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THE LAST SOVIET- EP 1: Let’s Go · The Steve Harvey Morning Show

0:19
Speaker 1: Two hundred and fifty miles above the Earth, Traveling at
0:23
Speaker 1: five miles a second, a man completes a perfect circle
0:28
Speaker 1: around the globe. His name is Serge Krakov. He's a
0:35
Speaker 1: Soviet cosmonaut, and he's manning the world's only space station,
0:39
Speaker 1: the Pride and Joy of the U. S. S R.
0:44
Speaker 1: The year Sarage has been up there for three months
0:48
Speaker 1: by now on the space station. Every day starts the
0:53
Speaker 1: same way, with a call at seven a m. Moscow
0:56
Speaker 1: time from michig Control. He reports his stats, blood pressure,
1:01
Speaker 1: heart rate, and mood. Sometimes in the evening, when he
1:08
Speaker 1: feels lonely, he will tune his hand radio equipment to
1:11
Speaker 1: the right frequency and make contact with his friend in Australia, Maggie.
1:18
Speaker 1: They chat about what he's done that day, and she
1:20
Speaker 1: sends some clippings from the newspapers. That's a pleasure, pleasure.
1:29
Speaker 1: As the days bleed into one another, he's starting to
1:32
Speaker 1: feel a bit space sick. He's been counting down the
1:37
Speaker 1: weeks till he's due to come back to Earth, back
1:40
Speaker 1: to his home, his wife and their one year old daughter.
1:54
Speaker 1: But then one day, his friend, this woman in Australia, Maggie,
1:59
Speaker 1: tells him something troubling. She says, Sarage, something bad is
2:05
Speaker 1: happening in your country. After months strikes, protests, and deepening
2:09
Speaker 1: economic chaos. People are sleeping in train stations. There is
2:13
Speaker 1: no food in the shops. I gave them my money
2:16
Speaker 1: that they should old woman, we won't give you your bread.
2:19
Speaker 1: Law and order seem to be breaking down, the banding
2:24
Speaker 1: of the k President Gorbachev's grip on the country is slipping.
2:29
Speaker 1: The republics that make up the Soviet Union are starting
2:31
Speaker 1: to break away. There were wild scenes, gun fire, and
2:35
Speaker 1: three deaths. Soviet forces tried to capture the main center
2:39
Speaker 1: of opposition. Surage doesn't know what to think. He asked
2:43
Speaker 1: mischion control, what's going on? But they don't tell him anything,
2:47
Speaker 1: just parrot the party line. Nothing to be alarmed about.
2:51
Speaker 1: Everything is fine, And so Sarage is floating around the
2:57
Speaker 1: space station, struggling to believe that down there on Earth,
3:00
Speaker 1: everything he knows, everything he believes in, is falling apart.
3:05
Speaker 1: Wood rippled through the crowds that the army was about
3:08
Speaker 1: to launch a major assault. Seventy four years of communism,
3:13
Speaker 1: seventy four years of trying to create a different way
3:17
Speaker 1: of life, a different society, a different vision of the
3:21
Speaker 1: world is on the verge of collapse. It's quite time.
3:27
Speaker 1: Uh Sarah still has to do his job. The station
3:46
Speaker 1: has to have an engineer on board or it might
3:49
Speaker 1: shut down, but he's doing it on autopilot, his minds
3:54
Speaker 1: firmly on his loved ones, wondering if they're okay, if
3:58
Speaker 1: they're safe. And then one day he wakes up to
4:03
Speaker 1: a message from his handlers on the ground. They tell him,
4:08
Speaker 1: we can't keep this from you anymore. It's true. Everything
4:12
Speaker 1: is collapsing around us, including the Soviet Space Agency. We've
4:18
Speaker 1: run out of money. We can't send anyone to replace you,
4:22
Speaker 1: So we're giving you a choice. You can come back
4:26
Speaker 1: down to Earth is planned and abandon the station to
4:30
Speaker 1: an unknown fate, or you stay as long as it
4:34
Speaker 1: takes and protect the station the final outpost of a
4:39
Speaker 1: falling empire. Sarage knows. The longer you spend in space,
4:45
Speaker 1: the more your muscles start to disintegrate, your bones weaken, headaches, nausea, vomity,
4:53
Speaker 1: And then there's what might happen to your mind, something
4:58
Speaker 1: called space horror. We're being up in space so far
5:03
Speaker 1: away from home, will literally drive you insane. So what
5:08
Speaker 1: is Sarage going to do? Go back to Earth, be
5:12
Speaker 1: with his family, his newborn daughter in these truly desperate times,
5:18
Speaker 1: or stay in space, save the space station, serve his country.
