Pushing.

Hello, revisionist history listeners. Malcolm Gladwell here. We're on summer break,

but we'll be back in September with four brand new episodes of the show.

Meanwhile, I hope you're staying cool. And to help you with that challenge,

I have a little something that will plunge you into a world of freezing cold.

It's an epic tale that comes by way of my good friend and fellow Pushkinite Tim Hartford.

Over at his podcast, Cautionary Tales, he has a fantastic trilogy about Antarctica.

And a treacherous race between two explorers chasing one another across the frigid ways of the world's

least hospitable continent. There are blizzards, dogs, frostbite, scurvy, and epic mistakes.

Fortunately, the whole point of Cautionary Tales is to learn from other people's mistakes.

The bigger the mistake, the more you can learn. After I listened to this series, I had to call Tim.

Literally, 100% of that was new to me. 100%. It was so great. I was like, this is fantastic.

Who knew all this crazy stuff? Okay, before we get to more of my conversation with Tim,

you should probably hear a taste of this crazy stuff. So let's listen to some of his first

Antarctica story and then follow up with my chance to ask Tim all the burning or freezing as a case

may be questions. Here's Tim with Cautionary Tales.

In June 1910, two ships set sail from Europe. One of them was capped in by Robert Falcon Scott

of the British Navy, representing the most powerful empire the world had ever seen.

The other ship was led by Rol Amanson of Norway, a small country that had gained its independence

just five years before. Both men had the same goal. They burned to be the first in history to

reach the South Pole, planting their national flag. This wasn't about imperial conquest.

The South Pole had no gold or spices or slaves. It was all about the symbolism.

...