The Final Verdict and Legacy

He's got like a he's seen in your underwear or something. He's got a piercing gaze. I don't know. I don't know what I was saying, but okay, this is obviously him pre murder . Yes, this is not a picture of his corpse . This is Charles Francis Hall pre murder. I should have said that. I don't know. I was just I'm just was just timestamping This is an iHeart podcast guaranteed human looking for the perfect rental ? Discover top rated stays loved by guests , rated highest by real guests through authentic reviews. These traveler loved stays are recognized by the details that matter most and valid ated by real experiences . Choose confidently from rentals you can trust Verbo Book Now a Vacation Rental Loved by Guests . If you've been sitting on an inspiring business idea, consider this your sign to take action and make it official by creating a website using Wix Harmony. Just tell Wix Harmony what you want and it will build the entire site for you. That's right, all just from your own text prompts. And of course, everything can still be edited by hand if you feel the need for distinct specifications . I mean it's your website, your call . Try it at wicks. com slash harmony. That's wicks. com slash harmony . This july fourth at Lowe's, get up to forty five percent off select major appliances. Plus, save eighty dollars on a select Charboy Performance Series Gas Grill, now two hundred and ninety nine dollars . Our best lineup is here at Lowe's Low e's, we help you save . Valid through seventy eight. While supplies last, selection varies by location, see Low's dot com for more details. Visit your nearby Low's on East Arquez Avenue in Sunnyvale . Welcome to Snafu, the podcast about history's most epic failures, faceplants, and fiasco's, and more importantly, what those blunders tell us about us as a species. I'm Ed Helms and today I'm joined by a true goat podcaster. You might know him from the iconic show he started radio lab or perhaps one of his many other audio accomplishments more perfect Dolly Partons America, or his newest show for audible Felac Fear No Man which covers the life, music and activism of the Nigerian Afrobeat pione er Feyla Kuti. He's an audio creator whose shows have been downloaded more than billion times, which is making my head explode . He's won three Be Body Awards and he's also my good pal from way back when at Berlin College. Welcome to Snap Foo Jad Abamrad . So good to see you. Thank you for having me on. I'm excited to go on whatever journey you're about to take me on. I'm going to take you on a very wild and wacky journey. But yeah, it is so good to see you. And I have to say as someone who's known you for gosh, like thirty years , I am insanely proud of everything you've done and accomplished. And I just wanted to express that. That's so that's so nice to hear from you. I mean, look, mutual admir ation society, my friend. Let's get into it. Just yeah. I was just at our alma mater, Oberland College. And they were so crazily my son who was about to turn sixteen , he's really into Oberland and he might go to Oberland . So we went there and they gave a presentation and you were all over the presentation . What? Yeah, you are a big selling point now of Oberland College. Not just you doing movie things, but you appearing at various places in the campus, playing banjo. Of course. It was really, I felt like I was hanging out with you as I was walking walking the lands there. Yeah, it's an extraordinary music conservatory and yet somehow they let me play banjo's there , which is which doesn't really go with the whole vibe, but it's an incredible place and informative place. I also remember moving from Oberlin after we graduated, there was just like a whole huge mass of students that moved straight to New York City. And you and I were among that mass migration . And I think you moved right to Brooklyn, and I moved, I was in the lower east side for a year, but then I moved this big loft apartment in Williamsburg that we rented from your then girlfriend's sister's boyfriend. Oh my god, I completely forgot about that Ed. Yeah. That whole like loft situation . The loft situation was un believable. It's one of the most magical places that I've ever lived in my life. And it was like four thousand square foot loft and we paid like three hundred dollars a month each. Me and two roommates. And I remember right when we moved in, it was Thanksgiving . And we had no furniture. We just had this giant industrial space with an asphalt floor and we built a dinner table out of a four by eight sheet of plywood. Do you remember this? You and your girlfriend who's now your amazing wife and a bunch of our other friends all came over for Thanksgiving and we sat on the floor around this piece of plywood and had just one of the most memorable Thanksgivings ever. You know, that it's all coming back to me. That was actually That was actually, that was kind of a charmed moment, not just in our lives. Because yes, I do remember us having Thanksgiving together . And we were all like babies. We were all like not we didn't start our lives yet. Is it that moment? Yeah. I want to tell you that when we were starting Snafu and in season one in particular, we were still just trying to kind of find the sound and the voice. Radio Lab for us was very much a North Star in terms of how you told a story , both in narration and with an inter weaving interviews. And I think it's fair to say so much of what became documentary audio storytelling was massively influenced by radio lab. I'm curious like in the way that that was such an innovation at that time , which now is so ubiquitous and feels so prevalent . What were your inspirations in creating radio lab? What was not just the stories that of course were these beautiful just kind of exercises and curiosity , but the actual production, the way that you crafted the auditory experience of radio lab. Yeah, I mean, it's funny to think back because it all feels so quaint and somewhat misguided. I mean, you know, at the at the aforementioned O'Reilly College, I