Titan The OceanGate Disaster: How to watch Netflix's gripping new documentary on the fatal 2023 deep-sea implosion
Titled 'Titan: The OceanGate Disaster', the feature-length documentary is set to premiere globally on June 11— just one week shy of the second anniversary of the incident that claimed five lives during a mission to explore the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic.
The documentary film shines a harsh light on OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush and his relentless pursuit of technological glory.
On June 18 2023, the Titan submersible lost contact with its surface vessel less than two hours after submerging. Aboard were Stockton Rush himself, British billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, renowned French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood alongside his 19-year-old son, Suleman. Debris from the vessel was later found scattered on the ocean floor, confirming what experts now describe as a "catastrophic implosion."
While the U.S. Coast Guard continues its investigation into the exact cause of the failure, early scrutiny focused on OceanGate's repeated defiance of conventional safety standards.
Engineers and marine professionals had reportedly raised alarms over the carbon fibre hull and experimental construction methods long before the tragedy occurred.
The documentary film will also examine the cultural obsession with exploration and extreme tourism, questioning whether the pursuit of greatness at any cost is worth the gamble.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hindustan Times
an hour ago
- Hindustan Times
Andrew O'Hagan on the Dickensian dark web of modern London
For months I resisted reading Caledonian Road. Never mind the rave reviews, the prizes it was picking up, and that it was plastered over the window displays of all of London's Waterstones bookstores as Book of the Month. Because did I really want to spend 600 pages reading about the angst of a middle-aged intellectual white man? Despite this, something beckoned— here was a social novel in the tradition of Dickens that looked at the murky money connections between Russian oligarchs and the British aristocracy. Set in London, it dug deep into politics, immigration, street crime and the dark web. With the very human story of Campbell, an art critic, a self-made intellectual who rises from the ranks and then inevitably starts to fall. And so I began, and in doing so, was drawn in deeply. I met author Andrew O'Hagan soon after, at this year's Jaipur Literary Festival. A slender Scotsman with a melancholy resting face and a wry sense of humour, Andrew spoke to me about why the social novel matters. We met more recently, this time on Zoom. On a recent Friday afternoon Andrew is hunkered down in his Scottish seaside writing den, surrounded by the detective-like charts that fuel his Dickensian cast of 60. Here are edited excerpts of our conversations. Caledonian Road The youngest of four boys, you grew up a feminist? I was the only feminist in my family, including my mother. My father was a tough man who lived according to old-fashioned, very macho rules—you just earned the money and drank a lot, and the boys were supposed to be tough and the girls were supposed to be sort of servants. My mother was a cleaner. She cleaned schools, she cleaned chip shops, and then she would come in and do all this work at home for free. And all these men just expected to have their mother running around, producing bread and soup and, I mean, it was amazing, and it was amazingly objected to by me. But my mother would say, I enjoy doing this, and this is my life. Over the years she seemed to enjoy it less, and became much more feminist afterwards. But, yeah, I wanted to get that energy into the book, because that was what I grew up with. Not just in our house, but in all the houses in our housing estate in our town, women were slightly subjugated by men, and the stories about how they achieved a revolution in their own lives are still arriving in novels and plays and poems today. Your father was a strict man? He was a very strict man. He was an addict, an alcoholic, a violent person—a social problem that was almost commonplace in the world I grew up in. Often, the people suffering in those circumstances are not only the addicts, but their partners and their children, and this is part of the social fabric that I've always tried to write about—as generations grow up in difficult circumstances and then try to use their experience and their imagination to look at the exploitation and disadvantages of other people. That is a Dickensian impulse, almost. Dickens grew up poor, working in a blacking factory, abandoned by a father who'd been in prison for debt. And what did he do when he grew up? He wrote about children living in families who were in debt. It doesn't happen to every writer, but it can happen, and it happened in my case. You've spoken earlier of how reading as a child helped you make sense of the world? My life was saved by reading. I don't know what would have happened otherwise. I was feeling around in the dark for a long time as a kid, and then suddenly my eyes began to open, and I was blinded by the light, and I've been blinded by the light ever since. The opportunity to read those wonderful stories—that's the great thing about literature. It's not just that they turn a light on so that you can see how brilliant other people are. They turn a light on in you and allow you to