Richard Cook (19:01)

Hop'S biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune and the music industry.

Lindsey Graham (19:06)

The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean.

Richard Cook (19:12)

Dennis Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about.

Lindsey Graham (19:19)

Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party. So yeah, that's what's up.

Richard Cook (19:23)

But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three count indictment charging Sean Combs with racketeering, conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution.

Lindsey Graham (19:37)

I was up and I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real.

Richard Cook (19:48)

From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Pl.

Lindsey Graham (20:12)

Thanks to Morton Thiokol Engineer Al MacDonald, the Rogers Commission now knows that NASA executives were aware of the risks of launching in cold weather and pressured Thiokol to greenlight the Challenger launch anyway. McDonald's revelations cast a shadow of doubt over the testimony given by NASA representatives, and that night, Commissioner member Richard Feynman decides he's no longer going to sit back and let NASA continue to cloud the public's perception of what happened. Feynman is a Nobel Prize winning physicist, but he's also a teacher, lecturer and best selling author. He's known for his ability to break down complicated scientific ideas into language that's easily digestible for the public. And with the Commission's next public hearing scheduled for the following day, Feynman prepares to do just that. The meeting begins just after 10am on February 11, 1986. Feynman takes his seat on the stage of the auditorium alongside his fellow commission members. NASA Project manager Larry Malloy returns to the witness stand to deliver a presentation about the solid rocket boosters. For nearly 90 minutes, Feynman watches him pace back and forth, moving between a miniature model of the shuttle and a handful of other exhibits, explaining in detail how the booster's engines are manufactured and refurbished. But Feynman is unimpressed. What he really wants to hear is a simple explanation of how the cold temperatures at launch may have affected the O rings inside of Challenger's boosters. And he gets the impression that Malloy is trying to obscure that crucial topic by burying the commission in unrelated technical details. So when the commission breaks for a recess, Feynman approaches Rogers and gets the chairman's permission to conduct a brief experiment. After the break, Rogers concedes, and Feynman starts to prepare. He takes a small 1 inch sample of an O ring that's been provided to the commission for the inquiry. Then he pours a fresh glass of ice water into a Styrofoam cup and takes a small metal clamp out of his pocket. He folds the O ring over several times, then locks the folds in place with the clamp and dunks the whole thing into the ice water. And as the hearing resumes, Feynman makes his move. Mr. Chairman, with your permission, I'd like to share something with Mr. Malloy. With all eyes on him, Feynman pulls the clamp and the O ring sample out of the styrofoam cup. Now, Mr. Malloy, during our recess, I took this stuff that I got out of your seal and I put it in ice water. I discovered something very interesting. When you put some pressure on it, like I did with this clamp, and then release that pressure, it doesn't stretch back. In other words, there's no resilience in this material when it's at a temperature of 32 degrees. I believe that has some significance. Significance for our problem. Feynman passes the hardened O ring material around the stage for his fellow commissioners to examine as he continues to question Malloy. Now, we've established in previous hearings that if the rubber is hardened, it might not expand to fill the joints of the booster properly. Is that right? Low temperature increases the time that would be required for the O ring to fill the seal of the joint. Yes, sir. So was there some kind of temperature limit on when you would say a seal was safe enough to fly? Well, right now we're running extensive testing to understand the response of the seal under the specific conditions during the launch of the Challenger. But the specification for the material says it will operate anywhere from minus 30 to 500 degrees. So you were certain it would work fine all the way down to minus 30 degrees. Thiol did present some data indicating a possible reduction in resilience if the temperature was down to 20 or 25 degrees degrees. But that was lower than what we had at launch. Now, just to be certain, we are running control tests under the specific conditions of the launch to understand it better, I guess. I'm not really concerned about tests you're running after the explosion. I just want to know, before the launch, from information that was available, was it fully appreciated everywhere that this seal would become unsatisfactory at some temperature? Yes, sir. But we felt under the conditions we had on launch day, the seal would function appropriately. And that was the final judgment. Clearly, that was your final judgment. But you're saying none of the engineers at thy call thought differently? Well, some engineers at th all suggested that the shuttle shouldn't be operated below any temperature that had been seen on previous lines. All right. Thank you. I have no further questions. Feynman leans back in his chair, satisfied he's done his job and hopeful that when he watches tonight's news coverage of the hearing, he'll find that his simple demonstration with the O Ring has reached the public as well. For the next 48 hours, video of Richard Feynman's impromptu O Ring experiment gets replayed by news networks all across the country. Through his Ice cup demonstration, the public begins to understand that the O Rings may have caused the explosion. And through Feynman's interrogation of Larry Molloy, they also learned that the explosion may have been preventable. In the wake of this breakthrough, more Thiokol executives and engineers are asked to testify before the commission. But two of those engineers, Al MacDonald and Roger Beaujolais, grow increasingly