The Unmade Podcast - Special: Antarctica

Episode Date: March 23, 2018

Brady visits Antarctica and takes a microphone.... Thanks to Audible: https://audible.com/unmade ... Or text UNMADE to 500-500 in the US... Try Endurance as your free book on the 30-day trial. Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/unmadeFM Join the discussion of this episode on our subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Unmade_Podcast/ USEFUL LINKS Brady's Antarctica blog: http://www.bradyharanblog.com/antarctica Additional footage of the iceberg tsunami: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KxTcDsy9Gs

That's easy, isn't it? There's half an hour of podcast done without us having to do anything. Except go to Antarctica. Yeah, well, yeah, there is that, but yeah. I'm just back from a big trip, Tim. Indeed. You know about this because of photos that were leaked on social media. I've seen a few things. I've tracked a few hints. It looks quite incredible, to be honest. I think it was. I've just been to Antarctica. And in addition to taking an incredible number of

photographs and videos, I thought it might be a good idea to also take an audio recorder. And that is partly because I think a lot of the ideas we've had or a fair chunk of them over the course of the Unmade podcast quite often involve traveling or some kind of travel log or recording things, you know, around the world. And I thought seeing I was going to such an interesting part of the world, I might kind of test or check what it's like to try and actually do some podcasting and make a podcast when you're traveling and being a bit of a traveler. That's what I did. So you took it on the road. So what I've done basically is each day of this trip, I made like a little travel log

and I've put it all together into like podcast form. And it's just like a one-off thing, a kind of like, here's what I did in my holiday type thing but I thought maybe we'd share it on the Unmade podcast just to give us an idea how hard or easy it is to to make podcasts when you're traveling and doing this kind of thing so I thought I'd play it to you we'll have like a half-time break and intermission so that we can see how it's going so far and then maybe we'll talk about it a little bit at the end as well does that sound like something you'd be up for oh yeah no I, I am. I'm interested in this.

I think it's quite courageous putting it out there as an episode and saying, well, here we go. Here's my trip. Courageous? Yeah. What could go wrong? Well, courageous, well, for two reasons. One is because you're actually kind of making a sample podcast episode.

So it's not just an idea where you can justify it. We're going to listen to the actual thing. So it's like, okay, it'll stand on its merits. That's courageous. And the second reason it's courageous is because it's your holiday and your thoughts along the way, and there's a lot of stuff you might have wished you'd said more eloquently in retrospect or, yeah, I don't know.

I think it's quite courageous. You're narrating a little piece of your life and putting it out there. It's going to be interesting. If it doesn't feel courageous, it's probably not courageous because... I'll take courageous. I suddenly feel like an even more heroic explorer now that you're saying it. I didn't say heroic. Yeah, forget Shackleton and Scott.

I actually am putting it out there as a recording. Those guys were cowards. Yeah, I didn't say heroic. Yeah, forget Shackleton and Scott. I actually am putting it out there as a recording. Those guys were cowards. Yeah, I didn't say heroic. I said courageous. Okay, all right. Sorry, yeah, I've just taken that bowl and slightly run with it. One last thing I'll point out before we start is that I said I took a lot of photos and made a lot of video while I was there.

And whenever we release an Unmade podcast, we also put it on YouTube as a video. So this particular video of the Unmade podcast is going to have pictures and videos of the things that are being talked about while they're being talked about. So normally I wouldn't even suggest going to YouTube and having a look at the video because normally it's just like wallpaper and pretty pictures of clouds and things like that. But I would suggest if you're interested, go to the Unmade Podcast YouTube channel and you can listen, watch to this there as well. And that will be quite a different experience. So if you're already listening as a podcast

and you're walking the dogs or driving the car, please continue because this has been made to be a podcast. It has not been made to be a video. But if you do want to see some of the things that are being talked about while they're being talked about you can also do the youtube thing is is that like like video footage or like photos still photos primarily it will be probably a mixture it'll be a lot of video but maybe once or twice i'll also go to photos because sometimes i talk about taking photos and photography so i'll show some of the photos i was taking at that time but it'll mainly

be video cool it also means it's going to take me a bit longer to actually make this episode but this is perfect timing for me because unbeknownst i last night randomly uh we watched a documentary david atten the new david attenborough blue planet 2 the first episode of that oh okay my videos won't be that good, just so you know. Well, he's had a little bit more practice. But in that episode, they go to the Arctic, right? So the other side of the world. Yeah.

But it's cold and there's snow and it's really quite moving. Anyway, so I'm in the headspace. I might talk about that a little bit more. You're putting the bar a bit high for me here, but right all right then well let's let's let's proceed here's here's the first half of uh what brady did in his holiday and you can have a listen and tim and i will join you at the intermission well i guess i'm going to call this Ship's Log Day Minus One because we're not actually on the ship until tomorrow. But today was the flight from London to Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires, the perhaps hardest city to spell of all the famous cities in the world. I'm just going to put that out there. It was a 14-hour flight. I actually slept through most of it, so that was pretty painless for me. We touched down at the airport. The airport was pretty easy going in the scheme scheme of things all through customs and immigration without too many problems or big queues. They were very relaxed about things there. In fact on the plane I filled out this customs form which got me all worried. They even asked what kind of like

brand of mobile phone you had and I thought gosh what do they want to know all this information for? And then when we actually got there and handed over the forms to the guy at the immigration counter he took it, didn't even look at it, screwed it up and put it in the bin so that was a bit of a waste of time now we're at the hotel the view from up here is really nice i mean buenos aires isn't the most beautiful of cities but i'm looking down over some nice parks i can see an amazing cemetery in the background and i can also see out to the sea and sort of one of the ports where there's a whole bunch of cranes and things taking cargo containers and things off of, well, cargo ships. But this isn't the port where we're sailing from,

because what we're going to do is hopefully we're going to have an early night, and then at about three or four in the morning we're going to wake up, and there's a three-hour flight to the port town or city of Ushuaia, which is right down the bottom of Argentina, right at the bottom tip of South America, and that's where we're going to be taking off, or sailing off, for Antarctica. So it's just after 3.30 in the morning,

and we're in the cab driving back to the main airport of Buenos Aires, so we can fly down to Ushuaia. It's less than 24 hours since we landed here, and it's like, obviously, the roads are pretty deserted now. I haven't really got much to say, I just wanted to prove that I was awake this early. It doesn't happen very often. It's never a happy time for me when I wake up early. All right I am gonna call this ship's log day one now because I'm standing on the Esplanade, the waterfront at Ushuaia which is the city at the end of the world or the southernmost city you can visit. We flew in this morning and I have to say it was one of the more

impressive approaches and plane landings that I've been on board for. For the last 20 minutes of the approach you actually sweep in over the Andes Mountains like you could almost reach out and touch them and there's all jagged rocks and ice and amazing lakes. It was really quite a sight. We went into the airport in Oshawa and I actually made the silly mistake of commenting that

I actually thought it was a really nice airport. Lots of wood and glass, really interesting architecture. And at that point the conveyor belt broke down so we had quite a wait for our bags. We did get them in the end though. We were shepherded onto buses and taken up a hill. Or yeah, I guess it was a hill. Sort of a mountain where there was a nice hotel at the top. And then we were taken for a nice little walk through some sub-Antarctic forest they call it. Enjoying nice views of trees and peat bog and mountains and things like that.

There's some really impressive jagged mountains all around Ashwagandha. I'm looking at them now. They're like teeth or fangs going up into the clouds around this really beautiful bay. Ashwire means a bay facing to the west, as our tour guide told us. Although our tour guide did manage to stretch that little nugget of information out into a 20-minute story, so that's probably not, hasn't been the highlight of the day, if I'm honest. But now we are looking at the ship. We can't go on it yet for another hour and a half, so, but I'm staring directly at at Le Boreal I don't know if it's bigger or smaller than I

expected I think it's probably exactly what I expected it's quite grey sleek bottom half with a white top half very modern looking pretty cool it's French there's going to be a lot of French speaking on board but a lot of excitement too because we're going to head out into Drake Passage pretty soon and I don't know if we're going to get the famous Drake Shake that makes everyone so seasick because it's notoriously this terrible piece of ocean, the most turbulent piece of ocean you can cross. Or sometimes, if you're lucky, you get the Drake Lake and it's like a meal pond. What do you think of the ship? You're seeing it for the first time. Is it bigger or smaller than you expected?

It's exactly the same size as I thought it was going to be. That's what I said. But I'm impressed by the colour because it's gunmetal grey and white with an orange touch. It's very stylish. Oh, I didn't notice the little orange bit along the bottom there, like at the waterline. It matches the lifeboat. Let's not talk about that. And the other ship I was looking at is next to it and it's not very nice.

So I'm really glad that I picked this ship. It is a bit like we've got the posh one isn't it and like the people that have to get on the Sea Spirit are like that. Look what you've got! I don't think you should say the name of it. Because if people are listening to this and they've booked the Sea Spirit they're not gonna be very happy. Okay. Have you talked about the wind? No I said it was quite still because I said I don't know if we're going to get the Drake Shake or the Drake Lake. What are you thinking? Because you're more worried about this than me. That's all I'm thinking about at the moment.

And my hair blowing around my face is making me worried that it's going to be a bit choppy. So I'm about to take a sea sickness pill. A little bit of wind though, like blowing your hair is different to like, you know, throwing, really throwing the boat around i heard a woman saying on the coach earlier that she wants it to be choppy because she wants the experience like i'm a bit like that no no no no that's like saying you want it to capsize so you can experience what it's like for a ship to capsize no no no i don't want to experience a ship capsizing but i I do want to experience the Drake Shake. Okay. I want you to experience it too, but enjoy it and not get sick or scared.

