Poles Apart: How A Journalist Divided A City
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Pushkin. Off the coast of Helsingor, 30 miles north of Copenhagen, a small boat sails up alongside a big one. On the small boat are a few Danish journalists and one English journalist. The Englishman is feeling cold. In his excitement at getting on board, he forgot his coat. It's chilly, early on a September morning. The year is 1909.

Down from the deck of the large ship snakes a rope ladder. The Danish journalists leap confidently, grip the rope ladder and shimmy up onto the deck. The English journalist gulps. He's not used to this kind of thing. He stands on the side of the small boat and tries not to look down at the swirling sea. He screws up his courage and jumps.

grabs at the rope and dangles his leg, frantically searching for a rung. At last he finds one and hauls himself up the ladder. On the deck of the big ship he's greeted by a big man, an American in baggy, well-worn clothes with unkempt hair and a warm smile. The man extends his hand. "'I guess you're the first Englishman to give me a greeting,' he says."

The big man on the big ship is Frederick Cook, an explorer. He's just come back from the Arctic, where, he says, he set foot on the very roof of the world, the North Pole, the first person ever to do so. It's a historic achievement and a huge news story.

Every journalist in the world would wish they were on Cook's ship, getting an exclusive chat with the explorer as he sails those last 30 miles into Copenhagen, where Danes are preparing a hero's welcome. The English journalist is called Philip Gibbs.

Over the next five hectic days in Copenhagen, a bitter divide is going to open up between the enthusiasts and the doubters on the question of whether or not Frederick Cook really did reach the North Pole. Philip Gibbs is going to cause that divide. This is a story, if you'll forgive the pun, about the pole and polarisation. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening...

to cautionary tales. Philip Gibbs never really wanted to be a news reporter. He preferred descriptive writing. He started his career as a literary critic. Then he took some time off and rented a Coast Guards cottage for the peace and quiet to write a novel, his first. The Coast Guards cottage turned out to be next to a funfair

Somehow he still managed to write the novel. But while he looked for a publisher, he had a wife and newborn child to support. London's Daily Chronicle needed a reporter. Gibbs was hardly a natural. Newshounds should be confident. Gibbs was painfully shy. But he got the job. And now his editor told him to go to Copenhagen because that's where Frederick Cook was about to arrive.

More than two years had passed since the American explorer set off for the North Pole. He should have got back a year ago. No one had heard from him. People assumed he was dead, if they thought of him at all. But no. In a tiny town on a remote North Sea island, Cook had just turned up at the telegraph office clutching a 2,000-word draft about his epic trek to the pole.

He telegraphed a newspaper in New York. Would they like to pay him $3,000 to print his article? They would. That's hundreds of thousands of dollars in today's money, but it was worth every cent. The news was sensational, and Frederick Cook was a pretty good descriptive writer himself.

With a single step, we could pass from one side of the earth to the other, from midday to midnight. A sentiment of intense solitude penetrated us while we looked at the horizon. In London, a rival newspaper to the Daily Chronicle bought the rights to Cook's definitive account. The Chronicle would have to play catch-up.

Go to Copenhagen, said the editor to Gibbs. Maybe you can get an interview with Cook. Find some kind of fresh angle. Gibbs wasn't keen. He'd rather be at home with his wife and child. He knew nothing at all about Arctic exploration and cared even less. But he was a news reporter. He had to go where his editor told him.

The story of Frederick Cook and Philip Gibbs is told in a new book called The Explorer and the Journalist by Richard Evans. The Chronicle's editor gave Philip Gibbs a bag of gold coins for expenses. Gibbs took the razor and toothbrush he kept in the office and hurried to catch a boat to Copenhagen. He arrived in the early evening and got in a taxi. "'Take me somewhere I can get a coffee,' he said."

In a smoke-filled cafe, he found a waiter who spoke English. "I'm a journalist," he said. "Ah, yes," said the waiter. "There are many journalists in Copenhagen today. Has Dr Cook arrived yet?" "No, he hasn't. He should have, but it's too foggy. His ship has moored for the night near Helsingor, 30 miles away. He'll arrive in the morning."