paranoid as their scheduled appearances approach. Both men fought hard to prevent Challenger's launch, and they have evidence that could prove damning to both NASA and their own bosses at the company. But they worry about the retaliation they might face if they go public about their experiences. In the days following the disaster, Beaujolais was ordered by Thiokol to turn over all documents relevant to the launch. But instead of following those orders, Beaujolais hid some documents in a locked drawer in his desk. Now, fearing for the safety of those files and even his own life, Beaujolais quietly retrieves the documents and mails a duplicate set to his wife. And as he awaits his chance to testify, he begins sleeping with the original copies underneath his pillow in his hotel room. As for MacDonald, he spends the next few days preparing detailed notes about everything he remembers from the pre launch process. And leaves a copy with a trusted colleague. And when he's officially called to testify on February 14, MacDonald's testimony lands like a bombshell. He recounts the late night teleconference in detail and walks the commission through the charts the engineers presented to NASA. McDonnell tells the commission that he was so vigorously opposed to the launch that he refused to sign his name to the recommendation, forcing Thiokol executive Joseph Kilminster to sign it in his place. Following this hearing, MacDonald becomes something of a national hero, and commission Chairman William Rogers is so moved by McDonald's testimony that he decides to pivot the focus of the investigation. He wants to determine not just what is to blame for the disaster, but who. Up until now, the Rogers commission has treated NASA officials as partners in the inquiry. But now Rogers bars participation from anyone involved in the Challenger launch. And when the next open door hearing is called to order on the morning of February 25th, there's a palpable shift in the tenor of the proceedings. And as Roger Beaujolais waits his turn to be called to the standard, he watches his boss, Thiokol Senior Vice President Jerry Mason, squirm under the commission's adversarial questions. Armed with information they learned from McDonnell, the commissioners hammer Mason about the teleconference the night before. Launch astronaut Sally Ride and physicist Richard Feynman are especially forceful, homing in on how Mason came to recommend the launch despite dire warnings from his engineers. Beaujolais feels mixed emotions about this scene. He's saddened to see his company's failings exposed like this in a public setting. But he's also gratified to see Mason, the man who refused to listen to Beaujolais warnings time and again, finally getting his comeuppance. When Mason's testimony is concluded, Beaujolais is called next. As he takes his seat on the stage, he feels his nerves getting the best of him. But then Beaujolais takes a deep breath, and he thinks back to the days leading up to the launch. He remembers all the times he pleaded with Thiokol's management to do the right thing, put the safety of the astronauts first. And then he decides that if his testimony destroys his company or costs him his job, then that's a price worth paying for the truth. Beaujolais begins his testimony by recounting his trips to Cape Canaveral in the years leading up to the launch, where he personally inspected the shuttle's spent rocket boosters after they were recovered from the Ocean Post launch. He explains the damage he documented in the booster's O rings, and he shares photos showing how the damage became more severe in the year leading up to the disaster. Then Beaujolais testifies about the teleconference the night before the launch. Referring to notes he took immediately after the call, he tells the commission that he believed Thiokol's engineers made an overwhelming case that launching in temperatures that cold could not be considered safe. But NASA's Larry Molloy seemed to reverse the agency's safety policy on a whimsical Beaujolais notes that Molloy explicitly stated it was Beaujolais burden to prove the O rings would fail, rather than NASA's burden to prove that they were safe. Next, Beaujolais recounts the poll taken by Mason where the Thiokol executives voted on whether or not to recommend a launch. Beaujolais explains that Mason excluded the engineers and pushed his fellow executives to make a business decision, not an engineering one. As he talks, Beaujolais looks into the faces of the dozen commissioners across the stage, trying to measure their reaction. He narrows in on Commissioner Neil Armstrong and sees the former astronaut's lips purse seething with anger. It's a striking moment for Beaujolais, watching the first man on the moon boiling with contempt for the very agency that made him a household name. And as Beaujolais testimony nears its conclusion, Chairman Rogers asks him to read aloud from a memo Beaujolais had written to his bosses in July of 1985, six months before the disaster. Beaujolais nods. He's been waiting for this moment. Of all the documents he locked away in his desk in the days after the explosion, he considers this memo the most damning. The room goes quiet as Beaujolais reads the memo in its entirety. In it, he begs his bosses for more time and resources to redesign the O rings. He writes that if shuttle launches continue with the O rings as currently designed, then the result could be a catastrophe of the highest order, including loss of human life. Coming to the end of the memo, Beaujolais reads, it is my honest and very real fear that if we do not take immediate action and dedicate a team to solve the problem with the O rings, then we stand in jeopardy of losing a flight. With Beaujolais testimony now concluded, he stands and leaves the stage and takes a seat to watch his fellow engineers give their account. And as he listens from his seat in the crowd, Beaujolais feels a weight lift from his shoulders. He's relieved to know that the documents he had gone to such great lengths to protect are now part of the public record. Now he just hopes that NASA and Thiokol will do the right thing and hold people accountable for the decisions that cost those seven astronauts their lives.

