What’s scarier, aliens or commies? Today we’re talking about a period during the tense, paranoid and uncertain early Cold War where Americans saw a rash of UFO sightings, setting off a panic. It wasn’t the prospect of little green men that put the country on edge, it was the idea that these objects could be Russians with secret technology…and we would be defenseless.

I use the 1950 B-film “The Flying Saucer” as a good illustration of where America’s mind was at around 1947-50.

I’ll also discuss the origin of the “flying saucer” term and the famous Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting that kicked it all off.

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Today we are talking about Kim Jong Un, the current (dear) leader of North Korea. We’ve been discussing current heads of state and how the Cold War has shaped them. Kim Jong Un really is a relic from the Cold War and in many ways still continues that history. We talk about his murky beginnings and his role in the current state, which is a throwback to the days of Mao and Stalin, with some homespun touches

For Xi Jinping the Cold War never really ended. What we saw as a victory of democracy was a failure of weak men and a cautionary tale for Xi and the Chinese Communist Party.

In this episode we talk about the chaos and suffering Xi endured in his young life to make him into the man he is today. The Cold War was a visceral experience for him that made him wary of chaos and disorder.

I think looking at his Cold War experience helps explain this leader who is elusive to the outside world.

Nicolas Maduro is in the news right now. When we look at his history and ideology, we find that he’s pretty much a guy that showed up late to the Cold War. We discuss his humble origins, training in Cuba and the current state of affairs.

Part 2 of our series on current world leaders and the Cold War

Today we’re looking at how the Cold War shaped Donald Trump and his experiences growing up during a period of peak American prosperity and moral authority, watching it decline then rising back up again. Although he had no military or political experience during this period, he reflected a mood in the country and became the poster child of free market capitalism during the 80’s. We talk about his history and how Cold War thinking shaped his present style of diplomacy. Yes, we talk about the draft deferments too.

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Netflix just released House of Dynamite, a nuclear thriller that brings the looming horror of the Cold War and nuclear war to the present day. Today I’m giving you my off the cuff review of the show and a few things of interest for those of us into this kind of thing

Today we’re talking about one of the creepiest relics of the Cold War, Buzludzha Monument in Bulgaria - an abandoned testament to communism’s unfulfilled ambitions. It resembles a giant concrete UFO on top of a mountain. Not only is it an artifact of a horrific period of history, many claim it’s haunted. We’ll discuss some of the strange things afoot in Buzludzha.

In order to turn this into a true Halloween extravaganza, I’ll read Percy Shelley’s “ozymandias” , which this abandoned monument reminded me of. I’ll also bring my Soviet Union-obsessed eight year old on to tell a good Cold War joke he told me the other day. Like, subscribe, share and leave good reviews. Hit me up on instagram or X.

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Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky both had their formative and life altering moments during the Cold War. In this episode, we discussed their history and how the fall of the Soviet Union, a nation they were both citizens of, affected them. It’s interesting that both leaders had a front row seat to the same series of events and came to such divergent conclusions. Leave a review to help the show grow and visit www.reddragonherbs.com to support financially.

The film for the Stephen King book The Long Walk just hit the theaters over the weekend. While we have a lot of accounts of the horrors of war, this story is the product of the dread over the prospect of being forced to fight a war from the perspective of a young horror writer. The boomers get a lot of grief for having had it easy, but King captured the horror of having the draft and Vietnam looming over your head as a young man in the 60’s.

In a recent episode about nuclear first strike plans, I got carried away and forgot to mention the strategic rocket forces of Russia/the Soviet Union. In this episode, I talk about one of the world’s most unique military branches including their history and their purpose over the years. The rocket forces are the guardians of Russia’s superpower status, with their finger on the button as their motherland’s ultimate trump card.