SpyCast
SpyCast, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum, is a journey into the shadows of international espionage. Each week, host Sasha Ingber brings you the latest insights and intriguing tales from spies, secret agents, and covert communicators, with a focus on how this secret world reaches us all in our everyday lives. Tune in to discover the critical role intelligence has played throughout history and today. Brought to you from Airwave, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum.
The Spy Museum does not endorse, approve, or support the opinions stated by guest speakers. Statements made by speakers do not represent the position or opinion of the International Spy Museum.
576
Spies, Policymakers, and Nuclear Weapons: An In...
SPY Historian Vince Houghton continues his conversation with historian Gregg Herken, focusing on his previous four books on US nuclear policy. Brotherhood of the Bomb, Cardinal Choices, Counsels of War, and The Winning Weapon redefined the ways histori...
31 min
577
Spies, Policymakers, and Nuclear Weapons: An In...
SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with historian Gregg Herken to discuss his new book The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington. Herken, the professor emeritus of modern American diplomatic history at the University of Californi...
26 min
578
Can a Drone Read Your Email? : An Interview wit...
SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Mike Tassey and Rich Perkins, creators of the Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform, a state-of-the-art cyber drone. Mike and Rich built their unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in their garage using off-the-shelf ...
27 min
579
From Bletchley to Bond: An Interview with Journ...
Half of the world’s population has seen a James Bond movie. The historical and cultural impact of this franchise’s 23 (and counting) films is unrivaled by anything else in contemporary pop culture. SPY Historian Vince Houghton is joined by British jour...
29 min
580
From Bletchley to Bond: An Interview with Journ...
SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with British author and journalist Sinclair McKay for a two-part SpyCast. In Part 1, Vince and Sinclair discuss the role played by the codebreakers at Bletchley Park in the Allied victory in the Second World War. T...
29 min
581
Author Debriefing: Good Hunting, An American Sp...
Jack Devine is one of the legendary spymasters of our time. He was in Chile when Allende fell; he ran Charlie Wilson’s war in Afghanistan; he had too much to do with Iran-Contra for his own taste, though he tried to stop it; he caught Pablo Escobar in ...
67 min
582
Author Debriefing: The Catcher Was a Spy: The M...
Moe Berg—the major league baseball player, OSS operative and legendary linguist—was one of the most remarkable secret agents ever deployed by the US. Whether authorized by the government as an atomic spy or choosing to surreptitiously film Tokyo of hi...
58 min
583
Author Debriefing: Double Agent, The First Hero...
Leading up to the US entry into WWII, Germany set up a sophisticated and productive espionage ring, which effectively utilized well-placed German Americans in the States. They were able to infiltrate key military and industrial facilities, and succeede...
48 min
584
Tinker, Tailor, Shortstop, Spy: An Interview wi...
Baseball has been played in the United States since the mid-19th Century, and from the very beginning teams were trying to gain a competitive edge against their rivals. In many cases, this involved stealing signs – the messages passed from coaches to p...
25 min
585
Terrorists, Double Agents, and European Dominat...
Join SPY Historian Vince Houghton as he continues his conversation with Paul Cruickshank and Tim Lister of CNN. Both men share their expertise on ISIS and the threat of Islamic Jihadism, and Tim, who has traveled to Ukraine on four different occasions ...
29 min
586
Terrorists, Double Agents, and European Dominat...
SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down with Paul Cruickshank and Tim Lister of CNN to discuss their new book Agent Storm: My Life Inside Al Qaeda and the CIA. The book, which they co-wrote with terrorist-turned-double-agent Morten Storm, traces an impro...
23 min
587
Author Debriefing: Spies, Patriots, and Traitor...
Nathan Hale and Benedict Arnold may be the most famous spies of the American Revolution, but they were hardly alone. George Washington’s use of spy networks and wider intelligence efforts were critical to the fight for independence. In Spies, Patriots,...
53 min
588
Election Espionage: An Interview with NBC Chief...
SPY Historian Dr. Vince Houghton sat down with NBC News Political Director and Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd to discuss the growing role of intelligence tradecraft in American election politics.Todd, the host of MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, ...
29 min
589
The Birth of British Intelligence Coordination:...
SPY Historian Vince Houghton in joined by Dr. Michael Goodman of King’s College in London. Dr. Goodman is the official historian for the British Joint Intelligence Committee, and in that role he has published the book The Official History of the Joint ...
48 min
590
Author Debriefing: The Good Spy: The Life and D...
Pulitzer Prize- winning biographer Kai Bird gives the inside story of his compelling portrait of the remarkable life and death of one of the most important operatives in CIA history, Robert Ames. Through Bird’s personal connection to Ames’ family, he g...
57 min
591
Author Debriefing: The Zhivago Affair: The Krem...
Travel back to a time when literature had the power to influence the world. Washington Post national security correspondent and former bureau chief in Moscow, Peter Finn tells the dramatic first account of how a forbidden book in the Soviet Union beca...
47 min
592
The Beginnings of US Overhead Reconnaissance
The development of overhead reconnaissance technology is one of the most important – if not the most important – advances in the history of intelligence. Policymakers today use IMINT from spy planes and satellites in their daily assessments of global t...
50 min
593
Spy in the Sky - The KH-9 Hexagon
SPY Historian Vince Houghton sits down with engineer Phil Pressel to discuss his role in developing the KH-9 Hexagon spy satellite. The Hexagon, which was the last US spy satellite to use film, was declassified in 2011, allowing Pressel to write his bo...
40 min
594
Peter Earnest: My Life in the CIA
Former SPY Historian Mark Stout sat down with SPY Executive Director Peter Earnest to discuss Peter’s CIA career. After his recruitment and espionage training at the Farm, Peter’s entry into the world of spying came at an important turning point in the...
34 min
595
The Future of Intelligence
The world sends 3 million emails every second. How do Western intelligence agencies cope with such massive amounts of data? The Spy Museum's Executive Director Peter Earnest sits down to discuss the future of intelligence with historian Richard Aldrich...
30 min
596
Putin’s End Game in Ukraine
Peter and SPY Historian Vince Houghton are joined by retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin. They discuss the current confrontation between Russia and Ukraine over Crimea, Crimea’s strategic place in Russian history, and the potential conflict over Ukr...
26 min
597
America's Great Game: The CIA's Secret Arabists...
Intelligence historian Hugh Wilford reveals the surprising history of the CIA’s pro-Arab operations in the 1940s and 50s by tracing the work of the agency’s three most influential—and colorful—officers in the Middle East: Kermit Roosevelt, Archie Roose...
50 min
598
Author Debriefing: Cyber War Will Not Take Place
Is cyber war really coming? Renowned scholar Thomas Rid of the Department of War Studies at Kings College London argues that the focus on war distracts from the real challenge of cyberspace: non-violent confrontation that may rival or even replace vio...
56 min
599
Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD's Secret Spying...
Six months after the 9/11 attacks, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly initiated a straightforward, yet audacious, antiterrorist plan to be implemented in the Big Apple, dispatching a vast network of undercover officers and informants to track suspe...
50 min
600
Shadow Warrior: William Egan Colby and the CIA
Historian Randall B. Woods of the University of Arkansas discusses his new biography of one of the most fascinating and controversial figures of the postwar period: William Egan Colby. World War II commando, Cold War spy, CIA station chief in Saigon, a...
51 min