay claim to Antarctica,
you know, should the Antarctic Treaty be renegotiated, and the
fact that the two countries are regional rivals only made
the situation worse. Like when Pinochet made a visit to
(23:13):
Antarctic in the nineteen seventies, Argentina felt like they were
losing the upper hand, so soon after his visit they
quietly sent a pregnant woman and her third trimester so
she could give birth to the first quote native Antarctica.
And according to Alice Obscura, the joke was that you know,
after they heard this, Chile started sending down couples to
conceive the first baby in the region, since you know,
(23:36):
some people think that birth starts a conception there, but
it's Argentina who's taken it the farthest. In Argentina, it's
illegal to show a map of the country that doesn't
include the section of Antarctica that they consider. There's biz
so I a should want to switch gears and talk entertainment.
But before we do that, should we talk about why
we're both so terrified to the continent, And that's you
(23:57):
know some of those early explorer stories, well, the early
explorer stories are definitely terrifying. And not only were they
wearing things like well clothing which really just absorbed the
snow and kept them damn but but they couldn't stop
being cold, like this guy absolutely Cherry Garrard, who sailed
with Captain Scott to the South Pole. He said this
about his teeth quote, the nerves of which had been
(24:20):
killed split to pieces from the chattering. His account in
the Antarctic trip was titled the worst journey in the World. Yeah,
he definitely wasn't glancing and you don't have to go
that far back to see how dangerous it can be.
Like in two thousand and fourteen, the British Halley six
Research Station lost its power and that is terrifying. There
(24:40):
the closest help was like eighteen hundred miles away in
the Falkland Islands. There was no sun, the temperature was
negative sixties seven degrees fahrenheit, and the winds were crazy.
The only thing that worked was a single satellite phone.
But the staff somehow managed to patch the problem in
nineteen hours and get limited elect fristity back. Of course,
(25:01):
they kind of dismissed it as being a you know,
not that big of a deal, and the station's electrician tweeted,
got Internet, lots of Yorkshire tea and a big cattle. Really,
what more do you need? Well? I love that he
was so calm. I was chatting with Noland, our researcher,
about this, and he was saying, the worst story he
read was about this Australian explorer Douglas Mawson. This is
(25:21):
back in and I'm gonna tell the story here. So
Mawson's this superstar geologist and he turns down Robert Scott's
expedition to lead his own. But his story is so tragic.
His timing was horrible, right, like, the blizzards were constant,
and winds off the coast where anywhere between fifty and
two hundred miles per hour. He split up his group
(25:43):
into different assignments, and he led a three man party
to map the far eastern shore. This was the most
difficult journeys. He was trying to map glaciers hundreds of
miles away, and so everything terrible happens. They're making about
three hundred miles out pretty smoothly, and then some weird
superstitious things up in like this petrol, which is this
bird you never see this far inland, comes out of
(26:04):
nowhere and just crashes into their sled and one of
the huskies eats her young one of his colleagues gets snowblindness.
Then a hundred fifty ft crevice opens up and swallows
that colleague. Yeah, as well as like their supplies and
a dog, elements are just against them. Then there's more snowblindness,
their dogs die, They run out of food, so they
(26:25):
have to eat their dogs. Masson's other colleague falls sick
and he carries them along, even though he has a
fever and dysentery. And despite all his best efforts and
trying to carry him, the pal passes away. So Masson's
basically alone at this point, and he's weak and damaged too,
but he somehow makes it to this cash of supplies
at this location called Aladdin's Cave, and when he's there,
(26:47):
another blizzard comes through and he's trapped for five more days.
But when he finally makes it back to camp to
meet up with the other teams, it's just in time
to see that the expedition ship has left for Australia.
The crew had actually waited for him, but now he's
from the ship's sail away and he has to stay
in Antarctica for another winner before he returns home. And
then the commercial ends and it says, come to Antarctica.
(27:09):
I mean, that is miserable, And you're right, the elements
just feel so raw and vicious. But I think we
should lighten this up a little bit with some events
to put on your calendar if you're headed to Antarctica.
