La toe in antarctica, is in the middle of their summer which means you can leave in, say, october or november which is their spring, go there as fast as you can and then come back, and he made it back before it turned really cold, made it back to his base. He went in through south of new zealand. He sailed down. The place you can get closest to the pole by ship and you can only get there in the antarctic summer because its frozen with just sea ice over the top and so a ship cant get in, but it opens up in the antarctic summer. The sea ice open toes up, and you can sail in quite close because you think of antarctica as a plate or as a dish. But actually it has a peninsula sticking way out on the side under the americas, and its got a big gouge cut out of it almost like a piece of the pie taken out which is the raw sea south of new zealand. And so if you sail in that way in the summer, you can sail in a hot further. So what hed done is hed sailed in the previous summer, that would be the summer of 191011, wintered over in a base that he built this the, at the southern part of the ross sea right on the ross ice shelf, something known as the bay of whales which is a cut in the ice shelf, brought down a prefabricated cabin, his dogs, nine men, and they wintered there. When it was spring, they headed out in a mad dash on their, with their sleds, dog sleds and the skis. Hed mastered dog sledding, hed mastered Cross Country skiing, Nordic Skiing just being a norwegian. But he mastered Cross Country skiing dog sledding in, when hed made the northwest passage. The first person ever to sail through the northwest passage. It actually took him three years. He started one year, waited out the winter, was frozen in again and sailed out the next year. So he had plenty of time during the arctic winters to learn dog sledding from the inuit people who lived there. And he was very familiar and cordial with the inuit people and learned the skills of dog sledding and also learned the skills of their warm wear, their types of clothing, all of which he used for his magnificent drive in the south pole. Host when you say he wintered there guest yes. Host how many months was that, what was the temperature . Then how long did it take him, how many miles was it to the socalled south pole . Guest well, by wintering down there is you have, you know, it varies because you never quite know when its going to ice this and when its going to open up. But you have, basically, four months of total darkness. That is, the sup has set because sun has set because youre below the antarctic circle there. And the sun has set, and its just totally dark may, june, july, august, totally debt. The sun sets in late april, it comes back up in september. But april and may are unsled bl. Even though theres some light, of course, theres a dawn, but theres some actual sunlight during that period. He tried to set out in september, and thats why i say its a little tricky how you put it. It was too early, he went back, and he left again in october. So you either, you have about six months, five and a half months when it would be, at that time you couldnt have of travel. Now, thats still true, of course. We have people who winter over the united states, the russians, the chinese, others, have people who winter over in bases on the polar plateau. The americans is right on the south pole. Its a wonderful place to go. Doing research on this book i was able to go there, but i went there in the summer. But people winter over there, but they cant get in and out. There is no you cant fly in and out in the winter. Youre isolated there. So what they did is back, that was before what we would know they had radio, but they didnt have radio that could reach a place like that. So once they went out of Radio Communication heading south, or once they left their last port really with them, with their case they didnt even have a radio because they couldnt have gone that far with a radio. They were out of communication. So they went out of communication in what would be the, what would have been in 1910. They wintered over, there was no communication, totally dark. They spent that entire time preparing for the pole, getting their dogs in shape, getting their skis in shape, getting their runners in shape, and then as soon as, as early as they could they headed out on a mad dash toward the south pole. But a brilliantlyexecuted dash. He was, amundtson was a tremendous planner. And what he did, he left supplies at equal distances and then left markers up that he would leave stretching out. There was the supply depot left as he was going out and, actually, the year before they left some supply depots where they would depot food. And then theyd leave markers running out in a horizontal line. So when theyre coming back even if theyre not, even if theyve lost their direction a little bit and he was an excellent navigator on ice and in water too. Because youd use the sun to locate your position. If he was missing, he would at least run into one of his flags, and theyd tell him if he was right or left and how far, and he could go in and get to his depot. So hed leave depots of food going out and, again, some were prelaid, and coming back that way he didnt have to carry it all. Coming back, he would hit those supply depots and get renewed food. Obviously, he of course, he s traveling by dog, and one advantage is they pull the sleds, but they also dont have to carry their own food because, to be blunt, they eat each other. You just slaughter the dogs as you go, and you take too many, and then the dogs basically carry their own weight. Host how many men went guest nine. Host nine men. How many dogs . Guest ooh, i dont know. I think he had about 50. 