January 10, 2012 • 36 mins
The answer is yes, but there's a lot more to traveling to the southernmost continent. Learn why emperor penguins don't make eye contact with humans, which country has the best research station and why the chances of your ship sinking are alarmingly high.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff works dot com? Hey, welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. This with me is a man named
(00:20):
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. He's a little under the weather
right now. Yes, sick, Yes, and that should come through
in this show. Keep getting me. I'm not gonna get
you sick. I got my own little mic cover with
my name on it. I'm gonna take it, probably burn it.
Actually I'm not gonna burn it because it's pricey. Didn't
(00:41):
the company get it for you though? Oh yeah, but
I don't want to waste the company money. That's good thinking. Yeah,
I'm a little ill, so all apologies, people, but we
like to soldier on here at s Y s K.
We meet our deadline. Remember when we often talked about
when you were sick for eight months? It was a
long time. Yeah, I'm hoping this is no more than
a few shows, maybe even just these two. That's what
(01:01):
I'm because we're recording to today. But I feel bad
for you because both of them are kind of chilly, Yes,
especially this one. Wintry topics. Yeah, well it's almost always
winter in Antarctica, even when it's summer season. Chuck. Have
you ever heard of a guy named Captain Robert Scott? Uh,
Bobby Scott, Bob Scott, cappy. I think he went by
(01:25):
rob instead of Bobby. Uh. He was one of the
first two people, or led one of the first two
expeditions to make it to the South Pole Antarctica, and
he was beaten by just four weeks by a Norwegian rival.
I think he's gonna say he's beaten by a polar
bear or something like that. Uh. No, well he did die.
(01:46):
A five man team made it to the South Pole
and started making their way back and just hit some
real freak weather. Um. And the guy that the team
meteorologist was in that five man team and just felt
awful that he'd missed this prediction. And they were just
buffeted by I think negative forty, negative ninety, just ridiculously
(02:06):
cold temperatures, so freak weather, or as they call it,
an Antarctica weather or Tuesday Tuesday. Um. So these guys died. Um.
But there they were found, and among them were found
some some of the find some of the things. This
is a scientific expedition. Obviously, UM some of the notes
they made, UM some the weather notes, the um a
(02:29):
trio of penguin eggs, Emperor penguin eggs. So they this
was kind of the the crown jewel of the stuff
that they accumulated during the scientific expedition. And here's why.
Apparently back in this era, this is nineteen eleven, I
think UM people thought that emperor penguins, because they couldn't fly,
(02:52):
were the most primitive birds on the planet. They hadn't involved,
and people were real keen on proving or disproving Darwin's
new theory about evolution through natural selection. So they figured,
if you go find the eggs of this very primitive bird,
you're going to find the link to dinosaurs and birds.
(03:13):
The reason why is because the Edwardians also believed that
um an animal went through all the stages of evolution
during its gestation. So they figured, hey, take some emperor
penguin eggs, crack them open, you're gonna find a dinosaur. Right.
It didn't work out like that, but they found the
very cute emperor penguin. They did dead inside, of course,
(03:36):
frozen to death. And now that I've seen the March
of the Penguins, I realized just how mean the expedition
kind of was. I didn't see that. Oh man, you
don't mess with an Emperor penguin egg. They go through
a lot to keep those things safe and warm and hatched,
and you don't. You just don't steal three of them, agreed,
(03:57):
Captain Robert Scott did. And you can't did either. I
imagine you can't. But you can't pay someone to take
you as close as you like. And if you were
a jerk, you could contuvably do it. Sneak one out
in your old purse. Yeah, let's let's talk about vacationing
and Antarctica. Did you know you can do that? Well?
I do now. Uh. Here, let's let's talk about the
(04:17):
body of land itself, because it's pretty remarkable. It's uh,
South Pole, Like you said, five percent of the lamb
masses ice, and I think the other point five is
a small putting green, but not mistaken. It's nice, says
Zoysia growing there. Uh. During the winter, they the ice
(04:39):
gets bigger, obviously, making it the fifth largest continent five
point million square miles of largely ice. And that's a
lot of ice. Even though it's shrinking, which we'll talk
about a little bit. Yeah, but naturally during the seasons
that expands and contracts slightly. Sure as ices want to do. Uh.
When it's warm, which is November to fed Bruary, it's
(05:01):
gonna be below freezing almost all the time. In the winter,
it can drop to ninety degrees below fahrenheit And I
got a world record here of one below zero at
the Bolstock station. Very dry, which is awesome because it's
(05:21):
like pristine, powdery snow. Uh, blustery winds. Actually that's not
the good part. Well, the winds are almost constant and
they get up to like two d you ever seen
the thing. Yeah, and by the way, two hundred miles
and hours three twenty one kilometers per hour for everybody else.
And you know what ninety degrees below fahrenheit is minus
(05:43):
sixty eight celsius. Yeah, like to convert for our friends
in other weird places. Yeah, two on that Canada. Uh,
not a lot of people live there. In fact, only
the only people that live there are people that have
set up research stations there. Yeah, it's in some I
guess some of them are manned year round, which is
pretty crazy. That's awesome. Yeah. So I say, if you
(06:06):
go to a research station during um, the time from
what February to November, Uh, you're gonna find maybe fifty
people there. And then when it's bustling from November to
February summertime, summertime, it's gonna be maybe a hundred fifty
people there. But all of these are temporary residents. No
one lives on Antarctica, well, temporary in a living since,
(06:30):
but they're permanent structures, right, They're not living in tents.
The residents are temporaries, not their structures. But there have
been people who were born on Antarctica. Yeah, now that
that was a cool fact of this show. I thought, Yeah,
have you heard of Emilio Marcos de Palma. I have? Indeed,
he you have. He's Antarcticon. He is, He's the first
Antarcticon ever. He was born in January night, and um
(06:55):
it was a bit of a ploy. Actually his father
worked at a research station in Antarctica, and the Argentinian
government found out that this guy's wife was pregnant and
hustled her down to Antarctica to give birth there in
an attempt to lay claim to sovereignty of Antarctica. Yeah,
and that's because no one is generally born there. There's
(07:17):
a lot of nations over the years that have tried
to claim it as her own, including Argentina, Australia, Chile, France,
Great Britain, New Zealand, and Norway. And I'm surprised the
U S hadn't none there. Don't we know that there's
land out there that we don't have our Chile did
the same pull the same stunt as Argentina. Um. I
(07:38):
think six years after Emilio Marcus to Palma was born
and a kid named Juan Pablo Camacho was the second
Antarctican ever born. But you can have as many babies
as you want there, you're not gonna establish sovereignty because
there's a treaty from nineteen fifty nine called the Antarctic
Treaty appropriately enough, and basically it says that Antarctic doesn't
(08:01):
belong to anybody. It's like the oceans. It belongs to
everyone and no one UM, no one can lay claim there.
And because it doesn't belong to anybody, and because it
belongs to everybody, um, it's protected from war and it's
a nuclear free zone. Would you war anyway, No, I
know here's gonna fight in other people or in the
(08:24):
case of the thing, you would be fighting some horrific
shape shifting beast. And by the way, we should probably
point out I think it's still commonly overlooked. Uh, Antarctic
is the only place where you can find penguins, right,
They're not in the Arctic. Okay, I didn't know that
penguins Antarctic. And also, if you you know, I know
(08:47):
you love HP Lovecraft. Here there um, if you are
into Antarctic and you want to be scared out of
your wits by an emperor penguin reed at the Mountains
of Madness, I love Crash. I want to read that one, dude.
That's probably his best one, and it's set entirely in Antarctica.
I think they're making a movie. I think they had before.
