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Can you vacation in Antarctica? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from house Stuff works dot com? Hey, welcome to the podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. This with me is a man named
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Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant. He's a little under the weather
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Speaker 1: right now. Yes, sick, Yes, and that should come through
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Speaker 1: in this show. Keep getting me. I'm not gonna get
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Speaker 1: you sick. I got my own little mic cover with
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Speaker 1: my name on it. I'm gonna take it, probably burn it.
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Speaker 1: Actually I'm not gonna burn it because it's pricey. Didn't
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Speaker 1: the company get it for you though? Oh yeah, but
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Speaker 1: I don't want to waste the company money. That's good thinking. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I'm a little ill, so all apologies, people, but we
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Speaker 1: like to soldier on here at s Y s K.
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Speaker 1: We meet our deadline. Remember when we often talked about
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Speaker 1: when you were sick for eight months? It was a
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Speaker 1: long time. Yeah, I'm hoping this is no more than
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Speaker 1: a few shows, maybe even just these two. That's what
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Speaker 1: I'm because we're recording to today. But I feel bad
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Speaker 1: for you because both of them are kind of chilly, Yes,
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Speaker 1: especially this one. Wintry topics. Yeah, well it's almost always
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Speaker 1: winter in Antarctica, even when it's summer season. Chuck. Have
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Speaker 1: you ever heard of a guy named Captain Robert Scott? Uh,
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Speaker 1: Bobby Scott, Bob Scott, cappy. I think he went by
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Speaker 1: rob instead of Bobby. Uh. He was one of the
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Speaker 1: first two people, or led one of the first two
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Speaker 1: expeditions to make it to the South Pole Antarctica, and
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Speaker 1: he was beaten by just four weeks by a Norwegian rival.
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Speaker 1: I think he's gonna say he's beaten by a polar
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Speaker 1: bear or something like that. Uh. No, well he did die.
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Speaker 1: A five man team made it to the South Pole
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Speaker 1: and started making their way back and just hit some
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Speaker 1: real freak weather. Um. And the guy that the team
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Speaker 1: meteorologist was in that five man team and just felt
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Speaker 1: awful that he'd missed this prediction. And they were just
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Speaker 1: buffeted by I think negative forty, negative ninety, just ridiculously
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Speaker 1: cold temperatures, so freak weather, or as they call it,
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Speaker 1: an Antarctica weather or Tuesday Tuesday. Um. So these guys died. Um.
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Speaker 1: But there they were found, and among them were found
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Speaker 1: some some of the find some of the things. This
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Speaker 1: is a scientific expedition. Obviously, UM some of the notes
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Speaker 1: they made, UM some the weather notes, the um a
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Speaker 1: trio of penguin eggs, Emperor penguin eggs. So they this
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Speaker 1: was kind of the the crown jewel of the stuff
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Speaker 1: that they accumulated during the scientific expedition. And here's why.
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Speaker 1: Apparently back in this era, this is nineteen eleven, I
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Speaker 1: think UM people thought that emperor penguins, because they couldn't fly,
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Speaker 1: were the most primitive birds on the planet. They hadn't involved,
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Speaker 1: and people were real keen on proving or disproving Darwin's
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Speaker 1: new theory about evolution through natural selection. So they figured,
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Speaker 1: if you go find the eggs of this very primitive bird,
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Speaker 1: you're going to find the link to dinosaurs and birds.
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Speaker 1: The reason why is because the Edwardians also believed that
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Speaker 1: um an animal went through all the stages of evolution
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Speaker 1: during its gestation. So they figured, hey, take some emperor
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Speaker 1: penguin eggs, crack them open, you're gonna find a dinosaur. Right.
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Speaker 1: It didn't work out like that, but they found the
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Speaker 1: very cute emperor penguin. They did dead inside, of course,
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Speaker 1: frozen to death. And now that I've seen the March
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Speaker 1: of the Penguins, I realized just how mean the expedition
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Speaker 1: kind of was. I didn't see that. Oh man, you
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Speaker 1: don't mess with an Emperor penguin egg. They go through
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Speaker 1: a lot to keep those things safe and warm and hatched,
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Speaker 1: and you don't. You just don't steal three of them, agreed,
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Speaker 1: Captain Robert Scott did. And you can't did either. I
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Speaker 1: imagine you can't. But you can't pay someone to take
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Speaker 1: you as close as you like. And if you were
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Speaker 1: a jerk, you could contuvably do it. Sneak one out
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Speaker 1: in your old purse. Yeah, let's let's talk about vacationing
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Speaker 1: and Antarctica. Did you know you can do that? Well?
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Speaker 1: I do now. Uh. Here, let's let's talk about the
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Speaker 1: body of land itself, because it's pretty remarkable. It's uh,
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Speaker 1: South Pole, Like you said, five percent of the lamb
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Speaker 1: masses ice, and I think the other point five is
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Speaker 1: a small putting green, but not mistaken. It's nice, says
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Speaker 1: Zoysia growing there. Uh. During the winter, they the ice
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Speaker 1: gets bigger, obviously, making it the fifth largest continent five
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Speaker 1: point million square miles of largely ice. And that's a
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Speaker 1: lot of ice. Even though it's shrinking, which we'll talk
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Speaker 1: about a little bit. Yeah, but naturally during the seasons
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Speaker 1: that expands and contracts slightly. Sure as ices want to do. Uh.