C (31:20)

I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be Finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad free on Wondery plus. Join Wondery plus plus in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts, or Spotify.

Lindsey Graham (32:31)

As the Rogers Commission hearings stretch into March of 1986, NASA continues working to recover Challenger from the Atlantic Ocean. The effort is led by Robert Crippen, the astronaut who piloted Columbia on NASA's first ever space shuttle mission. Heartbroken by the deaths of seven of his fellow astronauts, Crippen volunteered shortly after the explosion, looking for a constructive way to deal with his grief. And their recovery is a massive undertaking. Dozens of ships, planes and helicopters from NASA, the Navy, and the Coast Guard scour a vast expanse of ocean looking for pieces of debris. Each recovered piece is laid out meticulously in a warehouse near the launch site in Cape Canaveral. And as NASA engineers begin to puzzle the Challenger back together, they look for definitive evidence of what caused the explosion. But NASA is searching for more than just mechanical debris. They are also eager to recover the bodies of the fallen astronauts to bring closure for their loved ones. And on the afternoon of March 7th, a recovery diver named Mike McAllister makes a grim discovery. McAllister has been working on the Challenger salvage operation from the first hours after the disaster. It's been a long and often tedious process, using sonar to scan the ocean floor and then diving down to retrieve even the smallest pieces of debris. Today, McAllister and his partner, Terry Bailey, are searching a new area, a small section of The Atlantic, about 18 miles northeast of the launch site. Sonar on their recovery vessel recently picked up what looks to be a large metallic object, so McAllister is hoping to find something significant. The two men swim along the bottom of the ocean, 90ft underwater, dressed in black wetsuits and goggles and scuba tanks strapped to their backs. McAllister carries a bright orange inflatable buoy used to mark debris sites. Bailey has a sonar gun. Together, they move slowly, struggling to navigate through the cold and turbulent water. They only have about 10ft of visibility, so just ahead of him, McAllister barely is able to see Bailey aiming his sonar gun at the ocean floor, searching for wreckage. After a long while, Bailey looks back at McAllister and shakes his head no. He's not picking up anything. Then he points to his watch, asking how much time they have left on their tanks. McAllister checks the watch on his wrist and holds up 10 fingers, indicating 10 minutes left. McAllister uses a hand signal to suggest they do one more sweep of the area, and Bailey nods in agreement. McAllister follows behind Bailey, but before long, he sees Bailey point, indicating he's picked up something on sonar. Through the murky water, McAllister begins to see small chunks of shiny metal and wiring sticking out of the sand beneath him. It's definitely a debris field from the challenger. Then McAllister sees his partner stop swimming and begin pointing frantically at a larger piece of wreckage. For a moment, McAllister can't figure out what's wrong. Then he's able to look closer and sees it. A pair of white legs bobbing slowly in the current. McAllister swims ahead of Bailey and quickly realizes that what he's looking at is the bottom half of a spacesuit. He knows there's nobody inside it. The spacesuits weren't worn by the astronauts during the flight, but they were stored nearby in the crew compartment for use in spacewalks. McAllister turns back to his partner, but Bailey is nowhere to be found. McAllister figures he must have been so spooked that he headed back to the surface. Checking his watch, McAllister sees he's only got six minutes left in this tank. He needs to work fast. He frantically ties the marker buoy to a chunk of nearby wreckage with a long nylon string. He unspools it, then releases it, letting the buoy float to the surface to mark the location. Then McAllister turns upward and begins his ascent. He's relieved that he didn't actually