fully live. They replenish the imagination every day. Good books are as essential as protein in any well-lived life. And I would shout that from the top of any building. A person who doesn't read is at a distinct disadvantage in their life. That may sound like a harsh thing to say, because some people may be so distracted or preoccupied, or they can't get to books, and I feel sorry for those people the same way I would feel sorry for any malnourished person. And I do put it in those terms. It's not a moral decision to read a book. It's a practical decision, very often. Can you get to a library? Can you buy a book? Do you have a friend who you can talk to about what you've read? Where did you get your books from? It was quite a lonely journey being a solo reader in a house without books. But I had friends in the library. That is to say, the librarians—all women, all brilliant—doing what was called interlibrary loans. They would order books for you from other libraries that they didn't have. And they changed my life, these women. They spotted kids from houses where there were no books, where there were social problems or maybe alcohol abuse, and they said, 'We're going to create opportunity for you and distance and freedom.' I read Robert Louis Stevenson and Charles Dickens and all the children's books like The Little Prince and The Secret Garden—all those classic children's books which were really about how to live and how to use your imagination. And then you moved to London, joined the London Review of Books at 21, worked as a reporter and have written ten novels. Tell us about your 10th novel that took you ten years to write—how did Caledonian Road happen? As a reporter, I'd been working in crime, cryptocurrency, in fake identities and online personalities. Those stories gave me a wealth of curiosity about the modern world. And then two things came together in my head—the Victorian model of the social novel and this very non-Victorian subject matter. I realized that I could have a Dickensian novel about very non-Dickensian things, but where the same human problems would emerge—the gulf between rich and poor, between men and women, between truth and lies, between exploitation and decency. All these oppositions that existed 200 years ago still exist, but they express themselves through new technologies and new forms. This happened ten years ago and I thought, bloody hell, if I'm ever going to do the big social novel, I need to do it now. That meant looking at some of the great schisms and separations that exist in modern life and getting them into one book. So the one-word answer to your question is: ambition. I was in my forties, I suddenly realized that I had enough ambition and had enough energy. I knew it would take maybe 10 years, because 60 characters based on real social phenomena in one book—you don't pluck them from the air. Writing this novel for you meant years more of research into these disparate worlds of haves and have-nots—was it hard to move from one to the other? I wanted my novel to have the comedy and the sadness of modern London—all the corruption and all the colorfulness of a modern city in the age of the internet. So the research was crazy—craziest research of my life. But if you're working in the Charles Dickens tradition, you're trying to reinvent reality from the inside, and that means you have to go inside and get to know the thing that you're trying to depict. Sometimes, one part of my day was going to Windsor Castle to have lunch with the Queen and the aristocracy and Russian oligarchs. And then another part would be hanging out with young street guys and going to court when they've been accused of knife crime. And the world of DJs and fashion and film. I did find it easy to move from one world to another. I think I was born an adaptive—I'm one of those shapeshifters. I've been like that in my own life, and I've been like that as a writer. The two things are very close instincts for me. And you researched the world of sweatshops and of immigrants dying—was that hard? It was almost overwhelming doing some of that research. When you write a novel, you're dealing in invented characters—you can control the story. But these people are real. The forces that are operating on them aren't controlled by me. And I would get overwhelmed by a sense that I was about to leave them there, walking away with a very thick notepad. And of course, I'd done that with their understanding and with their permission, but nonetheless, I was leaving them behind. They were people whose lives I could neither control nor in any straightforward way improve. And that's a kind of agony. You also spent months on the dark web—was that scary? Horrendous. The dark web is a sort of bazaar of the dangerous, the despicable, the narcotic, the violent. The things that can't appear in public will appear on the dark net. It's a dehumanized place, but I had to get to know it as a novelist for this book. So yes, I was conscious of it as being dangerous, conscious of going in too far, but because it was going to lead to a place where (my protagonist) Campbell would lose himself in the dark web, I had to lose myself slightly in the dark net to be able to tell this story. Caledonian Road has an amazing audiobook version as well. Michael Abubakar (the narrator) is brilliant. He's at the Globe at the moment, in a Chekhov play, and he's got a big career ahead of him. He is only in his twenties, and he takes this 700-page novel—with