studied music composition at the Conservatory and I studied it at a time you had a lot of kind of as I think of them sort of leftover lefty's who were teaching this like really dissonant form of like Stockhausen and music cocret and all of this stuff . And that's what I that's what I spent four years learning. So when I got out of school, I thought I was going to be a composer or a film person. That was what my sort of trajectory was, and that was what was in my ears . And then I tumbled sort of through the side door into journalism. And so when I finally started making a radio show , I had like only a few templates or a few inspirations. One was this American life which had just sort of wandered into and changed culture and like five years prior to when radio l ab started . And then I had heard some like weird audio documentaries from like Australia because they have an amazing tradition . They do some very weird stuff there . And then I also have then had stockhausen in my years. And Stockhausen for the listeners is just a very avant garde composer . Yeah, that 's the guy who would take like car horns and use them as music, you know? Right . Which again, that kind of way of working is so ubiquitous now, like using the sounds of our world to make music. But he was the first one to do it. Literally, he would like record it on these giant reeled reels and like cut it up and then take pieces. And so like I had studied all that stuff. I had Ira in my ears. I had been listening around . And so radio lab became a kind of fusion of all those things. And I didn't know any better at that point to like know A that I couldn't do it or B that there like that this wouldn't be a that this was allowed. You know, it was just like again, it was in that period right before the internet became ubiquitous where suddenly you could hear everything . Sure. Instantly. It was like right before that . So yeah, it was like, I think I was just trying to make conversations sound like music. That's beautiful. There's yeah, there's a very playful quality to that. It's fandom is massive and for great reason. And I miss I miss you on that show. Thanks, man. Let's jump into today's snafu. Are you ready for this? Yes. I'm ready. Today's tale takes us north into the desolate, unforgiving expanses of the Arctic , where the success of a nineteenth century scientific expedition to reach the North Pole was tainted by murder and the subsequent head scratching Who Dunet ? Who? Is this a mystery tale? Yes, it's it's an adventure and it becomes a mystery . Okay. One of the reasons I want to discuss this with you in particular is because there's a sort of fun radio laby science angle on this, modern day scientific analysis has revealed a clue that might unveil the culprit of this murder. Oh cool. The clue is actually a cute little birdie. Literally it's a bird specimen brought back from the voyage, but we're gonna get to that all later for now. Okay , let's dive deep into the fraught and dangerous expedition of the USS Polaris and the unexplained death of its captain Charles Francis Hall . Let's start by getting to know our future murder victim, Mr. Charles Francis Hall, born in New England in eighteen twenty one, Hall's early life growing up in Vermont and New Hampshire was peaceful . Like peak cottage core vibes. He reportedly didn't get much of a formal education . He apprenticed as a blacksmith in his teens, later moved to Cincinnati in our beloved Ohio , where he became a businessman and a newspaper publisher. Let's take a look at this guy. As an adult, he was five foot eight, two hundred pounds and described as a bear like man. Yes , with a large bushy beard. He has a little bit of a Galfinafkis going on there. He does. You're right . Okay. He's okay. I would describe him as Galapenekish . Exactly . Yeah, you're very right . And I will say in this , we'll kind of learn that his personality is quite complicated, but he seems quite jovial and like Teddy Bar rish here. Yeah, he seems like he knows something He also looks he's got like a he's seen you in his in your underwear or something . He's got he's got a he's got a piercing gaze that can see through your clothes, I guess. Is that I don't know. I don't know what I was saying. But okay, interesting I don't disagree. I think it's obviously him pre murder . Yes, this is not a picture of his corpse . This is Charles Francis Hall, pre murder. I should have said that. I don't know. I was just I'm just I was just time stamping , you know , ye,ah of course. If Hall's upbringing was bucolic and tranquil, his personality was anything but he was emotionally volatile, capable of both passionate , grandiose expressions of hope and excitement . You can read his diary for proof of this and also outbursts of extreme anger and even violence. His ego was definitely a bit inflated, if not delusional. Despite this, he was intelligent and studious , even if his interests could be a bit fanatical. I kind of feel like this describes a lot of of this time period, right? Yeah . Like it didn't they didn't have the tools, Jad. They didn't have the emotional tools to communicate and invent their feelings in a healthy way. Yeah, I know. So we're about to trek into the great North. The North is unforgiving. And for centuries, explorers like Sir Francis Drake had traveled north to chart the Arctic's geography. A lot of the time these explorers were seeking the Northwest Passage, of course, which is at the time a hypothetical route that connected the Atlantic to the Pacific over the north of Canada. But every expedition to find this Northwest Passage failed up to this point , and the passage wasn't successfully discovered until much later in nineteen oh five. The exploits of these explorers fascinated Hall, and he became particularly fixated on Sir John Franklin's doomed Arctic expedition , which had occurred when Hall was in his mid twenties. I am curious what you think, Jad, what is it in human nature that we are so continuously kind of beguiled by these grand bold adventurers and explorers. Like what is what is that