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.