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The North Pole, Part 1: Maps and Legends · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as always
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Speaker 1: for tuning in. Now you know that you know the
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Speaker 1: weird fans of travel, we're fans of adventure. Everyone should be,
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Speaker 1: and today we have a weird one that we We
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Speaker 1: did this in advance. Finally, we decided in advance that
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Speaker 1: this would be a two part episode. So kudos to
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Speaker 1: us for getting in front of that one high I'm
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Speaker 1: ben hey man. No, uh yeah, look, because it's it's
0:57
Speaker 1: it's about a place, uh um, and the spirit of
1:01
Speaker 1: that place and the way that place figures into things
1:04
Speaker 1: like lore and and culture and history, and you know,
1:08
Speaker 1: we we tend to bullet point things sometimes and try
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Speaker 1: to compress large topics in the short episodes. But we
1:13
Speaker 1: felt like an entire land deserved two episodes at the
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Speaker 1: very least, if not a trilogy. But we haven't. We
1:21
Speaker 1: were done a trilogy, band, we were gone that far.
1:23
Speaker 1: We've done recurring series. No, we've done uh idiomatic for
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Speaker 1: the people. I still love that title. Um, I love
1:30
Speaker 1: that title too. I guess that's technically a trilogy doesn't
1:32
Speaker 1: have to go back to back to back, but then
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Speaker 1: it will eventually break the trilogy format. But what does it?
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Speaker 1: Quadrology quadrilogy? Yes, speaking of which we all know who
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Speaker 1: that is, that super producer Casey Pegram, super producer Casey
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Speaker 1: Pegram who has also has also been pitching us NonStop
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Speaker 1: on his own his own obscure trilogy. Oh, it's funny
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Speaker 1: because we're on zoom and it's much ben alright, alright,
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Speaker 1: is that the labush saga? I can either confirm nor
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Speaker 1: den I is it? Well? What's I'm sorry, guys, I
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Speaker 1: keep getting caught up in semantics here. What's the saga
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Speaker 1: versus a cycle? Or or? Yeah? Anybody cycles? Like what
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Speaker 1: five or seven or something? See, it doesn't matter, nobody
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Speaker 1: knows how many. What's the what's the ring cycle? That's
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Speaker 1: like five, right, the ring cycle the the opera by
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Speaker 1: Wagner Wagner. Yeah, yeah, I guess it is five O.
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Speaker 1: Saga doesn't have a um a numerical value assigned to it.
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Speaker 1: It's just a very long involved story. Like uh, like
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Speaker 1: I would say for many people here in Atlanta, Georgia,
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Speaker 1: voting in the primaries became a saga. Yeah that was
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Speaker 1: That's a sadly relevant example. But we have speaking of No,
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Speaker 1: I like where you're going with this. Maybe we have
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Speaker 1: a story about multiple saga's today. Thank you for giving
3:02
Speaker 1: me the benefit of the doubt that I was going
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Speaker 1: anywhere with it and caveatting it with them, maybe because
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Speaker 1: you have to hedge yourself a little bit there and
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Speaker 1: real quick before we get too far along. I just
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Speaker 1: want to clear this up. The ring cycle is four parts.
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Speaker 1: It's four operas, not five like I said before. So
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Speaker 1: I don't want the hardcore Wagnerians out there to like
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Speaker 1: be yelling at me on their podcast player for the
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Speaker 1: rest of this episode. So yes, yes, the Vagnarians uh
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Speaker 1: notoriously rapid fan base. So so please accept our apologies. Um. So,
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Speaker 1: this is a travel story. This is one of the
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Speaker 1: perhaps most important travel stories in history. It's it's one
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Speaker 1: of the big ones. It's about a place, uh that
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Speaker 1: I almost got close to going to in person. We're
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Speaker 1: talking about the North Pole. Uh. There is right now,
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Speaker 1: or there was pre pandemic, a way for you to
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Speaker 1: buy passage on a Russian icebreaker which we're fascinating called
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Speaker 1: the fifty let Pobity, which means fifty years of victory,
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Speaker 1: and you can ride this ship up to the actual
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Speaker 1: facts North Pole. Um spoiler, I didn't go. But would
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Speaker 1: you guys ever go to the North Pole if you
4:20
Speaker 1: have the chance? Yeah? Yeas so. I don't know, Like
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Speaker 1: I'm not really much of a snow guy, but it
4:28
Speaker 1: sounds like there's some beautiful what glaciers and stuff. I'm
4:32
Speaker 1: confusing the North Pole with Alaska. I shouldn't be doing
4:36
Speaker 1: that since we're doing an episode right now where the
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Speaker 1: Northern Lights was in the North Pole. They're above the
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Speaker 1: Arctic Circle. Okay, I'd go for the lights, sure, how
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Speaker 1: about you, Casey. One of my favorite authors, William T. Vollman.