speaking to in us? Yeah, you know, I think about this all the time. I recall in an early radio lab we talked to Robert Spolski from who's a primatologist and he told stories of watching baboon troops for months , years at a time. And he would notice this pattern where you'd have a very tight knit troop and then at some point that troop would be sort of in a neighboring area to another troop, and they're leaving each other alone. They don't want anything to do with each other. And it's always this juvenile male baboon who's just like, what's going on over there and just kind of starts creeping out to the edge Hey, what's up? What's happening over there? And then inevitably his old troop leaves and then he joins a new one and that becomes this, you know, exchange . But it's always the young men and you don't want to get too deterministic about this, but it does seem to me like a way that nature has written in a mechanism by which to expand the gene pool . And maybe in people like the fellow you're about to tell us about that's just an instinct that got turned up too loud and run amuk or something. I don't mean in a sexual sense, but I mean in like that wanderlust, that desire to discover the world . It feels to me like it's something it's kind of in a way one of the most beautiful parts of humans, but also sometimes one of the most toxic . Yeah . No, you're right. It carries both. It carries both the human instinct to explore contains multitudes . Indeed , indeed. Let me give you a little background on this John Franklin expedition that became Hall's Obsession. In eighteen forty five, the British Royal Navy commissioned this Sir John Franklin to find the Northwest Passage aboard the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. Unfortunately, for Franklin and his crew, the ships became trapped in the ice and contact was lost. Their fate remained unknown. Wait sorry, I'm just processing this late. Was it called the HMS Terror? Yes . Wow. Yeah, I don't know. An auspicious name. If I'm like a steward, I don't wanna get on that boat . Okay and bad things befell the HSS terror. Yeah, they got trapped in the ice. Their fate was unknown for many, many years because they just never returned. Multiple search expeditions went out and continued well into the twenty first century. We now know that all one hundred twenty nine crew members, including Franklin, died from exposure, scurvy, hypothermia, and apparently also even cannibalism . No, I'm not sure if they died of cannibalism or if they were cannibalized upon death. I would hope it's the latter. I hope they didn't get eaten to death . That would be awkward for everyone. Yeah, my God. Wow, okay. So this is the , this is the fellow or the expedition of the fellow whom Hall admired. Yes. And was it like a like that guy failed, but I will succeed where he failed? Kind of. There certainly was that it could be because the Northwest passage had not been discovered and the North Pole had not been had not seen a human at all , but also there was this obsession with that Franklin expedition itself. No one knew what happened to them . And eighteen sixty , most organized search efforts had fizzled out. Hall, however, was obsessed. He felt certain that he could uncover what happened even though the entire fricking British Royal Navy was unable to do so Remember what I said about Hall's ego being a bit inflated ? Right, right. Yeah. So in eighteen sixty, at the age of thirty nine, Hall joined a whaling ship going north. His intention was to hitch a ride to Baffin Island located, in present day Nunavut , Canada, and from there continue westward in a much tinier craft to investigate Franklin's fate. Of course , because this is Snafu, his plan went to shit. And this isn't even the main story. This is all still, we're still in the preamble, but so I assume the clue that you have not yet dropped the clue No, but I'm so glad you're paying close attention . I have not yet dropped the clue. Yeah . So a storm destroys his boat and illness kills his guide and Hall was stranded for the winter on Baffin Island . Ever the optimist, he decided to be productive and used this time to learn from the local Inuit culture and their incredible ability to survive and even thrive in this unbelievably harsh landscape which he came to love. He befriended an Inuit couple I,pvyrik and Takala Took and wound up staying on Baffin Island for two whole years immersing himself in the culture and learning their language . By eighteen sixty two, he was truly an Arctic badass, well trained in the sort of trades of living in that climate. And he even discovered artifacts belonging to explorer Martin Frobisher , another seeker of the Northwest Passage. Yeah, he was there for a full two years. Wow . And then finally returned to the United States in eighteen sixty two and now he's just hooked on exploration. In eighteen sixty four, launched he a second expedition reaching King William Island where Franklin's crew had been lost and recovered bones and small artifacts belonging to the crew from this site and this expedition lasted for five years and his passion for this region only deepened. He wrote , quote, The Arctic is my home. I love it dearly. It's storms, it's winds, it's glaciers, it's icebergs and when I'm there among them, I seem as if I were in an earthly heaven or a heavenly earth. Interesting. This guy's, yeah, he has all the things , you know, the good and the bad all rolled in. I mean it, is true it',s truly unbeliev able what some of these explorers in the nineteenth century put themselves through again and again. Like Ernest Shackleton, you know, went on multiple expeditions and it's just a it's it's really incredible. We're just so soft compared to compared to what they went through back in the day. I don't know. I feel like I could have done it . You probably could have. I mean, I don't know, I don't know why you had to say we 're speaking personally . It wouldn't have lasted five minutes. How would you do up there? I would be terrible. I mean, you know, Carla, as you know, is a Texan. We vacation