As mankind has progressed, its ability to build breathtaking wonders, powerful technology and complex societies has grown exponentially. But despite that progress, human fallibility remains ever-present, and with great strides in technological and societal development has come the potential for ever-more spectacular calamities.
Manmade Catastrophes is an independent podcast that examines those disasters wrought by man—some accidents resulting from hubris, greed or incompetence, others a result of malice and a complete disregard for fellow human beings.
No manmade catastrophe happens in a vacuum. They’re the result of slow-building and complex economic, political, social, cultural and psychological phenomena that converge in a perfect storm to bring suffering and death on a massive scale.
In this series, we’ll untangle those complexities through dramatic but deeply researched narrative storytelling. We’ll do deep dives on disasters you’ve likely never heard of—like the Banqiao Dam failure in Mao’s China that may have killed as many as 230,000 people, or the Fidenae Amphitheatre collapse in ancient Rome.
We’ll also examine events you have heard of, but probably don’t know the full story on, like the atomic bombing of Nagasaki or North Korea’s Arduous March famine of the 1990s. Finally, we’ll look at calculated acts of human cruelty, from the California genocide of Native Americans to mass murders perpetrated by those identifying as incels.
Whether it’s structural failures, fires, riots, stampedes, crashes, explosions, famines, massacres, war crimes, or genocide, every manmade calamity has lessons we can learn from—both about the human follies that enabled them, as well as how they can be prevented from ever happening again.
So explore the website for our full archive, show notes, transcripts and other resources. And subscribe to Manmade Catastrophes on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. Have any ideas or thoughts for the show, or just want to say hi? Use the contact form to the right.
