A Voyage to Antarctica

Alok Jha talks to pioneering explorer Ann Bancroft: the first woman to have skied to both North and South poles.

Ann joined the 1986 Steger International Polar Expedition as the only female of the eight-member team and became the first known woman to cross the ice to the North Pole. After leading the first American women’s East to West crossing of Greenland, she took her team to Antarctica, leading the first all-women’s expedition to the South Pole. In January 1993, after skiing more than 600 miles, Ann made history, becoming the first woman known to have skied to both North and South poles. She and Norwegian explorer Liv Arnesen then set an international record as the first women to ski sail across Antarctica.

Today Ann is a globally-recognised educator, speaker and founder of the Ann Bancroft Foundation. She lends her voice to organisations in education and the environment and is the co-founder of Bancroft Arnesen Explore.

🇦🇶 SUPPORT US 🇦🇶
https://shop.ukaht.org/products/donation

🐧 ADOPT A PENGUIN 🐧
https://www.ukaht.org/shop/adopt-a-pe...

🎯 FOLLOW US 🎯
✩ YouTube: / ukantarcticheritagetrust
✩ Instagram: / ukantarcticheritagetrust
✩ Facebook:/ ukantarcticheritagetrust
✩ TikTok: / ukantarcticheritagetrust

Season 6 of A Voyage To Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Expeditions.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alok Jha talks to Lorraine Kelly about her lifelong passion for Antarctica, inspired by her hero Ernest Shackleton AKA ‘The Boss’.

Lorraine Kelly is a Scottish television presenter, journalist and Sunday Times bestselling author, best known for her ITV show, Lorraine. In 2024, she was awarded a BAFTA for her outstanding contribution to the television industry, marking four-decades of her unstoppable and impressive broadcasting career, as a hugely significant presence on British television.

She has presented many other TV programmes including The Last Leg, Queens for the Night and Have I Got News For You?. She has made guest appearances on The Masked Singer, The Graham Norton Show, Ant & Dec Saturday Night Takeaway, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, Late Night Lycett and Portrait Artist of the Year. Lorraine is also a best selling author, most recently with her debut fiction novel, The Island Swimmer.

In 2012, Lorraine was awarded the OBE, for services to charity and the armed forces, by HM The Queen at Holyrood palace in Edinburgh. In 2020, Lorraine also received a CBE for services to broadcasting, journalism and charity. She is a keen charity supporter and is a patron of Help for Heroes and the STV Children’s Appeal.

🇦🇶 SUPPORT US 🇦🇶
https://shop.ukaht.org/products/donation

🐧 ADOPT A PENGUIN 🐧
https://www.ukaht.org/shop/adopt-a-pe...

🎯 FOLLOW US 🎯
✩ YouTube: / ukantarcticheritagetrust
✩ Instagram: / ukantarcticheritagetrust
✩ Facebook: / ukantarcticheritagetrust
✩ TikTok: / ukantarcticheritagetrust

Season 6 of A Voyage To Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Expeditions.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Astronaut Dr Meganne Christian takes Alok Jha on a trip across the universe, to explore the many connections between Antarctica and space travel.

Meganne is a member of the European Space Agency astronaut reserve and a Senior Exploration Manager at the UK Space Agency, advising on human and robotic spaceflight. She has undertaken two missions, including one over-winter, at Concordia Station in Antarctica (known as ‘White Mars’), where she was a research scientist in charge of atmospheric physics and meteorology. In November 2022, she was selected from a pool of over 22,500 applicants across Europe to be one of the 17 members of the European Space Agency’s first astronaut class in 13 years.

To support this podcast and the work of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust click here
For more information about our guests, click here

Season 5 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Hurtigruten Expeditions.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The winter before Captain Scott’s ill-fated attempt on the South Pole, his youngest team member Apsley Cherry-Garrard (known as “Cherry”) set off across the ice in the middle of the polar night. Henrietta Hammant talks to Alok Jha about this astonishing journey and Cherry’s subsequent memoir, which remains one of the most gripping works of travel and adventure writing to this day.

Henrietta is an anthropologist specialising in the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration. Her research considers how this era of Antarctic history is displayed in museums. She has worked across the UK and Canada, most notably at the Polar Museum in Cambridge, and has recently submitted her PhD thesis at the University of Reading.

To support this podcast and the work of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust click here
To buy a copy of Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard click here

Season 5 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Hurtigruten Expeditions.

Sound Credits:
Footsteps in Snow by SoundBiterSFX - https://freesound.org/s/730914/ - License: Creative Commons 0
Walking in Soft Snow.wav by Percy Duke - https://freesound.org/s/420633/ - License: Attribution 3.0
Silencyo_CC_Wind Mistral_Strong_pine trees.aif by silencyo - https://freesound.org/s/81797/ - License: Creative Commons 0
Heavy hailstorm with thunder by Cinetony - https://freesound.org/s/620489/ - License: Creative Commons 0
Short Hailstorm.wav by Benboncan - https://freesound.org/s/63802/ - License: Attribution 4.0
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With Antarctica sea ice levels reaching record lows over the last four consecutive years, Alok Jha talks to leading glaciologist Professor Martin Siegert about glaciology: the study of ice in all its forms - from the Antarctic ice sheets and glaciers to the icy bodies of our solar system – why ice matters, and the crucial role it plays in our climate.

Martin is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Cornwall) at the University of Exeter. Previously, he was a Professor at Imperial College London and Director of the Grantham Institute and before that he was Head of the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh. He has published over 250 papers and 8 books on the geophysical exploration of Antarctica. In 2013 he was awarded the Martha T Muse Prize in Antarctic Science and Policy, and in 2007 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

To support this podcast and the work of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, click here
For more information about our guests, click here

Season 5 of A Voyage to Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Hurtigruten Expeditions.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.