In Extremis - Stories from the Edge of History

Tom Trumble

A narrative history podcast about people pushed to the absolute edge. Hosted by Australian author Tom Trumble (Penguin Random House), In Extremis tells longform stories from WWII, the Cold War, and beyond — survival, mutiny, betrayal, leadership under pressure. Military history told as gripping human narrative. Coming soon: Shackleton and Mawson in Antarctica. Nancy Wake — the White Mouse. The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Chernobyl. The Mutiny on the Batavia. Also coming: Amelia Earhart. Vivian Bullwinkel. Captain Richard de Crespigny. The Thai cave rescue.

  1. 1d ago

    The Old Man and the Longest Race - Part 2: Shuffling to Glory

    Day 2 begins with chaos: Wally oversleeps, Cliff wakes at 2:30am instead of 6am, and runs unprepared on baked beans and two hours of sleep. What follows is an extraordinary five-day journey across 875 kilometres as a 61-year-old potato farmer defies every odd, battles injury and exhaustion, outwits his rivals, and becomes a national icon. This is the story of how Cliff Young won Australia's most grueling ultramarathon—and changed running forever. PEOPLE Cliff Young – 61-year-old potato farmer, Beech Forest, Victoria; unlikely heroWally Zunneberg – Cliff's trainer, Colac Football Club massage man; gruff mentor figureTerry "Wobbles" McCarthy – Support car driver; conflict with WallyGeorge Perdon – Elite runner, race favourite; "Gentleman George"Joe Record – Cliff's training partner, second-place finisher; strategic rivalJohn Hughes – New Zealand detective, cocky frontrunner, previous record holderTony Rafferty – Irish expat, elite runner, fifth-place finisherSiggy Bauer – World-class ultramarathoner, fourth-place finisherNeil Kearney – Channel 10 journalist; pivotal TV momentJohn Toleman – Race director, organiserMartin Noonan – Westfield marketing executive, race visionaryMary Young – Cliff's mother; presents garland at finish lineEunice & Lorraine – Cliff's sisters; provide sustenance during raceBob Hawke – Australian Prime Minister; sends congratulations telegramJeff Kennet – Victorian Opposition Leader; attends finish celebrationMartin Thompson – Public servant runner who quits from exhaustionKeith Swift – Runner whose crew is hit by car; pulls out injuredTOPICS The 1983 Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon (875km)Wally's alarm mistake (2:30am vs 6am start)Cliff's physical challenges: shoulder pain, massive blisters, minimal sleepThe "Cliff Young Shuffle" – revolutionary running techniqueCelebrity and adulation: Goulburn, Jugion, media coverageSupport crew dynamics: Wobbles' drinking, Wally's frustrationNeil Kearney's TV moment: Cliff eating pears straight from canChannel 10 coverage and newspaper articles during the raceNutrition strategy: baked beans, pumpkin, potatoes, pearsThe psychology of leading: Cliff's determination to hold the leadJoe Record's Wodonga betrayal: waking Cliff mid-sleepThe shin-splints moment: how Joe broke mentallyGeorge Perdon's demoralisation from Cliff's early 2am startWally's knife-and-methylated-spirits blister treatment (Albury)The broken support car 5km from finish lineBurke Street finish: kids nearly killing him with encouragementThe 10,000-person Melbourne CBD crowd (11:34pm Monday night)Cliff's $10,000 prize and decision to split it with other runnersReactions from elite runners: Hughes, Rafferty, Bauer, PerdonPost-race celebrity: Don Lane Show, Michael Parkinson, Parliament HouseThe gumboot statue memorial in Beach ForestDebunking myths: gumboots training, no formal training, the tortoise-and-hare fallacyLegacy: the Young-Shuffle adopted by subsequent winnersCliff's later career: subsequent races, marriage to Mary Howell, decline, stroke (2000), death (2003) Sources: Julietta Jameson, "Cliffy: The Cliff Young Story", Text, 2010 Cliff Young, "Cliffy's Book", High Country Publishing, 1995 Australian Story, ABC, How potato farmer Cliff Young outran the world’s best athletes | Australian Story

    The Old Man and the Longest Race - Part 2: Shuffling to Glory

  2. Jul 17

    The Old Man and the Longest Race - Part 1: The potato farming, gumboot wearing, ultradistance runner.

