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Spy Craft

Circle Of Insight Productions

Welcome to “Spy Craft,” the podcast that delves into the gripping world of espionage. Join us as we uncover life-and-death spy stories, dissect covert operations, and explore the news and events that made them possible. Each episode offers a thrilling journey into the clandestine activities of spies, revealing the secrets, strategies, and stakes behind some of the most daring missions in history. Tune in for an exciting look at the shadowy world of espionage and the operatives who risk everything.

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35 episodes
Avg 7 min
English

Episodes 35

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Yesterday · 2 min
The Approach Comes Through Your Phone: Reading the CHOSEN BRICK Advisory
Britain's NCSC, the FBI, and the Dutch AIVD have jointly warned about spyware they attribute to Iranian state-linked actors, including Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security. The malware is delivered through spear-phishing on WhatsApp and...
- Transcript
Wednesday · 2 min
Germany Charges German-Ukrainian Woman With Spying for Russia via Berlin Embassy Contact
On Sept. 14, 2026, German federal prosecutors charged a German-Ukrainian woman identified as Ilona W. with spying for Russia. She is accused of maintaining contacts since at least October 2023 with an intelligence officer at the Russian embassy in...
- Transcript
Tuesday · 2 min
Building a Legend: How Spies Create Fake Lives- the paper soul
A legend is not a costume. It is a second biography, assembled brick by brick so that a man may walk through another country’s streets and answer its questions without the tremor of invention. This piece examines how intelligence services construct...
- Transcript
September 13 · 2 min
The Shanghai Ledger: How a Marketing Man Fell Into the Wilderness of Mirrors
In Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court, marketing executive Alexander Csergo has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for reckless foreign interference. The case represents Australia’s first formal sentencing under the sweeping...
- Transcript
September 8 · 3 min
How Do You Catch a Mole?
A mole does not confess. He blends, he performs loyalty better than the loyal, and he waits inside an institution built entirely on the assumption that everyone in the room can be trusted. This is the story of how counterintelligence learned to hunt...
- Transcript
September 7 · 2 min
Poland's Drone Drill: NATO Learns Ukraine's Hardest Lesson
In late August, U.S. Green Berets put Polish special forces through a first-of-its-kind NATO exercise: crossing a simulated front line, covering roughly sixty miles, and striking a target with a drone while more than a hundred enemy aircraft searched...
- Transcript
September 3 · 3 min
They Didn’t Just Hack Agencies. They Tried to Rent Your Router.
On August 26 the Justice Department said it had seized the domains behind two Chinese state-linked hacking platforms, QScan and QTRouter, used since at least 2018. Some U.S. networks were compromised; others, including a NASA attempt, were not — and...
- Transcript
September 1 · 4 min
The Spy Who Betrayed MI6 from the Inside
Kim Philby was a high-ranking British intelligence officer who spent decades secretly working for the Soviet Union. As a member of the "Cambridge Five" spy ring, he passed classified information to Moscow while rising through the ranks of MI6, even...
- Transcript
August 30 · 6 min
Dead Drops and Brush Passes: The Tradecraft That Still Beats Digital Surveillance
Even in an era of pervasive digital surveillance, classic espionage tradecraft like dead drops and brush passes hasn't disappeared — it's adapted. This episode breaks down the operational logic behind these techniques and why intelligence services...
- Transcript
August 23 · 4 min
Can You Really Lose a Surveillance Team?
Surveillance detection routes, the tactics civilians pick up from movies, and the reality of how professional surveillance teams actually operate are three very different things. This episode breaks down what it actually takes to detect and evade...
- Transcript
August 19 · 5 min
The Butterfly Who Wasn’t: Inside the Shi Pei Pu Espionage Affair
For twenty years, a French diplomat believed he was in a secret relationship with a woman who bore him a son — until a Paris courtroom revealed she was a man. This episode unpacks the true story behind Shi Pei Pu and Bernard Boursicot, the twenty-year...
- Transcript
August 16 · 7 min
Inside an Intelligence Dead Zone: How Governments Defeat Spies, Signals, and Drones
In Homeland, the CIA encounters a Russian facility described as an intelligence “dead zone”—a compound where electronic listening and drone surveillance become nearly useless. The concept sounds like television fiction, but RF shielding, acoustic...
- Transcript
August 10 · 6 min
The Park Bench Problem: How Spies Really Meet Their Sources
Spy movies love the park-bench meeting: two intelligence officers sit facing opposite directions, whisper without looking at each other, exchange an envelope, and disappear into the crowd. But wouldn’t two people behaving that strangely actually...
- Transcript
August 9 · 6 min
The Waterfront Mata Hari: How a Father-Daughter Spy Team Hunted Ships in New York Harbor
In this episode of Strange Spy Facts, we dive into the shadowy world of Simon Emil Koedel, a naturalized American who became one of Nazi Germany’s most effective agents on U.S. soil. Learn how he turned his adopted daughter Marie into the so-called...
- Transcript
August 6 · 2 min
Hostile Surveillance: The Taxi Driver, the RAF Base, and the IRGC
A dual British-Azerbaijani national from London has been arrested in Cyprus and faces extradition to the United Kingdom on suspicion of conducting hostile surveillance of the strategic RAF Akrotiri air base and sharing the information with Iran’s...
- Transcript
August 3 · 5 min
Hunting the Jackal: The Rise and Fall of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez
This episode breaks down the life of the Venezuelan militant who became one of the most wanted men of the 1970s and 80s. From his early operations with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to the 1975 OPEC siege and his eventual capture,...
- Transcript
July 29 · 3 min
Shadow at SHAPE: The NATO Intern Spy Case
A Canadian intern of Chinese origin is arrested inside NATO’s most sensitive military headquarters on suspicion of espionage. We break down what we know, what it reveals about insider threats, and why this hits different for anyone who’s ever held a...
- Transcript
July 27 · 5 min
Black Tiger: The RAW Spy Who Became a Pakistani Major
Ravindra Kaushik erased his Indian identity, crossed into Pakistan as Nabi Ahmed Shakir, and rose inside the Pakistan Army while feeding critical intelligence back to India for nearly a decade. His cover held until a single compromised contact exposed...
- Transcript
July 16 · 4 min
The LinkedIn Trap: How China’s Military Intelligence Is Hunting Your Clearance
The Five Eyes alliance — the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand — just dropped a rare joint bulletin warning that Chinese military intelligence is running a scaled, systematic operation to recruit cleared personnel through LinkedIn, Indeed,...
- Transcript
July 13 · 6 min
American Revolution (1776): The Psychology of Hyper-Vigilance — Inside the Culper Spy Ring
George Washington was not just a general, he was an exceptional spymaster who understood that a smaller army could only win by manipulating the enemy’s perception of reality. This episode dissects the Culper Spy Ring, a network of ordinary citizens in...
- Transcript

Showing 1–20 of 35 episodes