26 Years Apart: A Family Reunited Behind the Iron Curtain

  Listen on Apple PodcassListen on SpotifyListen on YouTubeListen on Amazon MusicListen on OvercastListen on Pocket CastsListen on Podcast AddictBecome a Patron! For twenty-six years, war, exile and the Iron Curtain kept one Polish family apart. Torn from his homeland and sent into Stalin’s labour camp system, Aleksander Jablonski survived hunger, forced labour and a … Read more

Growing Up Grey: Childhood in Cold War Romania

Romania in the 1980s was a country of empty shops, power cuts, rationing and fear—but for one little girl it was also home. Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyListen on YouTubeListen on Amazon MusicListen on Podcast AddictBecome a Patron! In this episode, author Oana Aristide shares the remarkable childhood experiences that inspired her novel Astronaut! … Read more

Defection, Spies and the Shadow of Georgi Markov

  Listen on Apple PodcassListen on SpotifyListen on YouTubeListen on Amazon MusicListen on OvercastListen on Pocket CastsListen on Podcast AddictBecome a Patron! In 1986, Oggy Boytchev made a split-second decision that would change his life forever. Sent to Egypt by a Bulgarian shipping company, he seized an unexpected opportunity to escape communist Bulgaria, boarding a … Read more

My Father – The Enemy of the People: A Bulgarian Family’s Cold War Story

  Listen on Apple PodcassListen on SpotifyListen on YouTubeListen on Amazon MusicListen on OvercastListen on Pocket CastsListen on Podcast AddictBecome a Patron! Oggy Boytchev is a former BBC journalist with more than three decades of experience reporting from conflict zones across the Middle East, the Balkans and the former Soviet Union. Born in 1955, Oggy … Read more

Chornobyl: Anatomy of a Catastrophe

40 years ago, at 1:23 a.m. on April 26, 1986, a routine safety test inside Reactor Four at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant spiralled into the worst nuclear disaster in history. Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyListen on YouTubeListen on Amazon MusicListen on OvercastListen on Pocket CastsListen on Podcast AddictBecome a Patron! This episode traces … Read more

From East Berlin to West Ireland

Juli begins by recounting her early years in East Berlin, a time marked by the tragic loss of her father. Drafted into the army just days before her birth, her father continually deserted to see his family, ultimately leading to his untimely death. This early loss left Juli and her mother to navigate a harsh … Read more

An MI6 Director Looks Back at His Time in Cold War Berlin

  Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyListen on YouTubeListen on Amazon MusicListen on OvercastListen on Pocket CastsListen on Podcast AddictBecome a Patron! Former MI6 Director David Bickford takes us behind the scenes of one of the most unusual and precarious postings of the Cold War.  Arriving in Berlin in 1979, the city is still technically … Read more