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 miles above the Earth at five miles a second.
Speaker 1: His name is Sergei Krikov. He's a Soviet cosmonaut, and
Speaker 1: he's manning the world's only space station, the Pride and
Speaker 1: Joy of the U. S. S R. The year is
Speaker 1: Sarage has been up there for three months. By now,
Speaker 1: as the days bleed into one another, he's starting to
Speaker 1: feel a bit space sick. He's been counting down the
Speaker 1: weeks till he's due to come home to his wife
Speaker 1: and family, and that's when his friend, a ham radio
Speaker 1: operator in suburban Australia, tells him something shocking. She says,
Speaker 1: serge something bad is happening in the Soviet Union. After
Speaker 1: months strikes, protests, and deepening economic chaos. People are sleeping
Speaker 1: in train stations. I gave them my money that they
Speaker 1: should old one. We won't give you your bread. Law
Speaker 1: and order seemed to be breaking down. Red Almi Almus
Speaker 1: personnel carriers on the streets of Moscow this morning heading
Speaker 1: to the Kremlin. The republics that make up the Union,
Speaker 1: her star being to break away were wild saints. Three days.
Speaker 1: His handlers on the ground tell him, we can't keep
Speaker 1: this from you anymore. Everything is collapsing around us, including
Speaker 1: the Soviet Space Agency. We've run out of money. We
Speaker 1: can't send anyone to replace you. So we're giving you
Speaker 1: a choice. You can come back down to Earth's plan
Speaker 1: and abandon the station to an unknown fate, or you
Speaker 1: stay as long as it takes and protect the station,
Speaker 1: the final outpost of a falling empire. This is the
Speaker 1: story of the days Sergei spent circling the Earth three
Speaker 1: d and thirteen days that changed our world. Thanks Christ,
Speaker 1: Cars like climsy toys. Historians are likely to be analyzing
Speaker 1: the events of this day for generation is to come
Speaker 1: in Moscow, the Hammer and Sickle is lord for the
Speaker 1: last time, and an era comes to an A pay changed,
Speaker 1: a rank or status, everything changed. It was rather like
Speaker 1: he was a time traveling I'm Lance bass And from
Speaker 1: Kaleidoscope and I Heart Podcasts, This is the Last Soviet
Speaker 1: Starting on February. Listen to the Last Soviet on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.