Latest Oslo Podcast Episodes
Further Cold War Tank Tales from the Land Down Under (324)
Cold War Conversations - December 23, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsTim participates in Kangaroo 89, a huge military exercise with the entire Australian Army using an area the size of Western Europe and we hear about the Australian equivalent of Wolfgang the Bratty Man who used to turn up on British exercises in Germany. Tim was also part of an exchange program w...
How To Catch A Cold War Spy (323)
Cold War Conversations - December 16, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsSince 1985, Ana Montes has been an asset of the Cuban intelligence service. In that time, she’s risen through the ranks to become one of the Pentagon’s most respected voices on Cuban affairs with easy access to classified documents. Peter Lapp reveals Montez's tradecraft and how the FBI found th...
Cold War, Warm Hearts - Hitchhiking behind the 1960s Iron Curtain (322)
Cold War Conversations - December 09, 2023 00:00 - 59 minutes ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsIn 1966 most of Bridget’s friends, in their early twenties, were settling down with jobs and/or husbands… She, on the other hand, set off alone to travel across Poland relying on the kindness of strangers. Fascinated by what she experienced she continued to wander the highways and byways of, Hung...
Cold War Tank Tales from the Land Down Under (321)
Cold War Conversations - December 02, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsMany of Tim’s family had served in WW1 and WW2 and from a young age, he was determined to follow their path. Overcoming huge competition for places he became a driver of the Leopard AS1 MBT at 1st Armoured Regiment of the Australian Army. Australia is largely ignored in most Cold War histories, ...
Jack's dramatic Cold War escape across the fortified Inner German border (320)
Cold War Conversations - November 25, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsJack Wesolek was born in East Germany in 1966. His grandfather was a member of the Red Orchestra, a Communist Anti-Nazi resistance organisation in Germany during World War 2. He later became Chief of the Signals Service of the Volksmarine, the East German Navy. In the 1980s an East German Army si...
How President Kennedy's assassination almost started World War 3 (319)
Cold War Conversations - November 22, 2023 00:00 - 51 minutes ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsOn 23rd Nov 1963 at Kunsan Air Base, South Korea a detachment of US Air Force B-57 Canberra bombers were parked on an alert pad each with a live nuclear weapon in their bomb bay and ready to fly at a moment’s notice. At 0400 klaxon horns aroused the crews from their slumber and they rushed to the...
The lazy schoolboy who became a Cold War Vulcan nuclear bomber pilot (318)
Cold War Conversations - November 18, 2023 00:00 - 49 minutes ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsKevin was born in Wigan in North West England and joined the RAF as an apprentice in 1956 with only 3 O Levels. He came top of his course but was posted into supplies at RAF St Mawgan. However, he quickly became in charge of their clothing stores and via a fortuitous route became a trainee pilot....
An Ode to Boyhood and Rage. Max Porter and Mattis Øybø
LitHouse podcast - November 12, 2023 06:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsThe year is 1995, and 16 year old Shy is sneaking out of the rural boarding school for “difficult” boys, named “Last Chance”. A long history of petty crime, expulsions and frustrated family members has brought him here, but now it is all soon over. With a spliff in his pocket and his Walkman loa...
Across the Iron Curtain in a yellow MG Midget sports car (317)
Cold War Conversations - November 11, 2023 00:00 - 43 minutes ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsAndrew McNeile decided to travel through Eastern Europe in a yellow MG Midget Sports car, a car that's going to stand out no matter where you are! He recalls his adventures travelling through East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Yugoslavia He talks about the warmt...
1983 - the year the Cold War almost turned hot (316)
Cold War Conversations - November 04, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsThis week is the 40th anniversary of the Able Archer NATO Exercise where it is reckoned that the Soviet Union and NATO almost started a nuclear war. 1990 an investigation by the US President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, culminating in its highly secret report “The Soviet ‘War Scare’” Th...
Serving in a Cold War Danish Reconnaissance Squadron (315)
Cold War Conversations - October 27, 2023 23:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsDenmark joined NATO as a founding member in 1949. However, it originally laid down limitations to NATO membership, effectively excluding the country from full military integration. The conditions were threefold: no non-Danish bases, no nuclear warheads, and no Allied military activity on Danish t...
A Chorus of Voices from Vietnam. Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai and Yukiko Duke
LitHouse podcast - October 22, 2023 05:00 - 52 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsDo you understand why I’ve decided to tell you about our family? If our stories survive, we will not die, even when our bodies are no longer here on this earth. The Vietnam war was a watershed event in the Cold War as well as in the West’s understanding of itself. But what does the story look l...
The Cold War Atomic Spies (314)
Cold War Conversations - October 20, 2023 23:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsOn 29 August 1949 at 7:00 a.m. the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. The test stunned the Western powers. American intelligence had estimated that the Soviets would not produce an atomic weapon until 1953, while the British did not expect it until 1954. The speed at which the Soviet U...
Spying on NATO from a Cold War East German Army radio monitoring base Part 2 (313)
Cold War Conversations - October 13, 2023 23:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsThis is the second part of my chat with Thomas who worked in a secret East German radio monitoring base. He describes how a BRIXMIS or another Allied Military Liason Mission vehicle had once got into the base and what the East German Army was told about MLM capabilities. When the officers aren’t ...
A Love without Bounds. Aleksandar Hemon and John Freeman
LitHouse podcast - October 08, 2023 05:00 - 51 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsIn some other world, in some other life, Pinto might’ve prayed in the morning, prayed his šaharit, prayed to be relieved of his abhorrent passion. But the only prayer that came to his mind now was to the Lord to let him keep Osman for the rest of time, for his voice to be the last thing he would...
Spying on NATO from a Cold War East German Army radio monitoring base Part 1 (312)
Cold War Conversations - October 06, 2023 23:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsBorn in 1968 in East Germany Thomas had a "normal socialist" but happy childhood in a small town near Dresden. His family was viewed as exotic at that time as his mother had Hungarian citizenship which allowed her to travel to West Berlin. He was conscripted into the East German Army and signed u...
Traitor or war hero? Ian Buruma and Marte Michelet
LitHouse podcast - October 01, 2023 05:00 - 49 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsA masseuse who rises in the ranks to become Himmler’s confidant. A cross-dressing princess who spies for Japanese secret police in China. A Dutch Jew who personally hands over his friends to the Nazis and the gas chambers. The Collaborators is the story of three most unusual lives, all of whom ...
Cold War US Army tank gunner serves with a Bundeswehr Panzer unit (311)
Cold War Conversations - September 29, 2023 23:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsMark joined the US Army on January 6th, 1981, and went to Ft Knox KY for Basic and Armor training. He graduated in April 1981 and was selected as Instructor Tank commander and trained the next cycle of recruits till August 1981. Mark was posted to West Germany in September 1981 and was assigned t...
All Animals Are Not Equal. NoViolet Bulawayo and Priya Bains
LitHouse podcast - September 24, 2023 05:00 - 52 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsIn the novel Glory, we find ourselves in the fictional country Jidada, which is peopled with all kinds of animals; bleating sheep, a confident pig preacher, vicious dogs making up the country’s security forces, and at the very top: the Old Horse, who has ruled the country with an iron hoof ever ...
Uncovering Cold War Soviet secrets with the USAF and NSA (310)
Cold War Conversations - September 22, 2023 23:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsTim served in the USAF and the NSA from 1975 to 1988 during some of the most tense periods of the Cold War. This included stints at the US Air Force Electronic Warfare Center at Kelly AFB, Texas, and RAF Chicksands, in the UK working on SIGINT collection of USSR/Warsaw Pact/Other targets. He also...
REME Keeping the British Army on the road during the Cold War (309)
Cold War Conversations - September 15, 2023 23:00 - 31 minutes ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsAged 16 Chris joined the British Army apprentice school in Arborfield, at Princess Marina College. He was trained as a vehicle mechanic in the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers otherwise known as REME. We talk about life expectancy in war scenarios, experiences with crash-out exercises, and l...
Gunfire in the Woods: A foiled escape and imprisonment in Cold War East Germany (308)
Cold War Conversations - September 08, 2023 23:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsThis is part two of Henrik’s story. You can hear the first part in episode 307. https://coldwarconversations.com/episode307 It’s the late 1980s and Henrik and his friends plan to escape from East Germany via Czechoslovakia. Henrik provides a very vivid account of their discovery by Czechoslovak b...
The Writer as Witness. Joyce Carol Oates and Karin Haugen
LitHouse podcast - September 02, 2023 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsJoyce Carol Oates is one of the world’s greatest living writers, and is frequently cited as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature. It is truly a momentous occasion that Oates will visit the House of Literature, and in doing so will be visiting Norway for the very first time. Through mor...
Growing up in Cold War East Germany's Valley of the Clueless (307)
Cold War Conversations - September 01, 2023 23:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsHenrik was born in the late 1960s near Dresden in East Germany. The area was sarcastically known as the Tal der Ahnungslosen or Valley of the Clueless, as the area generally was not able to receive TV from West Germany from the mid-to-late 1950s. He describes his childhood growing up in a Uranium...
A Quiet Revolution. Abdulrazak Gurnah and Leila Aboulela
LitHouse podcast - August 29, 2023 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsIn 2021, Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, the first African-born writer to receive the award in close to 20 years. The Swedish Academy awarded Gurnah the prize «for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the ref...
What Should Art Be? Lecture by Joyce Carol Oates
LitHouse podcast - August 26, 2023 05:00 - 54 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsDo artists have a social responsibility? Should art be «pure» and not related to ethical or political issues? What, exactly, is the role of art? These are questions that the American author Joyce Carol Oates has dealt with through a long writing life, both as an author and as a professor in crea...
Flying the Cold War A10 Tankbuster Part 2 (306)
Cold War Conversations - August 25, 2023 23:00 - 49 minutes ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsYou are listening to part 2 of my chat with Joe who joined the USAF in 1981 and was trained to fly the A10 Warthog a single-seat, twin-engine jet aircraft designed to provide close air support to ground forces by attacking tanks, armoured vehicles, and other ground targets. Part 1 is here https:/...
Flying the Cold War A10 Tankbuster Part 1 (305)
Cold War Conversations - August 18, 2023 23:00 - 53 minutes ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsJoe’s father served in World War 2 in the USAF. His service inspired Joe to try and join the USAF or the Naval Air Force despite having no flying experience. It’s the aftermath of the Vietnam War so forces are being reduced, however with the arrival of a new President, Ronald Reagan, defence spen...
A Cold War Polish childhood near Wroclaw (304)
Cold War Conversations - August 11, 2023 23:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 102 ratingsTom lived in western Poland in an area that had been part of Germany until the end of World War 2. He describes how his grandmother settled in this area and the strangeness of taking over formerly German houses and apartments. Tom’s grandfather on his mother’s side was a Communist activist who wo...
My African Reading List: Masande Ntshanga
LitHouse podcast - August 06, 2023 05:00 - 34 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsMasande Ntshanga is a writer and poet, an editor of New Contrast Magazine and a teacher of creative writing. For his debut novel The Reactive, he was awarded the Betty Trask Award, while his second novel, Triangulum, was nominated for the Nommo Prize for Best Speculative Fiction Novel written by...