The North Pole Unwrapped - Russell Kane, Felicity Aston and Lloyd Peck

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Speaker 4 Hello, I'm Brian Cox.

Speaker 5 I'm Robin Inks, and this is the Infinite Monkey Cage, and it is Christmas Day!

Speaker 5 Here's a shiny shilling, Brian Cox.

Speaker 7 Get me the finest turkey in the window.

Speaker 5 Hope you got everything you wanted under the tree. Brian didn't, unsurprisingly, because Brian got a particle accelerator and he's got one of those already.

Speaker 8 And so he's like, oh, I need to get a power.

Speaker 5 I wanted a Hubble Space Telescope. No one understands me.
I'm going back to my room to listen to Heaven 17.

Speaker 2 Heaven 17.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I thought Heaven 17 was quite a good choice for you. I'd have thought you'd been into them.
It was either them or Flock of Seagulls. But Human League was kind of too mainstream.

Speaker 2 Human League, I would have thought before.

Speaker 5 So today we're going to visit Father Christmas's home and see if we can find Santa and discover why Brian didn't get the presence that he demanded.

Speaker 11 As usual, Robin is in a linear superposition of right and wrong. Because we are going to the North Pole today, but not in search of Santa.

Speaker 5 Though we will have a little look, won't we?

Speaker 2 Maybe.

Speaker 11 But mainly we'll be looking at how our proximity to the geomagnetic North Pole affects navigation. What does the latest research tell us about the northern lights and the behaviour of our star?

Speaker 11 And how is the polar environment changing? And what effects is that having on the flora and fauna of the far north?

Speaker 5 And also, what is the best way of hosting a cocktail party at the North Pole?

Speaker 11 Now, astonishingly, that last statement is part of the not-wrong branch of Robin's Wave Function.

Speaker 5 To help us explore, we are joined by an astrophysicist, Arctic explorer, a physiologist, marine biologist, and a comedian with an antipathy to the Aurora borealis for some reason. And they are.

Speaker 13 My name is Felicity Aston. I'm a polar explorer, and the coldest temperature I've ever experienced was not at the North Pole.

Speaker 13 I've been there several times, it was actually in a place called the Pole of Cold, which is the coldest inhabited place in the world.

Speaker 13 So, this is a tidy village called Omiokon in the very northeast of Siberia, and there's a population of about 300 people there, but their average wintertime temperature is below minus 70 degrees centigrade.

Speaker 2 Oh my goodness, yeah.

Speaker 14 Hi I'm Lloyd Peck. I'm the physiologist, marine biologist and I'm a polar one.

Speaker 14 I work for the British Antarctic Survey and my thing is scuba diving underneath ice and the best way I've found in the past to keep warm when you're cold is to get in a sleeping bag with somebody else and body heat is a really good way of keeping warm.

Speaker 8 Love a story.

Speaker 15 I'm Russell Kaye, I'm a comedian. If you're over 50 and your name's Terry, you could put it in inverted commas.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 15 the coldest I've ever been was in Luton. It was last December, just after Keir Starmer took Manan's radiator allowance away.

Speaker 6 Well, that's ended a rather gloomy opening to her, doesn't it?

Speaker 5 Now, I wish we'd dug the pole of cold now. That seems upbeat, doesn't it?

Speaker 6 Anyway, this is our panel.

Speaker 5 Well, I suppose, really to start off, Lisy, with you, one of the major questions a lot of people at home will be thinking about at the moment is: how difficult is it to build an enormous toy factory in an area like the North Pole?

Speaker 6 I mean, what would be the issues?

Speaker 13 I've been to the North Pole a number of times, and I go quite often into schools to talk about the Arctic and the North Pole and all these sorts of things.

Speaker 13 And the question I always get asked without fail is: have you ever seen Father Christmas or any elves at the North Pole?

Speaker 13 And you can hear the collective intake of breath from all the adults in the room. Like, you do not mess with Father Christmas.
And you can hear them thinking, What's she going to say?

Speaker 13 What's she going to say? What secrets is she going to give away? But unfortunately, I have never seen any sign of Father Christmas or the elves at the North Pole because it's magic, isn't it?

Speaker 13 You're not supposed to see it. But I have seen Father Christmas, but he's on the Arctic Circle in his office.

Speaker 13 There is an office in Finland, just north of Rovanimi, and Father Christmas is there pretty much every day with his elves. And I have been to see him many times, not always accompanied by children.

Speaker 13 So that is the place to go to see Father Christmas, not the North Pole.

Speaker 2 So that is what I can reveal.

Speaker 9 How do we define the North Pole?

Speaker 11 How is it defined in the Pole?

Speaker 13 It depends which North Pole you are talking about, because there are many North Poles on planet Earth.

Speaker 13 The two that are absolute North Poles by anybody's definition is the magnetic North Pole and the geographic North Pole.

Speaker 13 The geographic North Pole is the one that everybody thinks of, the one at the top of our planet at ninety degrees north.

Speaker 13 The magnetic North Pole is the North Pole of our magnetic field that surrounds planet Earth. So that's not too far away from the geographic North Pole.