Gibbs sipped his coffee and leafed through a Danish newspaper. He didn't understand a word, except for Dr Cook. Then a glamorous-looking woman walked into the café with two companions. The waiter said to Gibbs, That's Dagmar Rasmussen, the wife of Knud Rasmussen. Knud Rasmussen? Gibbs was baffled. Knud Rasmussen, the famous Danish explorer.

Everyone in Denmark knew all about the dashing young Knud, who'd long dreamed of being first to the North Pole himself. In his article for the Chronicle, Gibbs later misidentified the woman as the wife of Roald Amundsen, the famous Norwegian explorer who would later be first to the South Pole. We heard all about Amundsen in our previous Cautionary Tales trilogy, South Pole Race.

Rasmussen, Amundsen, Danish, Norwegian, close enough. As I said, Gibbs knew nothing about explorers. But he knew enough about news reporting to realise that he probably ought to try to talk to this woman in the white fox fur, whoever's wife she was. But the woman was so forbiddingly beautiful and Gibbs was very shy. He screwed up his courage and went to introduce himself.

"'My husband,' said the woman, "'was the last man to see Dr. Cook and his Inuit guides before they set out for the pole. I wish I could be the first to welcome him to Denmark.' "'Well then,' said Gibbs, "'why don't we all go to Helsingor? We can stay in a hotel and take a boat out to meet his ship first thing in the morning.' "'That's a nice idea,' said Dagmar Rasmussen, "'but we've missed the last train. What about a taxi?'

No, that doesn't work. You see, there's a law against driving outside the city at night. You can be fined. Gibbs thought for a moment and remembered his bag of gold coins. How much is the fine? They found a taxi driver who was willing to risk it for a price. He hurtled them at breakneck speed along the dark road between Copenhagen and Helsingor. They ran over a cyclist. Luckily, the man wasn't badly hurt.

And as dawn broke the next morning, Gibbs got his reward for overcoming his diffidence. He stood on a small boat with a couple of Danish journalists who'd had the same idea, approaching the big ship that would soon take Frederick Cook into Copenhagen. After the Danish journalists and Gibbs had ascended the rope ladder, Cook invited them into his ship's cabin for breakfast.

The journalist sat and listened as the American held court. It was always the same. One day, like another, going onwards to the north with nothing in sight upon the great white desert, and then the chance for questions. "'What evidence are you bringing?' asked Gibbs. "'That you really reached the North Pole. I bring the same proofs as every other explorer. I bring my story. Do you doubt that?'

The ship steamed slowly into Copenhagen. And there, in the harbour, was an incredible scene. 50,000 people. Hundreds of boats, including the Royal Boat. On it, the Crown Prince of Denmark. The American flag flying. Horns and whistles. A band playing "See the Conquering Hero Comes". Gibbs watched Cook take in this incredible welcome.

Was that a nervous look in the explorer's eye? Philip Gibbs thought it was. He decided that Frederick Cook was lying. Portionary Tales will be back after the break. AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry and literally billions of dollars are being invested. So buckle up.

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Why had Philip Gibbs decided that Frederick Cook was lying about his epic journey to the North Pole? Gibbs himself later said it was intuition, some quick instinct of facial expression, some sensibility to mental and moral dishonesty. And maybe it was. But there's another, more prosaic explanation. Gibbs was a young, unknown journalist with a novel to promote.

If he filed the same stories as every other journalist, waxing lyrical about the waving flags and Cook's compelling story, he wouldn't stand out from the crowd. Maybe it was worth the risk of writing something different enough to get him noticed.

Not too much risk, though. Gibbs couldn't flat-out accuse Cook of lying, with no evidence at all. If Cook actually had been to the poll, he could sue the Chronicle for libel. So Gibbs wrote an article that would pass the libel lawyers, but in a tone that dripped with disbelief. His eyes would not look into mine. He smiles when a man speaks to him for quite a long time before he answers.

