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Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

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Host Zaza talks to some of the SMARTEST PEOPLE on the planet, getting his greedy hands on as many topics as he can 😋🧠

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All Episodes

67:37

From SAMURAI to SHINKANSEN - the Rise, Fall and...

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2025/12/21

As someone who moved to Japan not too long ago I was always fascinated with the country's unique history, particularly with the question of how did a country so completely isolated from the industrial revolution become a global superpower in just a few short decades? How did it manage to totally transform its society, military and culture? And finally, where did it all go wrong?Join me and historian Christopher Harding, author of A History of Modern Japan, as we explore Japan's journey from the Edo

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60:53

The alluring MYSTERIES of Göbekli Tepe - the OLDEST...

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2025/11/29

The old version of the story went something like this - Homo Sapiens appeared in Africa around 2 to 300.00 years ago and for most of that time, we lived in small hunter gatherer communities, competing with other animals, sometimes more, and sometimes less successfully. That was, until one day we had a gnarly idea to start growing crops, build settlements and settle down for good.However, the mind-boggling discovery of the dazzling Gobekkli Teppe, has thrown this attractively simple narrative into

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66:26

We have stopped READING - is it a sign our...

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2025/11/17

In the past 2 decades literacy rates have dropped dramatically... and so have our IQ scores. Writer James Marriott believes these two facts are connected. His Substack article, "The dawn of the post-literate society and the end of civilisation," in which he argues that the absence of reading might signify the end of our civilisation, caused a big stir online...In this conversation we talk about the history of reading, why this immense transfer of knowledge led to the breakdown of feudal society

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79:24

Hare Krishna, Russian Jesus and the End of the World...

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2025/11/08

Joseph Kellner is a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union at the University of Georgia. He's also the author of the recently released book The Spirit of Socialism - Culture and Belief at the Soviet Collapse. Contrary to Western narratives, culture within the USSR wasn't an eternally grey monolith that we used to see in James Bond movies. Quite the opposite - it was a diverse, often flourishing organism. But what happened to it during the brutal dissolution of the Soviet Union? In this

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84:12

Joe Rogan keeps claiming the EARTH is cooling down. I...

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2025/10/30

Podcaster Joe Rogan keeps claiming that climate change doesn't really exist and that the Earth is in fact, cooling down, negating all available climate science (as well as plain observation). To address this misleading take, and the often cited Washington Post article accompanying it, I talk to Prof. David Armstrong McKay, climate scientist from the University of Sussex.We also talk about the rate of warming in 2025, the global lack of progress on climate targets, the danger of tipping points and

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56:28

Why does the INTERNET suck so bad now? With Cory...

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2025/10/18

We all know it - the internet has become a huge garbage heap, guided by malignant algorithms and filled with useless apps, mind numbing social media and AI slop. In a word - it's shitty. But how did we get here? And how can we restore the better internet of old?Cory Doctorow, author of the groundbreaking book ENSHITIFICATION: Why Everything Was Built to Break, has a couple of ideas.

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59:48

Genocide in GAZA, the biggest crime of our time. With...

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2025/10/04

The horrific war that Israel is waging against the predominantly civilian population in Gaza has been going on for almost two years, and yet, the slaughter continues to this day. Why is that? To discuss one of the biggest crimes of our time, I talk Mouin Rabbani, an analyst, and commentator specialising in Palestinian affairs, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the contemporary Middle East. We discuss the Western world's immoral support for Israel, Hamas' aims, Netanyahu's plan for Gaza, the

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69:44

The notorious two OPIUM WARS that ushered in China's...

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2025/09/26

Few conflicts have been as impactful as the two Opium Wars fought between China and the Western powers during the 19th century. These unjust wars, unanimously won by the West, ultimately resulted in a series of devastating concessions and ushered in China's so-called century of humiliation, the memory of which is still shaping global politics today. But how did it all start? Why was Britain intent on pushing opium on this vast and ancient empire? And how come Qing dynasty China crumbled in an

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75:08

Is the killing of CHARLIE KIRK another symptom of a...

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2025/09/14

Neoliberal capitalism is dead. But what kind of a system has replaced it?In the era of tech titans, weakening institutions and growing social tensions it's hard to get a grip on the forces that are governing our lives. Throw the chaotic administration of Donald Trump into the mix and the political landscape becomes truly unrecognisable.Are we living in the era of technofeudalism, platform capitalism or libertarian authoritarianism? And how do increasing political killings, such as the one of MAGA

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80:43

The one power that finally managed to BEAT BACK the...

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2025/09/11

It's the middle of the 13th century and the Mongols have bulldozed their way through a host of Middle Eastern kingdoms like they are playing a strategy game with a cheat code. One after the other, the powerful Christian, as well as Islamic, states fell until there were almost none left on the map. The conquest of EVERYTHING seemed inevitable... However, in one of history's greatest upsets of all time, the Mongols finally met their match. This is the second part of the conversation with Prof

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55:41

You're a MEDIEVAL King in the Middle East... and the...

