# "Who would you dine with? Scott or Amundsen?" Malcolm Gladwell and Tim Harford in Discussion.

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 19 Aug 2022, 25 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/c6347e5e-7193-4254-8bb8-aef200d0c2e5/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

Malcolm Gladwell joins Tim Harford to discuss our recent three-part tale about the race to reach the South Pole. There's talk of imperial decline; the power of the underdog; why getting everything you want is actually a handicap; and limes... lots and lots of limes. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. Wait, beware ahead of you, lie yawning crevasses, rampaging
[0:23] Speaker 1: killer whales, and Malcolm Gladwell bearing spoilers. You are about
[0:28] Speaker 1: to hear a conversation about our epic race to the
[0:32] Speaker 1: south Pole trilogy. So before you do, please have a
[0:35] Speaker 1: listen to the trilogy itself, which should have arrived in
[0:38] Speaker 1: your Cautionary Tales podcast feed over the past few weeks.
[0:42] Speaker 1: I'll wait, don't worry right, as you will now know
[0:47] Speaker 1: the trilogy makes reference to Malcolm Gladwell's work. Malcolm is,
[0:51] Speaker 1: of course the author of David and Goliath, The Bomber Mafia,
[0:54] Speaker 1: and other best sellers, and the creator of the Revisionist
[0:59] Speaker 1: History podcast. I was so excited when he agreed to
[1:02] Speaker 1: come and talk about the south Pole Trilogy. Why Captain
[1:05] Speaker 1: Scott's access to money and patrons turned out to be
[1:08] Speaker 1: more cursed and a blessing what it cost rolled Amondson
[1:12] Speaker 1: to rip up the conventional rules of behavior, and the
[1:14] Speaker 1: astonishing subplot in which absolutely everybody seemed to forget the
[1:18] Speaker 1: scientific evidence and come down with scurvy. Now, I had
[1:22] Speaker 1: assumed I'd be asking Malcolm about David and Goliath, but
[1:26] Speaker 1: that is not how it went down. Malcolm had questions
[1:29] Speaker 1: for me, so many questions, and I just loved trying
[1:32] Speaker 1: to keep up with him. I think you're going to
[1:34] Speaker 1: enjoy the conversation as much as I did. So now
[1:37] Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales presents a conversation between me, Tim Harford, and
[1:42] Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell himself. Tim, I've listened to all three of
[1:47] Speaker 1: your episodes, and I must say I liked him very much.
[1:52] Speaker 1: Though I thought it was fascinating, I actually knew none
[1:54] Speaker 1: of this, none at all. I couldn't yet. It was
[1:57] Speaker 1: all kind of a blur to be all of these,
[1:59] Speaker 1: all of these explorers from long ago, and are all
[2:02] Speaker 1: of these dimensions that I didn't understand. But I were
[2:05] Speaker 1: to start with this contrast between Scott and Ahmad's and
[2:09] Speaker 1: the complex thing and the thing that makes it really
[2:12] Speaker 1: fascinating is that Scott is really the innovator, isn't he. Yeah,
[2:15] Speaker 1: he sees himself as the scientific innovator. He wants to
[2:19] Speaker 1: he wants to break ground in terms of exploring, measuring
[2:23] Speaker 1: magnetic fields, discovering new aspects of the flora and fungi
[2:28] Speaker 1: of Antarctica. There's this crazy side quest they do when
[2:31] Speaker 1: they're trying to get a penguin egg, which is described
[2:35] Speaker 1: as the worst journey in the world because they have
[2:37] Speaker 1: to travel in the Antarctic winter. It's crazy. He's doing
[2:40] Speaker 1: technological innovation. He has these three motorized sleds, which I
[2:45] Speaker 1: think partly paved the way for tanks in the First
[2:47] Speaker 1: World War. And people who think that Scott is awesome
[2:50] Speaker 1: emphasize all of this ambition, all of the things he
[2:53] Speaker 1: was trying to do. But of course Amonson just wanted
[2:56] Speaker 1: to use the best possible way to get to the
[2:58] Speaker 1: South Pole first. And actually that was innovative in some
[3:02] Speaker 1: small ways that the precise design of the sled and
[3:05] Speaker 1: the kind of containers that won't leak, but it was
[3:07] Speaker 1: basically using techniques that have been used in Greenland by
[3:11] Speaker 1: indigenous people for well, I mean, we don't know how long,
[3:14] Speaker 1: a very long time. This is actually what I loved
[3:16] Speaker 1: about the story is that it's so incredibly contemporary because
[3:21] Speaker 1: Scott is really the kind of He's the Silicon Valley
[3:23] Speaker 1: startup who gets an enormous amount of venture funding and
[3:28] Speaker 1: proceeds to blow it all on a series of ideas
[3:30] Speaker 1: and solving problems that aren't problems, and Emmonson is the
[3:34] Speaker 1: kind of bootstrap entrepreneur in the middle of the country
[3:38] Speaker 1: that no one's paying attention to, who's you know, forced
[3:41] Speaker 1: to use the tried and true. The original sin it
[3:44] Speaker 1: sounds like, is the fact that Scott was given everything
[3:47] Speaker 1: he wanted, everything he wanted, plus a lot of baggage
[3:50] Speaker 1: he didn't want, all kinds of interference and all kinds
[3:53] Speaker 1: of people telling him they want to do this, and
[3:55] Speaker 1: they wanted to do that, and they want them to
[3:56] Speaker 1: achieve all of these great things, which means he can't focus.
