Sidequests

October 1973: Americans wait in line for hours to buy gasoline. Prices have quadrupled. Rationing is in effect. The images are iconic—cars stretching around city blocks, gas stations running dry, tempers flaring.But the gas lines everyone remembers were just the visible symptom. The 1973 oil crisis didn’t just cause a recession. It ended an era and created the world we live in today.1973 was the year everything changed. The moment when guaranteed prosperity ended. When the future stopped looking better than the past. When the post-war order broke and the modern world began.This is the story of that inflection point, and why it still shapes everything from Middle East policy to global finance to the economic assumptions we all carry. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

April 10, 1912. Six in the morning. Dawn breaking over Southampton. At Berth 44, the largest moving object on earth sits waiting — boilers burning, officers walking their inspections, stewards arranging flowers in rooms no one has slept in yet. In six hours, she sails.But before Titanic ever reached open water, she nearly collided with another ship in the harbor. And deep in her belly, a coal fire had been burning for days. Nobody told the passengers.This episode covers the full sailing day — the passengers who boarded and what they were carrying with them, the near-miss that almost ended the voyage before it began, and the hidden problem the crew was quietly managing while everyone else marveled at the ship's beauty.In the free episode: the boarding of over 2,200 souls across three classes, the harrowing suction event with the SS New York, and the coal fire that was finally extinguished the day before the iceberg.In the full premium episode at newssidequest.com: the officers who didn't want to be there, the 325 engineering crew members who kept the lights burning until two minutes before the ship went down — and paid for it with their lives — and the locked gates that turned class separation into a death sentence for hundreds of third-class passengers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On January 15, 1919, a storage tank in Boston's North End burst open and sent more than 2 million gallons of molasses roaring through the streets at 35 miles per hour. Buildings collapsed. People were buried alive. 21 died. It sounds absurd — and it was also completely preventable. The tank had been leaking for years, the warnings were ignored, and the company painted it brown to hide the evidence. This is the Boston Molasses Disaster: one of the strangest and most consequential industrial accidents in American history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In July 1518, a woman walked into the streets of Strasbourg and started dancing. She didn't stop for days. Within a month, hundreds had joined her — collapsing from exhaustion, some reportedly dying — in one of history's most baffling and unsettling outbreaks. The city's response made it worse. The medical theories still don't fully explain it. And the way it ended is somehow the strangest part of all. This is the Dancing Plague of 1518 — and no one has ever completely solved it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

