The Illegals was a network of sleeper agents created by KGB, who were sent into western countries, pretending to be ordinary citizens. Jack Barsky was a young German man when he signed up and became one of the few Illegals who sent straight into the belly of the beast - into the US. We discuss his early life in East Germany, the KGB training he went through in Moscow, his mission in the US, the eventual arrest by the FBI, as well as famous films portraying spying.

Jacob Mikanowski is a Polish-American journalist, writer and academic who's recently published an amazing book on the history of EASTERN EUROPE called "Goodbye Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land." Jacob and I talk about the origins of Slavs, the surprising role of slavery in early kingdoms, the colourful medieval Slavdom, as well as modern stereotypes and our unique sense of humour.

Uwe Boll is an infamous German film director, a Hollywood outcast consistently panned by critics, who produced and directed more than 30 films, working with some of the biggest names in show business.We talk about his everlasting passion for film, humble beginnings, first feature, developing a hard skin, hanging out with Mike Tyson and boxing his critics in the ring.

Most of us believe our lives are ordered by reason, or at least some kind of a sensible narrative... However, much as we hate to admit it, chance, randomness and chaos all play a crucial role in our lives (as well as our societies) - and that's exactly what Brian Klaas, associate professor in Global politics at University College London, wrote a phenomenal book about (called Fluke: Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters). We also discuss the pervasive ideology of individualism, "hustle culture", the myth of a secret genius, conspiracy theories and the best way to lead our lives in our dopamine dependent societies.

I talk to Norman Ohler, the author of the best-selling book Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany. We discuss the hidden history of widespread drug use in the Third Reich, the mass consumption of methamphetamines by the German army, as well as Adolf Hitler's spiralling dependence on "injections" administered to him by his doctor, Theo Morell.

Brent Lee is an ex-conspiracy theorist who's managed to escape the rabbit hole after dwelling in its depths for 15 years. These days he's known as the host of the "Some Dare Call It Conspiracy" podcast, through which he's trying to help people who are still caught up in these beliefs.We talk about his descent into the bizarre world of conspiracies, the impact they had on his personal life, his beliefs at the time, the con men "influencers" he encountered, as well as his mission of trying to reach people who still inhabit this paranoid world.

Dr. Michael Rowe is a Reader in modern European History at King's College London. Over the last two decades he has published extensively on the period of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars.In this episode of Smart Cookies we talk about Napoleon's rise, his personality, conquests and defeats, as well as his relationship with Josephine and finally, bout Ridley Scott's divisive Napoleon biopic.

Dr. Tobias Jones is a researcher, historian and lecturer of Mongol history at Leiden University. Back by popular demand, he returns to Smart Cookies to talk about some of the most powerful women of the Mongol Empire. We also talk discuss upbringing and the role of Mongolian women, the ancient custom of bride kidnapping, levirate marriage, whispers of warrior women, and Marco Polo doing kung-fu in China.

Bruce Greyson is a Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neuro-behavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia, who has studied near-death experiences for more than 45 years and is one of the world’s leading experts on their science and significance. He is the author of After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond, co-author of Irreducible Mind and co-editor of The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences. We talk about his research on near-death experiences, science defying survivor testimonies, the prospect of the afterlife and scepticism.

Tariq Ali is a writer, filmmaker and a leading figure of the international left since the 60s. He is a long-standing editor of the New Left Review and a political commentator published on every continent. His books include The Clash of Fundamentalisms, The Obama Syndrome and the latest, Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes, which we discuss in this episode.We also talk about Churchill's racist views, support of British Imperialism, World War 2, Class Warfare and his role in The Bengal Famine.

During one of the most dramatic summers in recent memory, filled with record breaking temperatures, devastating wildfires and destructive floods, a bombshell report released by the IISD exposed the fact that our governments are pumping RECORD amounts of money into big oil...I talk to one of the reports' authors, Tara Laan, to figure out WHY.We also discuss climate anxiety, the relationship between pollution and health, climate summits, COP28 and climate activism.

Professor Avi Loeb is a former Chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University, founding director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative and director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He is also the head of the Galileo Project - the Systematic Scientific Search for Evidence of Extraterrestrial Technological Artifacts. We talk about the US government's "secret retrieval program" testimony by David Grusch, UFO and UAP sightings, the search for Alien Civilisations, space trash from possible neighbours.... and Professor Loeb's hunt for interstellar objects in the Pacific Ocean.

Stanley Stepanic is an Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Virginia. To date he has published three textbooks that have been released in recent editions - these are "Dracula or the Timeless Path of the Vampire," "Russian and East European Film", and "Russian Folklore". In addition to such publications, Professor Stepanic has been very active in the public sphere, giving a variety of presentations, primarily concerning the VAMPIRE.We talk about vampire origins, Count Dracula, the Blood Countess, Nosferatu, symbolism, vampire incarnations in pop culture and... Morbius.

