Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, Revision's History listeners. Malcolm Globble here. We're on
Speaker 1: summer break, but we'll be back in September with four
Speaker 1: brand new episodes of the show. Meanwhile, I hope you're
Speaker 1: staying cool, and to help you with that challenge, I
Speaker 1: have a little something that will plunge you into a
Speaker 1: world of freezing cold. It's an epic tale that comes
Speaker 1: by way of my good friend and fellow pushkin nite
Speaker 1: Tim Harford over at his podcast Cautionary Tales. He has
Speaker 1: a fantastic trilogy about Antarctica and a treacherous race between
Speaker 1: two explorers chasing one another across the frigid waste of
Speaker 1: the world's least hospitable continent. There are blizzards, dogs, frostbite, scurvy,
Speaker 1: and epic mistakes. Fortunately, the whole point of Cautionary Tales
Speaker 1: is to learn from other people's mistakes. The mistake, the
Speaker 1: more you can learn. After I listened to this series,
Speaker 1: I had to call Tim Literally one hundred percent of
Speaker 1: that was new to me. One hundred percent. It was
Speaker 1: so great. I was like, this is fantastic. Who knew
Speaker 1: all this craziest that I'm like, hey, okay, before we
Speaker 1: get to more of my conversation with Tim, you should
Speaker 1: probably hear a taste of this crazy stuff. So let's
Speaker 1: listen to some of his first Antarctica story and then
Speaker 1: follow up with my chance to ask Tim all the
Speaker 1: burning or freezing, as the case may be, questions. Here's
Speaker 1: Tim with cautionary tales. In June nineteen ten, two ships
Speaker 1: set sail from Europe. One of them was captained by
Speaker 1: Robert Falcon Scott of the British Navy, representing the most
Speaker 1: powerful empire the world had ever seen. The other ship
Speaker 1: was led by Roald Amundson of Norway, a small country
Speaker 1: that had gained its dependance just five years before. Both
Speaker 1: men had the same goal. They burned to be the
Speaker 1: first in history to reach the South Pole, planting their
Speaker 1: national flag. This wasn't about imperial conquest. The South Pole
Speaker 1: had no gold or spices or slaves. It was all
Speaker 1: about the symbolism. The age of exploration was largely over.
Speaker 1: Most of the world had been thoroughly mapped, with one
Speaker 1: big exception the vast interior of the icy continent of Antarctica.
Speaker 1: No human feet had ever trodden on the Earth's most
Speaker 1: southerly point. Of course, the British wanted to be the
Speaker 1: first to reach it. Over the centuries, they'd grown used
Speaker 1: to thinking of themselves as the greatest explorers in the world.
Speaker 1: Robert Scott's British ship carried what one historian called the largest,
Speaker 1: best equipped scientific team ever sent to Antarctica. Carried three
Speaker 1: state of the art motorized sleds, along with Siberian dogs
Speaker 1: and ponies, and a crew of sixty five. This little
Speaker 1: army set sail from London in front of a crowd
Speaker 1: of the Empire's finest. The American polar explorer Robert Bartlett
Speaker 1: was there, noting that nobody had ever given him such
Speaker 1: a send off. There were gold lace and cocked hats,
Speaker 1: and dignitaries enough to run a navy. I couldn't help
Speaker 1: comparing all this formality with the shoddy, almost sneering attitude
Speaker 1: of the American public. One of Scott's crew was almost
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by the crowd of onlookers. The cheers from the
Speaker 1: many thousands of throats fairly made the air quiver on
Speaker 1: that blazing summer afternoon. Rolled Amundson's Norwegian vessel was much smaller.
Speaker 1: It carried no motorized sleds, or ponies, only dogs, and
Speaker 1: a crew of just nineteen. It sailed at midnight without
Speaker 1: ceremony or celebration, a ghost chip slipping out into the
Speaker 1: Norwegian Fiords. Nobody in Norway was excited about Amundson's bold
Speaker 1: thrust to beat the British to the South Pole, and
Speaker 1: there was a reason for that. He had told everyone
Speaker 1: he was heading to the North Pole instead. It's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine a more uneven contest. Scott's expedition was far
Speaker 1: larger and far better funded, underwritten by the British Navy
Speaker 1: and supported by public and private donations from across the
Speaker 1: British Empire. There could be only one winner, and it
Speaker 1: was already obvious who it would be. I'm Tim Harford,
Speaker 1: and you're listening to cautionary tales. Remember the biblical story
Speaker 1: of David and Goliath. An Israelite shepherd boy with the
Speaker 1: humblest weapon imaginable, a sling, defeats Goliath, the Philistine champion,
Speaker 1: a fully armed man mountain. King Saul of the Israelites
Speaker 1: is against the plan. You cannot go against this Philistine,
Speaker 1: to do battle with him, for you are a lad
Speaker 1: and he is a man of war. From his youth,
Speaker 1: but David fights Goliath anyway and winds easily. Malcolm Gladwell's
Speaker 1: book David and Goliath has some interesting things to say
Speaker 1: about this fight. Goliath wasn't quite as fearsome as he seemed.
