The award-winning podcast preserving the stories of the Cold War before they are lost…subscribe for free. Produced by Ian Sanders FRHistS
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
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
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 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
Todays episode is different, the interviewer is not me, but one of our listeners who contacted me to help produce content for the podcast. This gave me the idea for a new area of the podcast called “Cold War Contributions” where listeners can send in audio interviews for broadcast on the show. Email me … Read more
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
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
Today’s episode is a bonus episode celebrating our 50th episode which came out on 23rd Feb 2019. I honestly never thought we’d get this far, but it’s thanks to you the listener. In 1951, a small pilot program was launched in Indiana and Utah as a civilian defense measure to aid in the aftermath … Read more
Audra J Wolfe is writer, editor, and historian based in Philadelphia. With a background in both science and history her work specifically focuses on the role of science during the Cold War, a period when science held a special place in maintaining and projecting state power. Now if you’d like to support us with a … Read more