Episode Details

Think the Cold War started because Russia was scary? Think again. In this episode, Matt Ehret walks us through the Guzenko Affair of 1946, a coordinated British intelligence operation that used a low-level Russian cipher clerk with a bag over his head to terrify the Western world into submission. Along the way, Ehret covers eugenics in American universities, Churchill's admiration for Mussolini, Henry Wallace's erased vision for the postwar world, and the founding of the Five Eyes surveillance network. It's a lot. But Ehret argues the same psyop playbook is alive and well today, just with different villains. Today's boogeyman has a Beijing accent instead of a Moscow one, but the architects behind the curtain? Same crowd. Buckle up.