Oh What A Time... - #93 Cover ups (Part 1)

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

We’ve touched on conspiracies on the show, but this week we have for 100% true conspiracies that really did happen - it’s Cover Ups! We’ll have the Ozyorsk Disaster hidden away by the Soviets, what the US Government really knew about bootlegging during prohibition and how Margaret Thatcher prepared to battle the striking minders of the 1980s.And boy are we glad we’re in the elastic age with pants securely tightened in-place. And do you work in a place that sells a historic food or drink? You can get in touch via the medium of the future, whenever you want: [e-mail] If you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wandery Plus subscribers can listen to episodes of Oh What A Time early and ad free. Join Wandery Plus in the Wandery app or on Apple podcasts. Hello. Thank you very much for downloading Oh What A Time. And welcome to the podcast that asks the question, when did socks become good? Because I think in a pre-elastic age, I just think socks would have been irritating. I don't know if you ever notice this when your kids will live very little, but when a baby can have half a sock hanging off and it won't be annoyed by that. Whereas if I had a sort of a sock hanging off my foot.

So do you mean it's rolled down over the heel and it's now just flopping over way beyond where it turns out? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's halfway down the foot and it's, and the bottom bit is flopping down. Can I just say this is genuinely making me feel uncomfortable you describing that. Yeah.

And it's tucked into a shoe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you must have seen your kids have that. Yeah. And it's tucked into a shoe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you must have seen your kids have that. Yes. When they were very little. And it doesn't bother them at all. Yeah. And that would really annoy me and it's made, just me describing it has made Tom feel uncomfortable.

And a big part of what makes the modern 21st century sock experience so pleasant. I would say 20th century in the main, I don't remember a pre-elastic age. But when socks were just woolen with no elastic. Oh, can you imagine? I would say 20th century in the main. I don't remember a pre-elastic age. When socks were just woolen with no elastic, you'd be pulling them up, they'd have been rolling down. It's the drooping around the ankle which is the worst bit. The floppyness around the ankle. It would have driven me mad.

Now you're looking at the possibility of not wearing socks, which is probably worse. The inside, I mean what if your shoes are wooden? That's going to be uncomfortable. It's just... It's just annoying. Have you ever had a pair of socks where the elastic's gone and it's just so loose? Oh, terrible. Your life is no longer worth living after that, I think.

Same with pants though. Pants... Pre-elastic pants. I would have been so grumpy all the time if I'd always been pulling my pants up. I can't even imagine it. How do you solve that conundrum? Pre-elastic pants? What even are they? Drawstring pants? What do people do?

Drawstring pants, isn't it? Yeah. Is this where the phrase pull your socks up come from? That's a genuine question. It must be, yeah. From floppy socks? It must be, yeah. From floppy socks? It must be. Because do you know what, I'm wearing a pair of 2012-2013 season Swansea City Traxy Bottoms. To be honest, I've seen better days. They've got elastic, that's still functioning, and a drawstring.

It is out of the question that these trousers fall down. Okay. You tested it in a wind tunnel. But you know there's like the triple lock on pensions. These are double lock trousers. Multiple devices. Let's imagine a situation, Ellis, where somehow you've been cast in magic might and the excited audience member in the front row are trying to yank your trousers to see the goods. But it's not magic, it's elastic. Okay, right. Isn't it? There's no magic involved. We all know. People would be at the back shouting, how's he doing it? What's the secret?

I'll tell you what the secret is. Drawstring, which involves elastic, and elasticated waistband. My trousers have got an elasticated waistband. Fine. My pants have got an elasticated waistband and My trousers have got an elasticated waistband. Fine. My pants have got an elasticated waistband and my socks have got an elastic. I'm happy. Pre-elastic. I have a problem with any kind of bunching of material around the ankle. I include bootcut jeans in that, which I think it's a crime that they've come back. And also a sock which is giving up the ghost. Yeah, they have bootcut jeans, they're on the way back in. It's that sort of 2000s revival thing. Will Barron I saw a picture of a load of Welsh boxers and

Frank Warren before. No, it wasn't Welsh boxers. There was boxing at the Millennium Stadium. So Amir Khan is one of them. Joe Kazaki is one of them. I'm trying to think of who the others are. Enzo McEnrelly is one of them. I can't remember who the other boxes are in the photo. So it's them on Westgate Street in Cardiff and they're all sort of doing this sort of boxing pose with Frank Warren to promote the fight. It's 2006. The book cut trousers are an absolute scandal. And yet we'll all be wearing them. But to be honest, you're not going to mention it to them, are you though? Of all the people.

