The Almost Astronaut (Revisited)

Looking for love is an art, not a science. People have been trying to crack the code, with mixed success, for a long time. This week we're going back to the 1960s, when a couple Harvard students had an idea.Businesses had started using a new technology called the computer to proc ...  Show more

Today on the show, we sit down with photographer Andrew Lichtenstein to discuss his new book, THIS SHORT LIFE, which combines photo essays with audio testimonies about 12 Americans, from a West Virginia coal miner to a Maine farmer, all united by how the struggles of their pas ...

Join host Greg Jenner as he skyrockets back to the 20th century for a homeschool history lesson on the space race. From ancient Assyrian astrology to modern spacecraft, we explore how superpowers Russia (Team USSR) and America (Team USA) raced each other into space, aiming to be ...  Show more

Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin left Kazakhstan for space on 12th April, 1961 - the first human to venture beyond the confines of Earth's atmosphere. As the rocket roared into the sky, Gagarin's now-famous exclamation of "Poyekhali!" ("Let's go!") echoed through the cockpit. Despi ...  Show more

The three astronauts on the Skylab 4 space research mission in 1973 got behind schedule when one of them vomited before they'd even got onto the space station. They felt they were being micromanaged by ground control, and that their workload was unreasonable - and one day, all th ...  Show more

Since the beginning of the space program, we’ve always expected astronauts to be fully abled athletic overachievers who are one-part science-geek, two-parts triathlete – a mix the writer Tom Wolfe famously called “the right stuff.”

But what if, this whole time, we’ve ha ...