South Pole 2. Antarctic Research and Exploration: A Historical Backdrop

Join host Clark Marchese in this enlightening episode of "South Pole," the podcast that delves deep into the fascinating history and enduring mysteries of Antarctica. In today’s show, we explore the extensive and multifaceted history of the world’s coldest continent. Clark is joined by Dr. Ursula Rack, a distinguished polar historian from the University of Canterbury, who shares intriguing stories from her research on Antarctic expeditions. From the earliest Indigenous connections to the heroic age of exploration and the scientific endeavors that followed, this episode uncovers the layers of human interaction with Antarctica. Dr. Rack also discusses her personal experiences visiting the continent and the historical impact of expeditions on global trade, science, and geopolitics. Tune in for a captivating history lesson that sets the stage for future episodes on this extraordinary land of ice.

Episode Guest: Dr. Ursula Rack

More information about Dr. Ursula Rack here

Access Dr. Ursula Rack’s website

Connect with Dr. Ursula Rack via email

Browse Dr. Ursula Rack’s publications on Research Gate

Episode Transcript  and more information on the Pine Forest Media Website

Follow Pine Forest Media on Instagram @pineforestmedia

Hosted, produced, written, and edited by Clark Marchese 

Cover art and PFM logo by Laurel Wong. 

Theme music by Nela Ruiz

Transcript

[00:00:09.540] - Clark

Hello, and welcome to South Pole, the podcast that explores everything Antarctica. I am your host, Clark Marchese, and today we are going back in time for a history lesson of the world's coldest continent. A historical backdrop of Antarctica is what you're going to be getting today. We are going to be talking about a lot of things, and we're also going to be leaving a lot of things out. We might assume that the history of Antarctica could be covered in one episode. I mean, people have never settled there. How much human history could there be? Well, as we've learned from the last episode, human connections to Antarctica stretch far beyond its icy expanse. So there's actually a lot that we could talk about. We could talk about specific expeditions, We could talk about Indigenous Connections, female explorers. We could talk about the earliest scientific projects or whaling and its importance to global trade in the 1800s. We could talk all about Antarctica and the Cold War, and there's even a big colonial dimension to it as well. So of course, we can't get into all of that today in a way that would do each topic justice.

[00:01:38.390] - Clark

Therefore, this episode is meant to serve a couple of purposes. First, to show us just how vast the field of Antartic history is. Second, to give us a broad but important context to keep in mind during the episodes that follow. And third, to do some storytelling. The expert that we're speaking to today specializes, among many things, in Antartic Exploration. We're going to hear a couple stories about the expeditions that she has researched. So this is a pretty fun episode. Now, this expert is named Dr Ursula Rack, and Dr Rack is a polar historian with an interest in social and environmental history. She teaches at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and she has quite an extensive list of publications on the subject. I'm very glad that she is here to speak with us today. Without further ado, let's get started. All right, Dr. Rack, welcome to the show. Maybe first I'll just ask you to introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your research Thank you for having me.

[00:02:47.710] - Dr. Ursula Rack

My name is Ursula Rack. I'm originally from Austria, but I live with my husband now in New Zealand. Since I have been a child, I was interested how other people lived, especially in the past. History was an obvious choice for me to study over the time. My research took several U-turns, so to speak. It got very precise then in 2003 when I started my PhD on Antarctica and Arctic, so polar. My PhD was about the social conditions on German and Austro-Hungarian polar expeditions between 1868 and 1939. It's a very long and not catchy title, but it describes what I did. But I also do a lot of biographical studies, biographies and stuff like this, and of course, major events, anniversaries and stuff like that.

[00:03:39.520] - Clark

Have you ever gone down to Antarctica to research for any of your biographies or historical publications?

[00:03:45.350] - Dr. Ursula Rack

I have not been down for the research, but I have been down six times so far. The first opportunity was 2014, so 10 years ago. I could go down as tutor on Scott base with 16 PECAS students. PECAS is Postgraduate Certificate of Antarctic Studies. It's a 14-week summer course at the University of Canterbury at Gateway, Antarctica. When I was down there, really living in the tent and doing my water and taking every precaution not to get frostbite and so on and so forth. Then I got more and more into the diaries of the expedition as the early one. When you get cold, different when you go skiing, but when you really get cold and you sleep and so on, or you have really problems to do the simplest things like dressing, what takes 20 to 30 minutes till you are completely dressed. That brought me closer to my study objects, the expeditioners, and their conditions they lived through. The other one was at the last four times. I was then in lecture and the expedition staff of expedition cruise ships along the Antartic Peninsula, so the completely other of the Antartic. This is a completely different experience.