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Speaker 1: When it's warm, which is November to fed Bruary, it's
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Speaker 1: gonna be below freezing almost all the time. In the winter,
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Speaker 1: it can drop to ninety degrees below fahrenheit And I
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Speaker 1: got a world record here of one below zero at
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Speaker 1: the Bolstock station. Very dry, which is awesome because it's
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Speaker 1: like pristine, powdery snow. Uh, blustery winds. Actually that's not
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Speaker 1: the good part. Well, the winds are almost constant and
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Speaker 1: they get up to like two d you ever seen
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Speaker 1: the thing. Yeah, and by the way, two hundred miles
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Speaker 1: and hours three twenty one kilometers per hour for everybody else.
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Speaker 1: And you know what ninety degrees below fahrenheit is minus
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Speaker 1: sixty eight celsius. Yeah, like to convert for our friends
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Speaker 1: in other weird places. Yeah, two on that Canada. Uh,
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Speaker 1: not a lot of people live there. In fact, only
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Speaker 1: the only people that live there are people that have
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Speaker 1: set up research stations there. Yeah, it's in some I
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Speaker 1: guess some of them are manned year round, which is
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Speaker 1: pretty crazy. That's awesome. Yeah. So I say, if you
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Speaker 1: go to a research station during um, the time from
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Speaker 1: what February to November, Uh, you're gonna find maybe fifty
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Speaker 1: people there. And then when it's bustling from November to
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Speaker 1: February summertime, summertime, it's gonna be maybe a hundred fifty
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Speaker 1: people there. But all of these are temporary residents. No
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Speaker 1: one lives on Antarctica, well, temporary in a living since,
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Speaker 1: but they're permanent structures, right, They're not living in tents.
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Speaker 1: The residents are temporaries, not their structures. But there have
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Speaker 1: been people who were born on Antarctica. Yeah, now that
6:41
Speaker 1: that was a cool fact of this show. I thought, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: have you heard of Emilio Marcos de Palma. I have? Indeed,
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Speaker 1: he you have. He's Antarcticon. He is, He's the first
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Speaker 1: Antarcticon ever. He was born in January night, and um
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Speaker 1: it was a bit of a ploy. Actually his father
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Speaker 1: worked at a research station in Antarctica, and the Argentinian
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Speaker 1: government found out that this guy's wife was pregnant and
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Speaker 1: hustled her down to Antarctica to give birth there in
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Speaker 1: an attempt to lay claim to sovereignty of Antarctica. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and that's because no one is generally born there. There's
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Speaker 1: a lot of nations over the years that have tried
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Speaker 1: to claim it as her own, including Argentina, Australia, Chile, France,
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Speaker 1: Great Britain, New Zealand, and Norway. And I'm surprised the
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Speaker 1: U S hadn't none there. Don't we know that there's
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Speaker 1: land out there that we don't have our Chile did
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Speaker 1: the same pull the same stunt as Argentina. Um. I
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Speaker 1: think six years after Emilio Marcus to Palma was born
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Speaker 1: and a kid named Juan Pablo Camacho was the second
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Speaker 1: Antarctican ever born. But you can have as many babies
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Speaker 1: as you want there, you're not gonna establish sovereignty because
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Speaker 1: there's a treaty from nineteen fifty nine called the Antarctic
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Speaker 1: Treaty appropriately enough, and basically it says that Antarctic doesn't
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Speaker 1: belong to anybody. It's like the oceans. It belongs to
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Speaker 1: everyone and no one UM, no one can lay claim there.
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Speaker 1: And because it doesn't belong to anybody, and because it
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Speaker 1: belongs to everybody, um, it's protected from war and it's
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Speaker 1: a nuclear free zone. Would you war anyway, No, I
8:19
Speaker 1: know here's gonna fight in other people or in the
8:24
Speaker 1: case of the thing, you would be fighting some horrific
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Speaker 1: shape shifting beast. And by the way, we should probably
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Speaker 1: point out I think it's still commonly overlooked. Uh, Antarctic
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Speaker 1: is the only place where you can find penguins, right,
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Speaker 1: They're not in the Arctic. Okay, I didn't know that
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Speaker 1: penguins Antarctic. And also, if you you know, I know
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Speaker 1: you love HP Lovecraft. Here there um, if you are
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Speaker 1: into Antarctic and you want to be scared out of
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Speaker 1: your wits by an emperor penguin reed at the Mountains
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Speaker 1: of Madness, I love Crash. I want to read that one, dude.
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Speaker 1: That's probably his best one, and it's set entirely in Antarctica.
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Speaker 1: I think they're making a movie. I think they had before.
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Speaker 1: Jackson's looking into it. I think that would be good. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: he's probably the only person who could pull it off,
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Speaker 1: but he'll he'll probably fail like everybody else. What about
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Speaker 1: Eugene Levy, You don't think he could do it. He
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Speaker 1: could be too charming, you know, like it wouldn't exist
9:22
Speaker 1: in The Cannon or a Christopher Guest movie. I saw
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Speaker 1: Spinal Tap for the first time the other day, first
9:28
Speaker 1: time ever ever? Shut up, was like, what do you
9:31
Speaker 1: mean you haven't seen Spinal Taps? Watched it right, I
9:35
Speaker 1: loved it. I had no idea what I was missing.
9:37
Speaker 1: I tweeted to Michael McKeon and said, are you aware
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Speaker 1: that you were in Spinal Tap? And he tweeted back,
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Speaker 1: shut up, Wait what he said? Yeah, I favorite it,
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Speaker 1: So we're on was that personally or that was s y?
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Speaker 1: So we're on his radar in a small way. Apparently. Wow,
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Speaker 1: at the very least he thought it was a funny tweet.
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Speaker 1: That's pretty funny. And I can't believe you never saw that.