He seems to be cautious with words. Gibbs recalled Cook's answer to his question about evidence. "I bring my story. Do you doubt that?" It seemed to Gibbs that Cook had said that with a flash of anger. I thought, "Hello, what's wrong? This man protests too much."

Cook explained, wrote Gibbs, that he had of course taken scientific instruments with him and made observations as every explorer does. That's how it works. Explorers make records of their journeys and then some august scientific institution forms a committee of experts to check those records and say they're satisfied the story stacks up, that the evidence suggests the explorer is telling the truth.

Cook assured Gibbs that he would present the usual kind of records to some appropriate scientific body in due course. But he didn't have his instruments or records with him now. He'd left them in a settlement in northern Greenland, a kind of base camp for Arctic exploration. Another explorer had promised to take them directly to New York, to Gibbs. That didn't make sense.

Surely he should have retained the strongest proofs of his claim so that it might be immediately established. That was a fair point. Some other doubts Gibbs raised were not so fair. At one point, Cook made a throwaway remark about not having worn a beard for 15 years. Gibbs picked him up on it. Was he saying that he'd been able to shave while at the Pole? No.

"'Of course not,' Cook laughed. "'He explained that you don't want a beard in the Arctic "'because icicles would form on it. "'You hack off your facial hair as best you can, with a knife or scissors. "'Gibbs thought that sounded fishy. "'He might not know his Rasmussons from his Amundsons, "'but he'd seen photographs of explorers before, "'and he was sure that some of them had beards.'"

Something else Cook said made Gibbs suspicious too. He'd been to the Pole with two Inuit companions, then widely known as Eskimos, and he praised them wholeheartedly. The Inuit are an intelligent and cultured people, he said. That didn't sound right to Gibbs. I'd always thought the Eskimos were the most primitive and ignorant race on Earth.

The primitive ignorance here was Gibbs' racism, but it all added up to make Gibbs convinced that Cook was bluffing. He didn't want to risk saying that explicitly, but he made it clear enough. Whether his answers seem satisfactory, I will leave my readers to judge.

Gibbs wired his article to the Chronicle and news of what he'd written soon got back to Denmark, where the Danes had taken Cook to their hearts. It caused an uproar. The shy, retiring Gibbs became instantly notorious. He ruefully described himself as the most unpopular man in Copenhagen.

diners booed him in a restaurant. A newspaper published a caricature depicting him with a darkened face and a slyly evil look. He even got threats of violence. Faced with this hostility, Gibbs felt there was only one thing to do, double down.

He sought out any expert he could find who might help him pick holes in Cook's story. He followed Cook to events, observing him closely. This wasn't always easy. Some of those events were black tie and Gibbs hadn't brought his dress suit with him. He borrowed one from the waiter he'd met in the cafe. It was stained with grease and far too big. He had to hold the trousers up as he walked.

When Cook gave speeches, Gibbs seemed to notice things others didn't. There were many awkward pauses, he informed his readers. Dr Cook stumbled badly. His face was flushed, his forehead beaded with perspiration. Another journalist described the same speech as given coolly and without hesitation. Cook struck most people as charming, fluent and plausible.

But also, Cook wasn't just some random person who'd appeared from nowhere. Other explorers knew him, and they mostly seemed to like him. None more so than Roald Amundsen, the famous Norwegian. Frederick Cook is the most honest man I've ever met, said Amundsen. If he says he's reached the pole, I believe him.

Ten years earlier, Cook and Amundsen had become firm friends on an epic voyage to the Antarctic when their ship got stuck in ice for an entire year.

Amundsen, then young and unknown, Cook, the ship's doctor. They'd saved each other's lives, roped together on a perilous trek across a glacial crevasse. They'd discussed ideas to improve equipment for explorers. When Amundsen later reached the South Pole, it was with snow goggles and a wind-deflecting tent he'd made from designs that Cook suggested.