    SHOW NOTES - CLIFF YOUNG EPISODE 1 The Underdog In April 1983, a 61-year-old potato farmer from Beech Forest lined up alongside elite ultramarathoners for the inaugural Westfield Sydney to Melbourne ultramarathon—864 kilometres across Australia. Nobody took him seriously. Except the runners themselves. This is the story of how an old bloke in gumboots almost didn't make it through the first night, nearly hit by a semi-trailer and forced to rest on baked beans, setting up one of sport's greatest comebacks. PEOPLE Cliff Young – 61-year-old potato farmer, Beech Forest, VictoriaSiggy Bauer – 1000-mile record holderRobert Bruner – 200km Sri Chinmoy Festival championGeorge Perdon – Australian ultradistance runner, Fremantle to Sydney recordTony Rafferty – Irish expat, rival ultramarathonerJohn Hughes – New Zealand runner, cocky frontrunnerJohn Toleman – Running coach, race organiserMartin Noonan – Westfield marketing executiveWally Zunneberg – Cliff's trainer and support crewMary Young – Cliff's motherTOPICS The 1983 Westfield Sydney to Melbourne ultramarathonCliff's failed 1000-mile run attempt (November 1982)The water tank incident (January 1983)Ultramarathon training and preparationSupport crews and logisticsThe psychology of the underdogRunning on the Hume Highway in 1983TIMESTAMPS (approximate) 0:00 – Opening: Westfield Shopping Centre, April 26, 19833:45 – The field: Siggy Bauer, Robert Bruner, George Perdon, Tony Rafferty7:20 – Cliff Young introduced10:15 – How the race came to be: Toleman, Perdon, Rafferty rivalry15:30 – Martin Noonan's vision18:00 – The test run: Noonan and Cliff22:15 – The gumboots press conference26:00 – The 1000-mile run (November 1982)30:15 – The water tank disaster (January 1983)34:00 – Race day begins36:45 – The mad dash: Hughes, the cracking pace38:30 – The semi-trailer near-miss and Wally's alarm mistake40:00 – END OF PART 1RESOURCES "Cliffy: The Cliff Young Story" by Julietta Jameson"Cliffy's Book" by Cliff Young

    The Old Man and the Longest Race - Part 1: The potato farming, gumboot wearing, ultradistance runner.

  3. Jul 1

    The Man Who Saved the World — Part 2: 85 Seconds to Midnight

    On the night of September 26th, 1983, Stanislav Petrov stood alone in a Soviet bunker outside Moscow while every alarm in the building screamed that America had launched its missiles. He didn't make the call. This is the second and final part of the story of the man who may have saved human civilisation.. and was punished for it. In this episode: What was the Perimeter system — and why did the Soviets build it? The answer reveals everything about how close the world came to automated annihilation, and why the decision that night rested on one man's shoulders rather than a machine's. Why was Petrov different from every other officer in that bunker? His upbringing, his education, and the family trauma that shaped him all suggest the system had produced exactly one person capable of doing what he did. What happened when he was proved right? A reprimand. And what became of Petrov after the Soviet Union collapsed is covered. Primary and secondary sources for this episode: The principal secondary sources for this episode and its companion are: Taylor Downing, 1983: Reagan, Andropov and a World on the Brink (2018) — the most comprehensive single-volume account of the 1983 war scare. Nate Jones (ed.), Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise that Almost Triggered Nuclear War (2016) — a collection of declassified primary documents, including CIA assessments, NSA intercepts, and internal NATO communications, assembled by the National Security Archive. Additional material drawn from: Petrov's own interviews, particularly his 2013 BBC interview on the thirtieth anniversary of the incident, and the 2014 documentary The Man Who Saved the World. David Hoffman, The Dead Hand (2009) — Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Soviet nuclear programme and the 1983 war scare.

    The Man Who Saved the World — Part 2: 85 Seconds to Midnight

  4. Jun 25

    The Man Who Saved the World — Part 1: Stanislav Petrov and the most dangerous moment of the Cold War

