Ep. 56: The Day the Music Died

A private jet crosses the Midwest at 46,000 feet, perfectly on autopilot, while fighter pilots pull alongside and see frosted windows and no movement inside. Nobody aboard will ever answer the radio.

This week, Andrea and Crystal look at some of the most famous plane crashes in history: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper, Patsy Cline, Jim Croce, Lynyrd Skynyrd, John Denver, Payne Stewart, Aaliyah, and JFK Jr. But we’re not telling these stories in order. We’re sorting them by what actually happened to the human body and brain in the cockpit, because most of these crashes weren’t about the airplane at all.

We get into why your inner ear will confidently lie to you in a cloud, what it means when the pilot is the patient, how running out of fuel is really a dosing error, and why hypoxia looks a lot like that patient satting 82 who swears they feel fine. Along the way, because they too deserve to be remembered, we say the names of everyone on board, including the pilots, bandmates, and crew that history usually leaves out.