Episodes

  • S4: Life after Antarctica: post-deployment with Dr Bav Sasi, Jerry Gillham and Kirsten Shaw

    S4: Life after Antarctica: post-deployment with Dr Bav Sasi, Jerry Gillham and Kirsten Shaw
    Jan 6 2025
    Adapting to life after Antarctica can be a strange (and sometimes difficult) transition. Whether it's adjusting back to the daily hustle of home life after being in a remote community, or coming down from the emotional highs and lows of life in the wildest environment on Earth, returning to normal can be a challenge.
    In this episode, host Nadia Frontier speaks with Dr Bav Sasi, a former medic at Rothera Research Station, about his research into the psychological and emotional effects of returning from Antarctic deployments. Also joining the conversation are Station Leader Jerry Gillham, and Antarctic Postal Logistics founder Kirsten Shaw. Together, they share their personal experiences of moving between life on the frozen continent and the 'normal' world, plus their top tips for managing the transition - whether you’re returning from an extreme experience, or supporting someone who is.
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    Welcome to Antarctica. What's it like living and working in one of the most extreme environments in the world? From polar scientists to plumbers, ICEWORLD is a series of interviews with ordinary people who are doing extraordinary jobs in Antarctica. The team talk climate science, extreme living, expeditions and becoming a community.
    A podcast from British Antarctic Survey, hosted and recorded by marine biologist Nadia Frontier. Produced in partnership with Boffin Media.
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    27 mins
  • S4 Ep5: Penguin passion at the poles with Derren Fox and Peter Fretwell

    S4 Ep5: Penguin passion at the poles with Derren Fox and Peter Fretwell
    Dec 23 2024
    Are you a professional in penguin bum lifting? Derren Fox’s love for penguins began long before he made the trek to the icy sub-Antarctic island of Signy, where he works as a Zoological Assistant. In this episode, Derren chats to Nadia from Signy Research Station, where he spends his days getting up close and personal with Adélie penguins. He’s joined by Peter Fretwell, a satellite-wielding penguin expert who studies emperor penguins across the vast, frozen continent.
    Together, they share some of the more interesting ways they weigh and monitor the health of these iconic, charming, and stubborn birds - and spoiler: it involves a lot of careful penguin wrangling. They also discuss the serious threats facing emperor penguins from climate change. From dodging the occasional disgruntled penguin, to the iconic place these flightless birds have in Antarctica’s ecosystem, this episode is a fun, eye-opening look at the challenges and joys of studying penguins in the wild.
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    Welcome to Antarctica. What's it like living and working in one of the most extreme environments in the world? From polar scientists to plumbers, ICEWORLD is a series of interviews with ordinary people who are doing extraordinary jobs in Antarctica. The team talk climate science, extreme living, expeditions and becoming a community.
    A podcast from British Antarctic Survey, hosted and recorded by marine biologist Nadia Frontier. Produced in partnership with Boffin Media.
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    29 mins
  • S4 Ep4: Scouting for shags and skuas with Paul Whitelaw and Aurelia Reichardt

    S4 Ep4: Scouting for shags and skuas with Paul Whitelaw and Aurelia Reichardt
    Dec 9 2024
    Paul Whitelaw started dreaming of a job in Antarctica when a BAS marine biologist visited as a lecturer during his degree. Only a few years later, Nadia speaks to Paul while he is monitoring seabirds at Rothera Research Station in Antarctica as part of his PhD.
    From dodging dive-bombing skuas to tracking hatching egg numbers, Paul's work includes monitoring the health of the substantial seabird populations in Antarctica. With 10% of the world's population of skua in the same bay as Rothera, Paul is able to use the changing fate of the birds there as an indicator for the health of the marine ecosystem as a whole. Paul is joined in the interview by Aurelia Reichardt, Station Leader, who has also been involved in the long term monitoring of skua populations at Rothera.
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    Welcome to Antarctica. What's it like living and working in one of the most extreme environments in the world? From polar scientists to plumbers, ICEWORLD is a series of interviews with ordinary people who are doing extraordinary jobs in Antarctica. The team talk climate science, extreme living, expeditions and becoming a community.
    A podcast from British Antarctic Survey, hosted and recorded by marine biologist Nadia Frontier. Produced in partnership with Boffin Media.
    Cover photo of Paul by Patrick Griffin.
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    19 mins
  • S4 Ep3: The operation to survey sea ice - from land, sky and satellite

