Master of Disaster

In 1996, ValuJet Flight 592 disappeared into the Florida Everglades just minutes after takeoff from Miami. What followed was one of the deadliest aviation disasters of the 1990s and a recovery operation complicated by its location. In this episode of  Master of Disaster , we examine the chain of failures that led to the crash, the chemistry behind the deadly cargo fire, the challenges of respondin...

In 1987, in the heart of Brazil, a glowing blue powder captivated the residents of Goiânia—and unleashed one of the worst radiological disasters in history. This wasn’t a meltdown or a terrorist attack. It started with a forgotten medical device, a few scrap metal salvagers, and a capsule of cesium-137 that no one knew was deadly. In this episode, host Stephanie Einstein Tashiro takes us into the...

It was supposed to be a dream community—a place where clean energy and modern living met in harmony. But beneath the quiet streets of Love Canal, New York, lay 21,000 tons of toxic industrial waste, silently poisoning the soil, water, and the people who called it home. In this episode of Master of Disaster, host Stephanie Einstein Tashiro unearths the buried secrets of Love Canal, tracing its tran...

In 1816, snow fell in June, crops failed across continents, and the sun glowed a ghostly blue. Known as The Year Without a Summer, this eerie global disaster was sparked by the eruption of Mount Tambora—one of the most powerful volcanic events in recorded history. In this episode of Master of Disaster, exposure scientist Stephanie Einstein Tashiro unpacks how a single eruption in Indonesia sent sh...