I'm not going to tell. Which is why they're allowed to continue to get away with it. I'm now going to put a picture on our shared WhatsApp group, which is a picture of Simon Cowell's jeans. Have you seen these? What? I've just sent it around.

This is from a few years ago. We'll put them on the Instagram. Thoughts on those please. Let's have a look. There you go. Oh dear. Jeans and shoes. Describe what you're seeing there, Ellis. I'll tell you what that is. If you've ever been unlucky enough to be in Cardiff or Twickenham

on match day during the Six Nations, that's the rugby fan lucky choice. It's the big book cut, jeans too long for him, I would say. So the trousers need to be shortened anyway, but they're big book cut, baggy from the knee down, and a very, very pointy shoe. Now that is coming back. Also, we know that those jeans will be doing what all of those types of jeans do, which is fray horribly at the back as well. Will Barron Oh, at the back. All my bootcut jeans used to do that in the noughties. Will Barron Yeah, in sick form. If you walk behind me,

it looked like I sort of, you know, had a fight with a combine harvester. It was just shredded, completely shredded heels to the back of my jeans. Will Barron Well, in the 80s, what was very fashionable, certainly amongst football casuals, football fans, was you would cut a little triangle in the seam of the bottom of your jeans to open up dream pipe jeans a little bit. I remember that. I remember people doing that. Yeah. Like Ju Bellingham in the back of his socks. Yes, exactly like that.

No sort of cuts. Ellis, for a point, what is the most embarrassing thing that happened to me with a pair of pants dropping? Do you remember this? I will do, but there's just so many to choose from. We talk about elasticated pants. In defence of this story, that isn't to do with that. It was an interview I had at Radio Wales when I graduated. Remember? Do you know about this?

I will do. I just needed to remind me because there's so many. It's like taking someone to the National Library and going, see all those books in there. Pick a book at random. Go on. I'm going to be mentioning a story from one of these books. Which book do you think it is? There's just so much to choose from. So, I went in, I just graduated, I went for my first ever post uni job interview, this was at Radio Wales, and I went in to meet the editor of Radio Wales, and as I went in, yesterday's underpants fell out of the bottom of my jeans. I do remember that. I'd obviously got undressed for bed the night before and my pants had remained in

my jeans. The next day I put on new pants into my jeans, gone in, walked into the office. As I went in my pants fell on the floor in front of me. Now then. Was it Sally? Was it when Sally... It was Sally, yes. Now then.

I like you. Okay, thank you. I think that's a nice way to end. That's good. Okay, into like you. Okay, thank you. I think that's a nice way to end. That's good. Okay, into the history. Putting myself in the corporate arena. Okay, yeah. You know, head of BBC Wales or RG Wales going to employ someone.

I cannot employ you. I cannot employ a pants coming down the bottom of the trouser leg, man. Even at a lower level. But hang on, this is the era of the prank call, you know, the DJ like Steve Pank, you know, this is the comedic hilarious DJ era. You're walking with a guy, his pants are falling out of his trouser leg, you're like, you've got the job. Say no more. We'll put you on breakfast.

You're now hosting Radio Wales-ill's breakfast, six until ten. I've just sent you the picture of the boxers. Look from the knee down. Calzaggys are the worst. Calzaggys are… I wouldn't tell him, but they are bad. You could make two pairs of jeans with the amount of denim in his one pair of jeans. Quite easily.