Speaker 13 But then it starts to get a little bit more esoteric and it depends. Some people think these are true North Poles, some people think it's a a load of rubber.
So you've got the geomagnetic North Pole.

Speaker 13 So this is like a theoretical North Pole.

Speaker 13 This is if the Earth really was a definite sort of bar magnet and we had a perfect magnetic field that was all nice and even and uniform, then that's where our North Pole would be.

Speaker 13 So this is the North Pole that's used by a lot of models, computer models.

Speaker 13 But then you've got things like the Pole of Cold that I just mentioned, and some people go, that's not really a proper North Pole.

Speaker 13 And you've got the Pole of Inaccessibility, which is the place that is most inaccessible from all directions. And you've got a Northern Pole of inaccessibility

Speaker 13 and a southern pole of inaccessibility. And then you really do start to get a little bit bottom of the barrel.
So there's the celestial North Pole. So

Speaker 2 that's not the bottom of the barrel.

Speaker 13 Well, I was talking to an astronomer.

Speaker 13 So astronomers use this a lot because if you imagine that the sky is actually a sphere that surrounds the earth, then the north pole of that sort of celestial sphere, if you project that down onto the surface of the earth, then some people say, well, that's another north pole on the surface of the planet.

Speaker 13 So how many is that? Is that six? That's six.

Speaker 13 So,

Speaker 13 you know, you could maybe stretch it to seven if you include the pole of cold.

Speaker 5 So it's two kind of north poles and then just some general flibbity-dibbity stuff.

Speaker 14 But no, you could go for three at least. Do you reckon three? I reckon you could go for three absolutely rock-solid ones.

Speaker 2 Which is the third one then you go for that?

Speaker 14 So there's the geographic, there's the magnetic, and there's the geomagnetic.

Speaker 1 Oh, fair enough, yeah. Yeah,

Speaker 14 those three you can measure. The others are subject to argument.

Speaker 11 And so the geomagnetic pole is the one that's wandering.

Speaker 13 The geomagnetic pole is fixed. Oh, sorry, the magnetic.
The geomagnetic one that's wandering.

Speaker 11 So that one's wandering around.

Speaker 14 And that one sometimes flips.

Speaker 5 So hang on the... Right, look, this is going to to be an absolute.

Speaker 5 I'll tell you what, considering most of the people listening at home are drunk already on Christmas Day, this is not following Wreathian values.

Speaker 11 So where is the magnetic North Pole now?

Speaker 13 Well, for ages, it was sort of floating around the Queen Elizabeth Islands in the northern Canada, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. But then the last 10 years, it started really accelerating.

Speaker 13 So it started moving 50 to 70 kilometers in a year. So it's gone right the way across the Arctic Ocean is now closer to the coast of Siberia than it is to the coast of Canada.

Speaker 12 It will never go south though, will it? Like it won't like go on tour and appear in Manchester or something.

Speaker 2 It will. Yeah, it will.
It's going to flip.

Speaker 4 But it'll come here.

Speaker 14 Well, it'll go down to the South Pole.

Speaker 7 But it doesn't actually, it doesn't hit.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 8 Let's just get this clear.

Speaker 2 It doesn't kind of keep sliding down, does it?

Speaker 7 There's a point

Speaker 5 when it flips. So it doesn't kind of just go, oh, it's just got

Speaker 2 Guernsey.

Speaker 2 It does do that, does it?

Speaker 13 So it's a bit like the expansion of the Big Bang. You know, there's definite theories, but no one yet knows which of those theories are right.

Speaker 13 So, one theory is that our magnetic field will slowly decrease until there's nothing, and then it will reappear equally gradually over time in a different orientation.

Speaker 13 Another theory is that it's an instant flip, and that we might get lots of flips really rapidly. But I mean, we're talking rapidly over geological time.

Speaker 11 We have a record of it, don't we? Because we we have essentially a barcode across the Atlantic, for example, when rocks cool and form and that they line up with the magnetic field.

Speaker 11 So we can see when it flipped in the past. And it's quite, it's irregular, isn't it? We should say this is the North Pole to which your compass points.

Speaker 11 And then the question arises: as an explorer, is that a problem? Yeah. Your compass is pointing to different places.

Speaker 13 Yeah, okay. So the last time I skied to the North Pole, a helicopter set me down on the frozen surface of the Arctic Ocean about 80 kilometers away from the North Pole.

Speaker 13 And I have to find my way to the North Pole. There's nothing to see out there, so every direction looks exactly the same.
So, what do you do? Do you use a compass?

Speaker 13 But the problem with a compass is that it's pointing not to the geographic North Pole that you're aiming towards, it's pointing towards the magnetic North Pole, which is several hundred kilometers away from the geographic North Pole.

Speaker 11 And occasionally in Canada, and occasionally in Siberia.

Speaker 13 Exactly. So you can't really use a compass.
And the other difficulty is that the difference between the magnetic North Pole and the geographic North Pole changes depending on your location.

Speaker 13 It's called declination. So you have to know what the declination is so that you can use a compass to direct you to the geographic North Pole.

