South Pole Race: David and Goliath on Ice
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 July 2022
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
1910: Two men are racing to be the first to reach the South Pole. Captain Robert Falcon Scott heads a well-financed, technologically-advanced expedition - aiming to reach the pole in the "proper" and heroic way... on foot. Roald Amundsen's effort is more modest, relying on cheap sled dogs to carry him to victory.
Scott - for all his money, for all his fancy equipment, for all his backing from the mighty Royal Navy - is doomed to failure in the icy wastes of Antarctica. Why?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pushkin |
| 0:18.0 | In June 1910, two ships set sail from Europe. |
| 0:23.0 | One of them was captained by Robert Falcon Scott of the British Navy, |
| 0:27.0 | representing the most powerful empire the world had ever seen. |
| 0:31.0 | The other ship was led by Rol Amanson of Norway, |
| 0:35.0 | a small country that had gained its independence just five years before. |
| 0:40.0 | Both men had the same goal. |
| 0:43.0 | They burned to be the first in history to reach the South Pole, |
| 0:47.0 | planting their national flag. |
| 0:50.0 | This wasn't about imperial conquest. |
| 0:53.0 | The South Pole had no gold or spices or slaves. |
| 0:58.0 | It was all about the symbolism. |
| 1:00.0 | The age of exploration was largely over. |
| 1:03.0 | Most of the world had been thoroughly mapped with one big exception, |
| 1:08.0 | the vast interior of the icy continent of Antarctica. |
| 1:14.0 | No human feat had ever trodden on the Earth's most southerly point. |
| 1:19.0 | Of course, the British wanted to be the first to reach it. |
| 1:22.0 | Over the centuries, they had grown used to thinking of themselves |
| 1:25.0 | as the greatest explorers in the world. |
| 1:28.0 | Robert Scott's British ship carried what one historian called |
| 1:32.0 | the largest, best equipped scientific team ever sent to Antarctica. |
| 1:37.0 | It carried three state-of-the-art motorised sleds, |
... |
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