Is Calzaggy out on the street wearing a pair of Uggs. Yeah, like Ugg slippers. I think they're work boots. I think they're sort of like tough man work boots. I think they're like caterpillar work boots with huge jeans. Enzals aren't great. Amir Khan's aren't great. Yeah. Frank Warren is wearing the kind of baggy suit of like a 50s gangster. Yeah. Prohibition here. What's weird, the sort of baggy suit, and then Danny Williams's trousers aren't great, and then it's, I think it's Matt Skelton.

Here's a fun question for our listeners. What items of clothing should be confined to history? I don't just want the answer to that, I want you to tell me what should return in its place. What items of clothing should be confined to history? I don't just want the answer to that. I want you to tell me what should return in its place. So what are we getting rid of from modern clothing? If it could be that, Ellis. Exactly. Why is she going into Tiger Tiger with a massive codpiece?

Well I've actually got a theory about this, a slightly adjacent theory. I reckon if you erased all of fashion from human consciousness and you started again, I'm not convinced the tie comes back. Will Barron It has absolutely no reason to do that. Will Barron It has absolutely no use. It's purely decorative. Will Barron It's just dangerous. Will Barron What would happen is, if we were all naked, and then someone said, right, we're inventing clothes we were doing from scratch, initially

everything would be designed to be comfortable and hard wearing. Yes. Practical. Because of work and getting things dirty and whatever. And it would, comfort would come first. And then what would happen is you would want to- Sort of onesie with knee pads. That sort of thing.

Sort of like a tough Teflon onesie. Everyone's wearing knee pad onesies. Yeah, yeah. I get you. I get you. Yeah. There's sort of, you know, There's sort of a well appointed boiler suit. But then what would happen is very quickly people would want to express their personalities and they'd want to look attractive. And that's when fashion comes in.

Well, Ellis, is there an argument in that case we should respect the bootcut gene as Is there an argument in that case we should respect the bootcut gene as simply an aspect of self-expression. So for us to mock it and say it should disappear actually, we're trying to stop people's freedom of expression, you know, showing who they are. Also what's funny, or what I'm jealous of, is that some people look good whatever they're wearing. Yeah. I hate those people because I look all right in a very small sort of...

Will Barron In a green Lacoste shirt. Will Barron Yeah, yeah. And that really, that really is it. Will Barron Yeah. There was an article with the guy from, he was the leader of the New Gladiator, a really handsome man. Will Barron Oh, Paul Muskell. Will Barron From ordinary people, Paul Muskell. Will Barron Yeah, yeah. Will Barron And he was wearing this crazy sort of tartan suit with a massive collar,

really weird, wide flared bottoms and everyone just saying how brilliant he looked. Right, okay. He did, but because he's incredibly good looking, Paul Mascal, if I was in that, it looked like I'd lost a bet. Or I was on my way to a stag tank. I'd call your wife and I'd say, Claire, he needs help. Please, he's struggling. I remember seeing a magazine article in Vanity Fair.

Vanity Fair. And it was, why is this so hot? Now we were all, we're all the same age, roughly the same age. We were all at university, some of the 2000s, early 2000s. You know how like the jocks used to go to co-op? Yeah. Sort of nine o'clock at night and it would be shorts, flip-flops and like, I don't know,

like a crap rugby shirt or like a t-shirt you'd worn on a stack. Yeah. It was that. It's just now, so he was wearing tiny like GAA shorts, socks pulled up to the calf, really tiny shorts. He's listening to his... He's just Paul Mascar with him. Paul Mascar, he's listening to his iPod and he's eating like a calipo or something, or he's got like a can of Lilt, like a crap old t-shirt that you'd sleep in. This to me is people who are doing the sports science degrees at Cardiff Met

in co-op on Cruyff's Road at like half past eight at night in January, and they're going to throw a rugby ball round in the car park. But because he's Paul Muskell, Americans who clearly haven't seen sports science students at Cardiff Met in co-op or half past eight at night are like, oh my God, it's the sexiest thing I've ever seen in my life. It's because he is sexy. Like I met male model David Gandhi once. Oh, there is not an item of clothing David Gandhi wouldn't look good in. David Gandhi and Paul McCall are doing 95% of the heavy lifting in any outfit they're wearing. Exactly. Whereas it's the opposite with me.

