A Voyage to Antarctica – Details, episodes & analysis

Alok Jha talks to Leilani Raashida Henry about her father: the pioneering Antarctic explorer and civil rights leader, George Washington Gibbs Jr. 

Born in Florida during the Jim Crow segregation era, Gibbs enlisted in the US Navy in 1935, and went South aboard the USS Bear. On 14 January 1940, Gibbs made history as the first black man to set foot in ‘Little America’ and the first recorded person of African descent known to have landed on the Antarctic continent. 

Leilani, an author, facilitator, coach, artist, and public speaker, pieced together her father’s story after his death from diaries and contemporary accounts and wrote a book – The Call of Antarctica: Exploring and Protecting Earth’s Coldest Continent – inspired by his life. She has also followed in her father’s footsteps on two expeditions to Antarctica.

To support the work of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust click here 

For more information about our guests click here

Season 5 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Hurtigruten Expeditions.

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Alok Jha talks to world-renowned volcanologist and filmmaker Clive Oppenheimer. More people have been to space than have set eyes on the depths of Mount Erebus in Antarctica – the continent’s highest active volcano. But Clive has been back to Erebus 13 times: to better understand what is happening in the fiery depths below the ice and answer big questions about life on our planet and beyond. 

For 30 years Clive has been based at the University of Cambridge, where he is Professor of Volcanology. His research seeks to understand how volcanoes work and to probe the connections between eruptions, climate and society. He has conducted fieldwork around the world, either at the crater's edge peering in with assorted monitoring devices or hunting for the far-flung deposits of Earth's greatest eruptions.

His books include: 'Mountains of Fire' and 'Eruptions that Shook the World' and he has also made two documentary features with legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog: 'Into the Inferno' for Netflix and 'Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds' for AppleTV+.

To support the work of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, click here 

For more information about our guests, click here

Season 5 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Hurtigruten Expeditions.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alok Jha talks to record-breaking explorer and UK Antarctic Heritage Trust's Head of Operations Sophie Montagne, one of the British Army’s Ice Maidens team, which in 2018, became the first all-female team to cross Antarctica using muscle power alone. 

Sophie trained in Arctic Norway with the Royal Marines and the Norwegian Army, learning how to survive, and be comfortable, in a frozen environment. She is now UK Antarctic Heritage Trust’s very own Head of Operations, running  activities in Antarctica and managing the seasonal teams at the Port Lockroy base. 

Prior to joining the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, Sophie was the Director of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Polar Regions, helping to improve politicians' understanding of the Arctic & Antarctic, and has spoken to over 30,000 young people across the UK about Antarctica and exploration. Sophie is an Army Reservist, a military ski instructor and always happiest in the mountains.

https://www.ukaht.org/antarctica-in-sight/podcasts/ 

Season 3 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible with support from Hurtigruten Expeditions.

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Alok Jha talks to Marine Biologist Dr Huw Griffiths about the weird & wonderful life that is being discovered underwater in Antarctica; teaching us incredible things about our planet’s deep past, and even revealing some secrets of the universe. 

Huw has worked for the British Antarctic Survey for over 20 years, studying the animals that live at the bottom of the sea around Antarctica and the Arctic. He also studies the potential effects of marine protected areas, climate change, human impacts and pollution on these unique ecosystems, and has participated in and led multiple expeditions to both poles, studying everything from the beaches to the deep sea.

https://www.ukaht.org/antarctica-in-sight/podcasts/ 

Season 3 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible with support from Hurtigruten Expeditions.

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Alok Jha talks to Mya-Rose Craig, aka Birdgirl, the British-Bangladeshi birder, race activist and environmentalist, about travelling to Antarctica and the impact the frozen continent has had on her climate activism. 

Mya-Rose’s memoir, Birdgirl, published by Penguin in June 2022, shares her journey to activism and joy through birding, during a deepening family mental health crisis. 

When Mya-Rose was 11, she started her popular Birdgirl blog and, at age 14, she founded her charity Black2Nature, which engages VME young people in the UK with nature. At 17, she became the youngest person to see half the world’s bird species and the youngest person to receive an honorary Doctorate of Science in recognition of her pioneering campaigning work. 

