The Book Review17 Mai 2024

Writing About NASA's Most Shocking Moment

The year 1986 was notable for two big disasters, both of them attributable to human error and bureaucratic negligence at competing super powers: the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Soviet Union and the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in the United States.

The journalist Adam Higginbotham wrote about Chernobyl in his 2019 book, “Midnight in Chernobyl.” Now he’s back, with a look at the American side of the ledger, in his new book, “Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space.” On this week’s episode, Higginbotham tells host Gilbert Cruz why he was drawn to both disasters, and what the Challenger explosion revealed about weaknesses in America’s space program.

“There was certainly a lot of hubris and complacency that led into this accident,” Higginbotham says. “In complex decision-making processes like those leading to the Chernobyl accident and the Challenger disaster, those concerned with making the decisions start off with a series of extremely carefully governed and defined practices for what constitutes acceptable risk and normal behavior. And then gradually over time, they subtly and almost unconsciously expand what they deem to be acceptable without even realizing it."

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(600)

Why We Can’t Resist a Great Bookstore

What is it about a bookstore? You walk in planning to browse for a few minutes, and somehow an hour later you’re still wandering the stacks with an armful of books you can’t seem to put down. For this...

21 Aug 26min

This Reporter Can Tell Us What Nuclear Apocalypse Looks Like (Encore)

Imagine, if you will, that for unknown reasons North Korea has just launched a nuclear bomb at the United States. What happens next? The journalist Annie Jacobsen has imagined exactly that, and spent ...

14 Aug 45min

Let’s Talk About the 50 Best Thrillers of the 21st Century

What are the best thrillers published since 2000? That was the question that the team at The New York Times’s Book Review posed to hundreds of writers of every kind of crime fiction, from legal thrill...

5 Aug 51min

Book Club: Let’s Talk About ‘John of John’

Early in Douglas Stuart’s new novel, “John of John,” the Booker Prize-winning author describes a peculiar irony: “What skinned him was that the closer he got to home, the more lost he felt.” It’s a pa...

1 Aug 55min

Let’s Talk About the Best Books of the Year (So Far)

The editors at The New York Times Book Review spend almost the entire year discussing, debating and sometimes arguing about the year’s best books. We’re halfway through 2026, which means it’s time for...

24 Jul 39min

Sophie Elmhirst on the True Story of a Shipwrecked Couple

Today we want to bring back an episode from our archives. It’s about a book that has real beach read vibes. There’s a lot of water. It’s a relationship drama. And it’s also a daring story of survival...

17 Jul 31min

This Author Says You Shouldn’t Be Intimidated by ‘The Odyssey’

If you can’t tell your Eurylochus from your Telemachus, fear not: Your primer on “The Odyssey” is here, just in time for Christopher Nolan’s new film adaptation of the 3,000-year-old epic. Madeline Mi...

10 Jul 43min

Jill Lepore on What to Read This Fourth of July

The United States is celebrating its 250th birthday this summer, giving Americans a chance to reflect on the nation’s past and imagine its future. Who better to help us make sense of this moment than ...

3 Jul 52min