Mental Floss Presents: The Quest for the North Pole Trailer

In this new podcast, Mental Floss Presents: The Quest for the North Pole, we’ll dive into the adventure, excitement, and danger surrounding our obsession with the North Pole. Hosted by Kat Long, the science editor at Mental Floss and obsessive fan of polar history, this show will analyze the motives and celebrate the triumphs of the people who sought the northernmost point on the globe. Many wanted to claim its discovery—but only one could be the first.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah. On the morning of April seven, hundreds of miles
from civilization, renowned explorer Robert Edwin Perry crunches over the
snow and ice to a spot that only he can identify.

(00:20):
As he stares through a sextant to get his bearings,
the wind whips ice crystals into his face and freezes
his breath in his walrus like mustache. Finally, he's satisfied.
After years of trying, he has reached the North Pole.
He writes in his journal, The Pole at last, I
cannot bring myself to realize it. It all seems so

(00:42):
simple and commonplace. Turns out it would not be so simple.
Perry's claimed to be the first man of the North Pole,
along with his longtime assistant Matthew Henson, and four indigenous guides,
would be challenged for decades afterwards, illustrating the passion and
ambition that the North Pole has planted in the minds
of explorers for centuries. The quest to reach the North

(01:05):
Pole represents the human desire to make sense of mysteries,
to solve riddles of geography and the soul. In the
sixteenth century, explorers, driven by dreams of ridges and gold
set sail hoping to find a northwest passage to Asia
through the frozen Arctic. When explorers didn't quite find what
they were looking for, it just wetted their appetites for
more expeditions, better technology, and deeper understanding of humanity. As

(01:31):
the blank spaces on the map began to be filled in,
explorers sought new challenges. The search for the passage to
Asia became a race among nations to be the first
at the top of the world. Explorers based down death
at every turn, from starvation, exposure, disease, and their own
fatal choices. If they lived, explorers earned fame and the

(01:53):
admiration of their countrymen, but if they died, their names
became immortal. I'm Catlong, host of The Quest for the
North Pole, a new podcast from Mental Floss and I
Heart Radio that tells the story of Arctic exploration and

(02:14):
examines what pushed explorers to go ever further into the unknown.
In each episode, we'll look at the important expeditions and
what they found, as well as the tragedies and triumphs
of figures like Sir John Franklin, frit Jeff Nonsen, Robert Peary,
and Matthew Henson. We'll also delve into the racial and
nationalist dynamics of exploration and recognize many critical roles of

(02:36):
indigenous people, without whom few European adventurers would have survived.
And we'll learn how the climate crisis is changing the
Arctic and polar exploration. Today, we speak with historians and
adventurers to bring you insight into the social context and
psychology behind the race to the Pole. The Quest for
the North Pole premieres on January. Listen and subscribe on

(02:59):
the I heart rate, you app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts, M