[4:00] Speaker 1: He's got far too much money, he's got far too
[4:02] Speaker 1: many people. His ship nearly sinks simply because it's so overladen.
[4:06] Speaker 1: There's just so much on it. Yeah, that it's nearly
[4:09] Speaker 1: capsized by a storm on the way to the Antarctic.
[4:11] Speaker 1: But Amonson, meanwhile, is I not only is no one
[4:14] Speaker 1: paying attention to him, he's actively engaging in disinformation. He's
[4:18] Speaker 1: lying to He's even lying to his own crew about
[4:20] Speaker 1: where he's going. He's telling people he's going north and
[4:23] Speaker 1: he's actually going south. Yeah, And I love the way
[4:25] Speaker 1: that you've phrase this is he's a Silicon valley startup,
[4:28] Speaker 1: because for me, I'm thinking he's a he's a British
[4:30] Speaker 1: Navy guy. He's kind of a government man. He's a
[4:32] Speaker 1: military man. He's very bureaucratic. But you're you're seeing some
[4:36] Speaker 1: a different quality in him and a different problem that
[4:38] Speaker 1: he's facing. He's given everything he wants, and then as
[4:43] Speaker 1: a result, he has lots of things he doesn't want.
[4:46] Speaker 1: Those two things are linked. That's what happens when you
[4:49] Speaker 1: get everything you want. It's the careful what you wish
[4:51] Speaker 1: for problem. Right. The things he don't want are a
[4:55] Speaker 1: consequence of getting everything he wants. In the beginning, he
[4:58] Speaker 1: has so many people who are pitching in to quote
[5:00] Speaker 1: unquote help him that he ends up being burdened by
[5:02] Speaker 1: all of their expectations, which is another Silicon Valley kind
[5:07] Speaker 1: of conundrum. The venture capitalist gives you fifty million dollars
[5:11] Speaker 1: and then has a seat at the table and complicates
[5:15] Speaker 1: your vision with all their sense of where you should
[5:18] Speaker 1: be going. The funder the venture capitalist in this particular
[5:21] Speaker 1: case is a guy called Sir Clements Markham, who is
[5:23] Speaker 1: just this incredibly British, incredibly intimidating fellow. I've got this
[5:28] Speaker 1: portrait of him and it looks to me like the
[5:30] Speaker 1: expression on his face is like the photographer has just
[5:33] Speaker 1: broken wind, and he just looks so unhappy that someone
[5:37] Speaker 1: is daring to point a camera at him. And he
[5:40] Speaker 1: was just pulling the strings at the Royal Geographical Society
[5:43] Speaker 1: in London for decades. He's so tight with Scott and
[5:48] Speaker 1: Scott's family that Scott names his son Peter after Sir Clements,
[5:54] Speaker 1: and Scott is clearly terrified of him. And it's one
[5:57] Speaker 1: of these you know, he put Scott where he is
[5:58] Speaker 1: and he can put him right back again if he
[6:01] Speaker 1: wants to. And Sir Clements, who's never been to the Antarctic,
[6:04] Speaker 1: who's got no idea what it's like down there, just
[6:07] Speaker 1: has his views. Obviously there should be no dogs. Everybody
[6:10] Speaker 1: who knows anything about Arctic exploration knows you should use
[6:13] Speaker 1: dogs for any number of reasons I explain in the episodes.