Speaker 13 And you're trying to do that while the ice that you're standing on is also moving in an erratic motion, not always at the same speed or in the same direction.

Speaker 13 So then you think, well, I'll use a GPS then.

Speaker 13 So, yeah, okay, you can use a GPS, but you're at temperatures of maybe minus 40 degrees centigrade, and every handheld GPS device that there is uses batteries of some description, and they run down very quickly at those sorts of temperatures.

Speaker 13 So, you can't always navigate using a GPS.

Speaker 13 So, unless you're going to drag out a sextant, which you know they used to use in the old days, but that's working out your position based on the position of the Sun.

Speaker 13 Bit difficult when it's really cloudy and you can't see the Sun. So, all of these different methods of finding your way to the North Pole have their inherent disadvantages in them.

Speaker 13 And so, you end up sort of using a bit of a mishmash of all of it.

Speaker 13 So, you go, Oh, we'll just go to the right a little bit, and then maybe the ice will drift us back on to the North Pole and all will be good. So, it's all a bit of a guessing game.

Speaker 15 I can't get anywhere without a sat-nav, I'll just be dead within my how did you how did you get there?

Speaker 13 Well, I mean it explains why I've never seen Father Christmas, doesn't it? I mean maybe I've never actually been to the North Pole and it's all just been a a big mistake.

Speaker 11 Lloyd, you you make it even more difficult for yourself by diving under it.

Speaker 11 So could you could you actually outline what the challenges are in diving in the Arctic Ocean and in the Antarctic Ocean?

Speaker 14 So in one sense, we don't have it more difficult because we usually know where we are.

Speaker 14 And we've got batteries in our GPS system, so we're pretty good because we're not out for days and weeks on our own. So our location is pretty good.

Speaker 14 The way we dive through ice is we take out a five-foot chainsaw and we cut oxo patterns in the ice until we get a block.

Speaker 14 And the problem with that is that as you cut lines with your five-foot chainsaw, it freezes behind the chainsaw. So it probably takes you about three hours to dig a hole in the ice.

Speaker 14 And you're looking aghast. Yeah,

Speaker 2 the pothole rate is about the same.

Speaker 14 And then you bounce the blocks in the middle out and you pull them out with the skidoo and you're left with a hole that's about...

Speaker 15 And you think, I'm going to dive in that?

Speaker 14 Well, yeah, not only that,

Speaker 14 you think, I'm going to dive in that because that's great. That's the best diving you are ever going to do on the planet anywhere.

Speaker 5 What is it about that diving?

Speaker 14 So there are several things. One is that that time of year when the sea is frozen, everything settles out of the ocean and the visibility is hundreds of meters.
Wow.

Speaker 14 And you can see all this life that's around you on the seabed that you wouldn't otherwise be able to see because in the summertime when the phytoplankton blooms are on you can't see your hand at the end of your arm so you don't see anything.

Speaker 11 And you said the hole freezes over.

Speaker 14 So the hole does freeze over. So if you want to go back to the same place day after day after day,

Speaker 14 we put a cover over it.

Speaker 15 What's my cover made of then? Everything else bloody freezes over?

Speaker 14 Well we use plywood.

Speaker 15 Was anyone else expecting something more scientific?

Speaker 14 Because plywood's easy to get out and easy to retrieve, and it's flexible enough, it doesn't break like plastic does when it's cold.

Speaker 11 You said that you see the life in the winter when the visibility is good. Can you describe the kinds of life you see and the differences between the north and south poles?

Speaker 14 One of the great things that gets me excited about life in the polar regions is that some of it gets really big.

Speaker 14 So, and I did bring a couple of examples

Speaker 14 that I have in my box.

Speaker 14 We all know wood lice, yeah? That's a group of animals called isopods. Well, in the oceans, there are lots of isopods, and they get bigger as it gets colder.

Speaker 14 And this is one that you would find in the Arctic.

Speaker 15 It looks like something from Star Wars that would kill you.

Speaker 11 You should edit this, so it's the end of the show. And everyone goes, And this, we found, and everyone went, ooh, and then it just stopped.

Speaker 2 And that's the end.

Speaker 2 A scream. I see alive!

Speaker 2 He's gone into my mouth.

Speaker 2 So is that.

Speaker 15 If a lobster and a woodlouse had too much sambuka and got it on, that would be their kid.

Speaker 14 So, they get up to 10 centimetres, four inches long. They are hundreds of times bigger than the biggest isopods that we have around our coasts.

Speaker 11 And Felicity, earlier, didn't you say that they jump at you?

Speaker 13 Yeah, so when I was stationed at Rothera Research station, which is a British Antarctic Survey research base on the Antarctic Peninsula, there was a marine biology building that had these big aquariums.

Speaker 13 And part of the wintering job that you had to do was that you had to do night watch. One of the jobs that we had to do was sent to us by Lloyd.

Speaker 13 He was like, You need to check my aquariums to make sure that you know all the little beasties that we've collected are all doing all right.

Speaker 13 So, middle of the night, I've been on my own all night in the dark in an Antarctic research station, looking like a seventies horror movie set.

