Cold War Conversations

"Listening to even one episode of "Cold War Conversations" will make this sprawling, potentially intimidating period of history feel vivid and compelling." The New York Times

Experience the Cold War like never before with Cold War Conversations — an award-winning podcast.

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.