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Speaker 1: He is kind of a gonzo novelist. He likes to
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Speaker 1: go to real places and do a lot of research
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Speaker 1: before he writes about it. And so he was writing
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Speaker 1: this um like seven part series all about North America,
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Speaker 1: and on one of them, he went to the North
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Speaker 1: Pole by himself and nearly froze to death. It was
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Speaker 1: like way colder than he expected. He did not prepare well,
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Speaker 1: and he was up there stranded for like, I don't know,
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Speaker 1: two weeks or a month or something. Uh, And he
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Speaker 1: nearly died, but he made it back in he wrote
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Speaker 1: a cool book about it. So it all worked out
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Speaker 1: in the end. But me personally, I don't know if
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Speaker 1: I would go or not. I would probably go if
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Speaker 1: I had all the gear I needed in whatever. Why not? Yeah,
5:27
Speaker 1: I don't know. Jerry still out for me, I guess.
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Speaker 1: But h W A. Forrester, who was an essayist and
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Speaker 1: a lawyer from Toronto, wrote a piece in eighteen sixty
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Speaker 1: nine for the Toronto Globe that UH really put the
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Speaker 1: North Pole in the context in terms of its kind
5:43
Speaker 1: of mythological origins and the idea of the old Norse
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Speaker 1: gods and Thor and his hammers and all of that. Um.
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Speaker 1: And he says, in a quote from the piece, for
5:52
Speaker 1: we are a Northern people as the true outcrop of
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Speaker 1: human nature, more manly, more real than the weak men
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Speaker 1: row bones superstition of an effeminate South. So he's talking
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Speaker 1: about how the North Pole is like the bastion of
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Speaker 1: manliness and resilience and just general hardcore and badassory uh
6:15
Speaker 1: for the people of of humanity. Um. And largely it's
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Speaker 1: because it truly is such an inhospitable place, an absolute
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Speaker 1: frozen wasteland, uh, completely disconnected from any semblance of society,
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Speaker 1: like the writer you mentioned case, he found out to
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Speaker 1: nearly his own demise. So it does have this kind
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Speaker 1: of mythical um place in everything from fiction to pop
6:42
Speaker 1: culture to of course things like map making and science,
6:46
Speaker 1: because it is the very definition of an extreme greed.
6:51
Speaker 1: And I think that's an interesting point here, Noel, because
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Speaker 1: when you think about it, the North Pole is a
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Speaker 1: place everybody knows about, but very few people ever visit
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Speaker 1: for all the all the reasons we we just mentioned, uh,
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Speaker 1: and it is and remains a very dangerous place. This
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Speaker 1: is part of why there is such deep, rich mythology
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Speaker 1: surrounding the North Pole. And what's interesting about W. A.