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Speaker 1: I literally watch that movie over fifty times in college,
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Speaker 1: Like I can recite it almost by heart. I can
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Speaker 1: totally see that. Yeah, I can see that. I mean,
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Speaker 1: I'd love, you know, best in Show a lot, so
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Speaker 1: I knew i'd like Special Tap. Well, that was the
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Speaker 1: that was the original. It was strange seeing Harry Shear
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Speaker 1: because I just associate him with The Simpsons almost entirely. Yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: he's great in that too. I can talk about this
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Speaker 1: stuff all day. Let's get back to Antarctica, or we
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Speaker 1: should do a Christopher guest final tap um. So if
10:32
Speaker 1: you want a vacation there, which you can do, you
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Speaker 1: gotta get there. And in this case, getting there, I
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Speaker 1: don't know if it's half the fun, but it's half
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Speaker 1: the challenge because you're not gonna find any I twenties
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Speaker 1: zooming into Antarctica or any Delta Airline flights landing there, right,
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Speaker 1: and most of the action, um, when you're traveling to
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Speaker 1: Antarctica takes place on the Antarctic Peninsula, which is a
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Speaker 1: sweep of land that juts out toward uh, Southern South America.
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Speaker 1: Imagine almost all of Antarctica is still very much not
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Speaker 1: trod upon, you know. Um, yeah, it was just explored
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Speaker 1: like at the beginning of the last century. Basically, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: people like why don't I want to go down there?
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Speaker 1: Took us off right exactly. So like you were saying, like,
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Speaker 1: it's it's not easy to get to, and you're going
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Speaker 1: to get to the point that's easiest to get to
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Speaker 1: from southern South America. So most likely you're going to
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Speaker 1: take a ship cruise ship probably from Argentina or Chile
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Speaker 1: and show up, which seems weird that they're that close.
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Speaker 1: It's very close isn't it. And the weird Yeah, like
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Speaker 1: you think of like hot temperatures, you do, but then
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Speaker 1: you're like, oh wait, that's Bolivia I'm thinking of. Chili
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Speaker 1: is actually right by Antarctica. The first commercial cruise liners,
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Speaker 1: because you're gonna get there by ship is how you're
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Speaker 1: gonna get there, and cruise ship is one of the
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Speaker 1: most popular ways to do that these days. The first
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Speaker 1: one came in sixty nine and that was the lind
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Speaker 1: Blade Explorer. Just to give you an idea of the
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Speaker 1: increase in tourism over the years, in the early nineties
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Speaker 1: only about nine thousand people per year and just a
12:08
Speaker 1: couple of years ago in two thousand eight, two thousand
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Speaker 1: seven to eight forty, which doesn't sound like a lot
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Speaker 1: of people, but it's a lot for Antarctica, especially when
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Speaker 1: you consider the proportion that we're wearing Mickey mouse heres
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Speaker 1: at the time. They're incruising around the glaciers drinking Chilean wine. UH.
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Speaker 1: There is an UH tourist association, the i A a
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Speaker 1: t O Internets association of Antarctic tour operators formed in
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Speaker 1: the early nineties and their mission basically is to keep
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Speaker 1: everything safe and keep everything above board and ethical on
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Speaker 1: a environmental uh scale, because they're gonna want it to
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Speaker 1: be ruined. Antarctica is supposedly pristine, it is. We found
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Speaker 1: out it isn't though that same uh, the same scott expedition. Also,
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Speaker 1: I don't know how. I don't want to think hell
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Speaker 1: but came about came by some uh Emperor penguin skins
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Speaker 1: and they're still to this day used to um as
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Speaker 1: a control sample when you're comparing um tainted Emperor penguin
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Speaker 1: skins today. And they found out that d DTS actually
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Speaker 1: made its way down there to any So it's not
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Speaker 1: really pristine cheese that's pretty pristine, right. Well, now that
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Speaker 1: you have all these ships and people running all over
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Speaker 1: the place exactly like the ever Steel exactly, uh, November
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Speaker 1: to March is, like we said this quote unquote summertime,
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Speaker 1: So that's when tourists are most likely going to be there.
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Speaker 1: A little bit smaller than ice sheet, which means boats
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Speaker 1: are going to be able to get around easier because
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Speaker 1: you've got to be able to navigate through the ice sheets,
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Speaker 1: and not a whole lot of boats have the kind
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Speaker 1: of hull that it can withstand bumping into icebergs. No,
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Speaker 1: this was very alarming to me. There's there are people
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Speaker 1: who were going on cruises on cruise ships, and these
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Speaker 1: cruise ships can't withstand in iceberg. The um the Lynn
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Speaker 1: Blade Explore, Yeah, the first one, Yes, that was also
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Speaker 1: the first one. That was also the one that sank
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Speaker 1: in two thousand seven. It was the same exact ship
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Speaker 1: and ironic, yeah, they changed the name to the MS Explorer,
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Speaker 1: but it was the same exact ship. The first one,
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Speaker 1: the first cruise ship to go to Antarctica, was also
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Speaker 1: I believe the first one to sink in two thousand seven.