[6:17] Speaker 1: But Sir Clements is sitting there in London going, no
[6:20] Speaker 1: no sky, no dogs, Yeah, and Scott's kind of got
[6:23] Speaker 1: to do what he says. It's so funny that any
[6:25] Speaker 1: story about English life in this period always boils down
[6:29] Speaker 1: to the stupidity of the British ruling class. Sir Clements
[6:32] Speaker 1: is such a familiar figure, this kind of arrogant, pigheaded
[6:39] Speaker 1: authority figure who thinks that, who has a kind of
[6:42] Speaker 1: abstract notion of the way things ought to be. Yes, absolutely,
[6:46] Speaker 1: which sort of triumphs over the way things actually are.
[6:49] Speaker 1: But the interesting thing for me about Amundson is that
[6:54] Speaker 1: he also has these certain bureaucratic constraints. So he's the king,
[6:58] Speaker 1: is the patron of his expedition, and he's got funding
[7:01] Speaker 1: from the Norwegian government and all this kind of stuff,
[7:04] Speaker 1: but he just doesn't care. So he lies to the King,
[7:07] Speaker 1: he lies to Parliament, he's borrowed all this money, and
[7:10] Speaker 1: then he basically runs away. One of the things he's
[7:13] Speaker 1: doing going Fantarctica is getting out of reach of his creditors,
[7:16] Speaker 1: and it's only when they can't impound his ship that
[7:18] Speaker 1: he actually tells people exactly what he's doing. So, yes,
[7:22] Speaker 1: it is partly this kind of this hide bound British bureaucracy,
[7:26] Speaker 1: but it is also Scott's deference to it in a
[7:31] Speaker 1: way that Amundson was not interested for a second in
[7:34] Speaker 1: any of that. Yeah, to bring up the second Silicon
[7:36] Speaker 1: Valley analogy, there's a little bit of Elizabeth Holmes in
[7:41] Speaker 1: Ammonson it's fake it to you make it kind of thing. Yeah,
[7:44] Speaker 1: because he made it. Yeah, he said to be made it.
[7:47] Speaker 1: But that idea that for someone who's attempting something incredibly difficult,
[7:53] Speaker 1: that it may be necessary at some time to engage
[7:56] Speaker 1: in acts of deception at the outset, or maybe a
[7:59] Speaker 1: better way of saying it is that the kind of
[8:02] Speaker 1: person who is focused in singular singular enough to pull
[8:07] Speaker 1: off a feet like this, is willing to engage in deception,
[8:11] Speaker 1: doesn't have any kind of moral qualm, nothing, nothing. Trump's
[8:15] Speaker 1: the goal of reaching the South, Paula. Everything else is secondary,
[8:18] Speaker 1: including the truth. Yeah, and he doesn't seem to have
[8:21] Speaker 1: lost any sleep over that. And I think Amason had
[8:24] Speaker 1: this very clear vision that it would all be forgiven
[8:26] Speaker 1: if he succeeded, and which I suspect that to the
[8:29] Speaker 1: extent that Elizabeth Holmes that Saranos had a vision of
[8:32] Speaker 1: what was going on. But there's the same thing, they'll
[8:34] Speaker 1: forgive me want it all works. Oh, I think she
[8:37] Speaker 1: very clearly had that. Tim I think that's absolutely much
[8:40] Speaker 1: driving the whole train. There is it. I can lie in,
[8:43] Speaker 1: cheat and deceive because if I pull this off, I'm
[8:46] Speaker 1: a hero. Yeah, tell me a little bit about your
[8:50] Speaker 1: personal feelings about the two men. I mean, it's clearly
[8:53] Speaker 1: you're partial to Amadson. If you eat a choice between
[8:56] Speaker 1: dining with two of them, who's your first choice for
[8:59] Speaker 1: dinner tonight? Oh? Actually, I think they would both be well,
[9:02] Speaker 1: they both be interesting, but they would be pretty awkward
[9:05] Speaker 1: both ways, because I think they both had these huge egos.
[9:08] Speaker 1: I really like either of them as people. Amonson is
[9:12] Speaker 1: this anti hero. I'm excited by Amonson's daring and his
[9:17] Speaker 1: willingness to get things done, and he makes sacrifices and
[9:20] Speaker 1: he succeeds in the end, and Scott just seems like
[9:23] Speaker 1: this tragic blunderer. But I'm not sure i'd really want
[9:25] Speaker 1: to have dinner with either of them. If I'm honest,
[9:28] Speaker 1: who would you rather? Scott? Yeah? I came away from
[9:31] Speaker 1: listening to your your episodes liking Amondson, and I felt
[9:36] Speaker 1: very sorry for him because the world doesn't reward him
[9:38] Speaker 1: in the way that he ought to have been rewarded.