[00:05:03.610] - Dr. Ursula Rack

But I was lucky enough to see a lot of hats I wrote about or read about. I saw the hat where Jacky Ronne stayed for a year over wintering and stuff like this. It brings you closer to the people you try to find more information and bring new facts out of them. This is what the Antartic did for me.

[00:05:29.330] - Clark

That last person, Dr. Rack, just mentioned Jackie Ron. She's a famous female, Antartic Explorer, and I wanted to talk to Dr. Rack about her, but we just ran out of time. So if you're interested, make sure you're following the show because I think Jackie Ron is going to be having an episode of her own down the line. Okay, so the history of Antarctica. There may not be an easy answer to this question, and that's okay. We'll just go down whatever pathways it takes us. But here we go. When did the history of Antarctica and Antarctica exploration begin?

[00:06:01.750] - Dr. Ursula Rack

This is a very tricky question because we cannot really pinpoint it to a certain date. Because Maori, people, indigenous people here in New Zealand, and maybe also people from Teva del Fuego, South America, maybe they have been in the area already long before the Europeans. Therefore, I cannot say really. I'm not sure if they wanted to explore it, but they wanted maybe explore new ways to live or new areas to live. I think that was the motivation from some. The real exploring came with the 17th century when the Enlightenment started to really want to go to the bottom of things. They wanted to explain the whole world, how it functions when we think about Darwin. It was the experience people had. Therefore, when Cook then finally discovered the Antartic, then It was, of course, a big breakthrough.

[00:07:03.530] - Clark

Cook, James Cook. He was an Englishman who was credited by many with discovering Antarctica. He did sail around it from 1772 to 1775. Grave, and he did stop on a couple of islands, including South Georgia, which is an Antarctica Island. However, his discovery is contested because he did not set foot on the continent itself. But in any case, his journey was very influential and helpful for future explorations.

[00:07:31.400] - Dr. Ursula Rack

At first came the economy in the Antarctica because it first started sealing and whaling. But the exploration for science came then in the 19th and early 20th century, so the systematic exploration. There was also a little bit of colonial thinking behind it from some countries because it was the time also to fill the wide gaps in the maps, and it was also to get more ground, so to speak. One of the biggest colony-grabbing countries, so to speak, was Britain. But the thing is the colonial thinking behind it and the economy, what was attached to it, I think was very much a driving factor. Also in the mid-19th century, the ships got faster and could go other routes than the usual they were known. So they had to explore also the Southern Ocean with the currents and where the wind is coming from and so on. This was something what came then more and more in oceanography and magnetism and weather data and stuff like that. That goes all a little bit hand in hand. The exploring from science, what I'm very much focused on, started then, especially in the late 19th century. In the 1890s, when the first expedition went down there for science reasons and not for whaling reasons or sealing reasons

[00:09:05.280] - Dr. Ursula Rack

You cannot say only one thing was it.

[00:09:09.080] - Clark

Okay, so a lot of people are interacting with Antarctica from a lot of different places for a lot of different reasons since a long time ago. We were just able to give a structure of a timeline. I'm curious, do historians use any specific dates or terms to differentiate historical periods or waves when it comes to Antarctica?

[00:09:29.980] - Dr. Ursula Rack

We do. But this is also it depends what activity you are looking at. At first, it was the Terra australis incognita to find what happened, and finally in the 1770s. Sealing was always mixed with whaling. Sealing is almost a stepchild of whaling. When they had not enough whales, they went to Seals. But sailing started already in the 7080s in the South Atlantic Islands. Also in the 1820s, '70s, there were big ceiling hunting expeditions down there. The whaling started really commercially reliable in the 1870s because then the hapungan was invented over the time where then faster boats came the factory ships then in the 1920s and so on. And many say the whaling stopped in 1942. That's not right because we have still countries that do whaling. So it goes till the day and they are still countries that do sealing. Therefore, we cannot say that it stopped and closed the door from this moment on. The heroic era is very often numbered with 1893 with the Jason expedition along the Andalarctic Peninsula. Even historians fight, was it then the end in 1917 when Shackleton finally came back from his endurance expedition, or was it 1922?