Jackson's looking into it. I think that would be good. Yeah,
(09:10):
he's probably the only person who could pull it off,
but he'll he'll probably fail like everybody else. What about
Eugene Levy, You don't think he could do it. He
could be too charming, you know, like it wouldn't exist
in The Cannon or a Christopher Guest movie. I saw
Spinal Tap for the first time the other day, first
time ever ever? Shut up, was like, what do you
(09:31):
mean you haven't seen Spinal Taps? Watched it right, I
loved it. I had no idea what I was missing.
I tweeted to Michael McKeon and said, are you aware
that you were in Spinal Tap? And he tweeted back,
shut up, Wait what he said? Yeah, I favorite it,
So we're on was that personally or that was s y?
So we're on his radar in a small way. Apparently. Wow,
(09:53):
at the very least he thought it was a funny tweet.
That's pretty funny. And I can't believe you never saw that.
I literally watch that movie over fifty times in college,
Like I can recite it almost by heart. I can
totally see that. Yeah, I can see that. I mean,
I'd love, you know, best in Show a lot, so
I knew i'd like Special Tap. Well, that was the
(10:14):
that was the original. It was strange seeing Harry Shear
because I just associate him with The Simpsons almost entirely. Yeah, yeah,
he's great in that too. I can talk about this
stuff all day. Let's get back to Antarctica, or we
should do a Christopher guest final tap um. So if
you want a vacation there, which you can do, you
(10:35):
gotta get there. And in this case, getting there, I
don't know if it's half the fun, but it's half
the challenge because you're not gonna find any I twenties
zooming into Antarctica or any Delta Airline flights landing there, right,
and most of the action, um, when you're traveling to
Antarctica takes place on the Antarctic Peninsula, which is a
(10:56):
sweep of land that juts out toward uh, Southern South America.
Imagine almost all of Antarctica is still very much not
trod upon, you know. Um, yeah, it was just explored
like at the beginning of the last century. Basically, Yeah,
people like why don't I want to go down there?
Took us off right exactly. So like you were saying, like,
(11:16):
it's it's not easy to get to, and you're going
to get to the point that's easiest to get to
from southern South America. So most likely you're going to
take a ship cruise ship probably from Argentina or Chile
and show up, which seems weird that they're that close.
It's very close isn't it. And the weird Yeah, like
you think of like hot temperatures, you do, but then
(11:39):
you're like, oh wait, that's Bolivia I'm thinking of. Chili
is actually right by Antarctica. The first commercial cruise liners,
because you're gonna get there by ship is how you're
gonna get there, and cruise ship is one of the
most popular ways to do that these days. The first
one came in sixty nine and that was the lind
Blade Explorer. Just to give you an idea of the
(12:02):
increase in tourism over the years, in the early nineties
only about nine thousand people per year and just a
couple of years ago in two thousand eight, two thousand
seven to eight forty, which doesn't sound like a lot
of people, but it's a lot for Antarctica, especially when
you consider the proportion that we're wearing Mickey mouse heres
at the time. They're incruising around the glaciers drinking Chilean wine. UH.
(12:26):
There is an UH tourist association, the i A a
t O Internets association of Antarctic tour operators formed in
the early nineties and their mission basically is to keep
everything safe and keep everything above board and ethical on
a environmental uh scale, because they're gonna want it to
be ruined. Antarctica is supposedly pristine, it is. We found
(12:50):
out it isn't though that same uh, the same scott expedition. Also,
I don't know how. I don't want to think hell
but came about came by some uh Emperor penguin skins
and they're still to this day used to um as
a control sample when you're comparing um tainted Emperor penguin
(13:11):
skins today. And they found out that d DTS actually
made its way down there to any So it's not
really pristine cheese that's pretty pristine, right. Well, now that
you have all these ships and people running all over
the place exactly like the ever Steel exactly, uh, November
to March is, like we said this quote unquote summertime,
So that's when tourists are most likely going to be there.
(13:32):
A little bit smaller than ice sheet, which means boats
are going to be able to get around easier because
you've got to be able to navigate through the ice sheets,
and not a whole lot of boats have the kind
of hull that it can withstand bumping into icebergs. No,
this was very alarming to me. There's there are people
who were going on cruises on cruise ships, and these
(13:54):
cruise ships can't withstand in iceberg. The um the Lynn
Blade Explore, Yeah, the first one, Yes, that was also
the first one. That was also the one that sank
in two thousand seven. It was the same exact ship
and ironic, yeah, they changed the name to the MS Explorer,
but it was the same exact ship. The first one,
the first cruise ship to go to Antarctica, was also
(14:15):
I believe the first one to sink in two thousand seven.
It was actually outfitted to withstand in iceberg and it's
still sunk. So then you consider that there's plenty of
cruise lines down there that aren't in any way um
equipped to take an iceberg. Apparently they're very worried that
this is a disaster waiting to happen. Well, let's go
ahead and go there then. Uh. Since two thousand seven,
(14:37):
there have been four ships that have run aground, which
is not a good place to run aground. No. Well,
plus it's not good for Antarctica because it's like, hey,
have you met our refined fuel yet? Yeah, that's true. Uh,
but if if you do run aground and you're in
a in a cruise ship incident, you're gonna be stuck
there for a little while because it's not like any
other place where they can just send out a star
(14:59):
team and all of a sudden you're getting rescued six
hours later. So in two thousand seven, uh, with the
MS Explorer, these these passengers were in lifeboats, it says
for hours. I wonder how long I don't know. I
can imagine a while. And they got picked up by
another cruise ship, right, So it wasn't even a star
team that came to rescue him. No, it was a
Norwegian cruise Lines I think that came and got them.
(15:21):
So they're like thank you. And that same year, actually
uh and Curry from UH what is she? From the
Today Show? She was doing in the morning. She was
doing a piece called Ends of the Earth, and she
went down to Antarctica and she and her crew ended
up getting stuck there for days and they just hung
around the research station, which we'll get to in a second.
(15:42):
Because of freak weather though, right, not like an accident, no,
but the freak weather is apparently fairly common, so you
just call it again weather down there or Tuesday weather. Um.
But apparently if you book an Antarctic vacation, the tour
operator says, don't make any big plan on two weeks
of either side of your trip, because there's no telling
(16:03):
really when you're gonna go down there. They're shooting for
this window, but it might not be that window. That
might put me off, not from a schedule standpoint, but
just from beer, you know. And then I have a
story for you. So, um, this is all in summer,
like you might get stuck there during the summer. If
you're in winter, there's no way for you to get out.
(16:23):
You're absolutely stuck there. Nobody's coming in and you're not
coming out. You have to honker down for the winner. Yeah,
they shut it all down right, I'll travel, yes, um,
And they're I think beginning in nineteen nine, the Russians
built the Novo Lazarre of Skia. That's my Russian. Uh,
they're antarctic base. The Russian Antarctic base was built, and
(16:44):
two years later there was a surgeon there named Leonid
Rogozov and he was stuck there for the winner. No,
he was with some other people, but he was the
only physician, and he just happened to figure out that
he had a cute pancreat titus man and that he
was about to die, and that he had two choices.
He could either allow himself to die, or he could
(17:06):
perform an eppendex to me on himself. I'm sorry he
had appendicitis. He performed an appendect me on himself. When
you're doing this, you can't knock yourself out. So he
had no anesthesia whatsoever, and he stayed awake the whole time.
He would work for four or five minutes as he
was carving. There's a famous picture of him like carving
himself and he just stained with blood. Um and uh,
(17:29):
he'd worked for four or five minutes, rest for about
twenty thirty seconds, try to keep from passing out. And
he finally did it. He successfully performed surgery on himself
and lived to uh two thousand I think is when
he died. And he lived another two minutes. But he
I mean, could you be badder than that? He's pretty bad.