Speaker 1: He was at least six ft nine, but humans aren't
Speaker 1: built to be that big. One plausible explanation is that
Speaker 1: Goliath was suffering from a medical condition which causes the
Speaker 1: production of too much growth hormone. It also often causes
Speaker 1: double vision. Goliath looked terrifying, but he may well have
Speaker 1: had difficulty moving and difficulty focusing. In the Race to
Speaker 1: the South Pole, Robert Falcon Scott was Goliath, apparently the
Speaker 1: overwhelming favorite, but in reality in a hopeless position. Just
Speaker 1: in case you don't know how the race unfolds, Scott's
Speaker 1: mission ends in utter failure. For more than a century,
Speaker 1: people have been arguing about why. On one side of
Speaker 1: the argument to those who say Scott was terribly unlucky,
Speaker 1: in particular with the weather. On the other side of
Speaker 1: those who say Scott was an incompetent, that he chose
Speaker 1: the wrong method, took needless risks, and at critical moments
Speaker 1: he made the wrong calls. If it wasn't bad luck
Speaker 1: or bad judgment, then how else could such a well
Speaker 1: resourced expedition fail. But Goliath didn't lose because he was
Speaker 1: unlucky or because he was foolish. He lost because the
Speaker 1: apparent underdog was actually in a vastly superior position all along.
Speaker 1: We'll explore the causes of Scott's problems in a moment,
Speaker 1: but first let's describe the symptoms. His expedition was so
Speaker 1: large that scotch ship was overloaded with men, fuel, motorized sledges,
Speaker 1: and ponies, and it nearly sank before reaching Antarctica. Conditions
Speaker 1: on ship were miserable. The crew ate their meals from
Speaker 1: a table directly underneath where the ponies were being stabled.
Speaker 1: The yellow substance that dribbled down to the cracks in
Speaker 1: the wooden deck onto their table was euphemistically called mustard.
Speaker 1: Things were hardly more comfortable. Once Scott arrived in Antarctica.
Speaker 1: The British went to a base that Scott and others
Speaker 1: had established years before on Ross Island, just off the
Speaker 1: coast of the Antarctic continent. It was further away from
Speaker 1: the South Pole than where Amunson made his base camp,
Speaker 1: and not without its dangers. One man ventured onto an
Speaker 1: ice floe to photograph some killer whales and nearly ended
Speaker 1: up as their lunch. The ship was within sixty yards
Speaker 1: and I heard wild shouts. Look out, run jackman, jump,
Speaker 1: run quick. But I could not run. It was all
Speaker 1: I could do to keep my feet as I leapt
Speaker 1: from piece to piece of the rocking ice, with the
Speaker 1: whales a few yards behind me, snorting and blowing among
Speaker 1: the ice plots. He made it back to safety, with
Speaker 1: Captain Scott exclaiming, Oh my god, that was about the
Speaker 1: nearest squeak I ever saw. Then came the unloading of
Speaker 1: the ship. It did not go well. We realized that
Speaker 1: the ice was getting very rotten, wrote one crewman, But
Speaker 1: when a message came back from an anxious Scott to
Speaker 1: hurry with the unloading, no one had the courage or
Speaker 1: the sense to ignore it. They were unloading one of
Speaker 1: the three motorized sledges. The ship party had got the
Speaker 1: sledge down onto the ice, when, without warning, Williamson went
Speaker 1: through to his thighs. The motor sledge suddenly dipped, the
Speaker 1: ice gave way, and she fell with all her weight
Speaker 1: vertically on the rope. The rope began cutting through the
Speaker 1: thin ice. Man after man was forced to let go.