5:24
Speaker 1: The very last Soviet. This is the story of one
5:37
Speaker 1: man who lived through the final days of Empire. But
5:40
Speaker 1: evening the East Germans of the Knights tarted to tear
5:43
Speaker 1: down parts of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of one
5:45
Speaker 1: dream all Russia's just wild about urga In the first
5:49
Speaker 1: man took conquer space and the birth of another future
5:53
Speaker 1: for the Russian people. Storians may have trouble describing a
5:56
Speaker 1: Davin Chile got resigned as the president of a Soviet
5:59
Speaker 1: union from a unique and perhaps ultimate advantage point space
6:05
Speaker 1: and the colors are unbelievably beautiful. This incredible bond, thin,
6:10
Speaker 1: beautiful bond an electric blue. I'm Lance Bass and from Kaleidoscope,
6:19
Speaker 1: I heard podcast and exile content. This is the last Soviet.
6:31
Speaker 1: Now you may be wondering why am I Lance Bass
6:34
Speaker 1: from in synct of all people telling this story about
6:38
Speaker 1: a Soviet cosmonaut. Well, yeah, probably won't believe this, but
6:46
Speaker 1: I am a trained Russian cosmonaut. Yeah, you heard that right.
6:51
Speaker 1: In two thousand two, I was at the end of
6:53
Speaker 1: an international in SYNCT tour that felt like it had
6:55
Speaker 1: been going on forever. I was about to have my
6:58
Speaker 1: first real break in years, six months off to do
7:02
Speaker 1: what I wanted, like sleep and see my family. And
7:07
Speaker 1: then I was sitting at home in Orlando, having a
7:09
Speaker 1: little breakfast, probably a green smoothie and pancakes, and I
7:13
Speaker 1: get this call on my phone. It's my manager, Lance.
7:18
Speaker 1: What would you say if I told you I've got
7:19
Speaker 1: you a ticket on a Russian space rocket. I almost
7:24
Speaker 1: dropped my phone, to be honest, I thought it was
7:26
Speaker 1: a prank, but pretty quickly it became clear this was real.
7:31
Speaker 1: Thank you, John six fifty seven. Now, finally, this morning,
7:34
Speaker 1: one in Sync band member is one step closer to
7:37
Speaker 1: saying bye bye bye to planet Earth. I would be
7:39
Speaker 1: going to Moscow to train for six months to go
7:41
Speaker 1: on a mission to the International Space Station. The final
7:45
Speaker 1: deal hasn't been signed yet, but the Russians have named
7:48
Speaker 1: Lance Bass as a member of the third At just
7:51
Speaker 1: twenty three years old, I was going to become the
7:54
Speaker 1: youngest person in history to go to space the Space
7:58
Speaker 1: Station in October, and he's too young for you. Now,
8:04
Speaker 1: If that sounds crazy to you, crazy that I would
8:07
Speaker 1: want to use my precious six months off to take
8:09
Speaker 1: part in one of the most intense and grueling experiences
8:12
Speaker 1: of my life, then I think there's something you need
8:15
Speaker 1: to understand. I am absolutely madly obsessed with the space.
8:24
Speaker 1: I have been ever since I was a little kid.
8:27
Speaker 1: When my family drove from Mississippi to Cape Kernaville in
8:30
Speaker 1: Florida to watch a rocket launch fourteen hours in a car,
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Speaker 1: hot and humid, like someone was breathing on you. We
8:42
Speaker 1: arrived in my dad's blue station wagon, pulled up to
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Speaker 1: the launch side, and that's when I saw it in
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Speaker 1: front of me, a gigantic rocket and this big clock
8:56
Speaker 1: in the distance, and it starts counting down from two minutes,
9:04
Speaker 1: and then as it gets closer to zero, there is
9:06
Speaker 1: this rumbling that comes from beneath the ground, and then
9:11
Speaker 1: this burst of fire and an unbelievable noise. As the
9:17
Speaker 1: rumbling turns into a roar, and the rocket starts rising
9:23
Speaker 1: up and up. As it keeps climbing, the crowd is
9:28
Speaker 1: getting more and more excited, until finally it disappears into
9:36
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, up and away into the great Via. It
9:47
Speaker 1: was that day in Cape Carnavel when the dream of
9:49
Speaker 1: going to space took hold of me. It was just
9:51
Speaker 1: the coolest thing I've ever seen, and since then it's
9:54
Speaker 1: all I've ever wanted to do. Even when I was
9:57
Speaker 1: living this incredible life touring within sync, I still had
10:00
Speaker 1: this desire, this dream to go to space. And that's
10:06
Speaker 1: why when my manager called me that day, I jumped
10:09
Speaker 1: at the chance, and just a few months later I
10:11
Speaker 1: arrived at Sadoc Star City, the home of Russia's top
10:16
Speaker 1: secret cosmonaut training program. When I got there in two
10:20
Speaker 1: thousand two, I remember thinking this place, these people are
10:23
Speaker 1: obsessed with space, even more than we are in America.