    Shortly after midnight on the 27th of September 1983, a forty-four-year-old Soviet military officer named Stanislav Petrov was sitting in a reclining chair in a bunker eighty miles south of Moscow when his early warning system told him that the United States had launched a nuclear missile at the Soviet Union. He had minutes to decide whether to believe it. This is the first of a two-part episode on Stanislav Petrov and the most dangerous moment of the Cold War that almost nobody has heard of. In this episode we set the scene: who Stanislav Petrov was, what he was doing in that bunker, and why the autumn of 1983 was the most terrifying season of the entire Cold War. Along the way we cover: The OKO satellite network — the Soviet early warning system that Petrov had helped build, and that he was now being asked to trust with the fate of civilisation. The near-misses that preceded 1983 — Vasili Arkhipov and the Soviet submarine B-59 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the man who refused to authorise a nuclear torpedo launch when his captain was convinced the war had already started. And Zbigniew Brzezinski, who in 1979 got out of bed at 3am and decided not to wake his wife before calling the president to recommend a retaliatory nuclear strike — only to be told, thirty seconds later, that someone had accidentally loaded a training tape into a NORAD computer. The state of the world in 1983, Reagan's Evil Empire speech, the Strategic Defense Initiative, the deployment of Pershing II missiles to West Germany, and why the Soviet Union read all of these not as defensive posturing but as the systematic assembly of a first-strike capability. Yuri Andropov: the former KGB chief who succeeded Nikita Brezhnev as General Secretary in November 1982. A dying man, conducting the business of running a nuclear superpower from a hospital clinic, connected to a dialysis machine, watching Ronald Reagan describe his country as the focus of evil in the modern world. Korean Air Lines Flight 007: shot down by a Soviet interceptor on the 1st of September 1983, killing 269 people including a US Congressman. The event that poisoned an already toxic relationship just weeks before Petrov's night in the bunker. And Reagan himself: who despite his bellicose rhetoric was privately horrified by Pentagon officials who believed nuclear war was winnable. "I can't believe that this world can go on beyond our generation," he said in a radio address from Camp David, "without someday some fool or some maniac or some accident triggering the kind of war that is the end of the line for all of us." The episode ends where it began — in Serpukhov-15, with Stanislav Petrov staring at a screen that now reads not launch, but missile attack. What he does next is the subject of Part 2. Content note: this episode contains discussion of nuclear weapons, mass casualty scenarios, and Cold War geopolitical history. No graphic content. Primary and secondary sources for this episode: The principal secondary sources for this episode and its companion are: Taylor Downing, 1983: Reagan, Andropov and a World on the Brink (2018) — the most comprehensive single-volume account of the 1983 war scare. Nate Jones (ed.), Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise that Almost Triggered Nuclear War (2016) — a collection of declassified primary documents, including CIA assessments, NSA intercepts, and internal NATO communications, assembled by the National Security Archive. Additional material drawn from: Petrov's own interviews, particularly his 2013 BBC interview on the thirtieth anniversary of the incident, and the 2014 documentary The Man Who Saved the World. The Reagan Presidential Library's archive of public papers and radio addresses. David Hoffman, The Dead Hand (2009) — Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Soviet nuclear programme and the 1983 war scare.

    The Man Who Saved the World — Part 1: Stanislav Petrov and the most dangerous moment of the Cold War

  5. Jun 18

    The Heroine of Singapore - Part 5: The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond

    This is the final episode of the Heroine of Singapore arc. It begins with Elizabeth Choy sliding under the bars of her cell for the last time — certain she is being taken to Johor to be beheaded. Instead, a guard hands her her handbag and tells her she can go. After 193 days of imprisonment, beatings, starvation, and electrocution, the Kempeitai concluded that Elizabeth Choy was just trying to help. In this episode we also learn the truth about the missing $10,000 that triggered her arrest, a mystery whose answer, when it finally came, was almost unbearably simple. Sumida Haruzo was tried at the Double Tenth Trial in Singapore's Supreme Court. He smiled throughout even when giving testimony about the deaths of internees. Robert Heatlie Scott survived. Barely. When Singapore was liberated, he broadcast a message across Malaya and named Elizabeth Choy by name. After the war, Elizabeth met Mountbatten, attended the Instrument of Surrender, travelled to England, met the Queen, and became a national hero of Singapore. Research for this podcast episode was based entirely on my book, Survival in Singapore. The recording of Elizabeth Choy was made in 1985, and is available at the National Archive of Singapore's webpage. Next on In Extremis — Operation Able Archer. 1983. The NATO exercise that nearly ended the world.