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Speaker 1: Foster here is that when he was talking about this,
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Speaker 1: you know, the manly pole of of the North Pole,
7:27
Speaker 1: he was continuing a process. He was joining in a
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Speaker 1: long intergenerational narrative that mythicized the North Pole, and it
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Speaker 1: it went in step with European colonialism. So if we
7:41
Speaker 1: paint the picture of the Arctic the way that Foster
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Speaker 1: and his ilk portray it, it's terrible. It's far away
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Speaker 1: from everything. Like you said, it's harsh, it's bleak, and
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Speaker 1: it's this sort of empty canvas for largely European people
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Speaker 1: at this time to to kind of right their own
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Speaker 1: narrative about man versus nature. Uh, you know, anyway they
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Speaker 1: see fit. So that's there's something else that occurs here
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Speaker 1: that I think will be familiar to anybody has read
8:13
Speaker 1: about tourists in the Himalayas. There are indigenous people who
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Speaker 1: lived in this very harsh climate. They've been there for
8:21
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of gears. But in these stories, in
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Speaker 1: these accounts by people like Foster, they they might as
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Speaker 1: well be another iceberg, or you know, some some piece
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Speaker 1: background set piece, or they're relegated to that terrible role
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Speaker 1: of the noble savage stereotype. And this sounds like basic
8:41
Speaker 1: stuff we all know today, but at the time this
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Speaker 1: was what people believed in. The weird thing is those
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Speaker 1: images were not produced in the Arctic. They were the
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Speaker 1: imaginations of all these other people who, oddly enough, to
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Speaker 1: your point, Noel pretty much live did that effeminate itself.
9:01
Speaker 1: They railed against totally. I mean, it's essentially colonization by imagination.
9:06
Speaker 1: I just coined that. That's great take. I'm gonna run
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Speaker 1: with that. I like that colonization by imagination, you're creating,
9:12
Speaker 1: you're taking ownership of a thing that you don't own
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Speaker 1: or understand, just by projecting your own kind of biases
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Speaker 1: onto it. Uh. And that's the thing though, UM. The
9:22
Speaker 1: North Pole has had and continues to have an incredibly
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Speaker 1: profound and kind of mythical place in uh, in cultures
9:31
Speaker 1: across the planet, this planet of ours, UM, because of
9:34
Speaker 1: those reasons that we just mentioned, because of many of
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Speaker 1: the special properties that it holds. Monarchs throughout history have
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Speaker 1: funded voyages to the North Pole UM, partially looking for
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Speaker 1: a sea route to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans,
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Speaker 1: but also following these tales of these of these myths
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Speaker 1: surrounding the North Pole and then these like frozen you know,
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Speaker 1: tundra people and gods and you know, fairies or what
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Speaker 1: ice fairies. I don't know, I I what do you think, Ben,
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Speaker 1: Do you have any more details about like what kind
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Speaker 1: of myths they were chasing? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's
10:11
Speaker 1: this Uh, there's this very weird twist of course on
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Speaker 1: the old Norse mythology, right like uh, there there's this
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Speaker 1: idea that you are literally at the end of the
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Speaker 1: world and therefore you are walking from your crossing the
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Speaker 1: boundary from the world of humanity into the world of
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Speaker 1: legend like this. This such an old idea right as
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Speaker 1: early as three thousand b C. E People in multiple civilizations,
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Speaker 1: Arabic civilization, Greek civilization, Egyptians, they thought that the entirety
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Speaker 1: of the heavens what we call the cosmos today, revolved
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Speaker 1: around the North Pole and it was located under the
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Speaker 1: star the Greeks called Aires. And then you know, we
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Speaker 1: would also see real descriptions of actual things in that
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Speaker 1: region that were depicted in increasingly fanciful ways over the
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Speaker 1: long game of telephone that we call history, right, like
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Speaker 1: the Greek geographers. Yeah, Pitheist, who is an explorer and
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Speaker 1: geographer from Greece from ancient Greece, went there around three
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Speaker 1: b C. And talked about seeing these white bears on
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Speaker 1: a sea of ice um, which sounds like the stuff
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Speaker 1: of legend, because those areas under Polaris, as far as
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Speaker 1: they were concerned, were supposedly guarded by celestial bears a
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Speaker 1: k a like, imbued with some sort of power from
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Speaker 1: on high, you know, or they had come from the
11:47
Speaker 1: other side, like through those gates I guess of of
11:49
Speaker 1: of the the let's call it the the afterworld um
11:53
Speaker 1: in honor of prince's recent birthday. Um and Uh they
11:57
Speaker 1: were called ark does um. And that is actually where
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Speaker 1: the name the Arctic came from. And these kind of
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Speaker 1: myths really persevered throughout time and created a lot of
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Speaker 1: the names that we know today uh from these regions.