If I put on something nice, the outfit is doing the heavy lifting. Yeah, totally. I'm basically trying to distract from me. I'm exactly the same. Very occasionally there'll be something that just suits my shape and I can look passable. If you're Paul Muskell, the clothes suit his shape as opposed to the other way around or David Gandhi. Yeah.

But yeah. So if we got to the bottom of why Crane has never been a catwalk model, because what you're saying is he will bring the clothes down. I'm just very busy. That's what it is. I'm a very in-demand writer on a podcast, so it's kind of I've already got the time for that. Otherwise I would. I can't imagine anything. I would feel so vulnerable to clothes as a catwalk model. I'd be so embarrassed. I think they'd have to hold you back like a punchline.

You'd have to do like seven or eight models and then you'd laugh. Big laugh. Everyone's feeling a bit more relaxed. It's not feeling so formal anymore. Well done, Ellis. Well, you said if I'm the headliner at Paris Fashion Week. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Everyone knows you're going to come out. Yeah. Oh, do you think, I think if you came out, it'd be like the cuddly toy on Generation Game. You'd get away. Yay! I quite like it as well, Ellis, with that in mind. Have you ever seen it when the designer comes out with the models and is like tiny? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like some bloke and he's never sort of particularly dressed up either. It's often like jeans and t-shirt. Yeah. Hello. With his huge models. Hi. I would feel so embarrassed on a catwalk. I would love it. I'd love to see that. And the final ensemble in this year's Prada collection,

modeled by Ellis James, a podcaster, who looks incredibly embarrassed. That's part of the look. Oh yeah, walking up and down. Everyone's taking snaps. The elastic's gone of the look. Oh yeah, walking up and down. Everyone's taking snaps. The elastic's gone in your pants. The one thing you didn't want to happen. Your socks are drooping off your ankles.

What about, Crane, you model a fashion show made exclusively with clothes without elastic? Like you come out, you model all these clothes, no elastic. It's the new collection by Tom Crane. Trousers that are constantly falling down, socks around your ankles. Flashing by Tom Crane. I think I'll pass on that. However, before we moved on to natural history, I do generally want that. I think that's a good chat for our listeners. I want a one-in-one-out fashion. That's what I want. Yeah, that's a good idea. A piece of clothing from modern day that can be placed back in history, forgotten

about and also one that can come and replace it. Get in contact with the show and let us know your thoughts on that. Before we get into the history today, let's hit up one of the emails we've received this week. You're up for that guys? Yes, please. Okay. Quite recently, I don't know if you can remember, you've got better memories than me, we were

talking about Mead. Why were we talking about Mead? What was that about? I think it might be because I said they should stop trying to bring Mead back because I'd been to St. Fagans, the folk museum in Wales, and they're selling the gift shop, I think. Well, this email speaks to a thirst for Mead that we may not have been aware of. It's not just gift shop based. It's not just hipster. It turns out that becoming increasingly popular in a genuine sense. Rose has emailed to say, hello, hello. In your most recent episode on cancel culture, you started off by talking about mead. And unfortunately, I know a lot

about the wretched drink as I work in a Viking themed metal pub in New York. Which as you can imagine gets lots of interesting customers. And we sell, get this, about 12 types of mead. Wow. I didn't know there were 12 types. Yeah, indeed. Personally, I can't stand the stuff, but it's bizarrely really, really popular. If I had a penny, every time I had to describe what it was and what it's made of and warn people how strong it is, well, I wouldn't need this

job. We do sometimes get people even bringing in their own horns, as in Viking horns, and requesting to drink mead out of the horns. Once we had someone come in claiming they worked at a mead brewery and I just thought, well, that's probably made up, isn't it? Especially seeing as they were asking for a honey based mead, which is like all of them. There you are. So they're all all of them. Anyways, I hope that helps. I love the podcast. It's getting me through my history degree. That's from Rose. Thank you for emailing Rose. So there you are. There's a pub in York that sells 12 types of mead. I think York, I think it's the best pub city in Britain. Really? It is a fantastic place to go for a pint, York. It sounds like it might be the mead capital of the world.

