Astronaut Dr Meganne Christian takes Alok Jha on a trip across the universe, to explore the many connections between Antarctica and space travel. 

Meganne is a member of the European Space Agency astronaut reserve and a Senior Exploration Manager at the UK Space Agency, advising on human and robotic spaceflight. She has undertaken two missions, including one over-winter, at Concordia Station in Antarctica (known as ‘White Mars’), where she was a research scientist in charge of atmospheric physics and meteorology. In November 2022, she was selected from a pool of over 22,500 applicants across Europe to be one of the 17 members of the European Space Agency’s first astronaut class in 13 years.

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

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The winter before Captain Scott’s ill-fated attempt on the South Pole, his youngest team member Apsley Cherry-Garrard (known as “Cherry”) set off across the ice in the middle of the polar night. Henrietta Hammant talks to Alok Jha about this astonishing journey and Cherry’s subsequent memoir, which remains one of the most gripping works of travel and adventure writing to this day. 

Henrietta is an anthropologist specialising in the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration. Her research considers how this era of Antarctic history is displayed in museums. She has worked across the UK and Canada, most notably at the Polar Museum in Cambridge, and has recently submitted her PhD thesis at the University of Reading.

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To buy a copy of Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard click here 

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

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With Antarctica sea ice levels reaching record lows over the last four consecutive years, Alok Jha talks to leading glaciologist Professor Martin Siegert about glaciology: the study of ice in all its forms - from the Antarctic ice sheets and glaciers to the icy bodies of our solar system – why ice matters, and the crucial role it plays in our climate.

Martin is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Cornwall) at the University of Exeter. Previously, he was a Professor at Imperial College London and Director of the Grantham Institute and before that he was Head of the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh. He has published over 250 papers and 8 books on the geophysical exploration of Antarctica. In 2013 he was awarded the Martha T Muse Prize in Antarctic Science and Policy, and in 2007 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 

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

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Dr Leigh Hickmott takes Alok Jha up close and personal with Antarctica’s most fearsome resident: the killer whale, which Leigh calls ‘the apex and most adept predator on the planet’. 

Leigh is a research scientist, zoologist and wildlife presenter, who has co-authored and contributed to numerous scientific research papers. His killer whale research is featured in BBC documentaries ‘Expedition Killer Whale’ and ‘Frozen Planet II’ and he has acted as an ‘on location’ scientific adviser during the filming of natural history series including: NatGeo/Disney+’s Emmy award winning ‘Animals Up Close – Killer Waves’, ‘Our Oceans’ on Netflix, ‘Sentient’ on Disney+ and ‘Blue Planet III’ on the BBC.

Leigh’s Antarctic research journey began in 2017, and he has returned each austral summer season since. His research includes studies of three ‘ecotypes’ of killer whale found along the Peninsula’s coast, with his core focus on ‘pack ice’ killer whales.

Special thanks to Leigh for providing images and recordings of killer whales for this episode. 

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

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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.

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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+.

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

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Alok Jha revisits one of Antarctica’s most enduring tales of exploration with author and journalist Katherine MacInnes. Her book 'Snow Widows' tells the story of the race for the South Pole, from the perspective of the women whose lives would be forever changed by it: the wives and mothers that Sir Robert Falcon Scott and his expedition team left behind. 

Katherine MacInnes has been an arts journalist and commissioning editor and has gained an MSt from The University of Oxford. She has published plays and children’s books, as well as a biography of Oriana Wilson - 'The Woman With The Iceberg Eyes'. She is a regular on local BBC Radio and her journalism has appeared widely, including in the Times, Telegraph and Country Life. 

For more information about our guests and episode transcripts, click here

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To buy 'Snow Widows' by Katherine MacInnes, click here 

Season 4 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible with support from Hurtigruten Expeditions.

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Alok Jha talks to NASA astro-botanist Jess Bunchek about growing vegetables in Antarctica – and outer space. 

Jess started as a botanist and agronomist and, after completing her masters, worked as an astro-botanist at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where she researched space crop production and supported “Veggie” – a vegetable production chamber on the International Space Station. 

While at NASA, she proposed a new collaboration with Germany's space agency, DLR, on the EDEN ISS greenhouse project in Antarctica. For this, Jess overwintered for 14 months at Germany's Neumayer Station III in Antarctica from late 2020 to early 2022, where she operated EDEN ISS and contributed to multiple areas of Antarctic research. 

For more information about our guests and episode transcripts, click here

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

Season 4 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible with support from Hurtigruten Expeditions.

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Alok Jha talks to Dr Peter Fretwell, award-winning cartographer and leading scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, about Antarctica’s most iconic residents – Emperor penguins – and the threats they’re facing from climate change. 

Peter pioneered the use of satellite imagery to find and monitor polar wildlife – a project that has led to him discovering almost half of the world's Emperor penguin colonies.

He chairs the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, Bedmap3 group and ‘Censusing Animal Populations from Space’ (part of the Southern Ocean Observing System) and heads BAS’s ‘Wildlife from Space’ group. He has completed five field seasons in Antarctica.

For more info about our guests and episode transcripts, click here

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Season 4 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible with support from Hurtigruten Expeditions.

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Alok Jha talks to journalist and author Julian Sancton about the harrowing and epic survival story of The Belgica: an early polar expedition gone terribly wrong – with a ship frozen in ice and its crew trapped inside for months of endless polar night. 

Julian is an editor at The Hollywood Reporter. His writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, Esquire, GQ, The New Yorker, Wired, and Playboy, among others. He has reported from every continent, including Antarctica, which he visited while researching his New York Times bestseller Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica’s Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night. A graduate of Harvard College, where he majored in History, Julian lives in Larchmont, New York, with his partner, Jessica, and their two daughters.

For more info about our guests and episode transcripts click here

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

Buy Julian's book, Madhouse at the End of the Earth here

Season 4 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible with support from Hurtigruten Expeditions.

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