Power Corrupts – Details, episodes & analysis

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Power Corrupts

Brian Klaas

News

Frequency: 1 episode/21d. Total Eps: 47

Does power corrupt? Absolutely. This is the podcast about the hidden—and often nefarious—forces that shape our world. Election rigging. Smuggling. Narcopolitics. Ransom. Conspiracy Theories. North Korean bank heists. Cults. Drug Lords. Voodoo. Money laundering. Assassinations. Unhinged conspiracy theories. Unbelievable stories. Stitched together with the help of world-leading experts. Created and narrated by Dr. Brian Klaas, a political scientist and columnist for The Washington Post. Join our exclusive Patreon community for uncut interviews, episodes early and much more: Patreon.com/powercorrupts

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Apple Podcasts

🇫🇷 France - politics
04/08/2025
#66
🇨🇦 Canada - politics
17/06/2025
#88
🇬🇧 Great Britain - politics
17/06/2025
#80
🇬🇧 Great Britain - politics
16/06/2025
#73
🇬🇧 Great Britain - politics
15/06/2025
#61
🇬🇧 Great Britain - politics
14/06/2025
#54
🇬🇧 Great Britain - politics
13/06/2025
#33
🇬🇧 Great Britain - news
13/06/2025
#68
🇬🇧 Great Britain - politics
12/06/2025
#22
🇬🇧 Great Britain - news
12/06/2025
#46

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Good

Score global : 89%

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The Dark Side of AI

Season 3 · Episode 15

Tuesday, November 23, 2021 • Duration 54:44

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 have the power to do enormous harm in modern society.

You can support our work here: Patreon.com/powercorrupts

And you can buy Brian’s book, Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us, here (or wherever you buy books):

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Corruptible/Brian-Klaas/9781982154097

Twitter - twitter.com/powrcorrupts

Instagram - instagram.com/powercorruptspodcast

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Space Wars

Season 3 · Episode 14

Tuesday, November 16, 2021 • Duration 43:08

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 mirrors to a new Chinese space weapon that flies right over the South Pole.

You can support our work here: Patreon.com/powercorrupts

And you can buy Brian’s new book, Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us, here (or wherever you buy books):

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Corruptible/Brian-Klaas/9781982154097

Twitter - twitter.com/powrcorrupts

Instagram - instagram.com/powercorruptspodcast

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Fake IDs

Season 3 · Episode 5

Tuesday, September 21, 2021 • Duration 54:04

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 private investigator who proves that people are, in fact alive, and a wine merchant who decided to act like an FBI agent in his quest to stake out a man who was making fake bottles of his wine. And in the process, we see glimpses of how identities are harder to forge in the 21st century.

Guests in this episode: Steven Rambam, private investigator; Laurent Ponsot, master winemaker; Peter Hellman, author of In Vino Duplicitas; and two eminent historians, Helen Watt and Paul Dryburgh.

Support our work here: patreon.com/powercorrupts

And buy Brian's new book, Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Corruptible/Brian-Klaas/9781982154097

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Do Not Disturb

Season 3 · Episode 4

Tuesday, September 14, 2021 • Duration 53:07

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 placed there to buy the assassins a bit of extra time as they fled the country.

This episode looks at the alarming rise in transnational repression and cross-border killings, where dictators and despots hunt down their enemies no matter where they are in the world. In the process, we ask whether dissidents can ever be safe in the 21st century, or if it’s just a matter of time before their murderous authoritarian regime hunts them down.

This episode features Michela Wrong, a phenomenal journalist and author of Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad, which you can and should buy here: https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/michela-wrong/do-not-disturb/9781610398435/

It also features the voices of Isabel Linzer and Nate Schenkkan at Freedom House, and you can find their report on transnational repression here: https://freedomhouse.org/report/transnational-repression

And we speak to Geoffrey York, who has reported on Rwanda for years as the Africa Bureau Chief of the Globe & Mail. You can find his reporting here: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/authors/geoffrey-york/

Pre order Brian's book - https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Corruptible/Brian-Klaas/9781982154097

Click Here To Kill Everybody

Season 3 · Episode 3

Tuesday, September 7, 2021 • Duration 48:36

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 growing array of attacks against the Internet of Things, objects that used to operate offline but are now connected to the internet—and therefore vulnerable to hacking. From Wi-Fi enabled tea kettles to cars that can be taken over remotely to knocking power out for entire countries using smart thermostats, the risks are everywhere. We’re just lucky there hasn’t been an Internet of Things attack that has been on the scale of 9/11 or Hiroshima – yet.