He's up there with and uh who was the white
(17:50):
the white death uh Seemohiah. Yeah, yeah, I'd like to
see those guys sit down and have a tough off
like an arm wrestling competition. So any way, you're stuck
there in the winter for sure, but you can frequently
get stuck there in the summer too, which hey, you
know it's only like fIF theme below. In the summer,
you're golden. Uh. Sightseeing cruises probably what the most popular
(18:15):
thing to do, like the Alaskan cruise. They'll they'll run
you through, uh, through the Kodak Gap, which did you
look at the pictures of this place? Oh my gosh.
The La Mayre Channel is the official name between the
Booth Island Mountains and the Arctic Peninsula peninsula. But they
call it that obviously because they should call it the
(18:35):
Digital Mpeg Gap now, I guess. But it's extremely photogenic.
It's it's where you see like those just like ice
blue cave ice caves that you can like go through
when your boat and stuff like that. I guess, not
caves but tunnels. It's pretty amazing. And I hope you
don't strike either side exactly. So they're gonna take you
(18:56):
on these cruises. They're gonna get you close. Uh. Some
of these tours will take you actually onto land from
a smaller boat or a helicopter for a little while,
but you're not going to be spending a whole lot
of time on land if you're doing one of the
cruise ships. Right there are there are some um expeditions
you can undertake, Like, um, there's something you can cross
country skihole and you can't along the way. It's like
(19:20):
a two week tour. I think, Yeah, I'll bet it's
pretty cool too, but I think you have to be
um kind of strong of mind, probably get you'll go nuts. Yeah,
I would imagine, Well, it depends. I mean, I'm sure
there are conditions to where it's like quote unquote warm
and just lovely in blue, but there's also going to
be the white outs where you can't see your hand
(19:42):
in front of your face and the wind is like
blowing your headgear off, and yeah that's no good. Well,
plus also, I think plenty of it's barren. It's just
the same view three and sixty degrees, which has to
drive you a little nutty too. It's lovely though. Um.
You can also, if you're insane already, run a marathon
in Antarctica. I'm gonna tell my friend James about this.
(20:05):
He's a trail runner and does like these trail marathons
and these crazy things. And he's I think he's doing
one in Ireland soon. So he likes to travel. I'm
gonna turn him onto this. All he needs is about
sixteen grand and he can join in the Adventure Network
International full or half marathon. I would imagine it's UM
fifteen five for the half marathon and then sixteen grand
(20:27):
for the full marathon. UM. But you're running in the
interior of Antarctica UM about minus twenty degrees ferret height,
and you're going to have to deal with the temperature,
the wind, chances in elevation, and b penguins trying to
trip you because they got money on somebody else. And
let's be honest, running a marathon, let's not forget that
(20:49):
that's challenging in July. It keeps me at home right there.
What I want to know what they run in though?
Shoe wise, Yeah, I wonder, you know, I wonder if
if it's I mean, obviously are not wearing snowshoes or
anything like that, or spikes. I guess there's areas where
just heavy tread would work. I would think, So there's
gotta be or else. What are you gonna do? You
(21:09):
can't run a marathon and snowshoes, so it's ridiculous. Uh
So once you're there, you want to pass a little time,
You want to see some things that are awesome. Besides
the Kodak gap. Uh you can go check out the
the mountain there and you can even climb it and
it's really not I didn't get a hide on that,
did you. No? But it's a four mile climb, which
(21:32):
isn't that much. No, I mean it's not. It's nothing
to sneeze at. But it's no Everest, But I imagine
there's probably a lot of ice to it, ice climbing
and as well as just rock climbing. Mount Vincent is
what we're talking about. What did I say? Vincent vin
Sun not Vincent. Okay, it's the son of Vincent. Got
(21:52):
you sorry about that? You can go get your picture
made in a bikini in front of the little South
Pole marker at the uh Amonson Scott South Pole Station.
It's very famous American research center at the South Pole.
And they had a little candy cane pole with a
little silver ball on top of it. And I've seen
a lot of pictures of ladies and bikinis taking their
(22:13):
picture there. So the Americans never said this is our land,
but they're the ones who built the research station like
virtually on top of the South Pole. Um and Amonson Scott.
That's named after the two guys who made it to
the South Pole, including Robert Scott and Roald Amerson. When
was this the early nine It was a nineteen eleven
and nineteen twelve, which makes it seem like um Amonson
(22:36):
beat the tar out of Scott, but it was really
four weeks this summer in January. Yeah, and when you go,
you're going to find that they're very friendly people at
this facility, that there are tours already set up. It's
kind of a routine thing to like go to, you know,
the American South Pole Station because I mean, if you
like the George, you're gonna love Antarctica. But there's not
(22:57):
that much to do, really, no, there really is. You
check out the there's a lot of wildlife. Well, yes,
and apparently one of the cool things about Emperor penguins
and penguins in general is they are not at all
afraid of humans. That's because we've never killed them with
reckless abandon I know, or at least as far as
they know. And apparently they'll just ignore us and um,
(23:18):
hang out with us and post for pictures. Yeah, they'll
do close ups, but uh, it's just about any naturalist
or biologists will tell you just hanging around an animal
and watching it like some slack jawgoon is going to
produce stress in the animal, most likely because the animal,
even though it's not scared of you as a predator,
(23:39):
it doesn't know what you're going to do, or what
you're doing or what you want. And um, you just
probably should keep that in mine when you're observing penguins.
Don't chase the penguins. And when I said a lot
of wildlife, let me clear that up. It's not like
Yosemite National Park wildlife. But it is a very hospitable
place for certain kinds of animals, especially animals that live
(24:02):
in the water, because there's just tons of protein. You
got whales, you got penguins, you got polar bears, and
you have to see marks of the penguins. I don't know,
you know, it was just one of those movies they
just got by me. It is I think I won
an oscar. Yeah sure, what Morgan Freeman, Yeah, buddy, yeah, Um,
but yeah, it's a really great movie. Have you ever
been to the aquariums penguin exhibit? Uh? Yes, you know
(24:26):
you can stick your head up that you can crawl
into the tunnel and you stick your head up into
a clear plexi hole for your head basically, and the
penguins are right there right in front of your face, like,
what are you doing? Yeah, you're stressing me out, So
chuck um. The water is generally or the sea is
(24:47):
good for the wildlife around it because they've adapted to it.
If you're one of those polar bear guys, though you
can't considerably jump in during the winter, you should do
so at your own risk. Oh that the humans that
do that stuff, because the water gets down to about
thirty two degrees fahret height there, I should say, up
to thirty two degrees fahrenheight, and you're going to freeze
(25:09):
because that's zero celsius um. It's very very dangerous. And
if you do that and you hurt yourself, you're gonna
find yourself on a long, arduous journey back to Chili
or Argentina um at your own expense. Yeah, I mean,
there's a little bit of medical help at these stations,
and maybe a passing cruise ship will have the good
(25:29):
doctor from the love Boat on board, but um, you're
not gonna be able to get serious medical attention and
you're you could be in trouble unless you get either
too sweet or you're gonna be performing self surgery right
exactly d D style. So how much does this kind
of run you? Uh? I don't know, do you know?
I don't know. I've heard you can expect to spend
(25:53):
upwards of ten grand I mean the marathon was sixteen grand.
I mean getting there's gonna be pricey, period. Sure, but
like a really probably probably like um full on great
state room kind of cruised down there, including airfare to
South America's gonna run you ten grand or probably last.
I'm sure you can get deals for less, but you
(26:15):
need to have a little bit of cash to make
it down to Antarctic. It's not a poor man's vacation.
You know, that's what you're saying. Environmental safety concerns, Josh,
we talked about obviously, would you say, was there now?
