The Art of Adventure

Jaksot

• 
  The Race for Timbuktu: The Hunt for Africa's City of Gold 16.09.2026 36min

  For centuries, Timbuktu was Europe's idea of the unreachable place - an African El Dorado where the roofs were said to be made of gold. The myth had roots in something real: in 1325 the Malian emperor Mansa Musa travelled to Mecca with so much gold that his spending in Cairo devalued the Egyptian currency for years afterwards. By the time European explorers went looking, the city had been in decline for two centuries. Nobody in Europe knew that, because nobody had been there and come back.In the 1820s, the French put up a prize: a small fortune for the first person to reach Timbuktu and return alive to describe it.Two men went after it, and they could not have been less alike. Alexander Gordon Laing was a Scottish army officer who crossed the Sahara openly. René Caillié was the son of a convict, orphaned at eleven, self-taught and self-funded. He spent months learning Arabic, travelled alone and in disguise. One man never returned, and the other discovered something he could have never predicted. Charlie English joins Hugh to tell the story of both men. A writer and journalist, and formerly head of international news at the Guardian, Charlie left the paper to write The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu, which braids this nineteenth-century race together with a modern one - the librarians who smuggled the city's ancient manuscripts to safety during the jihadist occupation of 2012.The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu by Charlie English is out now, published in the US as The Storied City.Charlie and a group of academics are raising funds to support the Mohammed Tahar Library in Timbuktu. Search for the Mohammed Tahar Library Project on Patreon.The Art of Adventure is brought to you by Arthur Beale, outfitters to sailors, adventurers, vagabonds and explorers for over 500 years. Find out more at arthurbeale.co.uk. Listeners get 15% off with the code PODCAST at checkout.
• 
  Denali 1967: The Worst Climbing Disaster in North American History (Part 2) 09.09.2026 39min

  Seven men were somewhere on the upper slopes of Denali and nobody had heard from them since a single radio call from the summit. Five survivors were pinned in their tents three thousand feet below, so battered by the wind that four hours of climbing gained them only a few hundred yards. In 1967 there was no rescue service on the mountain, no aircraft that could fly in those conditions, and no way for anyone to go up and look.Which is how a group of climbers with no connection to the expedition became the only people who could find out what had happened. A Mountaineering Club of Alaska team, a bush pilot circling in a Super Cub, and a note wrapped around a rock and dropped onto the ice.What they found at high camp was a collapsed tent and a body still gripping the tent pole. Below Archdeacon's Tower they found two more men, one sitting upright with a calm look on his face. Weeks later, when a return party climbed to look again, all of it was gone. The only trace ever recovered from the seven was the top few inches of a flagstaff and a scrap of nylon.In the second of this two-part series, Andy Hall takes Hugh through the search, the fifty-year argument over who was to blame, and the night his father spent at park headquarters with Joe Wilcox, telephoning seven sets of parents. George Hall called it the longest night of his life. What Andy only worked out decades later was what his father did next — refusing a direct order to close the mountain to climbing, and paying for it with his career.None of the seven men has ever been found. They are all still up there.Denali's Howl: The Deadliest Climbing Disaster on America's Wildest Peak by Andy Hall is out now.The Art of Adventure is brought to you by Arthur Beale, outfitters to sailors, adventurers, vagabonds and explorers for over 500 years. Find out more at arthurbeale.co.uk. Listeners get 15% off with the code PODCAST at checkout.
• 
  Denali 1967: The Worst Climbing Disaster in North American History (Part 1) 02.09.2026 40min

