Hi there, I'm Jason Gautz and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think podcast.

I recently spent several hours on a transatlantic flight zooming in and out of the interactive map of the earth on my seat's personal entertainment unit,

exploring tiny islands in the polar north, impossible inland seas in

the middle of Central Asian deserts, places so remote and strange that they fire the imagination.

In 2018, it's not easy to wrap your mind around the fact that not all that long ago,

no human and no satellite had ever set eye on many of these places.

For all anybody knew, much of the earth was probably populated by cyclopses and sea monsters.

In the mid-1800s, the icy poles, north and south, were the final frontiers.

And the brave men, and even a bit braver perhaps, women disguised as men, who set off to explore

them were quite literally heading into the unknown.

My guest today is writer, actor, comedian, and explorer Michael Palin.

He studied history at Oxford, then transformed comedy forever as a writer and performer in

Monty Python's Flying Circus. Since then, he's been traveling the world, writing books and

hosting travel documentaries. His latest book,

Erebus, resurrects one of the greatest nautical mysteries of all time and takes us deep into

the icy heart of polar exploration in the mid-19th century. Welcome to think again, Michael.

Thank you, Jason. Nice to be here. It's so good to have you here. Thank you.

So why this story now in 2018? Well, I'm a great believer in things

just happening kind of intuition. The particular fascination with this ship began when I was

doing some research on quite a different subject. I was having to give a talk at a club in London

about a club member. It was a very old

club and going back to 1830. And I'd chosen a man called Joseph Hooker. Joseph Hooker was a great

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