D D T. Yeah, they've on traces of it. They
found it in penguins cheese. Uh. In April two thousand nine,
there was a joint session of the Antarctic Treaty Panel
(26:37):
and the Arctic Council, and they met in Baltimore, Maryland,
which I'm sure that's nice in April, but for some
reason I thought they would say, like, let's go to
Phoenix in July and hold our meeting and baw. But
they had, you know, a lot on the agenda, including
global warming talks, shipping routes, stuff like that. But they
did talk about tourism, and not incidentally or coincidentally, around
(27:02):
that same time, a twenty five mile ice shelf broke
off shattered into the sea, which kind of was like
symbolic of hey, we really need to talk about tourism.
That's huge. And the the I guess the tourism and
the loss of ice has this sort of self reinforcing
thing going on. Because you lose ice, you actually get
(27:25):
more tourism, which is ostensibly responsible for even further climate
change in the area. And so you lose more ice
and you get even more tourism. And the reason why
is because you lose twenty five mile piece of ice,
cruise ships go, oh, we can go in here. Now
we have a passage exactly, so they're they're coming up with. UM,
I guess an idea of how they can. UM, they
(27:48):
want to ban the construction of any kind of hotels
or anything like that, any permanent, not even accommodations. No,
not even although that would probably no, that would be permanent.
It down there, I'm sure you can't say it would be.
It wouldn't be permanent. But because right, UM, you want
they need they want to do a number a limitation
(28:09):
to the number of ships that can come in every year. UM,
restrictions on how close ships can come to shore. Yeah,
like are you gonna drop people off here at the
shore line? Yeah, just to see those little penguins. But
here's the problem. They can't just say like, Okay, we're
gonna have fifty ships a year or twenty or whatever. Uh,
(28:31):
if you touch the penguins, you'll be executed by the
International Criminal Court at the Hague. UM. They can't say
these things because no one has any sovereign right to
issue any kind of decree over Antarctic. So what can
they do to establish guidelines and recommend that signatory countries
and travel agencies follow them and suggest to highly suggest that.
(28:52):
But right now there's only forty seven signatory countries on
the Antarctic Treaty. Yeah, I wonder who's on there. I
was gonna look that up, but I didn't get a chance. Uh.
And the reason why they don't ban people outright, not
only can they not, but one of the most important
parts of that the treaty is that it does allow
freedom of access. They're like, you know what, you can
(29:14):
come here. Yeah, they can't stop anybody from coming there.
And I feel like I feel like they want to
allow it just to a degree. Sure I might be
wrong there, but well, I'm sure that the tour operators
associations like, I don't know, we wanna tread lightly here exactly. UM.
And then speaking of getting stuck in Antarctica, one last
(29:34):
thing you know about this UM. A couple of years
ago they a case of eleven bottles of Scotch McKinley Scotch,
which isn't made any longer and was originally produced in
eight or ninety seven and was part of the um
Ernest Shackleton Nimrod expedition of nineteen o seven, was left
(29:56):
beneath his hut and forgotten for like a hundred years,
and they found it in two thousand and six when
do we talk about this on the webcast, the good
old webcast, and they got it out of there. Remember
you and I were like, what's going to happen to this?
Because that treaty like you're Antarctica is there for scientific expedition.
You're supposedly not supposed to touch anything that has any
(30:16):
sort of historical or scientific significance. It's not supposed to
come out. So they're like, you can't really remove this,
we have to drink it down there. Well, it turns
out that UM Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand now
has this scotch and it's exhibit. I can't remember. Did
they sample it? Someone didn't they No one will probably
(30:36):
ever taste the scotch. Instead, they've allowed some scotch makers
to UM to take samples and see if they can
recreate it because no one has the original recipe anymore's
taken it up. That's what I'm thinking too, But surely
some rich guy was like, get me that scotch. Here's
as much money as you need. And it didn't go
into the hands of some rich scotch lover. It went
(30:58):
to a relatively unknown own museum in New Zealand. Which
is pretty cool. I bet the night guard. I bet
there's some Kiwi security guard that's taken the tiniest of
nips and then filled it back up with like t
They'll never know. It's like the mini bar. So you
got anything else? I don't. So that concludes our episode
on alcoholism among night watchmen. And if you want to
(31:21):
learn more about that or Antarctica, you want to type
in A N T A R C T I C
A in the handy search bar at how stuffworks dot com,
which means it's time for a listening to mail. Josh,
I'm gonna call this UH exchange email exchange because I'm
actually gonna read my response to UH sort of an
upset Canadian. This is about daylight saving, which, by the way,
(31:45):
we must spoke. Go ahead and say that we're getting
beat up by the the people south of the equator.
When we said that they spring back and fall forward,
that it's not so. They spring forward and fall back.
It's just at opposite times as us. No, I'm saying, no,
(32:07):
they springboard, they fall back, but their spring is opposite
of our spring. You haven't seen that the Facebook and
emails they've been killing their spring Okay, I got to
you know what I'm saying. It was very very North
hemispheres centric, and so I need to explain myself here
(32:28):
because I got an email from Marie from Canada and
she was a little man at me. Just finished listening
to the podcast on daylight saving time. You mentioned that
in the civilized world time makes no difference and only
the rising and setting in the sun is really important.
I wanted to offer you a different perspective on that.
I live in white Horse, Yukon, Canada, and the sun
is currently rising at set and that's a whole five
(32:52):
hours and fifty seven minutes of light in the dead
of winter. I assure you that we are a fully
functioning part of the civilized world here and setting the
time is very important to us. We do observe daylight
saving time in the Yukon and in the summer month
when we get are on average eighteen hours of daylight.
Having the clocks change makes a huge difference in my
daily life after the long dark. It's relief that the
(33:13):
clocks now allow for a little more vitaminded, I think
you I just found your comments callous. Perhaps you should
rely less on these skeptic pages, as it seems to
put you in a sour mood. St Yeah, please remember
that you have a very wide range of listeners and
we are not savages out in the waste lands. We're
intelligent people who enjoy learning and see you and your
(33:36):
colleagues is valuable and often entertaining source of information. She's
talking to you right, because it sounds like one of
your quotes. It was one of mine. So I wrote
Marie back, and I was like, Marie, I you either
misunderstood or I didn't get it across. Clearly, I wasn't
saying that at all. What I'm saying is the civilized
world is the The only reason clocks matter to me
(34:00):
is because Man invented clocks and time quote unquote to
get on schedule in a commerce way, so businesses could
be open and you could reference schedules and work schedules
and and shopping and things like that. If man had
never invented a clock, it wouldn't change anything about the
rising and setting of the sun. We would just operate
(34:22):
on the rising in the setting of the sun. It's
like I'm watching you for a future little so it
very much matters. Obviously in the civilized world, because that's
the only place at time matters. I imagine in third
world countries where they don't have clocks, they just operate
with the rising in the setting of the sun, like
we did before we invented clocks. Does that make sense? Sure?
(34:47):
I certainly wasn't trying to say that people of Canada
were civilized people of Canada. Attention Chuck Bryant means you
no harm. He's a very nice guy. None can anthem.
But he is never out to hurt anybody's feelings. Even
when he does, it's accidental. Please accept his apologies. So
either misspoke or was misunderstood, or something got garbled up,
(35:08):
but sortainry so you have it. Thank you to all
of our friends in Canada for listening. Man. I gotta
tell you they take off easily, especially if you call
their thanksgiving pig thanksgiving. Their sensitive people they do not
like that. But it's because Americans are arrogant, and they're like,
you know what, Yeah, but they don't necessarily pick up
(35:28):
on when we're poking fun at our own arrogance, which
is surprising because they gave us Dan at Kroy. Yeah,
the whittier meant a lot so, uh, if you have
a great story about Dana Kroyd, we want to hear
about it. Okay, heck yeah. You can tweet to us
at s y s K podcast. You can go on
(35:49):
to Facebook and let us know about it at Facebook
dot com slash stuff you Should Know, and you can
send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, is it how stuff works dot com. To
learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
(36:10):
in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how
Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today
on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff works dot com? Hey, welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. This with me is a man named
(00:20):
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. He's a little under the weather
right now. Yes, sick, Yes, and that should come through
in this show. Keep getting me. I'm not gonna get
you sick. I got my own little mic cover with
my name on it. I'm gonna take it, probably burn it.