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Speaker 1: It was actually outfitted to withstand in iceberg and it's
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Speaker 1: still sunk. So then you consider that there's plenty of
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Speaker 1: cruise lines down there that aren't in any way um
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Speaker 1: equipped to take an iceberg. Apparently they're very worried that
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Speaker 1: this is a disaster waiting to happen. Well, let's go
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Speaker 1: ahead and go there then. Uh. Since two thousand seven,
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Speaker 1: there have been four ships that have run aground, which
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Speaker 1: is not a good place to run aground. No. Well,
14:42
Speaker 1: plus it's not good for Antarctica because it's like, hey,
14:44
Speaker 1: have you met our refined fuel yet? Yeah, that's true. Uh,
14:49
Speaker 1: but if if you do run aground and you're in
14:51
Speaker 1: a in a cruise ship incident, you're gonna be stuck
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Speaker 1: there for a little while because it's not like any
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Speaker 1: other place where they can just send out a star
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Speaker 1: team and all of a sudden you're getting rescued six
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Speaker 1: hours later. So in two thousand seven, uh, with the
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Speaker 1: MS Explorer, these these passengers were in lifeboats, it says
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Speaker 1: for hours. I wonder how long I don't know. I
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Speaker 1: can imagine a while. And they got picked up by
15:15
Speaker 1: another cruise ship, right, So it wasn't even a star
15:17
Speaker 1: team that came to rescue him. No, it was a
15:18
Speaker 1: Norwegian cruise Lines I think that came and got them.
15:21
Speaker 1: So they're like thank you. And that same year, actually
15:24
Speaker 1: uh and Curry from UH what is she? From the
15:27
Speaker 1: Today Show? She was doing in the morning. She was
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Speaker 1: doing a piece called Ends of the Earth, and she
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Speaker 1: went down to Antarctica and she and her crew ended
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Speaker 1: up getting stuck there for days and they just hung
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Speaker 1: around the research station, which we'll get to in a second.
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Speaker 1: Because of freak weather though, right, not like an accident, no,
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Speaker 1: but the freak weather is apparently fairly common, so you
15:49
Speaker 1: just call it again weather down there or Tuesday weather. Um.
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Speaker 1: But apparently if you book an Antarctic vacation, the tour
15:57
Speaker 1: operator says, don't make any big plan on two weeks
16:00
Speaker 1: of either side of your trip, because there's no telling
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Speaker 1: really when you're gonna go down there. They're shooting for
16:05
Speaker 1: this window, but it might not be that window. That
16:07
Speaker 1: might put me off, not from a schedule standpoint, but
16:10
Speaker 1: just from beer, you know. And then I have a
16:13
Speaker 1: story for you. So, um, this is all in summer,
16:18
Speaker 1: like you might get stuck there during the summer. If
16:20
Speaker 1: you're in winter, there's no way for you to get out.
16:23
Speaker 1: You're absolutely stuck there. Nobody's coming in and you're not
16:25
Speaker 1: coming out. You have to honker down for the winner. Yeah,
16:27
Speaker 1: they shut it all down right, I'll travel, yes, um,
16:31
Speaker 1: And they're I think beginning in nineteen nine, the Russians
16:34
Speaker 1: built the Novo Lazarre of Skia. That's my Russian. Uh,
16:41
Speaker 1: they're antarctic base. The Russian Antarctic base was built, and
16:44
Speaker 1: two years later there was a surgeon there named Leonid
16:47
Speaker 1: Rogozov and he was stuck there for the winner. No,
16:52
Speaker 1: he was with some other people, but he was the
16:54
Speaker 1: only physician, and he just happened to figure out that
16:57
Speaker 1: he had a cute pancreat titus man and that he
17:00
Speaker 1: was about to die, and that he had two choices.
17:03
Speaker 1: He could either allow himself to die, or he could
17:06
Speaker 1: perform an eppendex to me on himself. I'm sorry he
17:09
Speaker 1: had appendicitis. He performed an appendect me on himself. When
17:14
Speaker 1: you're doing this, you can't knock yourself out. So he
17:16
Speaker 1: had no anesthesia whatsoever, and he stayed awake the whole time.
17:21
Speaker 1: He would work for four or five minutes as he
17:23
Speaker 1: was carving. There's a famous picture of him like carving
17:25
Speaker 1: himself and he just stained with blood. Um and uh,
17:29
Speaker 1: he'd worked for four or five minutes, rest for about
17:31
Speaker 1: twenty thirty seconds, try to keep from passing out. And
17:34
Speaker 1: he finally did it. He successfully performed surgery on himself
17:38
Speaker 1: and lived to uh two thousand I think is when
17:40
Speaker 1: he died. And he lived another two minutes. But he
17:44
Speaker 1: I mean, could you be badder than that? He's pretty bad.
17:46
Speaker 1: He's up there with and uh who was the white
17:50
Speaker 1: the white death uh Seemohiah. Yeah, yeah, I'd like to
17:54
Speaker 1: see those guys sit down and have a tough off
17:56
Speaker 1: like an arm wrestling competition. So any way, you're stuck
18:00
Speaker 1: there in the winter for sure, but you can frequently
18:03
Speaker 1: get stuck there in the summer too, which hey, you
18:06
Speaker 1: know it's only like fIF theme below. In the summer,
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Speaker 1: you're golden. Uh. Sightseeing cruises probably what the most popular
18:15
Speaker 1: thing to do, like the Alaskan cruise. They'll they'll run
18:18
Speaker 1: you through, uh, through the Kodak Gap, which did you
18:23
Speaker 1: look at the pictures of this place? Oh my gosh.
18:26
Speaker 1: The La Mayre Channel is the official name between the
18:29
Speaker 1: Booth Island Mountains and the Arctic Peninsula peninsula. But they
18:32
Speaker 1: call it that obviously because they should call it the
18:35
Speaker 1: Digital Mpeg Gap now, I guess. But it's extremely photogenic.