[00:11:00.090] - Dr. Ursula Rack

Who when he died in South Georgia. I'm the 1917 person, others maybe are the 1922 person. Then there's always said there was the interval period or mechanical era, especially after World War I, maybe because the airplanes came into place. Therefore, the mechanical era, they always say 1918 to 1945, because then the permanent station time from the 1950s to the present day. Then some say we have even an era of the Aldactic Treaty, and some say the scientific era started 1959 after the international geophysical year. I say the scientific era started already, and we go for the systematic science in the heroic era and goes till today. There are fights. I teach sometimes my students there is a list, but only when they want to find something in a certain time frame. But it's very hard to say there was the whaling and then was nothing. Those were hand in hand. But there are waves to where we say, Okay, this is the heroic era, and I am researching the heroic era, for example.

[00:12:13.010] - Clark

Okay, so there was a lot of information there. This episode is meant to be a historical backdrop to keep in mind as the series continues. When we do an episode about a Western Explorer or expedition, you can think, Okay, heroic era. When we talk about Antarctica's role in the World Wars, we can think, Okay, mechanical era. I also heard the words Terra australis incognita, which means unknown Southern land. This is the earliest era when Antarctica only really existed as an abstract concept. We'll be talking about this era when we do an episode about early Indigenous connections, for example, some stretching as early as the seventh century. Of course, the vast majority of the episodes we will have, you would classify in the scientific era, which we are able cover in real-time. So these waves, if that's even the right word, it seems like a lot of them have overlapped and existed concurrently. Perhaps rather than historical periods, perhaps historical themes is a better way to understand how we look at this. But my question is, what or which waves or themes would you say we are in now? Would it be scientific or do we still see some of the other themes you mentioned continuing on till today?

[00:13:26.510] - Dr. Ursula Rack

Yeah, there's always a economic reason as well that science is done in the Andalctic. Also, science can become very political. We saw this in Operation Tabarine, for example. It was the era from 1944 when they started the permanent placing the English on the Andalctic Peninsula that had to do with the claims from Chile and Argentina. That was Chileopolitical. That was really to manifest this is British territory and show that Chile and the Argentinian, we don't go away. But the people that went down there did science and a ground-breaking science. And Oparishy Taberine is the route where the British Andartic survey is filled on to the day. So this is the one thing. The other thing, to your question, I think we are in the era of scientific era, but also in the era of the Antartic Treaty, because since 1959, we live by the Antartic Treaty. So you use the Antartic for peaceful purposes and not for war exercises and stuff like this. But it is always a very multi-layered situation there. But most of the people, they go down through the Andalctic programs nowadays, they have the science in mind. Therefore, I would say we live in the Antartic Treaty of Science era.

[00:14:56.470] - Clark

I'm hearing it hinted a bit that there are mixed motives with a lot of Antartic projects. So I'm curious about that, but in a general sense, too, because I know this is a focal point of your work as a historian. What economic, political, or social drivers would prompt a country to invest in an Antartic expedition or project?

[00:15:16.620] - Dr. Ursula Rack

When they started, especially in the heroic era, for example, from the first German Antartic expedition, Alma Eric von Plögalski, 1901 to 1903, this was pure scientific. The magnetism, the temperatures, the whole mechanisms in geology and ice and snow and ocean, that was the driving force, and how the Antartic weather or climate influenced the rest of the world. Who found this out very quickly was Georg von Neumeyer. He was in Australia for a time and found out that the closeness of the Antartic had really an influence on the Australian weather. He really pushed the scientific research in Antarctica forward from the 1870s on. The other one, for example, the British Expedition under Scott at the same time, what was a collaboration, by the way, that was not only scientifically driven, that was also geopolitically because that was the biggest extent of the British Empire at the time. Because Cook discovered the Antarctica, they thought, We have to go to the South Pole because then the Antartic is all ours. That was There's a very big thinking behind it. But many, like from the Royal Society, but also people from the Royal Geographical Society, were also very much interested in the science combined with the economic interests with the shipping routes.