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Speaker 1: So the idea of the ancient Norse vikings seeing the
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Speaker 1: northern lights as incarnations of their gods um. And of
12:20
Speaker 1: course we know about the idea of the yeti or
12:22
Speaker 1: abominable snowman, which was always the scariest part of the
12:26
Speaker 1: matter horn to me if you remember that ride at Disney, Uh,
12:29
Speaker 1: there was their part near the end where the abominable
12:31
Speaker 1: snowman kind of pops out and gives you gives you
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Speaker 1: a little fright. Um. But this is also true in
12:36
Speaker 1: Nepalese culture. And the Greeks had their own conceptual version
12:42
Speaker 1: of of an Arctic and it was called Hyperborea, which
12:47
Speaker 1: would have been at the top of the world, you know.
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Speaker 1: And and that's where the name uh Borealis came from,
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Speaker 1: the idea of the Aurora borealis, which is the northern lights.
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Speaker 1: Of course, another name they're referred to as the funny
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Speaker 1: thing is though a little different in the Greeks thought
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Speaker 1: that the Arctic was some kind of tropical paradise. Yeah,
13:10
Speaker 1: which is interesting to me, especially since all the Arctic lingo.
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Speaker 1: What do you think about that? Man, that's interesting. I
13:15
Speaker 1: am over the moon, or should I say over the
13:19
Speaker 1: poll over Polaris to be able to finally start recommending
13:23
Speaker 1: comic books and graphic novels. Again, Fans of hell Boy
13:27
Speaker 1: and fans of bpr D already know what I'm about
13:30
Speaker 1: to say if you haven't checked these out. Hyperborea figures
13:34
Speaker 1: heavily into the the excellent writing of those series. But yeah,
13:40
Speaker 1: it's a real myth. And it's funny to me because
13:43
Speaker 1: there's this thing in Greco Roman culture where they really
13:47
Speaker 1: they really like. The idea of these elite communities are
13:51
Speaker 1: kind of I guess we would almost call them like
13:53
Speaker 1: the gated communities of the gods. This also probably calls
13:57
Speaker 1: to mind It's it's not in the North Pole. I
14:00
Speaker 1: think it's in the South Pole. But it probably calls
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Speaker 1: a mind for Marvel fans, the idea of the Savage Land. Uh,
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Speaker 1: the idea, it's this idea that there is a paradise
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Speaker 1: it is on Earth. It's just very, very difficult to
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Speaker 1: get to. Overtime, the myth of Hyperborea came to be
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Speaker 1: associated with the Lost Civilizations tropes like they. You know,
14:22
Speaker 1: we're portrayed as incredibly advanced in scientific pursuits. But the
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Speaker 1: weird thing is these ancient cultures, even though they got
14:33
Speaker 1: some stuff wrong, to say the least, they were actually
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Speaker 1: right about the North Pole being tremendously unique and special place.
14:42
Speaker 1: In a book called north Pole Nature and Culture. A
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Speaker 1: scholar of the history of science and head of the
14:47
Speaker 1: Circumpolar History and Public Policy Research at the Scott Polar
14:52
Speaker 1: Research Institute at University of Cambridge. God, that's a long title.
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Speaker 1: His name is Michael Bravo. Uh And he has great
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Speaker 1: stuff to say about what makes the North Pole so unique. Yeah,
15:03
Speaker 1: he wrote a book called north Pole Nature and Culture. Um.
15:06
Speaker 1: And he does a fantastic job of truly eliminating any
15:11
Speaker 1: questions about why the North Pole seems to continuously find
15:14
Speaker 1: such a special place in history and culture and a
15:17
Speaker 1: lot of these connections and associations it has to other phenomena.
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Speaker 1: Uh And and this is how he characterized it quote,
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Speaker 1: I offer the reader a way to understand why the
15:26
Speaker 1: North Pole truly matters to anyone who knows that our
15:29
Speaker 1: home planet Earth is a globe. The North Pole has
15:31
Speaker 1: refracted our understanding of the planet on which we live
15:35
Speaker 1: and the quest to master knowledge of who we are.