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2025/09/03

The Byzantine Empire, Anatolian Seljuks, The Ayyubid Empire, Kingdom of Armenia, The Crusader States, The Abbasid Caliphate, the Nizari Assassins... this isn't a list of factions for a new Age of Empires video game, it's a snapshot of the Middle East in the middle of the 13th century - a time (and place) of incredible diversity, sophistication and struggle.All of these states, whether Christian or Muslim, are continuously interlocked into alliances and division, cooperation and armed conflict. But

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97:08

The West is CLUELESS about China. Here's why that's a...

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2025/08/23

In the mainstream media China still occupies the role of the main adversary of the West. It's usually portrayed negatively, as a belligerent country and a paragon of human rights abuses. But is China really just an endless Asian gulag, or is the picture a bit more complicated?To find out I talked to Kaiser Kuo, creator and host of the Sinica podcast, and former Director of International Communications at the Chinese search giant Baidu.In this wonderfully illuminating conversation we discuss

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66:26

In politics and in the workplace, WHY do we keep...

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2025/08/16

The omnipresent problem of bad leadership in politics and business seems to be more pressing than ever. So why do we keep choosing incompetent leaders? What kind of people get ahead in the workplace? What does good leadership actually look like? And finally - do I have what it takes to fulfil my lifelong dream and become an effective basketball coach? Tune in to my convo with historian Martin Gutmann, author of the best-selling book The Unseen Leader, to find out!

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73:12

The TOTALITARIANISM of Stalin, Hitler and... Trump?...

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2025/07/30

Marci Shore is a historian, chair in European Intellectual history, a professor at the Munk School of Global affairs, and the author of The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe. Since she's an expert in the history of totalitarian regimes, I ask her about Hitler's Nazi Germany, the brutal claustrophobia of Stalinism, the twisted psychology of Soviet purges and the totalitarian mechanisms that turned ordinary people into monsters. As prof. Shore recently made headlines

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62:08

AI empires are here - what are they after? With Nick...

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2025/07/18

What are the motivations of artificial intelligence CEO's, people like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Sam Altman? What kind of ideologies are animating Silicon Valley? Why are AI companies, such as Palantir, suddenly signing huge military contracts with the Pentagon? I addressed all of these questions to Nick Srnicek, Senior Lecturer in Digital Economy at King's College London and author of Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future. Check out the full conversation on what our AI future holds here!

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88:39

The MIND-BENDING science of BLACK HOLES, with Marcus...

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2025/07/04

Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer, broadcaster and former radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He's the author of The Ascent of Gravity, Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt you and Afterglow of Creation.His latest title, A Crack in Everything: How Black Holes Came in from the Cold and Took Cosmic Centre Stage details the mind-blowing science of black holes, and traces this, once preposterous idea to its obscure beginnings.In this interstellar conversation we discuss

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66:53

Why does Gen Z think we Millennials are CRINGE? With...

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2025/06/13

In light of a scandalous recent Guardian article which explored why Zoomers think we Millennials are profoundly uncool, I desperately needed some answers. So I turned to Dr. Carolina Are, an Innovation Fellow and a social media researcher at Northumbria University’s Centre for Digital Citizens.We proceeded to talk about the list of perceived millennial sins, the many different aesthetic sensibilities we inhabit, the various unique challenges that only Gen Z faces, the nature of cringe... and last

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74:18

Did the Great Crash of 1929 really propel HITLER into...

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2025/05/26

Dr. Christopher Dillon is Senior Lecturer in Modern German History at King’s College London who has authored many books and articles on the history of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany.In this conversation we tackle the supposedly failing economy of the Weimar Republic, how this perception helped the Nazis take power, why big business supported Hitler, but also what economic policies did the Nazis actually implement? Obviously we can't get past the big elephant in the room, namely the often

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68:33

Massacres, the Children's Crusade and Kingdom of...

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2025/05/11

Welcome back to the second episode of the extraordinary history of the CRUSADES, with renowned historian Prof. Nicholas Morton from Nottingham Trent University.In this episode we discuss the unexpected military success of the First Crusade, the horrific massacres that followed, the resulting establishment of the Crusader States and the initiation of the Knights Templar - but also their ultimate demise, the grim reality of the so-called Children's Crusade and finally, Ridley Scott's epic crusader

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71:00

God Wills It: The HOLY WAR That Changed History...

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2025/05/03

Nicholas Morton is an Associate Professor in Middle Eastern history at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, and has been teaching Medieval - Middle Eastern History, especially the history of the Crusades, since 2008.In the first part of our conversation on the CRUSADES, we talk about the conditions in medieval Europe at the turn of the 11th century, the religious ideas that made the prospect of a holy war possible in the first place... as well as the first military expedition that ventured to the

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