  In the summer of 1967, twelve men set out to climb Denali - then officially Mount McKinley - the highest mountain in North America. Nine of them had been recruited by a 24-year-old graduate student named Joe Wilcox, and most had never met before they arrived in Alaska. The other three were a Colorado team who had lost their fourth man in a car accident weeks earlier, and who were forced to merge with Wilcox's group days before the climb because park rules required a minimum of four. Twelve strangers, one leader, and a mountain that none of them had any real experience of.Denali in 1967 was a different proposition to Denali today. There was no rescue service. Weather forecasts came from a radio DJ reading out the temperature in Anchorage. Radios were so poor that a message from the mountain had to be relayed through Fairbanks and back again. From base to summit it is a bigger climb than Everest, and its position close to the Arctic means the death zone starts lower down.On 15 July, four men reached the summit in near-perfect weather. Three days later, the remaining seven made their own attempt - and radioed from the top as the cloud closed in around them. It was the last anyone ever heard from them. What was building over the mountain would be described as the worst storm ever to hit Denali with climbers on it.Andy Hall joins Hugh for the first of a two-part series. An Alaskan journalist and former editor of Alaska magazine, Andy has a personal connection to this story: in 1967 his father, George Hall, was superintendent of the park, and Andy was five years old and living inside the crisis as it unfolded. His book Denali's Howl draws on five years of research - tracking down the survivors and rescuers, and unearthing the lost tapes and documents of that summer, including recorded interviews with his late father.In Part 1: the mountain, the men, the merger that shouldn't have happened, and the decision to split the team that has been argued over ever since.Denali's Howl: The Deadliest Climbing Disaster on America's Wildest Peak is out now.The Art of Adventure is brought to you by Arthur Beale, outfitters to sailors, adventurers, vagabonds and explorers for over 500 years. Find out more at arthurbeale.co.uk. Listeners get 15% off with the code PODCAST at checkout.
• 
  The Last Tourist in Russia 26.08.2026 44min

  In February 2022, Charlie Walker flew to Russia to travel 600 miles alone across Arctic Siberia. Five days later, Russia invaded Ukraine. He had a narrow window to get out - and chose to stay and finish the trip, becoming very possibly the last Western tourist in Russia.Walker set off on foot from the coldest inhabited place on earth, hiking frozen rivers and ice roads in temperatures down to minus 50. The expedition itself mostly went to plan. The problem was everything around it. With independent media silenced and a new law threatening 15 years in prison for "fake news" about the war, his presence was logged village by village and reported. By the time he reached the coast, he was expected. What followed was an interrogation, a fabricated case, and four weeks in a Russian prison - with the real risk of becoming a bargaining chip - before he was finally deported.Charlie Walker - adventurer, author and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society - joins Hugh to tell the full story: why he carried on after the invasion, how he talked about the war without being drawn on it, the memory cards he had to keep hidden, and what it's like to be locked up abroad with no idea when, or whether, you'll get out.Charlie's book, On Thin Ice: An Explorer's Memoir of Siberia, Surveillance, and Survival, is out now from Duckworth.The Art of Adventure is brought to you by Arthur Beale, outfitters to sailors, adventurers, vagabonds and explorers for over 500 years. Find out more at arthurbeale.co.uk. Listeners get 15% off with the code PODCAST at checkout.
• 
  Theodore Roosevelt's Last Great Adventure: The River of Doubt 19.08.2026 44min

  In 1914, former US President Theodore Roosevelt nearly died in the Amazon. Feverish and delirious from an infected wound, he asked his son to leave him behind — and carried a lethal dose of morphine in case the end came.Roosevelt had gone to Brazil after losing the 1912 election, the strongest third-party run in American history. A planned speaking tour turned into an expedition to chart the River of Doubt, an uncharted Amazon tributary, alongside the Brazilian explorer Cândido Rondon. It went badly wrong: wrong boats, a drowned crew member, a murder among the men, malaria, starvation, and the leg injury that nearly killed Roosevelt before they reached safety.Dr Michael Cullinane, Walton Chair of Theodore Roosevelt Studies, joins Hugh to tell the full story — what happened on the river, how Roosevelt survived it, and why a man who had already been almost everything kept throwing himself at the unknown.For Roosevelt's own account, the Theodore Roosevelt Center holds a free digital archive of his letters home at theodorerooseveltcenter.org. Further reading: Candice Millard's The River of Doubt is the definitive account of the expedition, and Darrin Lunde's The Naturalist traces where Roosevelt's love of the wild began.The Art of Adventure is brought to you by Arthur Beale, outfitters to sailors, adventurers, vagabonds and explorers for over 500 years. Find out more at arthurbeale.co.uk. Listeners get 15% off with the code PODCAST at checkout.
• 
  Dismasted in the Southern Ocean: Lisa Blair's Solo Record Around Antarctica 12.08.2026 49min

