Causality

CURRENT


178 iTunes Ratings (4.9 Av)
166
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Causality

Chain of Events. Cause and Effect. We analyse what went right and what went wrong as we discover that many outcomes can be predicted, planned for and even prevented.


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Show Blog

Total Listening Time: 1 day, 3 hours, 58 minutes and 4 seconds.

Selected iTunes Reviews
Ragequeen6
Great, easy listening

John has a great voice to listen to. He’s also super smart and breaks the maths and such side of things down enough my brain doesn’t freak out haha. Thanks. Sam. Perth

MacAdk
Great podcast for safety practitioners and risk managers.

Really enjoy John’s analysis of these famous safety incidents. Lots to learn here!

Sheldon Porcina
Love it

A wonderful podcast. Loving it!

AaronBman88
A True Favorite

I discovered this podcast in a roundabout way investigating Chernobyl & Fukushima. John Chigdey is a passionate genius, I love his delivery, knowledge and analysis. I have never heard of many of these incidents (NOT ACCIDENTS!). It's tragic how these mistakes pile up on each other until the inevtiable happens. Everything seems so safe and reliable until it doesn't. Even if you're not an engineer or a scientist this is a must listen series. I listened to them all pretty much straight in a row. There are lessons here applicable to just about every part of life.

Sheldon Porcina
Love it

A wonderful podcast. Loving it!

SeanJohnWan
Fukushima

Great podcast. Just finished Fukushima and it’s amazing the amount of misinformation put out by other podcasts that talk about this incident. It’s great to get an engineering perspective on what happened. Keep up the great work.

PlanetBeef
One of the most interesting podcasts

Fascinating take on the world.

gandtchart
Horrible incidents, but extremely compelling listening

John does a wonderful of walking through and unpicking the incidents discussed. His expertise in control systems and how they factor into unfolding events make this a must listen for anyone with an interest in engineering matters. Keep listening and pay attention.

ALTMKJC
Great!

Thank you this is such a great resource for safety professionals; well researched and easy to listen to.

Noelle L Riley
Absolutely fantastic

The disasters covered aren’t overly dramatized and are presented factually with an aspect I think many shows are missing: what was learned and what could be done differently. This is one of my new favorite podcasts

Amy True Crime Review
Incredible!

There is no better researched podcast than this one. Amazing telling of disasters with emphasis on engineering and science.

tinyRoBOTXXL
Best podcast i've ever listened to

I am entirely fixated on disasters, and this is by far my favorite source. Clean covering, professional with a well of barely hidden rage at the powers that be that allowed these disasters to come to fruition, and a nice voice to boot. If I could give more stars I really really would.

Rickey Smithers
One of those Exceptional Podcasts

This is one of the few podcasts where the podcaster understands what the word thorough means. No useless information is ever added. The subjects are interesting, heavy, and important. Sometimes it is dry, in the sense he is not making jokes, but that is a positive thing for this podcast but does mean it is not always the most accessible. I’m sure the podcaster knows this as he (to my glee) includes undiluted technical information to help explain the event.

cmdlvd
Dreamy narrator

This is a great podcast for me when I need a break from true crime. He talks about cataclysmic events not simply for the morbid entertainment, but to think about the “HOW” and “WHY” factors from the perspective of an engineer. Also, the dreamy Australian voice and calming tone of the narrator is everything. It’s oddly a compliment, but when I need to fall asleep to something that won’t give me nightmares in the way many others of the same genre might— he’s my guy!

kysciguy
Great podcast!

As a teacher, I’ve found this podcast extremely valuable in learning great examples of why physics is important in our daily lives. He’s done a wonderful job in the recap of events and then the breakdown of where things went wrong. I highly recommend this podcast!

skylarkishome
Please make more

I enjoy having someone with a more analytical brain talk about what went wrong and why. Too many podcasts focus on the horror of what happened in disasters, as opposed to the causes beneath it. Or they focus on being entertaining and witty. I’d much rather hear someone with a background in science go through cause and effect, and what happens when people and systems fail. For a non scientist such as myself, it’s lovely learning how someone with, I assume, education and training in engineering, perceives man made disaster Great job to everyone involved in this podcast!

interested party ny
How things go wrong

Great analysis of various disasters. Fascinating how greed has become one of the main villians in these disasters.

Levint7012
From a maintenance perspective amazing

I am a maintenance electrician and it is so interesting how incorrect procedures or “tribal learning” leads to dangerous outcomes

vinnievroom
I actually get a bit excited when a new one comes out.

A podcast for those with a brain

appleseeds11
really interesting

This podcast is awesome. Really interesting details explaining disasters from an engineering point of view.

Drew Stephens
Wonderfully in-depth explanations by an engineer

John explains the causes of disasters in great detail—many of them about incredibly interesting events that I did’t even know about.

