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

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

Iran, China, and the New Middle East | Ahmed Aboudouh from Chatham House

Ahmed Aboudouh — associate fellow at Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa Programme and head of the China Studies Unit at the Emirates Policy Center — joins Chris

Think Like a Spy: What Intelligence Work Really Teaches About People | Julian Fisher

Julian Fisher spent his career as a British intelligence operative before distilling what he learned into the Think Like a Spy: Strategic Relations Workshop—and his centr

A Rich Harvest of Bitter Fruit: CIA, MI6, and Covert Action in Cold War Albania | Stephen Long

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, CIA and MI6 launched an audacious series of clandestine operations to infiltrate and destabilize Communist Albania — and lost nearly ev

Gabbard Resigns, Trump Meets Xi, and China's Capitol Hill Spy Pitch | Espresso Martini

Chris and Matt break down a packed few weeks in intelligence and geopolitics, opening with the resignation of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence — a depar

America’s War Powers Crisis | Brian Finucane

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. Congress hasn't formally done so since 1942. Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer and current s

A Spy at War | Charles Beaumont

Charles Beaumont spent years as an MI6 officer running human sources before turning to fiction—and his second novel, A Spy at War, carries the authority of someone who ha

No show on Saturday 9th May. We will return on 16th May. Chris has some episode recommendations from our back catalogue

There will be no show on Saturday 9th May as we are on a production break. We will return on Saturday 16th May Chris has some recommendations from our back catalogue. C