Ian Sanders · History

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.

Episodes

Working in the nuclear missile compartment of a Cold War Royal Navy Polaris submarine (213)

18 Dec 2021

47m

British Army "stay behinds" the Special OP Troop (212)

11 Dec 2021

1h 19m

A Cold War childhood in Albania (211)

03 Dec 2021

1h 1m

AI processed

Lea Ypi recounts her childhood in Albania, the last Stalinist outpost in Europe, where communist ideology permeated every aspect of daily life. Despite the state's rigid control, her family lived under a veil of secrecy, using coded language to discuss political imprisonment and their own dissident history. The transit...