So al right, here's a few of them. If you
like music, there's ice Stock, which is Antarctica's woodstock. There's
barbecue in bands and people in costumes. There there's also
(27:29):
Freezing Man, which is Antarctica's burning Man midwinter Day, is
a big deal. It's his celebration held halfway through The
Miserable Winner, when everyone huddles and watches the shining. Apparently
I don't know why they do this. Then there's the
Ross Cup, where once a year the Americans play scientists
from New Zealand and rugby and of course the Kiwi's
always slaughter the Americans and you know, personally because they
(27:51):
actually know how to play rugby. But also they do
that intimidating hawka dance that we've seen before. This is,
you know, all before they hit the field. That's pretty great.
And there's one other tradition I actually love, and it's
the moving of the South Pole. How does that work. Well,
it's because the ice shifts and so the marker for
the south pole moves about twenty five or thirty feet
every year. So there's this big ceremony that everyone from
(28:13):
the South Pole station attends and the south pole is
recalibrated and then a new pole is placed in that location.
Those are also fun. So I also looked into some
of the more standard things you could do, like people
play cards and board games, Argentina also just set up
this new movie theater. This might be part of their
ploy to seem like it's a real town, because they
also bring directors and actors there to talk about the films,
(28:35):
and they premiere new movies which are all subtitled for visitors.
But all the bases also have some version of the
three hundred club, which is where you sit in a
sauna that's three hundred degrees hotter than the temp outside,
then you run through the snow naked or do a
polar plunge, and then rush back in. I guess it's
supposed to be exhilarating. I just I've never understood the
whole like polar bear plunge thing that happens in so
(28:57):
many places, and it just sounds even worse here. So
I was reading on slate there's an Antarctic saying that
if it's twenty below and the wind ain't blowing, it
ain't bad. It sounds bad though, Yeah, I can't say
that I would agree with that statement. But the strangest
mundane thing I found that's actually no longer There was
a two lane bowling alley at McMurdo station. Can you
imagine bringing all that wood down in materials to build
(29:19):
a bowling alley. It's yeah, it's kind of insane, but
I found the photos on Laughing Squid. The alley was
built in ninety one and lasted for almost fifty years.
It's funny. It used this Brunswick manual pin set system
where an employee had to pick up the fallen pins
by hand and also send your bowling bowl back to
you down this ramp, and when they finally tore it
(29:39):
down in two thousand nine, it was the only manual
pin set system of that type left in the world.
Oh man, that's kind of a kind of a shame.
So so why did they end up tearing it down. Well,
eventually the wood on the lanes wore down, and replacing
the bowling alley was just too expensive. So they've turned
it into a curling club, and I would guess that
ice is a little bit easier to maintain. And you
know what I found really interesting was just how much
(30:01):
responsibility bartenders have an antarctic I mean, it's actually kind
of an important job. Why is that, Well, obviously, people
want to drink, I mean there's little else to do,
so having a good bar keep is comforting. But you know,
even though people aren't driving drunk, they're real dangerous to
drinking and Antarctica. I was reading this account of a
scientist who worked as the volunteer bartender at Club nineties
(30:23):
south and this is a bar at the South Pole station,
And this is how he's quoted in the Guardian. It
says I made it a point of honor to be
the last person to leave the club each night. I
learned to spot the signs that someone was likely to
wander drunkenly into the Antarctic night. And I heard too
many stories of people returning to base with hypothermia and frostbite.
My theory was it's easier to recover from too much
(30:45):
drinking than to grow back a missing limb. I was
happy only when everyone was safely tucked up and accounted for,
even if it meant leaving them passed out on the
bar's couch. I mean, with that blinding snow, it's supposedly
really easy for people to get lost. I I read
this account from the National History Museum where the scientists
talked about how he and a colleague walked just two
(31:07):
yards to get snow samples, and they thought they were
walking parallel to this seismic tunnel, and then they crossed
it and almost fell in, and they weren't even slashed.
They were like totally sober. So I'm really glad the
bartender has taken upon themselves to watch over the patrons.
But by the way, the strangest thing I read about
drinking in an article was that people often go outside
to be sick, but the stuff freezes as soon as
(31:29):
it touches the ice, so people are expected to clean
up after themselves with pick axes to chip that frozen
grossness away and then throw it out all right. Well,
on the flip side of that, one thing I didn't
expect to find an Antarctica was so many beautiful churches, definitely.
So I saw this gallery of seven churches in Antarctica
at messy Nessy Chick, and they were all gorgeous. My
(31:51):
favorite was this beautiful Russian Orthodox church that's a wooden structure,
like you wouldn't think that would last through those winds,
but it's somehow survived. It's like the other miracle on
ice exactly. I mean, they are all sorts of these churches.
