♪ ♪ >> anthony: the c-130 hercules is past the point of no return, the point where there is not enough fuel to safely turn back, no matter what the weather is on the ice. it's loud back here -- the moan of four massive props, relentless. i'm dressed like all of us who've been approved to make this journey in the same regulation gear as required by the national science foundation for all flights and means of conveyance on the ice. thick goose-down parka, known by one and all as big red, heavy waterproof overalls, inflatable bunny boots, gloves, long underwear, cap.

i am talking layers. ♪ i took a walk through this beautiful world ♪ ♪ felt the cool rain on my shoulder ♪ ♪ found something good in this beautiful world ♪ ♪ i felt the rain getting colder ♪ ♪ sha la la la la sha la la la la la ♪ ♪ sha la la la la sha la la la la la la ♪ >> anthony: the runway is frozen sea ice, ten-feet thick.

♪

>> anthony: the airport shuttle -- ivan the terra bus -- a "road warrior"-looking behemoth that takes us slowly towards our destination. >> bus driver: we're driving ivan. 40-feet long 67,000 pounds, 23 years old, made out of good canadian steel. sometimes the heat actually works. this year it does. >> anthony: it's no short hop to antarctica, and no easy thing to see it the way it should be seen. the last un-[ bleep ] up place on earth. >> bus driver: here we are. try to get plenty of rest and enjoy the antarctic. >> anthony: mcmurdo station, the largest u.s. base on the

continent. the hub, supply and support center for everything we do here in antarctica. the pursuit of pure science. it ain't pretty. it looks like a mining camp, but look closely and you notice things like the total absence of liter, not a single cigarette butt. it's one of the most carefully regulated communities on the planet, and it is a community. a tightly knit, highly organized, very odd subculture of just under 1,000 people in summer and 150 in winter, all working towards the same thing in this most remote, barren, yet stunningly beautiful continent. work is seasonal in mcmurdo and it's the type of place that demands a special kind of individual. everyone is interdependent and comes to realize that very quickly. the scientists, known in local parlance as beakers, depend absolutely on a support community of specialists like the carps, or carpenters, heavy equipment operators, the fuelies, riggers, pilots, wasties, cooks.

like i said, it takes a special breed of hard-ass to not just make it down here, but like it. you got to be tough. >> doug: right now i love being in mcmurdo, because it's like being at a spa for scientists. >> anthony: doug macayeal is one of the world's preeminent glaciologists, who's been coming to antarctica since the '70s. the coffee house -- one of three watering holes on station. it's not much to look at, but offers a welcome respite from the cold. >> doug: one thing about this continent that's special is the vertical hierarchy. everybody respects up and down equally. the janitor really does have a sense that their action is right at the frontline. that doesn't happen as much elsewhere in the world of science. tangibly seeing a contribution. >> anthony: what brought you here? it's cold down here. >> doug: it's part of some kind of personal honor. people who come as a scientist might think of their science as

driving them more than thinking of coming to a place that is definitely different than anywhere else in the world. >> anthony: despite its seemingly endless whiteness, what you see is a desert, technically. the highest and driest on the planet. a frozen desert holding 61% of entire world's fresh water. it looks like nothing lives. you won't see a single plant, a single leaf, and certainly not a puppy. even the sun this time of year never sets. it moves in lazy circles around the sky. but [ bleep ] is indeed moving, beneath your feet, all around you, just very slowly. >> doug: an ice shelf is a kind of glacier that flows off the land, but begins to float in the ocean. >> anthony: it's fresh water. >> doug: it's fresh water ice and the ice itself varies from

