In Havana this year we talked to Fidel Castro about the irony of his 1959 trip to the United States.

A friendly CIA encounter in New York, but an ominous meeting in Washington with the American Vice President.

And I wasn't invited to talk to Nixon about an hour and a half or so.

And I remember that he was interested about Cuba and explained the real objective niche

that he had to operate a series of social changes.

I remember that Nixon looked very young, the listen to me was attention.

And then we said why? Later on I found out that immediately after our interview was over,

Nixon sent a memorandum to Eisenhower, telling him that I was a communist and I had to be eliminated.

Welcome to Blowback. I'm Brendan James. I'm Noah Colwyn.

And this is episode two, Lois Simos.

Now last episode was really more of a prologue.

We introduced you to a lot of the characters that are going to be important in this season's drama.

And we front loaded some of the spicier bits of trivia.

But this is the episode where we're really going to get started and dive into this season's story.

This episode is about the Cuban revolution.

But much like we did with Iraq in season one, we're going to trace the relationship between Cuba and the United States

a bit further back so that we can understand the train of events that leads to the revolution in 1959.

And of course everything that's going to come after it.

Right. And the way that we're going to get there is by telling the story of how this small island in the Caribbean,

you know, exploited by European, I or you're being irony guys.

Yeah, we're exploited by European irony guys for centuries.

We're going to see the story of this small island in the Caribbean that's going to be exploited for the most part by Spain

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