over there. We go to visit her family there and every time I go to Texas, it's eighty five, ninety degrees , hot , but not obscene. I mean, I'm from the Arab world. I should be able to handle heat, but I get heatstroke every single time And yeah, and I end up having to lie in a dark room and she'll always be like, Oh my little orchid you need just the right environment to thrive . So all of which is to say I don't think I would have lasted long in the Arctic. The orchid jad would have withered in an Arctic climate . Do you want to find a stress free way to buy your next car? Start at Carmax and shop your way. If you want to browse with confidence, get pre qualified online with no impact on your credit score and shop cars within your budget, from luxury cars to family rides. Carmax has options for almost every price range , including more than twenty five thousand cars priced under twenty five thousand dollars. So hey, want to get started? Just head to carmax dot com for details and get pre qualified today. Want to drive? Carmax. Vibecoding is everywhere right now, but it's not just for apps anymore. Now it's making its way into website creation. That's right. Wix has introduced Wix Harmony, a vibe coder for websites that allows you, yes you to type what you want and generate a site ready to use, complete with forms, payments, security, and more built in. And Wix Harmony doesn't requ ire AI for everything . You can still click and edit anything manually or select an element and have Arya, your AI agent make updates for you. It's a smart solution to the frustrations of time consum ing prompts and fixes. Try it for free at wicks dot com slash harmony. That's wick dot com slash harmony . Okay , not so fun fact . Autoimmune skin conditions are actually on the rise . Cases are climbing nearly twenty percent every year . I know , terrible opener for a podcast ad. But here's the thing. I'm Holly Fry and our skin exists precisely because of stats like that. Because more people than ever are living with conditions like psoriasis and hydrodinitis suprativa, and most of them are doing it alone , without answers, without community, without anyone to tell them what the heck is actually going on. You know, not that many people knew about it and I felt kind of alone like am I an outcast? That's where we come in. We talk doctors. We talk appointments that are well a disappointment. We talk about the flare ups and the breakthroughs. Then we dive deep into the wild, occasionally gross, always fascinating history of how humans have tried to understand our skin over the centuries . Spoiler alert, we did not always get it right. Listen to Season three of Our Skin, a Personal Discovery Podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's face it, most guys just power through pain and strains. The smart choice is taking action early before it turns into a bigger problem. That's when a physical therapist can assess what's going on and tailor a plan to address it. Physical therapy isn't just for recovering after injury . It helps stay ahead of them, building strength, improving movement, and supporting longevity for living life on one's own terms. To learn more and find a local physical therapist, visit choose p . com . All right, back to Hall . It wasn't always heavenly for him in the Arctic. He did learn the hard way that leadership is an innate quality that harness with grace, especially in desolate lands where temperatures average minus thirty three degrees Celsius or minus twenty two Fahrenheit . Wow. Man, I remember getting off the plane in Cleveland one year . I was just gonna say like at Oberlin, it sometimes touched those icy icy depths and it was actually kind of like amazing from a physics perspective just to like snot would come out of your nose and then freeze instantly. Yeah, yes, carry on with Hall. We're in eighteen sixty eight and it's the tail end of this second trip and one of his crew members, Patrick Coleman , allegedly called for a mutiny, or that's what Hall claimed. Coleman was never actually able to kind of make his case because Hall shot him with a gun and just killed him. Wow, which is not my go to conflict resolution strategy. So you'd think murdering murdering someone would come with some kind of consequences , but Hall just got away scot free on this because the incident occurred beyond Canadian territorial boundaries. British authorities who governed Canada at the time declined to pursue the matter and instead deferred it to the United States. The U. S. was like, we don't really give shit. And it just went completely unprosecuted and Coleman's murder never besmerched Hall's record in any way. Wow, okay. So Hall was celebrated for his research and on this second expedition having documented more about Inuit culture, oral histories and Arctic survival skills than any previous traveler. And he soon found himself hobnobbing with the elite, and he earned himself a very cushy gig leading a third expedition. Actually, I would not describe it as Kushy, a gig , leading a third expedition. This one was major , and it was also where our Snafu story really kicks into gear. Okay . Backed by fifty thousand dollars from the U. S. Navy, which is about one point three million today, he set sail from New London, Connecticut on july third, eighteen seventy one aboard the USS Polaris, aiming to be the first to reach the North pole. Why Connecticut, but you know what? That's probably a detail that we shouldn't dwell on. Okay, so he's on his way to the north. Yes. This is the problem my problem is I will ask you a series of questions which will digress us and no, I'm in now so I love it though, Jad, honestly, like your curiosity is my fuel. I just and I can answer your question. You're saying why Connecticut? It's because so much of the maritime world was rooted in the whaling industry, which is all up and down the Connecticut coast and of course Massachusetts and Long Island. I don't know why this particular expedition left from New London, but I do know that so much of shipping and whaling and all maritime activity