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Cold War Conversations

by Ian Sanders
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About the show

"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.

Latest episodes

  • From Mao's Red Guard to conscription into the Chinese People's Liberation Army

    October 2, 2026 · 57 min

    At twelve years old, Bing became a Red Guard—and for a few intoxicating months, he felt invincible. Growing up in Mao’s Beijing, Bing was taught to worship Chairman Mao, recite the Little Red Book and attack the old order. But the…

  • The Birth of Poland's Free Trade Union Solidarity

    September 25, 2026 · 1 hr 6 min

    One morning in August 1980, the noise of 10,000 shipyard workers suddenly stopped. Something extraordinary was happening. As a young shipbuilding student, Bogdan finds himself inside Gdańsk’s Lenin Shipyard as workers down tools and the…

  • Growing Up Under Communism on Cold War Poland’s Baltic Coast

    September 18, 2026 · 1 hr 8 min

    Bogdan was born just a month before the Berlin Wall went up—and left communist Poland a month before it came down. In between lay a childhood shaped by shortages, censorship, compulsory conformity and a growing determination to…

  • If the Soviets Invaded : Sweden's Secret Underground Resistance Plan

    September 11, 2026 · 47 min

    For decades, ordinary Swedes secretly prepared for the day Soviet forces might occupy their country. Farmers, factory workers, gamekeepers and travelling salesmen were recruited into a clandestine resistance network, trained to operate…

  • Bandit Country - The IRA and South Armagh

    September 4, 2026 · 1 hr 8 min

    During the Cold War, British soldiers fought a Provisional IRA insurgency in Northern Ireland. Probably the toughest location was South Armagh, where they had to travel by helicopter, while watchtowers scanned the fields, and an IRA sniper…

  • A Czech Border Guard’s Daring Escape to the West

    August 29, 2026 · 1 hr 24 min

    What happens when the man guarding the Iron Curtain decides to escape through it himself? In 1975, Jiří Barteček was a Czechoslovak border guard, trained to track fugitives with a German shepherd and ordered to stop anyone attempting to…

  • Twenty-Six Years Apart: A Family Reunited Behind the Iron Curtain

    August 21, 2026 · 55 min

    For twenty-six years, war, exile and the Iron Curtain kept one Polish family apart. Torn from his homeland and sent into Stalin’s labour camp system, Aleksander Jablonski survived hunger, forced labour and a wartime journey through Russia…

  • Announcing Cold War Conversations History Tours

    August 19, 2026 · 1 min

    I’m delighted to tell you about  Cold War Conversations History Tours I'm exploring the idea of hosting a Cold War history tour via a specialist tour company, and I'd like your help working out what it should be. There are several…