10:28
Speaker 1: There are these statutes of cosmonauts everywhere, even the metro
10:31
Speaker 1: stations are named after them. But back then I didn't
10:35
Speaker 1: really get a chance to figure out why this was.
10:37
Speaker 1: I hardly even had time to think. I was so
10:40
Speaker 1: busy training day and night. So when I first heard
10:43
Speaker 1: the story of Saragei Krakolov, I was intrigued. We had
10:48
Speaker 1: both trained in the same place, but we had come
10:50
Speaker 1: from such different worlds. Me an American pop star, him
10:55
Speaker 1: a Soviet cosmonaut, and I wanted to know what was
10:59
Speaker 1: going through his head when he had to make this
11:02
Speaker 1: choice to go back home and protect his family or
11:06
Speaker 1: stay in space and protect the station, the crown jewel
11:11
Speaker 1: of the Soviet space program. Was it just that he
11:17
Speaker 1: loves space so much like me? Or was there something
11:20
Speaker 1: bigger driving in Because space isn't just about nerdy kids
11:24
Speaker 1: thinking it's cool and wanting to go space, it turns
11:28
Speaker 1: out is always about politics. We go into space because
11:34
Speaker 1: whatever mankind must undertake, three man must. Billionaire Elon Musk
11:40
Speaker 1: has sent three batches of SpaceX Starlink satellites over Ukraine.
11:44
Speaker 1: Russia's war is putting years of collaboration at risk, and
11:47
Speaker 1: we will plant our beautiful American flag very soon on
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Speaker 1: the surface of Mars. Space is a battleground, a symbol
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Speaker 1: of power. And that's because of this thing that happened
12:00
Speaker 1: before I was even born, when Sarage was three years old.
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Speaker 1: And to me, it's the thing that can maybe best
12:07
Speaker 1: help us understand Sarage and how he could even consider
12:11
Speaker 1: staying in the space station as his country collapsed below him.
12:21
Speaker 1: It was the height of the Cold War, and my country, America,
12:24
Speaker 1: and his country, the Soviet Union, were racing to answer
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Speaker 1: this one particular question, who would be the first to
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Speaker 1: put a man into space. The confrontation itself would determine
12:37
Speaker 1: ultimately which ideology, which worldview, would take over the world.
12:43
Speaker 1: Stephen Walker is a journalist who wrote a book about
12:45
Speaker 1: the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union.
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Speaker 1: The battle began in nineteen At the time, Sarage Kraklov
12:54
Speaker 1: was a toddler, and the Americans announced to the world,
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Speaker 1: We're going to put the first man in space, as
12:59
Speaker 1: if it was a done deal. The Russians weren't even
13:02
Speaker 1: on their mind. Here's a nation that, as far as
13:04
Speaker 1: they were concerned, the USSR couldn't build refrigerators that work properly.
13:09
Speaker 1: It's true Soviet test flights often went wrong. One of
13:13
Speaker 1: their spacecraft blew up just seconds after taking off, killing
13:16
Speaker 1: a hundred people, But these disasters didn't matter because the
13:21
Speaker 1: Soviets were determined. They decided they were going to surprise
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Speaker 1: the Americans and do it in complete secrecy. They start
13:30
Speaker 1: looking at the records of USSR Air Force pilots, most
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Speaker 1: of them in the early to mid twenties. All of
13:40
Speaker 1: them are sound of limb and mind, incredibly healthy, incredibly
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Speaker 1: fit and ideologically committed to the Soviet cause. And these
13:50
Speaker 1: are the guys that formed the nucleus of the top
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Speaker 1: secret Soviet space program. And one of them is this guy,
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Speaker 1: Yuri Gagarin. Yuri Gagarin, a man who would end up
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Speaker 1: being the most famous person in Russia and Sarage Gargolov's
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Speaker 1: hero at the time. He was one of twenty men
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Speaker 1: chosen by the Soviet authorities to compete to be the
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Speaker 1: first man in space. Twenty men chosen to be put
14:22
Speaker 1: through intense physical and psychological training. And when I say intense,
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Speaker 1: I mean intense, So I mean they do these horrible
14:32
Speaker 1: heat chamber tests, for example, where they kind of baked
14:35
Speaker 1: them for hours on end. They put them into pressure
14:39
Speaker 1: changlers where they depressurized to see when they pass out.