[00:16:45.120] - Dr. Ursula Rack

That is a little bit different. For example, then there was the French expedition at the same time, and they wanted to find the Swedish expedition, what was down there on the Nordenschild. The Nordenschild expedition was placed on the Antartic Peninsula. This expedition was purely science because they had never the drive to go to the South Pole and claim parts of the Antartic because Sweden was not even supporting this expedition. It was purely from the scientists. Then there was a French expedition who should find the Nordenschild expedition because there's a long story attached to it. That was a middle thing between science and adventure. We have all sorts of drivers on each expedition. We cannot say this is purely this or this is purely that. It was always a little bit a combination.

[00:17:42.400] - Clark

I appreciate this nuance that you bring to all of it because I think it will enhance our understanding of how interconnected we are with the continent even today. I am curious about one thing you said, though, which has to do with the shipping routes. In my understanding, shipping routes are ideal when they are most efficient, the shortest distance between two places is a straight line type of thing. But Antarctica seems to be a bit out of the way. Why were they needing access to shipping routes down there?

[00:18:10.000] - Dr. Ursula Rack

Because the ships got faster, they had more specific timetables to deliver goods and produce, but also people. Therefore, it got quite crowded on the usual traffic routes, and so they had to find new ways. Also, that is not only the Antartic, it is the Southern Ocean. The Southern Ocean was also very important to bring settlers to their destinations, to bring the goods back from the settlements, like when it was in South America, to bring back the silver and the guano and all these fertilizers and also the timber and all these things. Because the industrial revolution, what was in full swing, they needed more and more from the resources. That means more and more ships had to go faster, faster ways. And so that you're not collied, you'll try to find your own route. Therefore, they were very much interested in the ocean and in the current of oceans and in the weather conditions. When there were still the sailing boats, it was much more important where the wind is coming from than when they had then later the machinery. But for the machinery, for the motors, for the engines, they needed the exact temperature temperature of the water because it had an influence how the engine worked.

[00:19:34.340] - Dr. Ursula Rack

But also, when can I expect an iceberg? Or when do I have to think that there's so much ice that I cannot go through? So this were also questions then where the business people had an interest. Therefore, business people and companies, very often, were big fundraisers or financing people for the expeditions because they got something out of it. Very funny thing is, for example, some sparkling wine companies gave a lot of sparkling wine to the ships, and then they could make advertisements that this wine is also drunk in the United States. They had a little table and there was a certain champagne on the table, and that was a promotion photo. There were some quirky funny things as well attached with.

[00:20:26.400] - Clark

That's hilarious marketing. I feel like it's something Emily in Paris would come up But another thing I'm curious about is a lot of these expeditions you've mentioned, I've heard so far, Swedish, French, of course, British, also Australian. It seems like at some point these were all national projects, and at times there was even some nationalism involved. And nowadays, when I speak to scientists about research in Antarctica, the space seems to be very international and collaborative. So my question is, how did we get from one to the other?

[00:20:54.520] - Dr. Ursula Rack

Yeah, the first international collaboration in the polar research as such was in the first international Pole a year, 1882, 1883. And there was also Georg von Neumeyer, and there were only two expeditions in the Antarctic or in the Sub-Antarctic. And Georg von Neumeyer pushed on and pushed on with his idea until he found collaboration in the British, namely in the Royal Geographical Society and Clemens from Markham. Clemens Markham was one who pushed expeditions because of the national driver. He even said, once, Shall we share the exploration with the people from Humboldt, Germany? But then he said, It will benefit both countries. That was his approach to convince also the British people, Okay, we should work together. Then there was the first really international collaboration in the Antarctic between 1901 to 1905. There were the British Scott Expedition, there were the German There was the German Dregalski Expedition, there was the Swedish Nordenschild Expedition, there was the French Expedition with the Français, with Jacquot. Then we have William Spears-Bruce, a Scottish man who went to Lorry Island and build a meteorological station. Clemens-mackham gave out a program where all the five expeditions tried to do the same measurements at the same time.

[00:22:27.360] - Dr. Ursula Rack

The data was so much that people worked on this data even 20 years later. So vast was the data collection. This was the first time. Then there was the second international polar year that was in 1932, 1933. Economic landscape collapsed completely and so on. So there was more in the Arctic. But people started to research here the Southern Ocean, especially here in New Zealand. Then there was after the war in 1957 to 1958, the International Geophysical Year. That was the point of no return, so to speak. From that moment on, international collaboration was the key to do research in the Antartic, because each country realized the technological advancements are so big with satellites and all that stuff that no country can do it by its own. That brought the a whole international collaboration into gear. From that moment on, we work with National Antartic programs, but on an international base. My husband, for example, he's a glaciologist and remote sensing specialist. He works with the British, he works with the Germans, he works with the Canadians, he works with South Africans, with Australians, you name it. He cannot do his research only with one country.