18:41
Speaker 1: It's it's where you see like those just like ice
18:44
Speaker 1: blue cave ice caves that you can like go through
18:47
Speaker 1: when your boat and stuff like that. I guess, not
18:50
Speaker 1: caves but tunnels. It's pretty amazing. And I hope you
18:52
Speaker 1: don't strike either side exactly. So they're gonna take you
18:56
Speaker 1: on these cruises. They're gonna get you close. Uh. Some
19:00
Speaker 1: of these tours will take you actually onto land from
19:03
Speaker 1: a smaller boat or a helicopter for a little while,
19:06
Speaker 1: but you're not going to be spending a whole lot
19:07
Speaker 1: of time on land if you're doing one of the
19:09
Speaker 1: cruise ships. Right there are there are some um expeditions
19:13
Speaker 1: you can undertake, Like, um, there's something you can cross
19:16
Speaker 1: country skihole and you can't along the way. It's like
19:20
Speaker 1: a two week tour. I think, Yeah, I'll bet it's
19:22
Speaker 1: pretty cool too, but I think you have to be
19:25
Speaker 1: um kind of strong of mind, probably get you'll go nuts. Yeah,
19:30
Speaker 1: I would imagine, Well, it depends. I mean, I'm sure
19:34
Speaker 1: there are conditions to where it's like quote unquote warm
19:37
Speaker 1: and just lovely in blue, but there's also going to
19:40
Speaker 1: be the white outs where you can't see your hand
19:42
Speaker 1: in front of your face and the wind is like
19:44
Speaker 1: blowing your headgear off, and yeah that's no good. Well,
19:48
Speaker 1: plus also, I think plenty of it's barren. It's just
19:51
Speaker 1: the same view three and sixty degrees, which has to
19:54
Speaker 1: drive you a little nutty too. It's lovely though. Um.
19:58
Speaker 1: You can also, if you're insane already, run a marathon
20:02
Speaker 1: in Antarctica. I'm gonna tell my friend James about this.
20:05
Speaker 1: He's a trail runner and does like these trail marathons
20:09
Speaker 1: and these crazy things. And he's I think he's doing
20:11
Speaker 1: one in Ireland soon. So he likes to travel. I'm
20:14
Speaker 1: gonna turn him onto this. All he needs is about
20:16
Speaker 1: sixteen grand and he can join in the Adventure Network
20:20
Speaker 1: International full or half marathon. I would imagine it's UM
20:24
Speaker 1: fifteen five for the half marathon and then sixteen grand
20:27
Speaker 1: for the full marathon. UM. But you're running in the
20:31
Speaker 1: interior of Antarctica UM about minus twenty degrees ferret height,
20:36
Speaker 1: and you're going to have to deal with the temperature,
20:39
Speaker 1: the wind, chances in elevation, and b penguins trying to
20:42
Speaker 1: trip you because they got money on somebody else. And
20:45
Speaker 1: let's be honest, running a marathon, let's not forget that
20:49
Speaker 1: that's challenging in July. It keeps me at home right there.
20:52
Speaker 1: What I want to know what they run in though?
20:54
Speaker 1: Shoe wise, Yeah, I wonder, you know, I wonder if
20:57
Speaker 1: if it's I mean, obviously are not wearing snowshoes or
21:00
Speaker 1: anything like that, or spikes. I guess there's areas where
21:04
Speaker 1: just heavy tread would work. I would think, So there's
21:07
Speaker 1: gotta be or else. What are you gonna do? You
21:09
Speaker 1: can't run a marathon and snowshoes, so it's ridiculous. Uh
21:13
Speaker 1: So once you're there, you want to pass a little time,
21:16
Speaker 1: You want to see some things that are awesome. Besides
21:18
Speaker 1: the Kodak gap. Uh you can go check out the
21:23
Speaker 1: the mountain there and you can even climb it and
21:25
Speaker 1: it's really not I didn't get a hide on that,
21:28
Speaker 1: did you. No? But it's a four mile climb, which
21:32
Speaker 1: isn't that much. No, I mean it's not. It's nothing
21:34
Speaker 1: to sneeze at. But it's no Everest, But I imagine
21:37
Speaker 1: there's probably a lot of ice to it, ice climbing
21:40
Speaker 1: and as well as just rock climbing. Mount Vincent is
21:43
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. What did I say? Vincent vin
21:48
Speaker 1: Sun not Vincent. Okay, it's the son of Vincent. Got
21:52
Speaker 1: you sorry about that? You can go get your picture
21:55
Speaker 1: made in a bikini in front of the little South
21:58
Speaker 1: Pole marker at the uh Amonson Scott South Pole Station.
22:02
Speaker 1: It's very famous American research center at the South Pole.
22:05
Speaker 1: And they had a little candy cane pole with a
22:08
Speaker 1: little silver ball on top of it. And I've seen
22:11
Speaker 1: a lot of pictures of ladies and bikinis taking their
22:13
Speaker 1: picture there. So the Americans never said this is our land,
22:16
Speaker 1: but they're the ones who built the research station like
22:18
Speaker 1: virtually on top of the South Pole. Um and Amonson Scott.