15:39
Speaker 1: And he goes on to say that when you're actually
15:41
Speaker 1: standing of the North Pole, technically every direction faces south,
15:45
Speaker 1: and the North Pole has the unique distinction um that
15:49
Speaker 1: it continues to after this day of having no allocated
15:52
Speaker 1: longitude or any time zone. And that's not lost on
15:55
Speaker 1: Bravo or anyone that has been, um, you know, fascinated
15:58
Speaker 1: by this place. Um. Emperors and philosophers, he says, there
16:03
Speaker 1: are history have recognized how special this place is and
16:06
Speaker 1: all of that significance that actually defies time. But it
16:10
Speaker 1: also is not somehow like immune to time. I don't know,
16:14
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a little poetic and kind of like
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Speaker 1: a high minded way of talking about it, but it's true.
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Speaker 1: It's a very special place, and that absolute extreme nature
16:23
Speaker 1: of its location really does give it some interesting properties. Then, yeah,
16:27
Speaker 1: think about the way that the location the North Pole
16:31
Speaker 1: has defined so much of what we do even today.
16:36
Speaker 1: When the when the big maritime ages were hitting like
16:40
Speaker 1: in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, navigators and sailors needed
16:46
Speaker 1: to understand something about the North Pole because it defined
16:50
Speaker 1: our ability to navigate the globe, you know, like Bravo writes,
16:55
Speaker 1: Without poles, there could be no geography, there could be
16:57
Speaker 1: no system of orientation for navigation, and so we as
17:02
Speaker 1: a species had to create new ways to understand the
17:06
Speaker 1: structure of the planet, and the North Pole became one
17:10
Speaker 1: of our main keys to answering this question, which it
17:17
Speaker 1: sounds it sounds silly to phrase it this way, but
17:20
Speaker 1: here's the question that baffled civilizations for millennia. It's this
17:26
Speaker 1: what time is it right now? And where where the
17:30
Speaker 1: hell are we and where are we going? Those are
17:33
Speaker 1: those are? They seem like really basic questions now, But
17:36
Speaker 1: some of the smartest people in history we're working around
17:40
Speaker 1: their version of the clock to figure this out. That's
17:43
Speaker 1: why you can see all this magnificent artwork. Um, that's
17:47
Speaker 1: that's functional artwork. Two like globes and maps from this
17:51
Speaker 1: time period. Yeah, I mean, because when we say poles,
17:53
Speaker 1: we're talking about the spots where the little C shaped
17:56
Speaker 1: clamp connects to the globe when you mount it so
18:00
Speaker 1: you can spin it around. Those are the axes that
18:02
Speaker 1: it spins on UM and it truly does give us
18:05
Speaker 1: the ability to kind of look at our planet from
18:07
Speaker 1: the top down, which is the thing that was really
18:09
Speaker 1: unique at the time. UM. During the Renaissance, for example,
18:13
Speaker 1: all sorts of thinkers and mathematicians and artists, map makers,
18:19
Speaker 1: uh created all of these globes that we're talking about,
18:22
Speaker 1: and all of these maps where the North Pole was
18:26
Speaker 1: the most important feature because it gave you a frame
18:29
Speaker 1: of reference for everything else that you were looking at.
18:32
Speaker 1: And a really great article on Arctic Today dot com
18:35
Speaker 1: talks about how this really allowed people this new kind
18:40
Speaker 1: of perspective and the ability to truly get an understanding
18:45
Speaker 1: of the kinds of voyages that were very very well known,
18:48
Speaker 1: like those undertaken by Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus
18:53
Speaker 1: and other influential explorers. Yeah, and now we're going to
18:58
Speaker 1: get into uh just for a second, we have to
19:02
Speaker 1: acknowledge the international politics at play here, because this powerful,
19:08
Speaker 1: powerful place, right Uh, it's something that of course the
19:13
Speaker 1: leaders of the world want to control. As a matter
19:16
Speaker 1: of fact, in fifteen seventy eight, Queen Elizabeth assigned one
19:21
Speaker 1: of her you know, like one of her court nerds
19:23
Speaker 1: a scholar, in other words, to try and make a
19:26
Speaker 1: case that said Britain owns the North Pole. Spoiler, it
19:30
Speaker 1: didn't work out, but to underline how important this was
19:35
Speaker 1: two people and remains. Maybe we can talk about some
19:38
Speaker 1: specific examples. So the first let me not put my
19:43
Speaker 1: conspiracy hat on here, but it's widely agreed that the
19:48
Speaker 1: first real map of the North Pole comes to us
19:51
Speaker 1: in the sixteenth century by a guy named Gerard murk Cater.