Stuart Vyse is a behavioral scientist and writer with a PhD in psychology and BA and MA degrees in English Literature. He's a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, as well as a contributing editor for the Skeptical Inquirer magazine. His first book, Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition won the William James Book Award of the American Psychological Association. In 2020 he wrote a book called Superstition, published by Oxford press - who also released his latest book, The Uses of Delusion: Why It’s Not Always Rational to be Rational. We talk about black cats, Friday the 13th, Zodiac, delusions, the futility of Twitter debates and my addiction to fortune telling.

Professor Patrick McNamara has over 15 years of experience working directly on the problem of the nature and function of dreaming. He has been the recipient of grant awards from the National Institutes of Health, to further study sleep and was awarded the Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience from Boston University. He did a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Aphasia Research Center, Boston VA Medical Center. He has published over 50 scientific papers as well as several books on the neuroscience of dreams. We talk about the neuroscience and evolution of dreaming, but also about REM sleep, the function of nightmares, demonic possession dreams, sleep paralysis, lucid dreaming and dreams within dreams.

Mike Rothschild is a journalist and author, focused on the intersections between internet culture and politics as seen through the dark glass of conspiracy theories. Since 2018, he has specialized in examining the QAnon conspiracy cult and is one of the first journalists to reveal its connections to past conspiracy theories. He is the author of the seminal work on QAnon, "The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything.""We talk about QAnon's humble beginnings, it's meteoric rise and it's status after the 2020 presidential election... We also discuss conspiracy theories in general, as well as Bill Gates, the Reptoids, JFK, the attempted coup in Germany, the pervasive underlying thread of anti-Semitism, and of course, the infamous "Mattress Conspiracy."

Agustín Fuentes is a professor of anthropology at Princeton University. His research focuses on the biosocial, delving into the entanglement of biological systems with the social and cultural lives of humans, our ancestors, and a few of the other animals with whom humanity shares close relations.He has written many books, but we mostly discuss his latest one, which is called "Why we believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being;" in it Professor Fuentes examines our capacity to believe.We also talk about the effects our minds have on our bodies and health, the genesis of our belief systems, the importance of travelling and education, and the enormous influence of figures, such as Joe Rogan, on public opinion.

Anil Seth is a professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where he is also Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science. His latest book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness, is a Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller, a New Statesman Book of the Year, an Economist Book of the Year and a Guardian Science Book of the Year. His TED talk on consciousness has more than 13 million views and is one of TED’s most popular science talks. We talk about ChatGPT, the possibility of conscious machines, the illusory nature of reality and our ability to perceive it, as well as about his research on (human) consciousness as a controlled hallucination.

Bill Schutt is Professor Emeritus of biology at LIU Post and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History. He is the author of Dark Banquet: Blood and The Curious Lives of the Blood-Feeding Creatures and Pump: A Natural History of the Heart, which is his latest book. In 2017 he published an astonishing book called Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History, which is what we discuss in this episode... We also talk about cannibalism's rise in contemporary Hollywood, Christopher Columbus, 2Pac and Keith Richards.Oh, and we can't get past the time Professor Schutt ate a woman's placenta while doing research for his book.

Dr. Lisa Sugiura is a Reader in Cybercrime and Gender at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Portsmouth, Themes Strategic Innovation Fellow and the Deputy Director of the Cybercrime Awareness Clinic. Her research focuses on online deviance, and technology facilitated gender-based abuse and sexual violence. She has published on topics including the online pharmaceutical trade, online research ethics, and rape culture online. She is the author of the books: Respectable deviance and The incel rebellion: the rise of the manosphere and the virtual war against women.We talk about the Andrew Tate "phenomenon", different Manosphere groups, the Red and Black pill concepts, Incels and the dangers of (self-)indoctrination.

Professor Chris Stringer has worked at The Natural History Museum London since 1973. He is now Research Leader in Human Origins and a Fellow of the Royal Society, and is also a Visiting Professor at Royal Holloway and UCL. His early research was on the relationship of Neanderthals and early modern humans in Europe, but through his work on the 'Recent African Origin' theory of modern human origins, he now collaborates with archaeologists and geneticists in attempting to reconstruct the evolution of modern humans globally. His recent books include The Complete World of Human Evolution, The Origin of Our Species and Britain: One Million Years of the Human Story.We talk about Human Evolution, the prehistoric world we shared with other Hominins, the demise of the Neanderthals, my big nose and Ozzy Osbourne's DNA.

The Partial Historians is a renowned podcast about ancient Roman history, hosted by historians dr. Fiona Radford and dr. Peta Greenfield, who discuss, spar, and laugh their way through different aspects of the Roman world...We talk about the first Roman Emperor's scandalous daughter, Julia the Elder, but also about sassy Roman parties, unforgivable affairs and the endless cycle of the struggle for power.

Edward Slingerland is Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, where he also holds appointments in the Departments of Psychology and Asian Studies. He is an expert on early Chinese thought, comparative religion and digital humanities. Besides numerous academic books, translations and edited volumes, Professor Slingerland is the author of the best-selling book "Drunk - How we sipped, Danced and stumbled our Way to Civilization", which explores the evolutionary and civilizational importance of alcohol.We talk about why humans love to get sloshed, "beer goggles," the beer over bread hypothesis, different drinking culture(s), the depiction of booze in books and film, and much more...

