Detour: Antarctica

World records are what bring people to Antarctica. When Colin O’Brady claimed an ‘Impossible First’ skiing solo across Antarctica, it exposed cracks in the club-like polar explorer community.
Thomas Bywater looks into what a world first mean to polar explorers - and how far would they go to chase them?

With thanks to Fiann Paul, Colin O’Brady and Mark Jones

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While Kiwis were protesting for a nuclear-free Pacific, 300 tons of radioactive soil were sailing through New Zealand waters. Thomas Bywater discusses the story of ‘Nukey Poo’, Antarctica’s problematic power plant and New Zealand’s dirty nuclear secret.

With thanks to Peter Breen, Ron Regan, the veterans Edwin (Chaddy) Chadwick, Apiha Papuni and Kelly Tako.

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Antarctica is the only continent without police, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any crime. When it was discovered in 2000 an Antarctic researcher had been poisoned, it was too late - seven months had passed his colleagues were long gone. Thomas Bywater explores if Rodney Marks was Antarctica's first murder victim?

Thanks to David Fisher, Donald Rothwell and the friends and colleagues of Rodney Marks

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Being pregnant on an Antarctic research base is banned. So how is it that eleven children were born there in the 1980s? And where are they now? Thomas Bywater explores why it wasn’t a happy accident that Emilio Palma was born in Esperanza Base.

With thanks to Horacio Villalobos, Meredith Nash, Damien Venuto, Juan Lucio Palma, Emilio Palma

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The Antarctic Treaty is the rulebook to the South Pole. But when it was written sixty years ago, the creep of Antarctic tourism and iceberg harvesting were issues nobody saw coming. As a potential endpoint to the treaty inches closer, and as the south gets busier and heats up, Thomas Bywater questions if these rules at breaking point?

With thanks to Ceisha Poirot, Alan Hemmings, Aaron Russ, Donald Rothwell

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In the 1970s, when arrowheads were discovered in Antarctica, it sparked an archaeological mystery. Were they the first sign of an untapped history of the frozen continent, or part of a conspiracy to rewrite Antarctic history.

Thomas Bywater talks to the pioneers of Antarctic archaeology about their strangest finds, a dictator's attempt to change history, and a woman whose skull was found on Livingston Island.

With thanks to Ruben Stehberg, Fiann Paul, Michael Pearson

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Punta Arenas is an Antarctic Gateway city. It has trapped the likes of Shackleton, Henry Worsley and other polar explorers - but, more recently, 2000 cruise passengers were stuck here at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Amongst them was NZ Herald travel writer Thomas Bywater, who used the time to reflect on Antarctica's rapid move into a tourist destination.

With thanks to Gábor Van Tolna, Ceisha Poirot of Antarctica New Zealand, James Cooley, Catherine Sutherland

For more on this series, head to nzherald.co.nz/detour

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.