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Speaker 1: I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a

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Speaker 1: little band called in Sync. What you may not know

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Speaker 1: is that when I was twenty three, I traveled to

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Speaker 1: Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go

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Speaker 1: to space. Band member is one step closer to saying

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Speaker 1: bye bye bye to planet Earth. I spent six months

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Speaker 1: learning Russian astrophysics, even flying a fighter jet with a drunk.

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Speaker 1: Commanders have named Lance Bass as a member of the

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Speaker 1: three person crew. It was the craziest experience of my life.

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Speaker 1: And when I was there, as you can imagine, I

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Speaker 1: heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one

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Speaker 1: that really stuck with me. It's about a man who's

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Speaker 1: traveling two miles above the Earth at five miles a second.

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Speaker 1: His name is Sergei Krikov. He's a Soviet cosmonaut, and

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Speaker 1: he's manning the world's only space station, the Pride and

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Speaker 1: Joy of the U. S. S R. The year is

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Speaker 1: Sarage has been up there for three months. By now,

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Speaker 1: as the days bleed into one another, he's starting to

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Speaker 1: feel a bit space sick. He's been counting down the

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Speaker 1: weeks till he's due to come home to his wife

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Speaker 1: and family, and that's when his friend, a ham radio

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Speaker 1: operator in suburban Australia, tells him something shocking. She says,

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Speaker 1: serge something bad is happening in the Soviet Union. After

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Speaker 1: months strikes, protests, and deepening economic chaos. People are sleeping

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Speaker 1: in train stations. I gave them my money that they

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Speaker 1: should old one. We won't give you your bread. Law

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Speaker 1: and order seemed to be breaking down. Red Almi Almus

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Speaker 1: personnel carriers on the streets of Moscow this morning heading

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Speaker 1: to the Kremlin. The republics that make up the Union,

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Speaker 1: her star being to break away were wild saints. Three days.

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Speaker 1: His handlers on the ground tell him, we can't keep

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Speaker 1: this from you anymore. Everything is collapsing around us, including

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Speaker 1: the Soviet Space Agency. We've run out of money. We

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Speaker 1: can't send anyone to replace you. So we're giving you

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Speaker 1: a choice. You can come back down to Earth's plan

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Speaker 1: and abandon the station to an unknown fate, or you

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Speaker 1: stay as long as it takes and protect the station,

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Speaker 1: the final outpost of a falling empire. This is the

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Speaker 1: story of the days Sergei spent circling the Earth three

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Speaker 1: d and thirteen days that changed our world. Thanks Christ,

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Speaker 1: Cars like climsy toys. Historians are likely to be analyzing

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Speaker 1: the events of this day for generation is to come

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Speaker 1: in Moscow, the Hammer and Sickle is lord for the

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Speaker 1: last time, and an era comes to an A pay changed,

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Speaker 1: a rank or status, everything changed. It was rather like

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Speaker 1: he was a time traveling I'm Lance bass And from

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Speaker 1: Kaleidoscope and I Heart Podcasts, This is the Last Soviet

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Speaker 1: Starting on February. Listen to the Last Soviet on the

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

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Speaker 1: your podcasts.