When some of the crew on the ice-bound ship got scurvy, Cook cured them. He'd noticed that the Inuit never got scurvy, and he guessed that might be because they ate fresh seal meat. He insisted the sailors did too. He was right. After months stuck in the ice, when they started to fear that they might never get free, it was Cook who came up with a plan.

cutting out blocks of ice between the ship and the open water, so when the ice moved, it might crack and form a channel. It seemed like a mad idea at first, but it worked. It was like a miracle. Amundsen said of Cook...

He, of all the ship's company, was the one man of unfaltering courage, unfailing hope, endless cheerfulness and unwearied kindness. His ingenuity and enterprise were boundless. So, yes, if Frederick Cook said he'd been to the North Pole, Roald Amundsen believed him.

And what of Knud Rasmussen, the famous Danish explorer? The husband of the beautiful woman Philip Gibbs had met on his first night in Copenhagen. Knud was still in the north, doing exploring of his own. Gibbs bumped into Knud's wife Dagmar Rasmussen. She pulled out a long letter she'd just received. She let Gibbs copy part of it and have it translated.

My first feeling when I heard about Dr Cook was an immeasurable disappointment and sorrow. Everyone who knew Knud Rasmussen would have understood. The young Dane was downcast because he'd long dreamed of being the first man to reach the pole himself. Cook had taken that place in the history books, or so Rasmussen assumed, because he liked and trusted Cook too.

But Gibbs didn't know Knud Rasmussen and didn't understand what he meant. He just thought it sounded vaguely negative. He reported that Rasmussen was not supporting Cook. Gibbs was jumping to some wrong conclusions. But he was also asking the right questions of the right people when no other journalist would.

When the University of Copenhagen announced it would give Cook an honorary degree, other newspapers reported that Cook had shown his records to the university's top astronomer. Gibbs sought the man out. I hear you've seen Cook's records. What? No. Cook told me they're in a box in Greenland. So, you haven't seen any astronomical observations from Cook? Not at all.

And without those observations, there's no way to be sure that Cook's story is true? That's right, said the astronomer. By now, Gibbs was ready to throw caution to the wind. His reporting for the Chronicle was no longer inviting readers to judge for themselves. He flat-out accused Cook of fraud. If Gibbs had called this wrong, Cook would surely sue for libel.

one distinguished fellow journalist was horrified. "Young man," he said to Gibbs, "you have not only ruined yourself, which does not matter very much, but you have also ruined the Daily Chronicle." The Danes, meanwhile, were embracing Cook uncritically. The mayor of Copenhagen threw him a banquet. The King of Denmark invited him to dinner.

With every negative article Gibbs published in London, his notoriety in Copenhagen grew. It must have been disconcerting for Gibbs, reading articles about himself in the Danish newspapers. Mr Gibbs were the only words he understood. He asked someone to translate.

Dagmar Rasmussen says you're wrong. Knud does believe Cook. Oh, and the explorer Norman Hansen says you've insulted Cook's honour. That means he's challenging you to a duel. A duel? Gibbs had seen Norman Hansen. He's six foot three in his socks. I'm five foot six in my boots. Cautionary Tales will be back in a moment.

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We think of polarisation as a very modern problem. And in some ways it is. Study after study finds politics in the US and Europe going further to extremes. And it's not just opinions that divide us, it's what we believe to be true.

Think of the first few months of the Covid pandemic, when we faced so many entirely new questions. How much worse was Covid than flu? How well did masks work? Did the virus come from the market or the lab? These new vaccines, how safe were they? The best response to all these questions was: let's be guided by the evidence.

But for many people, that was hard. They committed early to one belief or another. We divided into tribes. It's easy to blame social media. You state a view. It brings you followers, clicks, maybe even advertising revenue. You stop being objective and start telling your new followers what they want to hear.

