Alone and on Foot in Antarctica

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Henry Worsley was a husband, father, and an officer of an élite British commando unit; also a tapestry weaver, amateur boxer, photographer, and collector of rare books, maps, and fossils. But his true obsession was exploration. Worsley revered the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton and he had led a 2009 expedition to the South Pole. But Worsley planned an even greater challenge. At fifty-five, he set out to trek alone to ski from one side of the Antarctic continent to the other, hauling more than three hundred pounds of gear and posting an audio diary by satellite phone. The New Yorker staff writer David Grann wrote about Worsley’s quest, and spoke with his widow, Joanna Worsley, about the painful choice she made to support her husband in a mortally dangerous endeavor. This segment originally aired March 2, 2018.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:04.1	Next week on the program, I'm going to be talking with my colleague and friend David
0:07.9	Grant, one of the great nonfiction writers working today.
0:11.9	He's got two books out that are high on the bestseller list this summer.
0:16.0	So before that interview, I wanted to share again a story that David brought to the radio
0:19.9	hour a few years ago.
0:22.1	It's about the explorer Henry Worsley, the subject of David's book, The White Darkness.
0:28.4	3.9, 4 nautical miles over 3.5 hours, travel was pleasing.
0:35.8	Having great spirits. It was so wonderful to be back on the snow, heading south.
0:41.6	Good night.
0:43.0	Worsley set out in 2015 to become the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided.
0:49.8	He was on skis, pulling his food and his equipment behind him.
0:53.7	Well, the journeys are all about how fit and strong your mind and will are.
0:59.6	Hours in the gym cannot prepare you for that moment.
1:03.5	On the sign of the airplane that has just dropped you off at your starboard fades.
1:09.5	Or from then on, this beguiling continent will scrype bear.
1:15.6	Here's David Grant.
1:18.6	Henry had been to the South Pole twice before, but this would be his first solo expedition,
1:24.6	and it was also longer than his other expeditions and more dangerous than any
1:28.8	other expedition he had ever attempted. Henry was a meticulous planner, ruthlessly whittling down
1:37.2	all his equipment to the bare essentials. Most important was his satellite phone, which would allow
1:43.7	him to stay in contact with
	...

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