50, 60 dogs. And some survived. He brought some back. Donated them to a later expedition by mossen, a great expedition by an australian, by mossen. So he brought some back. Host edward larson, how many miles was it from the winter camp to guest about 500. Host how many days . Guest out and back it took him 99 days. Out and back. That included several days staying at the pole because you want to know youre actually there. Of course, the pole theres no unfortunately, theres no barbershop at the pole. Its a high plateau. Youre two miles high, over two miles high because its behind mountains, and its two miles think of ice. Youre at High Altitude at the south pole and the whole polar plateau, and you have to use devices. Back then they didnt have a gps system, so they had to watch the sun, and the sun they got there in late december, so it was right near for them the summer solstice. So the sun was going around there almost directly in a circle, and you would have to take measurements from the sun to figure out where you are. So they went to where they thought was the pole based on their dead reckoning and they had a device to measure how far theyd traveled, and then they adjusted their they spent several days figuring out their location. And so they would move, theyd find out they were a few miles off, 5 or 6 miles off, and theyd move and check their location again because he wanted to make sure. If hed gone that far, he wasnt planning on going again, he wanted to make sure he was actually there. That was a major problem highlighted in that a couple years earlier robert perry had been the first to allegedly reach the north pole. But because he didnt take along any he wasnt expert at finding his location by the stars and sun himself. And he hadnt taken along anyone on that final sprint, and because the distances he claimed to travel seemed to be too large to be realistic, there has always been great dispute to this day and at that time about whether robert perry ever reached the north pole. And those were at their height when amundson was going to the south pole. So he wanted to not have any lingering doubt of whether hed actually made the south pole. If robert perry never head the north pole, actually the first person who did was amundson because he flew over it. Though one was sort of by flying. He didnt claim that. What was the average temperature on his trip . Guest , on his trip, you know, he didnt get the extreme colds. So he did not keep measurements and temperature gauges. He did not he was on a dash. He didnt keep the records that you can really tell unlike scott who kept much more accurate records. So were more relying on what were scotts records who was going at the same time another way in a much, much slower route. And you have to project them across. So he took some temperatures, but we dont have as dependable records. But you would often have temperatures of 20 below and temperatures like that. But it wasnt the extreme cold that scott would later face on his return trip. Host extreme cold being guest 50 below. 50 below. Host who is Ernest Shackleton . Guest he was a british explorer. Hed been a member of the merchant marine, and he sort of just was an adventurer, and he had a tremendously charismatic personality, a magnetic personality. And he was sort of bored being in the merchant marine. And the british were putting together their First Expedition to the, to antarctica. Wasnt billed as the south pole, though there was a hope to get there. It was an Antarctic Scientific expedition. The first one in, oh, really 60 years. The british had a major ec we decision expedition under James Clark Ross in the 1840s, and this was around 1900. They were putting together the expedition. It was funded by the Royal Society which is the leading Scientific Association in britain and the Royal Geographic Society. And be they were going to use naval personnel to get people down and get people back, and they were taking a team of scientists to do research. Well, he had connections, and so he got himself sort of to escape the monotony of the merchant that lean, he got himself assigned disturb marine, he got himself assigned or picked up, as it were, as one of the officers on that expedition. Now, that expedition was led by robert scott. Led in the sense that he was captain of the ship. He wasnt head of the scientific team. But when they got, the idea was to bring down this group of people to go to the ross sea. Again, youre as far south as you can be. They were doing Magnetic Research mostly. They were also doing geographical mapping, they were doing geological research, they were doing biological research. But the main goal was studying the Magnetic Fields down there, trying to locate the south magnetic pole, studying the roar bore yall lis, thats the time when electricity and magnetism were of great interest. And people and ships still used compasses to navigate, so they needed to know the lines of polar, for polar exploration and for travel in the low southern latitudes. And that was a time when australia, new zealand and south africa were booming with gold rushes to all the places and developing, and so the british those were part of the British Empire, and they needed to have better magnetic readings. So that was the purpose of the trip. Now, so shackleton signed on because he thought thatd be more fun than just working on the p. O. Lines of the merchant marine. So he went along, and he just got hooked. He just got absolutely hooked on antarctica and polar travel. And so when that expedition, he was picked to go when the scientists were out doing research, scott who was wintering over thought hed take the next they wintered over, went down one year, they wintered over, and then during the next year in the summer the scientists all went out to do research, and the idea was to sail back at the end of that scherr or if they couldnt get out, the beginning of the following year which is what they did. They ended up wintering for two years. The officers were sort of free during the summer, so scott had plan all along concocted with the