dukes, duchesses, Russian oligarchs and their children, Scottish people and Polish people—and he comes up with a voice for all of them! So what next? I have a non-fiction book coming out this October on friendship. I have a novel set in Glasgow on the cards. For another future novel, I'm working closely with AI scientists. If our children are speaking privately to machines all day—and yes, they are—what will the effect be on society, on human community? These are huge questions. So novelists must begin to understand things better, to imagine scenarios, tell stories in which these problems are addressed. … I come away from these conversations convinced novels still matter. From Russian oligarchs to AI ethics, a social novel like Caledonian Road, with its conflicts and comedies and cast of city characters, has the power to change the consciousness of our times. For that alone it is worth reading. What other social novels in this tradition that you would recommend? (Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya's Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or reading dilemmas, write to her at sonyasbookbox@ The views expressed are personal)
The Print
an hour ago
- The Print
Bucket lists, PTA meetings, Ozempic—welcome to online dating for 50-plus Indians
After escaping the death trap of marriage, kids, and draining EMIs, Gen X is coming out to play and choosing to deal with the frustrations of online dating. Even Carrie Bradshaw toyed with it for a couple of episodes in And Just Like That . A regular 50-something's dating app profile is often loaded with unconventional truths. Gen Z need not feel special about modern relationship drama because singles in their 50s are being breadcrumbed, ghosted too. And what's worse, lovebombed into co-parenting kids they didn't raise. Since most midlifers have about two divorces under their belt, they are wandering around the prison of romance pool like hardened criminals. They are swiping and scandalising on dating apps and not even sharing it on social media. Way to rob the masses of juicy lore. 'Father of two, taking a last chance at love,' read the dramatic bios. They don't have time to hold back. Many on Hinge answer the prompt, 'We'll get along if…' not with shared interests but with a list of everything their ex did wrong — 'if you don't scream in traffic, hoard clocks, or snack in bed.' The emotional baggage is bullet-pointed. They might not even have finalised the divorce yet. Putting up selfies taken in the bathroom of their marital homes, they ask their matches not to judge. Statistically, the elders are having more fun online than the people who invented sexting. Beyond the usual Bumble, Hinge, Tinder, and OKCupid, they are also populating the unconventional mating spaces. Think the ethical non-monogamy hotbed of the Feeld app or closed groups on Facebook, catering to all kinds of adventures under the kink umbrella. Sentient armrests Post-50s could almost be a golden age of dating — if middle-aged men weren't doing their best to ruin the fun. Women who refused to resign to the empty-nesters' club find themselves on dates where men rant about their children's spending habits. Lost without the safety of a serving wife, men are hunting for her replacement. 'I am looking for a nurturer,' they'll say, meaning someone to wash their dirty laundry. Jennie Young, a professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, studied the 'rhetoric of dating' and explained how these men approach women. With lines like 'Don't text too much', 'Don't be difficult', and the smoothest of them all — 'Act like you want me' — they're seeking submission, with benefits. The subreddit of Later Daters — a Netflix show following six golden singles on a series of blind dates — is flooded with one question in different literary styles. Why are older men such losers? Even without a single strand of hair to cover their soft skulls, all they can think about is stringing women along. A Delhi-based 'later dater' in her 50s is sick of men her age talking about ticking their bucket list. 'When it's time for them to kick the bucket soon!' she said. Every other guy seems to be on a mindfulness journey, either raving about Vipassana, cycling marathons, or overselling his post-Ozempic glow-up. All while doing heavy drinking, testing the already battered liver. They all claim to have cracked feminism without ever doing the dishes. Worst of all is that they have no rizz. If there's any hope for romance, they expect the woman to plan it, spark it, and carry it on her back while they sit there like sentient armrests. Also read: That older, wiser guy is undateable—just ask women his age Competing with PTA Then there's the ultimate vibe-killer for midlifers: the parent trap. The man on his 'weekend Papa duty' can't even step out for a coffee date. All his money and time are funnelled toward his kids. When will he have fun? One woman tweeted how she was on a date and her daughter kept blowing up her phone because she couldn't find her socks. Single mothers are anyway called a hectic variety of people to see romantically. Men fear they will end up emptying their pockets, cajoled into being someone's stepdad, but also just a boyfriend to the child's mother. It's called a lose-lose situation because the moment the gentleman chimes in with an opinion about his girlfriend's offspring, he's told to slow his roll. While it's an admirable quality from a parenting perspective, it can be pretty annoying for the childfree