What Does It Mean to Be a Modern-Day Explorer?

The planet Earth is fairly well charted at this point, but we humans still have a drive to explore. Learn how modern-day exploration works in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff Lauren Vogel Bam here. As of there are
nearly eight billion human beings on the planet Earth. Vehicles
of every kind roam the land, air, and sea, often
in weather conditions that would have stopped humans in their
tracks just a few decades ago. The world is in

(00:24):
essence getting smaller, leaving few places unexplored. Given those circumstances,
what exactly does it mean to be an explorer today?
Some would say that exploration is part of human drive,
as our curiosity pushes us to seek out new places
around us, wherever we live just down the road or
across the open countryside, and wherever we don't live, like

(00:47):
under the ocean's waves, in deep caves and into the
depths of the galaxy. Well, sure, some of us are
fine with plush couches and plentiful pizza, but for others,
the call of the unknown is irresistible, and these restless
souls find that even in a shrinking world, exploration is
very possible if you know where to look. There are

(01:08):
adventures to be had everywhere, new sights to see, in
places to experience. But if you want to go where
no one has gone before. You can start by looking
up or down. We spoke by email with Eric Larson,
a polar explorer and mountain climber. He said, there are
a variety of peaks in areas like Nepal, Pakistan and

(01:29):
China that have yet to be climbed. Exploring the depths
of the oceans would be one of the larger tracts
of undiscovered terrain, if you could call it that. I
know there are probably some areas of the Pacific Ocean
that remained somewhat untouched, and definitely parts of the Amazon
rainforest as well. Larson has launched some major expeditions. In
two thousand nine and twenty ten, he journeyed to both

(01:51):
the North and South Poles and the top of Mount Everest,
all within three hundred and sixty five days, the only
person ever to achieve this feat in under a year.
It was grueling, though, and took a drastic toll on
his mind and body. So why does he do it?
He said? I really enjoy the physical and mental aspects
of big expeditions, from the planning and preparation to the

(02:13):
decision making and stress involved in executing these adventures. I
like blazing my own trail as well, and being in
places that I know no one has traveled previously. These
kinds of adventures cost some people their lives. Take Percy Fawcett,
who in nineteen disappeared trying to find a legendary city
in the Amazon Rainforest, or Sir John Franklin and Francis Kosher,

(02:36):
who met the same mysterious fate in the eighteen forties
when they tried to find the fabled Northwest Passage. Larson
himself has almost died multiple times. He said, I've had
several very close encounters with polar bears. In two thousand
five off the coast of Siberia on the Arctic Ocean,
we had one jump on our tent while we were
sleeping in it. We also were in some pretty sketchy

(02:58):
situations in ten when trying to climb a peak in Nepal.
It took us three different attempts, and we were in
several situations where a wrong step would have meant death.
And as if near death isn't bad enough, there are
expeditions bills to be paid. Those kinds of journeys are expensive,
and explorers often search for sponsors to defray the costs.

(03:20):
In return for funding, the sponsors might ask for anything
from placement of their logo on a jacket to engagement
via social media, blogs, videos, live events, and more. And
these sorts of sponsorships are nothing new. Going back to
the turn of the twentieth century, explorers like Ernest Shackleton,
who led three expeditions to the Antarctic, depended on largely

(03:40):
private sponsors to fund their trips. The Shackleton struck deals
to name glaciers, mountains, and boats after his donors, and
even gave one woman's son a place on his team
in return for a two thousand pound loan. The son,
Philip Brocklehurst, wound up losing a big toe to frostbite
on the trip, but it seems there were no hard feelings.

(04:00):
The toe subsequently received a place of honor on the
mantelpiece in the family manner. That expedition was part of
a larger movement. At a dinner on May nineteen o four,
attended by fifty men well known in the circles of
exploration at the time, the Explorers Club was born and
soon began inviting explorers and scientists to speak of their

(04:20):
adventures and discoveries with the goal of promoting scientific exploration
and field study. The Explorers Club is particularly known for
its five Famous Firsts, a list of places conquered by
members the North Pole in nineteen o nine, the South
Pole in nineteen eleven, Mount Everest in nineteen fifty three,
the Marianna Trench in nineteen sixty and the Moon in

(04:43):
nineteen sixty nine. These explorers were breaking entirely new ground.
As of twenty however, most of the Earth has already
been witnessed by human eyes. Larson said the leading edge
of exploration today is more about pushing personal limits, trying
to do adventures in new, unique and challenging ways. For example,

(05:04):
while people have skied to the South Pole many times,
in I tried to bicycle to the South Pole. He
didn't make it, but there are plenty of other examples.
Take the incredibly steep pitch of l Capitan's Dawn Wall
in Yosemite National Park, some three thousand feet or nine tall.
It's been climbed many times, but in Tommy Caldwell and

(05:27):
Kevin Jorgenson were the first to free climate. Or there's
Alex Hanoald who took it to a nerve shattering extreme
when he climbed the Dawn Wall without any ropes whatsoever.
In his climb, which is considered to be one of
the greatest athletic achievements of all time, was documented by
the National Geographic film Free Solo. Now, you don't have

(05:49):
to take on these kinds of extreme adventures. If you
don't want to, you can leave it to the experts
and witness their bravery and perhaps dubious sanity from Afar.
But no matter how as small the world gets, it's
clear that there will always be people willing to push
exploration just a little bit further. Today's episode was written

(06:12):
by Nathan Chandler and produced by Tyler Clang. For more
on this and lots of other exploratory topics, visit how
stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is a production of iHeart Radio.
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