Actually I'm not gonna burn it because it's pricey. Didn't
(00:41):
the company get it for you though? Oh yeah, but
I don't want to waste the company money. That's good thinking. Yeah,
I'm a little ill, so all apologies, people, but we
like to soldier on here at s Y s K.
We meet our deadline. Remember when we often talked about
when you were sick for eight months? It was a
long time. Yeah, I'm hoping this is no more than
a few shows, maybe even just these two. That's what
(01:01):
I'm because we're recording to today. But I feel bad
for you because both of them are kind of chilly, Yes,
especially this one. Wintry topics. Yeah, well it's almost always
winter in Antarctica, even when it's summer season. Chuck. Have
you ever heard of a guy named Captain Robert Scott? Uh,
Bobby Scott, Bob Scott, cappy. I think he went by
(01:25):
rob instead of Bobby. Uh. He was one of the
first two people, or led one of the first two
expeditions to make it to the South Pole Antarctica, and
he was beaten by just four weeks by a Norwegian rival.
I think he's gonna say he's beaten by a polar
bear or something like that. Uh. No, well he did die.
(01:46):
A five man team made it to the South Pole
and started making their way back and just hit some
real freak weather. Um. And the guy that the team
meteorologist was in that five man team and just felt
awful that he'd missed this prediction. And they were just
buffeted by I think negative forty, negative ninety, just ridiculously
(02:06):
cold temperatures, so freak weather, or as they call it,
an Antarctica weather or Tuesday Tuesday. Um. So these guys died. Um.
But there they were found, and among them were found
some some of the find some of the things. This
is a scientific expedition. Obviously, UM some of the notes
they made, UM some the weather notes, the um a
(02:29):
trio of penguin eggs, Emperor penguin eggs. So they this
was kind of the the crown jewel of the stuff
that they accumulated during the scientific expedition. And here's why.
Apparently back in this era, this is nineteen eleven, I
think UM people thought that emperor penguins, because they couldn't fly,
(02:52):
were the most primitive birds on the planet. They hadn't involved,
and people were real keen on proving or disproving Darwin's
new theory about evolution through natural selection. So they figured,
if you go find the eggs of this very primitive bird,
you're going to find the link to dinosaurs and birds.
(03:13):
The reason why is because the Edwardians also believed that
um an animal went through all the stages of evolution
during its gestation. So they figured, hey, take some emperor
penguin eggs, crack them open, you're gonna find a dinosaur. Right.
It didn't work out like that, but they found the
very cute emperor penguin. They did dead inside, of course,
(03:36):
frozen to death. And now that I've seen the March
of the Penguins, I realized just how mean the expedition
kind of was. I didn't see that. Oh man, you
don't mess with an Emperor penguin egg. They go through
a lot to keep those things safe and warm and hatched,
and you don't. You just don't steal three of them, agreed,
(03:57):
Captain Robert Scott did. And you can't did either. I
imagine you can't. But you can't pay someone to take
you as close as you like. And if you were
a jerk, you could contuvably do it. Sneak one out
in your old purse. Yeah, let's let's talk about vacationing
and Antarctica. Did you know you can do that? Well?
I do now. Uh. Here, let's let's talk about the
(04:17):
body of land itself, because it's pretty remarkable. It's uh,
South Pole, Like you said, five percent of the lamb
masses ice, and I think the other point five is
a small putting green, but not mistaken. It's nice, says
Zoysia growing there. Uh. During the winter, they the ice
(04:39):
gets bigger, obviously, making it the fifth largest continent five
point million square miles of largely ice. And that's a
lot of ice. Even though it's shrinking, which we'll talk
about a little bit. Yeah, but naturally during the seasons
that expands and contracts slightly. Sure as ices want to do. Uh.
When it's warm, which is November to fed Bruary, it's
(05:01):
gonna be below freezing almost all the time. In the winter,
it can drop to ninety degrees below fahrenheit And I
got a world record here of one below zero at
the Bolstock station. Very dry, which is awesome because it's
(05:21):
like pristine, powdery snow. Uh, blustery winds. Actually that's not
the good part. Well, the winds are almost constant and
they get up to like two d you ever seen
the thing. Yeah, and by the way, two hundred miles
and hours three twenty one kilometers per hour for everybody else.
And you know what ninety degrees below fahrenheit is minus
(05:43):
sixty eight celsius. Yeah, like to convert for our friends
in other weird places. Yeah, two on that Canada. Uh,
not a lot of people live there. In fact, only
the only people that live there are people that have
set up research stations there. Yeah, it's in some I
guess some of them are manned year round, which is
pretty crazy. That's awesome. Yeah. So I say, if you
(06:06):
go to a research station during um, the time from
what February to November, Uh, you're gonna find maybe fifty
people there. And then when it's bustling from November to
February summertime, summertime, it's gonna be maybe a hundred fifty
people there. But all of these are temporary residents. No
one lives on Antarctica, well, temporary in a living since,
(06:30):
but they're permanent structures, right, They're not living in tents.
The residents are temporaries, not their structures. But there have
been people who were born on Antarctica. Yeah, now that
that was a cool fact of this show. I thought, Yeah,
have you heard of Emilio Marcos de Palma. I have? Indeed,
he you have. He's Antarcticon. He is, He's the first
Antarcticon ever. He was born in January night, and um
(06:55):
it was a bit of a ploy. Actually his father
worked at a research station in Antarctica, and the Argentinian
government found out that this guy's wife was pregnant and
hustled her down to Antarctica to give birth there in
an attempt to lay claim to sovereignty of Antarctica. Yeah,
and that's because no one is generally born there. There's
(07:17):
a lot of nations over the years that have tried
to claim it as her own, including Argentina, Australia, Chile, France,
Great Britain, New Zealand, and Norway. And I'm surprised the
U S hadn't none there. Don't we know that there's
land out there that we don't have our Chile did
the same pull the same stunt as Argentina. Um. I
(07:38):
think six years after Emilio Marcus to Palma was born
and a kid named Juan Pablo Camacho was the second
Antarctican ever born. But you can have as many babies
as you want there, you're not gonna establish sovereignty because
there's a treaty from nineteen fifty nine called the Antarctic
Treaty appropriately enough, and basically it says that Antarctic doesn't
(08:01):
belong to anybody. It's like the oceans. It belongs to
everyone and no one UM, no one can lay claim there.
And because it doesn't belong to anybody, and because it
belongs to everybody, um, it's protected from war and it's
a nuclear free zone. Would you war anyway, No, I
know here's gonna fight in other people or in the
(08:24):
case of the thing, you would be fighting some horrific
shape shifting beast. And by the way, we should probably
point out I think it's still commonly overlooked. Uh, Antarctic
is the only place where you can find penguins, right,
They're not in the Arctic. Okay, I didn't know that
penguins Antarctic. And also, if you you know, I know
(08:47):
you love HP Lovecraft. Here there um, if you are
into Antarctic and you want to be scared out of
your wits by an emperor penguin reed at the Mountains
of Madness, I love Crash. I want to read that one, dude.
That's probably his best one, and it's set entirely in Antarctica.
I think they're making a movie. I think they had before.