  Seventy-two days into her attempt to sail solo around Antarctica, more than 1,000 miles from the nearest land, Lisa Blair's mast came down in a storm. She was alone, outside rescue range, in the most hostile stretch of water on the planet. She fought through the night to save the boat and her life - and then, having lost the record she had spent years chasing, she had to decide what to do next.Lisa joins Hugh to tell the full story - and why she has learned to celebrate the small wins rather than the finish line. And she explains why the records were never really the point. In July 2027 she sets out on the Arctic Impact Project, an attempt to be the first person to sail solo, non-stop and unassisted around the Arctic Circle in a single season. It is a voyage that has only become possible because the ice is disappearing.Lisa Blair's book Facing Fear is out now: lisablairsailstheworld.com.Follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisablairsailstheworld/?hl=en The Art of Adventure is brought to you by Arthur Beale, outfitters to sailors, adventurers and explorers for nearly 500 years. Find out more at arthurbeale.co.uk.Listeners get 15% off with the code PODCAST at checkout.
• 
  Scott vs. Amundsen: Triumph and Tragedy (Part 2) 05.08.2026 35min

  March 1912. Roald Amundsen has beaten Scott to the South Pole, outrun the winter ice, and telegraphed his triumph around the world. But back on the ice, Captain Scott and his men are still fighting for their lives — and no one yet knows their fate.In the conclusion of this two-part series, host Hugh Taylor is joined once more by historian Dr Max Jones - author of The Last Great Quest - to tell the other side of the story. Who was Amundsen, the meticulous Norwegian who made winning look almost easy? Why did Scott's tragic failure eclipse Amundsen's success in the public imagination? And how did a dying man's final journal turn defeat into one of the most enduring legends in British history?From the freak weather that sealed Scott's fate, to Oates walking out into the blizzard, the discovery of the tent, and a century of fierce debate over Scott's reputation — this is the story of how the race to the South Pole ended, and why we're still arguing about it today.The Art of Adventure is brought to you by Arthur Beale, outfitters to sailors, adventurers and explorers for nearly 500 years. Find out more at arthurbeale.co.uk.
• 
  Scott vs. Amundsen: The Race to The South Pole Begins (Part 1) 29.07.2026 48min

  June 1910. Captain Robert Falcon Scott sets sail from Cardiff aboard the Terra Nova, convinced he has a clear run at the South Pole. Then a telegram arrives: "Beg leave to inform you Fram proceeding south. Amundsen." The race is on.In Part 1 of this two-part series, host Hugh Taylor is joined by historian Dr Max Jones - author of The Last Great Quest - to unpick the real story behind the Scott vs Amundsen rivalry. Who was Scott, really? Why was Britain so fixated on the Pole? And how did a bitter falling-out with Shackleton, a secret change of plan by Amundsen, and a fateful decision to take five men instead of four set the stage for one of history's most enduring tragedies?From naval ambition to the brutal reality of manhauling across the ice, this is the story of how the race to the South Pole began - and how Scott's party finally reached the Pole, and what they found when they arrived. The Art of Adventure is brought to you by Arthur Beale, outfitters to sailors, adventurers and explorers for nearly 500 years. Find out more at arthurbeale.co.uk.Listeners get 15% off with the code PODCAST at checkout.
• 
  Sailing Solo Around the World Like It's 1968: The Golden Globe Race 29.04.2026 27min

