In the mainstream media China still occupies the role of the main adversary of the West. It's usually portrayed negatively, as a belligerent country and a paragon of human rights abuses.

But is China really just an endless Asian gulag, or is the picture a bit more complicated?

To find out I talked to Kaiser Kuo, creator and host of the Sinica podcast, and former Director of International Communications at the Chinese search giant Baidu.

In this wonderfully illuminating conversation we discuss inaccurate Western perceptions, China's unique political system, its breathtaking technological advances, as well as the realities and challenges of everyday life in a first-tier Chinese city in 2025.

The omnipresent problem of bad leadership in politics and business seems to be more pressing than ever. So why do we keep choosing incompetent leaders? What kind of people get ahead in the workplace? What does good leadership actually look like?

And finally - do I have what it takes to fulfil my lifelong dream and become an effective basketball coach?

Tune in to my convo with historian Martin Gutmann, author of the best-selling book The Unseen Leader, to find out!

Marci Shore is a historian, chair in European Intellectual history, a professor at the Munk School of Global affairs, and the author of The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe.

Since she's an expert in the history of totalitarian regimes, I ask her about Hitler's Nazi Germany, the brutal claustrophobia of Stalinism, the twisted psychology of Soviet purges and the totalitarian mechanisms that turned ordinary people into monsters.

As prof. Shore recently made headlines when she announced she is leaving the US due to Donald Trump and his policies, we can't get past the question on how close current America is to a totalitarian state and even to civil war.

Tovarishi and tovarischitze, you don't wanna miss this one!

What are the motivations of artificial intelligence CEO's, people like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Sam Altman? What kind of ideologies are animating Silicon Valley? Why are AI companies, such as Palantir, suddenly signing huge military contracts with the Pentagon?

I addressed all of these questions to Nick Srnicek, Senior Lecturer in Digital Economy at King's College London and author of Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future.

Check out the full conversation on what our AI future holds here!

Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer, broadcaster and former radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He's the author of The Ascent of Gravity, Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt you and Afterglow of Creation.

His latest title, A Crack in Everything: How Black Holes Came in from the Cold and Took Cosmic Centre Stage details the mind-blowing science of black holes, and traces this, once preposterous idea to its obscure beginnings.

In this interstellar conversation we discuss what would have happened if you managed to fall into a black hole, whether time travel is indeed possible, why black holes aren't really black and finally, why do we find them at the centre of every galaxy in space.

In light of a scandalous recent Guardian article which explored why Zoomers think we Millennials are profoundly uncool, I desperately needed some answers. So I turned to Dr. Carolina Are, an Innovation Fellow and a social media researcher at Northumbria University’s Centre for Digital Citizens.

We proceeded to talk about the list of perceived millennial sins, the many different aesthetic sensibilities we inhabit, the various unique challenges that only Gen Z faces, the nature of cringe... and last but not last, about Goblin mode.

Dr. Christopher Dillon is Senior Lecturer in Modern German History at King’s College London who has authored many books and articles on the history of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany.

In this conversation we tackle the supposedly failing economy of the Weimar Republic, how this perception helped the Nazis take power, why big business supported Hitler, but also what economic policies did the Nazis actually implement?

Obviously we can't get past the big elephant in the room, namely the often repeated notion that the Wall Street Crash of 1929 launched Hitler straight to the top of the weakened German State.

Welcome back to the second episode of the extraordinary history of the CRUSADES, with renowned historian Prof. Nicholas Morton from Nottingham Trent University.

In this episode we discuss the unexpected military success of the First Crusade, the horrific massacres that followed, the resulting establishment of the Crusader States and the initiation of the Knights Templar - but also their ultimate demise, the grim reality of the so-called Children's Crusade and finally, Ridley Scott's epic crusader film, Kingdom of Heaven.

Nicholas Morton is an Associate Professor in Middle Eastern history at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, and has been teaching Medieval - Middle Eastern History, especially the history of the Crusades, since 2008.

In the first part of our conversation on the CRUSADES, we talk about the conditions in medieval Europe at the turn of the 11th century, the religious ideas that made the prospect of a holy war possible in the first place... as well as the first military expedition that ventured to the Holy Land and it's completely unexpected success, that culminated in the eventual conquest of Jerusalem.

Dr. James Glattfelder is a theoretical physicist turned complexity scientist, who's interested in the really big picture, questions such as the nature of consciousness, the universe and reality itself. He's also the author of the book The Sapient Cosmos: What a modern-day synthesis of science and philosophy teaches us about the emergence of information, consciousness, and meaning.

In this mind-bending conversation we talk about the stubborn limits of known science, mind-altering experiences, the problem of consciousness, as well as the wisdom of mystics and shamans that can help bridge the gap between the rational mind and the great beyond...