There's there's a Catholic church that was built in an
ice cave. This Bulgarian church that's basically under the snow,
you know, except for the church bell, and it's kind
(32:13):
of a sweet thing that they ring it with some frequency,
you know, especially when you consider it was built for
a four member Bulgarian team. There's some inner faith churches,
you know. The priest is happy to conduct both Buddhist
and be High services as well. Well. I think we've
covered where to get sazzled and where to get saved.
But I know we want to talk about why plumbers
are the real heroes of Antarctica, or at least I do.
(32:34):
So let's take a quick break and then discuss Welcome
back to Part time Genius. Now, before the break, Mango,
you were making some pretty big statements about plumbers and Antarctica.
(32:54):
I was reading about Brendan Hopkins, who's this Australian plumber
at the Casey Station, and he was talking about how
he's tricked out the pipes so they don't freeze in
this crazy climate. I mean, that's an important thing, and
so for most of the pipes, water is constantly running
through them, but that isn't the case with the sewer lines,
so it's really complicated when you hit the flush like.
To keep the sewer pipes from freezing, his team runs
(33:16):
these electric cables around the pipes just to heat the pipes.
And because no waste can be left in Antarctica, he's
built this crazy wastewater treatment plant that filters the waste
multiple times with microbes. And there's even this additive that
he uses to help package and reduce the way so
it can be shipped off the continent. He has this
pager set up just to watch the sewer systems at
(33:37):
all times, because fixing it is an enormous task. But
the one perk that the electricians and plumbers get is
taking turns brewing beer while they're supposedly sworn enemies in
their natural habitat. According to Brendan, they get along swimmingly
in Antarctica. It's pretty fun, you know. I actually think
being a chef down there is pretty darn heroic as well.
(33:57):
In fact, it's an honor to be chosen to look
at the Concordia base there, you know, since you actually
have to win a lottery to work at the French
and Italian base. But before you can even put your
name and you have to demonstrate a mastery of numerous
international cuisines, and you have to be a work course.
I mean you're making all three meals a day by
yourself for the crew there. But the cook seems to
(34:18):
love the high pressure environment and the food is top notch.
Lonely Planet calls it the best cuisine in Antarctica, with
the seven course Sunday lunches being the absolute highlight. Well,
speaking of absolute highlights, you know what time it is?
Time for the PTG fact off, Let's do it. H
(34:42):
Do you know that Antarctica is one of the best
places in the world to find meteor rights? Apparently that
snow white landscape is perfect for finding space junk. I
mean everywhere else in the world it's so much more difficult.
That's interesting. Well I've got one here. So Metallica once
played a concert in Antarctica and they did this just
to be the first band to play on all seven continents.
Pretty impressive. Uh yeah, and Metallica is so cool. Do
(35:05):
you know what small icebergs are called. I don't. They're
called growlers. They're usually the size of a grand piano
or a truck. And if you want to upgrade to
a medium sized iceberg, those are called burgie bits, Burgie
bits nice. Well. According to Australia's government site, doctors who
winter in Antarctica must have their appendix removed before traveling there.
(35:25):
That's because they don't want anyone having appendicitis while they're Oh,
that's crazy. So this summer in Edinburgh geographic survey found
ninety one volcanoes hiding two kilometers under the ice and Antarctica.
It's apparently the largest volcanic region on Earth. All right, Well,
when scientists discovered a new species of yeti crab living
in the thermal vents under Antartica, they were so impressed
(35:47):
with its hairy chest that they named it for David Hasselhoff.
It's affectionately known as the Hoff crabf crab. I've actually
seen that critter, and I think it's way better looking
than its namesake. But I do love that fact. So
why don't you take home today's trophy? I can do that,
all right, Well, that's it for today's show. If you
have any Antarctic facts you're dying to tell us, don't forget.
(36:08):
You can always drop us a line on our seven
Fact hot line one eight four four pt Genius or
email us at part time Genius at how stuff works
dot com. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks again for listening.
(36:32):
Part Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works
and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do
the important things we couldn't even again to understand. Tristan
McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme
song and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland
does the exact producer thing. Gayluesier is our lead researcher,
with support from the research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve Jeff Cook gets the
(36:54):
show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
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