22:22
Speaker 1: That's named after the two guys who made it to
22:24
Speaker 1: the South Pole, including Robert Scott and Roald Amerson. When
22:30
Speaker 1: was this the early nine It was a nineteen eleven
22:32
Speaker 1: and nineteen twelve, which makes it seem like um Amonson
22:36
Speaker 1: beat the tar out of Scott, but it was really
22:38
Speaker 1: four weeks this summer in January. Yeah, and when you go,
22:41
Speaker 1: you're going to find that they're very friendly people at
22:44
Speaker 1: this facility, that there are tours already set up. It's
22:46
Speaker 1: kind of a routine thing to like go to, you know,
22:49
Speaker 1: the American South Pole Station because I mean, if you
22:54
Speaker 1: like the George, you're gonna love Antarctica. But there's not
22:57
Speaker 1: that much to do, really, no, there really is. You
23:00
Speaker 1: check out the there's a lot of wildlife. Well, yes,
23:02
Speaker 1: and apparently one of the cool things about Emperor penguins
23:06
Speaker 1: and penguins in general is they are not at all
23:09
Speaker 1: afraid of humans. That's because we've never killed them with
23:11
Speaker 1: reckless abandon I know, or at least as far as
23:14
Speaker 1: they know. And apparently they'll just ignore us and um,
23:18
Speaker 1: hang out with us and post for pictures. Yeah, they'll
23:22
Speaker 1: do close ups, but uh, it's just about any naturalist
23:27
Speaker 1: or biologists will tell you just hanging around an animal
23:30
Speaker 1: and watching it like some slack jawgoon is going to
23:34
Speaker 1: produce stress in the animal, most likely because the animal,
23:37
Speaker 1: even though it's not scared of you as a predator,
23:39
Speaker 1: it doesn't know what you're going to do, or what
23:41
Speaker 1: you're doing or what you want. And um, you just
23:45
Speaker 1: probably should keep that in mine when you're observing penguins.
23:48
Speaker 1: Don't chase the penguins. And when I said a lot
23:52
Speaker 1: of wildlife, let me clear that up. It's not like
23:55
Speaker 1: Yosemite National Park wildlife. But it is a very hospitable
23:58
Speaker 1: place for certain kinds of animals, especially animals that live
24:02
Speaker 1: in the water, because there's just tons of protein. You
24:04
Speaker 1: got whales, you got penguins, you got polar bears, and
24:07
Speaker 1: you have to see marks of the penguins. I don't know,
24:10
Speaker 1: you know, it was just one of those movies they
24:12
Speaker 1: just got by me. It is I think I won
24:14
Speaker 1: an oscar. Yeah sure, what Morgan Freeman, Yeah, buddy, yeah, Um,
24:18
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's a really great movie. Have you ever
24:21
Speaker 1: been to the aquariums penguin exhibit? Uh? Yes, you know
24:26
Speaker 1: you can stick your head up that you can crawl
24:28
Speaker 1: into the tunnel and you stick your head up into
24:31
Speaker 1: a clear plexi hole for your head basically, and the
24:36
Speaker 1: penguins are right there right in front of your face, like,
24:38
Speaker 1: what are you doing? Yeah, you're stressing me out, So
24:42
Speaker 1: chuck um. The water is generally or the sea is
24:47
Speaker 1: good for the wildlife around it because they've adapted to it.
24:51
Speaker 1: If you're one of those polar bear guys, though you
24:54
Speaker 1: can't considerably jump in during the winter, you should do
24:57
Speaker 1: so at your own risk. Oh that the humans that
24:59
Speaker 1: do that stuff, because the water gets down to about
25:02
Speaker 1: thirty two degrees fahret height there, I should say, up
25:05
Speaker 1: to thirty two degrees fahrenheight, and you're going to freeze
25:09
Speaker 1: because that's zero celsius um. It's very very dangerous. And
25:13
Speaker 1: if you do that and you hurt yourself, you're gonna
25:15
Speaker 1: find yourself on a long, arduous journey back to Chili
25:19
Speaker 1: or Argentina um at your own expense. Yeah, I mean,
25:23
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of medical help at these stations,
25:26
Speaker 1: and maybe a passing cruise ship will have the good
25:29
Speaker 1: doctor from the love Boat on board, but um, you're
25:33
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to get serious medical attention and
25:36
Speaker 1: you're you could be in trouble unless you get either
25:38
Speaker 1: too sweet or you're gonna be performing self surgery right
25:41
Speaker 1: exactly d D style. So how much does this kind
25:45
Speaker 1: of run you? Uh? I don't know, do you know?
25:49
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've heard you can expect to spend
25:53
Speaker 1: upwards of ten grand I mean the marathon was sixteen grand.
25:56
Speaker 1: I mean getting there's gonna be pricey, period. Sure, but
25:59
Speaker 1: like a really probably probably like um full on great
26:05
Speaker 1: state room kind of cruised down there, including airfare to
26:08
Speaker 1: South America's gonna run you ten grand or probably last.
26:12
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can get deals for less, but you
26:15
Speaker 1: need to have a little bit of cash to make
26:16
Speaker 1: it down to Antarctic. It's not a poor man's vacation.
26:19
Speaker 1: You know, that's what you're saying. Environmental safety concerns, Josh,
26:24
Speaker 1: we talked about obviously, would you say, was there now?
26:26
Speaker 1: D D T. Yeah, they've on traces of it. They
26:30
Speaker 1: found it in penguins cheese. Uh. In April two thousand nine,
26:34
Speaker 1: there was a joint session of the Antarctic Treaty Panel
26:37
Speaker 1: and the Arctic Council, and they met in Baltimore, Maryland,
26:41
Speaker 1: which I'm sure that's nice in April, but for some
26:44
Speaker 1: reason I thought they would say, like, let's go to
26:46
Speaker 1: Phoenix in July and hold our meeting and baw. But
26:52
Speaker 1: they had, you know, a lot on the agenda, including
26:54
Speaker 1: global warming talks, shipping routes, stuff like that. But they
26:57
Speaker 1: did talk about tourism, and not incidentally or coincidentally, around
27:02
Speaker 1: that same time, a twenty five mile ice shelf broke
27:05
Speaker 1: off shattered into the sea, which kind of was like
27:08
Speaker 1: symbolic of hey, we really need to talk about tourism.