Royal Geographic Society to try to make a dash to the south pole. At this time they didnt know the south was on a polar plateau. They thought the south pole, antarctica might be like the north pole which is just an ark archipelago of islands with a floating icecap that floats on water. And so its not all that high, and you just they were going, and youre pretty close already. So they were just going to maybe just ski on down and take to sleds. And get down there during the scherr while the summer while the scientists were doing work. Well, shackleton went along with it. The trip was poorly planned, poorly executed. And they realized that there are mountains in the way. So they went back. The scientists did their work. It was a very successful expedition, they just didnt reach thinker near the south pole, anywhere even remotely close. So shackleton got back, and he had this charismatic, magnetic personality, and he organized an expedition of his own with the goal of reaching the south pole. He also took along scientists to do research. He raised private funding, and he went down and had his own expedition where he almost made it to the south pole. He made it all across the ross ice shelf, went up the anted arctic, transabout arctic mountains, got within 100 miles before he had to turn back. Basically, he had some difficulties. Some of the plans didnt quite work out, but he came close. Another part of his team made it to the south magnetic pole, so he went back a hero for this amazing expedition. He claimed the plateau for britain, and he went back and was knighted, a, you know, worked with, you know, met the king and spent time with the king and became a hero. Literally became a hero. Wrote up his account, mesmerizing account. Then when he hadnt made it, though, the expedition, scott was an army was a knave officer navy officer, captain in the navy. And he took more of a naval expedition back down with scientists, and theyre the ones that, its that expedition which shackleton was not part of that competed, raced as it were with amundson to get to the pole first. What shackleton ends up doing it, amundson makes it, scott has his problems thats putting it mildly and then shackleton then cant get this antarctica out of his system. So he organizes another expedition where hes planning to be the first to go completely across antarctica, start on one side, have another team at the other end, go completely across and end at the ross ice shelf, basically, into the ross sea. Thats the famous expedition that the ship going down, gets trapped in the ice. He proves to be the magnetic leader that he always was, the charismatic, the inspiring leader whose men are devoted to him. It was bad enough on his earlier expedition, the anymore rod, where he gets 100 miles to the south pole. Hes beloved then by his men. Many of them go back with him. Now he gets trapped in the ice. He floats around, the ship is, travels around in the ice for month after month after month and finally is totally crushed. And then he takes the men on the ice, and they cross the ice to get to an island, otherwise theyll die because no ones ever going to find them. And they manage this amazing trip across the ice and then by boat because theyre hauling their lifeboats across the ice. When they get as close as they can to an island, elephant island, they sail across its a relatively short distance to elephant island. Theyre there, but they realize that well never, nobody will ever find us on elephant be island. So he takes a small group and the best of the the large and best of the, basically, what youd call lifeboats, theyre a little bigger than lifeboats, the james cash was the name of it, and he takes a few of his best men, and they make an amazing open water voyage across whats known as the drake passage, the reputed to be the roughest seas in the world. Because hes got to sail up far enough north to where people live. And so he ends up sailing up to an island where there is a permanent whaling station. But its an enormous undertaking in a small boat. At finals the waves become at times the waves become huge. He, of course, has already been exposed to the elements for a year living outside, so they had very limited positions, and they provisions. Theyd already been live anything a stressful situation. Now theyre going in almost an open boat, it does have some covering. With very limited navigation devices, basically navigating by the stars. But the problem with that is that the sun is its overcast and raining most of the time, so they only get to take a dozen or so readings and then they get to this island. And then they have to cross the island, and they dont have proper shoes, and theyve been soaked. They have to cross the islands which have never been crossed to get to the whaling station and then go back to pick up his men, and he doesnt lose a single one. They all survive. And its just an amazing story of courage and enterprise. So shackleton, who was already famous from his nimrod expedition, now has this second expedition on top of it. Hes also known for his being with scott on the first one, so shackleton is, as a leader of men, is on a level that few reach. So youve got amundson who is a tremendous organizer, a tremendous planner, a, an inspiration alleyeder this that way, but youve got shackleton who has different skills, who has people skills. Ahundson was not lovable, but he was dependable. Shackleton was lovable and dependable in a way. He doesnt quite make it, the ship crashes, he doesnt make the crossing, doesnt make it to the pole. But as a leader of men, hes inspirational and beloved by his men. So youve got two largerthanlife characters, two living length jenlds coming out of this pursuit of the pole in this heroic age. Host edward larson, what happened to robert scott . His reputation . Guest robert scott had a little more trouble than the other two. But for a long