Hear the story of a doctor who decided to flee Cuba with his family in 1963

Since the revolution, approximately 1.4 million Cubans have fled to the US

Although Castro initially enjoyed broad support after toppling Batista in 1959, nearly 2 million Cubans chose exile in the years that followed. Most settled in the US, while others dispersed across Latin America and Europe, shaping migration patterns that persist to this day

See photos from the day Havana fell

When news broke that Batista had fled on New Year’s Eve 1958, photographer Burt Glinn rushed from Miami to Havana without an assignment. His iconic images—tanks in Old Havana and tearful reunions—captured a nation celebrating, uncertain, and on the brink of radical change.

Hear the story of an Afghan refugee family's journey to America

Dori Samadzai Bonner recounts her family's escape from Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and their journey to find US refuge. This story reveals the challenges immigrants face in navigating the American immigration system and in seeking sanctuary.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

Jeff Bezos’ adoptive father Mike Bezos immigrated to the US from Cuba at age 16

Mike Bezos’ mother made a coat out of cleaning rags for him before he immigrated, assuming that the United States would be very cold. Mike and Jeff told the story of Mike’s journey to the US and early days in America together in this video.

Finding the way home through flavor

In the fall of 1996, 9-year-old Alvin Chang rushed into his family's kitchen to find his grandmother making his absolute favorite dish: kimchi. This interactive story follows Chang's yearslong attempt to recreate the flavor from his childhood home.

Watch veterans experience psilocybin at a Mexican clinic and discuss the aftermath

This "60 Minutes" episode from 2025 follows nine veterans attending a week-long psychedelic retreat to treat their PTSD. Most of the vets say the experience at the Mexican clinic was life-changing. But results were mixed: One veteran reported he was scared and that the experience worsened his mental health overall.

Hear the story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech

This podcast traces Dr. King’s path into the Civil Rights movement and the buildup to the 1963 March on Washington, unpacking how his speech became a defining moment in US history.

Watergate's anti-Castro Latino burglars believed they were fighting communism

Among the Watergate burglars, Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, and Eugenio Martínez were Cuban American anti-Castro exiles who believed they were combating communist influence in the United States.

Dr. William Gorgas eradicated yellow fever in Panama, crucial to canal construction

The disease was one of the factors hampering the French effort to build the canal. Gorgas' experience elsewhere in the Caribbean had taught him that good drainage and quaranting patients were essential, and he would eventually apply mosquito prevention tactics on a mass scale.

Read an account of what life was like in America's national leprosarium—its leper colony

José Ramirez Jr. shares an account of his eight years at the 300-acre national leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana, from 1968 through the mid-1970s. Mostly staffed by nuns with nursing degrees, this facility was home to hundreds of people at a time, and it's also the site where they were required to be buried.

John Steinbeck's 'Sea of Cortez,' a travelogue through the Gulf of California, is still used by ecologists today.

Hughes lived in the Soviet Union in the 1930s

Hughes grew interested in the Soviet Union and radical politics in the early 1930s after the Communist Party of the United States defended the Scottsboro Boys, nine Black teenagers wrongly accused and convicted of raping two white women. In 1932, he lived there while working on a film that ultimately fizzled out, and returned home. In 1937, he planned to lead a tour of the country, as advertised below, but canceled it when a newspaper offered him a position reporting from the Spanish Civil War.

Norman Rosenthal’s struggle with SAD inspired him to understand it

The South African doctor migrated to New York City in the 1970s. During his first winter there, he noticed the shorter days had a significant impact on his mood compared to those in his hometown of Johannesburg, South Africa, which is much closer to the equator. After three years of this seasonal mood shift, he decided to focus his studies. Hear him speak in this quick narration.

Guitarist Charlie Byrd brought bossa nova to the US after a government-sponsored tour

The Mutual and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961, also known as the Fulbright–Hays Act, sought to spread understanding through education and cultural exchanges. Its passage led to a government-sponsored music tour of South America featuring jazz guitarist Charlie Byrd. In Brazil, Byrd was introduced to the music of João Gilberto and returned to the United States eager to incorporate bossa nova into his own music.

