‘A story about spies doing the unthinkable, about propaganda hidden in pop music, and a maze of government secrets…’
I miss the days when conspiracy theories would be about whether one of the munchkins killed themselves in the background of The Wizard of Oz or whether Marilyn Manson had had two ribs removed to perform fellatio on himself. The early days of the internet really were a simpler time – a time when you could read through Snopes.com without becoming profoundly depressed. Well, Wind of Change, Patrick Radden Keefe’s excellent 2020 podcast, harks back to those less troubled times…
Sometime around 2010, our intrepid host heard a rumour that the CIA wrote the song ‘Wind of Change’ by German hard rockers The Scorpions as a way to spread Western ideas behind the Iron Curtain following the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. While Keefe didn’t explore this theory much at the time, the wonderful simplicity of it nagged at him until he eventually returned to the subject properly in 2020. On a journey that takes in Russia, Ukraine, Germany and the CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, Wind of Change attempts to get to the bottom of what is a compelling and irresistible idea.
I think what makes Wind of Change so captivating is that it is at once incredibly low stakes (does it really matter if the CIA wrote ‘Wind of Change’? Probably not), whilst also revealing a deeper and more sinister truth. If the CIA were attempting to infiltrate the Eastern Bloc through popular culture (which Keefe proves that they were – even if the artists themselves were unaware of it), what else could they do? What else have they done?
I hadn’t heard of Keefe until he appeared on the Louis Theroux Podcast but his conversational broadcasting style, combined with his diligent research, makes for excellent podcasting. I listened to all eight episodes of Wind of Change in a couple of days and found it to be fascinating as well as strangely comforting. In a world on the brink of self-destruction, a German hair metal band possibly collaborating with the CIA is exactly what we all need right now.