Update, April 2026: Hello again, Katrien-heads. Audio technology has moved on a bit in the past 13 years, and there are now free AI models that can do a surprisingly decent job of extracting an isolated vocal even from a song like this. I’ve used a couple of them and updated the transcript below based…

I recently finished reading Race For The South Pole by Roland Huntford. Prior to reading the book I knew little of polar exploration, and was only vaguely aware of the Captain Scott legend via its permeation of British popular culture. I knew roughly that Scott had lead a failed antarctic expedition of some sort, and in particular…