Robert Peary, a civil engineer from Pennsylvania, resolved in the jungles of Nicaragua to be the first man to reach the North Pole. This episode explores how he treated the Arctic as a logistical problem, adopting Inuit furs and igloos and building a relay system of support teams that worked like a multi-stage rocket.

It also confronts the human cost of his obsession: the removal of the Cape York meteorite, the Inuit brought to New York’s American Museum of Natural History, and the children he left behind. Finally, we examine the 1909 claim itself, from sending navigator Robert Bartlett back to suspicious travel speeds and blank diary pages found in a 1989 review.

• How Matthew Henson went from clothing store clerk to Peary’s indispensable field partner
• Peary’s 1891 broken leg and the 1,250-mile trek proving Greenland is an island
• The tragic story of Minik and the deception surrounding his father Qisuk’s remains
• Why celestial navigation on drifting sea ice made Peary’s claim so hard to verify
• Wally Herbert’s 1989 assessment and the debate over Peary’s legacy