Well, neither of those things are going to happen. So you either choose a lack of experience for you or a great one for me. Or maybe you could sleep through the Drake Shake. Yeah, in your dreams. The Drake Shake could be a cool dance move. What would the Drake Shake dance move look like? Most of your dance moves. A welcome word by

our captain followed by a presentation of the life on board will take place. Thank you very much for your attention and I wish you an excellent cruise. Oh, thank you very much. We're looking forward to it. Alright, so we're properly aboard the ship now and we've sort

of unpacked and we like our room very much and we've done a little walk around tour and that went really well except for the point where i literally kicked the bucket in the most important part of the ship the big lovely public area with big beautiful carpet and a chandelier where everyone gathers and talks to all the people in charge so they can get their Wi-Fi and ask for help. I managed to, well, I don't know. I don't know if it was entirely my fault. I was kind of looking around, admiring all the scenery, and one of the cleaners had left his bucket full of water.

I reckon it was unattended. And I kind of kicked it over, and the water went all over the carpet, and it was a bit embarrassing. It wasn't really my fault was it it wasn't your fault no um he shouldn't have left it there he had a big yellow sign saying cleaning oh really yeah and you weren't looking at it because you were being australian and looking all around the ship saying oh isn't it wonderful yeah i didn't i didn't actually see that yellow sign all right maybe it was no and it was a whole bucket

and it's a really good omen because we're about to go on a really dangerous bit of water well that's our bad luck done with for now anyway the ship's good and the cabin's really nice it's really nice and modern it's quite small but still I think like bigger than it's bigger

I'd started imagining it like postage stamp and it's alright isn't it it's bigger than I thought but after it like postage stamp and it's all right isn't it it's bigger than i thought but after about three days we're gonna hate each other maybe three hours i thought i was gonna say three days i'm liking the sound of that all right i don't know if the wind's coming through on the microphone but we're now underway i reckon we're about 10-15 minutes underway. Before we started we had a very entertaining presentation from the crew telling us about life on board the ship. The captain came and dazzled us with his presence

and then we had to do the emergency drill which was very exciting. We all had to go back to our rooms, put on our life jackets, go back to the theatre where we gather in case of emergency and then we had a mock abandoning of ship but we didn't actually get in the life rafts or anything like that. The captain told us we might not get the full Drake shake experience. He reckons three to four meter waves possibly which he made sound like wouldn't be too bad but we don't know yet. We're still in the very calm Beagle Channel just going along very very smoothly. It's nice isn't it? I'm hoping it's gonna stay like this. When I think of three to four meters I think that's not very big but

it is isn't it? It's still quite big. Yeah I mean that's like three or four of you on top of each other isn't it? I'm more than a meter. I'm one meter sixty-five so it's two of me. Oh it's nothing. It's nothing. You'll be fine on a big ship like this. I think it's... I'm optimistic. Well, just in case you aren't well and have to go to the cabin, we've already got some of our photo shoots out the way, so it's nice. It's cold. It's quite cold. It's cold.

You think it's cold now? Wait till we get to Antarctica. I know, I'll be prepared for it then. Very windy. Oh, it is, yeah. It's getting windy now. That's the Antarctic wind already blowing all the way up here to Patagonia. Ship's log day two. I'm up on the deck.

So we got out of the Beagle Channel. We went to bed while we were still in the Beagle Channel, which is quite calm. And then we hit the Drake Passage while we were asleep, basically. So we'd wake up occasionally in the night and you'd notice the ship was rocking more. It's kind of just a sort of a gentle back and forward. You wouldn't want to be standing on one leg. You do lose your footing a little bit, but pretty calm. And I've since heard from some of the expedition leaders here on the ship

that this has been the calmest crossing of the season and we've gotten really lucky. I mean, it's just ocean as far as you can see now. There's a bit of a swell and the boat rocks around but it's all very calm and the ship itself is lovely, the food's all very posh and nice, it's like being in a posh hotel when you're below deck. Up above deck where I am now, windy and cold, not many people are coming out here. I'm out here a lot with all my cameras and taking pictures because I'm just being a photo and video nerd but most people are staying below deck and in the comfort.

We've had sort of a briefing about the rules in Antarctica and how to look after the continent and what it's going to be like when we get there and how to get on and off the Zodiac. But we've got another one later on about decontamination of all our clothes and kits so we don't pollute the continent. But basically everyone's just taking it pretty easy staying warm and comfy before we get to Antarctica tomorrow. It's only diehards like me who are coming up in the cold. Have a listen to how windy it is. I don't know if you can hear the sea down below. All right here's ship's log, day three.

This is the day things get serious. It's amazing. We've arrived at Antarctica. I'm sitting in the cabin looking at rock and ice and water and more ice. It really is amazing. But let me take you to the start of the day. We woke up at sea again, out in the Drake drake passage chuffing along as usual there's actually like a newsletter you get every morning at your cabin which has like things that are happening

during the day on the ship and important information and it actually said there was an iceberg spotting competition and the first person to see an iceberg bigger than the ship would like get a prize my wife actually noted she hopes the captain will be the first person that will see an iceberg bigger than the ship but i don't think that's the point. Anyway, being the nerd who's always up on deck looking at things and looking for whales and looking at birds, I did spy an iceberg way off in the distance. Took a couple of pictures with a long lens and came down to the room and said to my wife, I've seen an iceberg. Do you think anyone else has seen it? Surely other people have seen it. Should I call up and report it? And she said, just report it. So I called up reception and said,

I think I've seen an iceberg. It's out to the right. I should have said starboard, but you know, I'm not that cool. And the woman at reception said, okay, I'll have to call the deck and check. I said, has anyone else called about it? She said, no, no, you're the first. So she called up and then called back a minute or two later and said, yep, the deck have confirmed out to the right. that is an iceberg. You win the prize. And they actually brought a bottle of champagne and a little certificate to the room to say that I won the iceberg competition. And look, I'm a bit happier about that than I'm willing to admit.

So, you know, I can smell ice. What can I say? We also started seeing a lot of whales along the way. You see them blowing in the distance, like little puffs of water go up in the air. And then occasionally you see the humpy back of the whale. Nothing too spectacular, but they did get quite close to the ship. Very hard to photograph. Very disappointing to photograph, just seeing like a bit of brown above the waterline.

But anyway, it made Drake Passage a little bit more interesting. We finally saw our first bit of land, the Smith Island or Smith Islands, but that was just sort of briefly. And then we continued across the Drake Passage. And then eventually the first parts of Antarctica came into sight, sort of rock and snow. It was a bit cloudy, but the weather was getting better and better as we got closer. I was setting up a time-lapse of our crossing of the Drake Passage and the approach to Antarctica. So I was very fixated on batteries and cameras and all sorts of things like that. I was spending a lot of time up on the deck. The wind was very cold, but the sea was, again, thankfully smooth.

And then we got closer and closer and it got more and more spectacular seeing Antarctica. I wasn't prepared for how high everything was, like mountains and things like that. My wife, with perfect timing, came up just as we sort of entered Antarctica proper. You kind of go through this opening and you start going past all these icebergs and rocks and seals and penguins. I'm not going to use words like unspoiled and natural wilderness, although I did just use those words. But it really, it did feel like something special and it was more spectacular than I was ready for. And the other thing everyone who comes here says, and I now see why they say it, is it's more colourful than you expect the ice. The blues and the colours of the ice is quite something. So anyway, we dropped

anchor and then straight away they took us out in zodiacs and we went out in this little zodiac tour just like among the little inlets and the rocks and the ice and going through and up close to all these icebergs that are all over the place there were penguins everywhere loads of seals and we just we'd pootle right up in the zodiac right up close to them and they just you know them you could hear them you can even smell them they haven't it reminded me a lot of actually being on a safari i have been on a safari in africa and it was like that but with more ridiculous amazing scenery because you're there's like icebergs and huge snowy cliffs and rocks and things so it was quite something and you see though like the seals are swimming around in the water as you're going around you sometimes

you'll just see a head pop up you also we also didn't see a dead penguin in the water that had been well there wasn't much of it left after a seal had gone to town on it but hey that's nature anyway the zodiac tour was amazing it was about an hour and you're just like on a total high after that and i've just gotten back on the ship gonna maybe do some exercise there's a little gym on board so i might do that and then go to dinner but like the the two days of nothingness is now completely forgotten and it's just like looking out the window it's like whoa i forgot that's what it looks like out the window this is like this is a really special place to be and really excited and really looking forward to the next sort of uh five days or so that we're going to get to spend here the ship's now going to go to little little

parts along the peninsula little inlets and coves and places where there are things to look at and we'll take more tours in the zodiac and at some of the places we're going to land and get to you know walk around and that we didn't land anywhere today today was just a little hour pootled around the area where we've where we've uh dropped anchor by the way the dropping of the anchor was pretty awesome too hearing the chain going bang bang bang bang bang bang bang anyway as you can probably tell i'm a little bit excited now and energized by things but uh it's time to time to relax now and go through all my all my pictures and videos and i don't know what i'm gonna do now i'm like the sad guy i think that's always up on the deck looking at stuff even when no one's there and everyone's like in their cabins or you know at meals or just keeping warm or at the bar i'm just always up on the deck freezing cold

setting up cameras and tripods attaching cameras to the different railings and trying to trying to see things ship's log day four we're actually on antar together for the first time i don't know if you can hear penguins in the background or not i'll try and get some in a minute but there are penguins everywhere we're at a place called necco harbour we woke up opened the curtains and it was ridiculous it was even more beautiful than yesterday it's a real picture postcard place this and we jumped in zodiacs and we've come across onto the onto the land for the first time walked through a whole colony of penguins and a whole bunch of penguin poo if i'm honest then climbed up this sort of gentle slope that was quite icy and difficult for an amazing view over the harbour went a bit crazy with the camera of course now we've walked back down we're amongst the penguins

we've got another 10 minutes or so here on the land I really wasn't prepared for how beautiful it would be here it's pretty amazing let me go and speak to my fellow sailor what do you reckon not bad I was just uh hoping that you'd say that there was a penguin, like, sleeping about a couple of feet away from you. You probably didn't even notice where it was. But there are penguins everywhere. It smells of penguin poo. I think we're going to smell of penguin poo. The weather is unbelievable.

