Relative Disasters

In the early 1990s, a privately funded ecology experiment took place in the Arizona desert. Sealing humans inside with thousands of carefully selected plants, animals, and insects, the Biosphere 2 missions sought to show that people could survive and thrive in a contained ecosystem - if they could just get over the sleep apnea, cockroaches, orange skin, constant hunger, and difficult interpersonal...

This episode focuses on the wreck of the ship Batavia off the coast of Australia and the horrific mutiny that followed. Join us for a discussion of stupid plans, intrepid heroes, and what happens when you let a psychopath take charge of a group of people. We'll take a few sidebars into the Dutch East India company, a torturous method of execution, and the moronic reason behind a major change i...

In this episode, we look at the events surrounding the Great Peshtigo Fire - the deadliest wildfire in American history. If you’ve never heard of it, that’s probably because it took place the same day as the Great Chicago Fire, on October 8, 1871. Unlike the blaze in Chicago, however, conditions surrounding the Peshtigo fire turned it into a phenomenon known as a firestorm – a debris-laden flaming...

Join us in the somewhat-settled/somewhat-Wild West of the United States for a tale of a diamond mine that doesn't exist, the gleeful embarrassment of some of the biggest names in finance and politics of the late 1800s, and the unlikely twist of fate that exposed the whole scheme. It's an episode where the "hero" leads a double-life and the criminal masterminds settle down for qui...

Grab a swimsuit and top off your sunscreen - we're off to Australia's beautiful Bondi Beach! In this episode, we're looking at the events of February 6, 1938, when a series of rogue waves dragged 250 beachgoers - many of whom couldn't actually swim - past the headlands and into the Pacific Ocean. Thanks to the incredible efforts of the lifeguards and bystanders, plus new surf lifes...

In this episode, we go back to the 80's and talk about how the nascent video game industry in North America was nearly wiped out by a series of bad decisions and hubris. We'll visit Atari, Pac-Man, E.T., and a landfill in New Mexico. Enjoy the show? Support us on Patreon, at ⁠⁠www.patreon.com/RelativeDisastersPodcast⁠⁠ . Sources: The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven Kent Video Gam...

In medieval Strasbourg, during a period of unimaginable suffering and poverty, a mania took hold. Infected people were gripped by the compulsion to dance in the streets until they dropped senseless from exhaustion - or died. When the strange illness began to spread, the city took a series of steps to help the afflicted, culminating in a thirty-mile trek to seek the intervention of an obscure saint...

We're off for some birdwatching this week, with a deep dive into everyone's favorite extinction story, the dodo. Big, flightless, beaky, and laying only a single egg at a time, dodos were doomed from the moment Dutch merchants settled on the island at the turn of the sixteenth century. We lay out how and why the population dwindled, with extensive sidebars into how they tasted (not good),...

We're off to the African country of Cameroon this week to talk about the Lake Nyos tragedy, in which a small, rural crater lake exploded on a calm August evening. The eruption released a cloud of toxic gas that swept down into the valley below, killing every aerobic organism within a 15 kilometer radius - including at least 1750 people living in the villages of Nyos and Subum. We discuss the p...

This week we're headed to Canada to discuss the story of Air Canada Flight 143, which ran out of fuel 40,000 feet above rural Manitoba in July of 1983. What should have been a crash was narrowly averted by a pair of skilled pilots, a handful of algebra, and a landing site on a decommissioned airstrip in Gimli - which happened to be packed with Canadian car enthusiasts watching a racecar rally....

In episode 17, we're heading to Vaughn, Mississippi, to look at the infamous wreck of Engine 382. We'll discuss John Luther "Casey" Jones, the engineer at the controls of 382, his career in the railroad industry, and his actions leading up to the wreck, with sidebars on speeding freight trains, the banana business, the Chicago World's Fair, train whistles, and all the Casey J...

Content Warning: this episode concerns an act of extreme violence: mass murder and mass suicide, including the murder of children. Please feel free to skip this episode if that's going to be hard for you to hear. In this episode, we examine the life of American cult leader and mass murderer Jim Jones. We'll take a look at his strong beliefs in racial equality, and how this promising beginn...

