In January of 1915, Ernest Shackleton's ship, Endurance, became encased in the ice in the Weddell Sea.

Through determination, grit, and savvy, Shackleton would lead his men through a brutal winter,

then over hundreds of miles of Antarctic ice, followed by 800 miles across some of the roughest waters in the world.

It is one of the most extraordinary and inspirational journeys in the history of

exploration. Find this story and many others at the Explorers Podcast, available wherever you get

your podcasts or at Explorerspodcast.com.

Welcome to Spycast, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum.

I'm your host, Sasha Ingber, and each week I take you into the shadows of espionage, intelligence, and covert operations across the globe.

The Congo was just gaining its independence from Belgium in 1960

when its first democratically elected leader, Patrice Lumumba, faced an existential crisis,

mutiny in his new army, followed by an unwelcome intervention by Belgian forces.

Lumumba had hoped the U.S. would help, but when Washington turned its back,

Lumumba turned to Moscow, and so began a CIA operation to assassinate him, to stop the feared spread

of communism in Africa.

The story is documented in the Lumumba plot, a new book by author Stuart Reid.

Stewart, why did the CIA view Patrice Lumumba as a threat when he had turned first to

Washington and then turned to Moscow. Why did they see him

as a threat? Well, you're right. It's something of a puzzle because, as I've argued,

Lumumba was more pro-American than anything else. To give you just a few examples of that,

when he visited Washington, D.C., he called on the U.S. military to send American troops to Congo,

which is hardly something that a pro-Soviet stooge would do.

He also spoke of sending Congolese children to American schools, not Soviet ones.

...