From Wondery, I'm Matt Ford.

And I'm Alice Levine.

And this is British Scandal.

Sir Alice, William Joyce, better known as Lord Hawhor. Do we think he was a successful propagandist?

At one point he had nine million listeners, I'm not scoffing at that. That's a huge number, especially in a time when everyone gathered around the wireless.

They are mega numbers even now. But I guess the key question was, was he effective?

Was he actually changing how people thought and felt? Was he winning people over to the Nazi cause?

Or were people were just laughing at him?

And does it matter if people were laughing at him? Was some of what he

was saying, even if they were hate listening, to use a contemporary phrase, still seeping in?

You know, was he an example of people watching real housewives in 2025, claiming not to like it,

but actually it's all landing? You know I watch, and I would never claim not to like it.

But it's a good point you make, because we've got information coming at us from all angles nowadays.

Not just on social media, but news channels and even family WhatsApp.

And sometimes it can feel impossible to figure out what's real

and whether you're being manipulated or just entertained.

Thankfully, our guest today can help us answer all these questions.

Peter Pomerencev is Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, where he studies contemporary

propaganda and how to defeat it.

His latest book, How to Win an Information War, the propagandist who outwitted Hitler, tells the story of how the

British responded to Nazi propaganda during the Second World War.

He joins us next.

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