Episodes
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Announcement: The Brady Heywood Podcast is coming back
The Brady Heywood Podcast is coming back and the first episode drops on Tuesday 3 November. Instead of standalone episodes, we'll be doing limited series' where we cover one story or topic across several episode released weekly. The first series is Piper Alpha, one of the worst offshore disasters...
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Introducing 'Simplifying Complexity'
As you can tell by the title of this episode this isn’t a normal episode of The Brady Heywood Podcast. In today’s episode we introduce you to a new show that we’ve been working on called Simplifying Complexity, a podcast all about complexity science. Simplifying Complexity is all about...
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Miami Bridge Failure - Part 3
In today's episode, we bring to a close our three-part series on the collapse of a pedestrian bridge in Miami, Florida, in 2018. In part one, you heard about the cracks in the bridge and how nothing was done about them. And in part two, you heard about the serious errors that were made in the...
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Miami Bridge Failure - Part 2
Today's episode is the second of a three-part series on the 2018 collapse of the International University Pedestrian Bridge in Miami, Florida. In our last episode, you heard how a pedestrian bridge under construction at the Florida International University collapsed in 2018 and killed six people....
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Miami Bridge Failure - Part 1
Today's episode is the first of a three-part series about the 2018 collapse of the Florida International University pedestrian bridge in Miami, Florida. In this part, you'll hear how the signals which could have prevented the collapse of the bridge were ignored, leading to the deaths of six…
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The Brady Review
Today's episode is a little different. It explores 'The Brady Review', a report Brady Heywood undertook on the mining and quarrying industry in Queensland, Australia. From January 2000 until the end of July 2019, 47 people lost their lives in the mining and quarrying industry in Queensland,...
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The Pike River Mine Disaster - Part 3
CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains vivid descriptions of how the miners, who lost their lives in the disaster, died. Listener discretion is advised. In this final episode of our three-part series on the Pike River Mine disaster, we bring the story to a close. We examine what took place on the...
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The Pike River Mine Disaster - Part 2
In part one of this three-part series on the Pike River mine disaster, you heard what took place in the minutes, hours and days following the methane explosion at the mine. In this episode, we’ll step back and look at the history of the mine. You’ll hear how the factors that led to the explosion...
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The Pike River Mine Disaster - Part 1
CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains vivid descriptions of the moments that the disaster occurred. Listener discretion is advised. On the 19th of November 2010, New Zealand experienced one of its worst mining disasters when there was an explosion deep within the Pike River coal mine. Today’s...
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The 1976 Montreal Olympics Financial Debacle
It's 1970, and the mayor of Montreal, Jean Drapeau, declares that the 1976 Montreal Games will be self-financing. In his view, these games can no more have a deficit "...than a man can have a baby". In fact, he thinks the real problem will be in determining how to spend the surplus. But over the...
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The I-90 Tunnel Collapse
In this episode, we head to Boston. The 'Big Dig' was a road and tunnel construction project designed to solve Boston's congestion problems. With the final project cost exceeding $14 billion USD, this megaproject took 20 years to complete. It involved constructing 25 km of highway lanes, 8 km of...
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Introducing 'Saving Apollo 13'
In this short podcast we discuss the re-release of our Apollo 13 Series as Saving Apollo 13. We also talk about the subject of the next more 'traditional' Brady Heywood Podcast Episode. Saving Apollo 13 is available on iTunes via the link below or by searching 'Saving Apollo 13' wherever you find...
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Apollo 13 - Addendum
Want to take a deep dive behind the scenes of our Apollo 13 podcast series? Want to know the cause of the failure? Then this podcast is for you. We’ll talk about each episode, cover the technical material we left out, discuss the cause, and even chat about Ron Howard’s excellent movie, Apollo 13....
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Apollo 13 - Part V: Steely-Eyed Missile Men
Apollo 13 is about to undertake one of the most improvised and dangerous re-entries ever attempted by NASA. Will John Aaron and the Tiger Team figure out how to power back up the Command Module in time? Has the heat shield been damaged? Are their parachute's frozen? This is the final episode of...
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Apollo 13 - Part IV: Star Sailors
The crew of Apollo 13 begin their long fall to earth. In this entire episode we stay with the crew as they go around the moon, fight to keep their LEM functioning and their trajectory correct - all while their spacecraft begins to freeze around them. The final episode will be released next...
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Apollo 13 - Part III: The Tiger Team
"I don’t give a damn about the odds and I don’t give a damn that we’ve never done anything like this before. You’ve got to believe, your people have got to believe, that this crew is coming home." Gene Kranz to the Tiger Team, Room 210, April 1970. The Tiger Team and Mission Control work through...
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Apollo 13 - Part II: The Lifeboat
Following the explosion, the three astronauts and Mission Control fight to save the dying spacecraft. And Gene Kranz assembles a team to tackle an impossible rescue. A new episode will be released every Thursday. The series is accompanied by bonus material, in the form of photographs and…
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Apollo 13 - Part I: Head for the Hills
Apollo 13 is 200,000 miles from earth when it’s crippled by an explosion. On board are astronauts Jack Swigert, Fred Haise, and Commander Jim Lovell. In this five-part series we follow the story of the three astronauts, as well as the scores of people in Mission Control, who scramble to bring...