Speaker 1: The sledge is now resting on the bottom at a
Speaker 1: depth of one hundred and twenty fathoms. It was a
Speaker 1: terrifying moment, and an expensive one. Scott had paid about
Speaker 1: as much for his three motorized sledges as Amunson had
Speaker 1: raised to fund his entire expedition. After months preparing depots
Speaker 1: and sheltering from the winter, Scott was ready to make
Speaker 1: his attempt at the South Pole. Despite the loss of
Speaker 1: one motor sledge, he still had two more of them,
Speaker 1: plus packs of dogs, a team of ponies, and the
Speaker 1: time on a tradition of the British Navy, donning harnesses
Speaker 1: and hauling the sledges by hand with sheer British grit
Speaker 1: and endurance. The British had long experience of this man
Speaker 1: hauling of sledges in polar regions. One disastrous expedition to
Speaker 1: the Arctic in eighteen seventy five required man hauling. Here's
Speaker 1: the conclusion of a survivor. I would confine everyone who
Speaker 1: proposed such a thing in a lunatic asylum, burn every
Speaker 1: sledge in existence, and destroy the patterns long experience, as
Speaker 1: I say, but the British Navy had not learned from
Speaker 1: that long experience. With the luxury of these varied modes
Speaker 1: of transport available, Scott chose to hid them all. You
Speaker 1: might think that would give him flexibility. Instead it constrained him.
Speaker 1: Scott's ponies were poorly adapted to the cold, so he
Speaker 1: decided to start later in the spring. Even then, the
Speaker 1: ponies struggled. They traveled slowly, hooves sinking deep into the snow.
Speaker 1: Scott decided it would be better for the ponies to
Speaker 1: travel at night, when the colder temperatures might mean firmer
Speaker 1: conditions under their hoofs. It was miserable. Huge icicles forum
Speaker 1: under the pawnies nauses during a march. Scott's two remaining
Speaker 1: motorized sledges broke down early in the expedition. Nobody on
Speaker 1: his team had the mechanical expertise to fix them, so
Speaker 1: he had to abandon them and man haul the sledges instead.
Speaker 1: The man hauled sledges were even slower than the ponies.
Speaker 1: Scott's expedition was a patchwork caravan, from which the ponies
Speaker 1: and the dog sleds had to keep stopping to let
Speaker 1: the man hauled sledges keep up the dogs to the
Speaker 1: hall march in three hours, and then they have little
Speaker 1: else to do for the rest of the day. The
Speaker 1: dogs are doing splendidly. When news reached Scott and his
Speaker 1: team that Amonson was racing them to the poll, they
Speaker 1: correctly surmised that he wouldn't have taken ponies and he
Speaker 1: wouldn't be man hauling any sledges. I must say that
Speaker 1: Amondson's chance of having forestalled us looks good. After the losses,
Speaker 1: the accidents, the late start, and the slow progress, Scott's
Speaker 1: defeat was now just a matter of time. But why
Speaker 1: had such a well resourced expedition run into so many problems?
Speaker 1: Actually you'll have to subscribe to Cautionary Tales for the
Speaker 1: answer to that question and so much more. But first
Speaker 1: I got to call up Tim Harford and ask him
Speaker 1: so many burning questions or should I say, freezing questions
Speaker 1: what he learned from these Antarctic tales. Here's our conversation, Tim.
Speaker 1: I've listened to all three of your episodes, and I
Speaker 1: must say I liked him very much. I thought I
Speaker 1: thought it was fascinating. I actually knew none of this
Speaker 1: at all. I couldn't. Yeah, it was all kind of
Speaker 1: a blur to me. All of these all these all
Speaker 1: of these explorers from long ago, and there are all
Speaker 1: these dimensions that I didn't understand. But I were to
Speaker 1: start with this contrast between Scott and Ahmadson. The complex thing,
Speaker 1: and the thing that makes it really fascinating is that
Speaker 1: Scott is really the innovator, isn't he. Yeah, where he
Speaker 1: sees himself as the scientific innovator. He wants to he
Speaker 1: wants to break ground in terms of exploring, measuring magnetic fields,
Speaker 1: discovering new aspects of the flora and fungi of Antarctica.
