Today my guest is podcaster and historian Ian Sanders. Ian is the host and producer of the Cold War Conversations podcast. Since childhood, Ian has been fascinated with the Cold War which was an era in recent history that focused on the post war threat of conflict between the Warsaw Pact countries and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Ian started the podcast in 2018 to record as many first-hand accounts of the Cold War as he could before they were lost and in May 2022 the series passed 2 million downloads. I too have been interested in this era of modern history; as a young adult I watched the events unfold in Germany and across Europe as the Soviet dominance collapsed. I was really looking forward to catching up with Ian and our conversation doesn’t disappoint, so I hope you are sitting comfortably and happy to stay with us.
I started off by asking Ian about the origins of his interest in the Cold War and how he launched his podcast, before discussing the origins of the conflict and what the key moments were and who the players were (03:12). Our next topic was a chat about the progression from bombers to missiles (13:31), then we spoke about the proxy wars like the Korean and Vietnam wars (17:10). Berlin was our next stop and we mused the idea that it was the centre point of the Cold War (21:40), and also talked about the legacy of the Berlin Wall and its eventual downfall (25:50). As we passed the halfway point, we discussed the ramifications of the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and how it affected its member states (23:25), before finishing up with the importance of documenting the stories of people who had first hand experience living during this time (36:45).
- The Cold War Conversations podcast
- The Podcast on X
- Emanuela – a Cold War Romanian Childhood
- Newsweek clip courtesy of The Internet Archive
- For more, hear my conversations with Katja Hoyer, Clare Mulley and Robert Jacobs
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