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Disaster Area

Disaster Area

By: Jennifer Matarese
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A podcast about disasters throughout history - what caused them, how people survived, and how we've responded to keep those disasters from happening again. Social Sciences World
Episodes
  • RERELEASE: Episode 254: The Cutter incident - Part One
    Feb 27 2026

    NOTE: This was released in May of 2025, but due to life being what it is, I didn't get to finish the final two parts of the episode. So I am rereleasing this episode this week, and the next two weeks I will release the following two episodes. I have now officially backed myself in a corner and I simply MUST finish the episodes now.

    It would start with a headache, a fever, maybe a funny tummy. But soon enough your knee would give out, or your arm would hang limp, or you would struggle to breathe. You'd be taken to the hospital, where you'd get your diagnosis - polio. If you survived, you ran the risk of doing so with paralyzed limbs, struggling to walk on bulky leg braces. Your parents would be terrified they might lose you, and so everybody wanted the one thing that could stop all of this - a vaccine.

    Videos:

    • New England Journal of Medicine: The Cutter Incident, 50 Years Later

    • American Experience: The Polio Crusade

    • The Iron Lung and Polio by M.Rockoff | OPENPediatrics

    Articles and books:

    • Polio: An American Story, by David M. Oshinsky

    • The Cutter Incident, by Dr. Paul Offit

    • NEJM: The Cutter Incident

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    1 hr and 12 mins
  • Episode 263: Eastern Air Lines Flight 212
    Feb 21 2026

    2001 was not the only year in which something tragic occurred on September 11th. On that day in 1974, eighty-two people would board a plane from Charleston, South Carolina, to Charlotte, North Carolina. Only ten would survive.

    Videos:

    • 9/11/74: The Untold Story of Charlotte's Deadliest Plane Crash
    • Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper's beautiful conversation about grief
    • Talkative Pilots: Eastern Airlines Flight 212

    Articles and books:

    • A fiery plane crash on 9/11/74 changed Charleston forever. 50 years later, its scars linger.
    • NTSB Crash Report for Eastern Airlines Flight 212
    • Charlotte's deadliest plane crash has finally been memorialized after 51 years

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    58 mins
  • Episode 262: The sinking of the White Ship
    Feb 11 2026

    King Henry I of England had grand plans for the future of his sole legitimate male heir, William Aetheling. None of those plans would come to pass.

    Articles and books:

    • The Sinking Of The White Ship 1120
    • The White Ship, by Charles Spencer
    • The Impact of the White Ship Disaster of 1120
    • 900 years since the White Ship disaster
    • How one catastrophic shipwreck sank a medieval dynasty
    • Divers find The Tragic White Ship

    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 22 mins
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