Brian Klaas
Power CorruptsEpisodes
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Disinformation is a powerful weapon. It forces your enemy to inflict damage upon themselves based upon lies that you've deliberately spread. How did a homeless man's corpse help win World War II? How does reality television function in Russia,
Artificial intelligence is the frontier of human innovation. But it has a dark side, too. In this episode, we explore how AI intersects with everything from criminology to creative writing -- and in the process, we see how biased algorithms h
Is the next war going to happen in space? What are space weapons like, anyway? And why should we be worried about the space ventures of billionaires? In this episode, we look at the militarization of space, including everything from giant space
Is it a crime to steal back something that was once yours? That's the question we'll tackle this week, as we look at a string of sophisticated art heists aimed at reclaiming some stolen heritage objects. And we'll explore how Facebook is fa
This week's episode is an excerpt from the opening chapter of Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us. (If you pre-order the book or audiobook, you're eligible for a bonus episode of Power Corrupts that won't be released publicly).
The title of this podcast is Power Corrupts. But is that true? In this week's episode, host Brian Klaas has the microphone turned around on himself, as he's interviewed by Emma Nelson about his new book, Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It
The International Criminal Court prosecutes perpetrators of horrific crimes. But what if the perpetrator is also a victim? That's the question we explore this week, with the disturbing tale of a child soldier who was kidnapped into a militia,
How do you capture a pirate after they’ve hijacked a ship? In today’s episode, we look at two ingenious sting operations that managed to lure some pirates across borders to their arrest. And in the process, we’ll see how clever law enforcement
Pirates can teach us quite a lot about democracy and economics. What can Blackbeard teach us about signaling theory? Why were pirates racially progressive for their era? And is it possible that pirate ships were laboratories for experiments wit
Can doing the wrong thing ever be the right policy? That’s a question we’ll tackle this week as we look at the possibility of letting some very bad people get away with their crimes…in order to prevent them from causing further damage. From dru
What if you hacked a hitman-for-hire website and found out the identities of people who were slated to die before the murder? How much does it cost to hire a hitman on the Dark Web? And what if all of these supposed hitmen were just part of a g
Could you fake your death and get away with it? In this episode, we look at fake identities, from people who've tried to fake their own deaths to an audacious wine fraudster who made millions as he sold new wine in old bottles. We speak to a
Is going into exile safe any longer? A few years ago, a former Rwandan intelligence chief hiding out in exile was found strangled to death in a Johannesburg hotel room. Hanging on the door outside was a “Do Not Disturb” sign. It had been plac
In early 2021, hackers infiltrated the software that controlled the city’s water supply in Oldsmar, Florida. Through dumb luck, they caught the intrusion shortly after the hacker tried to poison the city’s water. This hack was part of a growi
We all know that offshore areas of financial secrecy exist. In this episode, we’re going to take a look at the origin story of one of them. It’s a story that will make you question the caricature you probably have in your head about why shadowy
When it comes to understanding the underworld of corruption and criminality, you can’t just look at the rich crooks. You also have to look at the lawyers who help them dot the i’s and cross the t’s as they try to stash their illicit cash somewh
They say power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But when it comes to the underworld of corruption, murder, and greed, from drug cartels to hackers to political psychopaths, what you see is often just the tip of the iceberg. To u
Pandemics are horrifying. But what if one could be unleashed deliberately — by terrorists or a disgruntled scientist? How did ancient armies from the Greeks to the Mongol hordes use germ warfare? Why did America conduct tests on unsuspecting pe
Pandemics are horrifying. But what if one could be unleashed deliberately? How did ancient armies from the Greeks to the Mongol hordes use germ warfare? Why did America conduct tests on unsuspecting people in New York and San Francisco? Can bio
When revolutions happen, everything changes. In this episode, we'll look at why one revolution was launched when a rebel leader in southeast Asia started climbing trees; how Teddy Roosevelt's son led a CIA-backed coup in 1953 that contributed t
Pandemics are as old as human civilisation, from the Plague of Athens to mysterious diseases that ravaged armies throughout history. But there's a lot you probably don't know about them. Why did "dancing plagues" erupt repeatedly in Medieval Eu
Have you ever made a catastrophic mistake? What if your mistakes could cause an empire to fall, a war to start, or thirty million people to starve to death? History and politics are defined by catastrophic miscalculations -- those "oops" moment
Corruption is usually hidden. But sometimes, it’s out in the open — either by design, or by incompetence. In this episode, we explore some unexpected hotspots of corruption and kleptocracy. How does a fugitive Malaysian playboy who allegedly st
Christopher Blair has been called the Godfather of Fake News. He's an American troll. And whether you realized it or not, you've probably unknowingly read a fake news article that he's written, cooked up on his computer in rural Maine. So we tr
When a brutal dictatorship collapses, there's a big problem: everyone who knows how to run the government is someone who worked for the brutal dictator. It's a battle of pragmatism vs. justice. Should Nazi civil servants be allowed to keep thei
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