[9:40] Speaker 1: He's the hero. He made it look too easy, that's
[9:42] Speaker 1: the problem. Yeah, he made it look too easy. But
[9:44] Speaker 1: Scott would just be fascinating, and he's so British, he's
[9:47] Speaker 1: so of that period. I mean, and you would dine
[9:50] Speaker 1: out on Scott stories for the rest of your life.
[9:52] Speaker 1: But if you had dinner with him, get him trying.
[9:55] Speaker 1: He was. He was a brilliant storyteller and the story
[9:58] Speaker 1: was of the tragic hero. And he was writing this
[10:01] Speaker 1: story of the tragic hero who's going to fail all
[10:04] Speaker 1: the way along. It's almost like he knew how it
[10:06] Speaker 1: was going to end. Yeah, there's this myth may King
[10:09] Speaker 1: that goes on afterwards as well. Of course, around Scott
[10:12] Speaker 1: the British establishments. At first, he's an inspiration for the
[10:15] Speaker 1: soldiers who are going over over the top in World
[10:19] Speaker 1: War One, and you know that this is a man
[10:21] Speaker 1: who knows how to die with dignity as a hero
[10:25] Speaker 1: for his country. Then later that parallel it is maintained,
[10:29] Speaker 1: but the moral flips, which is it was so stupid
[10:32] Speaker 1: and incompetent, and so with the generals in World War One.
[10:35] Speaker 1: So the whole narrative that the British are telling about
[10:38] Speaker 1: themselves throughout the twentieth century, the ebbs and flows, Scott
[10:41] Speaker 1: seems to be the exemplar. No matter what story you
[10:44] Speaker 1: want to tell, he's there in the middle of it.
[10:46] Speaker 1: That was something that thought that I was thinking about
[10:48] Speaker 1: when I was listening this old lady. Of the parallels
[10:51] Speaker 1: were the First World War, which is, you know, this
[10:53] Speaker 1: kind of epic example of the ability of the English
[10:58] Speaker 1: to romanticize failure and stupidity and just kind of tragedy.
[11:06] Speaker 1: I guess, I mean, just like that idea that dying
[11:09] Speaker 1: nobly in pursuit of some futile, stupid cause we think
[11:13] Speaker 1: of that as being the highest of all. There's nothing
[11:16] Speaker 1: that can stop the myth making machinery of early twentieth
[11:19] Speaker 1: century England or of kind of late British Empire England.
[11:24] Speaker 1: I just find it endlessly fascinating the way the kind
[11:27] Speaker 1: of the minds of these people work. Yeah, when they
[11:30] Speaker 1: finally find Scott, I mean, and it was never guaranteed
[11:33] Speaker 1: that they would find him. I mean, he could have
[11:35] Speaker 1: just been buried under the snow forever. When they finally
[11:38] Speaker 1: find him, in this terrible scene of him and he's
[11:42] Speaker 1: the last two men's he's with, and they're trying to
[11:44] Speaker 1: recover his diaries and move his arm, and his arm
[11:48] Speaker 1: just shatters because it's it's ice. It's just it's horrific,
[11:53] Speaker 1: and they're dragging with them about twenty or thirty pounds
[11:56] Speaker 1: worth of fossils, and then they haven't got any strength
[11:59] Speaker 1: more and any any strength to go any further, and
[12:02] Speaker 1: they all die and they've still got the fossils with them.
[12:04] Speaker 1: And there was one commentator who said, I think they
[12:08] Speaker 1: could have saved them else the weight, but all the
[12:10] Speaker 1: British were just isn't it epic? They were still trying
[12:13] Speaker 1: to do the science even up to the last moment,
[12:15] Speaker 1: and you know, the sensible response is, well, maybe they
[12:17] Speaker 1: should have stopped doing the science at the point at
[12:19] Speaker 1: which they were all clearly about to die. Yeah, it's
[12:22] Speaker 1: all part of the story, all part of the myth.
[12:24] Speaker 1: It's some mixture of a suicidal impulse and imperialism. You know,
[12:29] Speaker 1: it's like what happens when grandiose national dreams coincide with
[12:34] Speaker 1: psychological neurosis. You end up dragging the fossils with you.
