Welcome to Just Between Us, the podcast with all of the answers, some of the time.

A bit of a different thing going on this week.

You've been immature and you've lied.

And now you're trying to turn it on me and manipulate me and gaslight me.

I was trying to manipulate you.

Diana, you would be chucking their clothes out of the window.

I know, I'd be like, are you joking?

I don't know. I guess you'd have to ask. Someone that has sex. Someone that has sex. And remember, it's just between us. Ah, Benny's parents, thanks for coming. I, uh. So, Benny has really blossomed this term. You're telling me, he outgrew his bike. We sold it, on eBay. Oh, that's not quite what I meant. It's free to sell on there. Free to sell? Easy too. Sold Benny's bike, your guitar, my jacket. You sold my guitar? Shall we talk about Benny? When it's this easy to sell for free, you can't help but say you when it's eBay.

Things People Love. T's and Cs Apply, Exclused vehicles.

Hello and welcome to the History Extra podcast from BBC History Magazine and BBC History Revealed.

I'm Ellie Cawthorne. In their battle to control the citizens of East Germany, the Ministry for

State Security employed a variety of weapons. Among them, rather surprisingly, was poetry. And in his

new book, The Starzy Poetry Circle, Journalist Philip Alterman tells the story of how the

Starzy tried to instruct its agents to write better poems and win the Cold War through creative writing.

Rob Atar caught up with Philip recently to find out more about this curious chapter in the history of the GDR.

Philip, I wonder if we could begin by talking about ice cream, because in the first

page of your book, one of the characters in your story is thinking about different

flavours of ice cream. And I felt that that really added colour to a country that I think

we often picture in various shades of grey.

So I wondered if this was quite a deliberate metaphor for the story that you're telling in this

book and showing a different side to the GDR.

Well, thank you for your interest in ice cream. I think the reason why I started by zooming in

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