The History Channel, original podcast. History this week, April 10, 1912. I'm Sally Helm. It's hard to tell the story of the Titanic from the beginning, because it has such a dramatic end. On this day, in 1912, the ship sits in her berth on the south coast of England, ready to set sail. And picturing it, the passengers unpacking their fur coats and their hat boxes, crowds of people waving their handkerchiefs from the pier as the Titanic pulls away on her maiden voyage. It's like you can already see the distress flares. You picture those fur coats and those hatboxes on the ocean floor. You almost can't help but imagine the iceberg, floating out there beyond all those waving handkerchiefs, waiting to bring this ship down. Everything looks like a sign. As the RMS Titanic pulls away from the crowded Southampton port, it almost crashes. The ship is huge enough that it displaces a ton of water when it moves, so much so that a nearby boat breaks free of its mooring cables. A passenger reports that they snapped like a thread. That ship drifts towards the Titanic, sucked in by its powerful propellers. The crowds watching from the pier climb aboard railway trucks to get a better view. The ships get within four feet of each other, but at the last minute, the Titanic stops its engines. Tug boats are able to nudge the smaller ship out of the way. A serious disaster was narrowly avoided. The newspaper reports cheerfully the next day. Four days later, of course, a serious disaster will not be avoided. The Titanic's first voyage will be her last. But during her brief life, the vessel is a microcosm of the gilded world around her, a world that has important parallels to our own. We're probably living through something fairly similar for the first time since the early 1900s. It is a warning against the costs of human hubris. Today, the Titanic, a technological marvel that ran into the harsh laws of nature. How did this opulent luxury liner come to exist? And how did it foretell the dangers of wealth, technology, and arrogance that shaped the world around it, and the world we live in now?