Mental Floss Presents: The Quest for the North Pole Podcast
1) Bonus Episode 4: Live from Greenland
In the final bonus episode of The Quest for the North Pole, we travel to far northwestern Greenland to see the changing Arctic firsthand. We explore the long history of this area, from its settlement ...Show More
2) Bonus Episode 3: Family Reunions
On their many attempts to reach the North Pole, Robert Peary and Matthew Henson spent a lot of time in northwest Greenland. So much time that they, like many explorers before them, formed intimate rel...Show More
3) Bonus Episode 2: Minik and the Meteorites
Before Robert Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole, he led several expeditions to northern Greenland. But they were more than just scouting trips. He brought back three legendary meteorites fr...Show More
4) Bonus Episode: The Arctic’s Biggest Mystery
The demise of the Franklin Expedition remains the most compelling puzzle in Arctic exploration. Sir John Franklin was a veteran of three previous polar voyages, recognized for his bravery and resource...Show More
5) Polar Past, Present, and Future
Global warming is changing the Arctic rapidly. Explorers of the past would barely recognize its green tundra, diminished glaciers, and ice-free seas. We’ll hear from journalists and historians who hav...Show More
6) Triumph by Snowmobile
In 1968, decades after Peary’s and Cook’s competing stories emerged, a Minnesota insurance salesman named Ralph Plaisted was sitting in a bar, talking to a friend about snowmobiles. His friend said th...Show More
7) A Gold Brick
Robert E. Peary expected glowing accolades and worldwide fame for being first at the North Pole. But a New York physician named Frederick Cook said he had been first. Peary sensed his glory being snat...Show More
8) Third Time’s the Charm
Peary and Henson had one more shot at the North Pole in them. With their trusted Inughuit partners in Greenland, they spent months in the Arctic preparing for their dash to the Pole in spring 1909. An...Show More
9) Meet Peary and Henson
No explorer tried harder or over a longer time to claim the North Pole than Robert Edwin Peary, a tough Mainer who suffered setbacks that would have permanently discouraged others—he even lost most of...Show More
10) Inuit and the Explorers
European explorers often thought of the Arctic as an empty wasteland, and the Indigenous people who lived there as childlike. But as one historian put it, “the real children in the Arctic would be the...Show More