Speaker 13 And so, I let myself into this dark aquarium lab, and it's all apart from the red floodlights. So, it looks like that scene from Alien, right?

Speaker 13 Where there's something scuttling underneath all the lab desks. And I noticed that one of the covers that were over the top of the aquarium had been left partly off.

Speaker 13 And the reason those covers were on the aquarium is because those little woodlouse creatures like to jump out of the tanks to anyone that's passing by. And if they land on you, they stick to you.

Speaker 13 You can't get them off very easily. So I was seeing that.

Speaker 13 Oh, no, I've got to go and put that cover back on the aquarium and these things are gonna jump out at me in the dark in this red light but I managed to get them on and I didn't get attacked by a woodland question does immodium freeze because I would

Speaker 2 I would need a lot of it to survive that scenario

Speaker 5 oh no you wouldn't honestly it would be who was that guy do you remember who when we went to the adventurers club the explorers the explorers club that was it and he when he got trapped underground realized that because sometimes dog excrement you could actually turn into a pick because it would freeze hard So he did a big poo and then chipped his way out with his own excrement.

Speaker 8 What are you saying?

Speaker 5 And he also lost a leg and ate some of his own leg.

Speaker 15 I'll stick with the modium, it sounds more convenient.

Speaker 14 So to come back to the large animals, the real big story here is not the isopods, it's these guys.

Speaker 15 So listeners, it's

Speaker 15 it looks like a star-shaped spider-esque daddy longlegg thing, but it's the size of two adult hands.

Speaker 13 Very thin legs. It's a massive spider.
What are you chopping at?

Speaker 15 Sorry to be be pedantic, but how many legs does it have?

Speaker 4 It looks more like a living asterisk.

Speaker 14 So you can all count, can't you? It's got 10 legs.

Speaker 15 So taxonomically, is it a spider?

Speaker 14 No, taxonomically.

Speaker 4 Indeed, indeed, Paul.

Speaker 14 However, there's a big story to this as well. 95% of sea spiders in the world have eight legs.
But in the Antarctic, you get 10-legged species and 12-legged species.

Speaker 14 And the biggest ones are three times as big as this.

Speaker 14 They're 60 to 70 centimeters across. And they are 5,000 times bigger than the biggest sea spiders that we get in temperate latitudes.

Speaker 15 Not poisonous, not bitey?

Speaker 14 Well, they move very slowly. And if you were to put your hand underneath its mouth and hold it there for three or four hours, you might get bitten.

Speaker 15 You've done that, haven't you?

Speaker 8 Week five of the expedition, I'm going to do it.

Speaker 11 So why, why? Because many people have heard of island giganticism. What is it about the ocean, the Arctic oceans, that leads to this size?

Speaker 14 So the polar oceans are different in many ways from the oceans elsewhere in the world. If you go into the high polar oceans, the sea temperature is permanently below zero degrees.

Speaker 14 And that has extra characteristics. One is the amount of oxygen you can squeeze into water increases as you cool it down.
And that's in simple terms.

Speaker 14 It's because the molecules in the water move more slowly, the gaps get bigger, and you can force more in between the the gaps.

Speaker 14 And there's nearly twice as much oxygen in seawater at the polar regions as the tropics.

Speaker 2 So, one, more oxygen to feed the tissues.

Speaker 14 Two, these are all cold-blooded animals, and that means their body temperatures are the same as the environment.

Speaker 14 And because their body temperatures are below zero, their respiration rates, their amount of energy they need to keep their bodies going, is 25 to 30 times less than at the tropics.

Speaker 14 So, there's more oxygen, twice as much, 25 times slower rate of use, two times 25 is 50. You have a massive increased path length for supplying your tissues, which means you can grow more tissues.

Speaker 11 You mentioned just that the body temperature is the same temperature as the ocean, as the water. And you said below freezing.
Yeah. So why doesn't it freeze?

Speaker 14 So this is one of my lectures to undergraduates that takes about an hour. So if you're all sitting comfortably.

Speaker 15 Oh, Well done, Brian.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 14 if you look at living cells, they have to stay liquid. And there are various ways that you can keep that cytoplasm, that cellular content liquid.
One is you can use antifreezes.

Speaker 14 And fish in the polar regions produce protein antifreezes and glycoprotein antifreezes.

Speaker 14 So they make proteins that basically, when an ice crystal starts to form, they stick to the front of the ice crystal like cling film and stop more water coming on.

Speaker 14 Then they can use a whole range of things, things like glycerol and things like glucose, to change the point at which that liquid would freeze.

Speaker 14 In the same way that we can put salt into water and lower the freezing points.

Speaker 15 Vodka in the freezer, something.

Speaker 14 Vodka in the freezer, yeah, yeah. So if you drink a lot of vodka, you'd have to go to a lower temperature before you froze, which I guess a lot of people in Newcastle on a Saturday night do.

Speaker 2 So you can do all of that.

Speaker 14 But then they can also control the amount of water in their cells. And when it comes to wintertime in the Arctic, the different ways that animals survive the cold is absolutely mind-boggling.