period he was the larger hero. Certainly until the 1960s. He was the larger hero. He was sailing for england. He led the First Expedition, this one in 1901 is, 1904, the socalled discovery expedition because the ships name was discovery which was the first to really sort of open up a big chunk of antarctica as part of a multination expedition, but his was certainly the most successful. He becomes a National Hero when he comes home for this First Expedition. Then he mounts his second one, and his second one he, by the this time, shackletop has almost made it shackleton has almost made it and come back with that information. What scotts First Expedition with shackleton and a third person named edward wilson, they had gone down part of the way and then had to turn back. Then shackleton had gone down that same route, went further, climbed the transantarctic mountains, go gotten up on this polar plateau and traveled to within 100 miles of the pole before coming back. So thousand scott is comes back. Now scott comes back. Scott has designed, he doesnt know the norwegians are trying for the pole. He also brings down a large team of scientists, dozens and dozens of men, most of whom are doing nothing to do with getting to the pole. Most of them are out measuring glaciers, surveying the land, collecting, making collections of various, different seals and studying the penguins, doing all sorts of research. But a subset are reserved for the task, now openly, of reaching the south pole. And and he organizes. And so what my book does that nobody else does, a lot of people talk about the race to the pole. Theres some wonderful books about that, several wonderful books about race to the pole. What i do is my book is the first to ever try to study the entire expedition, study the scientific work, studying what the other people who were along were doing. And what it turns out is that the other researchers, the researchers that are going out from shackletons expedition or scotts first and second expedition and for the other expeditions, their adventures are actually just as exciting, just as deathdefying, just as remarkable as the race to the pole. And so im putting it in the context of the time and the place of the overall as opposed to just the race. But if you focus just down on the socalled race, scott doesnt think theres going to be a race. He goes down there not knowing, hes thinking that amundson is going to the north pole. He doesnt think anybody else is trying to go to the south pole. Somewhat by a different route, a air hell route. Actually like pieces of a pie going in toward the south, theyre starting about 400 miles apart and working toward the same place. So he starts later. He has a much, what he considers a much safer approach. He has teams of men who are going to bring along these depots of food. Some are traveling in tractors which he helped develop, early tractors. Tract devices. Some with ponies, horses pulling sleds who are going to depot food, some with dogs who go further, and theyre depotting food along the way. So its a large and very slowmoving caravan as it were which go toward the, across the ross ice shelf and then up. A couple teams of men go up the glacier to get to the polar plateau. And then only after theyre up there and travel the distance up there does the last support team turn back led by teddy evans, turns back and goes back leaving scott and, it turns out, four others, five people, to make a dash, as it were, across the polar plateau to the south pole. Well, the whole expedition has taken a lot longer by this time. Amundson is traveling faster, gets there first. By the time scott gets there, amundson has been there several weeks earlier. Amundson has left a tent and a note welcoming scott to the south pole which is not particularly welcome note. But he thinks that last part should be by manholing because thats the proper british way. And, you know, anybody can do it with dogs, were doing it by pulling in ourselves because thats the british way to do it. And and his men buy into this approach because whats the point of making the top of a mountain if a helicopter puts you there . Youve got to do it yourself. Well, thats true in a way and not in a way because he has used dogs, tractors and sleds to get himself to a relatively close point. So then they race across, they get to the pole. By this time its much later. They turn around to come back, and by now its getting colder, youre moving on to the antarctic spring. The weather turns unusually cold. Theyve had a lot of mistakes and falls along the way. The tractors didnt work as well as expected, they lost some of their horses early, so they couldnt do quite the same job of supplying, of depotting supplies. As i said, the weather, many things conspire against them, and they make it close to getting back. Theyre only a few hills, 11 miles from their big depot. They make it down the glacier. Of course, along the way theyre stopping to do some geological research, to basically collect fossils and samples, and they end up caught in a blizzard late in the season about 11 miles from their large depot which if they had got to, there was plenty of supplies. Their supplies are running low not because they dont have enough in the depots, but partly because they left canisters of fuel, and theres been leakage from their they didnt seal them right, and so theres been leakage, so they cant heat their food properly, and they die, the remaining party coming back two have already died, the last three die 11 miles from the supply depot. Their bodies are then found the next year because the tent is there, and theyre found the next year. So scott never makes it back. But in a way because he was able to write up his entire experience right to the end because they recover his diaries and his notes, he becomes a hero to britain. Theyre just heading into world war i, and this courage, his account