Gillian – A US Student at the opening of the Berlin Wall

  Gillian Cox visited the GDR as a student in October 1989 just before the Wall came down. In this episode you will hear her eyewitness of account of what she saw ion that momentous night of 9th November 1989. Before we start the episode I wanted to thanks everyone who is supporting the podcast … Read more

Dean Reed, the Red Elvis, a US music star behind the Iron Curtain – Episode 2

Ramona Reed continues the story of her father who was Dean Reed an American actor, singer and songwriter, director, and Socialist who became a huge star in Latin America and the Eastern Bloc. The previous episode is available here https://coldwarconversations.com/episode97/ Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyListen on Google Podcasts Now if you like the podcast … Read more

A Cold War Mystery – Death In Ice Valley

In 1970  a woman’s badly burnt body was found in the woods near Bergen, Norway alongside a suitcase full of secret codes, wigs and eight fake passports, police were dumbfounded. Who was she – and why had she been killed? Now many of our fans are the proud owners of a Cold War Conversations Coaster, … Read more

A Cold War UK/GDR Romance

    In 1986 GDR student Antje met a British guy who was installing sewing machines in of the hosiery companies in East Germany. Unusually he was given quite a bit of freedom to socialise locally and he eventually asked Antje to marry him. However, with her prospective husband being a citizen of the capitalist … Read more

Bridget Kendall – Cold War BBC Moscow Correspondent 1989 – 1995

  Today we have James taking the helm again with a fascinating chat with Bridget Kendall, the BBC’s Moscow correspondent from 1989 to 1995 when she was witness to the power struggles in the Soviet Communist party as Mikhail Gorbachev tried to introduce reform. However…before we start I have to thank our fans who are … Read more

Watching Socialism : The Television Revolution in Cold War Eastern Europe

Watching Socialism: The Television Revolution in Eastern Europe is an exhibition co-curated by the Wende Museum and British scholars Sabina Mihelj and Susan Reid.  Both the capitalist West and the communist East attempted to leverage TV as a medium that represented modernity and progress during the Cold War. While television was indeed a tool that … Read more

Stasi Infiltration of the Prenzlauer Berg Underground Literary Scene

  In this episode we speak with Professor Alison Lewis is Professor of German in the School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne, Australia. She is the a co-author of Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe which is published in August 2019. Now several of our fans are the proud owners of … Read more

Disarming Doomsday – the human impact of nuclear weapons since Hiroshima

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