Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

World Service,01 Dec 2025,37 mins

SeriesKennedy and Khrushchev

1. Opening moves

The Bomb

Available for over a year

As the USA and Soviet Union race for supremacy in the 1960s, Premier Khrushchev sizes up his rival, President John F Kennedy. Hosts Max Kennedy and Nina Khrushcheva, relatives of the superpower leaders, explore their rise to power - one wealthy, smooth-talking and Harvard educated, the other a hardened Soviet war leader from a peasant family. As they prepare to meet for the first and only time as world leaders, the stakes couldn't be higher: they are fierce rivals in the race to build ever more devastating missiles. This is the personal and political history of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nina Khrushcheva is the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev and Max Kennedy is the nephew of President John F Kennedy, and the son of Robert F Kennedy.

Programme Website
More episodes