A Voyage to Antarctica

UKAHT
  • 4.9 (15)
  • EARTH SCIENCES
  • BIWEEKLY SERIES

Journalist and broadcaster Alok Jha talks to leading explorers, scientists, conservationists and artists about Antarctica’s fascinating past, present and future, to discover why the icy continent matters to us all. Created by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the first sighting of Antarctica. UKAHT is a charity, championing the public understanding of, and engagement with Antarctica through the history of human endeavour in the region. UKAHT looks after British historic sites and artefacts in Antarctica and invests in global public programmes and education; enabling more people to discover, understand, value and protect this precious wilderness.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  1. EPISODE 1

    Lorraine Kelly

    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 unstoppable and impressive broadcasting career, as a hugely significant presence on British television. She has presented many other TV programmes including The Last Leg, Queens for the Night and Have I Got News For You?. She has made guest appearances on The Masked Singer, The Graham Norton Show, Ant & Dec Saturday Night Takeaway, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, Late Night Lycett and Portrait Artist of the Year. Lorraine is also a best selling author, most recently with her debut fiction novel, The Island Swimmer.  In 2012, Lorraine was awarded the OBE, for services to charity and the armed forces, by HM The Queen at Holyrood palace in Edinburgh. In 2020, Lorraine also received a CBE for services to broadcasting, journalism and charity. She is a keen charity supporter and is a patron of Help for Heroes and the STV Children’s Appeal. 🇦🇶 SUPPORT US 🇦🇶 https://shop.ukaht.org/products/donation 🐧 ADOPT A PENGUIN 🐧  https://www.ukaht.org/shop/adopt-a-pe... 🎯 FOLLOW US 🎯 ✩ YouTube: / ukantarcticheritagetrust ✩ Instagram: / ukantarcticheritagetrust   ✩ Facebook: / ukantarcticheritagetrust   ✩ TikTok: / ukantarcticheritagetrust   Season 6 of A Voyage To Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Expeditions.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    37 min

  2. EPISODE 2

    Ann Bancroft: A Polar Legend

    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 Antarctica, leading the first all-women’s expedition to the South Pole. In January 1993, after skiing more than 600 miles, Ann made history, becoming the first woman known to have skied to both North and South poles. She and Norwegian explorer Liv Arnesen then set an international record as the first women to ski sail across Antarctica.  Today Ann is a globally-recognised educator, speaker and founder of the Ann Bancroft Foundation. She lends her voice to organisations in education and the environment and is the co-founder of Bancroft Arnesen Explore. 🇦🇶 SUPPORT US 🇦🇶 https://shop.ukaht.org/products/donation  🐧 ADOPT A PENGUIN 🐧  https://www.ukaht.org/shop/adopt-a-pe... 🎯 FOLLOW US 🎯 ✩ YouTube: / ukantarcticheritagetrust ✩ Instagram: / ukantarcticheritagetrust   ✩ Facebook:/ ukantarcticheritagetrust   ✩ TikTok: / ukantarcticheritagetrust   Season 6 of A Voyage To Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Expeditions.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    40 min

  3. EPISODE 3

    Antarctic Rights

    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 Earth Jurisprudence and has played a significant role in informing and inspiring the growing Rights of Nature movement. Cormac led the drafting of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth (proclaimed on 22 April 2010 in Bolivia) and is a founder and Executive Committee member of the Global Alliance for Rights of Nature. He was awarded the 2025 Shackleton Medal for the Protection of the Polar Regions and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Antarctic Alliance, launched on 1 December 2025. 🇦🇶 SUPPORT US 🇦🇶 https://shop.ukaht.org/products/donation  🐧 ADOPT A PENGUIN 🐧  https://www.ukaht.org/shop/adopt-a-pe... 🎯 FOLLOW US 🎯 ✩ YouTube: / ukantarcticheritagetrust ✩ Instagram: / ukantarcticheritagetrust   ✩ Facebook:/ ukantarcticheritagetrust   ✩ TikTok: / ukantarcticheritagetrust   🇦🇶 Add your voice to the Antarctic Rights Campaign! 🇦🇶 antarcticrights.org/a-voice-for-antarctica/ Season 6 of A Voyage To Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Expeditions.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    38 min

