In 1898, author Morgan Robertson published a novel about an "unsinkable" ocean liner that struck an iceberg and sank with massive loss of life. He called it the Titan. Fourteen years later, the Titanic—nearly identical in size and fate—met the same end. The parallels are eerie, but they reveal something deeper: this disaster wasn't just possible, it was practically inevitable.

This is the first episode of a ten-part series exploring the Titanic disaster from conception to legacy—not just what happened, but why it happened, and what it tells us about hubris, inequality, and the illusions we tell ourselves about progress and safety.

In this episode:

The dinner party that changed history - Summer 1907: Two men sketch three ships on a napkin that would become the largest moving objects ever created by humans

The age of miracles (1880-1910) - How electric light, telephones, wireless, automobiles, and flight transformed the world in a single generation and created absolute faith in unlimited progress

The "unsinkable" ship - Why everyone believed it, even though White Star never advertised it that way

The world that believed - How Social Darwinism, technological optimism, and Edwardian confidence created a civilization convinced it had conquered nature

The warning nobody heeded - Jack Thayer's haunting observation: "The world of today awoke April 15th, 1912"

UPGRADE TO PREMIUM for the full 30-minute episode featuring:

The complicated story of J. Bruce Ismay and the sale of White Star Line to J.P. Morgan

The real economics of ocean liners: why the profit came from immigrants, not millionaires

The coal strikes, suffragettes, and Irish crisis of spring 1912

Why THIS disaster mattered more than any other maritime tragedy

Extended analysis of the worldview that made catastrophe inevitable

Premium episodes available exclusively at newssidequest.com

Next episode: Building the Titanic - The workers who died constructing her, the rivets that failed, and the design flaw no one saw until it was too late.

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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.