was rooted in the area. Yeah, don't you think when someone options the story you're telling if they haven't already, they should . This scene of him leaving and like the gathering of the crew, the motley crew that's going to be aboard the vessel that then launches to the North Pole, that feels to me like an instant scene in a mov ie. Oh, we're about to get there. I'm so glad you said that. Okay, yeah, yes, that's the perfect setup. Yeah, 'cause this trip is about to go real sideways , but before we get into the timeline of Hall's third expedition , let's lay out our rogues gallery of potential suspects. Very Agatha Christie style here. The crew was made up of twenty five people, Americans , Germans , Adan Swede, and two Inuit families , includ ing the MVP Duo, Ipvyirk and Tkakalatu who we previously met. Oh, gotcha plus their son. Yeah. So now technically Hall was the captain of this expedition. In practice , he really had no sailing experience. He wasn't so much of a great boat guy. So a man by the name of Sydney Buddington was brought in as the actual steady maritime adult in the room. He and Hall were friends from Hall's first whaling voyage. This was bound to go off without a hitch, right? Sort of like it's not clear who was captain . Then there's George Tyson, the assistant navigator . fact Fun , he was originally offered the captain gig before Buddington, but had to decline because of another job he'd already booked. When that fell through , Hall brought him on as second in command. So yeah, now there's a third guy who's like captain level, but not actually in the captain role. See, this is role clarity, always a good thing to have on a ship . You got to lay it down, of course. All right, over in the German corner , we have Emil Bessels, chief science and medical officer , plus his assistant Frederick Meyer. Hall did not want Bessels on board , but American authorities insisted , which is, you know , always comforting when your boss says , I didn't hire this guy, but we're stuck with him . They insisted for do is there a story behind why maybe it's not important , but why did they insist? I think he was a very prominent researcher and scientist and and for whatever reason those funding the expedition were like, this is the guy we want for research purposes. Okay . The U. S. government also intentionally stocked the crew with primarily whalers instead of polished naval officers, figuring these men were used to the brutal northern waters and they could handle the Arctic a lot better , which makes a lot of sense if you're going somewhere so aggressively frozen you want people who kind of think of fro stbite as just like just like Tuesday a mild fever . But at the same time, like they're not rooted in the same sort of disciplinary hierarchy of a naval command . What a motley crew. Yeah, it's it's quite an odd assortment of folks. And it's and there's one tiny issue here. Wait, did you tell me about the Dane? Was there a did you introduce me to the Dane or did I miss that? I did say a Dane Adan. I love that you're asking me about that and I don't have more information on him . Okay. , we can cross off the Dane as as one of the Dane , you're too good You already eliminated someone . Yeah, okay. All right, so obviously we have a sort of disparate international contingent here. And so it's no surprise that clicks formed very quickly along national lines . Tyson reported insolence and disaffection , which is a nineteenth century term for these guys are super toxic . Some of the crew stole alcohol from storage . One of the thieves stealing shots like a frat boy was Captain Buddington , who was also talking a lot of shit about Charles Francis Hall behind his back . It's a mess. And the German contingent, which is led by Emil Bessels, the researcher , he did not jive with Hall at all. They thought he wasn't up to snuff as the expedition leader . Buddington and Tyson were constantly butting heads because nothing says harmony like two men with captain experience. One technically in charge and the other technically not in charge just arguing all the time. Daring way into the Arctic Knights. This sounds like a whole soup of trouble . Yeah, and we haven't this is like this is just like the stat us . This has nothing to do with the hardship of the coming expedition. This is just sort of like baseline , which is kind of foreboding. Now at least Charles Francis Hall had a Pyrvic and Takala Took . They were his ride or dies. So despite all of this sort of internal conflict, Hall led the polaris to about eighty two degrees north latitude. Now this was farther north than any non inuit crew had ever reached at this time. Then things really started to deteriorate. In October as the sun set for winter , it doesn't just set at night. In October, it just sets for the season . It's like in Game of Thrones, you know? Winter is coming. Winter is coming. Oh yeah, it is. It's getting dark for a long , long time. And this is when the polaris gets trapped in an ice flow. That crew, that crew that you just introduced me to is not going to do well in this situation. You're very intuitive , Dad . You got just followed some big fat breadcrumbs you laid out for me . Okay, okay, so they're stuck and it's dark. So it's the October freeze . Hall they're just stuck in the ice and haul and a subsection of the crew took off dog sledding towards the North Pole mainly on a reconnaissance mission, maybe looking for kind of like openings in the ice or just other possibilities or more just sort of data about where they are. Hall wanted to get as far north as he could, but after two weeks and eighty kilometers, which is insane. They traveled eighty kilometers by dog sled just on this ice in October and they're forced to turn around possibly due to weather concerns . And despite this setback, Hall returned in very good spirits. He shook off the ic les on his eyelids and sipped on a nice fresh hot cup of warm brewed coffee . And he did his best to settle back into the rhythms of the ship until he became violently ill . Delirium set in, and he vomited