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to learn more. Welcome to Journey Through Time. I'm Sarah Churchwell.

And I'm David Olyshoga, and this is the first in our six-part series on Chernobyl, on the worst nuclear disaster in all of history.

A disaster that sent a plume of toxic nuclear fallout and radioactive rain across a huge area of Europe, a disaster

that could have been an even bigger calamity, as we now know, if the Soviet authorities had not

spent weeks fighting against a nuclear meltdown, against the risk of further bigger explosions.

And it was a disaster that made that name Chernobyl, a sort of tiny little

provincial town in Ukraine, globally famous and kind of the shorthand for everything that frightens us

about nuclear power. And it was the disaster that Mikhail Gorbachev said 20 years later was,

quote, perhaps the main cause of the Soviet Union's collapse.

I mean, it's the story of really a single night in April 1986 that changed the course of history.

And then the rest of the story is aftermath.

And it is, as you say, it's a story about an event that helped bring down a superpower.

And this year, 26, is obviously the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.

And I wanted to get in early.

Because in April, there will be memorials in Ukraine.

There will be discussions about the legacy, the living legacy, in terms of disease,

in terms of the health of those who were involved.

...