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PODCAST

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY Times

Experience the Cold War like never before with Cold War Conversations — an award-winning podcast recommended by The New York Times. Each week, host Ian Sanders brings you raw, firsthand accounts from the people who lived through one of history’s most tense and transformative eras — soldiers, spies, civilians, and more. These aren’t stories from textbooks. They’re unfiltered voices from the frontlines of history — emotional, gripping, and deeply human. This is Cold War history, told from the

history documentary

All Episodes

86:58

Flying for the CIA's Air America in South East Asia...

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/04/29

In 1964, pilot Captain Hansen found himself unemployed. He began to send out feelers to several companies including one that had placed an ad in the Washington Post called Air America. When he was called in for an interview which primarily consisted of two questions - can you fly good and do you drink a lot. Air America was the airline owned by the CIA. Its operations were unknown. Its schedules were irregular. Its pilots were shadow people. Its world was the world of spooks, covert air ops,

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62:55

A photojournalist in Cold War Eastern Europe (232)

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/04/22

During the 1970s and 1980s, Arthur Grace travelled extensively behind the Iron Curtain, working primarily for news magazines. One of only a small corps of Western photographers with ongoing access, he was able to delve into the most ordinary corners of people's daily lives, while also covering significant events. His remarkable book Communism(s) A Cold War Album is effectively psychological portraits that leave the viewer with a sense of the gamut of emotions in that era. Illustrated with over 120

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74:49

Escaping from Cold War Romania (231)

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/04/15

Zsolt Akos Pall was 17 when he decided to flee Cold War Romania for a better life in the West. It’s a heart-warming story of the generosity of strangers. Young Zsolt finds compassionate border guards, gets lost in Vienna and has incredible luck wherever he turns as he negotiates the iron curtain as well as many other international borders to reach his brother in Sweden However, his escape is bittersweet as we hear of his emotional farewell to his parents, not knowing if he’d ever see them

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49:07

A Hungarian childhood in Cold War Romania (230)

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/04/08

Zsolt Akos Pall was born in a small town in the Hungarian speaking part of Romania. For ordinary people, life in Romania in the 1980s was very hard and it could be even worse if you were a part of the Hungarian Szekler minority since the Communist government persecuted the Hungarian minority. They even made them change their Hungarian names into Romanian. Zsolt's brother was renamed Istvan to Stefan. However, Zsolt was baptised Zsolt, since there was no Romanian equivalent to it. Zsolt describes

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84:14

The shooting down of KAL007, the Able Archer exercise...

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/04/01

The year 1983 was one of the most dangerous in human history. While the Cuban crisis was exceptionally dangerous and both the United States and the Soviet Union had significant nuclear arsenals in 1962, a war in 1983 would have likely ended the human race. Brian Morra was Chief of Intelligence Analysis for US Forces Japan at Yakota airbase when on 1st September 1983 an unarmed Korean airliner was shot down by a Soviet fighter causing the deaths of 269 people. He describes the less well known

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70:35

Charlotte Philby talks about her grandfather Soviet...

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/03/26

In June 1934, Kim Philby met his Soviet handler, the spy Arnold Deutsch. Kim Philby was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963 he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring that had divulged British secrets to the Soviets during World War II and in the early stages of the Cold War. The woman who introduced Philby to Deutsch was Edith Tudor-Hart and her story has never been told. Edith Tudor Hart changed the course of 20th-century history

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78:31

The first woman to graduate from French Commando...

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/03/19

Maura McCormick was posted to Berlin as a Signals Intelligence voice interceptor (Russian). Her workplace was the Teufelsberg U.S. listening station, aka Field Station Berlin. Maura shares her early impressions of Berlin and working at the Tberg. She talks about her impressions of the infamous James Hall, a United States Army warrant officer and signals intelligence analyst who sold eavesdropping and code secrets to East Germany and the Soviet Union from 1983 to 1988. Maura also recounts a close

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66:05

Betrayed by comrades (226)

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/03/12

Liz Kohn has been researching Alice Glasnerová, who was imprisoned as part of the early Cold War Czechoslovak show trials known as the Slansky trials. These were among the most notorious show trials of the 20th century, with the prosecution and sentencing to death of Rudolf Slánský, general secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist party, and 10 other defendants, who had been arrested in a brutal purge ordered by Stalin. Alice Glasnerová was Liz’s father’s first wife. When Liz started researching

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83:50

My father, the KGB spy (225)

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/03/05

In 1978, Ieva Lesinska was a university student in Soviet Latvia with dreams of becoming a writer. She had just spent a heady month in New York visiting her father, Imants Lesinskis, a Soviet translator working at the United Nations. However, he was an employee of the KGB and a member of the Communist Party. During her trip to the US, Ieva’s father informed her that he and his wife Rasma were about to defect. He offered her a blunt choice: take a taxi to the Soviet Embassy and denounce him as a

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47:02

"Three, Two, one, detonation..." a Royal Navy nuclear...

