The Moscow-Washington Hotline

The Week Unwrapped - with Olly Mann

Start your Tuesday morning with The Retrospectors - Olly & Arion's daily history show - which we present to you here in its full, ten minute glory. Today's episode focuses on the hotline from Moscow to Washington.
On 30th August, 1963, a 10,000 mile transatlantic Washington-Moscow cable went live from the Pentagon to Red Square.
In the public imagination (in part thanks to Kubrik’s ‘Dr Strangelove’), it remains a red telephone - but it is, in fact, a pair of beige teletype machines that each required ten staff to operate.
In this episode, Arion, Rebecca Messina (yes, that's Gillie to long-time Unwrappers) and Olly explain why, prior to this, diplomacy was often being skipped altogether in favour of inflammatory radio broadcasts; consider what the messages the two nations send each other can tell us about their cultural differences; and marvel at just how much geopolitics hinges on whether two particular world leaders like each other…
Listen to The Retrospectors - Today In History every weekday at podfollow.com/retrospectors