Episode Details

Long before anyone used the words "intelligence service," Venice built one. Historian Ioanna Iordanou argues the Republic ran a centrally organised state intelligence apparatus with a corporate-style bureaucracy, a centralised secret archive, a standing spy network, and a dedicated counterintelligence body — centuries before the First World War, where the textbooks usually start the story. This episode walks through the machinery: the Council of Ten, the Cancelleria Secreta, the bailo in Constantinople, the gazeta sold for a small copper coin at the Rialto, and the market in secrets where you traded a raccordo for a supplica. Then it zooms out to the ancient world to ask whether any of this was actually new. Episode #385872 — open it directly at myweirdprompts.com/385872