But the polarisation of the poll debate in Copenhagen in 1909 suggests the problem may be older than we think. Just as with Covid, here was a brand new question nobody had ever had to think about before. Had Frederick Cook set foot on the North Pole? And just as with Covid, the best response was, let's be guided by the evidence. But that was hard.

especially if the evidence was supposedly in a box in Greenland and Cook wouldn't send it to the University of Copenhagen for months. Still, let's be guided by the evidence was the best response, and it was the one Philip Gibbs started out with. He declared, as one of the reporters of the world's history, I must be sceptical until the facts are proven. Quite right. But Gibbs shifted quickly from scepticism to cynicism.

Why? We can see the same dynamic at work on Gibbs that we see in today's social media world. Gibbs had an initial incentive to be opinionated. It was risky, but it got him noticed. Once he'd committed to a view, it coloured his judgement. Right from the start, when he unfairly dismissed the explorer's well-informed opinions about the intelligence of the Inuit and the advisability of facial hair in the Arctic.

Skeptical until the facts are proven. But it would take months for the facts to be proven. Gibbs lasted only a couple of days before he'd abandoned healthy skepticism for mocking stone-cold certainty. His claim to have reached the North Pole belongs to the realm of fairy tales. But just as Gibbs rushed to extremes, so did Cook's supporters.

Gibbs was right to keep pointing out that Cook had arrived in Copenhagen with no scientific observations to back up his story. Why was the King inviting him to dinner? Why was the university rushing to give him an honorary degree? Why weren't they being sceptical until the facts were known? To start with, Danes must have been flattered. Cook could have chosen to go straight back home to America after all,

But there he was in Copenhagen, bringing the city the attention of the world and saying lovely things about how the Danish had always supported Arctic explorers. Of course they wanted to believe. Richard Evans, the author of The Explorer and The Journalist, says the reaction of the Danes reminds him of a line from the great psychologist Daniel Kahneman.

When faced with a difficult question, we sometimes answer an easier question without noticing. The hard question, had Cook really been to the pole? The easier question, did Cook seem nice? But there's another reason Cook's supporters doubled down, as one of them later explained. The attacks on him were both indecent and ill-founded. Isn't that how polarisation works?

Philip Gibbs pushes further than the facts yet strictly justify. Cook's affronted friends push back harder than is justified too. The cycle continues. The two sides get further and further apart. In just five days, the world had divided into tribes. Cookites and anti-Cookites.

A handful of journalists held the line that we should wait for Cook's evidence, but it was hard to hold that line. The task of forming a sane opinion, wrote the Times of London, is more than usually embarrassing. A thousand people attended Cook's honorary degree ceremony at the University of Copenhagen. Royals, the great and the good of Danish science.

In his acceptance speech, Cook promised yet again to send the university his observations just as soon as he could. Then he got emotional. I can say no more. I can do no more. I'll show you my hands. And then it was over. After five days in Copenhagen, Cook set sail for home. Thousands of people came to the harbour to wave him off.

A dignitary gave a farewell speech: "We in Denmark believe in you absolutely." As Philip Gibbs watched Frederick Cook's boat depart, he had no idea if he'd ruined himself and the Daily Chronicle. Were there really compelling scientific observations in a box in Greenland that would confirm Cook's story?

Gibbs could only wait until Cook sent his papers to the expert committee assembled by the University of Copenhagen. Gibbs turned from the harbour and ran straight into the one man he didn't want to see, the man who'd challenged him to a duel, the six-foot-three explorer Norman Hansen.

Gibbs must have looked terrified because Hanson roared with laughter and held out his hand. "We will fight with our pens," he said. There was only one thing left for Gibbs to do. He visited the office of the newspaper that had published the challenge to the duel and gave them a quote. "Tell Norman Hanson that I am ready. He need only name his weapon." The shy and retiring Gibbs had found his confidence.

But just in case Hansen might change his mind, Gibbs got straight on the first boat back for London. Three and a half months later, Frederick Cook sent some papers to the University of Copenhagen. Expert committees usually take their time to pore over evidence from explorers, but after just four days, word got around that the verdict was ready.