    S4 Ep3: The operation to survey sea ice - from land, sky and satellite
    Nov 25 2024
    Flying low over ice in a timed dance with satellites. Digging 52m of ice cores out on the frozen sea. This is a team tackling Antarctica's sea ice question from every angle!
    In this group interview, teams from the DEFIANT* and CRYOVEX* projects talk about their epic campaign to 'ground-truth' the data collected from two important satellites that monitor Antarctic sea ice - ESA's CryoSat-2 and NASA's ICESat-2. This calibration work makes sure we know more about how the thickness of Antarctica's sea ice - helping us predict how climate changes will affect ocean circulation and ecology.
    Nadia Frontier is joined by guest host Matt Hughes, and members of the project team Andy Shepherd, Inès Otosaka, Sebastian Simonsen, Isobel Lawrence and Gaëlle Veyssière, and BAS' Head of Airborne Survey Technology, Carl Robinson.
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    *Acronym Busting:
    • ESA - the European Space Agency
    • NASA - the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
    • DEFIANT - Drivers and Effects of Fluctuations in sea Ice in the ANTarctic
    • CRYOVEX - CRYOsat Validation EXperiment
    • CryoSat-2 - it's not an acronym, 'cryo' just means ice
    • ICESat-2 - Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite
    • Dash-7 - also not an acronym, it's the nickname of the de Havilland Canada DHC-7 aircraft
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    21 mins
  • S4 Ep2: Evolving in the cold with Professor Melody Clark and Dr Simon Morley

    S4 Ep2: Evolving in the cold with Professor Melody Clark and Dr Simon Morley
    Nov 8 2024
    Who's watching out for the creatures at the bottom of the Southern Ocean? Geneticist Professor Melody Clark and ecophysiologist Dr Simon Morley talk about their decades of work understanding the animals who have evolved to survive in the world's coldest waters.
    From antifreeze fish to nail-varnish-wearing limpets, and from the gut microbiome of sea cucumbers to anti-microbial resistance, Melody takes us on a whistle stop tour of some of the main characters she's been studying in Antarctica. Meanwhile, Simon talks about his journey into studying the marine life around the frozen continent - and what the effect of warming will be on these creatures. He talks about the climate, optimism, and what you can do as an individual to make change.
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    Welcome to Antarctica. What's it like living and working in one of the most extreme environments in the world? From polar scientists to plumbers, ICEWORLD is a series of interviews with ordinary people who are doing extraordinary jobs in Antarctica. The team talk climate science, extreme living, expeditions and becoming a community.
    A podcast from British Antarctic Survey, hosted and recorded by marine biologist Nadia Frontier. Produced in partnership with Boffin Media.
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    22 mins
  • S4 Ep1: Piloting flights from Canada to Antarctica, with Vicky Auld and Olly Smith

    S4 Ep1: Piloting flights from Canada to Antarctica, with Vicky Auld and Olly Smith
    Oct 21 2024
    The annual migration to the frozen continent begins! Host Nadia Frontier speaks to British Antarctic Survey pilots Vicky Auld and Olly Smith just before they begin ferrying aircraft down the spine of the Americas - from Canada to Punta Arenas on the tip of Chile, then on to Antarctica.
    From views of the Andes to the first glimpse of white mountains of the Antarctic Peninsula, Vicky and Olly talk through the epic journey and the big to do list on their arrival. They chat about the years they both had pushing for piloting roles at BAS, working towards meeting the high qualification and experience requirements for the Air Unit.
    How do you decide the priority list of ferrying people into Antarctica? What are 'freshies'? And what happens to magnetic navigation instruments at the South Pole?
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    Welcome to Antarctica. What's it like living and working in one of the most extreme environments in the world? From polar scientists to plumbers, ICEWORLD is a series of interviews with ordinary people who are doing extraordinary jobs in Antarctica. The team talk climate science, extreme living, expeditions and becoming a community.
    A podcast from British Antarctic Survey, hosted and recorded by marine biologist Nadia Frontier. Produced in partnership with Boffin Media.
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    30 mins
  • S3 Ep14: The Life Antarctic, with marine biologist Nadia Frontier

    S3 Ep14: The Life Antarctic, with marine biologist Nadia Frontier
    Aug 28 2024
    Sometimes you ease yourself into a new job - and sometimes you move straight to Antarctica for two winters.

    In the final episode of series 3, host Nadia Frontier takes a turn in the hot seat, opening up about her 'double winter' living at Rothera Research Station.

    Interviewed at King Edward Point by Louis Day (meet him in series 3, episode 1).
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    23 mins
  • S3 Ep13: Ash Shinn is looking after your Antarctic research station

    S3 Ep13: Ash Shinn is looking after your Antarctic research station
    Aug 14 2024
    Do you have to get past hundreds of fur seals to get to work? Ash Shinn does - but there's no fresh water, heating or toilets at Antarctic research stations without him.
    Ash apparently can't get enough of working in Antarctica. He's done a real tour of Antarctic Stations almost continuously since 2021 - he worked at BAS a through the winter at Rothera Research Station as a Mechanical Maintenance Technician, before going to New Zealand owned Scott Base, where temperatures plunged to -40°C. Host Nadia Frontier interviews him on their new deployment overwinter at the comparatively warm and green BAS King Edward Point station in South Georgia.
    Nadia and Ash chat about what it's like to have worked at all these different stations, the ins and outs of Ash's job, and taking the time to appreciate the scenery when Antarctica starts to feel ordinary. What keeps Ash coming back to Antarctica season after season? What's it like looking after a remote station that's running mostly on hydro-electricity? And what, exactly, is a Reverse Osmosis Plant?
    ICEWORLD is hosted and recorded by marine biologist Nadia Frontier, and produced in partnership with Boffin Media.
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    17 mins