For one week, the world stood seconds from nuclear war.

Bestselling author Jeff Shaara joins Why Wars Happened to expose the CIA failures, backchannel deals, and hidden plots that defined the Cuban Missile Crisis — the closest we’ve ever come to the end.

⏱ Timestamps

00:00 – Welcome to Why Wars Happened

00:46 – Meet Jeff Shaara (The Shadow of War)

03:32 – The Bay of Pigs: Prelude to crisis

06:55 – The Cuban Missile Crisis begins

09:06 – Cold War context & public fear

12:33 – Eisenhower vs. Kennedy

15:15 – Soviet dynamics after Stalin

17:43 – The “winnable war” perspective

18:08 – Khrushchev’s balancing act

19:02 – The aftermath

20:25 – Operation Mongoose (CIA plots)

22:49 – Berlin’s role in the Cold War

28:38 – The secret treaty revealed

30:01 – Cl ...