all over the place . The chief medical officer tended to him as best he could. He treated Hall with a syringe of qu inine, which I guess is typically used for malaria. I don't think malaria was a concern in the Arctic, but anyway, a few days later, november eighth , Charles Francis Hall is dead . Whoa . So what do they do now? Well, the crew buries Hall in the frosted Tundra of Northwest Greenland, a place literally called Thank God Harbor . Does it really? It's a good final resting spot, I guess. Yeah. Now, according to an eighteen seventy seven article in the journal Nature, Hall's death was considered a freak accident . Yeah, okay, nature . Totally not suspicious at all. Don't worry. We're gonna circle back. Anyway, now Captain Buddington was totally in charge because someone had to keep this Arctic train wreck going. They still had an expedition to complete, and they were hell bent on doing it. What do you think? If you're Captain Buddington in this moment who, by the way, had been relentlessly raiding the liquor storage and was reportedly drunk a lot of the time. Yeah. How do you bring your crew back around in this moment? It's a little bit like when you have a plum ber come over and he's like and he looks at the plumbing that the last guy did and he's like who this guy like that guy was terrible. I'll I will take care of it. I don't know what that guy was doing. So I would imagine Buddington just you know was like, thank God that that's over. Now the room captain is here. And maybe the crew they're so starved for a sense of purpose and direction and clarity. It sounds like they had no clarity . Maybe they went along. I mean, what are they going to do at that point? They're all probably delirious, you know Well, thanks to the pack Ice, the crew was forced to hunker down there in Greenland in what would eventually become named Pol aris Bay and they were they had to just hunker down until the following year. Sometime between spring and fall, they set sail again , but by the fall of eighteen seventy two Gale Force Winds sent the polaris crashing into an ice berg , badly damaging the ship. Now keep in mind the Arctic sun had set once again not to rise again until spring, leaving them in pitch black darkness . So they have been out there for now well over a year stuck in ice freezing and they've gone through a long dark winter, a brief summer, and then they're now in the second long dark winter . Yeah , damn and now they've crashed into an iceberg . So naturally Buddington is freaking out. He orders everyone off the ship, they shoved food suppl,ies , and dogs onto the ice floor. This seemed like a good idea , but it turns out the Polaris wasn't sinking. She was just damaged. And after nineteen crew members had offboarded , including Tyson and the Inuit families. The polaris got caught up in high winds again and a strong current broke it free from the ice flow and it just disappeared . The boat just left them behind. It just drifted off into the dark and a disaster . But there a lot, Captain Buddington and a lot of the crew are still on board, but nineteen people , including Tyson and Ipiric and Takalatook are stuck on the ice . Oh man . Yeah, what are you thinking if you're one of those guys? It's funny it was, sort of comedic imagining the boat on its own leaving, but now you have like a crew that's been divided , which makes me just like sad for everyone at that point. The people on the ice are just like fuck at that point, you know you're gonna die and then it's just a question of when and how and then the people on the boat are you're, I don't even know what they're thinking. They're probably just like, peace, peace out, guys. Sorry we're for you now. We're being like here and so yeah, you know , I gosh, what a what a what 's brutal. Okay, so here's the insane thing. The Inuit family , Ipyrvik and Taklatok. They were part of the stranded group of people . And they had the skills . They became literal godsends. They built iglues , they hunted seals. Now they're just on floating ice . They're not on land , but they live on this floating ice for a very long time . Wow . And they burned one of their boats for firewood, which turned out to be a very bad decision, but they did not die in this moment. Wow. Meanwhile, Buddington was able to halt the Polaris drift by running it aground somewhere near Greenland. I guess it was it just was not navigable the boat. It's sort of drifting, but he was able to run it aground. And the captain and the remaining crew hunkered down until the summer again . At which point they were able to use smaller boats to sail south and eventually reach New York and they were survived and they were okay. Now back to this these nineteen people stuck on the dwindling ice flow . Okay on. So april thirtieth, eighteen seventy three, a sealer vessel called the Tigris . This is like, you know, just a guy who hunts seals erupted from a thick fog appearing in the nick of time after six months . Oh my god and over eighteen hundred miles of drifting and six months later they were saved and in the end they all survived. They just happened to be like they happened to come on the one little patch of ice where these people were marooned. Yeah , this sealing vessel kid just came right up on them and found them. That is a freakish coincidence. That's amazing . Yeah, okay. It is amazing. It's totally incredible. They all survived, of course, so it turns out everyone in the entire expedition survived except, of course, for Charles Francis Hall , and the expedition became a media sensation in the U. S. Some of the rescued crew questioned the circumstances of Hall's death, recalling that in his delirium , Hall claimed that someone had poisoned him . But who ? Vibecoding is everywhere right now, but it's not just for apps anymore. Now it's making its way into website creation. That's right. Wix has introduced Wix Harmony, a vibe coder for websites that allows you, yes you to type what you want and generate a site ready to use, complete with forms, payments, security, and more built in. And Wix Harmony doesn't require AI for everything . You can still click and edit anything manually or select an element and have Arya, your AI agent, make updates for you. It's a smart solution to the frustrations of time consuming prompts and fixes. 