Futility Closet

In 1822, Irish thief Alexander Pearce joined seven convicts fleeing a penal colony in western Tasmania. As they struggled eastward through some of the most inhospitable terrain on Earth, starvation pressed the party into a series of grim sacrifices. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the prisoners on their nightmarish bid for freedom. We'll also unearth another giant and puzzle over an eagle's itinerary. Intro: Two presenters at an 1884 AAAS meeting reported on "musical sand" at Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass. In scenes of pathos, Charles Dickens often slipped into blank verse. Sources for our feature on Alexander Pearce: Paul Collins, Hell's Gates, 2014. Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding, 2012. Robert Cox, A Compulsion to Kill: The Surprising Story of Australia's Earliest Serial Killers, 2014. Jane Stadler, Peta Mitchell, and Stephen Carleton, Imagined Landscapes: Geovisualizing Australian Spatial Narratives, 2015. "Alexander Pearce," Convict Recor