It's so warm. I think I could be out here in a t-shirt, don't you? Yeah, definitely think i didn't mention that it's like a brilliant blue sky even this morning the captain came on and made an announcement on the ship and reading between the lines i think he was saying you idiots go and take photos because because this is this is this is as good as it gets he said the light's amazing the weather's amazing go above deck and take some pictures i saw uh one guy in his towel and a woman in her dressing gown

running outside to take pictures because like the difficult thing is you don't know whether this is the only time you're going to see something so amazing because this is only really like day one on antarctica so you just think get out there make the most of it so i've taken about 3 000 selfies this morning in about an hour one of the guides actually told me earlier that this is the hardest terrain he's seen all season because it's the end of the season so it's getting a bit colder it's really icy and tricky to walk up and down I was a bit apprehensive actually my legs were like jelly at one point but you said it was gentle I don't think it was gentle I think it was quite a difficult slope to walk down particularly but totally worth it yeah Yeah I think it's so slippery because the sun's been out so much which has been melting the ice and snow and

then it's been refreezing so it becomes quite slippy but anyway we'll head back towards the zodiacs out of the water you might be able to hear them creaking up here. You can hear that or not. Anyway, I'm looking out over a harbour full of icebergs. It's quite amazing. We've just been out amongst them in the Zodiac. And they're as tall as office buildings, some of them. Some of them are like spires.

The sun's catching them and they're bright white. They've got these greeny-blue bases. Some of them have got these incredible blue stripes running through them where they've cracked and reformed. It looks like someone has literally painted a blue line down the middle of some of them. It was a really fantastic Zodiac ride. It was a bit adventurous because we had to go through all the pack ice and we got stuck once or twice on the ice. The wind was blowing a bit, a bit of spray coming up,

so it was proper expedition stuff today. Yesterday, after i spoke to you from necco harbour where we were on the land amongst the penguins we had an incredible sort of one one or two hour journey down this sort of uh narrow waterway i've got fantastic footage of it which i'll put on a put on the youtube channel but it was going down this fantastic waterway beautiful skies there were penguins jumping out of the water and seals basking on little icebergs it was it was probably one of the most beautiful little voyages of the journey i'll keep saying that or then the next day we had an even better one anyway from there we went to this place called paradise bay and we got in the zodiacs again there

and went for a little pootle around for about an hour an hour and a half to this amazing glacier but then also there were minke whales all over the place. So we were chasing the minke whales and they were coming up to breathe and we were getting as close as we dared to them. There were more seals all over the place. That was also a really great, fun adventure. When you're on a safari, sometimes you look at what the other cars are doing, the other Land Rovers, and you follow them because that's where all the good stuff is.

It was a bit like that with all the boats, all the Zodiacs. You'd look where someone was rushing off to because they'd seen a minke whale so you'd go in that direction as well and try and head one off at the pass really good fun the weather again has been really good to us like occasionally it's cloudy and a bit windy but most of the time we're getting blue sky the guides are saying this has been ridiculous weather compared to some of the other ones they've had so far this season touch wood it continues once they've packed all the zodiacs back on the ship here we're heading back up this amazing channel that we came down this morning which has these incredible rocky spires that are like something you've never seen before and then we're going to be heading to port lockroy where there's a little station where some english people are based who

we're actually meeting and doing a little bit of real work and journalism with while we're here again the the thing that really strikes me about being here in Antarctica was I thought you sort of, we'd get here across the sea and it would be like just arriving at like sort of, you know, a flat white land with a few hills and a bit of rock and that. But the thing that's really struck me is how jagged and steep and high everything is straight away, straight out of the sea. It's like being in a mountain range right up against the sea. It's really amazed me. It's the size and the grandeur of everything that has taken me by surprise. Everything is on a more extreme scale than what I imagined.

I imagined it would be like just going anywhere else in the world except more remote and unspoiled and more white. But it really is really extreme geography. unspoiled and more white but it really is really extreme geography everything's so angular and pointy and high and it's white white and blue this is ship's log day six i think this is day six you really do lose track of time you do so much in every day you see so much stuff and then when i sit down to do these little recordings I've kind of just forgotten everything I lost my place a little bit anyway it's just about sunset although it's quite overcast so you can't really see the sun there's sort of a low slate gray sky

and a gray sea with this sort of Antarctic peninsula off to the side with this spooky white cloud over it looks really beautiful we're sailing towards the Weddell Sea and our next destination which is tomorrow. Today, like every day, has been really remarkable. We started at this place called Enterprise Island and we got in the Zodiacs and went pootling out around sort of little snowy coves with seals basking about the place. It was kind of a melancholic, sad feeling place, which is hard to describe. I guess the main reason is there's this big wrecked ship that's been wrecked for over a hundred years poking out of the sea. It was a whaling ship that caught fire and the captain deliberately ran aground so that everyone could get off and it's still there it looks absolutely amazing and you could go right up to it you could touch it as it

sort of juts out of the sea there near the coast took lots of great photos of it and then we just kept sort of cruising around the area looking at things and I had this and and there was some like some some old wooden boats as well up on some rocks you see very little human stuff in Antarctica so this was kind of a historic little site with a little bit of wreckage. I don't know it was a really nice atmosphere it was it was really good. We came back to the ship the next location was then Portal Point which is part of the Antarctic Peninsula and that was that was really fantastic. We sort of, there's an amazing bird sort of flying next to me at the moment like

keeping up with the ship like i could almost reach out and touch it anyway portal point is like this uh it used to be an area scientists used as sort of like a ramp to go up to the main continent so we sort of pulled into this cove where there were loads and loads of fur seals having fights and we were warned that they could charge you and don't panic if they do it just that's just their way of you know showing their stuff and they won't actually attack but i don't think anyone got charged i'm not aware of it and then you could go up this sort of big snowy ramp climb up high which had like a really fantastic view over the whole cove and the whole cove was like full of icebergs it was like an iceberg sculpture garden so we did that and

then we came back down and then you could go up the other side of the cove there was another sort of snowy hill you could go up for some nice views so we went up there as well just great photos i mean you can't you can't describe how amazing everything looks it's like it's a really it's a really beautiful place like it's been i don't know four or five days in Antarctica now and like it never stops amazing you and now we're sailing off again and the other thing we've seen during all this sailing between all these locations and even this evening as well is loads and loads of humpback whales we've been we've been navigating through a whale soup and a couple of times they even put an announcement over the ship saying guys go upstairs because there's loads and those are whales feeding at the moment and you go out on the deck and see just lots of whales like showing

their humpy back and then occasionally putting a tail in the air and everyone's going crazy with photos i reckon i must have tried to take 400 whale photos they're all absolutely rubbish they will never be looked at again i've got some nice tails sticking out of the sea but in real life it's amazing and you can't believe what you're seeing but with a camera when they're like you know 50, 100, 200, 300 meters away and they're mostly underwater it doesn't it doesn't really do it justice so the photos are a lot of the photos I've taken like of you know penguins and seals where I can get pretty close to them and have a really long lens look amazing but these photos I've been taking of the whales are a bit of an embarrassment, to be honest.

Anyway, we've just had another lovely dinner. The food on the ship, this is a French ship, the food is incredible as well. So we've just stuffed ourselves with nice dinner, nice desserts and pastries. And now getting ready to retire for the evening before we have our penultimate day actually here in Antarctica. Tomorrow we're hitting the wet L.C. and we're going through a passage known as Iceberg Alley I think is its nickname, the Antarctica Sound, hoping to see lots of big flatter tabular icebergs apparently that have broken off the ice shelf over the other side of the peninsula.

So looking forward to that and looking forward to caning it on my camera again. I think I've taken a couple of thousand photos already and loads and loads of video. So I don't know what I'm going to do with all this, but that's a problem for when I get home. This is an addendum to six. I've come back in the room to see my fellow sailor who's reading the guide for tomorrow. She likes to get all organised and order breakfast and know what's going to happen tomorrow what have you liked about today i had the most amazing shoe bun with praline in it um you want me to talk about antarctica i've already mentioned the desserts really what did you say was the best one i didn't i didn't go into that level of detail

it was it was amazing today was my favorite day it was definitely my favorite day this morning was fine i mean it was just like a normal kind of zodiac cruise normal zodiac cruise like we do that every day around some cool icebergs i was on the back of the boat for most of it which meant that i had a really amazing view i got quite wet but i loved it on the back of the boat and then this afternoon was the best trip on the peninsula for me. I felt like I was exploring, wandering up the ice. I was alone for a little bit as well, just having a look around and experiencing what Antarctica's like which is very cold, windy and stunningly beautiful. I described it to somebody today as not being like

reality. It just felt like I'm in a bit of a dream world. It's going to be impossible to describe what it's like when I get home. I don't know what I'm going to use. The adjectives aren't there. Amazing, wonderful, fantastic. I need a new word. What about the photos? You don't think the photos do it any justice? No, they don't get across the scale. So in the background, you took some great photos of me today with icebergs behind me but they just look like maybe they're the size of a small house but actually they're probably the size of i don't know like what do you think like a massive tower block i don't know they're huge and yeah i mean the photos look great you know i'm lucky that i'm with you and you know you take amazing pictures but it doesn't show how huge it is. And for as far as