In 2020 Mya-Rose shared a stage with Greta Thunberg and took part in the most Northerly Youth Strike for Climate in the Arctic with Greenpeace. In 2021, she spoke at COP26 on a panel with Emma Watson, Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai. 

https://www.ukaht.org/antarctica-in-sight/podcasts/

Season 3 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible with support from Hurtigruten Expeditions.

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Alok Jha talks to award-winning history broadcaster and best-selling author Dan Snow about being part of the Endurance22 mission and what it was like to witness the extraordinary moment Sir Ernest Shackleton’s lost ship was found at the bottom of the Weddell Sea. 

Dan has made dozens of TV shows for the BBC, Discovery, and other broadcasters and hosts one of the world’s biggest history podcasts, with millions of listeners every month. He is the founder and Creative Director of History Hit TV, an on-demand history channel that’s been described by the Wall Street Journal as ‘Netflix for History.’ With vast numbers of paying subscribers, Dan has proved a pioneer of digital history broadcasting; according to the Times is now "the Mark Zuckerberg of Spitfires, the Elon Musk of the King Tiger Tank.”

Dan has worked on every continent, from the Yukon gold fields and Maori hill forts to the warzones of Syria and the Congo. When not making history shows, Dan hauls his three children around historical sites, preferably by boat.

https://www.ukaht.org/antarctica-in-sight/podcasts/

Season 3 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible with support from Hurtigruten Expeditions.

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In Season three of A Voyage to Antarctica, presenter Alok Jha (The Economist) and guests including historian Dan Snow and birder, activist and environmentalist  Mya-Rose Craig (aka Birdgirl), will delve into the extraordinary human stories of the wildest place on the planet. Unearthing Antarctica’s hidden treasures; telling untold stories of discovery and adventure; and exploring the amazing scientific discoveries being made across the continent of climate science. 

All brought to you by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust: the charity championing the public understanding of, and engagement with, Antarctica; with this season made possible by support from Hurtigruten Expeditions. 

So please join us to find out just how much Antarctica matters to us all.

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In the final episode of series 2, Alok Jha talks to Polar Conservationist and explorer Prem Gill to find out what Antarctic seals and Grime music have in common. 

Prem is a PhD candidate leading the "Seals from Space" project with the Scott Polar Research Institute, British Antarctic Survey & World Wildlife Fund, and a researcher working on Frozen Planet. 

Outside of this, Prem is interested in increasing opportunities for underrepresented and disadvantaged groups in polar and conservation science. As the founder of Polar Impact and British Antarctic Survey’s Diversity Champion, he has used his research to spearhead projects which attract and retain talent from non-traditional backgrounds. 

Additional music featured in this episode is by Marzmanj.

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Alok Jha talks to the award-winning writer Philip Hoare about his life-long love for and obsession with whales and their history in Antarctica. 

Philip’s numerous books include Leviathan or, The Whale, which won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize, and has been published all over the world.  It was followed by The Sea Inside (2013) and RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR (2017).

His latest book, Albert & the Whale, is published by 4th Estate in the UK. 

Philip wrote and presented the BBC Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick, and directed three short films for BBC’s Whale Night. He is co-curator of the Moby-Dick and Ancient Mariner ‘Big Reads’, and is professor of creative writing at the University of Southampton.

Special thanks to The Dominica Sperm Whale Project for providing recordings of sperm whales for this episode. http://www.thespermwhaleproject.org

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Alok Jha talks to Dr Kelly Hogan, a Marine Geophysicist at the British Antarctic Survey to find out what studying the remains of ancient ice sheets in Antarctica can tell us about climate change and the future of the planet. 

Kelly works on research vessels around Antarctica, looking for clues about how ancient ice sheets flowed and eventually receded back towards land but also what caused the ice to shrink.

In addition to more than 10 trips to the Arctic, Kelly has been on 5 research cruises to Antarctica. Her most recent trips have been to study Thwaites Glacier. New research has revealed huge channels underneath the glacier, which funnel in warm ocean water towards it, and could speed up the melting of the glacier. 

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