14:44
Speaker 1: They put an into these unbelievable vibration tests where they
14:48
Speaker 1: actually anny on these stretches, and then they started to
14:50
Speaker 1: vibrate the stretcher to the point where you teeth nearly fuller.
14:55
Speaker 1: But nothing can compare to the isolation chamber. One by one,
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Speaker 1: over a period of months and months, each of these
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Speaker 1: twenty men would be introduced into a sealed chamber in
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Speaker 1: which they were expected to function without being able to
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Speaker 1: see anybody or hear anybody for what could be days
15:19
Speaker 1: and days and even weeks totally isolated cuts off. They
15:30
Speaker 1: would occasionally put horrible sounds in that shrieks or very
15:35
Speaker 1: loud music, or wake you up in the middle of
15:37
Speaker 1: the night, you know, anything, so you couldn't sleep properly.
15:40
Speaker 1: They would twist time upside down so you didn't know
15:43
Speaker 1: whether it was day or night. The test on these
15:50
Speaker 1: men were so intense because the Soviet space team had
15:53
Speaker 1: this problem. They didn't really know what's going to happen
15:56
Speaker 1: to human being up there. Up to that point, the
15:59
Speaker 1: idea of human beings in space was only something that
16:02
Speaker 1: existed in the realms of science fiction. Nothing in the
16:07
Speaker 1: station has any weight. No, wait, what a wonderful idea
16:12
Speaker 1: you mean? If I went there, I wouldn't wear anything,
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Speaker 1: nothing at all. They had this term called space horror.
16:19
Speaker 1: If you're divorced from the world, traveling around the world
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Speaker 1: above it not part of it the first to do so,
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Speaker 1: is there a possibility that you go insane? Because of
16:32
Speaker 1: these unknowns, the Soviets knew they needed to find the
16:35
Speaker 1: perfect guy, the guy who could withstand anything, and in
16:39
Speaker 1: the end it came down to two men. Both were
16:43
Speaker 1: pretty much as good and tough as each other, but
16:46
Speaker 1: it was Gagarin that one. For one reason, he has
16:51
Speaker 1: a perfect communist biography. He's the son of a peasant
16:56
Speaker 1: from the country who was an iron foundry student who
17:00
Speaker 1: then became a serving military pilot. He was the best
17:04
Speaker 1: person to represent the Soviet Union against the United States
17:08
Speaker 1: because the Soviets knew they needed to beat the Americans
17:12
Speaker 1: to score the ultimate victory in the Cold War, and
17:18
Speaker 1: so on April twelfth nine, they pressed the gold button
17:22
Speaker 1: on Gagarin's flight is em bust out and what looks
17:26
Speaker 1: like a school bus to the rocket launch site, and
17:30
Speaker 1: then everybody says goodbye, and the goodbyes go on forever,
17:33
Speaker 1: because as far as I concerned, this guy is going
17:35
Speaker 1: to die. That's right. Odds are. Uri Gagarin is not
17:41
Speaker 1: going to survive the first few minutes of the flight.
17:46
Speaker 1: So many gruesome deaths awaitsed Euri Gagarine. It's almost like
18:17
Speaker 1: being on another planet. It just goes on forever and
18:24
Speaker 1: ever and ever, and then you reach this sort of
18:32
Speaker 1: walled city. It's in the middle of a desert, a
18:37
Speaker 1: city with guards standing around the perimeter. You know, you
18:42
Speaker 1: get these huge buildings with holes in them, and everything's
18:46
Speaker 1: rusting and it's corroded, and then you see it littered
18:52
Speaker 1: around the streets, bits of old rocket all over the place.
18:55
Speaker 1: It really looks like a disused enormous missile site, because
19:01
Speaker 1: really that's what it is. It's in Kazakhstan and it's
19:05
Speaker 1: called Biknor. It's the place that would have become the
19:09
Speaker 1: launchpad for the Soviet space program, but originally it was
19:13
Speaker 1: built a house their most advanced and deadly missiles. I mean,
19:18
Speaker 1: it's quite extraordinary. They've built the biggest rocket site in
19:20
Speaker 1: the world. I mean, the Americans didn't know about it,
19:22
Speaker 1: had no idea that the site even existed. We're talking
19:26
Speaker 1: about a site that is probably about the same size
19:28
Speaker 1: as the state of Kentucky. The secret it's a place
19:34
Speaker 1: where the conditions are extreme. It's incredibly hot in the
19:40
Speaker 1: summer and in the winter it goes down to the
19:42
Speaker 1: minus forties. I mean, it's really horrible. But every year
19:48
Speaker 1: in April, something extraordinary happens there. Out of this dead
19:53
Speaker 1: ground springs something new. Every spring. The whole of the
20:02
Speaker 1: step is covered with a compit of tulips, these incredible
20:10
Speaker 1: pink and purple and yellow tulips springing up from the dirt.
