A Voyage to Antarctica

Alok Jha talks to Zaria Forman , an artist who captures the beauty and fragility of Antarctica’s frozen landscapes in breathtaking pastel drawings.  Zaria travels to remote regions of the world to collect images and inspiration for her work, which is exhibited worldwide. She has flown with NASA on several Operation IceBridge missions over Antarctica, Greenland, and Arctic Canada. She was feat...

Alok Jha talks to meteorite-hunter Katherine Joy to discover why the icy continent is one of the best places on Earth to find them. Professor Katherine Joy is a Professor of Lunar and Planetary Sciences at the University of Manchester. She received her PhD in 2007 at UCL, before taking up post-doc positions at Birkbeck College and the Lunar and Planetary Institute/NASA Johnson Space Center, and th...

Alok Jha talks to Robert Macfarlane about the history of Western exploration and Antarctica's place as the last great wilderness on Earth. Robert Macfarlane ’s Sunday Times and New York Times-bestselling books include: Is a River Alive?, Underland, Landmarks, The Old Ways, The Wild Places and Mountains of the Mind, as well as a book-length prose-poem, Ness. His work has been translated into more t...

What if Antarctica had rights and its own voice at the international table? Alok Jha explores that question with Cormac Cullinan , environmental lawyer, author, and advocate for the rights of nature. Cormac is a director of the Wild Law Institute and the specialist environmental law firm Cullinan & Associates. His groundbreaking book Wild Law A Manifesto for Earth Justice (2002) pioneered Eart...

Alok Jha talks to pioneering explorer Ann Bancroft : the first woman to have skied to both North and South poles.   Ann joined the 1986 Steger International Polar Expedition as the only female of the eight-member team and became the first known woman to cross the ice to the North Pole. After leading the first American women’s East to West crossing of Greenland, she took her team to Antar...

Alok Jha talks to Lorraine Kelly about her lifelong passion for Antarctica, inspired by her hero Ernest Shackleton AKA ‘The Boss’.  Lorraine Kelly is a Scottish television presenter, journalist and Sunday Times bestselling author, best known for her ITV show, Lorraine. In 2024, she was awarded a BAFTA for her outstanding contribution to the television industry, marking four-decades of her uns...

Astronaut Dr Meganne Christian takes Alok Jha on a trip across the universe, to explore the many connections between Antarctica and space travel.  Meganne is a member of the European Space Agency astronaut reserve and a Senior Exploration Manager at the UK Space Agency, advising on human and robotic spaceflight. She has undertaken two missions, including one over-winter, at Concordia Sta...

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

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

Dr Leigh Hickmott takes Alok Jha up close and personal with Antarctica’s most fearsome resident: the killer whale, which Leigh calls ‘the apex and most adept predator on the planet’.  Leigh is a research scientist, zoologist and wildlife presenter, who has co-authored and contributed to numerous scientific research papers. His killer whale research is featured in BBC documentaries ‘Expedition...

Alok Jha talks to Leilani Raashida Henry about her father: the pioneering Antarctic explorer and civil rights leader, George Washington Gibbs Jr.  Born in Florida during the Jim Crow segregation era, Gibbs enlisted in the US Navy in 1935, and went South aboard the USS Bear. On 14 January 1940, Gibbs made history as the first black man to set foot in ‘Little America’ and the first recorde...

Alok Jha talks to world-renowned volcanologist and filmmaker Clive Oppenheimer. More people have been to space than have set eyes on the depths of Mount Erebus in Antarctica – the continent’s highest active volcano. But Clive has been back to Erebus 13 times: to better understand what is happening in the fiery depths below the ice and answer big questions about life on our planet and beyond. ...

Alok Jha revisits one of Antarctica’s most enduring tales of exploration with author and journalist Katherine MacInnes. Her book 'Snow Widows' tells the story of the race for the South Pole, from the perspective of the women whose lives would be forever changed by it: the wives and mothers that Sir Robert Falcon Scott and his expedition team left behind.  Katherine MacInnes has been an arts j...

