The Pan Am Podcast

69 Episodes

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Episode 66: A Farewell to Tom Betti

2026-05-3101:39:40

Send us Fan Mail In this final episode of Season Five, host and producer Tom Betti reflects on five years of preserving the stories of Pan Am, answers the question he has asked guests since the very first episode, and says farewell to the listeners who made this program what it became. After five years, 66 episodes, more than 95 hours of history and humanities content, and over 200,000 downloads in more than 180 countries, this is Tom's final episode. This special retrospective features six g...

Episode 65: A Ticket Counter in London with Bill and Diane Studeman

2026-05-2801:33:42

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we are joined by Admiral William O. Studeman, United States Navy, retired, and his wife Diane, former Pan Am stewardess and one of the most gracious ambassadors the airline ever had. Their connection to Pan Am runs deeper than most. Diane grew up in Milford-on-Sea in Hampshire, England. The navy and aviation were not just a backdrop to her childhood but its very fabric. She joined Pan Am as a stewardess in the early 1960s, at what many would argue was the cul...

Episode 64: The Best Job We Ever Had with Florette Vassall and Diane Krumholtz Lyras

2026-05-2101:11:45

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we are joined by two women who gave the best years of their careers to Pan American World Airways, and who have remained close friends for more than four decades since the airline closed its doors. Florette H. Vassall was born in New York City, the daughter of immigrants from Cuba and Panama. Aviation was a constant in her life from the very beginning. Her father was passionate about flight, and as a young girl, Florette watched Pan Am's famous flying boats c...

Episode 63: Operation Babylift: Carried Home and the Bonds That Endure

2026-04-1901:39:44

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, host Tom Betti is joined by three special guests - Pan Am flight attendant Karen Walker Ryan and adoptees Carol Mason and Dr. Matt Steiner - to mark the 51st anniversary of Operation Babylift, the frantic evacuation ordered by U.S. President Gerald R. Ford of Vietnamese war orphans in the final days of Saigon in 1975. But this episode is about more than history. It is about what happens to people after history moves through them. It is about memory, identity,...

Episode 62: Pan Am and the Art of Storytelling with Al Gilbert

2026-04-0901:04:34

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we are joined by Al Gilbert, known by his friends and family as Ace, a former Pan Am reservations employee and the author of Pan Am Stories: You Can't Make This Up. Al's career at Pan Am gave him a front-row seat to one of the most remarkable chapters in aviation history, and the stories he collected along the way are as funny, surprising, and human as the airline itself. After leaving Pan Am, Al channeled decades of memories and experiences into his book, a ...

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