20:19
Speaker 1: And so it was in April, as the tulips started
20:24
Speaker 1: to peek their heads out from under the earth, and
20:27
Speaker 1: the desert was filled with a riot of color. Jory
20:31
Speaker 1: Gagarin stood at the base of an enormous rocket, ready
20:34
Speaker 1: to change the course of world history. And so he
20:42
Speaker 1: walks up to the steel steps and enters the elevator. Up.
20:46
Speaker 1: He goes so high up it feels like it takes
20:49
Speaker 1: minutes rather than seconds. But eventually he gets there, walks
20:54
Speaker 1: out of the elevator, and straps himself into his seat.
20:59
Speaker 1: The hatch is closed, and then he's on his own garret.
21:05
Speaker 1: Actually remains really cool through this process. In fact, he
21:08
Speaker 1: starts asking for some music from what we would now
21:10
Speaker 1: call mission control, and they start supplying him with songs
21:14
Speaker 1: and music, and there's music that's piped through into his
21:16
Speaker 1: headends and he starts singing. He starts singing Lilies of
21:22
Speaker 1: the Valley, a popular song about the first flowers coming
21:26
Speaker 1: out of the ground, a song about spring, about new horizons.
21:33
Speaker 1: And he's quite cool action in there, given what was
21:37
Speaker 1: about to happen, and then he's ready for launch. He
21:42
Speaker 1: could die in the next few seconds. Now, he could
21:45
Speaker 1: die in the next hour. God only knows the different
21:47
Speaker 1: ways he could die. Eight making stranded in space. Seven
21:50
Speaker 1: could blow up on launch pad six if he burnt
21:53
Speaker 1: to a crisp coming back to Earth. Five, four, three,
21:57
Speaker 1: So many systems not properly tested, Some wish he doesn't
22:00
Speaker 1: even know about. Two Does he know everything about what
22:04
Speaker 1: could go wrong in that rocket? One? And then he's
22:10
Speaker 1: lashed the Garin. Here is a whistling noise, then a
22:14
Speaker 1: deafening warl. The rocket and everything in it begins to tremble.
22:19
Speaker 1: Garon's stomach flips and his head feels full of pressure,
22:24
Speaker 1: like he's being slowly sucked up into the air. He
22:28
Speaker 1: tries to move his arms and legs, but nothing, like
22:31
Speaker 1: his body's not his anymore. He takes a long, deep breath,
22:37
Speaker 1: and then from nowhere he shouts, which means let's go,
22:46
Speaker 1: and off he went. Upputs and uppoints and uplots, And
22:54
Speaker 1: as the rocket heads upwards, the booster rockets fall away.
22:59
Speaker 1: The Garin keep gathering speed fifteen thousand miles an hour
23:04
Speaker 1: sixteen thousand, seventeen thousand until he reaches eighteen thousand miles
23:12
Speaker 1: an hour, the speed of rocket needs to get past
23:14
Speaker 1: the pool of Earth's gravity and out of the atmosphere
23:21
Speaker 1: and down below, the engineers are beside themselves, downing our
23:25
Speaker 1: springs like nobody's business down in the bunker. Everybody I've
23:29
Speaker 1: spoken to engineers that that talk about being drenched in sweat.
23:33
Speaker 1: There was incredible feeling of fear as well as exhilaration.
23:37
Speaker 1: This this, this excitement, fear, sense of danger, potentially disaster,
23:43
Speaker 1: all happening. But Gagarin keeps going nine minutes, ten minutes,
23:51
Speaker 1: faster and faster, higher and higher until he reaches for
23:58
Speaker 1: a bit. Yeah, something completely incredible happens. He suddenly feels
24:13
Speaker 1: himself lifting from his seat and he's just held in
24:16
Speaker 1: by the straps. He's experiencing the effects of weightlessness in orbit.