the eye can see, there's nothing commercial here at all. I've never been anywhere like that in my life. What about the humpback whales? I mean, I took some pretty brilliant photos of them, didn't I? I got bored after like 500 of your pictures. When the captain first said that there are humpback whales, I was reading and I quickly got up and rushed to see humpback whales and I had a great experience because he said to everyone go to the port side and there are humpback whales and there were too many people so I couldn't really see so I was looking at the other direction and then just on my own and I didn't tell anyone I saw three humpback whales and I just had a moment with the whales and watched them do their thing I didn't take any pictures at all because I just had my iPhone with no Zoom. So I knew I wouldn't get a good picture

and I knew that you were trying to get them. So I didn't need to try. And then during the day, there's been another couple of announcements about whales and I haven't even bothered getting up. Whales are just like, we see them everywhere. I mean, we saw one, didn't we? Just when we were getting ready this evening

or two or three. We just saw them poodling around past the boat and i'd really like to see a killer whale i was in fact just reading about killer whales i'd like to see a killer whale this uh tomorrow stay tuned we'll let you know if we see a killer whale it's brady back here in real time with tim You've listened to that first half, Tim? Yes. I hope you were paying attention. No, I have. I have. Before we hear from Tim and have a chat about the first half,

we will thank the sponsor of today's episode, which is Audible, the masters of audiobooks. Get the Audible app on your phone. Listen to their ridiculously huge range of audiobooks and other spoken word material. Audible are all about trying to make a better you by listening to things that will make you smarter or cleverer or just more knowledgeable, maybe even just entertained. Now Audible's offering our listeners a free audiobook with a 30-day trial membership, just go to www.audible.com slash unmade, and then you can browse their unmatched selection of audio programs, download a title free, and start listening. It's

that easy. Go to audible.com slash unmade, or you can text unmade to the phone number 500 500 to get started i think that only works in the us i'm not sure but anyway that's sms 500 500 and use the code unmade so you write unmade and send it off to that number can i ask a question yes you can there's there's i'm imagining the trip there's a fair bit of travel that we've involved in this trip. You can't get to Antarctica quickly on a boat. Yes, you have been listening, yes. Audiobooks were part of your journey? This is it. Audiobooks was part of my journey in some of my downtime.

And before I went, there was an audiobook that was recommended very, very heavily to me. And that's the one I want to recommend today. Right. And it's unusual that several people recommend the same audio book to me, but everyone was saying, you've got to get this one. And the book was Endurance, Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. Oh, yes. This is the story of some things that went wrong for Shackleton in Antarctica,

around the Weddell Sea, around quite close to some of the areas where I was on my trip. Now, I haven't listened to the whole book yet, but I have started. And I have to say, I'm going to put this out here. If I was going to choose an audio book that I have listened to as the book that I would recommend to someone to get them into audio books, it would be this one. Oh, wow. It is so good. And it really grabs you by the scruff of the neck from the first few sentences that you just, you can't stop listening. This is a really, really great book. And it makes for a

really, really great audiobook. Better than many of the others I've listened to. I don't know if it's because of the way it's written. I don't know if it's because it has a fantastic narrator. I don't know what it is, but it just makes, maybe it's just because it's got that kind of expedition log nature to it. I don't know, but it's absolutely cracking right from the start. If you have not listened to audio books before and you've decided today's the day I'm going to try Audible and you're going to use the Unmade Code because, you know, you want to show a bit of love to the Unmade podcast. This is one to go for. Endurance.

All about Shackleton. Ernest Shackleton, the famous Antarctic explorer. Cracking story. Give this one a go. I have some friends who have read this and say it's just incredible. But hearing it, yeah, I can imagine as an audio book, it would be incredibly compelling. They've told me the story at length of Shackleton and it's fascinating.

Was it rubbing off on you? Like as you were doing your Captain's Logs, did you find yourself sort of adapting a tone as you were listening to the audio book? And they go, no. I think it's only fair to the listeners that I compartmentalise my adventure in Shackleton as similar as the two are.

Yeah. I didn't want to blur the lines too much. They were blurred in my mind as I was listening. I was what is this sorry is this shackleton or is this brady harrod it was it was incredibly vivid all right then finally thanks to audible yeah either you use the sms or the url use that unmade unmad to show that you're listening to the show. That helps us. But let's move on. Let's move on to that other famous, famous Antarctic adventure of Haran down south. How did you find the first half? Have you got any questions?

Is there anything I need to clarify for you at this stage? Anything I've missed or glossed over? Why can't you spell Buenos Aires? Sorry. Can you spell it? Not at the moment. No. I was taking a gamble that you hadn't written it down in anticipation of that question.

There it is. Okay, I've written it in front of me. I know it's immediately wrong. B-E-A-N-E-S-A-R. No, you're all... No. Not even close. Not even close.

Is there a Z in there? Have I missed something? Can I buy a vowel? That's right. He could write it down 500 times and still not get the correct spelling. Anyway, so it's not fair that I ask you about Buenos Aires straight up. I can spell Buenos Aires now, by the way. I had to Instagram and tweet it a few times, so I learned to spell it.

But it's not an easy one. Well, this is a really interesting idea. Because you really felt immersed. Like when I started listening, I thought, oh, here we go. And it starts off with the sort of pre-log, right, going through, you know, minus day one and all that stuff. And I thought, oh, okay. Yeah, okay.

A bit boring. Yeah, yeah. And then you were talking a lot about the trip. But somewhere along the line, I think it was when you started describing the ship. And it was a posh ship and, you know, and all that. And I could picture it. And I suddenly thought, oh, hang on a second, I'm caught up in this.

And I was picturing, yeah, the situation. And I had the mental picture, which is the ultimate giveaway with an audio book or a podcast that you're there and you're caught up into it. Maybe that's a sign I should have started it there. I mean, we're in a weird situation now that you've said that because, like, I can still edit all of this. Maybe the whole podcast should start there.

Well, maybe it should. Maybe it should. You know, it's not that it was boring up until then. It the whole podcast should start there. Well, maybe it should. Maybe it should. You know, it's not that it was boring up until then. It's just that that's, you know, that's when my. That's where it started working. Yeah, that's where the flow started. I'm not saying, I'm not asking you to do more in the taxi. But it was more exciting once you actually got on the boat.

Yeah, this is a really interesting idea. But I sort of flowed and I had a strong mental picture of the surroundings of your cabin and of the ship and the experience. And so my first impression is I wasn't optimistic about it. And I'm not a big one for this travel sort of podcast, even though I know I've flagged it in the past as a sort of a kick your heels idea. Yeah, you're the one who's always suggesting travelling podcasts. I'm not always suggesting them. You just want to do the travelling, basically. Oh, that's, yeah, I'm a big one for travel.

That's right. But I got caught up in it. I totally got caught up in it and was on the journey. So that's my overall comment. Because one thing I was wondering is because there's not, like, a tremendous amount of, like, sound effects and natural sound when you're on the ship i was wondering if there was a sense of place or it felt like i could have just been recording it in my bedroom and making it up later sort of thing i actually thought of that at one point

i actually thought whether i'm going hang on he's just because you do a lot of like you took the tone of remembering like you it's sort of like you'd go off and have your adventures and then and then yeah um you'd say okay today i went off and did this and this and this in back in the cabin and so i was thinking oh you could actually fake that and yeah and then i and then i walked up a cliff with tom hanks and it was amazing that's right that's right and then there was a penguin of the eyes he's he's bought a penguin he's got a penguin in his office. But then I forgot about that. And there was.

There were some sound effects. And you talked a bit about the wind, which the wind always sounds, you know, it's not terribly impressive on the microphone, except when it's annoyingly interrupting something you're trying to record cleanly. I stopped thinking that. And it did feel like you were there. Did you ever think about doing it live? Like, did you think, you know how there's often that,

well, here I am standing under the waterfall and you didn't think about taking it that way? Yeah, I mean, there was, I mean, there is a little tiny bit of that, like at Necco Harbour when we're walking on the land with the penguins. But I didn't want making the podcast to overtake the whole voyage. Like, you know, besides the fact I was also making a bunch of videos, which was a priority for me. Yeah.

I actually wanted to like enjoy Antarctica. And when, and those bits that I imagine would have been the most exciting to hear, like zooming around on the Zodiac or walking around amongst penguins and stuff. Like that was such limited time. Like you would only go ashore for like an hour, an hour and a half. Right. You know, you really wanted to really make the most of that and i didn't want to be spending 45 minutes of my hour kind of hunched over a penguin waiting waiting for it to make a nice

squeaky noise for my podcast and stuff like that so yeah so true if if podcast was my primary concern i probably would have done more of that sort of highly adventurous stuff. But I did have other priorities on this trip. So that's a fair question and perhaps also a fair criticism, but there is a reason for it. No, I think it's not necessarily a criticism. A bit of it would be nice. You could jump it around a little bit, but it also worked, that idea of today we did this and this and this. Yeah, I guess, yeah, you've digested it and you're reflecting on it a bit so i mean i i would like to have recorded more and in hindsight maybe i i could have got the recorder out a few more times the basic truth is tim a lot of the time i did take the recorder over to the land with me and as soon as you get off the

zodiac and step out you're so overwhelmed by what you're seeing and what's happening that you kind of forget all that stuff and and a couple of times i would get back to the ship and think oh i probably should have taken the recorder out at some point for that it was amazing you're just so um overcome by what you're saying that it's like like no other place i've been yeah the only other time i remember an experience like that it's happened twice is i've've been to Everest Base Camp a couple of times, and that's a very long trip. But when you actually get to base camp itself, you're only there for about an hour,

and you're a little bit euphoric that you've made it, and it's a really amazing place to be. That's another place where sometimes you can kind of forget to do the things you wanted to do because it's like, oh, my goodness, I can't believe I'm here, and this is amazing. So it's a bit of that sensation. It's like it's pretty extraordinary, as I constantly say to my own annoyance on the podcast.

