And why would anyone choose to use, of all things, airships, dirigibles to get to probably the worst place in the world to try to fly a dirigible? Go ahead.

Yeah.

You know, so what is interesting to me was when I came across this wild American journalist named Walter Wellman, you know, I had never heard of him.

So to set it up, you know, people have been trying to get to the North Pole the old fashioned way for quite a while, you know, using chips as far as you could go till they get stuck in the ice and then taking dogs and sleds the rest of the way.

And usually at terrific cost and tragedy and 50% mortality of these expeditions that would try.

And Wellman, Walter Wellman, who was an American journalist at the turn of the century, was, he tried the old-fashioned dog sled method a couple times.

And then he had this epiphany because he had been studying the origins of flight.

So when you were talking about with Roosevelt supporting the expedition, there's probably some governmental advantage for being one of the first people to fly over the Arctic as well.

yeah

you know to build a fire is one of my favorite stories of all time and um reading about the yukon and just how gnarly it was um but when i it's it's a weird thing like i had already been predisposed to um you know, humans on the edge of sort of suffering survival and maybe at some end of it, like triumph, I guess.

And then I went to Greenland in 2003.

I was following for a number of years.

I, followed these adventure races.

They are modern day adventure races in difficult contexts, which were made popular by Mark Burnett, the guy who who created Survivor, The Apprentice, maybe our president.

And but at the time, I was like really fixated on following these people that were doing these bizarre races.

So have you written fiction? Did you consider doing fiction before going the nonfiction route? What was that process like for you?

Like, his humanity was still there, and I think that's, that is one of the best stories out of all of this, is seeing that humanity, uh, there between Frederick and Rice.

Yeah.

I, I completely agree, and you know, that selflessness, too, because Rice had, had gone off a number of times.

Um, he was one of the strongest members, had tried...

There was this other expedition, the Nara's expedition, that had presumably cached like 500 pounds of, you know, tinned meat.

And so you think about that, you're in this, you're in this, uh, sort of hut stone structure that you've carved out of the ground with your hands and, um, you know that out there is salvation.

And, and so yeah, that tenderness, um, between those two, uh, y- you know, incredibly moving, and the idea that this man with whom I have shared...

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