24:25
Speaker 1: And then he looks to his right and he says,
24:31
Speaker 1: I can see the Earth. I can see the Earth,
24:39
Speaker 1: and the colors are unbelievably beautiful. This incredible band, thin
24:46
Speaker 1: beautiful band, a sort of translucent and electric. I think
24:50
Speaker 1: he describes it blue. It's the Earth's atmosphere. And he
24:57
Speaker 1: is the first man ever to see it the first
25:02
Speaker 1: man to break the shackles of Earth, and it was
25:06
Speaker 1: a Soviet who had done it. As you can imagine,
25:18
Speaker 1: it's not a secret the Soviets want to keep anymore.
25:23
Speaker 1: They had a very famous announcer called Levitan who would
25:26
Speaker 1: announced all the very big moments, like the beginning of
25:29
Speaker 1: World War two, the death of Stalin, all of that
25:32
Speaker 1: he had announced. He was brought in to announce this.
25:39
Speaker 1: His voice came on the radio and all over Russia
25:47
Speaker 1: people were listening to Garin's father, who had no idea
25:50
Speaker 1: his son was in space, his wife, who also was
25:53
Speaker 1: never told about his flight, and little boys like Sarage
25:57
Speaker 1: Cracow crowded around the radio in their homes, their parents
26:01
Speaker 1: proudly telling them that the Soviet Union has put a
26:03
Speaker 1: man in space. And pretty soon the news starts to rock.
26:13
Speaker 1: It around the world and it reaches the United States,
26:17
Speaker 1: where President Kennedy is sleeping. He was working up by
26:21
Speaker 1: his butler in the White House to a battery of news.
26:26
Speaker 1: All Russia's just wild about Uri Gagarin, the first man
26:29
Speaker 1: took conquer space, modest, just a family man. It was
26:33
Speaker 1: on every television stage, it was called everywhere. It was
26:37
Speaker 1: the news, and later that afternoon he had to go
26:41
Speaker 1: before members of the press in a massive press conference
26:46
Speaker 1: where he was unable even to utter the name Uri Gagarin. Well,
26:53
Speaker 1: it is a most impressive scientific accomplishment. And also I
26:58
Speaker 1: think that we uh, all of us as members of
27:03
Speaker 1: the race, have the greatest admiration for the Russian who
27:08
Speaker 1: participated in this extraordinary feat. I have already sent to
27:11
Speaker 1: congratulations to Mr Crucial. In one hour and twenty nine minutes,
27:41
Speaker 1: Uriga Garran completes one full orbit of the planet. But
27:46
Speaker 1: now the engineers in the control room are biting their
27:49
Speaker 1: nails again because Uriga Garran has to make it home alive,
27:54
Speaker 1: and to do that he has to break back through
27:57
Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere. He starts his descent. Almost immediately, the
28:03
Speaker 1: porthole window fills with hot orange gas, and Gagarin suddenly
28:07
Speaker 1: feels like he's being pushed back into a seat. He
28:10
Speaker 1: tries to breathe, working hard to get the air into
28:13
Speaker 1: his lungs, his heart rates sores. To calm himself, he sings,
28:23
Speaker 1: the Motherland, here's the Motherland knows. He sits back and
28:31
Speaker 1: grips the seat. A rushing noise feels his ears, and
28:36
Speaker 1: then he's through. At twenty three feet Gagaran is ejected
28:44
Speaker 1: from the capsule. He feels the cold air on his
28:47
Speaker 1: face and a rough tug on his shoulders as the
28:49
Speaker 1: parachute is deployed, and he drifts slowly down to a field.
28:57
Speaker 1: And there he nots a hundred and six minutes after
29:01
Speaker 1: he starts, having traveled all the way around the planet,
29:04
Speaker 1: in a plowed field, and there's absolutely nobody there to
29:08
Speaker 1: greet him except a very old woman and a little
29:11
Speaker 1: five year old girl who are planting potatoes, and who
29:15
Speaker 1: both see him and start running away. But he shouts
29:18
Speaker 1: to the old lady, I'm Soviet, I'm Soviet, I'm Soviet. Comrades,
29:22
Speaker 1: and very very cautiously, the grandmother planting potatoes and her
29:27
Speaker 1: five year old daughter come back. So here's a guy
29:31
Speaker 1: has gone around the world in a hundred six minutes.
29:33
Speaker 1: He's been traveling at eighteen thousand miles an hour, you know,
29:37
Speaker 1: ten times, has been of a rifle bullet. He's seen
29:39
Speaker 1: things that no one has ever seen before. Now he's
29:42
Speaker 1: in a plowed field, and he has only a horse
29:44
Speaker 1: and cart in which to get to a telephone. Just
29:54
Speaker 1: days later, he's back in Moscow, being paraded through the
29:58
Speaker 1: streets in a convertible covered with hours. The scenes are unbelievable.