[00:23:58.740] - Dr. Ursula Rack

Since we have then also the Autáctic Treaty from that moment on, from 1959, we agreed with signing the Autáctic Treaty that we share the data. When one country finds the data, it has to be shared with the other countries as well. Nobody can hold the data for itself anymore. We took out also a little bit more from the nationalistic approaches, but it's still going on. There's a very complex issues with the claims not active and the antic treaty.

[00:24:33.570] - Clark

Well, that's nice to hear. Although I do want to ask because one thing I know about history is that we study the past to understand the present. Do we still see any of the national inclinations lingering or reflected in the international interactions with Antarctica today?

[00:24:50.520] - Dr. Ursula Rack

I think the most nationalistic feeling is on national base. When you are at Scott base, then you are in New Zealand, and then you are at McMurder, then you are in America and when you are at the Korean base, then you are in Korea, so to speak. International scientists live there as well. But from the food, from the habits, from the commemoration days and things like this, then you have a little bit more national, I wouldn't say nationalistic, but national flair. This is the first thing. The other thing is, of course, that Chile and Argentina see their territory down to the South Pole with their claim, what is not active. But the thinking that this is Argentinian or Chilean or British territory, that is sometimes very sensitive. To name only one thing, in 2012, a big part of the Antartic Peninsula was named Queen Elizabeth II land, what brought diplomatic problems between Argentina and Britain. That was a very, very Yeah, nail-biting moment. We have this still going on. When New Zealand took its claim on the Ross dependency in 1923, it was not that the New Zealanders really wanted this That was because they are a domain from England.

[00:26:18.600] - Dr. Ursula Rack

So the British said, Please claim for us this part of the continent. And then the Australian said, 10 years later, then we take the rest of it and make it the Australian Autáctic Territory. They even name it the Australian Territory. Autáctic is a part of the Australian Territory. So the language sometimes can be quite confusing. But you have not the feeling there is a border because half an hour over the hill is McMurdo. We walk to McMurdo, and the McMurdo people come to Scott base, and there is no problem. Or when in Russia, when the Iron curtain fell in In 89, suddenly, they could not supply their stations anymore. The Germans, they were living close by. They brought them fuel and food and things like this, only that they could keep going because they could also not go home at the point. So national borders are very quickly blurred because in the Antarctica, you rely on each other.

[00:27:23.170] - Clark

Yeah, that notion of in the Antarctica, you rely on each other, that keeps coming up. Last week, our guest spoke about the strong social bonding that happens on an expedition to Antarctica. But also she spoke about how all of us around the world need to rely on each other to be good environmental stewards, both for the sake of Antarctica and by extension, the sake of ourselves. Now that we have a general historical backdrop, I want to get into some of the specifics of your research. Maybe we'll start by asking you if you have a favorite explorer or expedition, and maybe we can do the who, what, when, where, why of it all.

[00:27:58.280] - Dr. Ursula Rack

I like the Nordenschild expedition very much, the Swedish one, because they did a lot of science under very difficult circumstances because they lost their ship. Two parties had to survive. There was a group, they were set up on Hope Bay Because there were three men, they should go over the ice to tell the people on the main base on Snow Hill Island that the ship has to find another way to pick them up again. They overwintered there, they did their program and so on, and they were waiting to get picked up, but they did not come. The ship did not come. The problem was now that the three men could not go to Snow Hill Island because the ice changed and they could not go over it. They had to prepare for an overwintering for seven months with nothing, only what their environment did. But they did still geological samples, and they did biological samples, and they charting with the little instruments they had. The ship was trying to get the way to Snow Hill Island and was trapped in the ice, started to leak, and within 20 minutes, the ship was gone. In 22 men suddenly had to survive.

