Ferdinand Magellan did not sail around the world; he died about halfway through, in the Philippines in 1521. The man who completed the first circumnavigation was Juan Sebastián Elcano, a Basque captain who joined the expedition as a fugitive after the Spanish crown failed to pay him for military service and then criminalized him for selling his own armed ship to foreign bankers to cover his debts.

This episode follows Elcano through the Patagonian mutiny that Magellan crushed, the months he spent in chains doing hard labor, and the democratic vote that made him captain of the Victoria after the leadership collapsed. It covers his decision to sail west through Portuguese-patrolled waters, the roughly 27,000-kilometer voyage without a port stop, scurvy dissolving the crew's bodies, shipworms hollowing the hull, the Cape Verde escape that left ...