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Cold War Conversations Podcast

Cold War Conversations Podcast

Preserving the stories of the Cold War before they are lost…

Ian Sanders

472 episodesEN

Show overview

Cold War Conversations Podcast has been publishing since 2018, and across the 8 years since has built a catalogue of 472 episodes, alongside 20 trailers or bonus episodes. That works out to roughly 480 hours of audio in total. Releases follow a weekly cadence, with the show now in its 33rd season.

Episodes typically run an hour to ninety minutes — most land between 51 min and 1h 12m — though episode length varies meaningfully from one episode to the next. It is catalogued as a EN-language History show.

The show is actively publishing — the most recent episode landed 3 days ago, with 35 episodes already out so far this year. Published by Ian Sanders.

Episodes
472
Running
2018–2026 · 8y
Median length
1h 1m
Cadence
Weekly

From the publisher

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 inside out. We cover subjects such as spies, spying, the Iron Curtain, nuclear weapons, warfare, tanks, jet aircraft, fighters, bombers, transport aircraft, aviation, culture, and politics. We also cover personalities such as Fidel Castro, JFK, Ronald Reagan, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Mikhail Gorbachev, Konstantin Chernenko, Margaret Thatcher, John F. Kennedy, Josef Stalin, Richard Nixon, Lech Walesa, General Jaruzelski, Nicolae Ceaușescu. Other subjects include Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, West Berlin, East Berlin, Cuban missile Crisis, Berlin Airlift, Bay of Pigs, SALT, Perestroika, Space Race, superpower, USSR, Soviet Union, DDR, GDR, East Germany, SDI, Vietnam War, Korean War, Solidarność, Fall of the Wall, Berliner Mauer, Trabant, Communist, Capitalist, Able Archer, KGB, Stasi, STB, SB, Securitate, CIA, NSA, MI5, MI6, Berlin Wall, escape, defection, Cuba, Albania, football, sport, Bulgaria, Soviet Union, Poland, China, Taiwan, Austria, West Germany, Solidarity, espionage, HUMINT, SIGINT, OSINT, IMINT, GEOINT, RAF, USAF, British Army, US Army, Red Army, Soviet Army, Afghanistan, NVA, East German Army, KAL007, T-72, T-64, Chieftain, M60 The podcast is for military veterans, school teachers, university lecturers, students and those interested in Cold War history, museums, bunkers, weapons, AFVs, wargamers, planes, A Level, GCSE students studying Superpower Relations and the Cold War.

Latest Episodes

View all 472 episodes

Twenty-Six Years Apart: A Family Reunited Behind the Iron Curtain (470)

Aug 21, 202654 min

Announcing Cold War Conversations History Tours

Aug 19, 20260 min

Between Two Air Forces: From East German Officer to German Captain (469)

Aug 14, 202650 min

MiGs, Helicopters and Ideology: Life as an East German Air Force Officer (468)

Aug 7, 202644 min

Growing Up Grey: Childhood in Cold War Romania (367)

Jul 31, 202642 min

Defection, Spies and the Shadow of Georgi Markov (466)

Jul 24, 202641 min

My Father - The Enemy of the People: A Bulgarian Family’s Cold War Story (465)

Jul 17, 202659 min

Face to Face with the Srebrenica War Criminals (464)

Jul 10, 20261h 12m

Inside a Cold War USAF Fighter Squadron (463)

Jul 3, 20261h 9m

The Cambridge Five - new files reveal untold stories (462)

Jun 26, 20261h 5m

Malta & West Germany - Memories of an RAF Childhood Abroad (461)

Jun 19, 20261h 5m

Cold War Football: A History in Ten Matches (460)

Jun 12, 202652 min

CIA and MI6 Covert Action in Communist Albania at the Dawn of the Cold War (459)

Jun 5, 20261h 6m

On the edge of war: A V-Force pilot during the Cuban Missile Crisis (458)

May 29, 20261h 18m

Conscripted to a West German Nuclear Missile Unit (457)

May 22, 20261h 13m

Fakers: A Top-Secret Tale of Phantoms and Forgeries on the Cold War Disinformation Front Line (456)

May 15, 202653 min

30 Miles from the North Korean Border - A US Military Childhood (455)

May 8, 202645 min

The JFK Assassination: The human narratives behind one of history's most scrutinised events (454)

May 1, 20261h 24m

Chornobyl: Anatomy of a Catastrophe (453)

Apr 24, 20261h 13m

From East Berlin to West Ireland (452)

Apr 17, 20261h 34m
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