Toby Jones has just finished his PhD at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he is also teaching. His work focuses on the irruption of the Mongols onto the larger world scene focusing on their invasion of the Persianate world. The topic of his research is ‘Loyalty in the Turco-Mongol World' - through it he considers the Mongol invasions and their impact on the cultures around them.We talk about Chinggis Khan, Mongol feasts, Conquest, Ruthlessness, their Sense of Humour and the Role of Women in Mongol Society... as well as a very unlikely, Medieval James Bond.

Bill McGuire is a Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London, a co-director of the New Weather Institute and was a contributor to the 2012 IPCC report on climate change and extreme events.His books include A Guide to the End of the World: Everything you Never Wanted to Know and Waking the Giant: How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Volcanoes. In his latest book Hothouse Earth: an Inhabitant’s Guide, Professor McGuire explains the science behind the climate crisis and presents an honest picture of the world we’re going to leave to our kids and grandkids…We talk about the unknown dangers of Climate Breakdown, the Planet's Tipping Points, Denialism, COP27, Doomerism and a possible way out of the planetary mess we've created.

Mostafa Minawi is an associate professor of history at Cornell University and the director of the Critical Ottoman and Post-ottoman studies. He is the author of "The Ottoman Scramble for Africa: Empire and Diplomacy in the Sahara and the Hijaz", as well as the very recent "Losing Istanbul: Arab-Ottoman Imperialists and the End of Empire". His short video ‘The rise of the Ottoman Empire’ he made with TED-Ed has almost a million views on Youtube and is just the coolest introduction into the history of the Ottoman Empire.We talk about the founding dream of Osman I, the Janissaries, the power of the Imperial Harems and the Golden Age of Istanbul.

Prof. Massimo Pigliucci has a PhD in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Connecticut and a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Tennessee. He is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. His research interests include the philosophy of science, the nature of pseudoscience, and practical philosophies like Stoicism and New Skepticism. He is the author or editor of 16 books, including the best selling How to Be A Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life.In this episode we discuss how philosophy can help us lead better lives, the importance of virtues and his latest book, The Quest for Character: What the Story of Socrates and Alcibiades Teaches Us about Our Search for Good Leaders

Dr. Mathias Nordvig is a visiting assistant professor of Nordic and Arctic studies at the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures at University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder). He teaches subjects on Viking history, Nordic mythology, folklore, Arctic culture and society, and Danish language. Dr. Nordvig earned his PhD in Nordic mythology in 2014 at Aarhus University in Denmark, his native country...In this episode, we talk about persistent stereotypes we hold about the Vikings, the (in)accuracy of their portrayal on film and TV, and of course, about the easiest way to piss of your average Viking when sitting next to one.

Dr. Peter Struck is Professor and Chair of the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his A.B. at the University of Michigan and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. His primary research interests are in the history of ideas about the construction of meaning, with specialties in myth, literary criticism, and divination.His book Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of Their Texts won the C. J. Goodwin Award from the American Philological Association for best book in Classical Studies.We discuss the nature and functions of Myths, the delightful dysfunctionality of the celestial Olympian family and of course Xena, the warrior princess.

Dr. Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel is a Scholar and Historian who holds a Bachelor's degree in Physics, a BA in History and a PhD in Medieval Cultures from the University of Barcelona. She has been awarded a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship to carry out her research project ILLITTERATAE at Queen Mary University of London.We talk about Women's Spirituality, Mysticism, the Inquisition and the accusations of Witchcraft in the Middle Ages.

Dr. John Aberth is a medieval historian, author and professor. He received his M.A. in Medieval Studies from the University of Leeds in England and his Ph.D. in Medieval History from the University of Cambridge. Professor Aberth is the author of ten books on Medieval History, focusing mostly on the Black Death of the late Middle Ages.In this episode we talk about the origins of the bubonic plague, the devastation it caused during the Middle ages, the many unsuccessful ways it was treated, and also about its similarities to the epidemic of our time, Covid-19.

Dr Jonathan Mijs is a Dutch sociologist who earned his PhD at Harvard University and is currently teaching at Boston University. His research describes the beliefs people hold about economic inequality, its causes and political consequences. It especially highlights the process through which citizens - especially young ones - learn about inequality and come to make sense of poverty and wealth.His works have been featured in The Guardian, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, The Independent and a myriad of scientific journals.In this episode we're trying to dissect the many reasons why it's so hard for us to believe that inequality is mostly undeserved, and what we can do about that.

Dr. Julia Rucklidge is a Professor of Clinical Psychology in the School of Psychology, Speech and Hearing at the University of Canterbury and the Director of Te Puna Toiora, the Mental Health and Nutrition Research Lab.Her TEDx talk, ’The surprisingly dramatic role of nutrition in mental health’ has been viewed over 4 million times, and she recently co-authored a book, The Better Brain: Overcome Anxiety, Combat Depression, and Reduce ADHD and Stress with Nutrition, which was released in 2021.This is a conversation about the "mental health epidemic" of our day, as well as about the connection between nutrition and mental health.We also discuss the best ways to start eating (and feeling) better.