The John Batchelor Show

Matthew Longo, The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain. The focus shifts from political elites to young activists in the Hungarian "borderlands." In late June 1989, inspired by a speech from Otto von Habsburg, a young woman named Maria and a man named Ferenc hatch an audacious plan in the city of Debrecen: they will throw a party—the Pan-European Picnic—at the Iron Curtain itself. Maria, showing incredible initiative in a country with few phones, begins calling government officials and border guards to organize the event. The original vision for the picnic was "euphorically ignorant": the organizers imagined a thin fence where Hungarians and Austrians could pass sausages and beer to one another. In reality, the Iron Curtain was a "death zone" several kilometers wide, filled with watchtowers, dogs, and layers of fencing. However, the process of de-electrifying and dismantling the fence was moving faster than expected. The organizers eventually secured a location near the town of Sopron and convinced the authorities to allow a one-time-only opening of a border gate, allowing Austrians to cross into Hungary to celebrate "European togetherness." (2)
1930 BUDAPEST

Matthew Longo, The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain. This segment focuses on the high-level political maneuvers that set the stage for the collapse of the Iron Curtain, beginning with a Warsaw Pactmeeting on July 6, 1989. The primary figures are Miklos Nemeth, the young, Harvard-educated Prime Minister of Hungary and a reformer, and Nicolae Ceausescu, the "old guard" dictator of Romania. During the meeting, a furious Ceausescu berates Nemeth for betraying socialism and undermining the Warsaw Pact, even refusing to address him as "comrade." Nemeth, however, finds a silent ally in Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, who gives him a subtle "wink" to signal protection against the hardliners. Nemeth's radical goal was to dismantle the physical Iron Curtain—not just for ideological reasons, but because the technology (mines, electric wires) was decades old, ineffective, and too expensive to maintain. In a secret March 1989 meeting at the Kremlin, Gorbachev gave Nemeth a "green light," telling him that the border was Hungary's problem to manage. This meeting also touched on the sensitive presence of a secret Soviet nuclear arsenal in Hungary, which Gorbachev insisted remain hidden from his own defense ministers. Nemeth left Moscowfeeling that while Gorbachev wouldn't stop him, the Soviet leader's own position was precarious, and a hardline coup remained a constant threat. (1)
1800

Brett Forrest, The Lost Son: An American Family Trapped Inside the FBI's Secret Wars. The final segment of Forrest's account explores the dark possibilities of Billy's fate and the FBI's high-level awareness of the case. While some contacts suggested Billy might have simply disappeared into Russia or traveled to the Far East, Anastasia Mikhailovska offers a much bleaker theory: that Billy was taken into custody, tortured for information, and his body disposed of in a lake in one of the breakaway republics of Eastern Ukraine. This blunt assessment stands in contrast to more optimistic theories but aligns with the brutal reality of the Donbas conflict. Back in Washington, Forrest attends a retirement party at the Department of Justice, where he encounters Paul Abate. At the time Billy went to Russia, Abate was the Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit field office—the man who would have overseen Billy's handlers and the investigation into his disappearance. By 2018, Abate had risen to become the third-highest-ranking official in the entire FBI. When Forrest approaches him, Abate reveals that he already knows who Forrest is and is intimately familiar with the Riley case, despite no stories having been published yet. This high-level recognition suggests that the "secret wars" the Rileys felt trapped inside were well-known and carefully monitored at the top of the American intelligence apparatus. (4)
1867 MOSCOW

Brett Forrest, The Lost Son: An American Family Trapped Inside the FBI's Secret Wars. In this segment, Forrest details his own investigation in Russia, aided by his personal history of living in Moscow and Kyiv for fifteen years. He teams up with Dmitri Turin, a private investigator hired by the Rileys after they realized the FBI would not help them. Forrest seeks to meet Mikhail Pollenov, the manager of the volunteer fighter camp where Billy stayed in Rostov-on-Don, but Pollenov refuses to meet. He does, however, find Elena Gorbacheva, a photojournalist who had taken pictures of Billy on the day he arrived. Another key contact is "the general," a former member of the Russian services and a longtime friend of Forrest, who introduces him to Anastasia Mikhailovska, a woman who becomes critical to the investigation. Forrest visits Rostov-on-Don in the summer of 2018, noting the city's historic connection to the Cossacks and its modern role as a staging point for Russian military activities in Ukraine. He discovers that the volunteer camp Billy visited had been largely "cleaned out" by the time of the 2018 World Cup. The segment also explores the administrative nature of Billy's role as a CHS, explaining how the FBI's post-9/11 "re-engineering project" sought to turn the bureau into an intelligence agency by recruiting people like Billy to gather information on terrorist conspiracies. A major point of intrigue is Billy's "Volga sojourn," a trip he took to cities like Volgograd and Ulyanovsk shortly after arriving in Russia, which perplexed his parents as it took him away from the Ukrainian border. Finally, Forrest notes the suspicious timing of a visit by Tim Rhames, Billy's main FBI handler, who appeared at the Riley home for the first time ever immediately after Billy went missing. (3)
1891

