The John Batchelor Show

Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603–1689. The focus shifts to Charles I and his favorite advisor, the Duke of Buckingham. In a bizarre 1623 incident, Charles and Buckingham traveled in disguise to Madrid to secure a marriage with the Spanish Infanta, hoping to gain wealth and influence. The mission was a humiliating failure, leading to a shift toward wa...

Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603–1689. This segment introduces James I, the first monarch to rule both England and Scotland, who faced a kingdom deeply divided by religion. It details the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, an attempt by radical Catholics to destroy the political elite, which fueled a lasting anti-Catholic paranoia and a fear of "popish" tyranny...

Matthew Longo, The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain. Thirty years after the event, Matthew Longo returns to the border to reflect on the legacy of the picnic and the nature of freedom. The site of the former "death zone" has ironically become the most green part of Europe—a "green belt" of pastoral woodlands. Longo interviews the aging survivors, including Nemeth, Ag...

Matthew Longo, The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain. As the picnic date of August 19, 1989, approaches, the atmosphere is "fraught" with tension. Thousands of East Germans (GDR) have flooded into Hungary, pretending to be on summer vacation but actually acting as refugees hoping for a chance to cross into the West. They camp at places like Ferto Rakos, where they are...

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 Curt...

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"...

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 take...

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 man...

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 countert...

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...

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)

Charles Spicer concludes that after the war, Christie and Conwell-Evans published a limited-run book, None So Blind, detailing their ignored warnings to the government. Though Martin Gilbert later attempted to correct the record, these amateur spies largely slipped from historical memory. Tennant died in 1962, his contributions unacknowledged. Conwell-Evans lived modestly until 1968, having advise...

Charles Spicer recounts how, at the Nuremberg trials, Ribbentrop tried to use his pre-war Fellowship efforts as a defense, claiming he had always worked for peace. Göring remained unrepentant, while Hess insisted on wearing his flying boots in the witness box. Spicer notes that after the war, Vansittart and the Foreign Office obscured their connections to the German resistance to avoid admitting t...

Charles Spicer describes how, following the May 1940 retreat at Dunkirk, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister, finally acting on the intelligence Christie had provided for years. The polemic Guilty Men was published, simplifying the blame for the war onto appeasers like Chamberlain and Baldwin. Meanwhile, Lord Lothian, serving as ambassador to the US, successfully mobilized the "arsenal of demo...

Charles Spicer notes that even after war broke out in September 1939, the amateur spies remained active. The Kordtbrothers planned to assassinate Hitler using a bomb from German military intelligence, but their plot was delayed by Georg Elser's independent bomb attack, which narrowly missed the dictator. Christie continued meeting with Göring, whom London briefly considered as a potential replacem...

Charles Spicer relates how, in the summer of 1939, Ernest Tennant undertook an incognito mission to meet Ribbentrop, hoping to find a path to peace. He returned with warnings that Hitler was focused on Poland and prepared for a ten-year war. While London believed the information, Chamberlain's antipathy toward Stalin led to a slow, failed attempt at an alliance with Moscow, allowing Ribbentrop to...

Charles Spicer describes how, as 1939 began, the diplomatic situation worsened due to the catastrophic appointments of Henderson and Ribbentrop. Henderson, the "arch-appeaser," fed Chamberlain's natural tendencies and suppressed reports that might upset Hitler. Conversely, Ribbentrop had become irrational and vitriolic toward the British, feeling socially snubbed. Despite accurate intelligence fro...

Charles Spicer recounts how, by September 1938, the amateur spies learned of the Oster Conspiracy, a robust plan by German military and police units to arrest Hitler and prevent war. Spicer argues this was a credible arrangement that could have succeeded had Britain supported the resistance. Instead, Chamberlain's "Plan Zed"—his personal flights to meet Hitler—undermined the conspirators by robbin...

Charles Spicer describes how, during the 1937 coronation of George VI, Ribbentrop hosted a chaotic, overcrowded party at the German embassy. Despite the champagne-fueled festivities, the event was a social failure that highlighted the growing friction between the two cultures. Meanwhile, Vansittart realized the traditional intelligence services had poor access to the Nazi leadership. He establishe...

Charles Spicer explains that by late 1937, the Fellowship was being monitored by MI5 and penetrated by the NKVD. Soviet spy Kim Philby was even hired to manage the organization's PR, feeding information to Stalin, who feared an Anglo-German alliance against Russia. In November, Lord Halifax visited the Berghof. While he was appalled by Hitler's suggestion to shoot Indian protestors, the dictator s...

Charles Spicer describes how, during the 1937 coronation of George VI, Ribbentrop hosted a chaotic, overcrowded party at the German embassy. Despite the champagne-fueled festivities, the event was a social failure that highlighted the growing friction between the two cultures. Meanwhile, Vansittart realized the traditional intelligence services had poor access to the Nazi leadership. He establishe...

Charles Spicer relates how Ribbentrop arrived at Victoria Station as the new German ambassador with a mission to neutralize Britain through a show of friendship. However, his tenure was a disaster; he was socially clumsy, notoriously giving a Hitler salute to the King. His wife, Annelies, was equally thin-skinned and offended by the British habit of teasing. Simultaneously, Nevile Henderson became...