Speaker 1: There's this crazy side quest they do when they're trying
Speaker 1: to get a penguin egg, which is described as the
Speaker 1: worst journey in the world because they have to travel
Speaker 1: in the anti winter. I mean, it's crazy. He's doing
Speaker 1: technological innovation. He has these three motorized sleds, which I
Speaker 1: think partly paved the way for tanks in the First
Speaker 1: World War. And people who think that Scott is awesome
Speaker 1: emphasize all of this ambition, all of the things he
Speaker 1: was trying to do. But of course Amonson just wanted
Speaker 1: to use the best possible way to get to the
Speaker 1: South Pole first. And actually that was innovative in some
Speaker 1: small ways that the precise design of the sled and
Speaker 1: the kind of containers that won't leak, But it was
Speaker 1: basically using techniques that have been used in Greenland by
Speaker 1: indigenous people for well, I mean, we don't know how long,
Speaker 1: a very long time. This is actually what I loved
Speaker 1: about the story is that it's so incredibly contemporary because
Speaker 1: Scott is really the kind of He's the Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: startup who gets an enormous amount of venture funding and
Speaker 1: proceeds to blow it all on a series of ideas
Speaker 1: and solving problems that our problems. And Amonson is the
Speaker 1: kind of bootstrap entrepreneur in the middle the country that
Speaker 1: no one's paying attention to, who's you know, force to
Speaker 1: use the tried and true. The original sin sounds like
Speaker 1: is the fact that Scott was given everything he wanted,
Speaker 1: everything he wanted, plus a lot of baggage he didn't want,
Speaker 1: all kinds of interference and all kinds of people telling
Speaker 1: him they wanted to do this, and they wanted to
Speaker 1: do that, and they wanted to achieve all of these
Speaker 1: great things, which means he can't focus. But yeah, he's
Speaker 1: got far too much. He's got far too much money,
Speaker 1: he's got far too many people. His ship nearly sinks
Speaker 1: simply because it's so overladen. There's just so much on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's nearly capsized by a storm on the way
Speaker 1: to the Antarctic. But Amonson, meanwhile, is is I mean,
Speaker 1: not only is no one paying attention to him, he's
Speaker 1: actively engaging in disinformation. He's lying to he's even lying
Speaker 1: to his own crew about where he's going. He's telling
Speaker 1: people he's going north and he's actually going south. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I love the way that you've praised this is
Speaker 1: he's a Silicon Valley startup because for me, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: he's a British Navy guy. He's kind of a government man.
Speaker 1: He's a military man. He's very bureaucratic. But you're you're
Speaker 1: seeing a different quality in him in a different problem
Speaker 1: that he's facing. He's given everything he wants, and then
Speaker 1: as a result, he has lots of things he doesn't want.
Speaker 1: Those two things are linked. That's what happens when you
Speaker 1: get everything you want. It's the careful what you wish
Speaker 1: for problem. Right. The things he don't want are a
Speaker 1: consequence of getting everything he wants. At the beginning, he
Speaker 1: has so many people who are pitching in to quote
Speaker 1: unquote help him that he ends up being burdened by
Speaker 1: all of their expectations, which is another Silicon Valley kind
Speaker 1: of conundrum. The venture capitalist gives you fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: and then has a seat at the table and complicates
Speaker 1: your vision with all of their sense of where you
Speaker 1: should be going. The funder the venture capitalist in this
Speaker 1: particular case is a guy called Sir Clements Markham, who
Speaker 1: is just this incredibly British, incredibly intimidating fellow about this
Speaker 1: portrait of him, and it looks to me like the
Speaker 1: expression on his face is like the photographer has just
Speaker 1: broken wind, and he just looks so unhappy that someone
Speaker 1: is daring to point a camera at him. And he
Speaker 1: was just pulling the strings at the Royal Geographical Society
Speaker 1: in London for decades. He's so tight with Scott and
Speaker 1: Scott's family that Scott names his son Peter after Sir Clements,
Speaker 1: and Scott is clearly terrified of him. And it's one
Speaker 1: of these you know, he put Scott where he is,
Speaker 1: and he can put him right back again if he
Speaker 1: if he wants to. And Sir Clements, who's never been
Speaker 1: to the Antarctic, who's got no idea what it's like
Speaker 1: down there, just has his views the obviously there should
Speaker 1: be no dogs. Everybody who knows anything about Arctic exploration
Speaker 1: knows you should use dogs for any number of reasons
Speaker 1: I explain in the episodes. But Sir Clements is sitting
Speaker 1: there in London going no no ski, no dogs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Scott's kind of got to do what he says.
