Mystery on the Rocks

So a little later than expected...By us too!Illness and Christmas and family and bollocks conspire as they always do to stymie any kind of momentum. Not that Christmas and family are in trouble for doing so but illness and bollocks can fuck off quite frankly.Anyway, our Christmas (more like New Year) Special - recorded on location backstage at the Phoenix Arts Club - is here! Sooz takes the reins and Chris sips a Negroni while Masud sits this one out as we take a look at the (quite frankly compelling) evidence that Michael Jackson composed the music for seminal 1994 videogame Sonic the Hedgehog 3...

It's here! We did it! YOU did it!Made it through our longest season yet. We take stock of the topics covered and take a moment to reflect on our collective favourite episode of this season - Magnus Hirschfeld and Dora Richter. We discuss how it's a good indicator of whether or not humanity has learned from the history of the 20th Century.We don't think it has!Thanks for sticking with us this season - we're looking forward to sharing some cases of the week again with you very soon!And while we're taking a break between seasons, we're not taking a break over on our Patreon where we'll still be posting mini episodes, bonus episodes. If you can't bear the thought of waiting for Season Six why not head over to our Patreon to see if you fancy going one extra step in supporting the podcast!

It's (almost) the end...A mammoth trawl through geopolitics, war and espionage brings us to 2021 and an outgoing US President incites an insurrection on the house of government. What led us there, what parallels from history can be drawn and, more interestingly, where could this possibly lead us?We don't get entirely gloomy though, there's also a bit where we all thirst over Denzel Washington.

We hurtle towards the present day and the end of this mammoth season as we hit 2018 this week when the poisonings of two Russians, a father and daughter named Sergei and Yulia Skripal, in the Wiltshire town of Salisbury kick off mass panic, the death of a woman entirely unrelated to them whatsoever, a further tensing of international relations with Russia itself, calls to boycott the World Cup AND (in the generation of social media) a slew of memes.And what part could the British weather have played in the whole thing?We take a look as we disorientate ourselves a little bit with both how recent and  distant this feels...

In 2010, Gareth Williams - a mathematician and spy - is found dead in a padlocked duffel bag in a bath tub in an en suite in a British secret service safe house in Pimlico with no fingerprints, not even Gareth's, left on the padlock, bag or bathroom. Loads of theories have come out since but, if we're honest, no real satisfactory explanation for what actually happened.Did Russia attempt to recruit him and he rebuffed them? Was he in possession of British secrets the authorities were worried about him handing over? And, if he was assassinated, why was he left in the flat in such a manner? Equally, if he killed himself, how did he get in the bag and leave no fingerprints?In what is one of our messiest recordings for a while, can we get to the bottom of this strange case and is this the drunkest Sooz has been for a while?

In 2006, British-based Russian author and journalist Alexander Litvinenko is suddenly taken seriously ill. His deterioration is world news, chronicled right up until his death 3 weeks later.Thing is, Litvinenko wasn't only a journalist - he was a former Russian agent. And not only was he a former Russian agent, he was a vocal critic of the Kremlin and of Vladmir Putin, having gone on record accusing Putin of unspeakable crimes.A deliberate assassination, not even disguised as an accident. Is this when the world started waking up to the idea of a new full-blown tyrant?