Well, that brings me to another point, and that is because it's obviously overwhelming for you, the beauty, and so you need to be eloquent about the beauty. And I was thinking about how much the details matter because simply going, oh, it's amazing. Oh, it's so amazing. Oh, gosh, look at that. Oh, it was just amazing.

Would get a bit tired. I'm not saying you did that. I think you did actually a really good job. And I appreciated how you got into details about things. And that helped the mental picture as well. Yeah, I mean, a better wordsmith or more time on my behalf probably could have resulted in more purple prose and you know winding white ribbons draping into the ocean from the you know rocky crags and stuff but but yeah yeah no it's a hard picture to paint it's a hard picture to paint i'll say that much yeah and you

don't want it to be too rehearsed you're not writing you know like poetry or anything but you are you're wanting to describe something eloquently and accurately i guess and yeah i think you did that by and large and that was interesting i'll tell you what i would have liked to heard more about is descriptions of the ship because i wasn't sure yeah how big i know you both said it was the size that you imagined. And so I just thought, oh, it must be the size I'm imagining. But I was sort of like, oh, is this like, because you talked, I'm imagining a rather workman-like looking ship because that's what I see in documentaries going to Antarctica. But then you talked about having like really nice hotel level dinners and things.

I mean, the reason I didn't talk too much about the ship was I didn't want it to feel like a travel brochure. I wanted it to be about Antarctica and not about, like, holidays. Right. So I did avoid talking about the ship, but I will tell, but, you know, seeing it's something you asked and the whole point of inserting this into Unmade is for you to ask questions. It was like a nice sort of luxurious cruise ship.

It wasn't like an icebreaker or a research vessel. It was like a French cruise ship that during the summer cruises around Europe and places like that as well. But not as big as a cruise ship, surely. But it wasn't one of those mega ones that's like 30 stories tall and has 19 restaurants and five bars. It was quite, it was a bit more boutique. Right. It had 200 passengers. That's because if you want to land people on Antarctica, you can't land more than 200.

That's like an agreed limit. And that's one of the reasons you don't get mega cruise ships going down there because the people wouldn't be able to get off. They'd only be able to look. So it was 200 passengers, which is quite a small number, actually. And because about half of them at least spoke French and the other half spoke English, and you were often segregated by language for reasons of tour guides and lectures and stuff like that, really, you were on a cruise with 100 people in many ways. And so, you did get to know lots of people and you all became familiar faces. You know, it was reasonably personal in that respect.

And the cruise ship is very high spec. Like it's very nicely finished. It's like being in a nice hotel. It wasn't like, you know, grappling onto metal railings and rivets and bolts and things like that. Everything was, you know, nice carpets and it was lovely cutlery and glasses and things at that. Everything was, you know, nice carpets and it was lovely cutlery and glasses and things at dinner and that sort of thing.

It was like, yeah, it wasn't roughing it. Okay. I pictured it actually smaller than that. And I pictured the group as being about like 40 people. Should we crack on to the second half? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm interested. I hope you enjoyed the intermission.

I like having an intermission. It reminds me of the movies and theatre and stuff. Yeah. Movies didn't really have intermissions in our time, did they? But sometimes if you go, like, out to the country to a theatre, they'd have, like, an intermission in the middle of some film that wasn't designed to have one. It would feel really weird.

Yeah, growing up in the country, yeah, we had these. And you'd go – so I remember the last film I remember seeing an intermission, apart from watching an old film on TV where the word intermission comes up halfway through like in yeah the ten commandments or something like that which you just sort of sit through is um the bodyguard with whitney houston wow nice which i saw in like a gymnasium somewhere like at a resort where it was like oh this is the school gymnasium that's also our movie theatre. And it came up halfway. I said, what are we doing?

And it's like, it's intermission. So you go get another instant coffee and, you know. They're really uneasy times, intermissions, aren't they? Like at the theatre, like you're sitting around thinking, looking at your watch thinking, oh, can I go back in? And then you start worrying about missing the start of the second half. And I don't know. I think they cause more problems than they're worth. They're necessary for the bathroom, though.

That's what it is. Otherwise, you'd have people walking in front of you to the bathroom the whole time and whatnot. So I guess they do it for that reason. Well, now that we've been to the bathroom, let's do the second half of this podcast. Let's crack on this is ship's log i think day seven although i may be getting my numbering a bit mixed up by now as you tend to do on holidays so i woke up really early this morning like a like a kid on christmas

day because i knew we were in the antarctic Sound and there were going to be lots of icebergs coming up from the Weddell Sea. It must have been, yeah, it was about 5.30. I was up on deck setting up my camera. I thought I was just going to set up the time-lapse camera and come back down to the room, but it was so amazing that I ended up spending pretty much the whole morning up on the top deck. The icebergs were getting bigger and bigger. At one stage, we navigated around this giant, giant bright blue tabular iceberg which looked really amazing and it felt so close it felt like you could almost reach out and touch it. And actually though after we passed a huge piece of it about the size of an office block, cracked and fell off

into the sea and this massive wave came washing off the iceberg. I don't know if we'd been close to it when that had happened. I actually don't know what would have happened. It would have been quite a hairy situation, but anyway, that wasn't to be. We kept going. There were more and more icebergs, more and more pack ice, and the captain of the ship had to kind of go through it all a bit like a slalom, but eventually we got to our destination, a place called Brown Bluff, where we were able to go onto the land. Lots of penguins, a chance to hike up a glacier as well. It was pretty good fun. I spent most of the time putting my GoPro down on the snow, hoping that penguins would come up to it

and peck it and pick it up, which did happen once or twice. So I got some funny shots. We were then supposed to go out into the Weddell Sea properly, but there was just so much ice that they decided it was too risky and they were worried about the ship getting penned in somewhere. We'd have to do a winter over here in Antarctica if that happened, I think. So no one wants to do that. So we didn't go down into the Weddell Sea itself. And now we're heading up towards the South Shetland Islands for tomorrow. We're actually going to be leaving a bit earlier tomorrow as well because they're anticipating some actually quite big waves

in the Drake Passage in the next few days. And they want to get ahead of that. So we're told instead of two expeditions tomorrow, there'll just be one and then we're going to head up. Because if we hit the wrong waves at the wrong time in the Drake few days and they want to get ahead of that. So we're told instead of two expeditions tomorrow, there'll just be one and then we're going to head up because if we hit the wrong waves at the wrong time in the Drake Passage, they could be like, you know, over 10 meters high and we'd like to avoid that and have a smoother ride home. How have you found the day? You had a good day? I woke up this morning to that massive iceberg you just spoke about. So I opened the curtains and there was a huge iceberg right next to the ship and they are an

odd colour aren't they they're like bright blue and this they make the sea look black and the sky look grey and it's impossible to get across in a picture or description how huge they are I think that one of them that we saw today was a thousand times the ship. You said I was being ridiculous and it was like 20 times. I think you're wrong. I think I'm right. Obviously in life, that's how we feel.

It was definitely closer to a thousand times bigger than 20 times bigger in hindsight. It probably was a thousand times bigger. I think you were carrying on a bit like a pork chop about the bit of ice falling off. it's because you were like there's a tsunami it was it was like i was it's because i and one other guy who was up there the only people who saw her and it's like we've witnessed this amazing thing and this like a brush with death that no one else realizes and every person i tell they're like yeah whatever i swear if you'd seen it it

was it was crazy i just kind of trust the captain though that he wouldn't have taken us so close to an iceberg that could have potentially sunk his ship i don't know maybe that's naive anyway so what was the place we went to called brown bluff brown bluff uh it was brown um in parts but there was fresh snow on it too and there were thousands of penguins little penguins everywhere running around i am on the hunt for the perfect penguin selfie which i still haven't got yet my phone's full of them but most of them it just looks like a blob of gray in the background and what I really want is for the penguin to be right next to my head, looking into the camera and like posing. And then I can be like, okay, now do this with your face, penguin.

And then I could do like a four-way self penguin selfie is what I'm looking for. So there's only one day left to achieve that. I did choose to go on the hike. It was, we were warned it was very icy because you're walking on a glacier and we've only got Wellington boots which aren't that grippy. They're the ones that they give you on the ship by the way. They're not perfect. I would prefer to walk in walking boots but they did the job and it was super windy at the top. So windy I could barely get my phone out but I did and Brady wasn't there to tell me that I couldn't get my phone out so I got it out and took a million selfies and

got some people who are up there to take some pictures of me I really liked it it was I came down and I was covered in bits of ice from the from the wind blowing the ice all over me uh it was cold today really cold i think your favorite part of the whole day was when i put my gopro down in front of that that penguin and i was doing like and the penguin was standing right in front of my camera doing a magnificent pose and it was sick in front of the gopro it was perfect timing it was like perfectly center shot and it did this horrible orangey sick right in front of the camera like there you go that's what i think of your gopro in front of my path i'm throwing up in front of you it was so funny i'm hoping you get that perfect selfie now and the penguins on

your shoulder and it does a big sick on your shoulder um i'd love that it would be really funny i bet penguins sick doesn't smell nice smell disgusting if their poo's anything to go by i like the bit where the penguin was trying to eat your camera and then knocked it over that was good and i also liked the picture that you took of the bird trying to frame your shot because i think that bird might have got the horizon straighter than you managed to get them in pictures. All right. Just so we're clear, I'm not allowed to make any jokes about, like, waves and storms, but you can go my horizons.