  In 1968, nine sailors set off on the first solo nonstop race around the world. Only one crossed the finish line. Sir Robin Knox-Johnston returned aboard Suhaili to claim the Sunday Times Golden Globe - while behind him, one competitor faked his positions, another sailed to Tahiti instead of the finish line, and a third pushed his boat so hard it fell apart 1,200 miles from home.Nearly fifty years later, Australian adventurer Don McIntyre decided to bring the race back. The rules were simple: sail around the world alone, without stopping, using only the technology available in 1968. No GPS. No satellite weather. No electronic instruments. Navigate by sextant, listen to music on cassette tapes, and if something breaks halfway round the world, fix it yourself or retire. Fewer than one in five who start the Golden Globe Race will finish it.Don joins Hugh to tell the full story: from his boyhood obsession with Knox-Johnston to the moment he decided to recreate the race that started it all. He explains why the GGR has become the purest test in ocean racing, why its followers are more gripped by short daily text updates than live satellite feeds from other races, and why — in an age of autopilots, AI, and nineteen-million-euro campaigns — stripping everything away and leaving one person alone with the sea might be exactly what the world needs.The 2026 Golden Globe Race starts from Les Sables-d'Olonne, France, on 6 September. Follow the race at goldengloberace.com. If you haven't seen it, the documentary The Voyage of Madman, covering the 2018 edition, is free on YouTube.Arthur Beale is an official partner of the Golden Globe Race. We have produced the exclusive clothing and accessory collection for the race — rooted in a heritage of craftsmanship that reflects the resilience, determination, and spirit needed for true adventure. The collection is available to buy from arthurbeale.co.uk from May 2026.
• 
  Gino Watkins: The Greatest Explorer You've Never Heard Of 22.04.2026 56min

  In 1930, a 24-year-old Cambridge undergraduate named Gino Watkins led fourteen men to the east coast of Greenland on one of the most ambitious Arctic expeditions of the twentieth century. Their mission: to prove that aeroplanes could fly the Atlantic by mapping an unmapped coastline, discovering unknown mountain ranges, and manning a weather station in the middle of the Greenland ice sheet — through winter, in the dark, in winds of 130 miles per hour.Gino Watkins never lost a man. He discovered the highest mountains in the Arctic, became the first non-Inuit to master the Greenlandic kayak, and is now regarded as the godfather of British kayaking. By twenty-five, he had led three major expeditions and earned the Polar Medal from the King. And then, on a solo hunting trip during his next expedition, he disappeared - leaving only his kayak and his trousers behind. He was twenty-five years old.Nic Watkins, Gino's great-nephew and a filmmaker who has spent nearly a decade piecing together his story, joins Hugh to tell the full tale: the expeditions, the rescues, the family tragedies that shadowed Gino's short life, and what it was like to finally stand in the base camp where his great-uncle had lived, seeing in colour for the first time what he had only ever known in black and white.Find out more about Nic's documentary Bridging the Ice at bridgingtheicedoc.com, or visit nicwatkins.com. The film is distributed by Chip Taylor Communications at chiptaylor.com.Gino Watkins was himself an Arthur Beale customer - head to our website to see the telegram he sent from Greenland asking for an urgent restock of rope: arthurbeale.co.uk.
• 
  Solo to the North Pole: Pen Hadow 15.04.2026 49min

  Pen Hadow appears by arrangement with DBA Speakers www.dbaspeakers.comIn 2003, Pen Hadow became the first person to trek solo and without resupply from Canada to the North Geographic Pole - 770 kilometres across shifting sea ice, open water, and temperatures of minus 40. It is a feat that has never been repeated, and almost certainly never will be.But this is not the story of a single expedition. It is the story of a promise made to a dying father and fifteen years of refusing to give up. Pen joins Hugh to tell the full story: from a childhood toughened by the nanny who once looked after Captain Scott's son, to the moment he fell through the ice without his immersion suit just days from the Pole. He describes the paralysing effect of cold on decision-making, the protocols for surviving a polar bear encounter while swimming between ice floes, and why the hardest challenge of all was not physical - but managing the wild swings of emotion that come with being completely alone.He also explains what his years on the Arctic ice revealed about the disappearing sea ice, a discovery that has defined the second half of his life, and one he now shares with audiences around the world.Pen Hadow's book Solo is out now.
• 
  The Lost Franklin Expedition: What Really Happened? 08.04.2026 43min

