Ice Coffee: the history of human activity in Antarctica

With a hundred meg of storage in my name and a lot of audio snippets with nothing better to do I give you the bits episode. 
Mind the neck bolts.
This episode features the first competition I've run in a long time.  As usual it's biased in favour of early listeners who are old and who are me. 
Voices from the past.
Voices I hope will feature in the future.
One voice that long since broke.
We belong Dad.

Direct download: 112_Bits.mp3
Category:mixed bag -- posted at: 9:32pm EDT

Hope Bay's second tranche of winter residents settle in.
Then they head home to a less than heartening reception than their Swedish predecessors experienced, though Taylor didn't die in a public transport accident, so there's that. 

Direct download: 111_Operation_Tabarin_part_3.mp3
Category:History -- posted at: 7:28am EDT

Penguin sex gets the attention it deserves after Murray Levick deprived the world of his observations due to his prudish Victorian era sensibilities.  Professor Lloyd Spencer Davis gives you the good oil on the oily birds getting it on (early birds only get worms).
Extended and diminished visibility and lights in the sky at high latitudes receive some attention from a non-physicist who will accept corrections with gratitude and alacrity. 

Direct download: 110_Professor_Spencer_Davis_Optical_Phenomena.mp3
Category:mixed bag -- posted at: 12:45am EDT

James Marr takes his military expedition south and sets up shop on Goudier Island at Port Lockroy in Bransfield House, and also Base A. 

Direct download: 109_Operation_Tabarin_part_2.mp3
Category:History -- posted at: 5:21am EDT

Direct download: 108_Update.mp3
Category:Metageneral -- posted at: 3:39am EDT

Direct download: 107_Operation_Tabarin.mp3
Category:History -- posted at: 7:33pm EDT

More fuck! than you can poke a stick at.

Direct download: 106_Women_in_Antarctica.mp3
Category:History -- posted at: 4:47am EDT

So fuck! it warrants spelling fark!

Direct download: 105_USASE_Part_3.mp3
Category:History -- posted at: 2:17am EDT

Fuck!

Direct download: 104_USASE_Part_2.mp3
Category:History -- posted at: 11:47pm EDT

Keystone cops.
Byrd at his finest.
Fumes and fuming.

Direct download: 104_USASE_Part_1.mp3
Category:History -- posted at: 7:14am EDT

Lincoln Ellsworth convinces Sir Hubert Wilkins to head south once again and achieves very little. 

Direct download: 102_Ellsworth_s_last_Antarctic_gasp.mp3
Category:History -- posted at: 8:54am EDT

The War to End All Wars didn't do what it said on the box and political and economic pressures to fascist all over Europe, China and the Pacific led to another protracted period of bloodshed and barbarism. 
This episode is short and short on Antarctic content but it's important to understand the motives and outcomes of the morass of conflicts we came to call the Second World War because war and its wake once more held a lot of sway in what happened in Antarctica and by whom it happened to happen.  No mere happenstance but economic and politically driven outcomes lie in the offing and only those nations not completely economically crippled by conflict could afford to get south again in the short to medium term. 
Not a pleasant episode to write or record and likely little fun to listen to.  Huskie antics and people doing heroic and dumb things lie in the offing, I promise. 

Direct download: 101_World_War_Two.mp3
Category:History -- posted at: 3:50am EDT

Nazis don't deserve theme music, soundscapes or even my best efforts at editing out narrating flubs. 

Direct download: 100_Nazis_on_ice_part_2.mp3
Category:History -- posted at: 6:32am EDT

Driven south by the Third Reich's thirst for fat, the Schwabenland (ship version) carries two cool flying boats and a load of fucking nazis to Antarctic shores. 
No house keeping and no calls to action, this episode, because I hate nazis and writing, recording and editing this episode made me grumpy. 

Given that I parted brass rags with Quark expeditions because one of their guests called me a nazi and I told him to go fuck himself only re-doubles my anger at having to incorporate nazi assholes into my narrative.  Even Richard Byrd doesn't get me this pissed off. 

Direct download: 099_Nazis_on_ice.mp3
Category:History -- posted at: 8:09am EDT

The British Graham Land Expedition comes to a close but it's not the last we'll hear of its members or the repercussions of the work they carried out.

Direct download: 098_BGLE_wrap_up_and_double_the_normal_number_of_McArthurs.mp3
Category:History -- posted at: 11:37pm EDT

The British Graham Land Expedition near the end of their second year in Antarctica.  Much flying, sledging, surveying and the first crossing of Graham Land.
Huzzah.

Direct download: 097_BGLE_part_2.mp3
Category:History -- posted at: 12:10am EDT

John Rymill picks up where Gino Watkins' death left off and leads the most efficient Antarctic expedition to date. 
Lots of new discoveries, competent seamanship, sledging and flying ensue. 
The BGLE set the mold for safe and competent operations in the high southern latitudes.

Direct download: 096_The_British_Graham_Land_Expedition_01.mp3
Category:History -- posted at: 9:35pm EDT

I've traveled with Santiago for three austral summers and his humour and humanity have buoyed my moods while his perspectives on the birds we encountered opened my eyes to biological vistas I'd previously not spotted due to my focus on the mud. 
I only just met John Marsden ten minutes before pressing record but his tales of high latitudes aviation warrant further attention than the ten minutes afforded at Seaworks. 
I hope to spend a lot more time in company with these people in the future but until then here's a sonic record of our encounters. 

And some faux advertising to let you know what I've saved you from/what you're missing out on.

Next month, the BGLE get moving. 

Direct download: 095_Santiago_the_ornithologist_and_John_the_pilot.mp3
Category:Contemporary -- posted at: 5:41pm EDT

Lincoln Ellsworth's money returns to Antarctica with new pilots, no meteorologist and Norwegians all but ready to throttle him. 
Job's a good 'un, though, in spite of the lack of oomph, patience and skill the money bags brought with him. 

Herbert Hollick-Kenyon nails one of the best put downs in Antarctic history while puffing on his pipe, munching on boiled sweets and reading westerns. 

Lots of penguins, seals and Swedes in the aural background.

Still holding off on throwing the switch on the Patreon account as there's one more episode in the offing, this month. 
patreon.com/icecoffee

Direct download: 094_Ellsworth_triumphant_but_still_a_jerk.mp3
Category:History -- posted at: 6:23am EDT

Ellsworth's money gets it into its head to be the first to cross Antarctica.
Wilkins, Balchen, Braathen and another polar pig get tangled up in his weak sauce Ahab routine.

Soundscapes featuring Port Circumcision and the waters just off Two Hummock Island, which I'm sure is the British Hydrographic Office's cleaned up label for a rude sailor name originally given that land mass by some sailors who'd been at sea for a really, really long time or who knew a woman with really unusually shaped breasts.   

Direct download: 093_Ellsworth_at_his_best_now_with_added_coda.mp3
Category:History -- posted at: 11:54pm EDT

Two interviews with three fellow Drake Passage crossers and a thunder accompanied decompression after recent upheavals.
Anyone who feels hard done by in the third act is welcome to a right of reply. 

Also putting out my shingle via Patreon once more.
https://www.patreon.com/Ice_Coffee outlines what's on offer in return for financial support but I won't start processing episode releases through the Patreon system until people who signed up years ago have a chance to check they still want to contribute at the levels they pledged. 

Back to history next episode with some more on-site recordings about Lincoln Ellsworth's further efforts to make a name for himself by paying other people to do all the things.

Direct download: 092_Ice_life_art_and_unemployment_4.mp3
Category:Contemporary -- posted at: 11:19pm EDT

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