Guests this episode include Bruce Schneier, the author of Click Here to Kill Everybody; Nicole Perlorth, a reporter for the New York Times, Ken Munro, an ethical hacker, and Chris Valasek, a hacker who remotely took over a Jeep a few years ago and now works as the Director of Product Security at Cruise.

To check out Nicole’s book, click here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/this-is-how-they-tell-me-the-world-ends-9781635576061/

To buy Bruce’s book, click here: https://www.schneier.com/books/click-here/

And to read about Chris’s Jeep Hack as reported in Wired, click here: https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/

Pre order Brian's book - https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Corruptible/Brian-Klaas/9781982154097

The Shell Game

Season 3 · Episode 2

Tuesday, August 31, 2021 • Duration 46:04

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 somewhere offshore. And to accomplish that goal, you have to understand the world of shell companies, corporate entities that often exist only on paper to shield vast sums of wealth from the taxman or the prying eyes of journalists.

It’s a dangerous world, and it has led to the assassination of at least one journalist who tried to expose the secrets of the world’s super rich.

In this episode, we speak to the two journalists who broke the Panama Papers – the largest leak of offshore documents in the history of illicit finance. They walk us through the world they uncovered at Mossack Fonseca, a law firm in Panama, that helped set up some of the world’s shadiest shell companies for some of the world’s shadiest people.

Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier (who are not related) took immense personal risks to blow the story wide open. They tell us how they did it – and what secrets they uncovered about the ways the world’s richest people make up their own rules.

For further information about the Panama Papers, go here: https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/

And for the Daphne Project, visit this site:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/series/the-daphne-project

Pre order Brian's book - https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Corruptible/Brian-Klaas/9781982154097

The Billion Dollar Shack

Season 3 · Episode 1

Tuesday, August 31, 2021 • Duration 42:19

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 offshore economies develop. And it’s a story that involves, quite improbably, seabirds that made people rich, a failed musical about Leonardo Da Vinci….and a shack worth a billion dollars.

You may not have heard of it, but you can rest assured that terrorists, Russian mobsters, and rich oligarchs trying to set up their own banks know its name. This is a tale of greed, corruption, environmental destruction, and how – and why – the Davids of the globe can become Goliaths of illicit finance.

This episode features interviews with Jack Hitt, an award-winning journalist; Selena Shannon, a former journalist and a senior producer at Audiocraft; and Lisa Hollander, a former actress who starred in a doomed musical about Leonardo Da Vinci’s love life, funded by seagull droppings on a little island in the Pacific that you’ve probably never heard of.

To read Jack’s New York Times reporting about Nauru from 1999, click here. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/10/magazine/the-billion-dollar-shack.html

And for a review of the Leonardo Da Vinci musical published in 1993, go to this link:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/fertiliser-island-scents-musical-success-first-night-leonardo-1489451.html

Pre order Brian's book - https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Corruptible/Brian-Klaas/9781982154097

Power Corrupts Season 3: Returning 31st August 2021

Season 3 · Episode 1

Thursday, August 5, 2021 • Duration 02:22

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 understand how the world really works, you have to look at what's hidden below the surface.

From Brian Klaas, professor of global politics and Washington Post columnist, the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast returns on August 31, 2021. Subscribe now to make sure you don't miss an episode.

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Biological Weapons

Season 2 · Episode 10

Thursday, April 9, 2020 • Duration 50:14

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 biological weapons be developed to only infect a single person? And why is the US government researching how to use insects as taxis for viruses?

Support the show on Patreon at Patreon.com/powercorrupts

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Revolutions

Season 2 · Episode 9

Thursday, April 2, 2020 • Duration 54:37

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 to the Iranian revolution; and why one East German guard had a bad day -- and forever changed history as a result.

Support the show on Patreon at Patreon.com/powercorrupts

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Power Corrupts is written and narrated by Brian Klaas. The executive producer and sound editor is George McDonagh.

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Power Corrupts – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

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Power Corrupts – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Other9

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Other9

Patreon2

The Guardian1