partner who just wants to go out without competing with PTA meetings. One tormented girlfriend in her 40s only gets to see her partner on the second weekend of the month. She's also not allowed to call him on his phone without asking. She has shared custody of her man. If the dynamic was already that messy and volatile, there's the ex-factor. The former partners, with a history spanning a decade or two, are not NPC. They're either too involved or buried (metaphorically) under the living room sofa like a sworn enemy no one talks about. Is that why middle-agers end up dating younger? Much like the middle-aged men they've long endured, women now finally have a progressive dating pool of their own — one that lets them swipe right on younger men, skip the boredom, and avoid babysitting the oldies. Forty-nine-year-old Charlize Theron recently made headlines for hitting it off with a 26-year-old and bragging about it. She's an inspiration. Clearly, the Gen X dating game is enviable — even with its grown-up fuss. The lucky ones aren't even compromising on closet space, and somehow, they're still living a fairy tale. The love life of a 58-year-old professor in Mumbai now looks like the third act of a Nora Ephron movie. Right after matching on Bumble, the first phone call she had with her now-boyfriend — a 60-year-old who never married — lasted five hours. By the third date, they were chilling by the beach in Dapoli. 'He's up for fun and doesn't snore,' she said when counting the two best qualities of her partner. The couple has been in an LAT (living apart together) relationship for the past two years. It works like a dream. This article is part of a series of columns on modern dating in India—the good, the bad and the cuddly. Views are personal. The author tweets @ratanpriya4. (Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)
Mint
an hour ago
- Mint
‘Aap Jaisa Koi' review: Polished but superficial romance
In Aap Jaisa Koi, director Vivek Soni takes on the delicate subjects of late-blooming romance, masculine vulnerability, modern love, and old-fashioned chauvinism. The film, now streaming on Netflix, stars R. Madhavan and Fatima Sana Shaikh as two professionals navigating a hesitant, imperfect courtship. R. Madhavan plays Shrirenu 'Shri' Tripathi, a 42-year-old Sanskrit professor from Jamshedpur whose gentle, brooding nature hides years of emotional repression, social awkwardness, and societal taunts—including from his brother and best friend. He finds an outlet through an app aimed at lonely hearts called 'Aap Jaisa Koi'. Fatima Sana Shaikh portrays Madhu Bose, a French teacher from Kolkata. She's confident and open-minded, but carries her own emotional history. Madhu and Shri become an unlikely match, introduced by a kindly intermediary. She is everything Shri is not, and her interest in him makes him suspicious. In the company of Madhu, 42-year-old Shri, for the first time in his life, experiences female attention and intimacy. With this setup—opposites attract—the film could have been a poignant, character-driven drama about connection in the digital age—and in real life. It began confidently enough to suggest it might even be a fresh romcom. Unfortunately, the narrative is burdened by a script that lacks depth and a story that never quite takes off. Interactions are built around overly familiar themes of sexual conservatism, ego, and misunderstanding. The core problem lies in the writing (by Radhika Anand and Jehan Handa). The screenplay is thin and structurally uneven, which could explain why the director introduces elements of magical realism, fantasy, and a clutch of tuneless songs. These elements, while occasionally effective, feel more like aesthetic patches than storytelling tools. At times, the film seems more invested in how it looks than in what it's saying. The emotional beats are laid out but never earned. For instance, Madhu's reason for choosing Shri is rather instinctive and immediate. The central conflict is one-sided, and there's no doubt it will be resolved and neatly tied with a bow. Madhavan lends warmth and sincerity to his role, capturing 42-year-old Shri's hesitation with subtlety, but his performance often feels stranded by the limited material. The actor handles Shri's sudden shift to chauvinism and double standards smoothly, but the character jump doesn't seamlessly blend with the setup. Shaikh brings confidence and energy to Madhu, but her character often becomes a mouthpiece for the film's messaging rather than a fully fleshed-out individual. Madhavan and Shaikh's chemistry feels strained and overly polite—never quite evoking either attraction or tension. Despite the shortcomings at its centre, Aap Jaisa Koi does have a few notable performances by the supporting cast. Ayesha Raza is most affecting as Shrirenu's quietly observant sister-in-law, whose character has the most dramatic and interesting arc. But again, the screenplay bypasses the journey to directly present the outcome. Namit Das, playing Shrirenu's confidant Deepak, is in equal measures loyal and disruptive. Through Deepak and Shri's older brother (played by Manish Chaudhari), the film establishes ingrained and inherited patriarchy and gender biases. The cinematography captures the distinct atmospheres of Jamshedpur and Kolkata, and the background score complements the tone without overwhelming it. But for all its polish and promise, Aap Jaisa Koi remains a story that feels superficially realised to leave a lasting impression.
