Futility Closet

In 1925, Swiss schoolteacher Aimé Tschiffely set out to prove the resilience of Argentina's criollo horses by riding two of them from Buenos Aires to New York City. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow Tschiffely's unprecedented journey, which has been called "the most exciting and influential equestrian travel tale of all time." We'll also read an inscrutable cookbook and puzzle over a misbehaving coworker. Intro: English was Joseph Conrad's third language, but it held a peculiar mystique for him. Thanks to a mathematical oddity, one measurement suffices to establish the area of a carousel deck. Sources for our feature on Aimé Tschiffely: A.F. Tschiffely, Tschiffely's Ride: Ten Thousand Miles in the Saddle From Southern Cross to Pole Star, 1933. Lawrence Scanlan, Wild About Horses: Our Timeless Passion for the Horse, 2012. Sam Leith, "The Incredible Journey," Spectator 324:9694 (June 14, 2014), 36-37. "Long Ride," Time 21:16 (April 17, 1933), 51. Bacil F. Kirtley, "Unknown Homi