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/02/26

The British Nuclear Test Veterans Association (BNTVA) is the Charity for UK Nuclear Veterans and last year they very kindly invited me to the annual conference. I met many veterans including Peter Lambourne and this is his story. Peter joined the Royal Navy aged 15. He describes those early days including serving on HMS Wizard during the Cod War with Iceland in 1961. In 1962 Peter was then posted to HMS Resolution which was the codename for the nuclear bomb testing base on Christmas Island. Peter’s

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67:31

The Stasi Poetry Circle (223)

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/02/19

In 1982 the East German Ministry for State Security is hunting for creative new weapons in the war against the class enemy – and their solution is stranger than fiction. Rather than guns, tanks, or bombs, the Stasi develop a programme to fight capitalism through rhyme and verse, winning the culture war through poetry – and the result is the most bizarre book club in history. I speak with Philip Oltermann the author of The Stasi Poetry Circle. Philip has used unseen archival material and exclusive

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35:55

The start of the Cuban revolution & the launch of...

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/02/16

The phrase “history is human” was coined by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian David McCullough. He says “History is about life. It isn't just about dates and quotations from obscure treaties and the like; it's about people", which is exactly what Cold War Conversations is about. I discovered this phrase listening to the History Daily podcast presented and narrated by Lindsay Graham. This podcast takes you back in time to explore a momentous moment that happened "on this day" in

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65:13

Cold War British Army fighting tactics in West...

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/02/12

Frank Baldwin was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1979 and served for ten years, rising to the rank of Major. The first battlefield study he planned was in 1989 for HQ 4th Armoured Division. Since then, he has been a guide or historian for over 200 realities of war tours, battlefield studies and staff rides. Frank reels off lots of great anecdotes as he takes us through the initial years of the BAOR and the British Army’s plans for the defence of West Germany. He talks about the evolution

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71:35

The West Berlin village surrounded by the Berlin Wall...

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/02/05

When the Cold War split Berlin in half, between East and West, one neighbourhood was trapped in the middle and became a symbol of Cold War tensions. For more than twenty years, the hamlet of Steinstücken was caught in a tug-of-war between the Americans, the Soviets and the East Germans. Steinstücken officially belonged to the U.S. Occupation Sector of Berlin. But, it was located outside the city boundaries, completely surrounded by East German territory. No West Berlin-owned roads or trails

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37:33

Tales of a West German football fan in the Soviet...

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/01/29

You will remember Karl-Heinz from our episode 218 where he talked about being a signaller on the West German destroyer "Hamburg" in the late 70s. Today we follow his post navy life as a travelling supporter of football club HSV Hamburg where he followed them all over the Soviet bloc talks about watching them play Dynamo Berlin the Stasi side and drinking with Liverpool, Newcastle and Hamburg legend Kevin Keegan in a hotel bar in Tiblisi. And his Cold War encounters don’t stop there. While working

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36:29

Serving on the West German destroyer "Hamburg" (218)

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/01/22

Karl-Heinz served in the Bundesmarine as a Signalman on the West German destroyer "Hamburg" in the late 70s. He talks of his training, his role and shares details of manoeuvres in the North Sea and Baltics involving East German and Soviet ships. He also speaks about a cruise to West Africa where the sailors were briefed to stay away from any East German merchant marine sailors and not to engage with them in any form – he and his mates didn’t keep to the rules… If you have listened this far, I know

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67:26

The CIA director responsible for creating spy devices...

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/01/15

After service in the US Army during the Vietnam War Bob Wallace was recruited into the CIA. In the CIA his initial assignments were as a field case officer. He rose through the ranks at the agency and was Chief of Station in three locations where he directed the full range of CIA activities. In 1995 Bob became deputy director of the Office of Technical Service and in 1998 was appointed its director responsible for creating spy devices and capabilities necessary to conduct clandestine operations

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53:32

Vietnam War draftee to US Army Rangers (216)

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/01/08

Bob Wallace joined the US Army in 1968 as a reluctant conscript. He describes the draft process, and his attempts to avoid conscription. After basic training, Bob is assigned to a long range reconnaissance unit and ambush unit in five or six man teams in the Mekong delta. We hear of the reconnaissance and ambush tactics as well as some poignant memories of those that didn’t make it back. This podcast relies on listener support to enable me to continue to capture these incredible stories and make

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49:19

Helping the Refuseniks (215)

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2022/01/01

Refusenik was an unofficial term for individuals—typically, but not exclusively, Soviet Jews—who were denied permission to emigrate, primarily to Israel, by the authorities of the Soviet Union and other countries of the Eastern bloc. The term refusenik is derived from the "refusal" handed down to a prospective emigrant from the Soviet authorities. Eric Hochstein was a staff member for Senator Carl Levin of Michigan working on human rights. Human rights were a big issue for Senator Levin. Eric went

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50:03

Eyewitness to the 1991 Soviet Coup with Brett Elliott...

Cold War Conversations - "vivid & compelling" The NY... ·

2021/12/25

Today’s episode is different. Brett Elliott died earlier this year and I was contacted by his ex-wife Polly who offered me a cassette tape. Polly and Brett had met in college and got to know each other in Russian Club at Oklahoma State. In the summer of 1991, they went to Moscow to pursue Polly’s goal of being a reporter in Russia and Brett’s goal of further studying Russia. They both worked together covering the Bush Gorbachev summit, with Polly as a reporter and Brett as an interpreter. Polly

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453 results

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