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Apollo 13 - Teaser
Listen to our Apollo 13 teaser, with actual audio from its launch on 11 April 1970. In the New Year we will tackle the story of Apollo 13. In this episode we chat about the podcast journey so far and we discuss the new episodes currently in the planning stages. Follow on Twitter at…
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Stranger than Fiction
The collapse of the I-40 bridge in 2002 was a tragedy, but its aftermath was a story you simply couldn't make up. It begins with a barge, a bridge, and an impostor, and it ends with a prison sentence, Vladimir Putin, and cheque fraud in Alaska. Follow on Twitter at @BradyHeywoodPod Email...
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Quebec Bridge Collapse
Can ego knock a bridge down? How one man's decisions caused the collapse of the Quebec Bridge. Follow the podcast on twitter @BradyHeywoodPod The Royal Commission Report into the collapse can be found at...
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Earthquakes, Financial Crashes, and Dinosaurs
Why do the really big catastrophes happen? The earthquakes, the financial crashes, and even the outbreak of the First World War. In this episode we dive into the weird world of complexity theory. Follow the podcast on twitter @BradyHeywoodPod Mark Buchanan's Ubiquity can be found at...
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The Comet Aircraft Crashes
The aircraft crashes that changed the world of aviation. And the reason aircraft windows aren't square. Follow the podcast on twitter @BradyHeywoodPod A number of books cover the crash of the aircraft, but Henry Petroski's To Engineer is Human is one of the best:...
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Minneapolis Highway Bridge Collapse
On 1 August 2007 at 6:05 pm, during rush hour traffic, the I35-W Highway Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota collapsed into the Mississippi River. We’ll look at how a bridge could suddenly collapse after 40 years of service. And we’ll ask was there an issue with design, or was there abnormal bridge...
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Hanging Garden of Babylon
Did the Hanging Garden of Babylon actually exist or was it myth? And why bother talking about it in this podcast? Because apart from whether or not the Garden existed, or more importantly where it was located, the story of its history is fascinating. But even more fascinating is the extraordinary...
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Brooklyn Bridge - Part 2
With doctors saying her husband is dying, Emily Warren Roebling sets out on a path to see the great bridge through to completion. Read more at https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/52fa7d_6775ee5cee5c476d87e658bdb812cb9e.pdf. This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit...
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Brooklyn Bridge - Part 1
The greatest engineering challenge of the age. A male dominated profession. One woman. Emily Warren Roebling. Read more at https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/52fa7d_88f884ef141648d59ae81f5d8c0dee25.pdf. This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for...
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Tacoma Bridge Collapse
The collapse of the Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge is one of the world's most recognised structural failures. Were there any warnings from history that this failure could have occurred, and more importantly, if failures like this had ever happened at the past - why did we as a profession forget...
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Virgin Galactic Crash
The tragic crash of the Virgin Galactic spacecraft carries lessons for all of us. Do failures happen because humans make mistakes? Or do they happen because we design systems that ultimately fail us as humans? Detailed article on the disaster can be found at...
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Why Expertise Can Hold Us Back
What does a stadium collapse, baseball, fire fighting, and taking a shower have in common? In this episode we explore the concept of expertise and ask does it have a dark side? Indeed, can failures sometimes occur precisely because we possess expertise? But before all that we'll join a group of...
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The West Gate Bridge Collapse
What is not well known about the West Gate Bridge collapse in Melbourne, Australia in 1970 was that it was only one of a string of similar bridge failures that happened around the world. The failures highlighted that the engineering profession’s understanding of these bridge types was clearly...
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Heart Attacks: Is Less Information More?
What can heart attack diagnosis tell us about engineering failures? Perhaps not much directly, but it does provide fascinating insight into whether or not more information really leads to better decision making. This episode examines the story of the system developed at Cook County Hospital in...
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Corporate Memory Loss: The Malahide Collapse
While the technical cause of failure of the Malahide Viaduct in Ireland was straight-forward, the human factor that collapsed the bridge was a relatively new phenomenon: corporate memory loss. Detailed article on the collapse can be found at...
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Organ Donation Rates and Engineering Failures
Organ donation rates provide surprising insight into how we as humans make rational decisions. This podcast looks at this insight and examines how it can play a role in engineering failure, specifically examining the 2007 collapse of the I-35W Highway Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Johnson...
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The Citicorp Tower Crisis
In 1978 an engineering design error was discovered in the Citicorp Tower in Manhattan. It was so serious that it threatened the tower’s integrity. This is the story of how it was found and the race against time to fix it. Detailed article can be found at...
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The Role of Forensic Engineers in Legal Disputes
What is the difference between a forensic structural engineer, as opposed to an ‘ordinary’ structural engineer? And what are the roles of these two very different types of engineers in legal disputes? Detailed article can be found at...
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The Hyatt Regency Collapse
The structural collapse of walkways at the Hyatt Regency in 1981 was one of the most devastating collapses in US history. 114 died, over 200 were injured – needing the emergency rooms of 17 hospitals to treat them. We look at the story from the perspective of those involved. This episode contains...
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Welcome to the Brady Heywood Podcast
Welcome to the Brady Heywood podcast – the podcast where we look at engineering failures and disasters. My name is Sean Brady, and I’m a forensic structural engineer, which means I investigate the causes of engineering failures. And while I usually focus on figuring out the technical cause of a...
About this show
A show about engineering failures and disasters. We examine the technical, human and organisational causes of failure, and explore why our decision-making is not nearly as rational as we’d like to think.
Hosted by
Sean Brady
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