For 13 days beginning on October 16, 1962 the world teetered on total nuclear destruction. Today, Dr. Renata Keller joins in to talk about the Cuban Missile Crisis, how it is depicted in the film 13 Days, and how the events played out in Latin America. This is a deep dive into arguably the most consequential two weeks in world history.

About our guest:

Dr. Renata Keller specializes in Latin American and Cold War history. Her second book, The Fate of the Americas: The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Hemispheric Cold War (UNC Press, 2025), uncovers how people and governments across the Americas caused, participated in, and were affected by the Cuban Missile Crisis. Her first book, Mexico’s Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution (Cambridge, 2015), explored how the Cuban Revolution transformed Mexico’s domestic politics and international relations. It was awarded SECOLAS's Alfred B. Thomas Book Prize and honorable mentions for RMCLAS's Thomas McGann and Michael C. Meyer Prizes.

She received her B.A. in History and Spanish from Arizona State University and her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. She taught international relations at Boston University for five years before joining the History Department at the University of Nevada in 2017. She has published journal articles in The Journal of Latin American Studies, The Journal of Cold War Studies, The Journal of Cold War History, The Latin American Research Review, Diplomatic History, Contexto Internacional, and Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, as well as popular articles in History Today and The Washington Post. Her research has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Philanthropic Educational Organization, the Kluge Center at the U.S. Library of Congress, the American Philosophical Society, and other institutions. She is co-editor of InterConnections: The Global Twentieth Century, a new book series at UNC Press that is home to innovative global, international, and transregional histories of the long twentieth century.

She is also a dedicated educator. She teaches classes on modern Latin American history, Cuban history, the global Cold War, and drugs and security in the Americas. She also enjoys training the next generation of thinkers, historians, and history teachers in my classes on historical research and writing, historiography, historiography of the Americas, and her graduate research seminar on twentieth-century history.

Comanche Chairman Forrest Tahdooahnippah joins in to talk about Comanche history, culture, and so much more. We had a chance to talk about the legal relationships between Tribal nations and the United States, the importance of language preservation, what it’s like to lead a Tribe, thoughts on how Comanche people have been portrayed on film, and how historians and others can conduct ethical scholarship in Indian Country. This was a really wonderful conversation and I’m so thankful to the Chairman for the time to talk with us.

About our guest:

Forrest Tahdooahnippah is Chairman of the Comanche Nation. He earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Policy from Stanford University and his Juris Doctorate from the University of Minnesota Law School. Prior to his service as Chairman, he was legal counsel at Dorsey & Whitney, LLP and was an assistant professor of law at Mitchell Hamline School of Law.

This week Kate Sheppard and Colin Colbourn return to ask if Notting Hill is the greatest romcom of its generation.

About our guests:

Dr. Kathleen Sheppard earned her PhD in History of Science from the University of Oklahoma in 2010. After a post-doctoral teaching fellowship at the American University in Cairo, she arrived at Missouri S&T in the fall of 2011. She teaches mainly survey courses on modern Western Civilizations, which is arguably one of the most important courses students in 21st century America can take. Her main focus is on the history of science from the ancient Near East to present day Europe, United States, and Latin America. She has taught courses on the history of European science and Latin American science, as well as a seminar on women in the history of science.

Sheppard’s research focuses on 19th and 20th century Egyptology and women in the field. Her first book was a scientific biography of Margaret Alice Murray, the first woman to become a university-trained Egyptologist in Britain (Lexington, 2013). Murray’s career spanned 70 years and over 40 publications. Sheppard is also the editor of a collection of letters between Caroline Ransom Williams, the first university-trained American Egyptologist, and James Breasted from the University of Chicago (Archaeopress, 2018). Sheppard’s monograph, Tea on the Terrace, is about hotels in Egypt as sites of knowledge creation in Egyptology during the discipline’s “Golden Age,” around 1880 to 1930.

Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age was published in July 2024. It has been reviewed in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and was a top 6 Reader’s Choice non-fiction book on Goodreads.

Dr. Colin Colbourn is the Lead Historian for Project Recover, where he manages historical operations to locate and identify U.S. service members missing in action from past conflicts. He is a graduate of Ball State University and went on to earn his MA and Ph.D. in U.S. History from the University of Southern Mississippi. His work at Project Recover blends family outreach, archival research, case analysis, and global field investigations to bring home missing service men and women. At Project Recover, Dr. Colbourn works with an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, oceanographers, marine scientists, and engineers in order to apply modern technology to the mysteries of the past. Dr. Colbourn also teaches U.S. Military History as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Delaware.