Jackson's looking into it. I think that would be good. Yeah,
(09:10):
he's probably the only person who could pull it off,
but he'll he'll probably fail like everybody else. What about
Eugene Levy, You don't think he could do it. He
could be too charming, you know, like it wouldn't exist
in The Cannon or a Christopher Guest movie. I saw
Spinal Tap for the first time the other day, first
time ever ever? Shut up, was like, what do you
(09:31):
mean you haven't seen Spinal Taps? Watched it right, I
loved it. I had no idea what I was missing.
I tweeted to Michael McKeon and said, are you aware
that you were in Spinal Tap? And he tweeted back,
shut up, Wait what he said? Yeah, I favorite it,
So we're on was that personally or that was s y?
So we're on his radar in a small way. Apparently. Wow,
(09:53):
at the very least he thought it was a funny tweet.
That's pretty funny. And I can't believe you never saw that.
I literally watch that movie over fifty times in college,
Like I can recite it almost by heart. I can
totally see that. Yeah, I can see that. I mean,
I'd love, you know, best in Show a lot, so
I knew i'd like Special Tap. Well, that was the
(10:14):
that was the original. It was strange seeing Harry Shear
because I just associate him with The Simpsons almost entirely. Yeah, yeah,
he's great in that too. I can talk about this
stuff all day. Let's get back to Antarctica, or we
should do a Christopher guest final tap um. So if
you want a vacation there, which you can do, you
(10:35):
gotta get there. And in this case, getting there, I
don't know if it's half the fun, but it's half
the challenge because you're not gonna find any I twenties
zooming into Antarctica or any Delta Airline flights landing there, right,
and most of the action, um, when you're traveling to
Antarctica takes place on the Antarctic Peninsula, which is a
(10:56):
sweep of land that juts out toward uh, Southern South America.
Imagine almost all of Antarctica is still very much not
trod upon, you know. Um, yeah, it was just explored
like at the beginning of the last century. Basically, Yeah,
people like why don't I want to go down there?
Took us off right exactly. So like you were saying, like,
(11:16):
it's it's not easy to get to, and you're going
to get to the point that's easiest to get to
from southern South America. So most likely you're going to
take a ship cruise ship probably from Argentina or Chile
and show up, which seems weird that they're that close.
It's very close isn't it. And the weird Yeah, like
you think of like hot temperatures, you do, but then
(11:39):
you're like, oh wait, that's Bolivia I'm thinking of. Chili
is actually right by Antarctica. The first commercial cruise liners,
because you're gonna get there by ship is how you're
gonna get there, and cruise ship is one of the
most popular ways to do that these days. The first
one came in sixty nine and that was the lind
Blade Explorer. Just to give you an idea of the
(12:02):
increase in tourism over the years, in the early nineties
only about nine thousand people per year and just a
couple of years ago in two thousand eight, two thousand
seven to eight forty, which doesn't sound like a lot
of people, but it's a lot for Antarctica, especially when
you consider the proportion that we're wearing Mickey mouse heres
at the time. They're incruising around the glaciers drinking Chilean wine. UH.
(12:26):
There is an UH tourist association, the i A a
t O Internets association of Antarctic tour operators formed in
the early nineties and their mission basically is to keep
everything safe and keep everything above board and ethical on
a environmental uh scale, because they're gonna want it to
be ruined. Antarctica is supposedly pristine, it is. We found
(12:50):
out it isn't though that same uh, the same scott expedition. Also,
I don't know how. I don't want to think hell
but came about came by some uh Emperor penguin skins
and they're still to this day used to um as
a control sample when you're comparing um tainted Emperor penguin
(13:11):
skins today. And they found out that d DTS actually
made its way down there to any So it's not
really pristine cheese that's pretty pristine, right. Well, now that
you have all these ships and people running all over
the place exactly like the ever Steel exactly, uh, November
to March is, like we said this quote unquote summertime,
So that's when tourists are most likely going to be there.
(13:32):
A little bit smaller than ice sheet, which means boats
are going to be able to get around easier because
you've got to be able to navigate through the ice sheets,
and not a whole lot of boats have the kind
of hull that it can withstand bumping into icebergs. No,
this was very alarming to me. There's there are people
who were going on cruises on cruise ships, and these
(13:54):
cruise ships can't withstand in iceberg. The um the Lynn
Blade Explore, Yeah, the first one, Yes, that was also
the first one. That was also the one that sank
in two thousand seven. It was the same exact ship
and ironic, yeah, they changed the name to the MS Explorer,
but it was the same exact ship. The first one,
the first cruise ship to go to Antarctica, was also
(14:15):
I believe the first one to sink in two thousand seven.
It was actually outfitted to withstand in iceberg and it's
still sunk. So then you consider that there's plenty of
cruise lines down there that aren't in any way um
equipped to take an iceberg. Apparently they're very worried that
this is a disaster waiting to happen. Well, let's go
ahead and go there then. Uh. Since two thousand seven,
(14:37):
there have been four ships that have run aground, which
is not a good place to run aground. No. Well,
plus it's not good for Antarctica because it's like, hey,
have you met our refined fuel yet? Yeah, that's true. Uh,
but if if you do run aground and you're in
a in a cruise ship incident, you're gonna be stuck
there for a little while because it's not like any
other place where they can just send out a star
(14:59):
team and all of a sudden you're getting rescued six
hours later. So in two thousand seven, uh, with the
MS Explorer, these these passengers were in lifeboats, it says
for hours. I wonder how long I don't know. I
can imagine a while. And they got picked up by
another cruise ship, right, So it wasn't even a star
team that came to rescue him. No, it was a
Norwegian cruise Lines I think that came and got them.
(15:21):
So they're like thank you. And that same year, actually
uh and Curry from UH what is she? From the
Today Show? She was doing in the morning. She was
doing a piece called Ends of the Earth, and she
went down to Antarctica and she and her crew ended
up getting stuck there for days and they just hung
around the research station, which we'll get to in a second.
(15:42):
Because of freak weather though, right, not like an accident, no,
but the freak weather is apparently fairly common, so you
just call it again weather down there or Tuesday weather. Um.
But apparently if you book an Antarctic vacation, the tour
operator says, don't make any big plan on two weeks
of either side of your trip, because there's no telling
(16:03):
really when you're gonna go down there. They're shooting for
this window, but it might not be that window. That
might put me off, not from a schedule standpoint, but
just from beer, you know. And then I have a
story for you. So, um, this is all in summer,
like you might get stuck there during the summer. If
you're in winter, there's no way for you to get out.
(16:23):
You're absolutely stuck there. Nobody's coming in and you're not
coming out. You have to honker down for the winner. Yeah,
they shut it all down right, I'll travel, yes, um,
And they're I think beginning in nineteen nine, the Russians
built the Novo Lazarre of Skia. That's my Russian. Uh,
they're antarctic base. The Russian Antarctic base was built, and
(16:44):
two years later there was a surgeon there named Leonid
Rogozov and he was stuck there for the winner. No,
he was with some other people, but he was the
only physician, and he just happened to figure out that
he had a cute pancreat titus man and that he
was about to die, and that he had two choices.
He could either allow himself to die, or he could
(17:06):
perform an eppendex to me on himself. I'm sorry he
had appendicitis. He performed an appendect me on himself. When
you're doing this, you can't knock yourself out. So he
had no anesthesia whatsoever, and he stayed awake the whole time.
He would work for four or five minutes as he
was carving. There's a famous picture of him like carving
himself and he just stained with blood. Um and uh,
(17:29):
he'd worked for four or five minutes, rest for about
twenty thirty seconds, try to keep from passing out. And
he finally did it. He successfully performed surgery on himself
and lived to uh two thousand I think is when
he died. And he lived another two minutes. But he
I mean, could you be badder than that? He's pretty bad.