Do you want to talk about the waves? Let's talk about the waves. I think it's going to be fine. Look, we're leaving early, not in my mind early enough i think we should be leaving now i've seen enough stuff you know it's been a great week i want to just get past the storm i'm you know i get really seasick i'm terrified of the sea i'm here because you wanted to be here you wanted to come here which is great and i'm really glad i came i don't regret it at all at the moment but But I'm really scared of the sea.

I'm convinced I'm going to drown. I mean, if I do, no one's going to hear this anyway, are they? Well, no, you might drown, but I might survive and this recorder might survive. Oh, you'll be like the one in Titanic on the door and I'll be like Jack sinking. Thanks. And maybe in like 20 or 30 years,

they'll bring me back here and ask me to tell the story. It's so long ago. Anything you can remember, Brady. It's so long ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. And you'll get this recording out and just play it. What would the people be doing? Like the salvage people be trying to get your bracelet, were they? Yeah, they'll be trying to get this sound recorder thing yeah from the bottom

of the ocean yeah the zoom of the ocean i tell you what though no one will be dancing and listening to the violinist playing will they they'll be taking pictures they won't notice that the ship sinking they'll be too busy looking through a camera lens trying to get the best picture of it i reckon even if it was sinking that'll be'd be taking pictures. Well, that's what I mean. Yeah. So instead of saying, you know, oh, you know, the band played right to the very end, it'll be that, oh, they were so stoic, they took selfies right to the very end. I mean, if there's a penguin there, I'm still going to try and get my penguin selfie. That's right. And the ship will be plunging under the waves

and you'll still be making jokes about my horizon being off. Anyway, I'm going to... This is not recommended, by the way, but I'm going to take a lot of pills. I've got a lot of melatonin, so I'm hopefully going to sleep my way through it. That's seasick pills, for the record. Yeah, seasick pills.

You're not going to be, like, partying up on deck or anything. Seasick pills. No, I'm hoping to put my headphones in, listen to sad music, drink some kind of lemonade and eat some sugar-covered ginger and it's going to be okay. It'll be absolutely fine.

You can't say that. You don't know that. You can't say that. I do, I know. You don't? I do, I know. You don't know that? I checked on a computer. You absolutely can't say it you don't know that you can't say that i do i know i do i know you don't know that i checked on a computer you absolutely can't say it's going to be fine i've seen videos on youtube of drake's passage in storms and it looks hideous and those people survived exactly

i know but it might be worse than that what do you think there are whole cruise ships going missing like on this trip and it just doesn't get reported? No, but before Titanic happened, people didn't think that a big ship would hit an iceberg and everyone would die. Yeah. Not everyone died, I know. You know what I mean. Yeah. So there's always a first.

Anyway, I don't want to talk about it. This is Ship's Log Day 8. We've come to the end of our time in Antarctica itself. We started with a visit early in the morning to a place called deception island which is a big volcanic caldera reminded me a little bit of santorini but much bigger and somewhat colder and inside is an area called whalers bay this was obviously where the whaling industry was based a long long time ago and there's still sort of the old falling apart buildings and huge oil tanks

and things like that still along the shoreline it was quite spectacular as the captain kind of just cruised around the edge of the coast for us all to have a nice look at it we didn't get to land though because of the the time constraints that we mentioned in the last posting and from there we sailed across to a place called Half Moon Island and actually got really foggy. We were kind of thinking, oh this is going to get cold off this landing, but just in time we came out of the fog, the sun came out even and the weather ended up being incredibly still, really perfect. So we anchored there, went across on the zodiacs and had a final sort of hour and a half wandering around in a sort of a little hilly rocky area. There were loads and loads of penguins, loads and loads of seals. So we filled our boots

with a final fill of photos, a final look, a final whiff of the unmistakable smell of penguin poo. Then it was all back on the ship, up with the anchor. We sort of wound our way through the fog and between the rocks and the cliffs out of the South Shetland Islands and now we're back in the Drake Passage making our way back to South America. We've got a day and a half, two days. We don't know exactly what the weather's going to be like yet or what the water's going to be like. We're hoping for the best. There are a lot of sick bags that have been put out along all the corridors in the ship which maybe doesn't bode well. I don't know, maybe that's a bit like when the gritters come out in England. If they think it's going to snow they put the gritters out. Maybe if they think the weather's going to maybe be bad, they put the extra sick bags out.

But we're hoping for the best, and we'll find out tomorrow if our luck is in or our luck is out. Ship's log, day nine. There's not much to say today. Today is the tax you pay for going to Antarctica. It's the long journey there and back, and today has just been Drake Passage. you pay for going to Antarctica is the long journey there and back and today has just been Drake Passage. Not as Drake Lake as the first time but certainly not super Drake shake either. Bit more wavy this time, bit more bumpy on the boat but all fine. But I did take the chance today to have a quick chat to John Frick who's our expedition leader so instead of listening to me

you can listen to him or you can listen to me and him. John, I feel a bit like if the captain is God, who is someone we hardly ever see, but he's responsible for our lives, you're like our dad. You're like the father of the expedition. Yes. How would you describe, though, your role? What's the role of the expedition leader? The expedition leader is charged with setting up the itinerary and getting passengers safely to landings or expedition activities and safely back to the ship. There's so many people and there's such a diverse range of people of abilities and ages that it feels like it would be a very stressful

job is it is it stressful for you you've done it so long it doesn't bother you or? It's still stressful but I enjoy it. I understand nothing is going to work perfectly but overall it's a big success. I want to quickly talk about Antarctica because I know you go to places all over the world and you see amazing things. What is it about Antarctica that is special to you and what do you think sets it apart from other places? Antarctica is for me like going to an another planet it's a beautiful planet it's a place that we don't actually belong we may visit we may research we may enjoy but it is so extreme that and so dominated by ice that humans really are just

visitors there. I feel like a lot of the time I've been here, John, this is obviously my first time, in taking photos, in talking about it into a microphone, I feel like I'm almost helpless in my ability to explain what it's actually like. Like I can't do it justice. Do you suffer that when you go back to the real world and you're telling your friends about your journeys? Like it's really hard to convey, isn't it? It is hard to convey. They have an idea when they hear antarctica they just think frozen wasteland and they're not quite sure why i work there or why i want to be there and when i go home it's very hard to convey the sort of beauty and the uh the wildness of it and so i basically don't when i get home. The thing I've been finding hardest to convey,

and the thing that has surprised me most, I don't know if you find this from your other passengers and expedition members, is the scale and the size of everything. I think everything is taller and bigger than I expected and farther apart. That's right. The mountains are much steeper and it's more mountainous, more three-dimensional than people expect. I also describe it sometimes that if there are mornings we wake up and just 15 degrees of the view would be the basis for a treasured national park at home. But that's just 15 degrees. It's all around you in 360 and that's the amazing thing about it. The wildlife is another thing that has the amazing thing about it the wildlife is another thing that has surprised me in terms of the abundance i thought it might be oh look

everyone over there 10 penguins oh look a seal but at times some of the places we've gone it's felt like wall to wall we've literally had to be careful not to step on penguins that's correct and um we're actually late in the season We're at the end of the breeding season. So the majority of penguins have left. Can you imagine earlier tens of thousands of penguins at one time? What we see in the later season more of, we see more seals and whales. Now, coming to this specific expedition, if you can cast your mind over the last four or five days, it felt to me like we were very fortunate at the start. We had really good weather. We've had a couple of little bits of bad luck later on in terms of things we haven't been able to do.

What would be your overall summary of this expedition? How it sort of has ranked in the league of things? Well, it was pretty clear with the group that there are some days that I had goals that even myself thought it would be unlikely that we could achieve. Getting into the Weddell Sea, it all depends on the ice. And the ice clearly prevented us from getting down there.

But we saw Brown Bluff, we landed. That was our third continental landing for the trip. We saw Great Tabula Icebergs. I showed everybody the major regions that I wanted to show them. One thing that fascinates me, like a place where I'd love to be a fly on the wall, is when you and the captain are having to discuss what you're hoping to do

and the captain's telling you what's feasible and possible. What would I hear and what's the atmosphere like if I was sitting in on one of those meetings between you and the captain? Well, I really respect him because he listens and I can actually convince him of things. Like there are certain parameters that he must operate within, and he tells me, for example, yesterday, that we will leave early.

So within that definitive statement, I did get him to go to Deception early and allow us to go to Half Moon late. So we both accomplished what we wanted. I mean, clearly his priority is all of our safety and the safety of the ship, but you feel like he will go the extra mile to make sure we see what we can? For sure, and I really appreciate that with him. When we were in Deception yesterday, he just didn't poke in and poke out.

He took his time, showed the starboard side of the ship, Weller's Bay, went to the Port Foster, came back and showed the port side. That's very good for a captain. That's so we could all watch it from our beds. Exactly, and bathrobes. And just to get a little bit more about your history with Antarctica, how many times have you been here now? I think this is my 105th trip.

Probably as expedition leader, about my 100th trip. That's amazing. How many more do you think you have in you? That's a good guess. For as long as my knees hold out. I feel like I could have stayed another month or two months. It was so incredible. Have you become blasé about it, having been here 105 times?