A standard mead is 7 to 14 percent. There you go. Blimey. I don't think you need a pint of it. I imagine mead is quite sickly because of the honey aspect. Yeah. But I now really want to go there. Well if we're ever doing an OB broadcast of this, we will go to the York Rock Club

and we will try all the 12 types of meat. Pint. Absolutely fucked at the end. Oh, what a place. If any of you guys work in a place that sells some weird historical food stuff, artefact, something you'd think shouldn't be knocking around in 2025. Do let us know about that as well. There are many ways to get in contact with a show and here's just a few of them. All right, you horrible lot.

Here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at earlwhattatime.com and you can follow us at hello at owattertime.com and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at owattertimepod. Now clear off. There you go, that's how you can get in touch with the show and don't forget, if you want even more Oh What A Time, including two bonus episodes every month,

you can become an Oh What A Time full-timer. You can do that via another slice or you can go to Wander E+. For all of your options, become an O What A Time full-timer. You can do that via another slice or you can go to Wondery Plus. For all of your options, go to O What A Time. I was actually, we recently did an episode on Spycatcher, the book by Peter Wright that gives the theory that the old head of MI6, Roger Hollis was actually a Soviet spy, offers that up. I was going through my notes on that bonus episode we did in January,

and I found one note that I didn't tell you about that I was like, oh, I wish I'd done that. Which is that, so Peter Wright, in MI6 in the kind of 60s, everyone had their own personal safe, but only the director general and I think the assistant director general had access to the safe. And he thought people were going through his safe. So what he did, he had two pieces of paper on top of each other and just made a tiny little pencil mark across these two overlapping pieces of paper. So they were perfectly lined up, these lines lined up. And when he went back the next day, he could see the lines weren't messed up. Someone had gone through the papers. He left a little trick to see that someone was going

through his papers. Will Barron I suppose if you're working in any environment where you think people might be spying on your stuff, it'll be working for MI6, where you're surrounded by spies. I can see how you might feel that could be a possibility. This is why I would be a shit spy. I'm just not a details person. It would not occur to me to think like that. Has anyone been looking through your stuff? I don't know. Have you checked? No?

Should I have? Yes? Oh, no, I've got no way of knowing. Will Barron You'd never be entirely sure if you'd been through your stuff either. Did you go through your stuff earlier? I literally don't know. Rob Bates Maybe, actually. Will Barron So if you want to catch that Spycatcher episode and all the other bonus episodes we've got, you can go to owatertime.com and look at your options for signing up. But today's episode is all about known, confirmed cover-ups. What are you guys going to be talking about? I am going to be talking about the 1984-85 miners' strike. I'm going to be talking about a genuinely shocking cover-up on the part of the American

government during Prohibition. It is mad. And I'm going to tell you all about, right now, a famous Soviet nuclear disaster. April 1986. The Chernobyl nuclear power station exploded. Hopefully we've all seen the Chernobyl series. Familiar with what happened at Chernobyl? Yes. I've seen about five episodes, really enjoyed it and then life and parenting got in the way. I was unable to continue. Is it a sort of place that you'd be tempted to visit or not? Do you have that sort of dark tourism part of you or not? Absolutely not at all. So I will, like I cannot imagine visiting Auschwitz for instance.

What about you Chris? I mean, I've definitely done some dark tourism, but I don't know if I'd want to do dark tourism in an area that is covered with radioactive fallout. I'd probably draw the line there. Would you include West Ham away as dark tourism or not? Why would West Ham and Millwall in the cup? Millwall's the new den in that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It affected farming in North Wales.

Well, this is really... Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like farmers couldn't sell sort of lamb or beef because a cloud from Chernobyl went over North Wales and because it started moving. Wow. It was actually the first detection of it in Northern Europe, I think was somewhere in Scandinavia. Like some of the atomic readings of monitoring radioactivity went off in like, I think it might have been Sweden or Norway, somewhere really far north.