the snow, like today. and then down at the bottom, ice that might have fallen as snow 35,000 years ago. it's the part of the antarctic ice sheet we call the buttress, because it fringes the entire continent. it might take 50,000 years for the ice itself to get into the raw sea and bust off as an iceberg. but it would take only 20,000 years or even 10,000 years if the ice shelf wasn't there. this is the biggest pile of free ice in the solar system. >> anthony: mcmurdo is at the tip of ross island, surrounded by miles of frozen sea. there are a lot of different types of ice down here. >> doug: glaciology started about 50 years ago. our entire science is driven by the fact that we're still trying to figure out what antarctica is doing in terms of sea level. how the ice sheet is expanding or contracting, how it's flowing, whether it melts in some places, how it bust off icebergs that float away in the ocean. and we're trying to come up with some kind of a solid, reliable statement about what cities like san francisco and new york and

shanghai have to plan for. >> anthony: antarctica, for all too obvious reasons, remained free of any sustained human contact until the mid-20th century when the u.s. navy launched operation deep freeze -- an enormous logistical enterprise that established the first permanent base here at mcmurdo in 1955. >> man: deep down in the ice, caves were cut, and here the supplies were packed away in a natural fridge. frozen meat, perfectly preserved, but where's that axe? let's have a bit of 15-year-old ham. >> anthony: since the national science foundation took over from the navy, things have gotten a lot less wild west around here. it feels like dorm life at college. bathrooms are communal,

everybody rotates housekeeping duties, everybody shuffles off at designated hours to the galley, where the cooks do the very best they can given the infrequent delivery of what are called in longing tones around here, freshies, or anything not frozen, canned, or prepared. the little connectivity i have with the outside world, i owe entirely to you. you have been helping me enormously. joni works i.t. and has been coming here for nine seasons. but it's coming, right? i mean, sooner or later they're going to put a satellite up there and everyone down here is going -- >> joni: maybe. i mean, we're a long way away from having cell service down here and everybody having internet like at home. >> anthony: it's really the last place on earth for cell service. kristy is a heavy equipment operator, coming for 19 seasons. >> kristy: i actually started off two seasons in the galley, and then i ended up getting trained on the equipment. >> anthony: so you learned an entirely new profession so that you could stay here?

>> kristy: yeah. >> anthony: and jules, another heavy equipment operator, who could most likely kick your ass, eat your lunch, then kick your ass again, has been coming for an astonishing 38 seasons. so what were you doing before? >> jules: see, my mom worked for the company and she wanted me to come, because i didn't want to come. >> joni: she tried to get rid of you or what? >> jules: yeah, she wanted to come. >> joni: when you first started coming, how many women were here? what was the ratio? >> jules: my first two years were at south pole. there were probably 90 civilians. i was the only female at south pole and there were probably 12 total at mcmurdo and probably 1,100 men. >> anthony: was the navy still run the place back then? >> jules: yes, and i had a lot of respect because the united states navy was the one who integrated this place. originally it was kind of this thing like, "well, should we let women be here?" and then we had an admiral come down and he's like, "dude, where's all the women?" "oh, we don't have facilities for them," they said. "well, you [ bleep ] better get facilities for them." when i first came down here, the company was all about "hey, this

is special. there's not very many civilians." you know, "it's wild and free and it's a great place to be." >> anthony: just looking out the window, having seen what you see on a regular basis and experience what you've experience, is that an alienating experience? >> kristy: i really appreciate how simple life is and how little you need to get by. you just pack a couple duffle bags and you come down. but then i find when i go home sometimes i get caught up in the "i want, i need, i want, i need" and that's the part that kind of bums me out. >> joni: that's one of the things i like about it. there's no rat race, there's no errands. it's a pretty egalitarian society here. nsf sitting down at tables with us. the janitors and the fuelies are as important as people who run the station. nothing gets done without power, and there's no power without fuel, there's no fuel without roads, there's no roads without heavy equipment. so it just kind of goes from there and you kind of appreciate what everybody else's role is. >> jules: this is a place where things are more powerful that don't involve money. you make lifelong friendships. >> joni: the beauty of this place is astounding. >> anthony: no doubt. >> jules: there is something magical about being here, a shared experience, but, you

