How does a Siberian peasant mystic end up controlling the most powerful empire in Europe? Could the rumours that destroyed a dynasty have been entirely false — and did they matter anyway? And, without Rasputin, would there have been no Lenin — and would the 20th century have looked completely different? Peter sits down with Sir Antony Beevor — bestselling author of Stalingrad, Berlin, and D-Day — to dig into his new book on one of history's most mythologised figures: Grigori Rasputin, the Siberian wanderer who charmed the Tsarina, antagonised everyone else, and whose murder was so catastrophically bungled it reads like black farce.

0:00 From Siberia to the Imperial court — how a peasant mystic reached the centre of power

5:30 Holy fools, wandering pilgrims, and why Russia was always fertile ground for figures like Rasputin

10:00 The voice, the eyes, and the seduction: how Rasputin actually worked on people

13:00 The Tsarina's obsession — and why Antony Beevor is certain the rumours were fake news

17:30 How Rasputin's ministerial choices set the railways on fire and sparked a revolution

24:00 Rasputin was right about the war — and then made everything worse anyway

27:30 The assassination: poisoned cakes, Yankee Doodle, and a murder plot of spectacular incompetence

32:00 Putin, Nicholas II, and why historians should be wary of historical parallels

36:00 Without Rasputin, no Lenin? The counterfactuals Antony loves but won't fully follow

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What did it take for human beings to start controlling what they ate — and why did "health" so quickly become a cover

story for something else? How did a Venetian nobleman's wine-heavy calorie restriction become a blueprint for the

modern diet industry? And, when tobacco companies, Hollywood, and the beauty industry all decided women's body

anxiety was a market opportunity — who, exactly, was the diet really for?

Peter and Afua trace the history of the human body as a commercial battleground: from the first diet books in 1558,

through the birth of the calorie and the explosion of Weight Watchers, to the heroin chic 90s and the disordered eating

it left behind.

0:00 The Venetian nobleman who invented calorie restriction — and still drank 14oz of wine a day

7:30 George Cheyne: 32 stone, no meat, no alcohol, and a bestselling book in 1740

14:00 Empire, refrigeration, and why cheap food created the first diet industry

21:30 The discovery of the calorie — the invention Afua still resents

25:30 Freud's nephew, cigarettes, and the moment thinness became a product to sell

31:00 Weight Watchers, zero-fat yoghurt, and the 80s: cottage cheese as cultural trauma

36:30 The 90s: heroin chic, cellulite alerts, and the era that hospitalised a generation

40:00 Keto, Atkins, and the diet that keeps reinventing itself

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What did Vogue actually recommend women eat in 1977 — and why did it make one food writer cry in the

bathroom? How did the Greeks turn a six-pack into a moral argument? And, has the human obsession with

controlling what we eat ever really been about health at all?

Peter and Afua trace the long, strange history of dieting — from ancient Greek athletics and Roman

feast-and-purge excess, to medieval starvation saints who turned self-denial into a radical act of female agency.

0:00 Vogue’s 1977 Wine and Egg Diet — and what happened when someone actually tried it

6:30 The diet industry’s dirty secret: it was never about nutrition

9:00 Peter on fasting, cranky emails, and what not eating teaches you about your relationship with food

14:30 Ancient Greece: when abs were a moral statement, not just an aesthetic one

19:30 The manosphere’s Spartan fantasy — and what the Greeks would actually make of it

23:00 Rome: the inventors of binge and purge culture

24:30 When Christianity enters the chat — and fasting becomes holy

26:00 Catherine of Siena: the medieval starvation saint who used hunger as protest

30:00 Anorexia mirabilis — holy anorexia, and why Peter is wary of projecting modern diagnoses onto the past

32:00 Why medieval peasants weren’t dieting — they were just trying to stay alive

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What happens when you raise a child telling him he's the Beast — and he decides to prove you right? Could a man

who genuinely repelled everyone around him have quietly shaped the culture we live in today? And, is the world of

sex, drugs, and rock and roll actually the legacy of a repressed Victorian occultist with a god complex?

Peter and Afua descend into the dark, theatrical, and genuinely troubling life of Aleister Crowley: English occultist,

self-declared Great Beast 666, and the man who may have done more than anyone to wire transgression, desire, and

spiritual hunger into the DNA of modern culture.

0:00 The wickedest man in the world — and why he owned it

6:00 The Exclusive Brethren: the suffocating sect that made Crowley inevitable

10:00 Cambridge, cigars, and erotic poetry: the beast is unleashed

15:00 Golden Dawn and the occult underground of Victorian London

20:00 Mountaineering, meditation, and the spiritual pick-and-mix

24:00 Cairo, 666, and the Book of the Law

26:00 Rose Kelly: the woman without whom none of it happens

33:00 The Abbey of Thelema and a scandal that shocks even the tabloids

38:00 How Crowley became the Beatles' and Led Zeppelin's spirit animal

42:00 Jack Parsons: the rocket scientist who performed Crowley rituals by night

44:00 Was Crowley a feminist? (Afua has thoughts)

48:00 The stain that runs through modern culture straight back to him

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Who invented the spiritual vocabulary of the modern world — karma, reincarnation, yoga studios, the idea that you can be "spiritual but not religious"? What if the hidden masters living in remote Tibetan mountains who inspired her weren't real — but the New Age movement they sparked absolutely was? And can you change the course of Western spirituality forever while being accused of fraud, plagiarism, and dropping fake letters through the ceiling?

Peter and Afua explore the extraordinary life of Helena Blavatsky: Russian aristocrat, globe-trotting mystic, chain-smoking occultist and the most polarising spiritual figure of the 19th century — whose Theosophical Society gave us yoga mats, abstraction in art, and the modern wellness industry, all while she battled accusations of being one of history's greatest frauds.

0:00 Introduction: The Woman Who Invented New Age Spirituality

4:15 Russian Aristocrat: Growing Up Between Two Worlds

9:40 The Lost Years: Tibet, Egypt, and the Mysterious Mahatmas

16:20 Arriving in New York: Spiritualism, Grief, and the Telegraph

23:10 Meeting Henry Steel Olcott: The Partnership That Changed Everything

28:35 Isis Unveiled: 1,200 Pages That Sold Out in 10 Days

35:50 Moving to India: Strategic Genius or Cultural Appropriation?

41:20 The Mahatma Letters: Messages from the Ceiling

47:05 The Coulomb Scandal and the Hodgson Report

53:30 Vindication? The 1986 Harrison Report

58:10 The Secret Doctrine and Her Uncomfortable Nazi Legacy

1:03:45 Blavatsky's New Age Legacy: From Mondrian to Matcha Lattes

1:09:20 Final Verdict: Genius, Fraud, or Both?

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Nostradamus has predicted every major disaster in history — or so the internet would have you believe. Peter and Afua get behind the myth to meet the real man: a plague-era apothecary, rejected by the medical establishment, whose greatest invention wasn't prophecy — it was selling certainty to an anxious world.

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Malcolm McLean was a frustrated truck driver who thought there had to be a better way. The metal box he invented now carries 90% of the world's traded goods — and quietly runs the global economy.

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From colliers carrying coal out of Newcastle to Marshall Plan grain crossing the Atlantic, Peter and Afua trace how the movement of goods by sea built the modern world. This is the story of bulk cargo — and why the ships that carried it changed everything.

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