30:02
Speaker 1: People line the sidewalk, and I'm not just talking thousands
30:05
Speaker 1: or hundreds of thousands. There are millions of people out there.
30:10
Speaker 1: I've seen footage and it looks like there is not
30:12
Speaker 1: a single empty space along the whole parade route. People
30:16
Speaker 1: are clambering on top of lamp post and leaning out
30:18
Speaker 1: of balconies and screaming and waving the Soviet flags. White
30:22
Speaker 1: doves are set free, Confetti is thrown from helicopters, Women
30:26
Speaker 1: break the barriers, the hand in flowers. It's thought to
30:29
Speaker 1: have been the biggest party in Soviet history. When Gagarin's
30:33
Speaker 1: motorcade reaches the Kremlin, he's kissed on the cheek by
30:36
Speaker 1: the Premier Nikita Kushtev and awarded the title Hero of
30:40
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. This was their moment. This was and
30:47
Speaker 1: it still is probably to this day. This is Russia's
30:50
Speaker 1: great moment in history, and they made the most of it.
30:55
Speaker 1: This was a real feeling of my God, We've beaten
30:59
Speaker 1: the most powerful and the most technologropy advance nation on us.
31:03
Speaker 1: We can do anything. The Soviet Union won the race
31:11
Speaker 1: to put the first man in space. It was a
31:14
Speaker 1: huge deal for everyday Russians, and it turned the cosmonaut
31:18
Speaker 1: at the center, Uriga Garon, into an icon. So I
31:22
Speaker 1: think it's important for us to understand the level which
31:25
Speaker 1: Yuriga Garden was a star, a superstar, at the level
31:28
Speaker 1: I don't think we can even imagine. This is Assif Sadiki.
31:32
Speaker 1: He's a professor of space history at Fordham University. There
31:36
Speaker 1: were posters of Yuriga Garden. There were magazines, there were postcards,
31:41
Speaker 1: there were trinkets, there were toys, there were models, there
31:44
Speaker 1: were a record albums. Agaren was like the Soviet version
31:51
Speaker 1: of Lance Bass and justin timber Lake. Okay, maybe more
31:54
Speaker 1: John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They even made Gagaran albums,
31:58
Speaker 1: although they sounded a little different to Love Me Do.
32:06
Speaker 1: The Soviet Union essentially created a cult of personality around
32:09
Speaker 1: this guy. And I can tell you this is true.
32:12
Speaker 1: And Star City and Moscow, I remember seeing statues of
32:15
Speaker 1: Gagern everywhere. He became the ideal figure in Soviet society, quiet,
32:22
Speaker 1: unassuming and totally dedicated to the cause of being a
32:26
Speaker 1: Soviet cosmonaut. They were a political and they were young
32:30
Speaker 1: and dynamic and handsome and good looking, and I think
32:33
Speaker 1: they operated on that level a kind of quasi Hollywood culture.
32:37
Speaker 1: For young Soviet people. Space was freedom, Space was success.
32:45
Speaker 1: Space became embedded in the day to day lives of
32:47
Speaker 1: Soviet citizens. It was everywhere in the kitchens and bedrooms
32:51
Speaker 1: of Soviet men, women and children. Children grew up not
32:55
Speaker 1: wanting to be pop stars or soccer players, but to
32:58
Speaker 1: be cosmonauts. Every Soviet or later Russian cosmic I've spoken
33:04
Speaker 1: to have all said the same thing. This was the
33:08
Speaker 1: enduring legend that was for them an inspiration. It was
33:13
Speaker 1: the thing that helped launch them on this unbelievable career
33:17
Speaker 1: of cosmonauts. Sarage was three years old when Gagarin went
33:30
Speaker 1: to space. His early years were filled with that astonishing success,
33:34
Speaker 1: a symbol of what his country, the Soviet Union, was
33:37
Speaker 1: capable of, and he would follow in Gagern's exact footsteps,
33:42
Speaker 1: becoming one of an elite class of Soviets to go
33:45
Speaker 1: to space. And so perhaps it's Ury Gageron who Sage
33:49
Speaker 1: Cracklf is thinking of as he floats in space, his
33:52
Speaker 1: country crumbling beneath him, his friends, his family, his fellow
33:57
Speaker 1: Soviets living through chaos, and now he has to decide
34:03
Speaker 1: what to do. Stay in space and man the station,
34:07
Speaker 1: protect what has left of the Soviet Union, or go
34:11
Speaker 1: down to a country in crisis. Now, to be upfront
34:16
Speaker 1: about this, we know a lot about Sir Game. We
34:19
Speaker 1: had it all set up. We were going to Moscow
34:21
Speaker 1: to talk to him. It was scheduled for February, and
34:26
Speaker 1: then Putin's war gotten away. Vladimir Putin has just addressed
34:30
Speaker 1: the Russian people a moment ago, announcing what Putin called
34:33
Speaker 1: the start of a military special operation. And so the
34:36
Speaker 1: Russian Space Agency, in part a military organization, shut down.