    The Heroine of Singapore - Part 5: The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond

  6. Jun 11

    The Heroine of Singapore — Part 4: The battery, the blade and those who chose death over betrayal

    A warning before we start — this episode contains detailed descriptions of torture and extreme physical and psychological violence. Probably not one to have on in the car with the kids. Research for this episode comes from my book Survival in Singapore. Summary By the time this episode begins, Sumida Haruzo's investigation has been running for months. Dozens of British internees have been arrested and interrogated. Scores — possibly hundreds — of Chinese civilians have passed through the cells of the YMCA on Stamford Road. And Sumida has almost nothing to show for it. The radios in Changi were receivers, not transmitters. The money was funding a black market, not a sabotage operation. Elizabeth Choy had been helping the internees. Robert Heatlie Scott had been running a news committee. There was no fifth column. There was no conspiracy. And yet Sumida pressed on. In this episode we examine why and the answer says something uncomfortable about the nature of confirmation bias, institutional pressure, and what happens when a man of intelligence and ambition becomes too invested in a theory to abandon it. But the heart of this episode belongs to the people in the cells. Elizabeth Choy is subjected to electrocution while bound to a wooden frame, unable to move. She does not break. Then she and her husband Choy Khun Heng are brought into the same room, and the sadist Sgt Monai Tadamori deploys the cruelest instrument available to him: he tortures Elizabeth in front of her husband, and her husband in front of her. Both are told that tomorrow they will be executed. Alone together in the room, they reach an agreement. If they are to die, they will die for the truth. It would be an honourable death. A confession, they know, would cost others their lives. Then there is Robert Heatlie Scott. Scott has spent three months preparing for what is coming. He has reframed torture not as a horror to be feared but as an enemy tactic to be countered. He knows he will probably not survive. What matters is that nothing he says broadens the investigation. Nothing he says costs anyone else their life. When Monai finally comes for him — six days of sustained physical violence, sleep deprivation, the rack, the instruments laid out across the floor — Scott doesn't break. His answers never waver. And on the sixth day, when Monai places a farewell letter on the ground before him and draws his sword, Scott remains unmoved. The fate of Elizabeth Choy and Robert Heatlie Scott — and the final reckoning of Sumida Haruzo's investigation — will be told in the concluding episode of the Heroine of Singapore arc, next week on In Extremis. If you're enjoying In Extremis, the single best thing you can do is share it — with a friend, a colleague, anyone you think might find these stories as compelling as you do. Follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and if you feel moved to leave a review, that makes an enormous difference to how easily new listeners can find the show. People and places mentioned in this episode: Elizabeth Choy — Changi money pipeline courier; prisoner at the YMCAChoy Khun Heng — Elizabeth's husband; fellow prisonerMonai Tadamori — Kempeitai sergeant; Major Sumida's chief interrogatorSumida Haruzo — Head of the Singaporean KempeitaiRobert Heatlie Scott — British diplomat and propagandist; the man the Japanese called the master spyJohn Long — Ambulance driver; Changi news committee memberWalter Yoxall — Changi camp treasurerKT Alexander — Secretary to the Bishop of SingaporeThe YMCA, Stamford Road, Singapore — Kempeitai interrogation centreChangi Prison — Allied civilian internment camp

    The Heroine of Singapore — Part 4: The battery, the blade and those who chose death over betrayal

  7. Jun 3

    The Heroine of Singapore - Part 3: Diplomat, Propagandist, Spy

    When the 1,600 tonne coastal steamer Giang Bee was intercepted by Japanese destroyers 50 nautical miles off the coast of Sumatra, Robert Heatlie Scott did something extraordinary. He climbed into a 13-foot harbour dinghy and rowed toward a warship to negotiate surrender. It didn't work. It was never going to work. In this episode, we follow Scott's improbable journey from that dinghy back to Singapore, through a series of POW and internment camps, and finally into Changi Prison and then the YMCA. The repurposed headquarters and interrogation centre of Japan's military police unit, the Kempeitai And all the while, Major Sumida Haruzo was watching. Sumida was making progress in his investigation: to find and destroy a fifth column he was convinced was operating within the city. His prime suspect? Robert Heatlie Scott — the Far Eastern Representative for the Ministry of Information, a man fluent in Japanese and multiple Chinese dialects, a propagandist, a member of the Governor's War Council, and now an internee at Changi Prison. There was just one problem with Sumida's theory. A translation error. The Japanese word for intelligence — joho — also means information. And so the Ministry of Information became, in Sumida's mind, the Ministry of Intelligence. And Robert Heatlie Scott became a master spy. The consequences of that mistake would be catastrophic. We also hear about the inner workings of Changi's clandestine news network (radios smuggled in through pipes and false-bottomed equipment, news bulletins hand-delivered each morning, distributors who memorised the day's report and destroyed their copy before dawn). A meticulously compartmentalised operation, run under the nose of the Japanese, and watched closely by Sumida's undercover operatives. On the Double Tenth, October 10, 1943, the Kempeitai move on Changi. Names are called. Men are taken. Scott is driven through the city in the dead of night and deposited outside a three-storey Edwardian building on Stamford Road. The YMCA. Where, in a corridor of cells illuminated around the clock, he will come face to face with Elizabeth Choy. Subscribe to hear Part 4 next week. Check out Tom's companion Substack - tomtrumblewrites@substack.com Read Survival in Singapore, my book which forms the research backbone for this series arc. People and places mentioned in this episode: Robert Heatlie Scott — British diplomat and propagandist, Far Eastern Representative for the Ministry of InformationSumida Haruzo — Head of the Singaporean KempeitaiElizabeth Choy — Changi money pipeline courier; now also a prisoner at the YMCAJohn Long — Ambulance driver and Changi news committee memberJulius Planzer — Swiss diamond drilling engineer aboard the dinghyMajor Ivan Lyon — British officer whose operatives destroyed the ships in Singapore Harbour (see the Britain's Greatest Soldier arc)The Giang Bee — Coastal steamer carrying 300 civilians intercepted by Japanese destroyersOutram Road Gaol — Singapore POW facility notorious for severe mistreatment of prisonersThe YMCA, Stamford Road — Kempeitai interrogation centreChangi Prison — Allied civilian internment camp; nerve centre of the clandestine news operation

