Disasters taken apart, one investigation at a time.
Walter picks a catastrophe, or a cluster of them, and rebuilds the chain of design choices, decisions and investigative work behind it. Air crashes share space with the I-35W bridge collapse, the 1918 Spanish flu and the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis.
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CatastropheCast.com is a disaster history show built around Walter, who approaches each catastrophe the way an investigator would, working from the evidence toward a cause. The subjects range widely. Air disasters form one strand, including the de Havilland Comet crashes of the 1950s and Japan Airlines Flight 123 on August 12, 1985. Structural failure is another, with the 2007 collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis. Beyond those sit the Spanish flu of 1918 and the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis that struck Tohoku, Japan, on March 11, 2011. Walter likes to start with a question. Why are airplane windows round instead of square? How did Boeing and Airbus come to lead the jet business? The Comet story answers both. Along the way it deals with the problem of investigating a crash when most of the aircraft is missing, and with the examination of victims that ruled out a bomb. The bridge episode reaches back to the Federal Aid Road Act of 1918 and the numbered highway system of 1926. From there it settles on a 1977 decision to thicken the bridge's concrete and what that added weight meant across the bridge's full length and width. His habit of doing the arithmetic out loud is one of the show's quieter pleasures. For Flight 123, which was a listener request, Walter traces origins he places a decade before the crash and describes American investigators waiting days to reach the site. The flu episode puts the Spanish flu's hospitalization rate at three in four in some cases and sets it against the 2017-2018 season, which he recalls from his own work in hospitals. The Tohoku episode, which he flags as a longer special, turns to governance and preparedness. It compares Japan with places where weaker earthquakes have taken far more lives. The darkest material is in 'Podcast #38 - Suicide by Airplane', which gathers five incidents: crashes in Namibia, the Alps and a California hillside, a cargo plane that should have crashed, and a baggage handler who stole a plane. One case is rebuilt from a note that survived the impact and a recovered piece of the gun. Walter closes that episode by urging listeners to check on one another and to talk to someone if they need help. The production is informal. On air, Walter mentions a snoring dog, military aircraft over the house, and a ten-month absence he spent working multiple jobs. His closings point listeners to a 'what do you want to hear' link on the website, an email address and a Twitter handle. It suits someone who wants the mechanics of a disaster laid out plainly by a narrator who shows his working.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants the engineering, medical and investigative side of disasters explained in plain language, and who is happy with an informal delivery where the host mentions the odd household interruption.
What sets it apart: Walter hangs each disaster on a practical question, such as why airplane windows are round, and answers it with investigation details and back-of-envelope arithmetic. The subjects range from air crashes to a bridge, a pandemic and an earthquake.
If there is a catastrophe or disaster, manmade or natural, it has probably grabbed our attention. Join us as we delve into the world of catastrophes and disasters, find out what went wrong, and the lasting consequences.
One fan blade fails, and suddenly you care how titanium is made.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grim aviation episode about suicidal crashes, forensic clues, and one extraordinary survival.
CatastropheCast frames suicidal acts in flight as both private tragedy and public disaster, moving through crashes in Namibia, the Alps, and California before turning to PSA Flight 1771 and Federal Express Flight 705.
A postwar jet's crashes reveal how aircraft design changed when catastrophe refused simple answers.
De Havilland's Comet is treated as a sharp case study in postwar aviation: wartime urgency becomes civilian ambition, and speed of innovation begins to show its cost in the air.
A wartime pandemic is measured in hospital beds, giving 1918 a starkly modern pressure.
The episode revisits the Spanish flu of 1918 by placing it inside a world already worn down by World War I. Its strongest move is to translate the outbreak into hospital capacity, from hospitalization rates that in some cases reached 75 percent to a modern projection requiring…
A Tohoku disaster episode that ties survival to governance, building codes, and public scrutiny.
CatastropheCast treats the 3-11 disaster as more than a sequence of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear emergency. It follows the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake, described as the fourth strongest in recorded history, into the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown, then uses its interview…
A plainspoken aviation-disaster episode tracing an earlier tail strike through the evidence left at a devastating crash site.
CatastropheCast follows Japan Airlines Flight 123 as a disaster with roots years before the crash, moving from the Boeing 747's earlier damage to the in-flight failure and the investigation that tried to make sense of it.
Human stories behind aviation disasters.
Overlooked lives, read from the sources, talked through warmly.
Walter opens CatastropheCast episode #38 by tying five aircraft cases to suicide: LAM Mozambique Flight 470, Germanwings Flight 9525, PSA Flight 1771, FedEx Flight 705, and Richard Russell's Horizon Air Q400 theft.
CatastropheCast #37 tracks the de Havilland Comet crashes of the 1950s and the engineering lesson behind circular airplane windows.
CatastropheCast.com's "Podcast #36, The Spanish Flu of 1918" opens with January 1918 numbers, World War I, and a flu that could kill within hours.
CatastropheCast.com focuses on the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake, which Walter calls the fourth strongest earthquake in recorded history and a central part of Japan's '3-11 events.' He describes a magnitude 9.0 to 9.1 quake that lasted six minutes, triggered a tsunami about 30 minutes later, and hit more than 100 evacuation sites despite Japanese planning.
CatastropheCast's Walter traces Japan Airlines Flight 123's August 12, 1985 crash from a 1978 tail strike to a Boeing repair that failed after about 10,000 cycles.
CatastropheCast.com’s Podcast #33 examines the September 25, 1978 collision between Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182 and a training Cessna over San Diego.
CatastropheCast.com host Walter compares United Airlines Flight 232, a 1989 DC-10 accident involving total hydraulic failure and 111 deaths, with Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, a 2018 Boeing 737 engine failure that killed one passenger.
Walter's CatastropheCast episode examines Helios Airways Flight 522, a Boeing 737 that departed Larnaca on August 14, 2005, after a prior aft-door pressurization problem.
The host introduces a listener-suggested disaster from 1978 in Spain, setting up a deep dive into the event and its aftermath.
This episode analyzes the unique hijacking of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 in 1996, exploring what went wrong and its lasting consequences.
The host introduces the Tenerife Airport catastrophe, the deadliest aviation accident, and shares his lifelong interest in crash investigation.
The episode explores the 1915 Boston Molasses Disaster, detailing its background, causes, and lasting impact.