No, I think that's why I keep coming back. I've seen other people come and go that do get over it or move on to other things. I have enough variety in my life that I look forward every season to coming back here. What is it about here that makes it worth coming back? Does this say something just about your personality that you can't get enough of it? Or is there something about Antarctica that makes someone want to keep coming back? Well, as I said, it's always changing, it's wild, it's extremely beautiful and dangerous at times. That's one side of it. The other side is that I still can't believe this is my life. I never in a thousand years would have expected that I work in Antarctica. John, back in the real world, a lot of people talk about, you know, politics and

climate change and all these things. And Antarctica is always held as this thing that must be preserved or could be under threat. As someone who comes here all the time, do you feel more sensitive to those discussions? Do you almost want to grab people by the scruff of the neck and say, you guys, you don't understand what the stakes are here? Well, especially in the United States where I come from, climate change unbelievably is still a political issue, not just a scientific or general pressing issue of all humanity. It's a political position. I see changes in Antarctica over the course of 17 years. I see whole areas that have where glaciers have melted back or that were permanently snow or ice covered before and now are exposed even early in the season so it is worrisome. Do you

feel like if more people could make this trip and just get this small taste of Antarctica maybe people's attitudes would change a bit if they saw what it's like down here? I think they would I think they would that's that's why I like tourism down here is that we do create ambassadors for Antarctica. On my staff, we don't have a climate change lecturer, and that may be better, because that argument, it's to come down here and enjoy the sea, and take that information and go back and then listen to the arguments, I think. Yeah, I agree with you, John.

I think it would be heavy-handed to bring us down here and then lecture us about climate change. I think almost the scenery speaks for itself. That's correct. That's my feeling as well. The 105 times, is there anything you haven't yet seen? Is there like your holy grail, like something that can be seen down here that even you haven't seen yet? I'm sure there's a lot of that.

I'd love to see more emperor penguins or an emperor colony. I would love to get to Snow Hill Island someday. And that's within the range of this ship. It would have to be clear conditions in the Weddell Sea. So this is a place that you haven't quite reached yet, but one day if the stars align, you might get. That's true. And of of course there's a dream some somehow somebody would invite me to uh south polar station uh even for a short visit but uh i don't see that happening well you never know you never know like just one more thing a aspect of working on a small ship and working on an expedition ship is the crew members and the expedition team that you work with.

You see them. It will change over the course of years, but you work with them now, and maybe two years from now, they're back again, and that's a very nice feeling of camaraderie and shared endeavour. A lot of science-y people listen to the things I make, so they might think, oh, I'd love to be on an expedition, work on an expedition like this. What are you looking for when you're recruiting your dream team? I look for, of course, knowledge about a specific aspect of ornithologists, glaciologists, marine mammologists, or so on.

Somebody who can share an experience with somebody who's not talking down to somebody, but sort of sharing their knowledge, and who are good educators. I also look for somebody who can drive a Zodiac, and are reliable, and are team players. Send your CV, John Frick. So a bit of a postscript. Apparently I'm talking down the waves a little bit. Perhaps because we're so high up in the ship,

I don't realise when I look down just how big they are. Although I have spent most of the day trying to film them. What do you reckon? You reckon they're a bit bigger, do you? I think to most people, these would be big waves. This is a big ship, and the waves at one point, when I saw them at the front of the boat, were coming over the bow. And it was dangerous to stand out there.

I mean, there was some guy with his iPad out there, which was just quite frankly stupid. I think it's very difficult, as I've said before, to get a grasp on perspective because there's nothing around us at all. There's no land at all. But all I know is the waves were coming higher than I was on the top deck I mean yeah we were on level six which is about four or five levels I think above the water line and the spray was hitting up on the window there they did shut that top deck later on as well where the iPad man was because I tried to go out there and set up my camera again and they wouldn't let me so yeah okay pretty big waves This is ship's log, the final day. So last night things did get a bit choppy on the water

and we were being tossed and turned a bit, weren't we? As we went through the sea. It was as rough as it got. That's an understatement. I'm glad I was kind of asleep. It was, I think it was quite scary. I guess I was mainly asleep. But anyway, it calmed down.

We made it. We made it to the Beagle. What's it called? The Beagle Channel. The Beagle Channel. We made it to the Beagle Channel, which is where things calmed down a bit. And then we just cruised on into Ushuaia. One of the last things that happened was John, the expedition leader,

recited a poem for some of us who decided to go down to the theatre. Is it The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner? That's right. I don't think I'd heard it. Oh, I'm sure I hadn't heard it before. You were quite familiar with it. I studied it at school at GCSE level. Mrs Priest taught me it.

It brought back lots of memories. I remembered quite a lot of it, but you knew some lines. Yeah, obviously it's such a famous poem. Lots of lines that I didn't know came from that poem. Like the whole notion of having an albatross around your neck and also the line water water everywhere and not a drop to drink comes from that it's it's like a poem about something going pretty catastrophically wrong at sea so i'm glad they didn't do it until the end yeah i didn't think about that actually waited until we were safe to tell us that story it was quite funny though because because I knew it was a very long poem.

And when we got there, John, the expedition leader, said that it would be about a 40-minute reading. And you were like, he's not going to read the whole thing in your Australian way. But you sat through it. Did you enjoy it? I did. I liked it. I liked it. Did you follow it?

I kind of followed it. Obviously, it's got all the fancy talking that I don't usually go for. But I like that John occasionally put up slides. He put up some Gustave Doré etchings that accompany the poem. And I'm a bit of a fan of that artwork. So I liked that. And pictures always help. It was a picture poem.

It helps when there's pictures. And he put in a few little annotations that helped. Like where he pointed out that it's bad luck to whistle on a ship, which is bad because you love whistling. I love whistling. I don't think I've whistled though. I realised today that I whistled on the pier and I don't know if that was bad luck but I think it's okay because we're moored and it's safe

now. You weren't on the ship though. I wasn't actually on the ship so I think it's okay. I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. Just sitting there listening to him read the poem letting it wash over you. I think, yeah, I'd love to do that a bit more.

I don't think it's something that you want to do more. Go to poem recitals. Yeah, if it's too good for my Antarctic or I'll do it. And now that the trip's over, are you glad? Did you enjoy it? Was it good stuff? You asked me today whether I would do it again. And I said straight away, yes, but I would like to do it for longer. It takes a long time to get here, obviously a long time to get back.

I found that difficult because I like to do lots of stuff and be busy all the time. And there's very little to do. I've read a lot of books. I've listened to a lot of music. I've watched some shows. I've been to the gym a lot. But today I was thinking, oh, I'm bored now. So I would like to spend longer in Antarctica to make it worth that trip. But I've really enjoyed it. The seas were scary at times, but not as bad as I thought they were going to be. And the expeditions were amazing.'s over too quickly really I agree with all of that the only thing I guess I don't agree with was the crossing wasn't as boring for me because I don't get as affected by the sea so I quite enjoyed the crossing of the Drake's Passage

I'd enjoy just like going up onto the deck and looking at the sea and wandering around the ship and sitting in different parts of it and so it was great but it is such a long way to get to South America and it is two days of sailing i definitely would have liked longer in antarctica itself maybe next time we'll do a trip that has a few extra days maybe adventures a little bit further south but it has been an excellent trip and next next north north you reckon? Yeah. We've been south as far as, well, as far as probably I can go. And next time, north, I would like to see a polar bear. All right, Tim. All right.

That's it. You made it. I made it. Yep. Wow. What do you think of the second half? Ended with a flourish, didn't it? The fact that we've spoken means I knew the boat wasn't going down.

Yeah. That tension was missing. Yeah, look, it's really interesting. I think it got better in the second half. I was interested to see how it went. And I think probably the views and things got more spectacular as well. And your awe was maintained. That was interesting.

It was. It genuinely was. Now, let me clarify this. So when there was a massive ice break, when it broke away, that caused the tsunami that nearly toppled the boat, apparently. Well, okay, yeah. Was it really as big as an office block? I mean, was it really huge?

It was massive, man. It was massive. Now, let me tell you this. I captured the tail end of it on video, because I was filming something else when it happened, and I swung the camera around. So people watching the YouTube version will see footage of this incident. Okay.

But I was so far away when it happened, because it was like 20 or 30 minutes after we'd passed so the iceberg was way in the distance by this point right that it may not look as big as i would like right but i can assure you when you consider how far away this was and how big the overall iceberg was this was like a big chunk of ice it was definitely taller than like a six or seven story building and it and it fell off it you know it was definitely taller than like a six or seven story building. And it, and it fell off at, you know, it was, it must've been a couple of miles away by this point. And you heard the crack. Did you capture any of the sound? No, I don't, I don't think I've got the

sound of the cracking. I'll go back and check. Cause I was very, cause I was pointing the camera in another direction at the time. So I've just kind of swung it around and I haven't got my long lens on. So I zoomed as far as I could. You will get a sense that it was a fair old wave. And the thing to remember is the ship passed quite close to it. I'm not saying the ship would have toppled over. In fact, I hope it wouldn't have. But I don't rule out that it would have.

Put it this way, everyone on the ship would have known something very, very major had just happened. But, you know, would have, could have, should have. This was, we had passed after it happened. The other guy who saw it, actually, when we were talking about it, very very major had just happened yeah but you know would have could have should have this was we had passed after when it happened the other guy who saw it actually when we were talking about it said i wonder if the ship passing precipitated that happening like you know put a little bit of extra movement in the thing you've got to remember though in antarctica is this is happening all the time and i don't talk about that in the podcast but like when the ship is like anchored

and it's very quiet and you've got glaciers and mountains all around you, you're constantly hearing cracking of ice. You're constantly hearing and sometimes seeing avalanches of snow. You're seeing icebergs suddenly break apart and just shatter into mush in the water. That's probably something I didn't talk about much, is there was constant change and movement happening around the place and this was just one example that happened at a time very close by to the ship when which would have affected the ship but anyway because you didn't get the first part of it on film have you considered any kind of paper mache reenactment film to supplement your footage. Yeah, I could create something with ice cubes in the bathtub or something.

