The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963 might be the closest the world has ever come to actual nuclear war – but do we really understand what went on between Kennedy, the USA and Kruschev’s USSR? Ukraine-born Harvard Professor of History Serhii Plokhy tells Jude Rogers about his new book Nuclear Folly: A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis – and what this fatal moment in the confrontation between East and West can tell us about today’s unspoken second Cold War. 

• “Diplomatic telegrams were so slow that Kruschev thought the best way to communicate with Kennedy was openly, through Radio Moscow.”
• “The technology has changed since the Cuban Missile Crisis but human nature hasn’t.” 
• “Today we’re back in the uncharted waters of the nuclear arms race before the Cuban Crisis.”

Presented by Jude Rogers. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Logo and branding by Mark Taylor. Music: Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. The Bunker is a Podmasters production

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