34:41
Speaker 1: The interview frustrating but fitting for a story about the
34:45
Speaker 1: way space and politics are so intertwined. Space has become
34:49
Speaker 1: a political battleground again. Russia's war is putting years of
34:53
Speaker 1: collaboration at risk, and the astronauts in the situation they
34:57
Speaker 1: did not ask for. America and Russia, once more on
35:00
Speaker 1: opposite sides. The Russia space program has cut ties with
35:03
Speaker 1: the West on almost every front. It's now unthinkable for
35:07
Speaker 1: a high profile cosmonaut like Surrogate to go on an
35:10
Speaker 1: American podcast. But we have spoken to Saragate's friends and
35:14
Speaker 1: his colleagues, to people who have worked with him, and
35:18
Speaker 1: people who have been to space with him, to try
35:20
Speaker 1: to understand how he made the decision he did to
35:24
Speaker 1: stay or to go. And so he spends hours thinking
35:29
Speaker 1: of what to do about his family, about his baby daughter,
35:35
Speaker 1: about his country falling apart, but also about the space
35:39
Speaker 1: station he is manning. It's the first and only space
35:43
Speaker 1: station orbiting the world. Without him, it will die. He
35:48
Speaker 1: looks out the window at the world two fifty miles
35:51
Speaker 1: below him, and then he's ready. He calls down to
35:56
Speaker 1: mission control and tells them I'll stay. And now, over
36:02
Speaker 1: the next seven episodes, we're going to tell the story
36:05
Speaker 1: of Sergei Krikov, of those three and thirteen days he
36:09
Speaker 1: spent circling the earth as his country collapsed. Three hundred
36:14
Speaker 1: and thirteen days that changed our world. Thanks crushed cars
36:20
Speaker 1: like flimsy toys. Soldiers used nightsticks, slope bombs. It was
36:24
Speaker 1: an earthquake. It was a daily earthquake in Moscow. The
36:29
Speaker 1: hammer and Sickle is lord for the last time, and
36:32
Speaker 1: an era comes to an end. Your pay changed, the rank,
36:36
Speaker 1: the status, everything changed. It was rather like he was
36:40
Speaker 1: a time traveler. That's coming up on the Last Soviet.
36:47
Speaker 1: Oh and by the way, we're gonna be telling my
36:49
Speaker 1: story as well. This is the pioneering stage everyone should
36:53
Speaker 1: and we'll have the opportunity to travel into space. The
37:14
Speaker 1: Last Soviet is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership with I
37:17
Speaker 1: Heart Podcast and Exile Media, produced by Sama's Dad Audio
37:23
Speaker 1: and hosted by me Lance Bass Executive produced by Kate
37:27
Speaker 1: Osbourne and Mangesh had Akador with Oz Wallashan and Kostas
37:32
Speaker 1: Linos from My Heart Executive produced by Katrina Norville and
37:37
Speaker 1: Nikki Torre from Sama's Dad Audio are executive producers or
37:41
Speaker 1: Joe Pikes and Dasha Listina. Produced by Assia Fuchs, Dasha
37:46
Speaker 1: Litzitza and Joe Pikes. Writing by Lydia Marchant, Research by
37:51
Speaker 1: Mika Golubovski and Molly Schwartz, music by Will Epstein, themed
37:57
Speaker 1: by Martin or Strich, Sound designed by Richard Award and
38:00
Speaker 1: special things to Nando Villa, Melissa Pollock, Will Pearson, Connel Burne,
38:05
Speaker 1: Bob Pittman and Isaac Lee and thanks to Stephen Walker.
38:09
Speaker 1: His book is called Beyond the astonishing story of the
38:13
Speaker 1: first human to leave our planet and journey into space
38:17
Speaker 1: if you want to hear more shows like this. Nothing
38:19
Speaker 1: is more important to the creators here at Kaleidoscope than subscribers, ratings,
38:23
Speaker 1: and reviews, so please spread the love wherever you listen.