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Now we're helping companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business , IBM . I'll point back to something way back in the very beginning. If you'll remember, a little bird that had been preserved for research purposes was a clue. Was a clue ? Okay , who would be handling the bird? Okay, so the most salient characters in the tale that you've just told me are Buddington he's a and Hall, of course, but he's the unfortunate subject of the murder. The Bodington is the sort of disgruntled number two, who's now in charge. So clearly he has a motive . The Inuits seem delightful and but they also seem like you're like maybe it is always the case that the least the least likely ends up being the culprit. So there's a part of me that thinks could the Inuits , the two Inuits and I forget their names Tuckle Took and irv Ipirvik. Ipyrvic, yes. And I don't know why. There's nothing that you've told me that would lead me to think that they were the culprits. I will tell you it isn't the Inuit people. Wait a second . Could it be the German scientist Hesen Hes ? Bessel imm il Bessel.s Emil Bessels. Hold that thought, John. Okay, okay. Because somehow science bird, maybe I don't know, I don't know the connection exactly. All right, but you're on the right track. Despite a rather tragic voyage in lots of ways, the polaris was actually considered a successful expedition. They returned with tons of scientific and navigational and meteorological data to satisfy the Navy and the broader American scientific community. Several of the scientific specimens collected during the expedition were even kept and studied at the Smithsonian. The man who collected some of those specimens, however, is our person of interest . And that is the expedition's chief medical and science officer , Emil Bessels. Let's take a look Bes atsels. Here's an eighteen eighty photo of mill . Whoa , this could have been taken that wow . I just need to stare at that picture for a while. Yeah, he looks like an REI mod el. I was gonna say this could have been taken anytime in the last two centuries. Like this wow. He might have had a pretty cool fur park up, but he sure as hell didn't get along with the gr uff and bear like Charles Francis Hall . This was something that had come up in the very beginning. Hall didn't even want him on the expedition but he was sort of forced to have him along. Several crew members spilled tea after the fact. Hall and vessels were always at each other's throats with Bessels running point as the main villain in the sort of German click on the boat. And remember that store of liquor on board, the one that Buddington and the rest of the crew were stealing from . Well, Bessel was the one who insisted that that even be on board in the first place for scientific purposes or so, he said . Hall never wanted it there. Hall was furious that there was liquor on the ship at all or alcohol of any kind, and I imagine he resented vessels for how much trouble the alcohol was causing once the expedition got underway. Like I said before, Hall's death wasn't considered suspic ious at the time at all. But here's the catch. The guy who gave the cause of death as quote natural causes was none other than Imil Bessels , which is awfully convenient. Medical professionals in the states agreed with him. And this is of course because they didn't have a body to examine at all. They just kind of took his word for it . And Bessels lived the rest of his life under no suspicion . He was honored as a top scholar. He was even bequeathed a room in the Smithsonian castle in Washington DC to conduct research on his polaris findings. Bessel's claim of natural ca uses, however, would not last forever. Okay, so now cut to much later . Now in nineteen sixty eight, Arctic historian and Dartmouth professor of English and American literature Chauncey Loomis questioned the circumstances around Hall's death while doing research for a biography on Charles Francis Hall . According to a newspaper article in the New York Herald dated september twenty first, eighteen seventy three, this so back closer to the time of the expedition, the Royal Inspector of North Greenland H,. Krup Smith was quoted as saying The jealousy of some of Hall's subordinates taken in connection with the whole affair leads me to the conclusion that there was foul play . I think the body of Captain Hall, which, I have no doubt, is still in a state of preservation, should be sought after and exhumed . Whoa, that's why sorry, I'm keeping to jump ahead, but this is fascinating. Well no, so now let's do jump back ahead back to Loomis. Loomis is our Dartmouth guy, right? Yes. So now we're back in nineteen in the nineteen sixties with Loomis, Loomis and his team did just that. They traveled to Hall's resting place in Greenland . They pulled samples of his hair and fingernails, which were still very much intact and form like frozen , like he was very well preserved , which is a little creepy . And they had these hair and fingernail samples analyzed. And guess what they found? A shit ton of arsenic. So all of the vomiting and delirious visions that had been reported around Hall's death , modern medicine knows these are textbook examples of arsenic poisoning. It's obviously hard to accidentally drink arsenic ? Right. So someone very likely Bessels must have slipped it in. Going back, is there any particular moment in this story where it might have been convenient to dose haul with arsenic . Well , given the way that the tail unfurled , I would say, it was the moment after the eighty kilometer and then back bob 'eds l ride to the back to the boat where he finally got that steaming cup of coffee. Yes, a nice yummy cup of coffee, which Hall noticed was a little sweet and apparently arsenic has a sweet taste to it. 