Speaker 14 If you go and look in Canada at the red bark beetle, it has larvae. That starts off using glycerol and it goes down to about minus 20 with glycerol.

Speaker 14 Then it pumps the water out of its cells so there's less chance of water molecules sticking together. It gets down below minus 40.

Speaker 14 And then when it gets down below minus 40 towards minus 50, it it vitrifies.

Speaker 14 And the problem with freezing is the ice crystals break your cells open and kill you. But if you vitrify, you turn into glass, and there are no ice crystals.

Speaker 14 And those bark beetle larvae have been taken down to minus 150

Speaker 14 and survive.

Speaker 15 Can I ask a question? Is it aging still at this point, or is it in stasis? So, if it was to stay frozen and it was to defrost 300 years later, would it be the same age as when it froze?

Speaker 14 So, really, really, really good area of research. is in stasis.

Speaker 15 Is it possible we could ever use this technology to stop human aging so we could travel to distant stars and things like that?

Speaker 14 So cryogenesis, yes that is possible. In the 1950s there was a lot of work done on freezing mammals and they were able to freeze mice and they couldn't do it with rabbits.

Speaker 14 And the problem is not with freezing them, the problem is warming them up.

Speaker 14 Because if everything does not warm up at the same rate and something goes liquid while something else is solid, your animal is not going to function.

Speaker 14 And that was the research that led to the invention of microwave ovens.

Speaker 13 So they microwave them to warm up.

Speaker 2 That is a good one. I told them that wasn't going to happen.
Wait, where's Nan?

Speaker 4 She's on defrost.

Speaker 2 She'll be 10 minutes.

Speaker 2 This has changed a lot of people's Christmas lunch.

Speaker 6 Absolutely fascinating.

Speaker 11 We've spoken about the life that we see underwater. So, in terms terms of the life that you've seen on your expeditions, what's the variety of animals that you see on the surface?

Speaker 13 Yeah, I mean, this is the wonderful thing about going to the North Pole versus going to the South Pole.

Speaker 13 And one of the defining characteristics of the Antarctic Plateau in the centre of Antarctica is the absence of life.

Speaker 13 I mean, there's no wildlife there, there's no penguins or seals or birds or anything like that.

Speaker 13 But when you are up in the north, you are surrounded by life, even if you're right up there in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.

Speaker 13 And it's not just that you see it, it's that you can feel it all around you from the presence of the big predators, the polar bears, right down to when a big chunk of ice turns over and there's lots of algae and even fish using the algae.

Speaker 13 I remember being startled by a lemming in my tent when I was

Speaker 15 the most ironic death in history.

Speaker 13 And you're thinking, how does this tiny little thing, you know, manage to to survive all the way out here? It's really incredible.

Speaker 11 Everyone has a polar bear story. Surely every explorer has a polar bear story.

Speaker 5 So you narrowed that down.

Speaker 5 Everyone has a... No, actually, I shouldn't be.

Speaker 2 Explorer.

Speaker 11 I just wondered, in terms of jeopardy, because you told us about their big predators. So what's your big predator story?

Speaker 13 Oh, gosh. Well, I mean, the closest encounter I've had with a polar bear, luckily, I was on a snow machine.
So I was driving by myself on a snow machine past a big area of ice.

Speaker 5 Oh, so that's a machine that goes on snow, not a machine that makes snow.

Speaker 13 Yeah, a snowmobile, a skidoo, whatever you want to call it. And I was keeping an eye on the ice rubble because that's where the polar bears kind of like to hang out.

Speaker 13 And I came over a rise to find one sort of stood pretty much right in front of me. I was close enough to really see the sort of definition of its muscles.
I mean, these are

Speaker 13 frightening animals. And the number of people that said, oh, I really want to see a polar bear.

Speaker 2 It's like, you really don't.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 so luckily, I was on a snowmobile and I knew that I was in an area where the locals hunted them on snow machines.

Speaker 13 So I was able just to rev the engine a bit and it got up on its back legs, took a big sniff. And my heart was sort of in my mouth as it's doing this, and then it just took off and ran.

Speaker 13 So I didn't have to even get the rifle off.

Speaker 15 My feet was a bit warm after that encounter wasn't it?

Speaker 14 If you go and work in Svalbard and you go to the UK station in Svalbard the first thing they do on the first day is they give you a 0.375 rifle

Speaker 14 and that has bullets that are bigger than anything you've seen in a rifle before. They train you how to shoot it and they give you thunder flashes.

Speaker 14 So that if the polar bear starts coming towards you, you're supposed to throw the thunder flashes between you and the polar bear and the bangs make it go away.

Speaker 14 And then they say if that doesn't happen,

Speaker 14 then you have a rifle if you can't get away from it in time.

Speaker 14 And if it worst comes to worst, you have to shoot the polar bear.

Speaker 14 Now, you're on Norwegian territory, and the law says you are not allowed to shoot a polar bear unless it is less than 10 meters away from you.

Speaker 14 And a full-sized polar bear does 11 meters per second.

Speaker 14 And then they say, the last time one of these was killed, it took three bullets to kill it.

