Ending of the podcast: This is what the author says directly to the audience: (31:00 on podcast)

What are we to take away from this episode?.....Robert McNamara said, "Somewhere in that period when the country did not know that these missiles were in Cuba, that we knew and the country did not know. He saw the sun set and he wondered is that was going to be the last sunset I will ever see. Will I ever see the sun rise again?"

When you have these kinds of weapons, when you have this kind of destruction, when you have this kind of confusion, when you have this kind of chaos, and there's a lot of unknowns. It really CAN lead to the end. And there is a lot of confusion here, you know. There is a lot of coalescing, there is a lot of moving back and forth among factions.

We think of the cold war as pretty rigid. In terms of, these people are in this camp and these people are in that camp. But under Eisenhower and Kennedy; enemies become friends, friends become enemies. In the struggle against communism, relationships really were transactional. Fulgencio Batista is our man, with our support, but he brutally oppresses his people. He crushes civil rights.

In the 1950's-1960s we were so scared of the spread of the red, that we tell the world that the United States lives in the spread of the principle of self determination. But then we engineer election outcomes we prefer. We secretly overthrow democratically elected rulers we don't like. So all that is peculating in the time. All that is peculating in this story, and all that is peculating in the set up to the Cuban Missile Crisis and part 2 of our story next week.

I am Joe Pacino, we will see you next week. Going back to my opening point. We are slowly headed toward an uncertain end. Lets enjoy one another while we are here. Lets love one another while we are here. Lets value our contribution to what we have got, and lets make it to tomorrow.