This week, it's a self-inflicted and completely unnecessary disaster - one that took fourteen lives over the course of nearly thirty years, and outlasted the American Civil War. We'll be covering the 1847 argument between two very rich and deeply unlikeable Louisiana planters, Charles Jones and St. John Richardson Liddell, that led to the feud, and digging into the unbelievable pettiness o...

This week, we're looking at the amazing life of Dr. Henry Jones, Jr. and his discovery of the Ark of the Covenant! This one's got it all - guerilla archaeology, Nazis, and a prize of biblical proportions. We'll talk about the history of the Ark, its disappearance from the historical record, and its re-emergence and re-discovery in the 1930s. Nearly everyone directly involved with the p...

Add some ice to your drink and travel with us to Antarctica! This week we're talking about the US Navy's 1946 Operation Highjump, which sought to map Antarctica under the command of Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr. We'll discuss the mission, the technology, the major players, and the horrific crash of the George One, a seaplane caught in 'the worst weather on planet Earth'....

A little something to tide you over while we prepare the next episode! Here's Greg's quick look at look at the early life of the walking disaster Sir Gregor MacGregor, creator of the Poyais Scheme and swindler of hundreds. Intrigued? For a complete bibliography and the full disaster rundown, please see Episode 04 - The Poyais Scheme. Enjoy the show? Support us on Patreon, at ⁠⁠www.patreon....

Stroll with us down to Boston's North End and take a deep breath: do you smell something sweet? In Episode 12, we go over the 1919 industrial accident that resulted in a tsunami of molasses - over 2 million gallons - pouring down the street at 30 miles per hour, killing 21 Bostonians and a number of horses. We'll discuss what exactly happened, what was responsible (anarchists? capitalism?...

In this episode, we discuss the stories of Pompeii and Herculaneum, the ancient Roman cities buried by the CE 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Join us as we go over new research on the causes of death during the eruption; the geology that makes the area particularly unsafe; the last adventure of Pliny the Elder; and how a man's brain turned to glass after being exposed to the heat of a pyroclast...

In Episode 10, we swan-dive into the most ambitious and expensive film ever abandoned by Walt Disney Studios. Join us as Greg dissects the creative and administrative failures of "Kingdom of the Sun". We also get into the creation (and suppression) of its' making-of documentary, "The Sweatbox", the wasted Sting songs, and the phoenix that rose from the ashes of "Kingdo...

Episode 9 is Ella's love letter to the Mona Lisa. Join us for highlights of the painting's 500-year history, including time spent in a royal bathroom and at Napoleon's bedside, and the 1911 theft that propelled it from 'relatively obscure example of Renaissance portraiture' to 'global media darling'. We'll get into the events of the theft, how the criminal was caugh...

In Episode 8, our disaster is a person: Lord Timothy Dexter, the most-disliked person in the history of Malden, Massachusetts. We discuss The Malden Informer of Deer's rags-to-riches social ascent, his uncanny (diabolical?) good luck in business, his eyesore of a house, his terrible marriage, his publishing venture ("A Pickle for the Knowing Ones") and his two funerals, only one of w...

In Episode 7, we discuss the flight of Larry Walters, a California truck driver who decided, one pleasant Saturday in July 1982, to tie a few dozen weather balloons to a lawn chair and go for a quick float over the Mojave desert. The idea worked...but not quite as expected, sending Larry's airship, "Inspiration 1", into federally-controlled airspace over LAX before crashing into a qu...

In Episode 6, we talk about the third-deadliest natural disaster of all time: the massive earthquake that occurred in Shaanxi, China, during the Ming Dynasty. We'll cover why it occurred, what exactly happened, and what was going on with the Jiajing Emperor at the time, as well bonus sidebars on soil liquefaction, royal scandals, where to find loess, and why you wouldn't want to be in a ya...

Episode 5 takes us to the windy, isolated, and very cold Ural Mountains to discuss the mysterious deaths of nine hikers. We will cover the hike, the hikers, and the evidence left behind; we'll also take a look at several of the most persuasive theories surrounding the incident, including Yetis, the KGB, the weather, the wind, secret Soviet weapons testing, and - why not? - wolverine attack.  (...

In Episode 4 we take a ride with swindler Gregor McGregor all the way to the beautiful tropical country of Poyais. You'll hear all about investment bubbles, South American political movements, the tried and true military strategy of running quickly away from the enemy, and how a Scottish con man convinced thousands of people to sink their life savings into shares of an imaginary South American...