of these last days and these last months, this trek back in the face of adversity and almost certain death and the courage they show is so inspiring that he becomes a legend in a way for his failure. Sort of like the charge of the light brigade. You know, this march into death thats lionized by the poets. In a time when britain is sending men into the trenches in world war i to be mowed down by german machine guns or to die from gases or to lie out in no mans land, world war i was such a devastating and emotionally traumatic experience, in many ways what scott had been through becomes a profile in courage. Courage of a different type than shackleton showed or amundson showed. And that courage was much appreciated. I mean, it was, it was, it was, it became is such a powerful symbol, such a powerful, had such meaning in england that scott in the British Empire and in the englishspeaking world, scott actually becomes the larger hero in failure. Until that sort of courage, sort of that sort of selfsacrificing courage goes out of favor in the 1960s. So as long as that remains in tear, he actually become in favor, he actually becomes the larger hero than amundson and shackleton. What has happened since then is that sort of noble, devoted determination is now what we treasure, what we prize more inn many ways, many people prize more is success. Its leading men. It is making an organization work. And there amundson in one way, that nordic efficiency, that incredible efficiency, is greatly admired, and shackletons way even writing Business Books about shackletons way of getting a team to work and be loyal and amundson for efficiency, those two people have now basically eclipsed scott, and theyre the larger heroes for different ways, Different Reasons because they succeeded, and they never lost men. They took care of their men, and so its a different sort of heroism. But for two generations and still today among many scott is a true hero. And in my book im able to put him in his position because for the last 40 years biographers have tended to ridicule him. For his failings. And by showing him in the larger context of how he actually led the more successful scientific expedition and by the science that he brought from, back from antarctica, it became the foundational science of all our current work from Climate Change to plate tectonics to certain sorts of animals that can live at low temperatures. So much of his work was so foundational to the science being done now, in a way his expedition had a greater meaning because it contributed to the advance of science than the other two, and yet in that way it was even though it was victorian in many ways and failed in, definitely in certain ways, it also had a certain greatness to it. So to me, all three leaders are great, but in different ways. Host professor larson, whats this photo on the cover of an empire of ice . Guest in hard back it runs around the back. Those are five of those are a team of scientists who got trapped out through the winter. They were the socalled Northern Party of scotts expedition from scotts second expedition who are supposed to be doing Scientific Research, and theyre put in place for what they thought was a summer of research at a place called terra nova bay, a place ive been many times. Its a glorious place in the summer to do Scientific Research. But the ship couldnt recover them, and they had to survive on their own through the winter. They dug an ice cave, they had no supplies, so they jerry rigged a stove out of an old tin bucket. They would kill seals and penguins, they would cook, heat with their blubber. They lived from eating the food, they lived in miserable conditions. They had no changes of clothes. And they somehow survived doing Scientific Research on the site since they were there and eventually man hauled, walked out to the main base. Everyone thought they were dead. And thats how they look when they come out of their ice cave. It shows it. And it is, and some of these are leading scientists, others are just, are important men who are working with them, basically guides. And the book tells stories like those stories. Thats raymond priestly was one of the leaders of that group. And they are as gripping and as admirable and as memorable as anything that amundson, shackleton and scott did. And yet they never got the glory, the fame. They were just trying to do science. Host youre a law professor here at pepperdine. Youre an author of a pulitzer prizewinning book on the scopes monkey trial. Youve written about the election of 1800, antarctica, rather an eclectic collection. Guest well, im a historian of science. My ph. D. s in the history of science. I also teach history at pepperdine college, and what connects all those ones you put together is they all involve some aspect of law. Because even when antarctica, youve got the antarctic treaty, and i work with the legality of the expeditions. They involve law, but they also involve science in a fundamental way, and they bring together those two worlds. And they are stories that i think have been left behind or not fully told, and i try to pick them up and carry them through. And we wrap up tonights prime time programming at 11 eastern with a recount of the west in 1776. That all happens tonight on cspans booktv. Booktv attended the Eagle Forum Collegian summit in washington, d. C. Recently and over the next couple hours you can watch authors discuss their books. It starts with emily miller author of emily gets her gun our next talk is emily miller and her talk is about emily miller gets her gun but obama takes your. She was Senior Editor at the washington time and a columnist at aol. She is a producer of abc news this week and good morning america. She served as Deputy Press Secretary to the secretary of state powell and rice. She was Community Director to tom de lay. Please welcome emily miller. [ applause ] thank you f