[00:29:17.490] - Dr. Ursula Rack

Luckily, the captain, Captain Aldo Larson, knew the area from the Jason expedition he did, the whaling expedition he did some years earlier there. So he knew there is an island and 20 kilometers where the ship sank. He let grow the people with what they could save on the ice flow, rode 20 kilometers back and forwards to this island, built a stone hut. He knew there was water. There are millions of penguins and sheiks and so on, so he could provide for the people, and they survived, even when they had not even enough sleeping bags. Then they found each other in a very difficult way, and It was so much luck behind it as well. To make it short, the people from Hope Bay went then in spring to Snow Hill Island and told them, The ship obviously did not come. So they sent a relief ship down to Snow Hill Island. Then they found the three people from Hope Bay and the six people from the station. In that moment, when they wanted to go away, Carl Anton Lassen rode 125 kilometers to Snow Hill Island and came around the corner before the ship left and said, We have a lot of people also on Poland Island.

[00:30:40.510] - Dr. Ursula Rack

Even when they lost some of their results with their sinking ship and so on. But still, they could save so much that their scientific report is quite extensive. This is what I like at this expedition. I think this story has to be told also much, much more. This is one of my favorite expeditions when it comes to science, but also drama.

[00:31:07.540] - Clark

Wow, that is quite the story. I can only imagine how many hours of archival work and reading personal accounts and correspondence that you'd have to do to find all of this out. I'm curious, has there ever been an excerpt or a personal recounting of events that you've come across in your research that really sticks out in your mind?

[00:31:26.020] - Dr. Ursula Rack

Yeah, that is the Felchner Expedition. This expedition It was the second German expedition in 1911, 1912. Its leader was Wilhelm Felchner. This expedition would, if you make a movie out of it, nobody would believe it. Why the expedition did go so wrong in the first place? In the first place, it was that Felchner was an army officer. The officers, the rest of the officers, were Navy officers. Then there were civilian scientists. This is where you have to understand the context of the German society. Emperor Wilhelm II wanted a navy as big as his Auntie, Queen Victoria, had in England. So he built the navy and Everything was focused publicly on the Navy. The other thing was that the captain, Captain Vassil, had syphilis. I found out about this at the Dregalski expedition because he was there, the second officer, and he faked his medical certificate. That was the beginning of the syphilis. Ten years later, it was in the last stage. His spine, his brain, his kidneys were already very much affected. But he could not tell that he had syphilis because otherwise, he would end almost up in jail because it was a moral illness.

[00:32:52.620] - Dr. Ursula Rack

Therefore, it was tricky. Basel and Félixne did not go on so well. When they were finally then in South Georgia, it seemed that the group comes together. But when they were in the ice and they stuck then in the ice, the captain died. Then it got really confused. And there were situations where Feltner and his guests were sleeping with loaded guns on the floor of their cabins because the doctor from the opposite group says he want to shoot them through the door and things like this. So there were There were situations you can hardly believe. Then I was lucky and got the diary of one of the sailors, and he wrote about this expedition. When they went to Grittwegen, this is in South Georgia, the ship came into the harbor, and there was the opposition group on one side, and the few people from the group around Filchna on the other side. Suddenly, a shouting took place between the two groups, and suddenly the opposition group started to smack and fight the other group. In that moment when the British official came on board, because Yeah, he was British then at this time. That was really a situation.

[00:34:20.880] - Dr. Ursula Rack

He describes this so good that he said, And this is now the gentleman we had to deal with because the dogs were more behaved than the so-called scientists. This was something that really stuck in my mind. You normally would not read this in some official report or something like this. Based on this diary from Bjovi, they made a theater play out of it. In Germany.

[00:34:46.120] - Clark

Wow. Well, I think we do need the film adaptation next. That story definitely shows the human side of Antarctica.

[00:34:53.260] - Dr. Ursula Rack

This makes history so interesting because it's like detective work.

[00:34:58.770] - Clark

I feel like we could talk about history of Antarctica for hours, and we will as the show continues because it's clear we've only just scratched the surface. But at this point, towards the end of the episode, I'd like to ask if there's any reflections or something we missed about either what we've already discussed on the show or about history and exploration of Antarctica more broadly?

