#98 'So coarse, so manly' - Ep 2 Murder. Mystery at the North Pole

Livingstone was the first European to record his visit to Smoke that Thunders on the Zambezi river. 100 metres of plummeting water, across the entire kilometre of the Zambezi’s width. He promptly named it after his queen, Victoria Falls. His ambition was to find a navigable river from the east coast of Africa inland. Although it was clear that Smoke that Thunders would put a stop to any trade boats navigating any further inland he remained undaunted. He calculated that just being able to bring a ship this far would be well worth the effort. Now he just had to hope that there was nothing else like these immense falls before the Zambezi reached the sea. (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Exploration changed in the middle of the nineteenth century, when Henry Morton Stanley met Dr David Livingstone. We discover that Livingstone isn’t remembered for anything he achieved. A missionary and medical doctor from a poor Scottish background – and an indestructible traveller - he learned to make accurate geographical calculations and used them to map a small part of Africa. Amazingly he did most of his successful exploration with an African team and backed by African funds. So why did he become an international sensation? (R) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Did Robert Peary or Frederick Cook reach the North Pole first? In our 100th podcast, we weigh up what evidence remains after a ruthless campaign to destroy records and reputations. And we discover the new evidence that has begun to emerge from the most unexpected places.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A full year before US commander Robert Peary claimed he had been the first man to reach the North Pole, a younger, medical doctor, also from America, had beaten him to it. Or so he told the press. His name was Frederick Cook and he had expedition history with both Peary in the Arctic and Amundsen in the Antarctic. He not only treated the Inughuit well but also returned with credible latitude readings and unique observations of the movements and character of the polar ice. None of which was unacceptable to Peary and his millionaire backers.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robert Peary’s backers were the wealthy railway barons and bankers of New York. It didn’t matter to them whether Peary was the first to get to the North Pole or not. What mattered to them in 1909 was that he would say he’d reached the Pole, and then tell a strong, manly tale about it. In their eyes the future of Americans, as the tough frontier people, depended upon it. It may well have pushed Peary, a man who was known to be both ruthless and exploitative, towards murder… Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We may think the main controversy surrounding American, naval commander, Robert Peary’s claim to be the first to reach the North Pole on 6/7 May 1909 was whether he, and the other ‘invisible’ five men accompanying him, actually got anywhere near the Pole. However, it’s a much more complicated and sinister story than that…. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What was the driving force behind the settlement of the American west? Was it the so-called ‘anarchocapitalism’ so admired by the Hoover Institution and some of the followers of President Trump? The violence they fetishize turns out to have been only in those places populated by young men – we’re talking not just cowpokes or gold and silver prospectors, but also vigilantes in the towns back east. The majority of frontiers-people were peaceful Americans. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A series of land grabs and cruel clearances by the Federal government from 1781 triggered a crazy, barely-contained movement west, spearheaded by gold prospectors, cattle ranchers, homesteaders and the railroads. By 1892 it was generally agreed that the American character was forged in the violence of the shifting frontier. We look at the popular fiction and entertainment that helped create this belief: Deadwood Dick, Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane, Mark Twain’s Six-fingered Pete and many others. And we examine what really went on! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Having considered the arguments in favour of defining Sir Isaac Newton as an early 'scientist', we now consider the other side of the coin. Newton’s best-known breakthrough – the identification of gravity – belonged not to the latest tradition of European Cartesian rationalism, but to a very English strand of occult philosophy. In fact it was only because Newton worked in this tradition that he was able to think of gravity as an unseen and mysterious force. Europeans like Leibnitz wrote the idea off as magic. More striking, like other English philosophers, Newton believed that all this had been known to ancient thinkers going back to Noah, and spent much of his life trying to decode the myths and symbols they left behind. He was, he believed, the only man in his generation privileged to understand them. The last of magicians? Maybe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The short answer to the question, ‘was Newton the last of the magicians?’ is, yes …. And also … no. Newton and alchemy turn out to be ‘a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.’ We toss a coin and take a heads-and-tails approach. In this podcast we argue that the alchemical experiments he undertook had nothing to do with magic. Newton’s alchemy now looks to historians like good science (although he would have called himself both a natural philosopher and a chymist). It was well conceived and measured and drew on the work of his contemporaries and of many men before him. And Newton was certainly not the last person in Europe to practise alchemy of this kind. Within fifty years of his death it would simply evolve into modern chemistry. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.