Brains on Universe Dear Diary, I just ate a turkey sandwich for lunch. No mayo, obviously. And as of this moment, I can't stop singing My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion. You know the smash hit theme song to the legendary 1997 movie Titanic? And I know that my heart will go rrrrr. I'll tell you what, Celine really is the queen of Canada. What did we do to deserve this diva? Anyway, this all started because last night I watched Titanic, the movie that won Best Picture with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. It's about this giant boat that everyone claimed was unsinkable, but it crashed into an iceberg and sank. But Titanic isn't just a blockbuster movie, it was a real boat that really sank. And I can't stop thinking about it. Why did it crash into that iceberg? Why was there an iceberg? Couldn't have Kate's character rose scooched over on that door to make room for Leo's character Jack's spoiler alert? And wouldn't it make more sense if Leonardo DiCaprio used an English accent? Did he learn an English accent at acting school? Can I do an English accent? Joy, are you doing an English accent again? Hi Juniper. Yeah, but I think I better stick to my own joy accent, my joy scent. Is that your journal? You mean my history maker? Journaling is making history? Totally. I'm documenting this time and place. What a for lunch, my latest obsession with the Titanic. It's all history in the making. Do you think that one day people will read your journal? It's possible. Ooh, I should write them a note. P.S., if you're a stranger in the future reading my diary, what's the future like? Are we wearing pants on our heads yet? Please refer to page 20 for my turkey sandwich recipe. You're welcome for the history. P.P.S., are people still obsessed with the Titanic? What about Celine Dion? Hey Joy, what if we did an episode about the Titanic? Titanic, the 1997 showstopping romance film, or Titanic, The Actual Boat? The Actual Boat Titanic, not the movie, but it could be historic. Aye aye, captain! ["I'm Your Host, Joy Dolo"] You're listening to Forever Ago from the Brains On Universe. I'm your host, Joy Dolo, here with Juniper from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Go birds! Hi Joy. Hello! So today we're talking all about the unsinkable ship that sank. The Titanic. The Titanic was one of the biggest luxury cruise ships of its time. In the year 1912, it was going to travel across the Atlantic Ocean from England to New York City. But four days into its first trip, the boat struck an iceberg and sank. Only about one third of the passengers survived. It's a tragic but fascinating story, one that people are still drawn to, even well over 100 years later. Juniper, what do you know about the Titanic? I used to go to an aftercare, and one of the people that taught there, one of their great-great-aunt or grandma or something was on the Titanic. Oh! Have you ever seen the movie? No. Yeah. I think it was from my time, from a while ago. So the Titanic was really big. It was humongous. So what's one of the biggest things that you've ever seen? Oh, OK. So this summer I went on a trip to Maine, and on the way back, I saw the biggest yacht ever. It was humongous. Would you say it's like a Carnival Cruise Line size or bigger than that? Bigger. Oh my gosh! That's a big yacht. I bet you could have a restaurant and 35 bathrooms and 16 porta-potties. Why would you want porta-potties when you have bathrooms? Why are we on the water in the first place? But no, that sounds pretty big. I saw one of the biggest carvings of Paul Bunyan in northern Minnesota, and it was big. It was really tall, not so much wide like a boat, but it was super tall. And then he had the big blue ox, his pal, carved next to him. And I was like, wow, this is unnecessary. Like we mentioned earlier, the Titanic sailed the seas in 1912, when cars were new and exciting. Electricity was just getting brought to buildings, but people did not have TVs or home computers. Instead, they listened to the radio or read newspapers and magazines. And that's probably how they first heard about the Titanic. It was the largest ship of its day. Over 882 feet long. Which is about the same length as four city blocks. Or about as long as three football fields. And it weighed more than 46,000 tons. Now that's a big boat. Sounds like the size of your yacht. So a fun fact, the Titanic is actually smaller than most cruise ships we see today. But back in the early 1900s, it was truly a marvel. It was known as a white star liner, and people went gaga for it. The new white star liner is a model of comfort, beauty, and attractiveness. Their launching will signalize a most important era in maritime achievement. The ship was first built in Belfast, Northern Ireland, back in 1909. Titanic was actually the second of three giant luxury cruise ships being built at the time. It took thousands of workers to build it. They started by building the base of the boat on land in a shipyard next to a river. You might be wondering, how do they get such a giant boat into the water? With the help of a lot of soap and grease. The workers coated the bottom of the boat with over 20 tons of suds and oil, and then released the trigger. They shot the base of the boat out into the water. Yeah! But the boat was only partly built, so they parked the half-made boat alongside a dock, where they kept building it up from the base. They used giant cranes to load in the engine, boilers, and