Brett Forrest, The Lost Son: An American Family Trapped Inside the FBI's Secret Wars. The story shifts to 2017 when Brett Forrest, a Wall Street Journal correspondent, receives a tip from Bob Foresman, an American financier with deep ties to the Russian and Ukrainian power structures. Foresman reveals the outlines of a "story of great depth": a young Michigan man who worked for the FBI in counterterrorism had disappeared in Russia, after which his handlers visited his family, confiscated their electronics, and then effectively "shut the Rileys out." Forrest visits the Rileys in the winter and finds a family living through a tragedy but fueled by a relentless energy to find their son. The timeline of Billy's final known movements is established through his WhatsApp messages to his mother. He arrived in Moscow, met with contacts named Mikhail Pollenov and Elena Gorbacheva, and then took a train to Rostov-on-Don, a staging ground for the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. Billy told his parents he intended to join a "humanitarian mission" delivering food and medical supplies to civilians in the war zone. While he was a self-taught expert on the region and could read Russian well, his parents remained uncertain if his humanitarian goals were his true or only purpose. On June 24, 2015, while his parents were on a bicycle trip, Billy sent a final, cryptic message stating that "plans have changed," ending all further communication. (2)
1898

Brett Forrest, The Lost Son: An American Family Trapped Inside the FBI's Secret Wars. This segment introduces the core of the mystery surrounding Billy Riley, a young man from Oxford, Michigan, who disappeared after traveling to Russia in May 2015. Billy is described as a product of the post-9/11 era whose life was fundamentally redirected by that event, leading him to develop a deep, self-taught expertise in global conflicts, religions, and foreign languages while operating from his parents' home as a "keyboard commando." His prolific internet activities eventually drew the attention of the Detroit FBI, who recruited him as a Confidential Human Source (CHS)—a type of freelance operative or "informant." The narrative highlights the tension between Billy's imaginative world and his physical reality; although he had not traveled widely, he was handling increasingly dangerous assignments for the FBI. One such assignment involved an online relationship with an individual in the Philippines suspected of being linked to Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic terror group allied with ISIS. Though Billy nearly traveled to Manila in December 2014 to meet this person, he backed out at the airport. However, by May 2015, he was determined to seek adventure in Russia, specifically heading toward the war-torn Donbas region of Ukraine. His parents, Terry and Bill Riley, were aware he worked for "the men"—his name for his FBI handlers—but Billy had become adept at being "coy," sharing just enough to intrigue them without keeping them fully informed. Notably, despite growing up in a traditional Catholic environment, Billy had converted to Islam through personal study, often reading the Quran in his Catholic school classes. The night before his fateful departure for Moscow, he met with his main FBI handler for dinner, a meeting shrouded in mystery that left his mother with a sense of parental intuition that something was wrong. (1)
1900

Jeremy Zakis updates listeners on the four magpie families that have reclaimed his property, peacefully coexisting with his dog, Dallas. He highlights the birds' advanced cognitive abilities, explaining how they recognize friendly humans and pass this generational trust down to their younger offspring in residential areas. (4)

Jeremy Zakis and John Batchelor explore the deep-rooted drinking culture in cricket, citing Ben Stokes' retirement and the legacy of Sir Garry Sobers. They also discuss the "death" of Bazball, an aggressive strategy that proved physically unsustainable and unsuccessful during long five-day Test matches for England. (1)
1920

Jeremy Zakis recounts a dramatic incident where a 60-year-old cyclist in New South Wales accidentally rode over a six-foot eastern brown snake, which then became entangled in her bike's chain. Remarkably, the woman survived a "dry bite" without venom, illustrating the unpredictable dangers posed by Australian wildlife. (3)

Jeremy Zakis details Australia's preparations for a potential record-breaking "Super El Niño," which threatens to trigger extreme heat and devastating eucalyptus forest fires. Concurrently, John Batchelor reports on the severe smoke and air quality issues in New England resulting from massive wildfires in Canada. (2)