Speaker 14 So, the best advice is: if it starts stalking you, get out of the way really quickly.

Speaker 13 Yeah, so if you come across a bear when you're on an expedition,

Speaker 13 the only responsible thing to do is to get yourself out of there. Because we are intruders in their territory.

Speaker 15 My life is less valuable than the bears in that scenario, is what you're telling me.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 14 They are nine feet tall and they are heavier than any two people that you know.

Speaker 2 So they are massive animals.

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Speaker 5 Now, we're going to do because you, I believe, this is true, Clissy, you have in the Guinness Book of World Records

Speaker 5 for the most polar bears shot.

Speaker 6 No, God, no, we have to get that to it.

Speaker 5 No, you're in the Guinness Book of Records for the most northern, most cocktail party.

Speaker 2 Yes, that is a Guinness World Records that I currently hold.

Speaker 13 So I was on an expedition and we were right up at 78 degrees north. So, you know, as you imagine, like polar explorers are in a tent and all the polar gear with skis and everything else.

Speaker 13 But in order for it to be considered a cocktail party by the Guinness Book of Record, there's a very specific set of criteria that you have to follow. There has to be at least five people.

Speaker 13 Tick, we were a five-person team. You have to be in proper cocktail attire.

Speaker 13 So

Speaker 13 that is a dress for women. I mean, you know, they the Guinness World Records have got something to answer about.

Speaker 13 Sort of, and if you're a man, it's a proper lounge suit or a lounge dress, cocktail dress. You have to have music playing.
You have to have a table with a tablecloth.

Speaker 13 I'm already thinking most of the parties I've ever been to in my life are already not considered a cocktail party.

Speaker 13 By this, you have to have at least three different types of cocktails, and you have to have two different types of canopé, one sweet and one savoury.

Speaker 13 Oh, and it has to to last for at least 15 minutes. We had to sort of drink it quickly before it froze into a sort of icicle in the bottom of the glass.
God, it goes straight to your head.

Speaker 15 Why did you defrost the canopies?

Speaker 13 I knew you were going to ask that.

Speaker 13 So the cocktails were ready mixed, and we took them in like these little packages. We had to defrost those by sort of putting them down our fronts.
I knew it. The warmest parts of our body.

Speaker 13 So, you know, under your armpit,

Speaker 13 it's one of the warmest pits, and down your pants, whatever.

Speaker 13 But they were all in clothes, so that was fine. But the canopies, yeah, our canopes, we had to get inventive using the rations that we had.

Speaker 5 We're going to now try and create Aurora-based cocktails using a UV light.

Speaker 4 So, what we've got in these glasses here is a

Speaker 5 gin and tonic.

Speaker 11 Just a second, because I arrived quite late for this recording. I have no idea what's going on.

Speaker 7 Oh, neither do I.

Speaker 11 Is there some context about why you've got a UV light and some gin?

Speaker 2 Do you know what, Brian?

Speaker 5 You've never complained before when we found reasons that we can have alcohol in, which appear to be tax-deductible.

Speaker 11 So I have a vague memory of something now in some production meeting a while ago.

Speaker 4 So something about the northern lights.

Speaker 5 So that there, using a small amount of blue liqueur-style drink, and a baroca and a UV light, all of those things you probably receive for Christmas.

Speaker 11 So just to recapture, this is an elaborate introduction to the Aurora Borealis.

Speaker 5 Yeah, what is happening in the atmosphere that creates that kind of

Speaker 5 the greenness of the Aurora Borealis?

Speaker 13 Yeah, so if we rewind a bit to what the aurora is, so if you imagine the Earth is a big bar magnet and we have this big magnetic field that spreads all the way around the globe, and that creates this sort of area of space around the planet called the magnetosphere.

Speaker 13 And then you have the Sun in the middle of the solar system that is constantly sort of emitting this wind of charged particles.

Speaker 13 So it's this huge amount of charged particles that are cascading from the Sun outwards across the whole solar system. And instead of hitting the Earth, it hits the magnetosphere.

Speaker 13 And because these particles are charged, they react with that magnetic field that surrounds the planet. So it acts as a sort of shield.
It protects us from the solar wind, from all this radiation.

Speaker 13 But some of those charged particles sort of get trapped inside the magnetic field of the Earth.

Speaker 13 And if you can imagine, sort of around the poles, let's focus on the North Pole, around the North Pole, where the magnetic field lines are sort of going into the top of the planet.

Speaker 13 All these charged particles that are spinning around all these magnetic field lines are being dragged down towards the surface of the planet around the North Pole.

Speaker 13 And where those charged particles start getting dragged through the atmosphere, that it starts interacting with other particles that are in the atmosphere, so things like oxygen and nitrogen predominantly.

Speaker 13 And so, when a charged particle starts interacting with some oxygen, it will start getting really excited and emitting light as photons.

Speaker 13 And we see that light as green if it's interacting with oxygen, but we'll see it as different colors depending on which gas it's interacting with.

Speaker 11 And they're so much a part of

Speaker 11 the Arctic, of the experience, the aurora, both north and south. So they become part of the mythology, haven't they? The Northern Lights, part of the cultures of the Arctic.

