Poles Apart: How A Journalist Divided A City
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2023
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Heroic explorer Frederick Cook has just returned from the very roof of the world, the first man to reach the North Pole. Or so he says. Journalist Philip Gibbs has been watching him, and he’s convinced he’s lying.
When Gibbs publishes that belief, he stands alone. Cook has a gripping manner and an excellent reputation: his winning tale must be true. Diners boo Gibbs at a restaurant, newspapers publish sly-looking caricatures of him, and he even receives threats of violence.
But then, everything changes.
We often think of polarisation as a modern problem — but the story of Cook and Gibbs has much to teach us here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Helena Bonham Carter and for BBC Radio 4, this is history's secret heroes. |
| 0:08.0 | She received a brown envelope and says, do not open it until you get on the plane. |
| 0:14.0 | A series of rarely heard tales from World War II. |
| 0:17.0 | They knew they were going to be caught and actually that was sort of part of the plan. |
| 0:22.0 | Unsung heroes, acts of resistance, deception and courage. |
| 0:26.0 | That is a morning that is seared into my memory. |
| 0:30.0 | I will never be able to forget the terror of that morning. |
| 0:34.0 | Subscribe to history's secret heroes, wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:45.0 | Pushkin. |
| 0:47.0 | Of the coast of Helsingor, 30 miles north of Copenhagen, |
| 0:57.0 | a small boat sails up alongside a big one. |
| 1:01.0 | On the small boat are a few Danish journalists and one English journalist. |
| 1:07.0 | The Englishman is feeling cold in his excitement at getting on board, he forgot his coat. |
| 1:14.0 | It's chilly, early on a September morning. |
| 1:18.0 | The year is 1909. |
| 1:21.0 | Down from the deck of the large ship snakes a rope ladder. |
| 1:26.0 | The Danish journalists leap confidently, grip the rope ladder and shimmy up onto the deck. |
| 1:33.0 | The English journalist, Gulps, he's not used to this kind of thing. |
| 1:38.0 | He stands on the side of the small boat and tries not to look down at the swirling sea. |
| 1:44.0 | He screws up his courage and jumps. |
| 1:47.0 | Grabbs at the rope and dangles his leg frantically searching for a rung. |
| 1:52.0 | At last he finds one and hauls himself up the ladder. |
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