Yeah, but you're quite right. Acid rain fell in like the west of Ireland, Snowdonia in North Wales, farming was affected, and the Soviet authorities denied the explosion for days until the denial became untenable. But I'm actually not going to tell you about Chernobyl. I'm actually going to tell you about... Oh, I'm genuinely disappointed. Well, we should do that in another episode. There was actually a nuclear accident in the Soviet Union that happened years before that on the 29th of September, 1957, in a Plutonian production plant in Azyusk, a closed city in the Ural Mountains

in southern Russia. Do you know what closed cities are? This is a fascinating thing about the Soviet Union. What's that? The Soviet Union had closed cities, which were basically, access was restricted due to the fact the capabilities within this city were like strategic, military, or had some other kind of scientific significance. Oh wow.

They were usually cities dedicated to the development of weapons or nuclear research or key military operations. But basically, in a closed city, only residents with special permits were allowed into those cities. And there was a great degree of secrecy about those cities as well. So typically you might find that they were absent from maps or public records or that their very locations were classified. And movement in and out was also tightly controlled. Residents were often sworn to secrecy about their work and surroundings,

isn't it? Absolute nightmare when you're first moving there to get the job and not on maps. I've got a great job. Brilliant. But I'm three weeks into the drive. I have no idea. Should give directions to Orioles Sutton of it. Oh yeah. That's absolutely fascinating. I wasn't aware of that as a thing. That's amazing. That's a great setup for like a drama. The idea of a city that nobody knows exists. That's fantastic. I love that. So exciting. Ozjorsk was originally named City 40 40, was founded on the banks of Lake Irutash, 155 kilometres south of Yakutyrnberg in 1947 to service the Mayak Plutonian plant which was then being built.

The city was established as the home of the Soviet nuclear weapons programme. And today, as of right now, it is one of the most polluted places on earth. And the reason it's so polluted is it is covered in nuclear waste. That is where it gets most of its toxicity. There was a great deal of haste with which City 40 was built. It was a reaction to, in the Cold War, to the American nuclear weapons programme, which the Soviets had seen obviously use the devastating effect in the summer of 1945. That's what you want when someone's building a nuclear, whatever you call it, reactor haste.

That's what you want. That sense of, let's just get this done quickly. That's the word you want to hear. Yeah. Corners being cut, bodge job being a world that people are bundying about. Yeah. Sergey, just knock it up. I don't care.

I've done one of these. Like that ITV show. What was that show? Changing Rooms, where they'd sort of people leave for an hour and you come back and it's sort of, your front room's a nuclear reactor. That's the Russian version. Made of MDF. Yeah, exactly.

Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen going, look, I've turned your garden into a... It's glowing. You won't need lights again. In 1949, the USSR started conducting its first nuclear tests and it would carry on doing so until 1991 when it stopped following the collapse of the Soviet Union. One thousand, almost one thousand nuclear devices were exploded in this part of the country as part of the country's atomic weapons programme. Wow, so they were testing weapons there? Yeah.

Wow. More than any other country on earth. And the effects were unsurprisingly covered up by state secrets, despite millions of people suffering from various forms of radiation poisoning. Oh my goodness. That's mad, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, I feel like on the last one of the previous episodes, I was very generous about

Joseph Stalin's photoshopping skills. So it's good to have some balance and point out how in other ways the Soviet Union was utterly disastrous. Problematic. The Azorsk disaster of 1957 was the worst at that point to before the Soviet nuclear program and it demanded the most serious government cover-up. There weren't actually that many people who dined in it. There was 200 dead from radiation exposure, 66 from radiation poisoning

in the long term, but some 270,000 were affected by the spread of radioactive material in the atmosphere where they lived. So God, that'd be everyone you knew. Yeah. Yeah. So is that in cities and conurbations near? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that's on the wind where it happens to be, it's been carried, isn't it, basically? Yeah. The effects of nuclear use. Well, what's mad is that this happened on a September day. And effectively, there was 70 to 80 tonnes of highly radioactive liquid waste in a storage tank that was being cooled by a cooling system.

But the cooling system malfunctioned because it hadn't been repaired properly. Without adequate cooling, the waste, the 70 to 80 tonnes of highly radioactive liquid, began to overheat. And the storage tanks containing the contaminated waste exploded with a force of 70 tonnes of TNT and eight tonnes of radioactive material was lifted up into the atmosphere. A column of smokes and dust stretched a mile high and then was carried on the wind as far as 200 kilometres away. Bloody hell.