  In 1845, Sir John Franklin sailed from England with 129 men and two of the Royal Navy's finest ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, to chart the last unmapped stretch of the Northwest Passage. They were expected back within three years. They were never seen again.What followed became one of the greatest mysteries in the history of exploration. Scattered bones on a frozen island. Inuit testimony of starvation and cannibalism. A hastily scrawled note in the margins of an Admiralty form. And a Victorian public that refused to believe its heroes could have met such an end. Russell Potter, one of the world's foremost Franklin scholars, joins Hugh to unpick nearly 180 years of searching, speculation, and discovery. He explains what we actually know, what we can only guess at, and why the mystery endures. Both ships have now been found, one remarkably preserved beneath the Arctic waters, but what lies within them has yet to be fully explored.From the fatal decision to abandon ship, to the race between Lady Franklin and the press, to the amateur sleuths and satellite hunters still searching today - this is a story that refuses to give up its secrets. We ask why the Franklin Expedition continues to grip us, what it reveals about the nature of obsession, and whether the answer might still be out there, waiting to be found.Russell Potter's book Finding Franklin: The Untold Story of a 165-Year Search is out now.
• 
  Navigating the Grand Canyon Like It's 1869: John Wesley Powell 01.04.2026 42min

  In 1869, John Wesley Powell set off down the Colorado River with nine men, four wooden boats, and no idea what lay ahead. The Grand Canyon, 300 miles of unmapped canyon, unknown rapids, and sheer rock walls, was the last blank space on the map of the continental United States.Author John F Ross joins Hugh to tell the full story: how a one-armed Civil War veteran turned geologist became the first person to navigate the entire length of the Grand Canyon, racing against starvation through 360 rapids in boats that were entirely wrong for the job.From losing a third of their food supply on the very first day, to the desertion of three desperate men - it is a thrilling snapshot into a moment in time. We ask what Powell's extraordinary journey revealed about the American West, about leadership under impossible pressure, and about what it means to push into territory where no map can help you.John F Ross’ book The Promise of the Grand Canyon is out now.The Art of Adventure is brought to you by Arthur Beale, outfitters to sailors, adventurers and explorers for nearly 500 years. Find out more at arthurbeale.co.uk.
• 
  Astronaut wanted, no experience necessary: Helen Sharman 25.03.2026 42min

  Helen Sharman appears by arrangement with DBA Speakers www.dbaspeakers.comIn 1989, Helen Sharman was driving home from work when a radio ad changed her life. Astronaut wanted. No experience necessary. Britain had no space agency, no human spaceflight programme, and no tradition of sending civilians into orbit. Helen was a 26-year-old food technologist from Sheffield with a chemistry degree and no military background. She applied anyway.Eighteen months later, she was sitting on top of a Soviet rocket - and on 18 May 1991, she became the first British person in space.Helen joins Hugh to tell the full story: the 13,000 applicants, the gruelling selection process, and the live television broadcast that revealed her as one of the two finalists. She describes life at Star City on the cusp of the Cold War's end, the manual docking crisis 200 kilometres from Mir when the navigation system failed and the crew had to act alone, and those evening hours when five people gathered around a porthole and simply looked at the earth. She also reflects on what it actually takes to go somewhere extraordinary — and why the qualities that got her there might be less unusual than we think.The Art of Adventure is brought to you by Arthur Beale, outfitters to sailors, adventurers and explorers for nearly 500 years. Find out more at arthurbeale.co.uk.
• 
  Climbing Mont Blanc like it’s 1838: Lise Wortley 18.03.2026 33min

  In 1838, Henriette d'Angeville became the first woman to climb Mont Blanc unaided - in a 12-kilogram wool dress, a matching bonnet, and hobnail boots, with 18 bottles of wine and a carrier pigeon tucked into her pack. Her name was largely forgotten until adventurer and filmmaker Lise Wortley decided to find out exactly what that climb felt like by doing it herself, in the same outfit, from the same church in Chamonix, via the original route.Lise joins Hugh to talk about her project Woman With Altitude, which researches and retraces the overlooked journeys of history's women adventurers - wearing exactly what they wore, right down to the corsets. She recounts the 2024 attempt that ended in a storm (four climbers died the following day), the return in 2025, and what it actually feels like to jump crevasses in a floor-length dress while looking into the darkness below. But this episode is about more than one extraordinary climb.Find out more about Lise on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/woman_with_altitude/?hl=enOr her website: https://www.womanwithaltitude.com/The Art of Adventure is brought to you by Arthur Beale, outfitters to sailors, adventurers and explorers for nearly 500 years. Find out more at arthurbeale.co.uk.
• 
  The Endurance: How to Captain a Ship Like Shackleton 11.03.2026 55min

