In the summer of 2018, England was in the middle of a record-breaking heatwave, but in

Cambridge, at the headquarters of the British Antarctic Survey, a team of researchers was

studying life on the coldest continent.

So the archive is tucked away, and there's all these deep freeze trucks coming in and out

and even though that was a particularly hot summer, you have people that keep a park

in their office just in case they have to go up and like look at Antarctic spider crabs

or something.

You know, I never got to see any of the like deep, deep freeze, like cold habitat critters.

That's Andrew Avery.

He was a PhD student, studying a species that is not native to Antarctica, humans and our

desire to conquer the continent.

Andrew was at the British Antarctic Survey, studying archival documents, old magazines,

supply lists, scientific reports, budgets, and one day, one of the archivists rolled their

cart up to Andrew's desk and said, Hey, you might be interested in this and so he drops

this folio in my lap.

It was just a white paper folder about the size of a standard Manila envelope.

It looked like every other one Andrew had seen that day.

He opened it.

I think the first thing I saw was like a sealed letter, sealed and just covered in stamps.

Someone wanted to be very sure that letter made it all the way to its destination.

And underneath that envelope, there were dozens more.

Old letters faded, worn by time.

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