Go inside the global effort that led to the Montreal Protocol in this narrative podcast

Nobel laureate Mario Molina and other key voices recount how science and diplomacy converged to develop a plan to close the ozone hole, offering insight into history's most successful environmental treaty.

Hear firsthand stories from Americans who lived through the 1918 flu pandemic

This video shares personal accounts from survivors of the 1918 influenza epidemic, capturing memories of sickness, loss, and resilience. Their voices offer a glimpse into how ordinary people experienced one of history’s deadliest pandemics.

Talese’s story on Joe DiMaggio examined the sports star’s life post-retirement

The profile, written in the aftermath of his popular “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” similarly offered a close look at an American icon after their prime. In DiMaggio’s story, however, the Yankees player seeks to vanish into obscurity and live a quiet life, golfing and mourning his ex-wife Marilyn Monroe.

The famous image of Che Guevara was captured by accident

Alberto Korda wasn’t aiming for Che Guevara when he snapped one of the most reproduced photos in history. This longread traces how that fleeting moment became a global icon—later commodified across pop culture, fashion, and advertising.

Hear the story of a cosmonaut stranded in space after the Soviet Union collapsed

When the USSR dissolved in 1991, cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev was still aboard a space station—forcing him to remain in orbit for months longer than planned. This limited podcast series recounts the event, hosted by astronaut and pop star Lance Bass.

Learn how Mexico’s anti-slavery stance shaped the US–Texas conflict

Historian Alice Baumgartner explores how Mexico’s abolition of slavery clashed with Anglo settlers' ambitions in Texas. The episode reveals how enslaved people fled south to freedom, reshaping the politics that led to Texas independence and the Mexican-American War.

Guatemala’s Regina José Gallindo's works protested abuses against women

In this in-depth interview with Bomb magazine, she discusses her motivations and inspirations for pieces like Recorte Por La Línea, in which she invited a plastic surgeon to mark everything he would change on her body to make it “ideal.”

Zora Neale Hurston used her anthropological training to interview a man who had survived the slave trade

The writer's interviews with Cudjo Lewis documented the man's enslavement and travel from Africa to the United States. It also captured the story behind Africatown, a community in Alabama that emerged after the Emancipation Proclamation. Hurston's book was not published during her lifetime, though it was finally released in 2018 as "Barracoon: The Story of the Last 'Black Cargo.'"

Some senior Nazis fled to South America and lived for decades

Using so-called "ratlines" through Spain, Italy, and into South American countries like Argentina, many of Adolf Hitler's closest associates evaded capture after the fall of Berlin in 1945. This video details the fate of eight, including infamous doctor Josef Mengele and logistics expert Adolf Eichmann.

Spanish colonists celebrated alongside the Seloy tribe in Florida in 1565

Long before the 1621 meal between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and 800 Spanish settlers founded the city of St. Augustine in Spanish la Florida. They celebrated the founding with a Mass of Thanksgiving with the Indigenous Seloy tribe.

Stranger pays for a family's breakfast tab and writes heartfelt note praising the father of three kids

In Fort Worth, Texas, an Emergency Room doctor wearing scrubs was enjoying a meal with his wife and three children. While getting ready to pay, the family learned that their $85 bill had already been settled, with a kind note left behind. The message was signed by "a retired Army Medic" who thanks the man for being a good father.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Watch contemporary footage covering the US-backed Shah of Iran fleeing the country in the face of the 1979 Iranian Revolution

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

Watch the cumbersome, but necessary, precautions healthcare workers must take to care for and protect themselves while caring for Ebola patients.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

The Dracula character, now seen as the vampire archetype, was inspired by a seafood-induced nightmare its creator experienced.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

Explore the archaeological treasures of Pompeii, the city buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

Fish populations in the Great Barrier Reef have increased after installing waterproof speakers on the ocean floor that played recordings of sounds from healthy coral reefs.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.