upper decks of the boat. In total, it took three years to complete the Titanic. The ship was packed with 10 floors worth of amenities. Here aboard the Titanic, we've got all the rooms you could ever imagine. Reading rooms, dining rooms, smoking rooms, lounging rooms, bedrooms, and bathrooms. We've even got bedrooms with bathrooms. Can you believe it? Passengers can enjoy our gymnasium, savor all the flavors at our French cafe, stroll along the deck, or take a dip in our state of the art swimming pool. Passengers aboard the Titanic were divided into three different classes, first, second, and third. Similar to the different classes on an airplane today, first was the fanciest, and third was the cheapest. There were passengers on the ship from all over the world, from England to Turkey to China. On April 10, 1912, the Titanic started its first trip from Southampton, United Kingdom. This just in. The Titanic set sail on her first voyage, the largest vessel that has ever sailed the seas. The ship made a stop in France, then Ireland, before heading across the Atlantic Ocean toward its final destination in New York City. But four days into its trip, there was a problem. It was late one evening when the Titanic crashed into an iceberg. The iceberg tore a huge gash in the side of the boat, causing water to flood the bottom of the boat. This ultimately caused the Titanic to sink. Of all the 2,240 passengers and crew on board, only 706 survived. That's about one third of all the passengers. One of the biggest reasons more people didn't survive the crash was because there weren't enough lifeboats for all the passengers and crew aboard the Titanic. And there weren't enough because the required number of lifeboats was based on an outdated law for much smaller ships. In the years after the Titanic sank, there were many improvements to safety regulations for all sorts of boats internationally. Like increasing the number of lifeboats required. As well as updating emergency plans and ramping up radio communication. The sinking of the Titanic was a really tragic, sad event in history. And one that still leaves a lot of questions. Like why did the boat crash into the iceberg in the first place? An important question. One will investigate shortly, but first it's time for... First things first! So this is the game where we take three things from history and try to put them in order, which came first, second and most recent. Today we're gonna talk about three giant vehicles. There's the double decker buses, jumbo jets and monster trucks. So Juniper, what do you think came first in history? Which second and which most recently? I'm gonna go double decker bus because I feel like it does require a little more work, but it's not like that giant jet that requires like a ton of work and a ton of time. And like those monster trucks are kind of like big and probably hard to build because they tend to go fast. Yeah, yeah. So we'll do double decker first. Yeah. All right. I'm gonna go jumbo jet for second because I don't know, I just feel like it's jumbo jet. Yeah, just go with your guess. So I guess in the third place is monster trucks. All right, so we have the double decker buses because it seems like they are like just kind of like two buses stacked on top of each other. Jumbo jet because we're trusting our guts and monster trucks because that's what's left. This is great. Okay, we'll hear the answers at the end of the episode right after the credits. So stick around. Hey, we're doing an episode soon all about slang words. You know, words like Riz or Ora or Glyzzy. I have no idea what any of those means, but they're all slang. Did you know you can just make up your own too? Like I made up a word Zappy for when something is really awesome. New sneakers, those are Zappy. You eat delicious curry, that zaps. Like you're being zapped with a hit of incredible-ness. Zappy, it's a hit. We wanna hear your slang words too. Make up a word and tell us what it means. Then send it to us at brainson.org slash contact. Bonus points if you use it in a sentence. Can't wait to hear what you dream up. I'm getting zapped. Just thinking about what you might dream up. ["Song of the Year"] You're listening to Forever Go. And I'm Joy. Today we're talking about the Titanic. It was the largest ship of its time. It was called an unsinkable ship. But it did sink. Just four days into its first voyage, the Titanic hit an iceberg. But why did it crash into that iceberg? A listener was also curious about this. Hi, my name is Lily from Chicago, Illinois, and my question is why did the Titanic crash into an iceberg? Thanks, Lily, for sending in your question. To help answer that question, we called up Ross Mumford. He's a researcher, historian, and educator who oversees exhibits of artifacts from the Titanic. Ross said there are a couple of different theories about why the Titanic hit the iceberg. Why did this moment happen? And there's a lot of reasons. For example, that night was a very calm, moonless night. Without the moon, there's not that bright light to shine off of an iceberg. There are no waves to lap against an iceberg, so you can spot it from more of a distance. There are theories out there that say because of where the iceberg was, there was warm air meeting cold water, which created a mirage and an illusion that made it difficult for the iceberg to be seen. So maybe the Titanic crashed into the iceberg because it was hard to see. There are other theories