27:12
Speaker 1: That's huge. And the the I guess the tourism and
27:17
Speaker 1: the loss of ice has this sort of self reinforcing
27:21
Speaker 1: thing going on. Because you lose ice, you actually get
27:25
Speaker 1: more tourism, which is ostensibly responsible for even further climate
27:30
Speaker 1: change in the area. And so you lose more ice
27:33
Speaker 1: and you get even more tourism. And the reason why
27:34
Speaker 1: is because you lose twenty five mile piece of ice,
27:37
Speaker 1: cruise ships go, oh, we can go in here. Now
27:40
Speaker 1: we have a passage exactly, so they're they're coming up with. UM,
27:44
Speaker 1: I guess an idea of how they can. UM, they
27:48
Speaker 1: want to ban the construction of any kind of hotels
27:51
Speaker 1: or anything like that, any permanent, not even accommodations. No,
27:56
Speaker 1: not even although that would probably no, that would be permanent.
28:00
Speaker 1: It down there, I'm sure you can't say it would be.
28:02
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be permanent. But because right, UM, you want
28:06
Speaker 1: they need they want to do a number a limitation
28:09
Speaker 1: to the number of ships that can come in every year. UM,
28:14
Speaker 1: restrictions on how close ships can come to shore. Yeah,
28:18
Speaker 1: like are you gonna drop people off here at the
28:20
Speaker 1: shore line? Yeah, just to see those little penguins. But
28:23
Speaker 1: here's the problem. They can't just say like, Okay, we're
28:26
Speaker 1: gonna have fifty ships a year or twenty or whatever. Uh,
28:31
Speaker 1: if you touch the penguins, you'll be executed by the
28:33
Speaker 1: International Criminal Court at the Hague. UM. They can't say
28:37
Speaker 1: these things because no one has any sovereign right to
28:40
Speaker 1: issue any kind of decree over Antarctic. So what can
28:44
Speaker 1: they do to establish guidelines and recommend that signatory countries
28:48
Speaker 1: and travel agencies follow them and suggest to highly suggest that.
28:52
Speaker 1: But right now there's only forty seven signatory countries on
28:55
Speaker 1: the Antarctic Treaty. Yeah, I wonder who's on there. I
28:59
Speaker 1: was gonna look that up, but I didn't get a chance. Uh.
29:02
Speaker 1: And the reason why they don't ban people outright, not
29:05
Speaker 1: only can they not, but one of the most important
29:09
Speaker 1: parts of that the treaty is that it does allow
29:11
Speaker 1: freedom of access. They're like, you know what, you can
29:14
Speaker 1: come here. Yeah, they can't stop anybody from coming there.
29:18
Speaker 1: And I feel like I feel like they want to
29:20
Speaker 1: allow it just to a degree. Sure I might be
29:23
Speaker 1: wrong there, but well, I'm sure that the tour operators
29:26
Speaker 1: associations like, I don't know, we wanna tread lightly here exactly. UM.
29:31
Speaker 1: And then speaking of getting stuck in Antarctica, one last
29:34
Speaker 1: thing you know about this UM. A couple of years
29:38
Speaker 1: ago they a case of eleven bottles of Scotch McKinley Scotch,
29:44
Speaker 1: which isn't made any longer and was originally produced in
29:47
Speaker 1: eight or ninety seven and was part of the um
29:51
Speaker 1: Ernest Shackleton Nimrod expedition of nineteen o seven, was left
29:56
Speaker 1: beneath his hut and forgotten for like a hundred years,
29:59
Speaker 1: and they found it in two thousand and six when
30:01
Speaker 1: do we talk about this on the webcast, the good
30:04
Speaker 1: old webcast, and they got it out of there. Remember
30:06
Speaker 1: you and I were like, what's going to happen to this?
30:08
Speaker 1: Because that treaty like you're Antarctica is there for scientific expedition.
30:13
Speaker 1: You're supposedly not supposed to touch anything that has any
30:16
Speaker 1: sort of historical or scientific significance. It's not supposed to
30:19
Speaker 1: come out. So they're like, you can't really remove this,
30:22
Speaker 1: we have to drink it down there. Well, it turns
30:24
Speaker 1: out that UM Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand now
30:29
Speaker 1: has this scotch and it's exhibit. I can't remember. Did
30:34
Speaker 1: they sample it? Someone didn't they No one will probably
30:36
Speaker 1: ever taste the scotch. Instead, they've allowed some scotch makers
30:40
Speaker 1: to UM to take samples and see if they can
30:42
Speaker 1: recreate it because no one has the original recipe anymore's
30:45
Speaker 1: taken it up. That's what I'm thinking too, But surely
30:49
Speaker 1: some rich guy was like, get me that scotch. Here's
30:53
Speaker 1: as much money as you need. And it didn't go
30:55
Speaker 1: into the hands of some rich scotch lover. It went
30:58
Speaker 1: to a relatively unknown own museum in New Zealand. Which
31:01
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. I bet the night guard. I bet
31:03
Speaker 1: there's some Kiwi security guard that's taken the tiniest of
31:07
Speaker 1: nips and then filled it back up with like t
31:11
Speaker 1: They'll never know. It's like the mini bar. So you
31:13
Speaker 1: got anything else? I don't. So that concludes our episode
31:17
Speaker 1: on alcoholism among night watchmen. And if you want to
31:21
Speaker 1: learn more about that or Antarctica, you want to type
31:24
Speaker 1: in A N T A R C T I C
31:27
Speaker 1: A in the handy search bar at how stuffworks dot com,
31:30
Speaker 1: which means it's time for a listening to mail. Josh,
31:34
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this UH exchange email exchange because I'm
31:38
Speaker 1: actually gonna read my response to UH sort of an
31:41
Speaker 1: upset Canadian. This is about daylight saving, which, by the way,
31:45
Speaker 1: we must spoke. Go ahead and say that we're getting
31:48
Speaker 1: beat up by the the people south of the equator.