Wow. Yeah. That's incredible. Also, if you saw that happen and you knew what it was. Yeah. That's incredible. Also, if you saw that happen and you knew what it was, can you imagine how you'd be like, okay, well, this is a big problem that I don't think everyone can sort out. It's a good point as well in a closed city, you'd think everyone's going to know. What else could that big, great could that big green explosion be? Desperately hope it's a garden center and someone's left the gas on or something.

Or a car's backfired. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So, I mean, this is the Soviet Union. So the government scramble to contain the fallout. And they really just want to understand what's happened. But of course, they're not- Literally the fallout, the the fallout. They really just want to understand what's happened, but of course they're not- Literally the fallout, the nuclear fallout. Yeah, literally. But they're not acknowledging that anything has taken place.

There's no public statement about it. An internal memo called it an accident and all the blame gets thrown on the local officials at the plant. I tell you what, every time a local official in the Soviet Union appears in a drama or anything historical that I'm reading about, they're getting blamed for something. It's got to be the worst job in the Soviet Union. Yeah, yeah. It's the kind of thing that if you met your sort of prospective mother and father-in-law

and you asked them what they did, oh, we're local officials. Okay, well in five years time, you're going to end up in an awful lot of trouble for something that wasn't your fault. Are we local officials actually? You never hear any historical stories about local officials in the Soviet Union being praised, having absolutely nailed something, done it really well. Yeah, what a thankless task. So a week after the disaster, 10,000 people were beginning to be evacuated from nearby villages, but they're not being told why they're being removed.

I think that's good. I think that's right. Leave it a week. I think that's good. To be fair, I think it was over the course of a week. Okay, fine, fine, fine. But they're not telling them why they're being removed. They're just obliging.

That's so scary, isn't it? You imagine they know what's happened. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unbelievably. So this happened in 1957. The Ozursk disaster was not fully exposed until the 1970s, almost 20 years later, when a dissident scientist, Zors Medvedev, wrote an article on the subject for the New Scientist magazine. He got his date slightly wrong. He said it was 1958, not 1957, but the story was true. Here's what he wrote.

There was an enormous explosion like a violent volcano. The nuclear reactions had led to overheating in the underground burial grounds. The explosion poured radioactive dust and materials high up into the sky. It was just the wrong weather for such a tragedy. Strong winds blew the radioactive weather for such a tragedy. Strong winds blew the radioactive clouds hundreds of miles away. But when he talked about this in the 70s, no one really believed Medvedev. They thought he'd been exaggerated or he was making it up. And the UK's Atomic Energy Agency head, a guy called John Hill, described the story as rubbish.

It's like being Everton manager. It's a fun task and no one ever believes you when you're right. But it has a go at you when you're wrong. No one really notices when it's going fine. When you're just muddling along at mid table. There's not a great deal of braids. It's just happening, isn't it? You're existing. You're not going to get fired. You are what you are. Then it's big sorts of twerks. As soon as you start talking about local officials in the Soviet Union, I was thinking, who does that remind me of? David Moyes.

I didn't realise it. David Moyes, Sean Dyche being editor manager. I wonder why we were concealing it as well, well not concealing it, why was that reaction from a British politician? What was the reason for that? I guess it's so outrageous, isn't it? That a nuclear explosion of this magnitude could have happened and not been detected or known about. Yeah.

What I remember from watching the Chernobyl drama, there is that sort of people being forced to accept the responsibility for things because of hierarchy and fear and people knowing that those above can basically... They just have no choice, do they? So there's a lot of that sort of thing seem to happen. It's very hierarchical and very much doing what you're told. Yeah, exactly. That's completely it. Yeah. I mean, it's basically like being in primary school. Yeah. But also underpinned by genuine and fair fear that if you're in trouble, you're really going to... you really are in trouble. People are feared for their lives and they're