that because the binoculars for the lookouts were locked up into a case where the keys were taken off before the ship fully sailed, that because they didn't have these binoculars, the lookouts couldn't spot it from a distance. Binoculars sabotage? My counter to that is that it probably wouldn't have helped in this scenario, in this situation. It is hard to use binoculars in the dark of night. Ice was unusually south, so that's also like a question to dive into. Why was ice further south this time of year? And why did Captain Smith, after receiving ice warnings, to decide to go further south? There's all these different reasons. And I think that's also one of the most fascinating parts of the Titanic story. One question leads to another, question leads to another. So true, it's like a rabbit hole of never-ending questions. Speaking of questions, I have another. If the Titanic sank, how do we know about any of these theories? There are many different ways that we know Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on April 14th to 15th, 1912. The main source that we originally used were primary sources, which are first-hand sources. This could be people who were there telling the story, items or photographs that show that it's happened, and then artifacts from that time period. Yes, primary sources are a key tool we use to understand history. They're direct evidence of an event or time period. So what counts as a primary source? Lots of different things can be a primary source, as long as it's a first-hand account of somebody documenting what they saw or experienced. So, like a letter or diary entry? Like the one you were writing earlier? Yes, or a photograph or video. A primary source can also be an object, like clothing or furniture. Anything that helps tell the story. In the case of the Titanic, there are survivors who could provide their eyewitness accounts. They had investigations onto why did Titanic sink? Which led to them interviewing many different survivors from the crew who were passengers. They also interviewed experts who would be able to explain why certain things happened. Piecing together all these different perspectives helped create a more clear picture of what exactly happened to the Titanic. Like putting together a puzzle? Exactly. And as researchers dove deeper, some theories that people had long believed to be true turned out to be wrong. Ooh, the plot thickens. We'll hear more about it right after we check the mail bag. I just love getting mail. A note about a favorite episode? Love it. A question about history? Love it. An overdue parking ticket? La- wait. No, not that one. Boo, I hate that. But oh, here's a drawing from Serena in Collinsville, Illinois. Let's see here. Let's open this up. Take the stamp and oh, this is, uh, okay, let me describe it to you. Uh, it's Hermie with two beautiful red bows on the hair and on the tail. And then, uh, I'm sitting on top of Hermie with a very patriotic outfit, red, white and blue, a red top and some red pants. And there's a giant thought bubble that says hi and I'm waving on Hermie as Hermie is flying on top of a skateboard or maybe the Titanic. Ooh, that is such an awesome picture. I love it. If you have art for us or if you have thoughts about an episode or you want to tell me what items you'd put in a time capsule for the future, share it. Just go to brainson.org slash contact. Thanks. Want this show with zero ad breaks? You can get it that way. Just join SmartyPass. It supports me and all the work the team and I do. Plus, you get ad-free versions of brains on, smash boom best and your favorite, obviously, forever ago. Sign up at SmartyPass.org. Thanks. I'm Joy. And I'm Juniper. And we're talking all about the Titanic. We know a lot about Titanic thanks to primary sources. Those are the first-hand accounts of people who are on the ship, letters and diary entries from passengers. Plus, artifacts from the boat itself, like clothing, furniture and other personal items. We know a lot about this boat, but there was one big theory that most everyone believed that turned out to be false. Here's Ross again to explain. Titanic was believed to have sunk in one whole piece. People believed that survivors believed that the media believed that it was the common story. There were some survivors that did claim that Titanic sank in two pieces, but they were not really believed. But this all changed in 1985 thanks to a special underwater expedition. A team of researchers from the US and France located the Titanic shipwreck deep on the ocean floor. And to their surprise, the ship was split in two pieces, nearly 2,000 miles apart. That happened because after Titanic started filling with water and she started dipping into the ocean more and more from the front of the ship, also known as the bow. So much water came in that it was too much pressure and as Titanic tilted out of the water, her back half or her stern tilted out of the water, she broke around her third funnel and separated into two halves. A big discovery for a big ship. That was a huge thing that changed how we knew Titanic. And it changed also what we had access to for information. Now that we had the wreck site, we were able to study it more and understand why did it sink and how did it sink. It goes to show how our perspective on history can shift and change as we learn more and more information. That's why it's important to keep asking lots of questions. Because that's how the story of the