Speaker 13 Hugely. The first time I saw the Northern Lights, I knew about the science.
I knew how they were caused according to European science. You know, we have the explanation.

Speaker 13 And yet, sitting there watching this phenomenon for the first time, that seemed like the least likely explanation.

Speaker 13 Magic seemed like a lot more realistic explanation of what I was seeing.

Speaker 13 I think it's important to say that, you know, this is a lot of people's beliefs, and I, in no way, am sort of sneering or laughing at that, because the first time I saw it, that was what I saw.

Speaker 13 I saw spirits moving across a bridge to another world.

Speaker 13 And it's reflected in a lot of different cultures. So, one of the loveliest stories I heard was actually from

Speaker 13 First Nation tribes

Speaker 13 north of the Great Plains. And they had a folkloric hero, a mythical hero, almost like a godlike figure, who, once he'd finished creating the world, they believe travelled north.

Speaker 13 And so that he could send a message back to his people that he hadn't forgotten them, he would light a massive fire. And this is what the Northern Lights was: a reflection of this massive fire.

Speaker 13 And whenever I see the northern lights now, I kind of that story springs into mind because it really does feel like you're seeing something that connects you not only to people around the world, but also connects you to like the solar system and everything beyond that.

Speaker 13 You know, this is created by something that's come from the sun.

Speaker 13 It's really incredible.

Speaker 11 Is it a very, very different experience being in the northern Arctic, where you have all these rich cultural stories, and then the Antarctic, where there's essentially nobody other than scientists.

Speaker 14 Well, it is massively different because the north is an ocean, and the south is a massive continent, a continent twice the size of Australia. And it contains rock.
It's rock underneath it, yeah.

Speaker 14 And there's no rock at the surface in the north. It's an ocean.
And the Antarctic contains about three-quarters of the world's fresh water. So the amount of ice in the Antarctic is absolutely unreal.

Speaker 14 It's an area the the size of Europe that's two miles thick.

Speaker 11 I'd like to ask about the impact of climate change on these areas in the Arctic and the Antarctic. So what are we seeing change over the years and decades that you've visited?

Speaker 14 So the biggest change, I think, is the loss of ice. So in the Arctic in the 1970s, we had 15,000 square kilometers of sea ice and now we've got five.

Speaker 14 And the predictions are that by 2050, in the summer, that minimum extent, and that's the minimum extent of ice in the Arctic, will have gone and it'll be open water in the Arctic, so people will be able to sail ships through the Arctic.

Speaker 14 You mentioned earlier, the ice turns over, and it's green, and it's thick green.

Speaker 14 And huge numbers of species live on the underside of that ice, including the early life stages of things like polar cod. And lots of organisms depend on that ice for their life cycles.

Speaker 14 So the effect on the ecosystem is massive. And all the the timings change.
And the ability of animals to raise themselves efficiently or even at all becomes a really difficult problem.

Speaker 14 And we know there are tipping points in the environment. We know there are tipping points, not just in the environment, but in ecosystems.

Speaker 14 And we, in the polar regions, we don't know how much we can lose from an ecosystem before it collapses.

Speaker 5 Felicity, how does that change in terms of your experience now when you go and knowing this fragility? How different is it for you?

Speaker 13 Really emotionally, I suppose it's really odd because if you're in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, you know, you know how fragile this environment is, and yet when you're there, seeing big blocks of ice, you know, coming up one over the other, and size of apartment blocks being just tossed over, you know, it feels anything but fragile when you're in that moment.

Speaker 13 But it's not just the amount of ice being so much less, it's the fact that what is there now is thinner, newer, and less stable than it's ever been before.

Speaker 13 Whereas, say, in 1969, when Sir Wally Herbert crossed the Arctic Ocean and became the first team of people to undisputedly get to the top of our planet, get to the North Pole.

Speaker 13 But you know, that journey is no longer possible because they did it when there was lots of what we call multi-year ice. So this is the thick stuff.
It can be three meters or more.

Speaker 13 And it's really stable, really strong,

Speaker 13 and it holds the pack ice together. The last time a polar explorer went from land to the North Pole across the Arctic Ocean was in 2014.
It's not been possible to do it since then.

Speaker 13 So now it's only possible to do partial journeys to the North Pole.

Speaker 5 Russell, what are your final thoughts on everything that you've heard today?

Speaker 15 I always get invited on this programme and I never know anything about the subject.

Speaker 15 I'm sort of like a student, but I have actually seen the northern lights, and I have actually been to the Arctic Circle for a project I was filming. It was a sort of comedy survival programme.

Speaker 15 So I've seen this majestic spectacle. And I was honoured, I was invited by the Sami, are the people in the northern part of,

Speaker 15 I think we were in Norway, the Sami.

Speaker 15 And I went into something called a La Vu, which is their conical-shaped traditional hut. I was invited for dinner.

Speaker 15 And in this programme, I had two YouTubers with me called Rose and Rosie and they'd been stressing all trip because they were vegetarians and this I don't think even word even exists in their language.

