A Voyage to Antarctica Podcast
From the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust - Championing Antarctic Heritage For All
In the second season of this podcast, the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust will be delving further into the extraordinary human stories of the wildest, windiest place on our planet. We’ll hear from explorers, scientists and writers who’ve built their lives around this incredible continent. Their guests include explorers Felicity Aston and Dwayne Fields, writer Philip Hoare and space scientist Suzie Imber.
These fascinating podcasts uncover untold histories, and gain insight into the cutting-edge research happening in the Antarctic, on the front-line in the fight against climate change. All from the people who’ve been there and make it happen.
Episode I: Epic Endurance with Felicity Aston
We’ve all learnt a thing or two about endurance over the last year, but few people know what endurance means better than our first podcast guest Felicity Aston, an Antarctic scientist, turned polar explorer. Host Alok Jha talks to legendary explorer Felicity Aston about what endurance means to her.
Episode II – To Antarctica and Beyond
Alok Jha goes to Antarctica and far beyond with space plasma physicist Dr Suzie Imber.
Suzie is Associate Professor in Space Physics at the University of Leicester. She’s currently involved in the BepiColombo mission to Mercury, which launched in 2018, and will go into orbit around Mercury in December 2025.
She’s also a high altitude mountaineer: since 2014 she’s teamed up with highly-acclaimed mountaineer Maximo Kausch, firstly to discover and then to climb dozens of the most remote mountains on the planet.
And, in 2017, Suzie was the winner of BBC2’s Astronauts: Do You Have What it Takes? After being put through her paces by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, she now has his backing for her application to the European Space Agency’s call for new astronauts.
Episode III: The White Continent?
In Part One Alok Jha speaks to Dwayne Fields, the first black Briton to walk over 400 miles to the magnetic North Pole, about his planned trips to Antarctica, the challenges he's faced as an explorer and his work inspiring young people nationwide to explore the ‘great outdoors’.
In Part Two we delve deeper into Antarctica's colonial history with historian Dr Ben Maddison, discovering more untold stories and some potentially uncomfortable truths from the continent's past. This episode shines a light on expeditions during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when we find evidence that the history of the involvement of black and indigenous people in Antarctica goes back far longer than most people might think.
Episode IV – Ancient Ice
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.
Episode V - Songs from the Deep
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 Hoare was born and brought up in the port of Southampton, within the sound of the sea. He has been haunted by whales ever since he saw a captive orca, as a boy. 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 was published in the UK and USA in spring 2021.
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.