[12:38] Speaker 1: And it's really this this weird kind of turning point
[12:41] Speaker 1: in the British Empire as well. And the British Empire
[12:43] Speaker 1: is last another half a century really until after the
[12:47] Speaker 1: Second World War. But the glory days or if you
[12:50] Speaker 1: if you prefer that, you know, the terrible days of
[12:53] Speaker 1: moral outrage. They're all in the past. All the conquering,
[12:57] Speaker 1: the exploitation, the stealing other people's land, the telling other
[13:01] Speaker 1: people what to do, the slave trade in the earlier centuries,
[13:05] Speaker 1: that's all happened, and Scott and his crew are just
[13:10] Speaker 1: trying to race to be the first person to this
[13:12] Speaker 1: arbitrary point on this icy desert. There's nothing there, there's
[13:16] Speaker 1: no resources, there's nothing, there's no people, and yet it
[13:19] Speaker 1: still matters to them. It's that last gasp of empire. Yeah,
[13:24] Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell and I will be back in a moment
[13:26] Speaker 1: to discuss how Scott and Amonson viewed their own chances,
[13:30] Speaker 1: why Amonson didn't seem to get the recognition he deserves,
[13:33] Speaker 1: and what we can learn from imperfect experiments. I'm back
[13:40] Speaker 1: with Malcolm Gladwell. I was curious about who do you
[13:44] Speaker 1: think at the moment both men get off their boats
[13:49] Speaker 1: and strike out on this expedition, Who do you think
[13:53] Speaker 1: is more confident in their heart of pulling it off?
[13:56] Speaker 1: Does Scott think he has a realistic chance? I think,
[13:59] Speaker 1: without a doubt Amonson. Scott is worried about Amonson from
[14:04] Speaker 1: the start. He knows Amonson has started closer to the pole.
[14:09] Speaker 1: He knows that because Amonson is traveling with dogs, which
[14:13] Speaker 1: have certain advantages, that Amonson is going to start earlier
[14:16] Speaker 1: in the spring. So for those two reasons alone, he
[14:20] Speaker 1: knows Amonson has this fantastic advantage. Scott is very confused
[14:23] Speaker 1: in the way he expresses this, because he will sometimes say, well,
[14:26] Speaker 1: I'm not really a big fan of dog they don't
[14:28] Speaker 1: really work, and then in the same letter he'll say, well,
[14:32] Speaker 1: Amonson has a big advantage because he's using dogs, and
[14:34] Speaker 1: you go, well, how can you how can you write
[14:36] Speaker 1: those two paragraphs on the same page. Amonson is always
[14:40] Speaker 1: concerned that maybe Scott will will beat him, but I
[14:43] Speaker 1: think he's he's very confident. He know he has a plan,
[14:46] Speaker 1: he knows exactly how it's going to go. The main
[14:48] Speaker 1: risk to Amonson is that he's so eager, he starts
[14:51] Speaker 1: too early, he hits bad weather and so there's a
[14:54] Speaker 1: false start. But once he really gets going, there's never
[14:57] Speaker 1: really any doubt. Yeah. Yeah, the whole thing so Norwegian,
[15:01] Speaker 1: with the skiers going out ahead, and it's just like
[15:05] Speaker 1: it's crazy. The diaries. You've got these the diary interests
[15:09] Speaker 1: from Scott saying oh, it's terrible. The ice is forming
[15:14] Speaker 1: on the nozzles of the ponies. They're sinking through the eyes.
[15:17] Speaker 1: This is our spirits are very low. This is really hard.