Danish journalists rushed to gather in a high-ceilinged, wood-panelled room at the university. In walked a functionary, carrying a pile of reports. He handed each journalist a copy. They avidly started to read. The records submitted, said the expert's report, were... Right, what does that mean exactly?

He didn't get to the pole? He might have. The journalists seek out the experts and ask them to explain. Remember the university's astronomer who told Philip Gibbs he needed to see Cook's records to be sure of his story? Well, he's seen them now. There is not a single astronomical observation, the astronomer tells the Danish journalists. Just remarks on weather and wind and ice and snow. That's not proof.

Also on the expert committee, the famous young Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen, who'd initially assumed Cook was telling the truth. Knud is scathing. Such a pathetic submission, he says, has probably never before been submitted to a scientific society for investigation. I have completely lost faith in his claim to be the discoverer of the North Pole.

Another expert on the committee likens Cook's submission to a student handing in an answer without showing his calculations. The professor, he says, would give the student a zero. And we have done the same. The news gets back to London. At the office of the Daily Chronicle, Philip Gibbs breathes a sigh of relief. He knows things might have turned out very differently.

I took a big chance, Gibbs later recalled. Looking back on it, one which was too dangerous and not quite justified. Gibbs's reporting on Frederick Cook became a legend of the British news industry. Gibbs became a well-known war correspondent, a modestly successful novelist, a campaigner for peace and a knight of the realm. Sir Philip Gibbs had gambled and won. And what of Frederick Cook?

He made some money on the lecture circuit, while enough people still believed him. He checked into a sanatorium with nervous exhaustion. He disappeared for months. He returned to Copenhagen to give a lecture. It was interrupted by a six-foot-three heckler. You scoundrel, shouted the explorer Norman Hansen. You betrayed the trust of the Danish people. Cook moved to Texas and reinvented himself as an oil man.

His promises to investors never seemed to come good. He was arrested and charged with fraud. "I've done nothing wrong," Cook told the police. "Tell it to the Danes," they said. Cook served seven years in prison. He was visited by his loyal old friend, Roald Amundsen, who spoke to reporters afterwards.

Cook is a genius, said Amundsen, the finest traveller I ever saw. I still find his story plausible. Cook himself never stopped making his case. I'm getting old. I want you to believe that I told the truth. Our children's children will give me a fair verdict. We're a generation or two on from that. So, did Frederick Cook reach the North Pole? He never produced convincing evidence that he did...

But then, nobody proved he didn't. He went somewhere for months with his Inuit friends. He maintained that he had proof in a box in Greenland, but the box never got to America and never could be found. Did he genuinely believe that he'd made the pole? Did he naively expect to be trusted? Or did he know he was bluffing and hoped to get away with a winning manner and a gripping story?

As Philip Gibbs once wisely advised, we must be sceptical until the facts are proven. The facts aren't proven yet. Perhaps they never will be. Thanks to Richard Evans for giving us permission to base this cautionary tale on his new book, The Explorer and the Journalist. It's already available in the UK and elsewhere and will be published in the US in November 2023.

Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Alice Fiennes, with support from Edith Ruslow. The sound design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise. Julia Barton edited the scripts. It features the voice talents of Ben Crow, Melanie Guttridge, Gemma Saunders and Rufus Wright.

The show wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilley, Greta Cohn, Leet Almalad, John Schnarz, Carly Migliori and Eric Sandler.

Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It was recorded in Wardall Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review. Go on, you know it helps us. And if you want to hear the show ad-free, sign up for Pushkin Plus on the show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus.

I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and I'd like to take a moment to talk about an amazing new podcast I'm hosting called Medal of Honor. It's a moving podcast series celebrating the untold stories of those who protect our country. And it's brought to you by LifeLock, the leader in identity theft protection. Your personal info is in a lot of places that can accidentally expose you to identity theft.

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