Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Tuesday, the 21st of April.

Where the Earth meets the sky, a story of penguins, people and place in Antarctica. That is the title of a book out today by the conservation biologist Dr. Louise

Blight and Louise very kindly is joining me from British Columbia where she now lives

to talk about the very very deep south south. Welcome, Louise. Why on earth? Would anybody,

and I understand you have roots in England, in Scotland, but you're now very much Canadian,

why would anybody from the northern hemisphere go to the very, very foot of the earth?

Why on earth?

That's a good way of putting it.

Well, it's a place on earth that not many people get to go to.

And as a conservation scientist and seabird ecologist, it's, of course, very attractive

because it's a place with a lot of seabirds, including penguins.

And so the book I write is about one of the

trips that I took to the Antarctic and a summer that I lived there and got to live there

studying penguins. So for somebody who loves nature, loves science, of course you would want to

go and study penguins in Antarctica. You've been there 50 times.

That seems impressive, but also really quite punishing,

because it is not an environment where humanity can easily survive.

Yes, I've been to the Antarctic over more than 10 seasons

and done a number of different trips back and forth within those 10 or 12 seasons.

And Dun had various roles there, worked as a naturalist and lecturer on expedition cruise ships.

But again, the trip that I write about is the one where I was, or one of the summers where I was living on Ross Island

and working as a field assistant on a penguin study there. You know, from the perspective

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