He's up there with and uh who was the white
(17:50):
the white death uh Seemohiah. Yeah, yeah, I'd like to
see those guys sit down and have a tough off
like an arm wrestling competition. So any way, you're stuck
there in the winter for sure, but you can frequently
get stuck there in the summer too, which hey, you
know it's only like fIF theme below. In the summer,
you're golden. Uh. Sightseeing cruises probably what the most popular
(18:15):
thing to do, like the Alaskan cruise. They'll they'll run
you through, uh, through the Kodak Gap, which did you
look at the pictures of this place? Oh my gosh.
The La Mayre Channel is the official name between the
Booth Island Mountains and the Arctic Peninsula peninsula. But they
call it that obviously because they should call it the
(18:35):
Digital Mpeg Gap now, I guess. But it's extremely photogenic.
It's it's where you see like those just like ice
blue cave ice caves that you can like go through
when your boat and stuff like that. I guess, not
caves but tunnels. It's pretty amazing. And I hope you
don't strike either side exactly. So they're gonna take you
(18:56):
on these cruises. They're gonna get you close. Uh. Some
of these tours will take you actually onto land from
a smaller boat or a helicopter for a little while,
but you're not going to be spending a whole lot
of time on land if you're doing one of the
cruise ships. Right there are there are some um expeditions
you can undertake, Like, um, there's something you can cross
country skihole and you can't along the way. It's like
(19:20):
a two week tour. I think, Yeah, I'll bet it's
pretty cool too, but I think you have to be
um kind of strong of mind, probably get you'll go nuts. Yeah,
I would imagine, Well, it depends. I mean, I'm sure
there are conditions to where it's like quote unquote warm
and just lovely in blue, but there's also going to
be the white outs where you can't see your hand
(19:42):
in front of your face and the wind is like
blowing your headgear off, and yeah that's no good. Well,
plus also, I think plenty of it's barren. It's just
the same view three and sixty degrees, which has to
drive you a little nutty too. It's lovely though. Um.
You can also, if you're insane already, run a marathon
in Antarctica. I'm gonna tell my friend James about this.
(20:05):
He's a trail runner and does like these trail marathons
and these crazy things. And he's I think he's doing
one in Ireland soon. So he likes to travel. I'm
gonna turn him onto this. All he needs is about
sixteen grand and he can join in the Adventure Network
International full or half marathon. I would imagine it's UM
fifteen five for the half marathon and then sixteen grand
(20:27):
for the full marathon. UM. But you're running in the
interior of Antarctica UM about minus twenty degrees ferret height,
and you're going to have to deal with the temperature,
the wind, chances in elevation, and b penguins trying to
trip you because they got money on somebody else. And
let's be honest, running a marathon, let's not forget that
(20:49):
that's challenging in July. It keeps me at home right there.
What I want to know what they run in though?
Shoe wise, Yeah, I wonder, you know, I wonder if
if it's I mean, obviously are not wearing snowshoes or
anything like that, or spikes. I guess there's areas where
just heavy tread would work. I would think, So there's
gotta be or else. What are you gonna do? You
(21:09):
can't run a marathon and snowshoes, so it's ridiculous. Uh
So once you're there, you want to pass a little time,
You want to see some things that are awesome. Besides
the Kodak gap. Uh you can go check out the
the mountain there and you can even climb it and
it's really not I didn't get a hide on that,
did you. No? But it's a four mile climb, which
(21:32):
isn't that much. No, I mean it's not. It's nothing
to sneeze at. But it's no Everest, But I imagine
there's probably a lot of ice to it, ice climbing
and as well as just rock climbing. Mount Vincent is
what we're talking about. What did I say? Vincent vin
Sun not Vincent. Okay, it's the son of Vincent. Got
(21:52):
you sorry about that? You can go get your picture
made in a bikini in front of the little South
Pole marker at the uh Amonson Scott South Pole Station.
It's very famous American research center at the South Pole.
And they had a little candy cane pole with a
little silver ball on top of it. And I've seen
a lot of pictures of ladies and bikinis taking their
(22:13):
picture there. So the Americans never said this is our land,
but they're the ones who built the research station like
virtually on top of the South Pole. Um and Amonson Scott.
That's named after the two guys who made it to
the South Pole, including Robert Scott and Roald Amerson. When
was this the early nine It was a nineteen eleven
and nineteen twelve, which makes it seem like um Amonson
(22:36):
beat the tar out of Scott, but it was really
four weeks this summer in January. Yeah, and when you go,
you're going to find that they're very friendly people at
this facility, that there are tours already set up. It's
kind of a routine thing to like go to, you know,
the American South Pole Station because I mean, if you
like the George, you're gonna love Antarctica. But there's not
(22:57):
that much to do, really, no, there really is. You
check out the there's a lot of wildlife. Well, yes,
and apparently one of the cool things about Emperor penguins
and penguins in general is they are not at all
afraid of humans. That's because we've never killed them with
reckless abandon I know, or at least as far as
they know. And apparently they'll just ignore us and um,
(23:18):
hang out with us and post for pictures. Yeah, they'll
do close ups, but uh, it's just about any naturalist
or biologists will tell you just hanging around an animal
and watching it like some slack jawgoon is going to
produce stress in the animal, most likely because the animal,
even though it's not scared of you as a predator,
(23:39):
it doesn't know what you're going to do, or what
you're doing or what you want. And um, you just
probably should keep that in mine when you're observing penguins.
Don't chase the penguins. And when I said a lot
of wildlife, let me clear that up. It's not like
Yosemite National Park wildlife. But it is a very hospitable
place for certain kinds of animals, especially animals that live
(24:02):
in the water, because there's just tons of protein. You
got whales, you got penguins, you got polar bears, and
you have to see marks of the penguins. I don't know,
you know, it was just one of those movies they
just got by me. It is I think I won
an oscar. Yeah sure, what Morgan Freeman, Yeah, buddy, yeah, Um,
but yeah, it's a really great movie. Have you ever
been to the aquariums penguin exhibit? Uh? Yes, you know
(24:26):
you can stick your head up that you can crawl
into the tunnel and you stick your head up into
a clear plexi hole for your head basically, and the
penguins are right there right in front of your face, like,
what are you doing? Yeah, you're stressing me out, So
chuck um. The water is generally or the sea is
(24:47):
good for the wildlife around it because they've adapted to it.
If you're one of those polar bear guys, though you
can't considerably jump in during the winter, you should do
so at your own risk. Oh that the humans that
do that stuff, because the water gets down to about
thirty two degrees fahret height there, I should say, up
to thirty two degrees fahrenheight, and you're going to freeze
(25:09):
because that's zero celsius um. It's very very dangerous. And
if you do that and you hurt yourself, you're gonna
find yourself on a long, arduous journey back to Chili
or Argentina um at your own expense. Yeah, I mean,
there's a little bit of medical help at these stations,
and maybe a passing cruise ship will have the good
(25:29):
doctor from the love Boat on board, but um, you're
not gonna be able to get serious medical attention and
you're you could be in trouble unless you get either
too sweet or you're gonna be performing self surgery right
exactly d D style. So how much does this kind
of run you? Uh? I don't know, do you know?
I don't know. I've heard you can expect to spend
(25:53):
upwards of ten grand I mean the marathon was sixteen grand.
I mean getting there's gonna be pricey, period. Sure, but
like a really probably probably like um full on great
state room kind of cruised down there, including airfare to
South America's gonna run you ten grand or probably last.
I'm sure you can get deals for less, but you
(26:15):
need to have a little bit of cash to make
it down to Antarctic. It's not a poor man's vacation.
You know, that's what you're saying. Environmental safety concerns, Josh,
we talked about obviously, would you say, was there now?
