Ann Bancroft: A Polar Legend

Alok Jha talks to pioneering explorer Ann Bancroft: the first woman to have skied to both North and South poles.  Ann joined the 1986 Steger International Polar Expedition as the only female of the eight-member team and became the first known woman to cross the ice to the North Pole. After leading the first American women’s East to West crossing of Greenland, she took her team to Antarctica, leading the first all-women’s expedition to the South Pole. In January 1993, after skiing more than 600 miles, Ann made history, becoming the first woman known to have skied to both North and South poles. She and Norwegian explorer Liv Arnesen then set an international record as the first women to ski sail across Antarctica. Today Ann is a globally-recognised educator, speaker and founder of the Ann Bancroft Foundation. She lends her voice to organisations in education and the environment and is the co-founder of Bancroft Arnesen Explore.🇦🇶 SUPPORT US 🇦🇶https://shop.ukaht.org/products/donation 🐧 ADOPT A PENGUIN 🐧 https://www.ukaht.org/shop/adopt-a-pe...🎯 FOLLOW US 🎯✩ YouTube: / ukantarcticheritagetrust✩ Instagram: / ukantarcticheritagetrust  ✩ Facebook:/ ukantarcticheritagetrust  ✩ TikTok: / ukantarcticheritagetrust  Season 6 of A Voyage To Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Expeditions.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alok Jha talks to Lorraine Kelly about her lifelong passion for Antarctica, inspired by her hero Ernest Shackleton AKA ‘The Boss’. Lorraine Kelly is a Scottish television presenter, journalist and Sunday Times bestselling author, best known for her ITV show, Lorraine. In 2024, she was awarded a BAFTA for her outstanding contribution to the television industry, marking four-decades of her unstoppable and impressive broadcasting career, as a hugely significant presence on British television.She has presented many other TV programmes including The Last Leg, Queens for the Night and Have I Got News For You?. She has made guest appearances on The Masked Singer, The Graham Norton Show, Ant & Dec Saturday Night Takeaway, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, Late Night Lycett and Portrait Artist of the Year. Lorraine is also a best selling author, most recently with her debut fiction novel, The Island Swimmer. In 2012, Lorraine was awarded the OBE, for services to charity and the armed forces, by HM The Queen at Holyrood palace in Edinburgh. In 2020, Lorraine also received a CBE for services to broadcasting, journalism and charity. She is a keen charity supporter and is a patron of Help for Heroes and the STV Children’s Appeal.🇦🇶 SUPPORT US 🇦🇶https://shop.ukaht.org/products/donation🐧 ADOPT A PENGUIN 🐧 https://www.ukaht.org/shop/adopt-a-pe...🎯 FOLLOW US 🎯✩ YouTube: / ukantarcticheritagetrust ✩ Instagram: / ukantarcticheritagetrust  ✩ Facebook: / ukantarcticheritagetrust  ✩ TikTok: / ukantarcticheritagetrust  Season 6 of A Voyage To Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Expeditions.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Astronaut Dr Meganne Christian takes Alok Jha on a trip across the universe, to explore the many connections between Antarctica and space travel. Meganne is a member of the European Space Agency astronaut reserve and a Senior Exploration Manager at the UK Space Agency, advising on human and robotic spaceflight. She has undertaken two missions, including one over-winter, at Concordia Station in Antarctica (known as ‘White Mars’), where she was a research scientist in charge of atmospheric physics and meteorology. In November 2022, she was selected from a pool of over 22,500 applicants across Europe to be one of the 17 members of the European Space Agency’s first astronaut class in 13 years.To support this podcast and the work of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust click here For more information about our guests, click hereSeason 5 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Hurtigruten Expeditions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The winter before Captain Scott’s ill-fated attempt on the South Pole, his youngest team member Apsley Cherry-Garrard (known as “Cherry”) set off across the ice in the middle of the polar night. Henrietta Hammant talks to Alok Jha about this astonishing journey and Cherry’s subsequent memoir, which remains one of the most gripping works of travel and adventure writing to this day. Henrietta is an anthropologist specialising in the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration. Her research considers how this era of Antarctic history is displayed in museums. She has worked across the UK and Canada, most notably at the Polar Museum in Cambridge, and has recently submitted her PhD thesis at the University of Reading.To support this podcast and the work of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust click here To buy a copy of Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard click here Season 5 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Hurtigruten Expeditions.Sound Credits: Footsteps in Snow by SoundBiterSFX - https://freesound.org/s/730914/ - License: Creative Commons 0Walking in Soft Snow.wav by Percy Duke - https://freesound.org/s/420633/ - License: Attribution 3.0Silencyo_CC_Wind Mistral_Strong_pine trees.aif by silencyo - https://freesound.org/s/81797/ - License: Creative Commons 0Heavy hailstorm with thunder by Cinetony - https://freesound.org/s/620489/ - License: Creative Commons 0Short Hailstorm.wav by Benboncan - https://freesound.org/s/63802/ - License: Attribution 4.0  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With Antarctica sea ice levels reaching record lows over the last four consecutive years, Alok Jha talks to leading glaciologist Professor Martin Siegert about glaciology: the study of ice in all its forms - from the Antarctic ice sheets and glaciers to the icy bodies of our solar system – why ice matters, and the crucial role it plays in our climate.Martin is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Cornwall) at the University of Exeter. Previously, he was a Professor at Imperial College London and Director of the Grantham Institute and before that he was Head of the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh. He has published over 250 papers and 8 books on the geophysical exploration of Antarctica. In 2013 he was awarded the Martha T Muse Prize in Antarctic Science and Policy, and in 2007 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. To support this podcast and