19:55
Speaker 1: That name should be familiar to cartography fans. And the
19:58
Speaker 1: thing about this map is he tried his best. He's
20:01
Speaker 1: best known for the Mercat projection, but he did a
20:05
Speaker 1: really cartoonishly inaccurate job on this one, which is not
20:09
Speaker 1: his fault. He's working with what he had and he's
20:12
Speaker 1: very smart guy. Um. The Mercat projection, of course, is
20:15
Speaker 1: is trying to solve that old problem. How do you
20:18
Speaker 1: depict a three dimensional sphere on a two dimensional surface
20:22
Speaker 1: a K A map, right, how do you take those
20:24
Speaker 1: curved lines make them into straight ones? Uh? This projection
20:29
Speaker 1: when he invented it, it it was invented for sailors so
20:32
Speaker 1: that they could plot kind of a straight line a
20:35
Speaker 1: two B course. And when he came out I believe
20:39
Speaker 1: it is specifically fifteen sixty nine, right. No. When he
20:42
Speaker 1: came out with this, um, this world map, yeah, and
20:46
Speaker 1: he sware by his math and his calculation and said
20:49
Speaker 1: that this particular world map, um again, this isn't a globe,
20:53
Speaker 1: this is a two dimensional map that you can use
20:56
Speaker 1: for charting courses, that this would be free of any
20:59
Speaker 1: of the calculations of previous maps. He referred to them
21:03
Speaker 1: as any of those errors which must necessarily be encountered
21:07
Speaker 1: on the ordinary charts of ship masters, because his was nothing,
21:12
Speaker 1: uh if not extraordinary. Um. Yeah, but um, he had
21:16
Speaker 1: to figure out how to do this, uh and maintain
21:21
Speaker 1: some semblance of scale or some semblance of kind of
21:24
Speaker 1: like continuity, and so he did have to sacrifice some
21:26
Speaker 1: accuracy in some places, um, in order to make these uh,
21:31
Speaker 1: these trajectories work. In order to do that, he did
21:35
Speaker 1: have to stretch some of the parts of the map,
21:37
Speaker 1: which made for an interesting comparative experience. When you're say,
21:41
Speaker 1: looking at parts of the south, which is parts of
21:45
Speaker 1: the north, Africa and Greenland, for example, on this map
21:48
Speaker 1: look almost identical, even though Africa is obviously about fourteen
21:52
Speaker 1: the signs the size of Greenland but you know, it
21:54
Speaker 1: was a small price to pay for accurate navigation abilities. Yeah,
21:59
Speaker 1: that's a point and very well put. You know, you
22:02
Speaker 1: gotta stick with what works. Here's the deal. Though, under
22:11
Speaker 1: the constraints of his own calculations, under the constraints of
22:15
Speaker 1: this let's call it Mercator math, there was a problem
22:18
Speaker 1: with the North Pole. It would be so ginormously outsized
22:24
Speaker 1: that it would appear to be almost infinite. So Mrcater
22:28
Speaker 1: cheated a little bit instead of putting it in this overall,
22:32
Speaker 1: this actual projection that he was making. Uh, he said,
22:36
Speaker 1: I'm going to put a small top down view of
22:38
Speaker 1: the Arctic just in the bottom left corner of my
22:41
Speaker 1: world map. So this is the thing here. You can
22:44
Speaker 1: see it. This is why historians consider it to be
22:47
Speaker 1: the first true map of the Arctic. And you know,
22:51
Speaker 1: Mercator and his followers, his proteges, his interns, they continually
22:56
Speaker 1: updated the map with the best information they had. Um.