[15:20] Speaker 1: And Amonson's diaries, he's telling stories about racing with this
[15:24] Speaker 1: world champion skier and trying to do these sharp turns
[15:27] Speaker 1: and falling over and isn't it fun? And you know
[15:30] Speaker 1: he's telemarking. Yeah, he's doing these telemark turns and he's
[15:33] Speaker 1: joking that, oh, I don't at least this guy pretended
[15:36] Speaker 1: not to see me fall over. And they're just they're
[15:38] Speaker 1: having fun on fresh powder. And it could not be
[15:41] Speaker 1: more different the impression that they're painting of themselves in
[15:46] Speaker 1: their diaries. Now, maybe their experiences were more similar than
[15:49] Speaker 1: their diaries described, although I kind of suspect not. This
[15:53] Speaker 1: is a massive hypothetical, but there was something in Scott's
[15:57] Speaker 1: attempt that seems very late Empire. But there was a
[16:00] Speaker 1: moment when the British empires kind of ability to pull
[16:04] Speaker 1: off these kinds of feats would have looked a lot
[16:06] Speaker 1: more like Edmondson. I'm wondering if if the Wish Empire
[16:09] Speaker 1: is beginning in the late nineteenth century as opposed to ending. Yeah,
[16:13] Speaker 1: does Scout work. In other words, is he a victim
[16:16] Speaker 1: of the kind of encroaching, bureautization and sclerosis that attends
[16:22] Speaker 1: to a country and decline, an empire and decline. I
[16:26] Speaker 1: mean my sense is that a lot of it is
[16:29] Speaker 1: the conservatism that comes from having something to defend, the
[16:34] Speaker 1: feeling that you should be winning every battle, that you've
[16:37] Speaker 1: got loads to lose, not much extra stuff to gain,
[16:40] Speaker 1: and then that that conservatism sets in. That that's a guess,
[16:44] Speaker 1: and early earlier on in the British Empire, they're the
[16:48] Speaker 1: plucky underdocks. I mean, you can object the morality of it,
[16:51] Speaker 1: and I think we do now from the twenty first century,
[16:54] Speaker 1: object to the morality of it. But this this tiny
[16:56] Speaker 1: country that is just conquering vast swaths of the world,
[16:59] Speaker 1: and it is incredible how they're managing to pull it off.
[17:02] Speaker 1: And it's much more entrepreneurial, much more dynamic, much more improvisational,
[17:06] Speaker 1: much cleverer than Scott and his cohorts his contemporaries seem
[17:12] Speaker 1: to be able to pull off. Maybe another way of
[17:14] Speaker 1: saying is that Amerson sounds he sounds like an eighteenth
[17:18] Speaker 1: century English explorer. He does, and Amason is from a
[17:22] Speaker 1: very young country. I mean, Norway is only only just
[17:24] Speaker 1: got its independence, so it's very aware of its need
[17:28] Speaker 1: to establish itself and to show the big boys that
[17:30] Speaker 1: it can do something. So that I think comes across
[17:32] Speaker 1: very much in what Amerson is doing. And he's like
[17:34] Speaker 1: that as well. He's got that scrappy underdog mentality. But
[17:37] Speaker 1: this brings up my last puzzle about about the story,
[17:41] Speaker 1: which is that the British should have readjust their expectations
[17:45] Speaker 1: to turn them into a hero, and Amason does not.
[17:47] Speaker 1: Even in his own country. He isn't the conquering hero
[17:51] Speaker 1: that you that he expected to be, which makes no
[17:54] Speaker 1: sense to me. Yeah, I grew up in Canada. Canada
[17:57] Speaker 1: is psychologically a lot like Norway. You know, we're too small,
[18:02] Speaker 1: and if you win a bronze medal in the Olympics
[18:05] Speaker 1: for Canada, you treat it as if you won the gold.
[18:09] Speaker 1: Considered to be it's been unbelievable old brands, you know
[18:11] Speaker 1: what I mean. So Norway it's tiny, They had nothing
[18:15] Speaker 1: going on, and this guy, one of their own, goes
[18:18] Speaker 1: and defeats the English at one of the great adventure
[18:21] Speaker 1: prizes of the era. And yet they come back and
[18:25] Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, they're excited at the time. I mean
[18:27] Speaker 1: it's actually it's huge at the time, but then the
[18:30] Speaker 1: question is, well, what's what's the second act? And actually,
[18:34] Speaker 1: in the end, Amonson gets tied up with the same
[18:36] Speaker 1: kinds of obligations that that wrapped around Scott's neck, and
[18:40] Speaker 1: he has to do these this scientific experiment because he
[18:43] Speaker 1: owes somebody a fade. He has to do all this
[18:45] Speaker 1: stuff and he hates it. He doesn't want to do it,
[18:46] Speaker 1: but he feels that he has to do it. And
[18:48] Speaker 1: there this slow, slow decline and this feeling of the
[18:52] Speaker 1: one hit wonder. Rock star is not fair to describe
[18:55] Speaker 1: him as a one hit wonder because he did several
[18:56] Speaker 1: other amazing things that no one, no one had ever
[18:58] Speaker 1: done before. But this sense of fading glory and ten
[19:02] Speaker 1: years later, after the First World War and people are
[19:05] Speaker 1: saying Amonson, oh, yeah, he's still alive. He's still doing it,
[19:08] Speaker 1: and he becomes this slightly ridiculous figure who's who's striving
[19:12] Speaker 1: through elevance. He needs money and people who want sort
[19:16] Speaker 1: of him as a hero now think of him as
[19:18] Speaker 1: a bit you know, a husband. Yeah, and it's it's
[19:20] Speaker 1: a very sad end. Yeah, if you make a list
[19:22] Speaker 1: of most famous Norwegians of all time. If you ask
[19:25] Speaker 1: Norwegians for the list, you know Magnus Carlson, Jacob Bingerbritton
[19:30] Speaker 1: is where is Admonson on that list? He he recovered
[19:33] Speaker 1: his reputation with the passage of time. Oh, he must have,
[19:36] Speaker 1: he must have. And fun fact, Roald Dahal, the great
[19:40] Speaker 1: children's author and not just children's author, was named after
[19:43] Speaker 1: rold Amonson. Oh yeah, so I mean rold Ammonson. He was.
