The Rest Is Classified: Live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall
Former CIA analyst David McCloskey and veteran intelligence correspondent Gordon Corera unpack real spy stories and the hidden power struggles shaping world events.
Why we picked this
The show returns following a sold-out January performance — McCloskey and Corera bring genuine insider fluency to questions about the intelligence world that most public commentary skates over.
The Rest Is Classified is hosted by David McCloskey, a former CIA analyst who left the agency to write novels about the world he once operated in, and Gordon Corera, the BBC’s security correspondent whose career has taken him inside the reporting of intelligence operations across three decades. Their podcast has built a substantial audience by doing something rare: explaining the real workings of espionage and geopolitical intelligence without sensationalism and without the sanitising vagueness of official briefings.
This live edition at the Queen Elizabeth Hall returns following a sold-out performance in January 2026 — the demand that prompted its return as the opening night of Goalhanger: The Rest Is Fest, the three-day Southbank Centre festival (4–6 September 2026). Expect the format the podcast does well: real cases, structural analysis, and the willingness to name what is actually happening in the spaces between public statements and private action.
The live setting adds something the recorded format cannot quite replicate — the chance to ask the questions directly, and to hear two people who have spent careers inside or closely observing closed institutions reason in front of an audience about what they know and what they cannot say.