Episode 6: It Came From Outer Space

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A fake moon landing…

Astronauts carrying space pathogens back to earth. Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain. HIV manufactured in a government laboratory. COVID-19 vaccines killing millions. In this episode, Jill Lepore follows a trail of disease stories and conspiracies from Apollo 11 to COVID-19. In part two of our series about the moon landing: Apollo’s splashdown, and the tidal wave of doubt it set off.

Photo: National Museum of the U.S. Navy

 

Key Sources

  • You can listen to NASA’s Mission Control communicating with Apollo 11 here.

  • Listen to “In the Year 2525” by Zager and Evans.

  • Read the NASA Apollo 11 re-entry flight journal here.

  • Watch President Richard Nixon greeting the quarantined Apollo 11 crew.

  • Watch a 1976 PSA warning about the swine flu, and read the government-commissioned account of the vaccination saga.

  • Watch this 60 Minutes episode about the swine flu.

  • Read a timeline of HIV/AIDS here.

  • Here’s a 1987 CBS broadcast airing the falsehood that AIDS was created in a U.S. laboratory.

  • Watch more of the Reagan administration’s response to the AIDS epidemic here.

  • Read historian of science Joanna Radin’s writing about Michael Crichton.

  • Mae Brussell tapes courtesy of www.maebrussell.com.