[19:46] Speaker 1: He was big news for a time at a certain moment,
[19:49] Speaker 1: he was one of the first, was one of the
[19:51] Speaker 1: most famous people around. But then the First World War
[19:54] Speaker 1: people had other things to worry about. Yeah. One question
[19:57] Speaker 1: that I wanted to ask you, having worked on this.
[20:00] Speaker 1: One of the subplots of this epic race between these
[20:03] Speaker 1: two men is scurvy. And what's weird about scurvy is
[20:09] Speaker 1: we're told that James Lynde, a Royal Navy surgeon, proved
[20:13] Speaker 1: how to cure and indeed how to prevent scurvy in
[20:16] Speaker 1: seventeen forty seven. This is nearly two centuries before this race,
[20:20] Speaker 1: which is in the early nineteen hundreds. You just need
[20:23] Speaker 1: lemons or oranges. It's fine, And he's a British Navy surgeon,
[20:26] Speaker 1: so the British Navy, among all the institutions, should understand this.
[20:30] Speaker 1: And Robert Scott is also a British Navy officer. And
[20:34] Speaker 1: yet somehow, by the time we get to the age
[20:36] Speaker 1: of Arctic exploration, people have either forgotten or they no
[20:40] Speaker 1: longer believe the result of James's experiment. And that's a
[20:44] Speaker 1: puzzle that I wrestle with in the episode. But your
[20:50] Speaker 1: most recent season of revisionist history is all about experiments
[20:54] Speaker 1: and what we learn from them or what we don't
[20:56] Speaker 1: learn from them. And are you surprised to hear of
[21:00] Speaker 1: this great experiment that proved this wonderful thing and then
[21:02] Speaker 1: everyone somehow managed to ignore it. Well, I thought the
[21:05] Speaker 1: way you talked this through to me was very in
[21:08] Speaker 1: the episode was very convincing, which was Lynn does an experiment,
[21:13] Speaker 1: but he doesn't finish the experiment, or he can't. Yeah,
[21:16] Speaker 1: he can't tell you why it works. He's made a
[21:19] Speaker 1: general observation. You put it all the ways in which
[21:22] Speaker 1: lemons aren't as good as oranges. If you boil the
[21:25] Speaker 1: orange juice, it by him and see disappears if you
[21:28] Speaker 1: use copper. That leaches out a sorbic acid, which is
[21:32] Speaker 1: what you need for scurvy. Lynn discovers something, but you
[21:35] Speaker 1: realize that a piece of knowledge has to exist within
[21:38] Speaker 1: an ecosystem to be useful, and there's no ecosystem. Lynne
[21:43] Speaker 1: discovers a stray fact, and a stray fact is of
[21:46] Speaker 1: limited use we really in the real world, and without
[21:50] Speaker 1: that fact being anchored, you know, you end up with
[21:52] Speaker 1: these paradoxes of two hundred years later, Scott is like
[21:55] Speaker 1: his men are dying of scurvy. Like you know, you're
[21:58] Speaker 1: left baffled. I'm curious. So is that a tendency that
[22:03] Speaker 1: you see more often? You've you've been thinking about all
[22:04] Speaker 1: these experiments You've you've told all these stories about these
[22:07] Speaker 1: different experiments that have happened, that have been deliberately designed,
[22:10] Speaker 1: that have accidentally occurred. Do we often conduct experiments and
[22:13] Speaker 1: then not realize what it is that we've actually found
[22:16] Speaker 1: because we've got nowhere to take advantage of the knowledge
[22:18] Speaker 1: or to plug the knowledge into some wider theory of
[22:21] Speaker 1: the world. Well, I would say, you know, the most
[22:24] Speaker 1: interesting point you make in that episode is that they
[22:27] Speaker 1: didn't understand that there was a kind of for a
[22:29] Speaker 1: long time that there was a window that you can
[22:32] Speaker 1: go without vitab and see for a while and be fine,
[22:34] Speaker 1: and then boom the hammer comes down. Yeah, which is
[22:36] Speaker 1: an incredibly, first of all, a difficult thing to as
[22:39] Speaker 1: you point out, to find out, and the implications of
[22:42] Speaker 1: that is you can think you've solved the problem and
[22:45] Speaker 1: you haven't. I guess what this is saying is that
[22:48] Speaker 1: the thing that people often misunderstand I guess about modern
[22:52] Speaker 1: science is the value of having a vast number of
[22:57] Speaker 1: academics out there who are treading over the same territory. Right.
