Cool Bios

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and 3 and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was 1 mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived. A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the...

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and 3 and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was 1 mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived. A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the...

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and 3 and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was 1 mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived. A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the...

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and 3 and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was 1 mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived. A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the...

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and 3 and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was 1 mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived. A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the...

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and 3 and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was 1 mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived. A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the...

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and 3 and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was 1 mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived. A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the...

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and 3 and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was 1 mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived. A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the...

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and three and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was one mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived. A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be o...

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and three and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was one mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived. A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be o...

He grew up on the streets of Dublin - an ordinary boy from an ordinary neighbourhood. But Patrick Dalton came of age at an extraordinary moment, in a city on the brink of revolution. In this episode, we tell the story of how a teenage rebel stumbled into a real-life rebellion - and what that collision made of him. "Dublin in 1916 was not a backdrop. It was a furnace. And Patrick Dalton was thrown...

In this final episode, the story of the Endurance reaches its extraordinary conclusion. While Shackleton, Crean, and Worsley had been crossing South Georgia, 22 men had been waiting on Elephant Island for 105 days — sheltering beneath upturned lifeboat hulls, surviving on seal and penguin meat, their clothing in tatters, their bodies deteriorating. Shackleton attempted three rescue missions before...

In this episode, the James Caird reaches the south coast of South Georgia — the culmination of one of the greatest feats of navigation in maritime history. But the ordeal is far from over. With the weather preventing them from sailing around to the whaling station on the north coast, Shackleton, Crean, and Worsley are left with only one option: to cross the island's interior on foot. No human bein...

In this episode, Shackleton makes the decision that will define his legacy. With 22 men stranded on the desolate rock of Elephant Island, he selects five companions — including Tom Crean and navigator Frank Worsley — and sets sail in the James Caird, a 22-foot lifeboat, for South Georgia Island. Eight hundred miles away. Across the Drake Passage — the most violent stretch of ocean on the planet. W...

In 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton led 27 men into the frozen heart of Antarctica aboard the  Endurance  — and what followed became the greatest survival story in human history. When their ship was crushed by pack ice and sank into the Weddell Sea, the crew was left stranded on one of the most hostile and remote places on Earth, with no communication, no rescue coming, and no hope — except Shackleton...

In this episode, we introduce the man at the heart of our story — Ernest Henry Shackleton. Born in County Kildare in 1874, Shackleton went to sea at sixteen and spent a lifetime chasing the edge of the known world. By 1909, his Nimrod expedition had brought him within 97 miles of the South Pole, making him one of the most celebrated explorers of his age. But his greatest — and most brutal — challe...

In this episode, we meet the ship at the heart of our story — the Endurance. One hundred and forty-four feet long and built in Norway in 1912, she was originally intended for Arctic tourist cruises. Fate had other plans. Departing South Georgia Island on the 5th of December 1914, the Endurance almost immediately encountered pack ice in the Weddell Sea — heavier and further north than any of the ol...

In this episode, the 28 men of the Endurance find themselves stranded on the sea ice with three small lifeboats, their sled dogs, and enough food to last only a few months. With no ship, no radio contact, and no rescue coming, they drift northward on an endless frozen desert, utterly alone. Shackleton makes a series of devastating decisions — including the order to shoot the dogs — as the reality...

In this episode, we turn the spotlight on one of the most extraordinary yet least celebrated figures in the history of exploration — Tom Crean of Annascaul, County Kerry. By the time Shackleton recruited him for the Endurance, Crean was already a legend among polar men, having served on two of Scott's expeditions and performed a solo 35-mile march across the Ross Ice Shelf to save the lives of his...