'Cause at that point, I mean, if you've been on the ice for that long, I mean your faculties, your skepticism is out the window. You're like, oh my god, just give me anything warm at that point . A hot cup of coffee after eighty kilometers on the in the Arctic Tundra, are you kidding me? Wow, you're just gonna yeah, you're gonna guzzle that down. Absolutely. Okay. That is A theory that that Hall died from arsenic poisoning. And it technically remains unproven. Let's run with it for a minute. So this is where our little bird friend comes in. Remember him from the beginning? Yes . So recently a member of the bird division at the Smithsonian , yes, the Smithsonian has a bird division, was cataloguing several of Bessel's specimens from the expedition. Now some of them were little birds called Plectroph enax Nivalis or more colloquially known as the snowbunting . They're very cute little creatures. Let's take a look. Wow . What does that say nineteen seventy eighteen seventy two? Wow . And these are these are little these are little Arctic birds. Yeah , that just live up there. They found these Bessel samples in the Smithsonian collection, and she realized that the palm sized bird specimens also contained a lot of arsenic . Now the same kind that had been found in Hall's system, according to the researcher, arsenic was a major component of taxidermy during the late nineteenth and twentieth century, since it helped to prevent decay on long voyages. So it doesn't take a genius to deduce that vessels almost definitely had a stash of arsenic onboard the Parolis. Thank you, Mr. Snowbunding for that extra bit of confirmation. Large amounts of arsenic in Hall's remains suggest he may have been poisoned gradually, not just by that single cup of coffee. Ah , Loomis' analysis indicates two weeks' worth had entered his system before he died. Oh, interesting. Coffee was just the first dose, and then there was a lot of subsequent doses. Yeah , what I don't know is how long that that dog sled expedition was. So if that if that was fairly short , I mean, dog sleds are fast. So they could cover a lot of ground. So if that had just like a couple d ofays, he may have been getting poisoned for a while. Yeah , wow . Okay . Where do things stand for you right now? Do you think Bessels did it? Or are you still feeling skeptical ? I mean, you have a man who uses ar senic for his science, you know a lot of arsenic in the murder victim . I believe that's still circumstantial evidence, right? It isn't like a direct link. But if anything else that you've I think this puts him ahead of and also there was motive clearly. Yeah, I would have to say I'm interested in a potential twist that you may be about to reveal, but at this point, I think it's got to be him. You're right that it's not this is not something that would hold up in a court of law, but there is a lot of evidence kind of pointing in the right direction. There's another interesting detail that I learned, which is that both Ipyrvik and Takla Tuk were on the record saying that Holl was very afraid that he would be poisoned. And that they had spoken up about that upon the return , that wasn't taken seriously. I feel bad for even just entertaining the thought that they may have been involved, but you were how dare I. So we're adding to the drama. There is more. Ship navigator George Tyson recalled overhearing hall four days before he died , warning that vessels might be trying to kill him. Hall got so paranoid that he even had other crew members taste his food and drink first. Okay , so now we've got the arsenic and we've got crew members on record saying that Hall was frightened of vessels poisoning him , but do we have a motive apart from them just like not liking each other Is there anything like a juicy motive here? What kind of beef did they really have? Well , it turns out there was a lady ah involved . So that romance might have been at play here. In twenty sixteen, a mere ten years ago, archival research revealed that Hall and Bessels had both been vying for the attention of Venny Reems . Now Venny Reems is a well known New York sculptor and something of a socialite. She's famous for the Lincoln Bust in the capital Rotund a. She is the sculptor who made that. Yeah . Okay Bessels recorded his admiration for her in his journals and Hall wrote letters to her from the Polaris displaying her gifts in his quarters . Interesting. She was, of course, back in New York . Yes. She was back in New York , just sculpting away. Yeah, I could see that that would be a thing that would simmer for a long time during the voyage . And then Hall gets on his bob slsed and takes off and Bessels is left to his own thoughts and is steing jealousy and 'cause it sounds like Hall had an actual relationship Bessel s did not , right? So now you do have a specific, I'm jumping to conclusions that maybe I shouldn't, but now you have a specific motive. It does appear that love was in the mix . And you are correct, Bessels and Rem's never united post voyage . Bessels continued to claim his innocence , asserting in eighteen seventy three that Hull could have died simply from apoplexy. He also started to refer to the voyage as the Hall Vessel expedition . So a lot of ego going into this whole thing as well. So we may never have a concrete conclusion to the mystery behind Hall's death, even though in my opinion, the discovery of arsenic in the bird is pretty damning. Bessels himself passed away not long after from a stroke or potentially heart failure , or potentially just karma came back and just whacked him. You know, wow. But he was only forty years old in eighteen eighty eight when he died, and only one of his volumes about the expedition was ever published , even though he had planned three . Meanwhile, Hall, bless his icy little heart , went down in history alongside the Arctic legends who had inspired him . Wow . Jad, that is the full saga. Ambition, Ice, murder , and unrequited love poetic, cold , and a little bit absurd . Dad has that story has all the things, Ed, like that. Yeah that is a that is that is something