  In 1914, Ernest Shackleton set out to make the first land crossing of Antarctica. His ship never reached the continent. Within months, the Endurance was crushed by sea ice, leaving 28 men stranded in one of the most hostile environments on earth, with no hope of rescue.Historian of polar exploration Henrietta Hammant joins Hugh to unpick the legend of Shackleton: his rivalry with Scott, the 5,000 men who applied for a voyage into the unknown, and the extraordinary 800-nautical-mile lifeboat crossing to South Georgia that should, by any reasonable measure, have failed. But this episode asks a harder question: what does it mean to lead when everything has already gone wrong? And what can a century-old survival story teach us about the kind of leadership we actually want today?The Art of Adventure is brought to you by Arthur Beale, outfitters to sailors, adventurers and explorers for nearly 500 years. Find out more at arthurbeale.co.uk.
• 
  Rowing For My Life: A Record Breaking Tale of Endurance 04.03.2026 38min

  Kathleen Saville was barely out of college when she rowed her first ocean - earning a world record along the way. What began as a wildly ambitious plan between two newlyweds became a test of resilience, navigation and marriage itself.In this episode, Kathleen recounts building Excalibur by hand, rowing 3,600 miles across the Atlantic, and later attempting a 10,000-mile Pacific crossing, during which her husband was swept overboard and their sextant lost to the sea. Guided only by the stars and their own resolve, they kept rowing.But this is more than a survival story. It’s a meditation on partnership, problem-solving, ego, humility, and what it really means to live a life less ordinary. Is adventure about conquering the ocean? Or learning how to get along with it?The Art of Adventure is brought to you by Arthur Beale, outfitters to sailors, adventurers and explorers for nearly 500 years. Find out more at arthurbeale.co.uk.You can order Kathleen’s Book, Rowing For Your Life, online.
• 
  Mallory's Last Climb: What Really Happened on Everest? 25.02.2026 41min

  On 8th June 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine set out from their high camp on Everest. They were spotted once, two small figures moving through a break in the clouds, and then they were gone. Over a hundred years later, we still don't know if they made it to the top.Award-winning filmmaker and author Mick Conefrey, whose book Fallen examines Mallory's final expedition, joins Hugh to separate the man from the myth. What really drove Mallory back to Everest a third time? Was the third attempt an act of heroism, or recklessness? And does it matter whether he reached the summit or not?Along the way, Mick challenges some of mountaineering's most cherished narratives, and asks what "because it's there" really tells us about one of history's most debated climbers.The Art of Adventure is brought to you by Arthur Beale, outfitters to sailors, adventurers and explorers for nearly 500 years. Find out more arthurbeale.co.uk.
• 
  Win a £100 Arthur Beale voucher - What do you want to hear in series 2? 28.05.2026 1min

  Have your say: https://forms.gle/Xc6USH2ThWqzxRex7Series 2 is coming. But first - we want to hear from you.Which adventures should we cover next? Which explorers, expeditions, or untold stories are you dying to hear?Fill in our short listener survey for your chance to win a £100 Arthur Beale voucher. It takes about a minute.Have your say: https://forms.gle/Xc6USH2ThWqzxRex7Entry closes 10PM GMT on 24th June 2025. Winner announced 25th June.
• 
  Introducing The Art of Adventure 09.02.2026 1min

  The Art of Adventure celebrates the people who push into the unknown, past and present, and asks: what is the true art of adventure… and where might it take you?Brought to you by Arthur Beale. Find out more www.arthurbeale.co.uk