the work of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, click here For more information about our guests, click hereSeason 5 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Hurtigruten Expeditions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Leigh Hickmott takes Alok Jha up close and personal with Antarctica’s most fearsome resident: the killer whale, which Leigh calls ‘the apex and most adept predator on the planet’. Leigh is a research scientist, zoologist and wildlife presenter, who has co-authored and contributed to numerous scientific research papers. His killer whale research is featured in BBC documentaries ‘Expedition Killer Whale’ and ‘Frozen Planet II’ and he has acted as an ‘on location’ scientific adviser during the filming of natural history series including: NatGeo/Disney+’s Emmy award winning ‘Animals Up Close – Killer Waves’, ‘Our Oceans’ on Netflix, ‘Sentient’ on Disney+ and ‘Blue Planet III’ on the BBC.Leigh’s Antarctic research journey began in 2017, and he has returned each austral summer season since. His research includes studies of three ‘ecotypes’ of killer whale found along the Peninsula’s coast, with his core focus on ‘pack ice’ killer whales.Special thanks to Leigh for providing images and recordings of killer whales for this episode. To support this podcast and the work of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, click here For more information about our guests, click hereSeason 5 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Hurtigruten Expeditions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alok Jha talks to Leilani Raashida Henry about her father: the pioneering Antarctic explorer and civil rights leader, George Washington Gibbs Jr. Born in Florida during the Jim Crow segregation era, Gibbs enlisted in the US Navy in 1935, and went South aboard the USS Bear. On 14 January 1940, Gibbs made history as the first black man to set foot in ‘Little America’ and the first recorded person of African descent known to have landed on the Antarctic continent. Leilani, an author, facilitator, coach, artist, and public speaker, pieced together her father’s story after his death from diaries and contemporary accounts and wrote a book – The Call of Antarctica: Exploring and Protecting Earth’s Coldest Continent – inspired by his life. She has also followed in her father’s footsteps on two expeditions to Antarctica.To support the work of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust click here For more information about our guests click hereSeason 5 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Hurtigruten Expeditions.Sound credits:porto 19-05-14 quiet to moderate waves on rock beach.wav by bpayri - https://freesound.org/s/245132/ - License: Attribution 4.0ships cabin.WAV by inchadney - https://freesound.org/s/111123/ - License: Attribution 4.0CD_VIE_012FX_Synthetic_wind by kevp888 - https://freesound.org/s/711283/ - License: Attribution 4.0 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alok Jha talks to world-renowned volcanologist and filmmaker Clive Oppenheimer. More people have been to space than have set eyes on the depths of Mount Erebus in Antarctica – the continent’s highest active volcano. But Clive has been back to Erebus 13 times: to better understand what is happening in the fiery depths below the ice and answer big questions about life on our planet and beyond. For 30 years Clive has been based at the University of Cambridge, where he is Professor of Volcanology. His research seeks to understand how volcanoes work and to probe the connections between eruptions, climate and society. He has conducted fieldwork around the world, either at the crater's edge peering in with assorted monitoring devices or hunting for the far-flung deposits of Earth's greatest eruptions.His books include: 'Mountains of Fire' and 'Eruptions that Shook the World' and he has also made two documentary features with legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog: 'Into the Inferno' for Netflix and 'Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds' for AppleTV+.To support the work of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, click here For more information about our guests, click hereSeason 5 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Hurtigruten Expeditions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alok Jha revisits one of Antarctica’s most enduring tales of exploration with author and journalist Katherine MacInnes. Her book 'Snow Widows' tells the story of the race for the South Pole, from the perspective of the women whose lives would be forever changed by it: the wives and mothers that Sir Robert Falcon Scott and his expedition team left behind. Katherine MacInnes has been an arts journalist and commissioning editor and has gained an MSt from The University of Oxford. She has published plays and children’s books, as well as a biography of Oriana Wilson - 'The Woman With The Iceberg Eyes'. She is a regular on local BBC Radio and her journalism has appeared widely, including in the Times, Telegraph and Country Life. For more information about our guests and episode transcripts, click hereTo support the work of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, click here To buy 'Snow Widows' by Katherine MacInnes, click here Season 4 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible with support from Hurtigruten Expeditions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alok Jha talks to NASA astro-botanist Jess Bunchek about growing vegetables in Antarctica – and outer space. Jess started as a botanist and agronomist and, after completing her masters, worked as an astro-botanist at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where she researched space crop production and supported “Veggie” – a vegetable production chamber on the International Space Station. While at NASA, she proposed a new collaboration with Germany's space agency, DLR, on the EDEN ISS greenhouse project in Antarctica. For this, Jess overwintered for 14 months at Germany's Neumayer Station III in Antarctica from late 2020 to early 2022, where she operated EDEN ISS and contributed to multiple areas of Antarctic research. For more information about our guests and episode transcripts, click hereTo support the work of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, click here Season 4 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible with support from Hurtigruten Expeditions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.