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>> anthony: in antarctica the sun sets once a year and rises once a year. some twilight in late march then 5 months of darkness and extreme cold weather conditions lasting until september. 6months of daylight, the antarctic summer season where we are now, constant sunlight. reflecting off the ice and it can and does fry the brain. >> romano: all right hello

ladies and gentlemen, my name is romano and this is the hot cup of joe radio show. we're going to spin some tunes here i have special guest here today. here to visit us at the mcmurdo station antarctica, mr. tony bourdain. >> anthony: there are no roads and few suitable runways beyond mcmurdo.

for short hops, the main mode of transportation is helicopter. ryan skorecki gets a lot of flying time shuttling scientists to and from remote fuel camps. >> ryan: so that's mount lister it's probably 60 or 70 miles away and that's over 14000 ft high. >> anthony: it looks close. >> ryan: yeah. look at that massive snow bridge over there. those are some good building sized blocks. >> anthony: how deep are those crest? >> ryan: it'd swallow buildings, it's very impressive. >> anthony: so that's what you

don't want to hit with your snowmobile. people climb around on those things? >> ryan: the mountaineers here you know have drills to practice extricating somebody. >> anthony: there's a steep learning curve to flying down here, skillfully handle gale force winds, reduced control at high altitudes and the unpredictability of extreme turbulence around mountains and active volcanoes. >> ryan: slowly but surely climbing and it's minus 20 outside. >> anthony: erebus and that's -- >> ryan: mount terror. >> anthony: vo this is mount erebus, the southernmost active volcano on earth. antarctica was a great mystery for most of human history. only a theory, a great white space at the bottom of the world. >> ryan: we're just

passing 8,500 so we'll go another 4,000. you're going to see the main crater in just a second. >> anthony: the conditions endured by the first british antarctic explorers like scott, and shackleton and norwegian amundson and the lengths of time they endured them, are well, horrifying to imagine. they made their journeys in wooden ships, then man hauling equipment across glaciers, ice floes, mountains and frozen seas surviving on penguin meat when rations ran out. >> ryan: you might start to smell some sulfur. you smell it? >> anthony: yeah i smell that sulfur. what's our altitude now? >> ryan: 13, two. >> anthony: oyour honor. about 22 miles from mcmurdo is cape royds, where a penguin colony of about 2000 breeding pairs live. marine ecologist,

dr. david ainley, has been studying this colony for 20 years. >> anthony: so you're tagging the young ones? >> david: right. >> anthony: do you follow them through their entire life? i mean essentially -- >> david: yeah, this year we've got a bunch of individuals that are 20 years old. >> anthony: why penguins, what brought you to penguin initially? >> david: well this kind of penguin does everything with no secrets. if you ask the right question and you're creative enough they're going to give you the answer without a lot of guessing. what really interests me is the relationship of the penguins to the ocean and how they fit into the food web. during the 90's, small colonies like cape royds were increasing much faster than the large colonies where the competition for food was so intense, in the

last ten years colonies started increasing again. we think it's because of the fishery of antarctic tooth fish. the tooth fish and the penguin eat the same prey. so now there are more fish available for the adults to capture and feed to their chicks. >> anthony: so there's less competition, therefore more of the same prey available? >> david: yeah. >> anthony: i haven't seen a lot of them going into the water, but their looking for some indicator that there are fish in there. >> david: they're afraid to cross the ice crack because leopard seals might be in them. they're very hesitant so then finally they make the plunge. >> anthony: i mean, they're very agile. they don't look though at first at first brush. they appear clumsy, but i'm watching them and they've got a lot of moves. >> david: yeah, they're very, very agile. >> anthony: increasingly people want to see penguins. they are much loved by, you know, children everywhere. a lot of people would like to come to antarctica as tourists and look at penguins up close in a natural environment without impacting in a negative way. is that a good thing? >> david: and the thing about antarctica is that most scientists you know keep their

nose to the grind stone. so the only advocacy for antarctica has to come from the public. it's very valuable to have these tours 'cause then people have an ownership, you know they've been there and they see it. >> anthony: what keeps you coming back? i mean other than the work. >> david: i wanted to come to antarctica because i heard it was very severe place and nature was the king, daunting, having that chance to be humbled by something greater than you is i think an important part of being here. here, it all starts with a simple...

