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