6.5.2026 - INTERVIEWS: Nathaniel K Gee, Jay Calderwood

About this episode

The episode features interviews with Dr. Nathaniel Gee and Jay Calderwood discussing the Teton Dam disaster and its historical context.

Send us Fan Mail On the 50th anniversary of the Teton Dam disaster, we spent the hour walking back through the *whole* story with Dr. Nathaniel Gee—dam safety engineer and author of *Failure and Fortitude*—starting with why the dam got built in the first place. We talked about the very human mix of ambition and pressure that pushed Teton forward: a political era where every district wanted a dam, elections that turned on local LDS culture as much as policy, and the hard truth that even after ...

People in this episode

Host: Neal Larson

Guests: Nathaniel K Gee, Jay Calderwood

Topics covered

• Teton Dam disaster
• dam safety
• political history
• engineering
• local culture
• human ambition

Keywords

• Teton Dam
• disaster
• engineering
• politics
• local culture
• ambition
• dam safety

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Failure and Fortitude

Places: Teton

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