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>> anthony: not all of antarctica is covered with ice. 60 miles out of town are the dry valleys, the one percent of the continent devoid of snowfall. scott called it the valley of death and it feels like mars. in fact, they use it to test out equipment for martian exploration here. desolate but beautiful, the canada glacier, a

wall of ice right there, where it seems to have stopped short, pulled back, scraping up a beach on a frozen lake. here is one of the nsf's oldest and more legendary field camps, lake hoare. everything comes in by helicopter. the base here supports a small team of scientists and staff working on a variety of long term projects. it is, however, most legendary, for this woman: rae spain, the camp's manager whose been coming to lake hoare for 19 seasons. said to be the best cook on the continent. this, in an environment where so called freshies, the rare fresh vegetable, is spoken of in hushed tones of near fetishistic appreciation. staying over at lake hoare is a rare privilege enjoyed by few, like

dr. michael gooseff, a hydro-ecologist and dr. byron adams, a biologist. >> anthony: so what are you looking at our here? >> michael: everything that lives here lives in the soil. we study the soil organisms mostly the animals the animals that live here, but also the microbes that those animals feed off of. >> anthony: right. >> byron: this is just a marker that tells us to stay on this trail. these soils are so sensitive that if we walk off the trail or whatever we could completely jack up the soils organisms that live below there. >> anthony: oh like that guy? >> byron: yeah, like that dude he's totally -- he's going to get wipped out. >> michael: when scientist came and first started studying they thought that these soils were sterile, but we've dispelled that myth when the glaciers melt and the streams flow, that's where you find life. >> anthony: so why is this area look like this? where's the ice? how come the ground is sort of soft and spongy? >> byron: the polar plateau where most of the ice

accumulates starts to spread out toward the edges of the continent, but the transantarctic mountains form a barrier. so the ice sheet hits the mountains and can't get through. the other thing is there are these really knarly winds that come off, and drop down into the plateau and then rush towards the edges of the continent gushing through these valleys. >> anthony: so it's a fluky micro climate here? >> michael: we call it the banana belt i of antarctica. it's warm, we're coastal. >> anthony: life at lake hoare, considering the limitations and the difficulties, is freakin' luxurious by continental standards. out here, by the way, as everywhere on the continent, every bit of waste is separated and collected. one pee's in a bottle and pours it in the barrel, where it is eventually collected and shipped back to america. life here most definitely has its advantages. rae and her staff seem always to be making something delicious. homemade bread, scones, muffins appear throughout the day. tonight its bbq pork tenderloin. oh that looks good. pork tenderloin, damn.

grilled mahi sticks and shrimp marinated in chili sauce. homemade sourdough bread, a roasted beet salad. >> woman in orange: oh, my gosh. look at that salad, it's so purple and it has avocado in it. >> anthony: what cannot be fresh is nonetheless delicious. edamame's salad with dried cranberries and carrots. roasted vegetables, one might find oneself enjoying a cocktail or two. this is an amazing spread. >> woman in orange: i know. >> anthony: what are you guys doing here? what are you looking for? >> woman in orange: i'm collecting water samples in the streams and i'm also collecting samples of the algea. >> woman in black: so we're looking at the sign of bacterium which kind of create this rainbow shag rug in the streams. >> woman in orange: it's super cool. >> anthony: well, you know, the beginning of the 20th century when scientist and explorers were national heroes, there was a hunger for knowledge and discovery, not a good climate of facts though that we live in today. >> mike: no.

