Speaker 1: I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a
Speaker 1: little band called in Sync. What you may not know
Speaker 1: is that when I was twenty three, I traveled to
Speaker 1: Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go
Speaker 1: to space. Band member is one step closer to saying
Speaker 1: bye bye bye to planet Earth. I spent six months
Speaker 1: learning Russian astrophysics, even flying a fighter jet with a drunk.
Speaker 1: Commanders have named Lance Bass as a member of the
Speaker 1: three person crew. It was the craziest experience of my life.
Speaker 1: And when I was there, as you can imagine, I
Speaker 1: heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one
Speaker 1: that really stuck with me. It's about a man who's
Speaker 1: traveling two hundred and fifty miles above the Earth at
Speaker 1: five miles a second. His name is Sergei Krikov. He's
Speaker 1: a Soviet cosmonaut, and he's manning the world's only space station,
Speaker 1: the Pride and Joy of the U. S. S R.
Speaker 1: The year is nineteen ninety one. Sarage has been up
Speaker 1: there for three months. By now, as the days bleed
Speaker 1: into one another, he's starting to feel a bit space sick.
Speaker 1: He's been counting down the weeks till he's due to
Speaker 1: come home to his wife and family, and that's when
Speaker 1: his friend, a Ham radio operator in suburban Australia, tells
Speaker 1: him something shocking. She says, Sarage, something bad is happening
Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union. After months strikes, protests and deepening
Speaker 1: economic chaoss, people are sleeping in train stations. I gave
Speaker 1: them my money, old one. We won't give you your bread.
Speaker 1: Law and order seem to be breaking down bread Almi
Speaker 1: almored personnel carriers on the streets of Moscow this morning
Speaker 1: heading to the Kremlin. The republics that make up the
Speaker 1: Union were starting to break away. They were wild scenes
Speaker 1: Guti and three days his handlers on the ground tell him,
Speaker 1: we can't keep this from you anymore. Everything is collapsing
Speaker 1: around us, including the Soviet Space Agency. We've run out
Speaker 1: of money. We can't send anyone to replace you. So
Speaker 1: we're giving you a choice. You can come back down
Speaker 1: to Earth's planned and abandon the station to an unknown fate,
Speaker 1: or you stay as long as it takes and protect
Speaker 1: the station, the final outpost of a falling empire. This
Speaker 1: is the story of the three thirteen days Sergei spent
Speaker 1: circling the Earth three hundred and thirteen days that change
Speaker 1: our world Thanks Christ. Cars like climsy toys. Historians are
Speaker 1: likely to be analyzing the events of this day for
Speaker 1: generation is to come in Moscow, the Hammer and Sickle
Speaker 1: is lord for the last time, and an era comes
Speaker 1: to an end. Of pay changed, a rank or status,
Speaker 1: everything changed. It was rather like he was a time
Speaker 1: traveling I'm Lance bass And from Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: This is the Last Soviet. Listen to the Last Soviet
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.