  4. EPISODE 4

    Robert Macfarlane

    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 than thirty languages, won prizes around the world, and been widely adapted for film, music, theatre, radio and dance. He has also written operas, plays, albums, choral works, and films including River and Mountain, both narrated by Willem Dafoe. Macfarlane has collaborated closely with artists including Olafur Eliasson, and with the artist Jackie Morris he co-created the internationally bestselling books of nature-poetry and art, The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. In 2017, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the E.M. Forster Prize for Literature, and in 2023 in Toronto he was the inaugural winner of the Weston International Award for a body of work in the field of non-fiction. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and is presently working on a graphic novel re-telling of the Epic of Gilgamesh. 🇦🇶 SUPPORT US 🇦🇶 https://shop.ukaht.org/products/donation  🐧 ADOPT A PENGUIN 🐧  https://www.ukaht.org/shop/adopt-a-pe... 🎯 FOLLOW US 🎯 ✩ YouTube: / ukantarcticheritagetrust ✩ Instagram: / ukantarcticheritagetrust   ✩ Facebook:/ ukantarcticheritagetrust   ✩ TikTok: / ukantarcticheritagetrust   Season 6 of A Voyage To Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Expeditions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    43 min

  5. EPISODE 5

    Meteorite-Hunting in Antarctica

    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 then a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship and a Royal Society University Fellowship at The University of Manchester.  Katherine studies different types of lunar samples to understand how the Moon has geologically evolved through time and how it is a recorder of Solar System processes. She is a member of the Artemis III Geology Team, and is involved in science teams for the ESA PROSPECT and DIMPLE lunar experiments. She also co-led the first UK team working with the British Antarctic Survey to recover meteorite samples from Antarctica.  🇦🇶 SUPPORT US 🇦🇶 https://shop.ukaht.org/products/donation  🎯 FOLLOW US 🎯 ✩ YouTube: / ukantarcticheritagetrust ✩ Instagram: / ukantarcticheritagetrust   ✩ Facebook:/ ukantarcticheritagetrust   ✩ TikTok: / ukantarcticheritagetrust   Season 6 of A Voyage To Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Expeditions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    37 min

  6. EPISODE 6

    Zaria Forman

    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 featured on CBS Sunday Morning, CNN, PBS, and BBC. She delivered a TEDTalk, and spoke at Amazon, Google, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, exhibited in Banksy’s Dismaland, and was the artist-in-residence aboard the National Geographic Explorer in Antarctica. She curated the first ever, permanent, polar art exhibitions aboard Lindblad Expeditions National Geographic Endurance and the National Geographic Resolution. Her works have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, and the Smithsonian Magazine. Zaria currently works and resides in upstate New York and is represented by Winston Wächter Fine Art in New York, NY and Seattle, WA. 🇦🇶 SUPPORT US 🇦🇶 https://shop.ukaht.org/products/donation  🐧 ADOPT A PENGUIN 🐧  https://www.ukaht.org/shop/adopt-a-pe... 🎯 FOLLOW US 🎯 ✩ YouTube: / ukantarcticheritagetrust ✩ Instagram: / ukantarcticheritagetrust   ✩ Facebook:/ ukantarcticheritagetrust   ✩ TikTok: / ukantarcticheritagetrust   Season 6 of A Voyage To Antarctica is made possible by support from HX Expeditions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    35 min
See All Season 6 (6)

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Ratings & Reviews

4.9
out of 5
15 Ratings

About

Journalist and broadcaster Alok Jha talks to leading explorers, scientists, conservationists and artists about Antarctica’s fascinating past, present and future, to discover why the icy continent matters to us all. Created by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the first sighting of Antarctica. UKAHT is a charity, championing the public understanding of, and engagement with Antarctica through the history of human endeavour in the region. UKAHT looks after British historic sites and artefacts in Antarctica and invests in global public programmes and education; enabling more people to discover, understand, value and protect this precious wilderness.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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