January 1909: RMS Republic collided with another ship in dense fog. A forty-foot gash tore open her hull. Fifteen hundred people were aboard. But the ship stayed afloat for thirty-nine hours. Wireless brought rescue. Passengers were transferred safely. Only six people died.The newspapers called it the "Miracle of Wireless."White Star Line learned a lesson: modern ships don't just sink. Watertight compartments keep them afloat. Wireless brings help. You don't need lifeboats for everyone—just enough to ferry passengers to rescue ships.It made perfect sense. It was based on real experience.And it would kill fifteen hundred people.This is Episode 2 of a ten-part series exploring the Titanic disaster from conception to legacy—not just what happened, but why it happened, and what it reveals about hubris, inequality, and how disasters are built one reasonable decision at a time.Paid subscribers on Substack get the full 70-minute episode featuring:Thomas Andrews and his obsessive notebook—the designer who knew every rivetThe engineering revolution: 46,000 horsepower, 600 tons of coal per day, 176 firemen in 100-degree heatLife in first, second, and third class—luxury, comfort, and adequateThe three sister ships and their vastly different fatesWhat really could have been done differently, and why it wasn't Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In August 1976, two American officers were killed in the Korean DMZ — beaten to death with axes during a routine tree-trimming operation. Three days later, the U.S. military came back to finish the job. This time, they brought B-52 bombers, fighter jets, helicopter gunships, an aircraft carrier group, and a special forces unit trained in hand-to-hand combat. The mission: cut down one poplar tree. The result: one of the most perfectly calibrated shows of force in Cold War history. This is Operation Paul Bunyan — and the chainsaw was the least dangerous weapon on site. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1932, the Australian military went to war. Not against a rival nation. Not against armed insurgents. Against emus — 20,000 of them — cutting through struggling farmland on their seasonal migration. The government's solution: two soldiers, two Lewis machine guns, and 10,000 rounds of ammunition. The result: one of the most embarrassing military defeats in recorded history. This is the Great Emu War — and the birds won. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1898, author Morgan Robertson published a novel about an "unsinkable" ocean liner that struck an iceberg and sank with massive loss of life. He called it the Titan. Fourteen years later, the Titanic—nearly identical in size and fate—met the same end. The parallels are eerie, but they reveal something deeper: this disaster wasn't just possible, it was practically inevitable.This is the first episode of a ten-part series exploring the Titanic disaster from conception to legacy—not just what happened, but why it happened, and what it tells us about hubris, inequality, and the illusions we tell ourselves about progress and safety.In this episode:The dinner party that changed history - Summer 1907: Two men sketch three ships on a napkin that would become the largest moving objects ever created by humansThe age of miracles (1880-1910) - How electric light, telephones, wireless, automobiles, and flight transformed the world in a single generation and created absolute faith in unlimited progressThe "unsinkable" ship - Why everyone believed it, even though White Star never advertised it that wayThe world that believed - How Social Darwinism, technological optimism, and Edwardian confidence created a civilization convinced it had conquered natureThe warning nobody heeded - Jack Thayer's haunting observation: "The world of today awoke April 15th, 1912"UPGRADE TO PREMIUM for the full 30-minute episode featuring:The complicated story of J. Bruce Ismay and the sale of White Star Line to J.P. MorganThe real economics of ocean liners: why the profit came from immigrants, not millionairesThe coal strikes, suffragettes, and Irish crisis of spring 1912Why THIS disaster mattered more than any other maritime tragedyExtended analysis of the worldview that made catastrophe inevitablePremium episodes available exclusively at newssidequest.comNext episode: Building the Titanic - The workers who died constructing her, the rivets that failed, and the design flaw no one saw until it was too late. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In June 1919, a German rear admiral gave a secret order and within hours, 52 warships slipped beneath the surface of a Scottish harbor. The British were furious. Nine German sailors were shot. And nobody realized, yet, that those sunken ships would eventually become one of the most valuable scientific resources of the 20th century.This episode is about low-background steel: why it matters, where it comes from, and how a fleet deliberately scuttled in an act of protest ended up helping us build spacecraft, study dark matter, and treat cancer. It’s also, if you have submechanophobia... the fear of man-made objects underwater… well, that’s why I do audio content. You won’t have to see it.This Friday: Episode 1 of Sidequests: Titanic.Yes, ships at the bottom of the ocean two episodes in a row. I’m not apologizing.The Titanic series isn’t just about the sinking — it’s about the age that made the Titanic possible, and what the world looked like when an entire civilization believed technology had finally outrun tragedy. Ten episodes. One of the most famous disasters in history, told from angles you probably haven’t heard before.Free subscribers get a nice 15 minute story. Paid subscribers get the complete 60-minute experience — the deeper dives, the additional threads, the full story.Upgrade to a paid subscription and get 20% off! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sidequests is a podcast about the history you didn’t know you needed... and sometimes, the history that explains the week you just had.We go down a rabbit hole. Sometimes it’s obscure. Sometimes it’s weird. Sometimes it’s both, and somewhere in the middle of it you realize the fourteenth century is suddenly more relevant than it has any right to be.In 1309, the entire papal court packed up and moved to France. Not because the pope wanted to. Not exactly. It’s a story about a king who wasn’t afraid of excommunication, a conclave that lasted eleven months, a wall that collapsed at the worst possible moment, and a mystic from Siena who eventually got tired of writing polite letters.The Avignon Papacy lasted sixty-seven years, produced seven popes, all French, and ended with a schism that cracked open questions the Church wouldn’t fully answer for another century. You may have seen a reference to it floating around in the news last week.Coming this Friday: The first episode of Sidequests: Titanic — a ten-part extended series on the sinking of the RMS Titanic and the age of technological optimism it brought crashing down with it.Free subscribers get the first episode in full. Paid subscribers get the complete 60-minute experience, with deeper dives into the people, the engineering, and the decisions that made April 14, 1912 inevitable long before the iceberg showed up.Upgrade to a paid subscription and get 20% off! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Right now, four human beings are hurtling through deep space at 24,000 mph. For the first time since 1972, humans are looking back at a shrinking blue marble on the Artemis II mission.But how did we actually get here?In this premiere episode of Sidequests, we headfirst down the rabbit hole of the 23-year political odyssey behind a ten-day mission. From the tragic 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster to the birth of the “Senate Launch System,” we explore the shifting goals, budget battles, and pure endurance that kept the dream of returning to the Moon alive.Meet the incredible crew making history—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—and discover why this mission is the ultimate stress test for the future of human space exploration. The screw-up took 23 years. The mission takes ten days. They’re out there right now, crossing the void. Let’s trace their path. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.