That's right, yeah. This is just one of those things in life that only you see and is very dramatic and you can never convey the amazingness to other people. And I'll be consigned to forever telling this story of this amazing thing that happened to people going, hmm, whatever. Yeah. Anyway, moving on. Yeah. Did you moving on. Yeah.

Did you enjoy the interview with John? I thought you might enjoy that. I did. I did. It was a real interview. I thought you were just going to have a quick g'day with him, but you ask really good questions, and they were really good questions, particularly about I can't believe he's been there 105 times.

I know. And that he still wants to go back and is still in awe of it and everything, which says a lot. And that's really lovely. He was such a great man. He was such a nice man. I thought you'd really like him because he's a lot like you in a lot of ways. Like he's very kind and nice and considerate.

You know, that kind of person who's just a bit too nice like you are. Bit too nice? What does that mean? Yeah. He's just nice. Nice people are important, man. There's nothing wrong with nice people. I wouldn't have considered myself a particularly nice person.

I have good intentions, but. You're pretty nice. Well, okay. You're pretty nice. Thanks, man. He was a fascinating guy and he's the expedition leader. It's funny how you played up and he kind of went with it, the aura around the captain. Like the captain captain this is your

captain speaking and and was it like that the you never see the captain they're like yoda that come out every now and then yeah you only see him rarely at dinner and if you do it's like oh look it's the captain oh really but also the the thing that adds to it is it was actually i didn't go into it in detail but at the start of the voyage it was really interesting the way they introduced everyone but then when the captain came out they said now it's the captain they played this really dramatic like movie cinematic score like as he walked down the aisle onto the stage like he was like gladiator or something like it was like and there was a second time when he was introduced to us to the to the crowd at like one of the dinners or something and again whenever

he's introduced they played the same music so he had his own like really dramatic theme tune that played whenever he walked anywhere is it like is it tongue-in-cheek are they having a go or is it is it kind of no i think it was kind of serious wow here's your comma dance and then there's like i'll try and find out what the music was i can't remember what it was but it sounded like something like you know like that hans zimmer had written for a movie or something. So every time he walks into a room, that music kind of plays. It's a bit like the president. Every time he walks into a room, someone's playing Hail to the Chief.

It was like that. Yeah, yeah. Captains on big ships do have this kind of godlike quality given to them. They're like, you know, it's pretty awesome. Yeah, I'm picturing Sean Connery in, like, The Hunt for Red October, you know, where his word is just, you know, they're in awe of him and he's a legend and his word is obeyed. Obviously, this captain wasn't trying to defect to Antarctica, though.

I don't think so. And he didn't have that kind of... Physically, he was not an intimidating, imposing or particularly rugged looking man. He was quite like... He did look a little bit like an accountant, but he was, you know, he's the captain of the ship. He's like, he's your God. Well, I guess it's more, yeah, you want a technically minded kind of bookish person who knows all the facts rather than a, you know, person with a beard and a pipe. And they're all computerised, those ships, these days anyway,

so everything's been done by, like, computer screens and command. So really what you do want is a guy who's really good at IT. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's more of a Picard kind of captain than... Yeah, that's true. Yeah, he was. He was more Picard than Connery. More than Ramus or Ranius or whatever he's called in Patrullet October.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Ramius. And the desserts were good too. That's important to hear. The food was amazing. In fact, I will share one picture on screen now for the people watching on YouTube that I took that just showed how French it was. And it's a chef in front of a huge table of cheeses that you could choose from at dinner. Like cheese is a really big deal to the French. Like I know

that's like a cliche, but if the offerings on the ship were anything to go by, that cliche is very much backed up by truth because they were very big on offering you cheeses. And I've got this chef with a big white chef hat on in front of a table of more cheeses than I ever knew existed. Well, look, as a podcast idea, like thinking about, like it was interesting. And I guess in one sense, I forgot about it being a podcast, which is always the best kind of podcast. As a podcast idea, I was thinking about how much of it worked because there is a novelty factor in the location because it's a place that is very rarely visited and almost no one who listens to the podcast will have been there as opposed to most travel shows.

You may have gone somewhere if you wanted to go travelling. So it would work as a, you know, Brady goes on holiday to a very unusual place. That certainly added something and probably made it a bit unique amongst other sorts of travel shows. And because you shared enough about yourself as well, as well as the location. So it's sort of like, it's a podcast about you, but you doing something that is genuinely interesting because I haven't done it and I'm not planning to do it. And it's

a real unknown. Like the expedition leader said, it's like going to another planet. Yeah. So you've got to think about how many places there are like that if you were to do it again. I guess there are some. There's certainly the world's full of really exotic and rare places. You don't think I could do an episode like that in Adelaide? Well, Adelaide is a rather exotic... Certainly not many people have been there.

That's right. It falls into the category of places that start with A that not many people have been to. That's right. It falls into the category of places that start with A, that not many people have been to. I mean, that's the other idea. You could do a podcast about travel to really obvious places and you're pointing out, you know what I mean, unique things that everyone's been to. I'm now approaching Times Square.

That's right. I'm tiptoeing around the corner hoping not to disturb any of the natural environment. I see a huge Coca-Cola billboard to my left. I see five guys selling hot dogs just off to my right. Well, it would be funnier if you didn't know what they were. So if you were approaching it for the first time, there's some sort of large, red,

it seems to be flickering screen with something, I'll spell it out, C-O-K. I can't make out the rest of it there are men that seem to be selling long cylindrical meat pieces in buns from metallic boxes that's that's right i'm i'm taking one now as a sample to uh laboratory for rolling it up yeah i don't know i mean i wasn't this this hasn't i haven't really made this as like a pilot of any kind of format it was more just putting my toe in the water to what's it like to be on the road be traveling and try to record things and how practical is it and how engaging is it and i certainly learned lessons from doing this things

that i would do more or less of you know know, if I was to try it again. But I wanted to share it with you and with people who listen to this podcast so that maybe in the future when you and I are talking about other podcast ideas that involve travel and adventure, we can look back at this as some kind of resource. What was it like in practical terms? Was it a hassle to remember, oh, yeah, I've got to be doing this other thing? Or was it like in practical terms was it a hassle to remember oh yeah i've got to be doing this other thing or was it like it felt a bit like a chore at the end of the day

sometimes it felt a bit like putting the bins out but more fun like it was something that was fun to do it was like it was nice to sort of recap the day but it was also like mustn't forget to do that because if i don't do it i'll fall behind and yeah it's important that i do these things it was also like, mustn't forget to do that because if I don't do it, I'll fall behind. And it's important that I do these things. It was important to me that I did them on the day and wasn't like, you know, cheating and doing them all days later. So it was a little bit chore-like in that sense. But also on a ship, you do have a lot of downtime. So it wasn't like, you know, I had to really work to carve out the time. You are standing around a lot.

It would have been different as well if i wasn't making so many films and spending so much time wandering around with all my cameras so okay so doing the other things was also part of the work so yeah yeah several projects i think for anyone else it would have been easy to find the time i was probably busier than most people on the ship not including the staff they're pretty busy too one thing that came to mind it you often talked about being up on the top deck and having equipment and setting up cameras and stuff and in every, and tying them to things. And in my mind's eye, I was just seeing things falling overboard all the time. Like you. I was seeing that in my mind's eye as well. It was a constant fear. It was a constant fear. I had

pretty good equipment for making things cling onto rails and that. But the thing that made me more nervous as the trip went on wasn't losing a camera to the sea. It was losing the SD cards in the camera to the sea and losing all the previous footage and photos I had. I was backing some stuff up onto my phone and iPads, but I wasn't able to do like big mass backups because I didn't take a laptop with me. able to do like big mass backups because I didn't take a laptop with me so there were a few times I'd be strapping a camera to a to a rail over the side of the ship to get a nice time lapse of the sailing and thinking gosh if this camera falls off I'll lose all that penguin footage I did today I was also taking SD cards out but I only had a finite number of cards and yeah my biggest fear wasn't losing a camera it was was losing data. Right, right. You weren't ordering choppers like helicopters weren't arriving to get the footage to rush it back to safekeeping to be broadcast.

No, no, no. You don't think it's a trip you would do? I would love to do. It's just not high on the priority. But, you know, I've talked to others. I'd actually never thought about it, to be honest, until you said so. I didn't know it was something you could do. I knew you could fly down to Antarctica,

but I thought that was primarily related to research projects and things like that. And you can do sightseeing flights as well. You can do sightseeing flights over Antarctica. Yeah, yeah. There was famously a sightseeing flight crashed into Mount Erebus many years ago. It was a very famous air crash tragedy.

That was a sightseeing flight over Antarctica, and that passenger airline, I went straight into a mountain. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. What's your overriding feeling about it, man? Do you think you did a good job? Is this interesting?

You glad you did it? With the recording? Yeah. That was all right. I wish, I mean, now that we've put it out there, perhaps I could have spent a bit more time on it and captured a few more sounds of... I would like to have captured more seal sounds

and maybe more sounds of whales because when you're close to the whales and they're blowing water and you hear them breathing through their big breathing holes, that's quite an amazing sound. But I didn't really have the equipment to do that either. I would have needed better, more specialised audio recording equipment. I was just using like a handheld little Zoom recorder.

So I would like to have collected more. And if I was making this as part of like a proper series of, you know, podcast adventure sort of thing, I would have spent more time on it. But I'm glad to have recorded it. It was good fun to do and I'm grateful to you for listening to it and being reasonably kind. No, it's cool. It's interesting.

I know people who will love it, the people I have in mind when I was thinking about my idea about going somewhere and being immersed in the area. Those people will love this. But I do think it's about you as well and you being yourself and talking and that makes it something as well so you want to go not just to the place with a neutral person but you want to go there with with brady because he has a particular way about it and that's what i enjoyed as well