Forget eye patches and wooden galleons. Picture an 1857 shipwreck carrying a modern equivalent of 2.4 billion dollars in California gold rush treasure, a wreck so devastating it helped trigger a national economic panic. Then picture the genius who found it 131 years later ending up a fugitive behind bars.

This episode unpacks the saga of the SS Central America across two centuries, from the mechanical failure that doomed nearly 600 people to the Bayesian search theory that located the gold, and the legal and human storm that destroyed the man who recovered it.

• The 280-foot steamer sank in a Category 2 hurricane through a fatal feedback loop, where a broken paddle-wheel seal flooded the boilers and killed the bilge pumps.
• The disaster claimed 425 lives, including Captain Herndon, whose daughter later married future preside ...