Thought experiment: you're a large country locked in a 20th century geopolitical death struggle. Any wrong move could irradiate the planet. Any right move gets you a marginal victory over your opponent without ending the larger conflict. In that scenario, do you ease the root tensions driving the world insane? Or do you maximize those tensions, dig your heels in, and remake your entire society just to piss off the Rooskies? (Spoiler: you do the second thing and it becomes this podcast episode.)

On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by comedian Chloe Radcliffe, comedian & podcaster John Moe, University of Minnesota historian Elaine Tyler May, and an amazing LIVE audience at Amsterdam Bar & Hall in St. Paul MN. They team up to explore the strangest, oddest, most bizarre ways America tried to win the Cold War -- everything from social engineering to suburban sprawl to a bomb shelter for non-human Americans -- and examine how those intentional societal shifts stick with us today.

Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/the-weirdest-ways-america-tried-to-win-cold-war/