D D T. Yeah, they've on traces of it. They
found it in penguins cheese. Uh. In April two thousand nine,
there was a joint session of the Antarctic Treaty Panel
(26:37):
and the Arctic Council, and they met in Baltimore, Maryland,
which I'm sure that's nice in April, but for some
reason I thought they would say, like, let's go to
Phoenix in July and hold our meeting and baw. But
they had, you know, a lot on the agenda, including
global warming talks, shipping routes, stuff like that. But they
did talk about tourism, and not incidentally or coincidentally, around
(27:02):
that same time, a twenty five mile ice shelf broke
off shattered into the sea, which kind of was like
symbolic of hey, we really need to talk about tourism.
That's huge. And the the I guess the tourism and
the loss of ice has this sort of self reinforcing
thing going on. Because you lose ice, you actually get
(27:25):
more tourism, which is ostensibly responsible for even further climate
change in the area. And so you lose more ice
and you get even more tourism. And the reason why
is because you lose twenty five mile piece of ice,
cruise ships go, oh, we can go in here. Now
we have a passage exactly, so they're they're coming up with. UM,
I guess an idea of how they can. UM, they
(27:48):
want to ban the construction of any kind of hotels
or anything like that, any permanent, not even accommodations. No,
not even although that would probably no, that would be permanent.
It down there, I'm sure you can't say it would be.
It wouldn't be permanent. But because right, UM, you want
they need they want to do a number a limitation
(28:09):
to the number of ships that can come in every year. UM,
restrictions on how close ships can come to shore. Yeah,
like are you gonna drop people off here at the
shore line? Yeah, just to see those little penguins. But
here's the problem. They can't just say like, Okay, we're
gonna have fifty ships a year or twenty or whatever. Uh,
(28:31):
if you touch the penguins, you'll be executed by the
International Criminal Court at the Hague. UM. They can't say
these things because no one has any sovereign right to
issue any kind of decree over Antarctic. So what can
they do to establish guidelines and recommend that signatory countries
and travel agencies follow them and suggest to highly suggest that.
(28:52):
But right now there's only forty seven signatory countries on
the Antarctic Treaty. Yeah, I wonder who's on there. I
was gonna look that up, but I didn't get a chance. Uh.
And the reason why they don't ban people outright, not
only can they not, but one of the most important
parts of that the treaty is that it does allow
freedom of access. They're like, you know what, you can
(29:14):
come here. Yeah, they can't stop anybody from coming there.
And I feel like I feel like they want to
allow it just to a degree. Sure I might be
wrong there, but well, I'm sure that the tour operators
associations like, I don't know, we wanna tread lightly here exactly. UM.
And then speaking of getting stuck in Antarctica, one last
(29:34):
thing you know about this UM. A couple of years
ago they a case of eleven bottles of Scotch McKinley Scotch,
which isn't made any longer and was originally produced in
eight or ninety seven and was part of the um
Ernest Shackleton Nimrod expedition of nineteen o seven, was left
(29:56):
beneath his hut and forgotten for like a hundred years,
and they found it in two thousand and six when
do we talk about this on the webcast, the good
old webcast, and they got it out of there. Remember
you and I were like, what's going to happen to this?
Because that treaty like you're Antarctica is there for scientific expedition.
You're supposedly not supposed to touch anything that has any
(30:16):
sort of historical or scientific significance. It's not supposed to
come out. So they're like, you can't really remove this,
we have to drink it down there. Well, it turns
out that UM Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand now
has this scotch and it's exhibit. I can't remember. Did
they sample it? Someone didn't they No one will probably
(30:36):
ever taste the scotch. Instead, they've allowed some scotch makers
to UM to take samples and see if they can
recreate it because no one has the original recipe anymore's
taken it up. That's what I'm thinking too, But surely
some rich guy was like, get me that scotch. Here's
as much money as you need. And it didn't go
into the hands of some rich scotch lover. It went
(30:58):
to a relatively unknown own museum in New Zealand. Which
is pretty cool. I bet the night guard. I bet
there's some Kiwi security guard that's taken the tiniest of
nips and then filled it back up with like t
They'll never know. It's like the mini bar. So you
got anything else? I don't. So that concludes our episode
on alcoholism among night watchmen. And if you want to
(31:21):
learn more about that or Antarctica, you want to type
in A N T A R C T I C
A in the handy search bar at how stuffworks dot com,
which means it's time for a listening to mail. Josh,
I'm gonna call this UH exchange email exchange because I'm
actually gonna read my response to UH sort of an
upset Canadian. This is about daylight saving, which, by the way,
(31:45):
we must spoke. Go ahead and say that we're getting
beat up by the the people south of the equator.
When we said that they spring back and fall forward,
that it's not so. They spring forward and fall back.
It's just at opposite times as us. No, I'm saying, no,
(32:07):
they springboard, they fall back, but their spring is opposite
of our spring. You haven't seen that the Facebook and
emails they've been killing their spring Okay, I got to
you know what I'm saying. It was very very North
hemispheres centric, and so I need to explain myself here
(32:28):
because I got an email from Marie from Canada and
she was a little man at me. Just finished listening
to the podcast on daylight saving time. You mentioned that
in the civilized world time makes no difference and only
the rising and setting in the sun is really important.
I wanted to offer you a different perspective on that.
I live in white Horse, Yukon, Canada, and the sun
is currently rising at set and that's a whole five
(32:52):
hours and fifty seven minutes of light in the dead
of winter. I assure you that we are a fully
functioning part of the civilized world here and setting the
time is very important to us. We do observe daylight
saving time in the Yukon and in the summer month
when we get are on average eighteen hours of daylight.
Having the clocks change makes a huge difference in my
daily life after the long dark. It's relief that the
(33:13):
clocks now allow for a little more vitaminded, I think
you I just found your comments callous. Perhaps you should
rely less on these skeptic pages, as it seems to
put you in a sour mood. St Yeah, please remember
that you have a very wide range of listeners and
we are not savages out in the waste lands. We're
intelligent people who enjoy learning and see you and your
(33:36):
colleagues is valuable and often entertaining source of information. She's
talking to you right, because it sounds like one of
your quotes. It was one of mine. So I wrote
Marie back, and I was like, Marie, I you either
misunderstood or I didn't get it across. Clearly, I wasn't
saying that at all. What I'm saying is the civilized
world is the The only reason clocks matter to me
(34:00):
is because Man invented clocks and time quote unquote to
get on schedule in a commerce way, so businesses could
be open and you could reference schedules and work schedules
and and shopping and things like that. If man had
never invented a clock, it wouldn't change anything about the
rising and setting of the sun. We would just operate
(34:22):
on the rising in the setting of the sun. It's
like I'm watching you for a future little so it
very much matters. Obviously in the civilized world, because that's
the only place at time matters. I imagine in third
world countries where they don't have clocks, they just operate
with the rising in the setting of the sun, like
we did before we invented clocks. Does that make sense? Sure?
(34:47):
I certainly wasn't trying to say that people of Canada
were civilized people of Canada. Attention Chuck Bryant means you
no harm. He's a very nice guy. None can anthem.
But he is never out to hurt anybody's feelings. Even
when he does, it's accidental. Please accept his apologies. So
either misspoke or was misunderstood, or something got garbled up,
(35:08):
but sortainry so you have it. Thank you to all
of our friends in Canada for listening. Man. I gotta
tell you they take off easily, especially if you call
their thanksgiving pig thanksgiving. Their sensitive people they do not
like that. But it's because Americans are arrogant, and they're like,
you know what, Yeah, but they don't necessarily pick up
(35:28):
on when we're poking fun at our own arrogance, which
is surprising because they gave us Dan at Kroy. Yeah,
the whittier meant a lot so, uh, if you have
a great story about Dana Kroyd, we want to hear
about it. Okay, heck yeah. You can tweet to us
at s y s K podcast. You can go on
(35:49):
to Facebook and let us know about it at Facebook
dot com slash stuff you Should Know, and you can
send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, is it how stuff works dot com. To
learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
(36:10):
in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how
Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today
on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
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