Alok Jha talks to NASA astro-botanist Jess Bunchek about growing vegetables in Antarctica – and outer space.  Jess started as a botanist and agronomist and, after completing her masters, worked as an astro-botanist at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where she researched space crop production and supported “Veggie” – a vegetable production chamber on the International Space Station.&nb...

Alok Jha talks to Dr Peter Fretwell , award-winning cartographer and leading scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, about Antarctica’s most iconic residents – Emperor penguins – and the threats they’re facing from climate change.  Peter pioneered the use of satellite imagery to find and monitor polar wildlife – a project that has led to him discovering almost half of the world's Emperor p...

Alok Jha talks to journalist and author Julian Sancton about the harrowing and epic survival story of The Belgica: an early polar expedition gone terribly wrong – with a ship frozen in ice and its crew trapped inside for months of endless polar night.  Julian is an editor at The Hollywood Reporter. His writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, Esquire, GQ, The New Yorker, Wired, and Playboy, among...

Dr Susannah Maidment , Principal Researcher in fossil reptiles at London’s Natural History Museum, takes us 100 million years back in time to when Antarctica was a rainforest and home to some of the biggest creatures to ever walk the earth – the dinosaurs!  Susannah has a PhD in vertebrate palaeontology from the University of Cambridge and, prior to working at the Natural History Museum, was...

Alok Jha talks to Guinness World Record-breaking polar explorer Preet Chandi MBE – known as Polar Preet – about her extraordinary, inspiring and boundary-breaking achievements in Antarctica. In 2022, Preet became the ninth woman in history to ski solo to the South Pole and the first woman of colour to complete a solo expedition on the continent. The next year, Preet set out on another adventure: c...

Alok Jha talks to award-winning polar architect Hugh Broughton , to find out what it takes to design buildings where people can live – and even thrive –  in the world’s most extreme conditions.  In 2005 Hugh’s practice won an international competition to design the UK’s most southerly Antarctic research station – Halley VI. The modular elevated base was completed in 2012 and is the world...

Alok Jha talks to climate scientist Dr Tamsin Edwards about how her pioneering work in modelling the impact of ice sheet and glacier melt on rising sea levels is predicting the future of the planet.  Tamsin is an award-winning science communicator, including through her blog for the Public Library of Science, articles for the Guardian, and co-presenting the BBC Radio 4 series “39 Ways to Save...

Alok Jha talks to record-breaking explorer and UK Antarctic Heritage Trust's Head of Operations Sophie Montagne , one of the British Army’s Ice Maidens team, which in 2018, became the first all-female team to cross Antarctica using muscle power alone.  Sophie trained in Arctic Norway with the Royal Marines and the Norwegian Army, learning how to survive, and be comfortable, in a frozen enviro...

Alok Jha talks to Marine Biologist Dr Huw Griffiths about the weird & wonderful life that is being discovered underwater in Antarctica; teaching us incredible things about our planet’s deep past, and even revealing some secrets of the universe.  Huw has worked for the British Antarctic Survey for over 20 years, studying the animals that live at the bottom of the sea around Antarctica and...

Alok Jha talks to Mya-Rose Craig, aka Birdgirl, the British-Bangladeshi birder, race activist and environmentalist, about travelling to Antarctica and the impact the frozen continent has had on her climate activism.  Mya-Rose’s memoir, Birdgirl , published by Penguin in June 2022, shares her journey to activism and joy through birding, during a deepening family mental health crisis.  &nb...

Alok Jha talks to award-winning history broadcaster and best-selling author Dan Snow about being part of the Endurance22 mission and what it was like to witness the extraordinary moment Sir Ernest Shackleton’s lost ship was found at the bottom of the Weddell Sea.  Dan has made dozens of TV shows for the BBC, Discovery, and other broadcasters and hosts one of the world’s biggest history podcas...

In Season three of A Voyage to Antarctica, presenter Alok Jha (The Economist) and guests including historian Dan Snow and birder, activist and environmentalist  Mya-Rose Craig (aka Birdgirl), will delve into the extraordinary human stories of the wildest place on the planet. Unearthing Antarctica’s hidden treasures; telling untold stories of discovery and adventure; and exploring the amazing scien...