Episode Details

Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon and came home to a depression so severe he could barely function. The second man on the lunar surface spent years battling alcoholism and a sense that nothing on Earth could match what he had already done. Glory turned out to be a terrible thing to survive.

This episode traces Aldrin from his fighter pilot days in Korea through the Apollo 11 mission, the psychological collapse that followed, and his decades-long campaign to return humanity to space.

• He was the second human to walk on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969
• He struggled with severe depression and alcoholism after returning from the moon
• He earned a doctorate from MIT in orbital mechanics before joining NASA
• He spent decades advocating for a permanent human presence on Mars