23:00
Speaker 1: But the story of maps alone is so compelling because
23:03
Speaker 1: they have such power in society, and you know, like
23:07
Speaker 1: a lot of us. Um, I don't want to date
23:08
Speaker 1: myself too bad here, but I grew up looking at
23:12
Speaker 1: the Mercator map and wondering just in awe of how
23:15
Speaker 1: large Greenland appeared to be. Did you guys have those
23:18
Speaker 1: when you were in school? Yeah, we looked at I
23:20
Speaker 1: guess a few different projections, but that was definitely one
23:24
Speaker 1: of the ones in the mix I think I did.
23:26
Speaker 1: I mean, they're just the ones that kind of have
23:27
Speaker 1: like the little gritted out kind of sections, some of
23:30
Speaker 1: them which are like stretched right is not the idea,
23:33
Speaker 1: I think that's okay? So yeah, definitely, So why is
23:35
Speaker 1: this inaccurate? Here's the thing. It turned out that Mercader
23:42
Speaker 1: made a call that a lot of people have made
23:44
Speaker 1: in the past. Because you see, there are two north poles. Right.
23:51
Speaker 1: There's the physical North Pole right, which we have assigned
23:56
Speaker 1: right that the quote unquote top most point, even though
24:00
Speaker 1: it is not really an up or down in space. Uh.
24:02
Speaker 1: And then there's the magnetic North Pole a k a.
24:06
Speaker 1: The reason compasses work, and the magnetic north Pole is
24:10
Speaker 1: not in the same location as the physical North Pole. Uh.
24:15
Speaker 1: You know, mercator is working off a very limited set
24:18
Speaker 1: of information, like by the by the fifteen hundreds, I
24:22
Speaker 1: don't think there's a hot take. Turns out not a
24:24
Speaker 1: ton of people had ventured up to the Arctic, let
24:27
Speaker 1: alone the North Pole. They wouldn't get there for what
24:29
Speaker 1: hundreds of years, right, you know? But Mcat was a
24:32
Speaker 1: go getter um and he wasn't gonna let that stop him.
24:36
Speaker 1: But he obviously couldn't, you know, get firsthand knowledge, so
24:40
Speaker 1: he had to dig around and use what he had
24:42
Speaker 1: at his disposal, Like we talked about before. Uh, he
24:45
Speaker 1: found something called Inventio Fortunata, which means fortunate Discoveries, and
24:53
Speaker 1: that was a travelog written in the fourteenth century anonymously,
24:57
Speaker 1: and he referred to the writer as quote an English
25:00
Speaker 1: minor Friar of Oxford, who traveled to Norway and then
25:04
Speaker 1: pushed on further by magical arts. Magical arts. Okay, you
25:08
Speaker 1: got my attention. Let's go on um. And one thing
25:12
Speaker 1: that he learned from this and gleaned from this book
25:15
Speaker 1: was what he ended up using as the centerpiece for
25:19
Speaker 1: his Arctic map, which was a giant rock exactly at them,
25:23
Speaker 1: I guess you could say, the terrestrial North Pole the
25:26
Speaker 1: actual position where that would be, and that was called
25:28
Speaker 1: the Rupus nigra l atissima or black very high cliff um.