[23:01] Speaker 1: We sometimes roll our eyes about, oh my god, do
[23:04] Speaker 1: we really need to have a hundred research facilities funded
[23:07] Speaker 1: by the whatever? But we do. This is what was
[23:10] Speaker 1: the problem with scurvy, right, Yeah, you did have twenty
[23:12] Speaker 1: five different labs around around England doing work on scurvy
[23:16] Speaker 1: in the nineteenth centuries. So we could have teased out
[23:18] Speaker 1: all of these little qualifying facts and so we could
[23:22] Speaker 1: have populated the kind of ecosystem. Yeah, And it wasn't
[23:25] Speaker 1: actually wasn't just Lynde. I mean, there was somebody before
[23:28] Speaker 1: lynd There were people after Lynde, but there weren't enough
[23:30] Speaker 1: of them. Not only was this discovered and then forgotten
[23:34] Speaker 1: or misunderstood. It was discovered and then misunderstood and then
[23:37] Speaker 1: forgotten multiple times that we went through this whole cycle
[23:40] Speaker 1: of people believing in this thing and then not believing
[23:42] Speaker 1: in this thing because they just didn't have enough of
[23:44] Speaker 1: that extra work to attach it to their understanding of
[23:47] Speaker 1: how the world will. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny because reporters
[23:51] Speaker 1: and scientists, I think learned the same lesson over the
[23:55] Speaker 1: course of their careers, which is, you think you're done
[23:58] Speaker 1: and you're not. You know, all those qualifying facts you
[24:01] Speaker 1: lay out about scurvy that were misunderstood. There's more a
[24:04] Speaker 1: scurvy than laments than door oranges rather, right, I mean
[24:09] Speaker 1: just the lemon. I thought there's the lemon distinction. I
[24:12] Speaker 1: was thinking, who on Earth would have thought there was
[24:14] Speaker 1: a difference between lemons and oranges in their ability to
[24:17] Speaker 1: kind of deliver the crucial ingredient for stopping scurvy. Yeah,
[24:21] Speaker 1: well it's the limes. The limes is the reals, because
[24:23] Speaker 1: they're just they're just green lemons, right, Limes are just
[24:26] Speaker 1: green lemons, except it turns out they're not, and the
[24:29] Speaker 1: Brits are falsely called limes. They should be called oranges. Yeah,
[24:33] Speaker 1: well they are correctly called limes because they're drinking lime juice.
[24:37] Speaker 1: And that's their problem, because they wrongly think that limes
[24:41] Speaker 1: are just like oranges and lemons. Yeah, when I'm cooking,
[24:45] Speaker 1: if a recipe calls for lemon juice or lime juice,
[24:47] Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, it's the same. It's not the same.
[24:49] Speaker 1: It's not the same. But but since you don't know
[24:51] Speaker 1: what vitamin C is, oh I misspoke, it's the difference
[24:54] Speaker 1: between oranges and lemons on the one hand and limes
[24:57] Speaker 1: on the other. Yes, the crucial they see. It's so subtle.
[25:00] Speaker 1: It's so easy to lose track a commission in the
[25:02] Speaker 1: British Navy. Await it's Malcolm, your failure to so fully
[25:07] Speaker 1: internalized the action between different citrus fruits. This was so
[25:11] Speaker 1: much fun. Thank you so much, Thank you, Jim. It's
[25:14] Speaker 1: a wonderful series. Thank you to Malcolm Gladwell. And if
[25:17] Speaker 1: you've not done so, subscribe and listen to the latest
[25:20] Speaker 1: season of his podcast, Revisionist History.

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