A World Divided

Thirteen Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis in Full is an in-depth, longform podcast that walks you hour by hour through the most dangerous standoff in human history.

Across six immersive episodes we explore not just the crisis itself, but the decades of political tension, ideological rivalry, and human miscalculation that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

This is not a surface-level retelling. There are no dramatizations, no reenactments—only the real history, fully detailed, with original sources, key player profiles, and careful analysis that pulls you inside the rooms where decisions were made.

From the aftermath of World War II to the rise of Fidel Castro, from secret U-2 flights to the tense meetings of Kennedy’s ExComm, from backchannel diplomacy to the final resolution—this is the Cuban Missile Crisis as you’ve never heard it before.

Because sometimes, understanding how the world almost ended… is the only way to understand how it survived.

Episode 1: A World Divided

Before the world held its breath during the thirteen fateful days of October 1962, a much longer story had already been unfolding. In Episode 1: A World Divided, we journey into the origins of the Cuban Missile Crisis—decades before the U-2 photographs, the quarantines, and the brink of nuclear war.

We explore the fractured alliances at the end of World War II, the birth of the Cold War, and the global chessboard that emerged from the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. We trace the rise of Fidel Castro, the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the dangerous miscalculations of John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev.

This episode provides the critical context: the ideological battles, the proxy wars, the personal ambitions, and the diplomatic failures that shaped the most dangerous confrontation in human history. It’s the story of how the world became divided—and how that division set the stage for the most perilous standoff of the 20th century.