New series preview: How much do we really know about the people who make the headlines? In a provocative new series the acclaimed journalist Michael Crick, formerly of BBC, C4 and Newsnight, delves into the backgrounds of the powerful and the influential.

In this first episode: Few newspaper editors wield as much power as the Daily Mail’s Paul Dacre. Feared and courted by politicians, he’s imposed his singular vision of Britain on successive governments – while sometimes stretching the law in pursuit of justice. But what makes Dacre tick? What does he want? And how might this epic career end?

Like this excerpt? Hear the complete episode on all platforms right now. And subscribe for new episodes every Monday.

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A special preview of a new podcast that Doomsday Watch listeners might enjoy. The Secret History of the Estonia from Crowd Network investigates Europe’s worst peacetime shipping disaster since the Titanic. How did a passenger ferry sink in the Baltic Sea back in 1994, killing 852 people? Was there a cover-up? Journalist Stephen Davis investigates a mysterious trail that leads back to the Cold War.

The Secret History of the Estonia is out now across all podcast platforms with new episodes every Monday. The entire series is available ad-free on the Crowd Stories channel on Apple Podcasts.

Listen on all platforms: https://crowdnetwork.co.uk/podcasts/the-secret-history-of-flight-149/

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Special edition: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy embodies the courage of his nation, and his charisma and determination have made him a hero to the free world. But what this former actor-comedian turned war leader tick? Arthur Snell talks to Steven Derix, co-author of Zelensky*: Ukraine's President and His Country with Marina Shelkunova, about the astonishing story of an actor who played a president on TV before being thrust into the role of real-life wartime leader.

(Yes, there are two ways of spelling it)

Support Doomsday Watch on Patreon and help us develop the next series of our globe-spanning documentaries: www.doomsdaywatch.co.uk

Photograph: Getty Images

Written and presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Original music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com . Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Doomsday Watch is a Podmasters production.

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Special bonus edition. Our latest series was a whirlwind tour of the apocalypse, from Ukraine to the Arctic to cyberspace and beyond. What did Arthur Snell learn? Our presenter sits down with Andrew Harrison for the big takeaways. Has Putin already lost the Ukraine War? Can a paranoid Republican Party really govern? Could there be a nuclear conflict after all? Plus questions from our splendid Patreon backers.

We’re already hard at work on a new and very different series of Doomsday Watch. Support us on Patreon to help make it a reality: https://www.patreon.com/doomsdaywatch

Produced by Robin Leeburn. Original music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com . Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Doomsday Watch is a Podmasters production.

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A special taster of our new series. Search for Jam Tomorrow in your favourite podcast app or visit https://kite.link/JTS1

Episode One: Every Day Is Like D-Day. How did Britain’s dreams of a new postwar world go unfulfilled? And what does that mean for us today? In the first of a new documentary series from the makers of Oh God, What Now?, Ros Taylor looks at the legacy of the War itself. Ιdeals of the Blitz Spirit and dreams of wartime heroism still shape everything from pop culture and entertainment to the Brexit debate. But the truth of the War is more complex and less comforting. What will it take for us to see the Second World War – and ourselves – clearly?

•  “If you’re going to have a foundation myth it might as well be one where you destroy Nazism.” – Al Murray

•  “If the response to air raid wasn’t stoicism there was a fear that morale would break down.” – Lucy Noakes

•  “The Keep Calm And Carry On poster was designed for a type of war that never arrived.” – Henry Irvine

•  “Britain went into the war not alone but at the head of the world’s biggest empire… When Britain went to war, so did vast part of the world.” – Lucy Noakes

Written and presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Jade Bailey. Voiceovers by Imogen Robertson. Original music by Dubstar. Lead producer: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Jam Tomorrow is a Podmasters production.

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Why do key military sites in Russia have an unfortunate habit of bursting into flames? Journalist and former US special forces operative Jack Murphy pulls back the curtain on an audacious campaign of sleeper agent sabotage on Russian soil. This is the astonishing story of how the CIA works with the spy service of one NATO-friendly country to bring the Ukraine War home to Putin.

Read Jack Murphy’s story here: https://jackmurphywrites.com/169/the-cias-sabotage-campaign-inside-russia/

Support Doomsday Watch on Patreon and get every episode a week early and ad-free, plus much more: www.doomsdaywatch.co.uk

• “A NATO ally has inserted sleeper cells into Russia… this goes back ten to fifteen years.”
• “This operation kicked off on Day One of the invasion which indicates how long it was planned.”
• “US intelligence is framing these acts of sabotage as ‘Rogue Ukrainian operations’. What are the Russians going to do? Invade Ukraine?”
• “We essentially created an entire parallel intelligence service because Ukraine’s SBU was compromised by Russia.”

Written and presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Assistant producer: Jacob Archbold. Original music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com . Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Doomsday Watch is a Podmasters production.

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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reshaped the world, but not the way Putin wanted. With little to show for its 100,000 dead, Russia is exposed as weak and militarily inadequate. Now Russian interference in Western democracy and dirty oligarch money are under greater scrutiny than ever before. With Western democracies shocked into unity, does the Ukraine War provide an opportunity to make a new, more secure free world?

