Did the CIA Plant a Virus in Cuba?

Science Vs

Spotify Studios

Education, Science, Health & Fitness

4.4 • 12.4K Ratings

🗓️ 13 November 2020

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When the Cuban government rounded up and killed thousands of pigs in 1971, people were angry and confused. Castro claimed they were trying to stop an outbreak. But then rumours started spreading that something much bigger was behind it all. The CIA. To find out more, we speak to Professor Virgil Suarez, journalist Drew Fetherston, Professor Mary Louise Penrith, ex-CIA Carol "Rollie" Flynn and Professor Loch Johnson. Here’s a link to our transcript: https://bit.ly/3ksSP0o A huge thanks to Dan Guillemette, Rebeca Ibarra and the team at WNYC's Scattered. This episode was produced by Wendy Zukerman, with help from Nick DelRose, Mathilde Urfalino, Hannah Harris Green, Rose Rimler and Michelle Dang. It was edited by Blythe Terrell and Caitlin Kenney, with help from PJ Vogt. Fact checking by Diane Kelly. Mix and sound design by Peter Leonard. Music written by Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, Bobby Lord and Marcus Bagala. Interpreting by Carmen Graterol and Julia Kaplan. Translation by Silvina Baldermann. Thanks to everyone we got in touch with for this episode including Peter Kornbluh, Professor Piero Gleijeses, Professor Armanda Bastos, Dr. Alexis Albion, Dr David Williams, Professor Hugh Wilford, Professor Jose Sánchez-Vizcaíno, Dr James Lockhart, Professor Louis A. Pérez, Dr Megan Niederwerder,Steven Aftergood, and Vicki J. Huddleston. And thank you to the Cuban exiles and those who fought in the bay of pigs for speaking to us. A special thanks to the Zukerman family, and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet.
0:04.0	On today's episode, we're diving into a decade's long conspiracy theory involving the CIA
0:12.7	and a deadly virus.
0:16.7	And I first learned about it from my friend, Dan Gimlet.
0:22.6	Everything is sounding good.
0:24.0	It's BabaBaba, it's working well.
0:25.6	Dan is in podcasting and he was working with a colleague, Rebecca Bara, on this podcast
0:31.0	called Scattered.
0:32.5	A lot of the show had to do with Cuban history and over the course of just doing the research
0:37.4	of the show, we kept hearing about this crazy event that kept happening to people in Cuba.
0:44.2	It goes back to Cuba in 1971 and Dan knew the perfect person to tell me about what happened.
0:51.1	Virgil Suarez.
0:52.1	I don't know exactly what you need from me, but Dan mentioned the story and suddenly
0:57.0	I felt the need to talk.
0:59.4	This is Virgil.
1:00.4	He's a poet and English professor at Florida State University and he grew up in Havana
1:05.0	in the 1960s.
1:07.0	Virgil told me that his childhood was pretty idyllic.
1:09.8	He has these memories of playing baseball down the street and picking mangoes off trees.
1:15.7	Even though I had an idyllic childhood, there were also all these weird things that would
1:20.2	happen.
1:21.2	It was an uncertain time in Cuba.
	...

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