Bay of Pigs: A Well-Planned Fiasco (Part One)

For the sixteenth installment of “50 Weeks That Shaped America” we go, for the first time to the Cold War. It’s April 1961, and the US is concerned about Cuba’s new leftist leader, Fidel Castro. The US has a new leader of its own, JFK, who adopts - and adapts - a plan from Eisenhower’s CIA to send a group of renegade Cuban dissidents into the Bay of Pigs to spark a revolution. It does not go well! We get into the botched plans, the rogue CIA, and why you can’t drive a boat over a coral reef. Join our America250 newsletter community !

You can listen to Bay of Pigs: A Well-Planned Fiasco (Part One) online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Bay of Pigs: A Well-Planned Fiasco (Part One) is an episode from This Day in Esoteric Political History by Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia.

This episode is 36:26 long.

This episode was published on Apr 21, 2026.

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