Titanic lives on thanks to people's curiosity. Titanic is ultimately a human story. It's the story of 2,208 people. They are lives before Titanic, during Titanic and any stories that continued after Titanic. It's the stories of the communities and the people that were deeply affected by the tragedy and who were fascinated by the question why. The power of why. Speaking of, Hermie, why are you holding my journal? My elephant is a little rusty. What did Hermie say? He said, nobody is wearing pants on their heads yet. Oh, I love the Titanic and Celine Dion. And thanks for the turkey sandwich recipe. Wait, did you read my diary, Hermie? Wow, you're the future stranger I was writing to all along. I was expecting it to be a little further in the future, but hey, this is still very cool. You're welcome for the history. The Titanic was a giant luxury ship. It crashed into an iceberg and sank in April 1912. We know so much about it, thanks in part to our primary sources. A primary source is a first-hand account of somebody documenting what they saw or experienced. There are lots of theories why the ship crashed into the iceberg, but we may never know for sure. But we do know that there's always more to learn, and it starts by asking why. This episode was written by Ruby Guthrie. It was produced and fact-checked by Nico Gonzales-Wistler and edited by Sandin Totten. Engineering help from Alec Cosenza, with sound design by Rachel Breeze. Original theme music by Marc Sanchez. Shout out to Petra, Natalie, Jerry, and Molly. And if you want access to ad-free episodes and special bonus content, subscribe to our Smarty Pass. Okay, Juniper, it is time. Are you ready to hear the answers for first things first? Yes, but no. Sounds like you're not quite ready. Well, as a reminder, we're putting these three things in order from oldest to most recent, and your guesses were the double-decker bus, jumbo jets, and monster trucks as the most recent. Are you ready to find out? Yeah. Yeah, let's see. Oh, okay. Well, that makes sense. You got it all right. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. It's like, I got you. You've been zapped. I'm so happy I never get these right. No, that's great. You did such a great job. First up was a double-decker bus, and that was first invented in 1853. And get this, they were pulled by horses. What? So yeah, you think those big double-decker bus that you see in England all the time, those big red ones? Imagine them just being pulled by probably like 40 horses or something. Imagine that. Yeah, it's got to be a lot of horses though, because they're pretty big. So motorized buses showed up in the 1900s, and today double-decker buses are common all over the world. There aren't even buses with open second floors used for sightseeing. There have been attempts to make triple-decker buses, but they usually aren't very stable. Yeah, I bet. That's dangerous. Yeah, and then after that, it's like, what is it? Forte-Bec quadruple-decker buses? And then on and on. Yeah. That seems dangerous. Yeah, I know. That's why it seems unstable, right? Prop builders did make a functioning triple-decker for the third Harry Potter movie. Oh! I remember that! Oh, did you see it? Yeah, I saw it, and I was like, hmm. And it was like really cool because I only see like the double-decker ones. Would you ever ride on a triple-decker? No. No. Absolutely not. I would not do that. Same. So next up, we have the Jumbo Jet, which was introduced in 1968. So the plane that first earned the nickname Jumbo Jet was the Boeing 747. It was so big, it was built in a Boeing plant that is the largest building by volume. In later versions, the tail of the plane was as tall as a six-story building. Oh, that's so jumbo. I see why it gets the name. It's like, it can't quite be called the Big Jet. Or... It's called a jumbo jet. Yeah, yeah, large doesn't really encapsulate all of it. So that was in 1968. And then last but not least is the monster truck in 1979. So the first ever monster truck was nicknamed Big Foot. But it was made by a truck enthusiast named Bob Chandler. Why don't you just call it the Big Bob? Yeah. That like rolls off the tongue like jumbo jet. Anyway, he started adding stuff to his off-roading truck and over time it got so big and beefy. People started calling it a monster truck. So today, building and driving monster trucks is a popular pastime. People pack stadiums to watch these massive machines do tricks and crush smaller cars. Have you ever been to a monster truck rally? No, but just what you said right there, crushing smaller cars. I don't want like oil or like carpets to just go like right in my face. Like imagine if you're like crushing a car. Like there's probably going to be some metal flying off of it. Yeah, it's really a really dangerous arena. But I also think I feel like it's going to be very loud, you know, which is things crunching. So what were you most surprised by out of all of these congratulations, by the way, getting them all right? I'm surprised by two things. One, I got them right. And two, probably that the jumbo jet was second because in my head I was like, it's a jumbo jet or monster truck. And I was like, I think I'm going to put jumbo jet in second place. And I'm so surprised that it was actually in second place. Yeah, yeah. You know what it is, it's because you followed your gut. You got to trust your gut all the time. Join us next week for a new episode all about slang words. Thanks for listening.