[00:35:19.350] - Dr. Ursula Rack

What I really want to emphasize is that Antartic history is more than only the survival story of Shackleton and the Denters of Scott. That's so many expeditions. There was even a Japanese expedition down there at this time in 1911, 1912. So that the context for Antartic history and that there were so many different nations down there. I think this is something what we should emphasize much, much more. The other thing is also how the view on Antartic history changed over the time. We don't tell Antartic history anymore only on her heroic experiences. We go also to the medical issues. Psychologists found out that it's a very vast field to investigate. There is also arts, what comes more and more to the Atlantic and also reflects on art, what has been done in the Antartic already, like the painters, the first photography and the expressions, the poetry and the writings and so on. Also, I think what is the context always very important, the politics, the economy, and the social structures of society that explains why people went down there or what they tried to achieve there. It makes it harder when we take it seriously enough to judge them with our knowledge today and say this was a blunderer or whatever, because for these opportunities they had with their scientific equipment, it was incredible what they could achieve.

[00:37:04.870] - Dr. Ursula Rack

I think we should realize this much, much more and keep it that way and not say, Yeah, he missed this point because he had no satellite. How should he know? I say he because it was mainly male history. Only in the 1980s, it started that women came more and more into the Altactic. This is the next thing in the Antartic history, the very short history of women history in the Antartic, and also Indigenous people, and especially Black people. Edward Bird, for example, he took the first Mary doctor in 1934 down to the Antartic when he was here in New Zealand. He said, I don't care where this man is coming from as long as he does the job right. He also took black people down in the 1930s, where nobody took them on expeditions except period. But an active history is You have to be sometimes very careful and very sensitive. You should think very often before you write something or say something because it could still harm people today.

[00:38:10.910] - Clark

Okay, well, if any of those things sound interesting to those of you listening, be sure to to cry because we'll be throwing in history episodes in the mix as we go along to talk about a lot of those things. The last two questions are, what is your favorite thing about Antarctica? And also, where can people find you and follow your work?

[00:38:28.160] - Dr. Ursula Rack

Yeah, my favorite thing in the The Andáctic is when I'm very close to the huts where the people live, or when I'm at the place and see it from the ship as they saw it from the ship. The other thing that also fascinates me on the Andáctic is the light. You see then in the paintings and in the photographs and so on, but the light in the Andáctic is really something special. People can find me. I have a little web page. It's called arcticandantarctic. Wordpress. Com. People can drop me an email under usula. Track@kentherbury. Ac. Inz. At the moment, I try to tackle Instagram. This is in the baby shoes, so to speak.

[00:39:17.320] - Clark

Okay, well, I'll be sure to put all of that in the episode description so that listeners can find it easily. This is the point where I say thank you so much for coming on the show today, for teaching us about the history of Antarctica, and also for all of your research.

[00:39:30.770] - Dr. Ursula Rack

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:39:43.420] - Clark

Okay, another final major thank you to Dr Ursula Rack. I think my biggest takeaway from this episode is realizing just how many different avenues we could go down when we're talking about history of Antarctica. I think this podcast is going to go down many of them. If there was that we talked about today that you really want to hear more about, first of all, make sure you're following the show. And second of all, if there's anything you're particularly curious about and want me to do a full episode on, tell me. Send me a message. You can contact me through the episode description or Spotify listeners will find a response box on the episode page of the Spotify app. Now, not all of our episodes will be about history, but I think it's important to keep revisiting it because it does help us understand some of the things at play in Antarctica today. Even this condensed historical backdrop we just got will be good to keep in mind as we go along. Speaking of going along, yes, I know this is a science podcast, and we haven't had a very science-heavy episode just yet, but next week we are going to be speaking with an ornithologist all about Antartic birds.

[00:40:46.390] - Clark

So stick around for that as well. And that is all I have for you today. So thank you for listening, and I'll talk to you later. You've been listening to South Pole. You can find more information about this week's guest and links to their work in the episode description. Cover art show was done by Laurel Wong, and the music you're listening to was done by Nila Ruiz. I am your host, Clark Markaisi, and this episode was produced, written, and engineered by me. So if you found it interesting, send it to someone you know. South Pole is part of a larger network of sciencey podcast called Pine Forest Media. We've We've got a podcast on plastic, one on drinking water, and a couple of new ones coming out soon. You can find more information about us in the episode description as well or at pieinforestpods. Com. We are also on Instagram and TikTok at Pine Forest Media.forestmedia. If you loved the show and you want to support science communication like this, a five-star rating across platforms and a review on Apple podcast is one of the easiest and best things you can do to help the entire network to grow.

[00:41:57.800] - Clark

Thank you to all of you who have made it this far, and I'll talk to you next week.