Ice Coffee: the history of human activity in Antarctica

It's just a word sometimes employed by people pretending to be pirates to most modern ears but until recently scurvy stood as a perplexing and deadly problem for mariners and polar explorers.  In this episode I discuss how sailors and scientists solved the scurvy riddle, screw up an attempt to say "very low levels," and make myself sad. 

Direct download: 019_Scurvy.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:18pm EDT

For my money, Charles Wilkes is the first of the Antarctic matinets.  Drawn south by the opportunity to lead a large expedition and little else, his attempts to coordinate six poorly fitted out and ill matched ships crewed by people who largely thought little of him went every bit as well as that sentence presages.

Direct download: 018_Wilkes.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:47am EDT

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