In our season finale, Arthur Snell looks forward to a world after Ukraine and asks: How does Putin fall? How would a wounded Russian psyche react? Will the Russian Federation itself survive? And could we be at the beginning of a new and better era?

Doomsday Watch will be back with a new series soon. Support us on Patreon and help us build our next season: www.doomsdaywatch.co.uk

• “Despite the war Ukrainians are fiercely optimistic… Everyone constantly talks about the future.” – Romeo Kokriatski
• “Europe has not really stepped up and 2023 needs to be the year it plays more of a leading role in repairing Ukraine.” – Jeremy Cliffe
• “Ukraine is helping to cure us of an addiction to dirty Russian money.” – Arthur Snell
• “The outcome of this war will determine the future of liberal democracies.” – Olga Tokariuk
• “The humiliation that came with the fall of the Soviet Union left a huge wound that was very useable for Putin and the people around him.” – Jade McGlynn

Photograph: Getty Images

Written and presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Assistant producer: Jacob Archbold. Original music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com . Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Doomsday Watch is a Podmasters production.

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COVID tested world health systems to near-destruction and killed more than 6.6 million people. Now new infectious diseases are emerging and the antibiotics we depend on no longer work the way they used to.

Arthur Snell meets doctors, epidemiologists, evolutionary biologists and veterans of the Coronavirus battles to discover the mounting threat of new zoonotic diseases which leap from animal to human, how COVID conspiracism is undermining our efforts against future pandemics… and how ill-prepared we are to deal with them,

Support Doomsday Watch on Patreon and get every episode a week early and ad-free, plus much more: www.doomsdaywatch.co.uk

• “We could be looking at the end of modern medicine as we know it.” – Arthur Snell
• “New pathogens are in an arms race with humans… We were stunned at how fast COVID was able to evolve against our defences.” – Prof Ravi Gupta
• “Some experts worry that COVID wasn’t the worst-case scenario. The next pandemic could be much more deadly.” – Laura Spinney
• “It won’t take many mutations to turn bird flu into a human-to-human disease… And then you’ve got a whole new pandemic.” – Prof Christina Pagel
• “An ordinary trip to hospital could become a high risk journey across a minefield of superbugs.” – Arthur Snell

Photograph: Getty Images

Written and presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Assistant producer: Jacob Archbold. Original music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com . Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Doomsday Watch is a Podmasters production.

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Espionage is changing, from George Smiley’s binary Cold War world into a more complex landscape. The CIA employs targeted drone killings while Russia and China’s cyber capabilities interfere in elections, media and industry. How did we get here? And what does the new ambiguity in intelligence mean for global stability?

In this edition Arthur Snell talks to veteran intelligence officers to find out how the CIA’s “golden age” of fixing elections and fomenting coups gave way to a post-9/11 world where technology enables new threats – and Putin and the Chinese have the advantage.

Support Doomsday Watch on Patreon and get every episode a week early and ad-free, plus much more: www.doomsdaywatch.co.uk

• “You can do interesting things with chemicals that you can’t do with a knife or a gun. You can send a very clear message.” – Dan Kaszeta
• “How has regime change actually worked out? It hasn’t worked for the USA or the Russians. Are we safer or not?” – Doug London
• “People would say, why don’t we just kill the Libyan leader? And the answer was, Because we actually operate within the law. Things were done once that nowadays are not done.” – Lucy Kirk
• “The CIA went down a path of covert action and counter-terrorism… And I do believe the Agency lost its way.” – Doug London

Photograph: Getty Images

Written and presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Assistant producer: Jacob Archbold. Original music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com . Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Doomsday Watch is a Podmasters production.

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Ten thousand years of Arctic pack ice is melting away, opening up a $30 trillion trade route and a dangerous arena for great power confrontation. Putin is determined to make Russia’s slice of the formerly frozen North matter, but China too sees itself as a Polar power. Arthur Snell charts a vast and game-changing development where climate change could upend the global balance of maritime power. Could the struggle to control a newly-navigable Arctic Ocean become the Great Game of the 21st Century?

Support Doomsday Watch on Patreon and get every episode a week early and ad-free, plus much more: www.doomsdaywatch.co.uk

• “It’s an ecological disaster but a geopolitical opportunity, and Russia is determined to take advantage.” – Arthur Snell
• “Planting a flag on the Arctic sea floor marked a turning point for Putin. Russia was now determined to be a great power on the move.” – Klaus Dodds
• “We’ve lost three quarters of the Arctic’s pack ice in my lifetime.” – Ben Saunders
• “The potential is absolutely there for an uncontrollable hot conflict between Russia and NATO in the Arctic.” – Robert Clark
• “Thanks to climate change the Arctic is effectively a new ocean that China wants to control.” – Arthur Snell

Photograph: Getty Images

Written and presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Assistant producer: Jacob Archbold. Original music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com . Group Editor Andrew Harrison. Doomsday Watch is a Podmasters production.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices