Chornobyl: Anatomy of a Catastrophe (453)
40 years ago at 1:23 a.m. on April 26, 1986, a routine safety test inside Reactor Four at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant spiralled into the worst nuclear disaster in history. This episode traces...
24 Apr 1h 13min
From East Berlin to West Ireland (452)
Juli begins by recounting her early years in East Berlin, a time marked by the tragic loss of her father. Drafted into the army just days before her birth, her father continually deserted to see his f...
17 Apr 1h 34min
Guarding the Wire at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (451)
Chris was a US Marine assigned to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a sprawling US base on the Communist island of Cuba. Chris describes the guard duty along the fence line, where the proximity to the Cuban bor...
10 Apr 1h 8min
Soviet - Afghan War, Mujahideen Resistance: The Brutal Fight for Zhawar (450)
In this episode, historian and writer Michael G. Stroud explores how decades of political instability drew the Soviet Union into Afghanistan in 1979—and why the intervention quickly spiralled into a p...
3 Apr 1h
Former MI5 & MI6 Legal Director Looks Back at His Time in Cold War Berlin (449)
Former Legal Director MI5 & MI6, David Bickford, takes us behind the scenes of one of the most unusual and precarious postings of the Cold War. Arriving in Berlin in 1979, the city is still technical...
28 Mar 1h 17min
An officer in The Internal Troops of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs (448)
Ihor reflects on his time serving as an officer in the Soviet Union’s Ministry of Interior troops. After volunteering for military service, he found himself travelling from Lviv to Lithuania to begin ...
21 Mar 48min
Growing up in Soviet Ukraine in the 1960s and 70s (447)
Born in Lviv in Ukraine, in 1958, Ihor grew up in a city where borders shifted, but memories endured. In this episode, he recalls a childhood shaped by silence, censorship, and family stories that cou...
14 Mar 49min
Secret Warriors - British Submarines during the Cold War (446)
During the Cold War, some of the most dangerous encounters between East and West took place far beneath the ocean’s surface. I speak with historian Dr. Paul Brown, author of Secret Warriors: British ...
7 Mar 1h 15min