>> man in green jacket: we may interpret our facts differently but we don't get to make up our own facts, right? >> anthony: there are plenty of people out there who believe "the flintstones" is pretty much an accurate portrayal of history. >> man in green jacket: don't laugh mike that's you. >> man in grey fleece: they are funding our science in large parts, you want that connection between the public and the scientist and that's something we don't do a great job of back home. >> man in green fleece: i get this criticism all the time though that you scientist need to do a better job of presenting your research. i get that, but i am a professor at a university. i present knowledge in information. it's in the classes, they learn all this awesome stuff. they're thoughtful, they enter the world, they make the world better, but they don't do it in a five minute sound bite. >> anthony: what if we live in a terrible new reality where you better have a five minute sound bite or they're coming for you.

>> man in green jacket: right, right. we've got to learn how to teach evolutionary biology 140 characters at a time. >> anthony: yeah pretty much. you guys just need better press. you're gathering data that will potentially save the world from flesh eating, anal seeking algae. we need a giant nematode to rampage through west virginia or some shit like that. then everyone will be extremely interested in what you're doing. >> rae: in a battle between the nematode and the algae who's going to win? >> man in green jacket: nematodes eat algae. >> anthony: for now. i'm betting on algea. in this time we've all chosen to come out here. you've all been born in the wrong century. why do you put up with these people? >> rae: because, everybody here is such incredible people. i can't help it. i can't find any other place like this. 34 years later, i'm still in love with the place. >> anthony: by the way, this is an amazing meal. >> rae: lucky for us, some freshies showed up today, because it gets really

challenging. >> woman in purple: it's her super power. >> rae: we've got like four drawers of spices. i think that can make a difference. >> man in green jacket: makes a difference. >> anthony: well, the meal was delicious. thank you. this is sort of the last place on earth where pure science seems to be celebrated at every level of society, where people are making great personal sacrifices in pursuit of knowledge. that sounds quaint where i come from, but it's an entire continent of seekers in a world that's increasingly hostile to basically everything you're all about. it's quite wonderful. >> man in green jacket: wouldn't that be great though? if everyone played as nice as we do with other nations working together to do science, collaborating. >> anthony: dream on buddy. the meal is followed by a

precarious trip across the frozen lake to the beach. because what's antarctica about if it ain't about a beach party? ♪

♪ >> anthony: another c-130. the big, gorgeous workhorse of the antarctic gets you to the ass end of the planet. where it's north every direction you go. bottom of the world. >> male pilot: so i like to say this is the biggest airplane you can do little airplane things with, sea ski planes or float planes and we're trying to do

those same types of missions with a c-130, which is unusual. >> female pilot: everything that built the station actually came on one of these c-130's. they had to build it with trusses and pieces that could fit in the confines of an lc-130. >> male pilot: it's a fun job, and it's important to scientists, it's fantastic. >> anthony: in just a few hours, we cross the ross ice shelf, fly up the beardmore glacier into the heart of antarctica the polar plateau. how many miles from mcmurdo to the pole? around -- >> female pilot: 735 miles. >> anthony: scott walked that? what was going through his mind? >> male pilot: they loved to suffer. >> anthony: the first explorers who got here or came close, raced across the continent, striving to be the first.

amundson made it before anyone in 1911, beating scott by only 34 days. amundson wisely used huskies to pull his sleds across the ice. scott didn't and his team never made it back alive. the south pole. what you might not know or be prepared for is the south pole is high, like 9,000 feet above sea level and it's cold, real cold, but you knew that. you feel the altitude. today, the base at south pole has the feel of a space station, a warm comfortable bubble in the middle of well, the great void. it can be incredibly harsh out there with winds reaching as high as 50 knots and temperatures regularly dropping below negative 50 degrees fahrenheit. about 200 scientists and staff work here during the summer season. chef bryan denham is responsible for keeping them all fed and happy. he's been coming here for about five seasons, wintering for over three of those. again one makes a lot with a little. what do you think the likely common thread between all of the people who choose to come to this place? >> stuart: everybody's got a spirit of adventure here. it's pretty cool because you think oh i've done some really