Speaker 1: It's so funny that any story about English life I'm
Speaker 1: in this period always boils down to the stupidity of
Speaker 1: the British ruling class. Sir Clements is such a familiar figure,
Speaker 1: this kind of arrogant, pigheaded authority figure who thinks that,
Speaker 1: who has a kind of abstract notion of the way
Speaker 1: things ought to be yes absolutely, which sort of triumphs
Speaker 1: over the way things actually are. But the interesting thing
Speaker 1: for me about Amunson is that he also has these
Speaker 1: certain bureaucratic constraints. So he's the king, is the patron
Speaker 1: of his expedition, and he's got funding from the Norwegian
Speaker 1: government and all this kind of stuff, but he just
Speaker 1: doesn't care. So he lies to the King, he lies
Speaker 1: to Parliament, he's borrowed all this money, and then he
Speaker 1: basically runs away. One of the things he's doing going
Speaker 1: to Fantarctica is getting out of reach of his creditors,
Speaker 1: and it's only when they can't impound his ship that
Speaker 1: he actually tells people exactly what he's doing. So, yes,
Speaker 1: it is partly this kind of this hide bound British bureaucracy,
Speaker 1: but it is also Scott's deference to it in a
Speaker 1: way that Amunson was not. I said for a second
Speaker 1: in any of that. Yeah, to bring up the second
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley analogy, there's a little bit of Elizabeth Holmes
Speaker 1: in Ammonson. It's fake it to you make it kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah, except he made it. Yeah, he said
Speaker 1: that he made it. But that idea that for someone
Speaker 1: who's attempting something incredibly difficult, that it may be necessary
Speaker 1: at some time to engage in acts of deception at
Speaker 1: the outset, or maybe a better way of saying it
Speaker 1: is that the kind of person who is focused in
Speaker 1: singular singular enough to pull off a feat like this
Speaker 1: is willing to engage in deception, doesn't have any kind
Speaker 1: of moral qualm. Nothing, Nothing trumps the goal of reaching
Speaker 1: the South Pole. Everything else is secondary, including the truth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't seem to have lost any sleep over that.
Speaker 1: And I think Ammonson had this very clear vision that
Speaker 1: it would all be forgiven if he succeeded, and which
Speaker 1: I suspect that to the extent that Elizabeth Holmes that
Speaker 1: Saranos had a vision of what was going on. But
Speaker 1: there's the same thing, they'll forgive me want it all works. Oh,
Speaker 1: I think she very clearly had that. Tim. I think
Speaker 1: that's absolutely much driving the whole train there is. I
Speaker 1: can lie in, cheat and deceive, because if I pull
Speaker 1: this off, I'm a hero. Yeah. Tell me a little
Speaker 1: bit about your personal feelings about the two men. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's clearly you're partial to Amondson. If you eat a
Speaker 1: choice between dining with two of them, who's your first
Speaker 1: choice for dinner tonight? Oh? Actually, I think they would
Speaker 1: both be well, they'll both be interesting, but they would
Speaker 1: be pretty awkward both ways, because I think they both
Speaker 1: had these huge egos. Amonson is this anti hero. I
Speaker 1: don't really like either of them as people. I'm excited
Speaker 1: by Amonson's daring and his willingness to get things done,
Speaker 1: and he makes sacrifices and he succeeds in the end,
Speaker 1: and Scott just seems like this tragic blunderer. But I'm
Speaker 1: not sure I'd really want to have dinner with either
Speaker 1: of them, if I'm honest, who would you Who would
Speaker 1: you rather? Scott? Yeah, I came away from listening to
Speaker 1: your your episodes liking Ammatson, and I felt very sorry
Speaker 1: for him because the world doesn't reward him in the
Speaker 1: way that he ought to have been rewarded. He's the hero.
Speaker 1: He made it look too easy, that's the problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he made it look too easy. But Scott would just
Speaker 1: be fascinating. And he's so British, he's so of that period.
Speaker 1: I mean, and you would dine out on Scott stories
Speaker 1: for the rest of your life. But if you had
Speaker 1: dinner with him, get him trying, and he wasn't. He
Speaker 1: was a brilliant storyteller. He did that and the story
Speaker 1: was of the tragic hero. And he was writing the
Speaker 1: story of the tragic hero who's going to fail all
Speaker 1: the way along. It's almost like he knew how it
Speaker 1: was going to end. Yeah, this is so much fun.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Thank you Tim. It's a wonderful series.