come into contact with the remains of an astronaut. But he knows what that spacesuit means. They found the crew compartment and that the astronauts must be nearby. The day after Mike McAllister and Terry Bailey's discovery, the recovery team begins pulling the astronauts bodies from the ocean. From there they're transported to an Air Force Force facility where pathologists begin performing autopsies on the crew, hoping to determine the definitive cause of death. Meanwhile, more equipment from the shuttle is recovered, including computers and audio recording systems from inside the orbiter. And as these components are examined, investigators make a shocking discovery. In the moments after the explosion, one of the astronauts could be heard saying oh over the orbiter's internal communication system. And three of their emergency oxygen packs were switched on as they fell toward the ocean. This is the first evidence that some and perhaps all of the astronauts actually survived the explosion and might have been alive for the full two and a half minutes before the crew cabin made impact with water. This discovery leads to speculation that the astronauts may have survived the disaster if there had been an emergency escape system installed on the shuttle. But years prior such a system was deemed unnecessary and cut from the shuttle's design in a push by NASA to make the craft lighter, more efficient and able to carry larger payloads. Weeks later, In June of 1986, William Rogers delivers his commission's final report to the White House. And it is damning. There is much blame to go around, but NASA's Larry Molloy receives the harshest criticism. The commission cites Malloy's years long failure to take the O ring issue seriously or to report what he knew about it to his superiors as primary contributors to the disaster. Malloy is also criticized for his effort to reverse the Thiokol engineer's recommendation that the Challenger launch be postponed due to cold weather. Soon after the report's release, Malloy resigns from NASA. The commission's final report also has repercussions at Morton Thiokol. Jerry Mason, the Thiokol executive who ignored the warnings from his engineers, takes an early retirement from the company. And several other executives from the rocket booster program are reassigned to different divisions. But rank and file Thiokol employees also suffer from the Challenger disaster. With the shuttle program now on indefinite hiatus, 200 Thiokal workers are laid off and more than a thousand are moved to part time. The engineers who tried to stop the launch are treated as heroes by the American public but become pariahs within their own company. They're seen as turncoats and blamed for the mass layoffs of their colleagues. Roger Beaujolais takes everything especially hard. Not only does he find himself ostracized by his colleagues, but he still blames himself for not doing more to stop the launch. He suffers from nightmares and is diagnosed with Post Traumatic stress disorder. Soon after, he leaves Thiokol and never works in aerospace again. Joseph Kilminster, one of the Thiokol executives who changed his launch recommendation the night before the disaster, is left equally haunted. One evening in the fall of 1986, he's in the living room of his home in Utah, playing host to his old friend Brian Russell, a Thiocol engineer. For now, both men's jobs have been spared, though Kilminster has been transferred to the company's automotive division. Still, Kilminster can't stop thinking about some of the employees under him who've lost their jobs, not to mention the fallen astronauts and their families. Oz Kilminster leans back in his recliner and begins staring out the window, watching the sunset over the mountains. Russell checks in on him. So, Joe, how's Automotive? It's all right, I guess. I mean, I'm lucky to have any job, right? After all that's happened. Do miss seeing you and the other guys from the booster plant. Well, you're not missing much. Honestly, I wish I was let go. I dread going in every morning. It's nothing but dirty looks all the time. Me and the other engineers who testified, we've. We're calling ourselves the