The spherical gondola was Piccard’s unique invention, prefigur­ing the stratospheric gondolas to come and even the Sputnik space­craft many years hence. It was the first of many kinds.

Auguste Piccard and an assistant took a gas-filled balloon to 15,781 meters in 1931. Their gondola was pressurized, and they were the first humans to see the curvature of the Earth and the dark ...

In this episode, Tom Goodwin talks to Bertrand Piccard, Swiss psychiatrist, aviator, and global explorer, about green ...