Speaker 12 Eventually we had to try to explain to the these people what vegetarian was.

Speaker 15 And when we got there, obviously I eat anything because I'm a moron from a council estate. And when I got there, dinner was, you couldn't have done a more comically shocking snack for vegans.

Speaker 15 It was a boiled reindeer's head, which was out, and everyone was like happily picking the bits of meat off.

Speaker 15 I mean, it just tasted like meat, it just looked horrible, obviously, the eye holes and everything. And these girls were starting to cry and panicking, you know.
And the producer's like, Is it okay?

Speaker 15 And he went, and he was the translator said, Don't worry, he's got something without meat for you, too. And it was a pancake made from blood.

Speaker 4 It was delicious.

Speaker 15 But yeah, I've been there.

Speaker 15 It's like another planet. It's hard to explain if you haven't done it.

Speaker 5 The more that we express the fascination, the beauty, the curiosity and how much you can fall in love with the possibilities that are there, then the more I think we strive to try and preserve what is there as well.

Speaker 14 Experiencing what the world has out there is just way more intense than anything that you can get within a city.

Speaker 14 And I would say the northern lights, the southern lights, that's one of a whole plethora of things and experiences that most people don't get.

Speaker 14 But if you have experienced them, they become a substantial part of the way you function and the way you live. And it has effects that go beyond what you can get by understanding what it is.

Speaker 5 Well, we also asked our audience, by the way, I just tell you, you know, the guy I told you about who had one leg who did a poo and then used it as a pickaxe? Peter Froiken.

Speaker 5 Anyway, so we always ask the audience a question because we have the most intelligent audience of any Radio 4 show.

Speaker 5 And I don't care what you say, Gardener's Question Time, I'll meet you out at the back of the allotments and take take you on with a poo shovel, with a poo shake plate.

Speaker 2 Is that a poo knife?

Speaker 2 Call that a poo knife? This is a poo knife. Where's your tall? Very strange remake of Crocodile Dundee.

Speaker 7 That's not a poo.

Speaker 2 This is a poo.

Speaker 2 So the

Speaker 5 weird cross audience, if you were going to make a snowman resembling anyone, who would it be and why?

Speaker 8 Is that the first one you made?

Speaker 11 It's Hugh Jackman, I think this should be, isn't it?

Speaker 7 Do you know why?

Speaker 2 You need to give us more clues. Hugh Jackman,

Speaker 11 what films has he been in? Wolverine.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 15 By the way, if you ever want to be a Wolverine at home, just put potato grazing.

Speaker 2 The greatest snowman. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Brian Cox building a snowman of himself because things can only get meta.

Speaker 6 Well done.

Speaker 2 Well done.

Speaker 2 I think I beat that.

Speaker 10 I beat that.

Speaker 2 Oh, come on.

Speaker 15 It's not Brian Cox based. I know you like them to be based on YouTube, but this isn't.
I'd build a really big one with a six-pack. It would be the abdominal snowman.

Speaker 2 Oh, nice. Okay, then.

Speaker 5 Well, thank you very much to our wonderful panel. Felicity Aston, Lloyd Peck, and Russell Kane.

Speaker 5 Next week, it's well, it's 2026, and we're going to be taking a bit of a break so Brian can tour the world.

Speaker 5 And I can watch every episode of The Professionals on daytime TV because I've always seen myself as a bit of the Martin Shorty or Lewis Collins.

Speaker 9 I think he's more cowly, don't you?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think he's a woolly jumper and an OCD.

Speaker 4 He doesn't have a woolly jumper.

Speaker 5 He's got tweedy jackets on the side.

Speaker 11 Tweedy jacket and a scotch and a jag.

Speaker 8 That's what I see. Oh okay well thanks very much very nice.

Speaker 5 Anyway as we're having a bit of a break this week's homework is a 500 word essay on how Archimedes' principles affect the flotation of Brian's ivory bath ducks.

Speaker 5 Or, for the more adventurous amongst you, using balsa wood, paper straws, three glass marbles and one item of your own choosing, make a perpetual motion machine and send it to BBC TV Centre Wood Lane.

Speaker 5 I'm sorry, but we're unable to return your perpetual motion machines if you return them back again and so on and so on and so on.

Speaker 2 Bye.

Speaker 2 Bye.

Speaker 13 Feeling now nice again.

Speaker 16 Political language can seem archaic.

Speaker 13 It's like the light from one of those stars that actually died.

Speaker 16 Sometimes bamboozly.

Speaker 13 It's a theme park with a five-foot log flume from one thought to another.

Speaker 16 And very often, beyond words.

Speaker 9 I don't know how to describe the language they use.

Speaker 16 I'm Amanda Unucci. I'm all reset and turbo-charged to stress, test, to destruction, used and abused buzzwords and phrases from the world of politics.

Speaker 16 I come with a dazzling array of guest presenters and I'll be exploring the verbal tricks of the political trade, the intentions behind them and the effect they have on all of us.

Speaker 16 The new series of Strong Message here with me, Amanda Unucci, from BBC Radio 4. Listen now on BBC Summons.

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