Five Leopards. Oh man, you don't deserve that. You guys did the right thing. That launch should never have happened and you said so. And then all you did is tell the truth. I'm sure the history books will call you heroes. Not me, though. What do you mean by that? You see the graffiti on the bridge outside town? One that says Morton Thaya call murderers. Yeah. They're talking about me. No, they're not. I don't think that's true. You were with me in that conference room the night before the launch. When Mason took that poll. He told us to make a business decision, not an engineering decision. I never should have listened to him. I should have been thinking about the astronauts. Oh, come on, Joe. Mason put you in a terrible spot. You weren't the only one who voted to launch. But all it would have taken was one vote to stop it. I could have saved those astronauts lives. And then I was the one who had to sign the recommendation. In 100 years, people are going to look at my signature on that letter. And that's how I'll be remembered. A guy who made the wrong decision for the wrong reasons. Kilminster puts his head in his hands and begins to sob. A moment later, he feels Russell's hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort him. But there's nothing his friend can do to take away the guilt. In the wake of the Challenger disaster, NASA paused all shuttle launches for nearly three years, and during that time the agency made some significant changes. The joints of the rocket boosters were reinforced to prevent the type of gas leak that caused the explosion. An escape system was added to the orbiter, allowing astronauts to exit the shuttle and parachute to safety in an emergency. And to reduce the number of missions, the shuttles were no longer used to carry commercial satellites into orbit. Space shuttle launches resumed in September 1988 and had a successful safety record until 2003. That year, the original shuttle Columbia broke up during re entry, killing its entire crew of seven astronauts. Following that disaster, President George W. Bush announced the shuttle program would be retired after it had completed its final mission, helping to complete assembly of the International space station. On July 21, 2011, the shuttle Atlantis touched down at Kennedy Space center in Florida, marking the end of the space shuttle program. All told, the space shuttle fleet conducted 133 successful missions over the course of three decades, but the program never quite achieved NASA's vision of making journeys into space as safe and routine as commercial air travel. Today, most manned spaceflight is conducted by private companies like Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and SpaceX. But in 2026, NASA hopes to return to one of its former glories, putting astronauts back on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. From Wonder E this is episode 4 of the Challenger Disaster from American Skin. On our next episode, I speak with Steve lechart, co director and producer of the Netflix document series the Final Flight. If you're enjoying American Scandal, you can unlock exclusive seasons on Wondery. Binge new seasons first and listen completely ad free when you join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a survey@wondery.com survey if you'd like to learn more about the Challenger disaster, we recommend the books Challenger by Adam higginbotham, the Burning Blue by Kevin Cook, and the Final Flight, Available on Netflix, this episode contains reenactments and dramatized details. And while in most cases we can't know exactly what was said, all our dramatizations are based on historical research. American Scandal is hosted, edited and executive produced by me, Lindsey Graham for Airship Audio editing by Christian Paraga Sound design by Gabriel Gould Music by Lindsey Graham. This this episode is written by Corey Metcalfe. Edited by Emma Cortlandt Fact checking by Alyssa Jung Perry produced by John Reed Managing producer Joe Florentino Senior producers Andy Beckerman and Andy Herman Development by Stephanie Jens. Executive producers are Jenny Lauer, Beckman, Marshall Louie and Aaron O'Flaherty. For wonder.