On the edge of the ice

October 15, 2025·31 min·2 clips

Elizabeth Rush couldn't sleep before seeing the enormous Thwaites Glacier, nicknamed the Doomsday Glacier, for the first time.

1. Outside/In hosts Nate Hedgie and Justine Paradis tell the story of writer Elizabeth Rush's 2019 voyage to Thwaites Glacier aboard the icebreaker RV Nathaniel B. Palmer. 2. Elizabeth Rush is the author of The Quickening and spent over half a decade writing about sea level rise before being invited to join the expedition by a colleague who reserved the ship's last available berth for her. 3. The episode's core question is what scientists actually found at one of the world's most inaccessible glaciers — and what the journey itself revealed about who gets to do Antarctic science. 4. Thwaites is nicknamed the Doomsday Glacier because it is roughly the size of Florida or Great Britain and alone contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by two feet. 5. Thwaites also functions as a cork to the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, which holds an additional 10 feet or more of potential sea level rise. 6. The RV Nathaniel B. Palmer departed from Punta Arenas, Chile, crossed the Drake Passage through 25-foot seas, and took several weeks to reach the glacier's vicinity. 7. A program officer told Rush before departure: 'It's going to be easier for us to get help to folks on the space station than it is for us to get help to you while you're at Thwaites.' 8. The 57-person crew included rock, sediment, submarine, and elephant seal science teams, with roughly equal gender representation among scientists but most cooks and support crew coming from different socioeconomic backgrounds. 9. Just hours from Thwaites, the ship turned back after a crew member experienced acute abdominal pain from an unexpected pregnancy, raising fears of an ectopic condition that could have been fatal at sea. 10. After evacuating the crew member and her husband at a remote British Antarctic base, the Palmer turned around again and reached Thwaites — the first humans ever to do so — with a narrowing window of open sea ice. 11. The science phase lasted less than a week but ran in 12-hour shifts around the clock, with Rush describing the atmosphere as 'very no BS — boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.' 12. The Swedish team deployed an autonomous underwater vehicle twice beneath the ice shelf and recovered it both times, gathering detailed images of the seafloor. 13. Scientists sedated Weddell seals and epoxied transponders to their foreheads so the seals could take water temperature and salinity readings year-round, including when sea ice makes the area impassable to ships. 14. The submarine's images revealed hundreds of corrugation ridges on the seafloor, each marking a former position of Thwaites' grounding line, showing retreat at rates two to three times faster than humans have ever directly measured. 15. Penguin-bone archaeology from remote island chains confirmed that Thwaites has not regenerated at any point since the last glacial maximum, giving scientists no basis for expecting future recovery. 16. Rush noted that her research in Antarctic literature before the voyage found roughly two dozen books, of which only two were written by women and none by a person of color, with the existing canon built around six male-explorer stories using metaphors of 'sexual dominance.' 17. The episode blends narrative journalism with scientific exposition — Rush's personal voice dominates, and the hosts guide transitions without heavy interruption. 18. The tone is reflective and measured; Rush discusses her decision to delay starting a family to make the trip and returns to that thread at the episode's close when she describes getting pregnant later that same year. 19. People drawn to climate science reporting, polar exploration stories, or first-person nature writing will find this episode particularly engaging. 20. Listeners wanting data-dense policy analysis or technical glaciology detail may find the personal narrative framing more prominent than they prefer.

As heard by us

A glacier story that balances awe, shipboard texture, and the pressure of a medical evacuation.

Elizabeth Rush's journey aboard an icebreaker at the western edge of Antarctica builds steadily toward Thwaites Glacier and its vast wall of ice.

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Why you'd press play

You want Antarctica to feel close enough to smell the rust and seawater.

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