cool things, and then you talk to someone else and you go, oh, i've done nothing. >> anthony: dr. stuart jeffries is an astronomer and solar specialist. >> man in brown cap: the first year is for the adventure. the second year is for the money. the third year is because you don't fit into anywhere else. >> siri: you can't function anywhere else. >> man in brown cap: that's right. >> anthony: siri grossman runs equipment and supply. >> siri: i really love it here. i feel like i live on a space station. i keep coming back. >> anthony: this is damn good. i like, after a hard day of dragging blocks of ice this is exactly what you need. >> man in brown cap: people who work outside, i mean, they'll burn 5, 6,000 calories a day. >> anthony: is there generally speaking people who work one and four hours at a time before they need to -- >> man in brown cap: come in and get warmed up. we eat pretty good down here considering where we are. so we've got a five a week menu cycle. every friday for four weeks is new york strips. on the fifth week we do filet mignon and crab legs. we don't really do fancy food, we just do basic food well. >> anthony: filet mignon with crab legs? >> man in brown cap: it's every five weeks. >> anthony: how do you deal with vegetarians with no freshies?

>> man in brown cap: we've got lots of frozen and canned stuff. >> anthony: it's like justice. who determines the playlist? >> man in brown cap: it's usually whoever's shift is going on at the time. >> stuart: i think there was a complaint one day about the music that they picked this really awful song the next day and they played it over and over, and over. >> man in brown cap: it was "afternoon delight." we just put in on loop. we started listening to german talk radio too. >> anthony: german talk radio. >> siri: yeah. >> anthony: so what do you do here? >> stuart: we're looking at the inside of the sun during the seismic probing. >> anthony: no one's looking for frozen nazi cyborgs? >> stuart: i think they've got those in the top two layers. >> anthony: there some out here

i'm sure of it. beneath the station is a subterranean world. 2000 feet of tunnels 30 feet down, carved into the walls impromptu shrines depicting personal messages, remembrances left behind by long gone workers. a frozen constantly moving and shifting network of passageways. >> scott: the walls come in, the ceiling comes down, the floor comes up. >> anthony: requiring constant maintenance. what's supporting this roof? >> scott: compaction of the snow. >> anthony: scott smith runs the crews keeping these tunnels clear and pipes flowing. >> scott: we're in the process of taking the chainsaw depth off the walls and ceiling to make them into a more usable entry. a lot of work. >> anthony: pretty amazing feat of engineering here. the lowest recorded temperature at the south pole is 177 degrees below zero. >> scott: where roughly at minus 59 right now. >> anthony: minus 59. >> scott: it's fahrenheit. >> anthony: wow, it only feels like minus 20. i can tell you it scorches the lungs and creeps through your heavy outerwear. >> scott: 200 ft below the ground, we've melted a giant enormous lake down there about 2 million gallons. this takes about 20 inches of snow to make an inch of water.

pump that fresh water supply up to the station. it gets treated at the power plant. the rest comes back down re-circulated. it's hot, which then melts more ice. >> anthony: right. >> scott: this giant hole in the ground contains our sewage for future removal. water on top, sewer on the bottom. [ electrical buzzing ]

[ dramatic music ]

ahhhh! -ahhhh! elliott. you came back!

>> anthony: what do they do down here? some pretty trippy shit as it turns out. this is the bicep in the dark sector lab and the south pole telescope, ten meters across mapping thousands of degrees of sky. today, they are installing the most advanced camera of its kind. >> dan: it's the third generation south pole telescope camera. 16,000 pixels, it weighs about 2,500 pounds. in a couple of days, we're going to pull it up into the telescope and try and see if we can hit the sky with it. >> anthony: very cool, it's like a bond villain stuff. >> dan: yeah, i know that's right. >> anthony: astrophysicists like

dan marrone will be looking through those telescopes at, get this, sagittarius a, the freakin' black hole at the center of the milky way. >> dan: we think we know what black holes look like, but no one's ever actually looked at one and if you can build a telescope the size of the entire earth, you can actually see with enough resolution you can watch things just swirling around disappearing into the black hole. we're basically taking every sublinear telescope in the world to synthesize one telescope that's 11,000 kilometers across, basically the size of the entire earth. >> anthony: really? >> dan: so that we can take the picture of the black hole at the center of our galaxy. >> anthony: wow. south pole is particularly useful because -- >> dan: there's no other site like this. the atmosphere is extremely stable. it's extremely clear. there's no water in it, water absorbs the microbes we're looking at.

