The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

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   Number 1: Simon Sebag Montefiore on the making of the modern Middle East

   Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore traces 125 years of war, revolution, upheaval and revival in the Middle East. From the final days of the Ottoman Empire to to the current Iran-US conflict, Simon's new book The Cauldron examines the forces, characters and calamities that have shaped the region.Guest: Simon Sebag Montefiore, writer and historianProducer: Ali Benton

   August 26, 2026·55min
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   Number 2: Unmasking the Cambridge Five spies

   The Cambridge Five have gone down in history as the most notorious spies of the 20th century. For seventeen years, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean and John Cairncross got away with leaking top-secret British intelligence to the Soviet Union with disastrous consequences. Now a new book, drawing on recently declassified files, debunks some enduring myths about them.Guest: Antonia Senior, author of Stalin's Apostles: The Cambridge Five and the Making of the Soviet Empire Producer: Julie Street

   August 19, 2026·27min
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   Number 3: Marwan Barghouti to run for president of the Palestinian Authority, from prison

   The last time a presidential election was held by the Palestinian Authority was in 2005, when Mahmoud Abbas was elected to a four-year term following Yasser Arafat’s death. He’s been in power ever since. Now aged 90, Abbas has called parliamentary elections for November 28, with a possible presidential election to follow. The man most likely to be elected to succeed Abbas is Fatah party leader, Marwan Barghouti, but he’s been in an Israeli prison for murder since 2002.Guest: Arab Barghouti, son of Fatah party leader, Marwan BarghoutiProducer: Catherine Zengerer

   August 11, 2026·19min
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   Number 4: Bruce Shapiro's USA: Democrat divisions and Fauci on trial

   A deep split is emerging inside the Democrats as yet another progressive populist wins in Michigan, while a more conservative group called The Third Way is pushing back. Support for Israel is at the centre of the split. Plus former Chief Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci faces a hostile Senate inquiry.Guest: Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor with The Nation magazine and Director of the Global Center for Journalism and TraumaProducer: Catherine Zengerer

   August 11, 2026·18min
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   Number 5: Gerontocracy - how the dominance of the old is holding America back

   The wealth and power of American elders was epitomised in the US 2024 election, with Joe Biden vs Donald Trump. But elder power spreads beyond political leadership, and is preventing the US from becoming as forward thinking and economically successful as it could be, our guest argues.Guest: Samuel Moyn, the Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University. Author of 'Gerontocracy in America: how the old are hoarding power and wealth, and what to do about it' (Macmillan, 2026) Producer: Ann Arnold

   August 27, 2026·26min
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