25:34
Speaker 1: And this was something that people pretty much accepted at
25:37
Speaker 1: the time, and a lot of folks thought that it
25:39
Speaker 1: had some kind of magnetic properties, which was the reason
25:44
Speaker 1: that everyone's compass pointed north. But Mercader wasn't quite convinced
25:49
Speaker 1: of this magnetic part of the equation. He definitely thought
25:53
Speaker 1: that it was the physical centerpiece of the map, but
25:56
Speaker 1: he wasn't quite sure that that was where the magnetism
25:59
Speaker 1: was coming from. So he actually used a different location
26:03
Speaker 1: to describe the magnetic pole, which is in the top
26:06
Speaker 1: left corner of his map, uh north of the Straight
26:10
Speaker 1: of Anon. So, as everybody knows, there is only one
26:16
Speaker 1: fan base more rabid than the Wagnerian fan base, and
26:21
Speaker 1: that's the Mercader rights. So we're we know that we're
26:25
Speaker 1: telling you some stuff that might be hard to hear,
26:27
Speaker 1: but again he's he's a very intelligent person working with
26:31
Speaker 1: the tools he add at the time. But there's more
26:34
Speaker 1: to his story. You're probably wondering, what the heck are
26:40
Speaker 1: polar pigmies. That's a that's the phrase they used. What
26:45
Speaker 1: are all those rumors of a whirlpool about? Well, we're
26:50
Speaker 1: going to tell you in part two of our episode
26:54
Speaker 1: on the mythology of the North Pole. How is that
26:56
Speaker 1: for a segue, Nold, does that get us out there? Ben?
26:58
Speaker 1: Are you big at cliff hanging us? Here we go,
27:03
Speaker 1: Here we go. That was the thing I remember that. Okay,
27:06
Speaker 1: it was it was. It was a joke. Okay. I
27:09
Speaker 1: think we've got we've got We've got some time before
27:11
Speaker 1: part two to brainstorm. Maybe get a white board and
27:14
Speaker 1: work on our of our mercater Uh uh Ricater stuff.
27:21
Speaker 1: It's been a crazy week. Uh snow white board. There
27:25
Speaker 1: we go, Okay, kill me, kill me? Yeah. I think
27:32
Speaker 1: we're in North Pole position to explore the rest of
27:37
Speaker 1: Ricater's story in part two. We hope that you have
27:41
Speaker 1: enjoyed this so far. If you have been to the
27:43
Speaker 1: North Pole, please please please let us know. You can
27:46
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook, you can find some Instagram. You
27:48
Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter, not just as a show,
27:51
Speaker 1: but as individuals. That's right. You can find me on
27:54
Speaker 1: Instagram at how Now Noel Brown or I posted lots
27:57
Speaker 1: of pictures of my daughter do an anime costplays in
28:00
Speaker 1: addition to a lot of cooking, and also now that
28:03
Speaker 1: I'm in my new studio, probably some music creation stuff.
28:07
Speaker 1: You can find me fighting the good fight for some
28:10
Speaker 1: cause or another at Ben Bulling hs W on Twitter.
28:13
Speaker 1: You can also see my various misadventures around here and
28:17
Speaker 1: around the globe at Ben Bulling on Instagram. Spoiler alert, guys,
28:22
Speaker 1: I think I might actually be traveling out of the
28:25
Speaker 1: country in August. I'm not sure yet. It's no promises,
28:27
Speaker 1: but I might get there. God's b been couldn't do
28:30
Speaker 1: it without Marcater. He's the real hero here. You know
28:33
Speaker 1: I've been. You're the real hero here, and we don't
28:35
Speaker 1: need another hero. I need a hero just like the
28:39
Speaker 1: song and uh and speaking to heroes, thanks of course
28:44
Speaker 1: to our incredibly patient super producer, Casey Pegram. Yes, thanks
28:49
Speaker 1: Alex Williams. A composed theme Christopher Hasciota is here in
28:53
Speaker 1: spirit Jonathan Strickland and his devious doubleganger, the Quister, who I,
28:57
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, is definitely due for a diabolical
29:01
Speaker 1: drop in because I can't think of another d thing.
29:05
Speaker 1: But I got there. I did my best. I think
29:07
Speaker 1: I think you did well. Um. You know we've got
29:10
Speaker 1: the time Arctic talking away here. Uh, and it's only
29:14
Speaker 1: a matter of time before he shows his face again.
29:17
Speaker 1: Like any good villain, he's uh, he's always just around
29:20
Speaker 1: the corner. So I guess we need to go ahead
29:22
Speaker 1: and sew this up. I don't know about you, guys,
29:24
Speaker 1: but I actually got chills while we were talking about this.
29:26
Speaker 1: I think I'm I'm in the zone, the Arctics. We'll
29:31
Speaker 1: see you next time. Flix. For more podcasts for my
29:42
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
29:44
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.