so, you can just map the sky day and night for 6 months a year without stopping, and it gives the best maps we can make short of going to space. >> anthony: i grew up in the kennedy era, where the space program was everything. the first man on the moon, the space race, the whole nation can't wait till we could get to mars. nobody gives a [ bleep ] now. i mean, have you seen that change because i felt it change. >> dan: it's true that there is an increased skepticism of objective reality these days, but this science stands on thousands of years of human, accrued understanding. >> anthony: who's interested? like who's most likely to benefit? >> dan: there's no immediate answer to that question. >> anthony: but you're asking basic questions about the fundamental nature of matter, time, space. surely there were people asking those kinds of questions that led directly to technologies that we take for granted now. >> dan: that's right. i mean there's no question. we have to solve hard problems to do these things and when we solve them they have other

applications. i've always thought of this basic research trying to understand the universe as one of the most hopeful things that humans do. we just want to know. >> anthony: what's at the other end of that? wouldn't you kind of like to know? at a time when science is held in open contempt, when painfully acquired data is actually being deleted from computers if it conflicts with preconceived policies, these guys are looking at some deep stuff. where do we come from? how does it all work? how far can we go? what are we, as sentient humans capable of? and what -- what's on the other side? chilly. ugh, my face hurts.

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>> anthony: as the antarctic summer season comes to an end, the u.s. coastguard icebreaker polar star cuts through 70 miles of frozen sea to make a channel for the resupply ship ocean giant. she delivers vital food and equipment to mcmurdo before the winter closes in. >> dale: just over 500 containers coming down, that'll be 500 going back. >> anthony: it's like a giant human, food comes in shit goes out. >> dale: the human waste does go out. >> anthony: everything, right? >> dale: petrol, the waste, old equipment. >> anthony: dale rivers, fleet ops foreman makes sure the supplies are moving on and off safely. the whole town mobilizes, working alongside hundreds of navy fleet ops to unload and reload.

>> anthony: oh, yeah. that'll do. thank you. >> woman: you're welcome. >> anthony: awesome. russell freeman is the executive chef at mcmurdo. >> russell: it's our year supply of food. >> anthony: year supply? >> russell: yup. >> anthony: how old is this [ bleep ] hot dog? >> russell: ideally you would want it from last year. >> anthony: you do a lot with a little. >> russell: yeah. soon after this vessel, leaves the population just starts going down hill. >> dale: now everyone's going to warm places, with green grass, all the things you don't see down here. >> anthony: children, puppies and salads. >> dale: exactly. and then we just scatter to the winds and regroup in august. >> anthony: oh yeah? at the end of the antarctic summer season, there is however a vibrant party culture. and where people work hard, they deserve to party hard. responsibly, of course, but they do go hard here. and whether it's the fuelies or the wasties or the riggers who

throw the best parties, and there is much competition in this department, one can, it turn out, have a very good time at the end of the world. >> romano: let's get another album cued up here. >> anthony: i'm liking this song. alright this is the world worst and technically inept dj signing off, thanks for listening. ♪ >> man in yellow gloves: antarctica, never gets old. ♪

>> anthony: there is a curiosity in everyone who comes here. it's a continent of travelers, of seekers, united in the continuation of exploration, learning, the search for greater understanding, the pursuit of pure knowledge. ♪ ♪

♪ here we are arms around each other the quiet scene, pretty lights all over ♪ ♪ snow is falling and every is here together ♪ ♪ santa's sleighbells ringing in the distance some waiting for the mistletoe and kisses ♪ ♪ i'll remember this moment for the rest of my life ♪ ♪ >> aurora: oh my gosh!