In this episode of 80 Days: An Exploration Podcast, we’re exploring the story behind the writer of the most well-known secular Christmas song: Jingle Bells, and some of its surprising backstory. We also reflect on whether AI will replace Luke, Mark or Joe first, and take on the now-traditional festive quiz where Luke tests how much trivia from our back-catalogue we can recall. From all of us, have a very merry festive season, and we’ll see you in 2026.
Thanks to all our patrons who support the show. We really appreciate your continued backing of us. If you want to join them, more information is available at www.patreon.com/80dayspodcast
The coversheet of One Horse Open Sleigh, by James Lord Pierpont, the original title of Jingle Bells (photo from Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain)
In this episode of 80 Days: An Exploration Podcast we’ll be talking about the Central American country Belize, formerly known as British Honduras. This small country on the Yucatan Peninsula. It is bordered by Mexico to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala to the west and south. This region was a stronghold of the Maya Heartland from around 1500BC up to the arrival of Europeans, namely the Spanish, in the 1600s. A tussle between Spain and Britain developed in subsequent decades, and Belize became a British colony in 1840, and a Crown colony in 1862, before achieving full independence in 1981. The country has an area of 22,970 square kilometres (8,867 sq mi) and a population of just over 410,000, making it similar in size to Wales, Djibouti or the US state of New Jersey, but the least densely populated nation in Central America. This is a very diverse place, ecologically, culturally and linguistically. The official language is English, but there are many other communities such as Maya, Garifuna, Creoles and even Mennonites, who speak a variety of tongues. Belize has over 400 islands or Cays off its coastline, as well as one of the world’s largest marine sinkholes, the Blue Hole, which is 318 m (1,043 ft) across and extends to a depth of 124 m (407 ft). The country also boasts the second largest barrier reef in the world after the one everyone’s heard of in Australia.
Thanks to all our patrons who support the show. We really appreciate your continued backing of us. If you want to join them, more information is available at www.patreon.com/80dayspodcast
In this episode of 80 Days: An Exploration Podcast we’ll be talking about Wellington, New Zealand. Located at the south end of the country’s North Island, Wellington is the third largest city, and capital of New Zealand. Māori oral tradition tells that Kupe discovered and explored the region in about the 10th century, before Maori people settled the country from around 1280, making New Zealand the world’s last major landmass to be occupied by humans. Maori named the natural harbour that forms here named the harbour Te Whanganui-a-Tara. As they tend to do, Europeans eventually showed up and began to colonise, in this case in the 1830s, inevitably coming into conflict with the Maori, and eventually renaming the settlement for Sir Arthur Wellesley, hero of Waterloo. Wellington was declared a city in 1840, and was chosen to be the capital city of New Zealand in 1865, making it the world’s southernmost capital of a sovereign state. Today, Wellington is home to around 420,000 people, giving it a similar population to Oakland, California or Manchester, England. It is well-known for its coffee culture, its natural beauty, its booming film industry and its extreme winds. Wellington is the world’s windiest city, with an average wind speed of 27 km/h (17 mph)
We also had a huge amount of help from Thomas Rillstone for this episode. He’s the legend behind the History of Aotearoa New Zealand Podcast. You should check out his show for far more info on New Zealand than we could ever hope to know, and for much more accurate pronunciations than we could ever manage.
Some further reading material is provided below:
We referred a number of times in this episode to the official government site on Wellington’s history, which you can find here.
Another great source is the Wellington Museum. Did we mention there’s a lot written down in this one? The episode was well over three hours before it was edited!
There’s also an episode of Absolute History all about the history of the city, which touches on some of the points we made and also gives a good tour around the city. Featuring Peter Jackson!
Thanks to all our patrons who support the show. We really appreciate your continued backing of us. If you want to join them, more information is available at www.patreon.com/80dayspodcast
In this episode of 80 Days: an exploration podcast, we’ll be talking about Svalbard (also known as Spitsbergen), a small polar archipelago off the northern coast of Norway. Svalbard is by far the most northerly place we’ve covered on the show, lying roughly midway between continental Norway and the North Pole, around 580 miles (930 km) north of Tromsø, Norway. The archipelago consists of nine main islands, the main island being Spitsbergen, which makes up over half of the land area. In total, Svalbard has a land area of around 24,209 square miles (62,700 square km), making it similar in size to Sri Lanka or the US state of West Virginia. There are only 2,500 permanent residents here, most of whom live in the main city of Longyearbyen. First settled as an arctic whaling base in the 17th century, the islands later saw the establishment of coal mining towns, but in recent years Svalbard’s main economic lifeline has been tourism and arctic research, both of which have boomed recently. Due to its extreme northern latitude, in the summer, the sun does not set on Svalbard for 4 months, while in the winter the archipelago goes weeks without any sunlight at all. Svalbard is also notable for being home to the Global Seed Vault, while as of 2012, all residents must carry a gun while travelling outside an established settlement, in case they encounter one of the many polar bears that live nearby.
Thanks to Dr Ciaran McDonough (@metamedievalist), Sonja Murto, Aengus Ó Maoláin and Roxana Cremer (@cloudcycling) for talking to us about their first-hand experiences visiting or living in Svalbard. They were invaluable to giving us a full picture of the place.
Pack ice at Svalbard – photo by Roxana Cremer (@cloudcycling on Instagram)
Nesting birds – photo by Roxana Cremer (@cloudcycling on Instagram)
Arctic fox – photo by Roxana Cremer (@cloudcycling on Instagram)
Svalbard reindeer – photo by Roxana Cremer (@cloudcycling on Instagram)
The Svalbard coast – photo by Roxana Cremer (@cloudcycling on Instagram)
Mountains in Svalbard – photo by Roxana Cremer (@cloudcycling on Instagram)
A polar bear in Svalbard – photo by Roxana Cremer (@cloudcycling on Instagram)
The northernmost statue of Vladimir Lenin, at Pyramiden – photo by Aengus Ó Maoláin
It’s a long way from anywhere! Signposts – photo by Aengus Ó Maoláin
Some further reading:
More on the Pomors, believed to be some of the earliest inhabitants of this region can be found here.
The Svalbard Museum has a wonderful section on their website about whaling in the Arctic.
An August 1906 article in Nature entitled “The Early History of Spitsbergen” can be found here.
For more on Basque whaling, see NABO’s article here.
Svalbard-Spitsbergen.com has more reading on the charming-sounding settlement of Smeerenberg, also known as “Blubbertown”.
The article concerning Horatio Nelson’s visit to Spitsbergen can be found here.
For more on the early scientific expeditions on Svalbard, see this article from Svalbard-Spitsbergen.com
“Elegy for the Arctic” by Ludovico Einaudi is a very striking video made by Greenpeace showing the condition of the arctic ice around Svalbard as a result of climate change, which is well worth a watch.
80 Days 