The award-winning podcast preserving the stories of the Cold War before they are lost…subscribe for free. Produced by Ian Sanders FRHistS
Operation Gold (also known as Operation Stopwatch by the British) was a joint operation conducted by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British MI6 Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) in the 1950s to tap into landline communication of the Soviet Army headquarters in Berlin using a tunnel into the Soviet-occupied zone. Steve Vogel is … Read more
Our interview today is with Iain MacGregor, the author of a new book on Checkpoint Charlie subtitled The Cold War, the Berlin Wall and the most dangerous place on Earth. Weaving together personal testimonies, this book is described as a gripping narrative with vivid interviews with those on all sides whose lives were directly … Read more
Dr Peter Johnston is the Head of Collections Research and Academic Access at the National Army Museum in London and the author of a lavishly illustrated military and social history of the British forces in Germany during the Cold War. < Now if you like the podcast you can help to support us for the ... Read more
Mark Baker was a journalist in Vienna who covered Czechoslovakia during the 1980s. In a wide ranging conversations we discuss the events of 1989 with Mark providing some vivid accounts of his experiences and how events were viewed at the time. Now as I’m sure you know some of our fans who are helping the … Read more
Richard Easton is the co-author of GPS Declassified which examines the development of GPS or Sat Nav as some of us call it now, from its secret, Cold War military roots. Roger Easton, Richard’s father, assisted in laying the foundations for the GPS system. However, Roger Easton also worked on the early US space program and … Read more
In a world divided by the ideological struggles of the Cold War, the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, more than one-fifth of the people on the planet paused to watch the live transmission of the Apollo 11 mission. To watch as humanity took a giant leap forward exactly 50 years ago. Now … Read more
We talk with Vince Houghton – Curator of the International Spy Museum who has just written a new book called “Nuking the Moon & Other Intelligence Schemes & Military Plots left on the Drawing Board”. Vince proves that abandoned plans can be just as illuminating–and every bit as entertaining–as the ones that made it. … Read more
Gareth Rubin is an author and journalist and today we’re talking to him about his latest novel, Liberation Square set in a Soviet occupied UK in the 1950s. Buy the book on this link and support the podcast Thanks to our select band of supporters who are helping us financially for the price of … Read more
In this episode, we speak with Dr Becky-Alexis Martin, an award-winning pacifist scholar, lecturer in Cultural and Political Geography at Manchester Metropolitan University, and photographer. Her first book, “Disarming Doomsday”, critically considers the social, cultural, and spatial inequalities and harms perpetuated by nuclear warfare, and was the recipient of the 2020 L.H.M. Ling Outstanding First … Read more
Today we’re talking to Alison Lewis, a professor in German at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of several books, including one in German about love and gender in literature during Germany’s reunification and a book in German about the Stasi’s infiltration of the literary underground. We spoke to Alison in episode 71. … Read more