    The Heroine of Singapore - Part 3: Diplomat, Propagandist, Spy

  8. May 27

    The Heroine of Singapore - Part 2: The Bishop's Smuggling Ring

    A warning to listeners: this episode contains detailed descriptions of torture and imprisonment. It is not suitable for children. When Elizabeth Choy arrived at the YMCA building in Japanese-occupied Singapore, she believed she was being taken to see her husband. She was not. She was being arrested. Part Two of The Heroine of Singapore begins inside the Kempeitai's detention centre. The converted billiard rooms and corridors of the YMCA is now a place of cells, interrogation rooms and screams that echoed through the building at all hours. Elizabeth is placed in a cell with twenty other prisoners, forbidden from speaking, sleeping under blazing electric lights on a dirt floor, sharing an open commode in the corner of the room. What she does next, and what she discovers about herself in the process, is one of the most remarkable passages in the entire story. This episode also tells the full story of the smuggling operation that brought her here. How Bishop John Leonard Wilson of Singapore secured freedom from internment through a miraculous connection with a Japanese Anglican officer named Lieutenant Andrew Ogawa. How the Bishop approached Swiss businessman Hans Schweitzer-Iten, head of the trading company Diethelm and Co., with an audacious proposal: loan the Anglican Church the equivalent of $15 million in today's money, and be repaid at the pre-war value of the Singaporean dollar with interest at the war's end. How that money was passed through a second-hand bookshop on Bras Basah Road, concealed in plastic piping, moved through a cut-out, handed to an ambulance driver, and delivered into Changi Prison — where it funded a black market that kept thousands of Allied civilian internees alive. And how it all unravelled. This episode covers the arrest of Elizabeth and her husband Choy Khun Heng, the conditions inside the YMCA detention centre, the secret sign language developed by prisoners to communicate under the guards' noses, the remarkable John Dunlop, the full mechanics of the Bishop's financial network, the role of Hans Schweitzer-Iten and his blue lorry, known to every internee as the Blue Angel, and the false confessions of John Long that widened the Kempeitai's net and brought Elizabeth Choy to the attention of Sergeant Monai Tadamori. The episode ends on a name that will be at the centre of everything in Part Three: Robert Heatley Scott. Further reading The full story of the Japanese occupation of Singapore, including Elizabeth Choy's extraordinary life, is told in Survival in Singapore by Tom Trumble, published by Penguin Random House in 2025. Available now wherever books are sold. Get in touch If this episode resonated or if you have a story you think belongs on In Extremis , reach out at podcastinextremis@gmail.com Every message is read.

    The Heroine of Singapore - Part 2: The Bishop's Smuggling Ring
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About

A narrative history podcast about people pushed to the absolute edge. Hosted by Australian author Tom Trumble (Penguin Random House), In Extremis tells longform stories from WWII, the Cold War, and beyond — survival, mutiny, betrayal, leadership under pressure. Military history told as gripping human narrative. Coming soon: Shackleton and Mawson in Antarctica. Nancy Wake — the White Mouse. The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Chernobyl. The Mutiny on the Batavia. Also coming: Amelia Earhart. Vivian Bullwinkel. Captain Richard de Crespigny. The Thai cave rescue.

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