feared for their families and stuff. Nuclear power going wrong. When I was a kid, it was something that people were very frightened of. It was a kind of punchline in comedy. Do you remember the old, the 1980s Ready Brek adverts where the kid would be eating Ready Brek and they'd have the glow and they'd have that red glow around them because they'd been eating nice Ready Brek

and they were nice and cosy and they were about to go to school. I remember there was a Not The Nine O'Clock News sketch in the mid-80s, early to mid-80s, and it was something like, you know, give your kids, give you this glow, you know, send them to school in Sellafield because there was a nuclear power plant in Sellafield. And also I suppose Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they would have been in more recent living memory. It was in the part of the conversation far more. Whereas now, like the French, the largest source of electricity in France is

nuclear power. That's been since the 80s. And it's kind of people are far less bothered about nuclear power and stuff now than they were then, if you know what I mean. To what extent is Homer Simpson to blame as well for the perception that politically abou is a disaster? I like the three-eyed fish and stuff in Springfield. It was something that would crop up in comedy as a reference fairly often. Well, the news of the Ozursk disaster actually really began to take hold in 1978. There was an article in Esquire by another dissident scientist, this time the former head of biophysics in Moscow, and he confirmed that something really had taken place in the Euros 20 years before.

In 1979, Medvedev published a full account, Nuclear Disaster in the Euros, warning of the dangers of nuclear programs and the probability of government cover-ups. Remarkably, a cover-up of Vysyorsk was made not only by the Soviet authorities, who obviously had a vested interest in covering it up, but it was also covered up by the Americans too. Interesting. Who determined that revealing the explosion and its impact would undermine their own nuclear testing program. They knew about it and they didn't acknowledge it. Ah, fascinating. Absolutely fascinating.

You think that they would say, but we won't get it wrong because we're the best and capitalism is better than communism and we're going to win. Yes. And we put a man of the moon first and all that kind of stuff. You think that they would use it as a way of undermining what the Soviets were doing? But then if it was a new technology that people were uncomfortable with, I can see where that would come from. That would be the prevailing concern would be the safety of the very nature of that way. And everyone knew the horrific outcome of what had happened in Japan as well. Yeah, exactly. Yes. You can see the logic behind that, but that's fascinating. And actually, Ralph Nader, in conjunction with the New York Times, following a series of freedom of information requests. He revealed that in 1977, the CIA had known all along about the Azork disaster since 1959,

with information coming to Langley via secret interviews conducted at the time with the Soviet, East German, and Eastern European scientists, various scientists. Yes, so the CIA knew about it almost instantly but didn't reveal to assist their own nuclear research capabilities. To make certain of the cover-up, the Soviet authorities designated the land near the site of the explosion as the East Urals Nature Reserve in 1968. The act ensured that the public was, and still is, prevented from going anywhere near the site and land management could be strictly controlled by a government agency. And today-

Nature reserve. For six-eyed fish, deers with five legs. It's a lovely nature reserve when no one's allowed to go. Yeah, exactly. There you go. Well, well, well, that's fascinating. I wonder if the people who live there, if there was a sense of stuff being rushed and jobs not being done properly, whether there was a sort of sense of danger or not. Were people aware of that? If you're working in these plants and you were seeing the state they're in and the way that, or maybe not,

or maybe the information was controlled so much you wouldn't have any sense of that. Maybe on the day the whole nuclear power plant was revealed to have been constructed by Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen over a weekend while they were away, they might have had suspicions. I can't imagine running to work if I was involved in the Soviet nuclear programme. If I was involved in the Soviet nuclear program, I can't imagine the alarm going at about 7. Getting up, you're like, right another day of the grind zone, come on, let's quick show them out and I'll be first in, cannot wait. Also all that nuclear waste exploded because the cooling system wasn't being repaired, but imagine being that repairman. Yeah. Like, oh, all the nuclear waste is starting to heat up a bit. Can you have

a look at the fan down there? Yeah, you're putting on your hazmat suit and you're just like, is this enough? Is this more than this? Can you waft some air over that 80 tonnes of nuclear waste? Yeah, yeah. Don't worry, Chris, I'll do it. Can't wait. Getting stuck in. Okay, that's the end of part one of cover-ups that actually happened.

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