PlanetBeef
One of the most interesting podcasts

Fascinating take on the world.

Selected Tweets

Boost-A-Gram Leaderboard (rules) for Causality
  1. 155445 sats for Episode: "737 MAX Ethiopian Air" from Dave
  2. 133346 sats for Episode: "45: Granville" from Crimson Deer
  3. 50017 sats for Episode: "44: Beirut Warehouse 12" from Dave Jones
  4. 50000 sats for Episode: "43: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory" from Dave Jones
  5. 50000 sats for Episode: "48: Instituto Goiano de Radioterapia" from Dave Jones
  6. 50000 sats for Episode: "48: Instituto Goiano de Radioterapia" from Dave Jones
  7. 50000 sats for Episode: "48: Instituto Goiano de Radioterapia" from Dave Jones
  8. 25000 sats for Episode: "49: Carmel Fireworks Explosion" from Dave Jones
  9. 25000 sats for Episode: "49: Carmel Fireworks Explosion" from Dave Jones
  10. 25000 sats for Episode: "49: Carmel Fireworks Explosion" from Dave Jones

Latest Episode

Episode 52: Colonial Pipeline

10 December, 2023

In 2021 many of Colonial Pipelines IT systems were locked by malware and out of caution they shutdown the fuel pipelines feeding nearly half of the Eastern US leading to chaos at the gas pump and a state of emergency being declared. We look at how poor off-boarding hygiene led to an easily preventable cyber-attack.

With John Chidgey.

Episode Gold Producers: 'r' and Steven Bridle.
Episode Silver Producers: Mitch Biegler, Shane O'Neill, Lesley, Jared Roman, Joel Maher, Katharina Will, Chad Juehring, Dave Jones, Kellen Frodelius-Fujimoto and Ian Gallagher.

Episode 51: I35 West

27 August, 2023

The I35W bridge over the Mississippi River carried 140,000 cars every day. Inspections in 1999 and 2003 showed damage to support plates that was dismissed as unimportant at the time. We look into how poor design checking and assumptions led to the bridge collapsing in 2007, costing the lives of 13 people.

With John Chidgey.

Episode Gold Producers: 'r' and Steven Bridle.
Episode Silver Producers: Mitch Biegler, Shane O'Neill, Lesley, Jared Roman, Joel Maher, Katharina Will, Chad Juehring, Dave Jones and Kellen Frodelius-Fujimoto.


Five months after Lion Air 610 crashed, another 737-MAX went down with a similar cause. However the official report was at odds with two other internationally respected investigative organisations. We dig into the detail of how the AOA Sensor was claimed to have failed, and review checklist discrepancies to extract fact from opinion as to what most likely triggered this horrible chain of events.

With John Chidgey.

Episode Gold Producers: 'r' and Steven Bridle.
Episode Silver Producers: Mitch Biegler, Shane O'Neill, Lesley, Jared Roman, Joel Maher, Katharina Will, Chad Juehring, Dave Jones and Kellen Frodelius-Fujimoto.


A fireworks company in Western Australia that had been in business for nearly a century, were preparing for a fireworks display in their packing shed when one ignited and set off a fire and an explosion. Onlookers were shocked when there was a subsequent explosion that was so big it was heard 30 kilometers away leaving the facility in ruins.

With John Chidgey.

Episode Gold Producers: 'r' and Steven Bridle.
Episode Silver Producers: Mitch Biegler, Kevin Koch, Shane O'Neill, Lesley, Jared, Joel Maher, Katharina Will, Dave Jones and Kellen Frodelius-Fujimoto.


When a radiation therapy machine was left behind during a move between buildings in central Brazil, it set in motion a series of events that would lead to one of the worst radiological incidents in history. We look into how bureaucracy and misdiagnosis cost four people their lives and how the actions of a concerned mother with no medical experience, saved the lives of countless more.

With John Chidgey.

Episode Gold Producers: 'r' and Steven Bridle.
Episode Silver Producers: Mitch Biegler, Kevin Koch, Shane O'Neill, Lesley, Jared, Joel Maher, Katharina Will, Dave Jones and Kellen Frodelius-Fujimoto.


The tallest building in Missouri with a large atrium perfect for big bands and dancing, hosted a regular Tea Dance in the summer of 1981. When two walkways collapsed killing over a hundred people, the investigators found multiple fundamental design errors. We look at how assumptions, redrafting conventions and negligence led to an incident that has become the case study in how not to do civil structural design.

With John Chidgey.

Episode Gold Producers: 'r' and Steven Bridle.
Episode Silver Producers: Mitch Biegler, Kevin Koch, Shane O'Neill, Lesley, Hafthor, Jared, Bill, Joel Maher, Katharina Will and Dave Jones.