49. The Man Who Tried To Kill The KGB: A Trai...

Bill Donovan has set himself up across an entire floor of the swanky London hotel, Claridge’s. From here he is now running international intelligence operations and laying plans for the future of espionage in the United States. But, his arch nemesis, J. Edgar Hoover has an altern ...  Show more

“Wild” Bill Donovan laid the template for the formation of the modern CIA, but this wasn’t the way his life was supposed to turn out. A working class boy from Buffalo, Bill dreamt of something better for himself. These dreams took him to the trenches of Belgium and the beaches of ...  Show more

In 1960, the Congo gained independence from Belgium. Patrice Lumumba was elected prime minister and Joseph Kasavubu president. Within a year, Lumumba was deposed and assassinated. This week on Deconstructed, executive editor of Foreign Affairs and author Stuart Reid joins Ryan Gr ...  Show more

For decades after the Second World War, the Soviet Union and the United States of America were locked in a conflict of ideology that took the planet to the brink of catastrophe. Known as the Cold War, it was an era of paranoia, fear and mutual suspicion, where the contest for sup ...  Show more

After endeavouring to wreak their revenge on Serbia, what would be the greatest hammer blow to the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the First World War? With Leviv having fallen apocalyptically to the Russian hordes, what had gone so wrong? How might the war have been brought to an ...  Show more

Krzysztof Kosior was thirty when he first felt ready to visit Auschwitz. But since childhood, he had heard stories of his great-grandfather’s time there, and of his journey from unknown soldier to one of Poland’s greatest heroes. Talking to actor and spy novelist Charlie Higso ...