Unsinkable: The Titanic Podcast

Whoa times about twenty, because this is a beast of an episode that grew its own legs. Here is my rundown of the life, career, and activism (yes, activism) of James Cameron, director of 1997's Titanic. To properly understand the film and its resonance in popular culture, I think its essential to understand the man who took us back to the ship. The clip of Cameron speaking about his childhood...

In this, my first book-centered episode, I chat with best-selling author William Hazelgrove about his book One Hundred and Sixty Minutes: The Race to Save the RMS Titanic, which unpacks and challenges a lot of the long-standing mythologies surrounding the ship's history. Using interwoven stories of wireless operators, rescue efforts of nearby ships, and the motivations and actions of those fa...

This episode has been in the works for many months, for there is a LOT of material out there about scientist and oceanographer Robert Ballard, one of the discoverers of the wreck of Titanic in 1985 and a veritable explorer of the deep. In this episode I present a biographical sketch of his astounding life and career but also historicize it, as well as try to take you as a listener back to that mom...

I've been training for this for 25 years, you guys! Today I shake up the Unsinkable feed with an experimental, rather spontaneous, rather improvised episode about Leonardo DiCaprio. He's our Jack Dawson, of course, but in many ways Jack Dawson has also been dead for a long, long time. Bear with me as I go off-script for the first time EVER on this podcast to share my thoughts on his film...

I re-visited the 1958 classic A Night to Remember, the first and main British cinematic interpretation of the sinking; it was based, of course, on the book of the same name by Walter Lord and I speak to Lord’s work and influence as well. I really wanted to bring some true academic analyses to this film AND address the comparisons of it to James Cameron’s 1997 film. So there’s some of both. Let me...

Join me for an in-depth portrait of Titanic survivor Helen Churchill Candee, whose 90 years of life coincided an incredible number of times with rather huge historical moments and social developments in the twentieth century. Her story takes us down the road of women's suffrage and early feminism, of course to Titanic's decks, later even to the battlefields of World War I (where her fate...

After touching on some analysis of Clive Cussler's 1976 bestseller Raise the Titanic  in my last regular episode, I decided to watch its 1980 film adaptation (though I feared it, to be honest). I'm so glad I did. Buckle up, because there's a lot to unpack here, not least of which is the image of a rusticled and mangled (but triumphant) Titanic finally arriving in New York Harbor by...

People have been writing  about Titanic since almost the moment she sank, and this episode is my attempt to analyze how those authors have interpreted and fictionalized the sinking. Historical fiction is a strange and often beautiful beast of a niche, and I've got great help here in understanding from Chelsea Pinkard, The Titanic Girl, who has a Titanic fiction book blog that is just absolute...

Here I put my cards on the table: Unsurprisingly, I'm a huge James Cameron fan and absolutely enamored of his deep sea exploration. In this episode I summarize, historicize, and review his 2003 documentary Ghosts of the Abyss, which took him and a team back down to Titanic in submarines fitted with 3-D cameras he'd designed alongside his brother. There's also a lot of Bill Paxton lo...

I'm thrilled to bring you an interview with Steven Schwankert, co-creator of the new documentary The Six, which tells the story of the six Chinese survivors of Titanic. The film is directed by Arthur Jones and marks the very first academic attempt to track the lineage of these survivors; along the way the team of researchers uncover a trail of stories that illuminate so much about the immigra...

An in-depth examination of paranormal phenomenon related to the ship: the omens and premonitions of passengers, accounts from fortune-tellers, and the life and writings of spiritualist and Titanic victim William Stead (whose floating, talking head so many people claim to have seen at seances just weeks after the sinking). Oh, and, of course...a few suspected hauntings. For more detail, I recommend...

I watched 1953's Titanic and it cracked open a wider discussion of class and gender than I even imagined. Join me as I examine Hollywood's Cinemascope imagining of the sinking, starring Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck, and Robert Wagner. It's a wild ride! For a fantastic in-depth look at the cultural and political history of Titanic and its interpretations on film, in literature, and...

This episode packs a punch (pardon the pun)! First off, I lay out some basics about the dining experience in the Edwardian era and on board Titanic in the first, second, and third classes. And then I share my interview with Veronica Hinke, author of The Last Night on the Titanic: Unsinkable Drinking, Dining and Style; this turned into a wonderful free-flowing conversation about memory and how we e...

In this first of a series of mini-pods on Titanic-focused movies, television shows, and documentaries, I take a look at (and then can't look away from!) the 1996 CBS miniseries The Titanic. It had the unfortunate timing of a release just one year before James Cameron's epic film. This one is a doozy, come take a listen. Let me know what other films or shows you'd like me to cover so...

Welcome back to Unsinkable: The Titanic Podcast! Episode two is an in-depth examination of the life of J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line (and, essentially, the owner of Titanic). History has not been kind to him, this man accused of abandoning his own ship and all those aboard her as she plunged into the sea. Here I outline his entire life, his own tragedies before and after...

Welcome to Unsinkable, a new bi-monthly podcast about Titanic hosted by me, L.A. Beadles, a writer and historian who has been obsessed with the ship since I was 13 years old. I'm a podcast novice, so please forgive any audio hiccups in this first foray!  In the introductory episode, I attempt to set the tone for the pod by sharing some survivor accounts, outlining how I conceptualize the cult...