Embrace the Cold

Original Air Date: 
January 29, 2019

It's never a great feeling to see "life-threatening low temperatures" in a headline about the weather forecast. But cold temperatures don't have to get you down — stay indoors and celebrate our collective triumphs over frigid conditions with this collection of conversations about embracing the cold.

Articles

Francis Halzen, the lead scientist of the IceCube Neutrino Detector, explains how light sensors buried deep in the ice at the South Pole detected a neutrino that traveled four billion light-years.

Length: 
11:40
TC Boyle
Bookmarks

How does a hummingbird survive in subzero winter temperatures? Why endure them at all? Author T.C. Boyle couldn’t understand why the small bird would be anywhere near his mountain writing retreat, but he found the answer in Bernd Heinrich’s “Winter World.”

Length: 
3:01
Polar bear
Audio

Depending on where you live, winter can be tough to get through.  It’s cold, it gets dark early, the weather’s messy.  Naturalist Bernd Heinrich shares some amazing stories about the ingenious ways animals survive winter.

Length: 
8:19
A lonely Antartic landscape.
Articles

In 1993, Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge became the first person to cross Antarctica alone. It took him 50 days. The thing that had the biggest impact on him was the silence.

Lynne Cox swimming.
Articles

Lynne Cox is an extreme swimmer. At 18, she swam between the islands of New Zealand. She broke the men's and women's records for the English Channel. Then she did the unthinkable — swimming to Antarctica.

Length: 
10:22
Show Details 📻
Airdates
January 29, 2019
Guests: 
Francis Halzen, professor of physics and academic program director of the UW IceCube Project, is pictured on April 1, 2013. (Photo by Bryce Richter / UW-Madison)
Lead Scientist, IceCube Neutrino Observatory
Erling Kagge
Explorer, Lawyer, Art Collector, Publisher, Author
Lynne Cox
Long-Distance Open-Water Swimmer and Author
Last modified: 
January 30, 2019