31:53
Speaker 1: When we said that they spring back and fall forward,
31:57
Speaker 1: that it's not so. They spring forward and fall back.
32:00
Speaker 1: It's just at opposite times as us. No, I'm saying, no,
32:07
Speaker 1: they springboard, they fall back, but their spring is opposite
32:11
Speaker 1: of our spring. You haven't seen that the Facebook and
32:15
Speaker 1: emails they've been killing their spring Okay, I got to
32:20
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. It was very very North
32:23
Speaker 1: hemispheres centric, and so I need to explain myself here
32:28
Speaker 1: because I got an email from Marie from Canada and
32:31
Speaker 1: she was a little man at me. Just finished listening
32:33
Speaker 1: to the podcast on daylight saving time. You mentioned that
32:36
Speaker 1: in the civilized world time makes no difference and only
32:39
Speaker 1: the rising and setting in the sun is really important.
32:42
Speaker 1: I wanted to offer you a different perspective on that.
32:44
Speaker 1: I live in white Horse, Yukon, Canada, and the sun
32:47
Speaker 1: is currently rising at set and that's a whole five
32:52
Speaker 1: hours and fifty seven minutes of light in the dead
32:54
Speaker 1: of winter. I assure you that we are a fully
32:56
Speaker 1: functioning part of the civilized world here and setting the
33:00
Speaker 1: time is very important to us. We do observe daylight
33:02
Speaker 1: saving time in the Yukon and in the summer month
33:05
Speaker 1: when we get are on average eighteen hours of daylight.
33:09
Speaker 1: Having the clocks change makes a huge difference in my
33:11
Speaker 1: daily life after the long dark. It's relief that the
33:13
Speaker 1: clocks now allow for a little more vitaminded, I think
33:18
Speaker 1: you I just found your comments callous. Perhaps you should
33:21
Speaker 1: rely less on these skeptic pages, as it seems to
33:23
Speaker 1: put you in a sour mood. St Yeah, please remember
33:28
Speaker 1: that you have a very wide range of listeners and
33:30
Speaker 1: we are not savages out in the waste lands. We're
33:32
Speaker 1: intelligent people who enjoy learning and see you and your
33:36
Speaker 1: colleagues is valuable and often entertaining source of information. She's
33:39
Speaker 1: talking to you right, because it sounds like one of
33:41
Speaker 1: your quotes. It was one of mine. So I wrote
33:43
Speaker 1: Marie back, and I was like, Marie, I you either
33:46
Speaker 1: misunderstood or I didn't get it across. Clearly, I wasn't
33:50
Speaker 1: saying that at all. What I'm saying is the civilized
33:54
Speaker 1: world is the The only reason clocks matter to me
34:00
Speaker 1: is because Man invented clocks and time quote unquote to
34:05
Speaker 1: get on schedule in a commerce way, so businesses could
34:09
Speaker 1: be open and you could reference schedules and work schedules
34:13
Speaker 1: and and shopping and things like that. If man had
34:15
Speaker 1: never invented a clock, it wouldn't change anything about the
34:18
Speaker 1: rising and setting of the sun. We would just operate
34:22
Speaker 1: on the rising in the setting of the sun. It's
34:24
Speaker 1: like I'm watching you for a future little so it
34:31
Speaker 1: very much matters. Obviously in the civilized world, because that's
34:34
Speaker 1: the only place at time matters. I imagine in third
34:36
Speaker 1: world countries where they don't have clocks, they just operate
34:40
Speaker 1: with the rising in the setting of the sun, like
34:41
Speaker 1: we did before we invented clocks. Does that make sense? Sure?
34:47
Speaker 1: I certainly wasn't trying to say that people of Canada
34:49
Speaker 1: were civilized people of Canada. Attention Chuck Bryant means you
34:54
Speaker 1: no harm. He's a very nice guy. None can anthem.
34:59
Speaker 1: But he is never out to hurt anybody's feelings. Even
35:01
Speaker 1: when he does, it's accidental. Please accept his apologies. So
35:05
Speaker 1: either misspoke or was misunderstood, or something got garbled up,
35:08
Speaker 1: but sortainry so you have it. Thank you to all
35:13
Speaker 1: of our friends in Canada for listening. Man. I gotta
35:15
Speaker 1: tell you they take off easily, especially if you call
35:18
Speaker 1: their thanksgiving pig thanksgiving. Their sensitive people they do not
35:22
Speaker 1: like that. But it's because Americans are arrogant, and they're like,
35:24
Speaker 1: you know what, Yeah, but they don't necessarily pick up
35:28
Speaker 1: on when we're poking fun at our own arrogance, which
35:32
Speaker 1: is surprising because they gave us Dan at Kroy. Yeah,
35:36
Speaker 1: the whittier meant a lot so, uh, if you have
35:40
Speaker 1: a great story about Dana Kroyd, we want to hear
35:43
Speaker 1: about it. Okay, heck yeah. You can tweet to us
35:45
Speaker 1: at s y s K podcast. You can go on
35:49
Speaker 1: to Facebook and let us know about it at Facebook
35:51
Speaker 1: dot com slash stuff you Should Know, and you can
35:54
Speaker 1: send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff
35:58
Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
36:04
Speaker 1: other topics, is it how stuff works dot com. To
36:07
Speaker 1: learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
36:10
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36:13
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