Secrets and Spies Podcast: Espionage | Global Issues | Current Affairs

Carlos the Jackal and the Return of Terror for Hire | Joby Warrick

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Joby Warrick covered national security for the Washington Post for nearly three decades. In his new book, The Jackal, he turns to Ilich Ram

Podcast Update | This Weekend's Episode Coming Sunday

A quick programming note: this weekend’s episode will be out on Sunday, October 18, rather than our usual Saturday release. We’re taking an extra day in the edit on Matt’

RAF Fairford, Flydubai, and the FBI | Espresso Martini

Chris and Matt start at RAF Fairford, where the arrest of five men outside the US bomber base, their swift release on bail, and a widening inquiry into possible Iranian i

What the Next 10 Years Look Like: China, Russia, Europe and AI | Sam Lichtenstein RANE

Sam Lichtenstein, director of analysis at the global risk intelligence firm RANE, returns to walk Chris through RANE's 2025–2035 decade forecast: a multipolar world in wh

Russia’s worldview, disinformation, and the politics of influence | Dave Troy

Every week, the Security Council of the Russian Federation publishes a digest of world events as Moscow sees them. Investigative journalist Dave Troy has been reading the

The Stay Behinds: Sweden’s Cold War Guardians | Johan Wennström

Beginning in 1949, officially non-aligned Sweden did something it kept secret for half a century: in close cooperation with the CIA and MI6, it built a clandestine civili

The Nerd Reich | Gil Durán

Journalist Gil Durán spent years in political consulting before returning to reporting, and eventually, to the beat that became the subject of his book, The Nerd Reich. H

Ratcliffe’s Moscow Warning, Iran’s Long Reach, and an Alliance on Edge | Espresso Martini

Chris and Matt open season eleven, and Secrets & Spies’ tenth anniversary, with three stories from a busy August. First, CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s trip to Moscow, a r

A Rebel, a Traitor, and the Birth of the IRA | Rory Carroll

Before Bletchley Park, there was Reginald "Blinker" Hall, the Admiralty’s mercurial intelligence chief whose codebreakers read Germany’s wireless traffic during World War

Ortiz’s War: The Most Decorated Marine in the OSS | Nicholas Reynolds & Katie S. Sanders

Peter J. Ortiz was the most battle-decorated member of the OSS, America’s wartime forerunner to the CIA, and one of the most decorated Marines of the Second World War. In

How GPS Became a Weapon | Katherine Dunn

GPS is the rare piece of infrastructure most of us never think about until it fails — and it is failing more often, in more places, by design. In Little Blue Dot: How GPS

Meir Dagan, Mossad, and the Art of Intelligence | Samuel M. Katz

Samuel M. Katz is a New York Times bestselling author and one of the foremost chroniclers of Middle Eastern conflict, special operations, and intelligence. His latest boo

Inside the Imperial War Museums’ Spies, Lies and Deception Exhibition | Amanda Mason

Amanda Mason is a senior curator of contemporary conflict at the Imperial War Museums, where she previously worked on the museum's acclaimed Secret War gallery. Chris spe

Political Violence on the Rise and Israel's Plot to Install Ahmadinejad | Espresso Martini

For years, according to a New York Times report, Mossad quietly cultivated former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Holocaust denier who once called for Israel's

Putin’s Survival Machine | Sean Wiswesser

Every few months, a rumor or prediction suggests Vladimir Putin is finally cornered — a purge, a battlefield setback, a grim Victory Day parade. Former senior CIA officer

Germany Rewrites the Rules for its Spies | Florian Flade

For most of its history, Germany's foreign intelligence service was built to watch, not to act — a constraint rooted in the country's experience of the Gestapo and the St

Britain's Next PM, AI's Counterintelligence Problem, and Ukraine's Warrior-Witches | Espresso Martini

Britain is changing prime ministers again: Keir Starmer is out after two years, with Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham the favourite to replace him — inheriting an un

The Guru, the Loyalist, and the DNI After Gabbard | Shane Harris

For most of her career, Tulsi Gabbard may have been taking direction from a reclusive Hawaii guru — the allegation at the center of a Washington Post investigation that s

Iran Survived. Now What? | Espresso Martini

Chris and Matt dig into the fine print of the U.S.-Iran memorandum signed this week by President Trump in Versailles, separating what Tehran banks immediately — sanctions

Full Stack Spies: Cyber Espionage in the Age of US China Competition | Ahana Datta Fasel

Ahana Datta Fasel began as an ethical hacker for the British government before becoming cyber chief at the Financial Times, where nation-state actors targeting journalist