Podcast
Cuba Analysis
Hosted by Cuba Analysis · EN
Think you know Cuba? Think again. Since the Revolution of 1959, Cuba has defied expectations and flouted the rules. It is a country of contradictions. A poor country with world-leading human development indicators. A small island that mobilises the world’s largest international humanitarian assistance. A weak and dependent economy which has survived economic crises and the United States blockade - the longest and most extensive system of unilateral sanctions applied against any country in modern history. Anachronistic but innovative. Traditional but creative. Formally ostracised, but with millions of defenders around the world. Despite meeting most of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, Cuba’s socialist development strategy is not upheld as an example. We’re going beyond the headlines to explore those contradictions. Using sources you never see and speaking to specialists you never hear from. On Cuba Analysis, we dissect the facts. We put things in context. Get to the root of the issue. We challenge assumptions and ask: Who’s shaping the narrative? Who benefits from the story? Join us. This is Cuba Analysis.
10episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Interview with Zue Jernstedt, US veteran turned anti-war activist
2w ago00:44:41Tap to summarizeIn the next episode of Cuba’s Analysis podcast, Nina Blodau speaks with US army veteran Zue Jernstedt, who served in Afghanistan before leaving the army and becoming an anti-imperialist activist. Zue has worked as a human rights observer in the West Bank, participated in the Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza, and organised with anti-ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) groups in the United States. In March 2026, she met the Cuba Analysis team in Havana during the Nuestra América Global Convoy of international activists who came together to oppose US threats of military aggression against Cuba and to demand an end to the US blockade, recently compounded by a genocidal oil siege. The conversation connects anti-imperialist struggles in Cuba and Palestine to the US domestic front. Zue discusses how the US military exploits poverty as a recruitment tool, the role of the naval base in illegally occupied Guantanamo Bay as a site for torture, US support for the genocidal Israeli state, and the use of starvation as a weapon of war. She reflects on her own political awakening in Afghanistan, where she realised that far from bringing democracy and women’s rights, the US were pursuing its own imperialist interests. This same logic now targets Cuba, she says, not with bombs but with a blockade that starves the population. More recently, Trump has also threatened Cuba with military attack. Zue contrasts propaganda about Cuba with the reality she experienced on the ground: free universal healthcare, a strong sense of community, and a society which, despite crushing sanctions, still cares for each other. Her story is ultimately a call to action. She urges international audiences not to remain passive in the face of imperialism: to engage, to challenge, and to disrupt complacency. As she puts it, “We shall overcome – our day will come. It is absolutely inevitable that we rise up.”Follow us for updates and new episodes:Website: https://www.cubanalysis.orgSocial: @cubanalysisInstagram / Facebook / Telegram / YouTube / TikTokSpotify: https://tinyurl.com/cubanalysisspotifyApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/.../cuba-analysis/id1846065440
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Interview with Cuban Ambassador Ismara Vargas Walter
Apr 1901:05:51Tap to summarizeIn this episode of Cuba Analysis, Helen Yaffe sits down with Cuban Ambassador Ismara Mercedes Vargas Walter to discuss recent and escalating threats from the US government under President Trump. These include the designation of Cuba as a threat to US national security, the imposition of an oil blockade, and the threat of military aggression to enforce regime change. The conversation explores the human cost of these measures, from energy shortages and blackouts to the damage inflicted on Cuba’s public healthcare and education systems. These coercive measures expose the real strategy behind US policy towards since 1960, as outlined in a secret memo written by US diplomat Lester Mallory advocating economic warfare to provoke “hunger, desperation and overthrow of government”. The Ambassador explains how the extraterritorial reach of the US blockade obstructs British entities - from individuals to banks - engaging with Cuba. These restrictions disrupt trade, finance, and everyday diplomatic operations; even the daily functioning of the Cuban embassy in London is affected. This is despite more than a century of stable Cuba-UK relations, spanning from diplomacy to co-operation in science and culture. Despite these challenges, Ambassador Vargas Walter emphasises Cuba’s resilience, highlighting a rapid shift towards renewable energies, strong popular unity and an ongoing commitment to sovereignty and self-determination. The episode closes by highlighting Cuba’s global contributions in healthcare and education and underscoring why international solidarity to defend Cuba is so important right now.Follow us for updates and new episodes:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIjujJoi8ck🌐 Website: https://www.cubanalysis.org 📱 Social: @cubanalysis Instagram / Facebook / Telegram / YouTube / TikTok Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cuba-analysis/id1846065440#CubanNews #CubaInPerspective #CubanFacts #CubaSolidarity #Cuba #CubaStudies #CubaHistory
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Interview with Alan MacLeod
Feb 1200:59:25Tap to summarizeIn this episode of the Cuba Analysis Podcast, Helen Yaffe and Nina Blodau talk to Alan MacLeod about the Trump administration’s use of propaganda, misinformation and psychological warfare to facilitate regime change in Cuba and Venezuela. MacLeod is a researcher and investigative journalist for MintPress News, and author of ‘Bad News from Venezuela: 20 Years of Fake News and Misreporting’, based on his PhD thesis. Through interviewing the western journalists posted in Caracas, MacLeod’s research showed that they acted as ‘ideological foot soldiers’ for US imperialism, deliberately manufacturing consent for regime change. MacLeod tells us how one journalist, who he names in the podcast, admitted to planting fake news about Venezuela, describing himself as ‘mercenary for hire’. He traces how this playbook of distortion, exemplified in propaganda against Cuba and Venezuela, creates a false reality for the general public, one where fake narratives about ‘narco-states’ and ‘authoritarian dictatorships’ counter the hard evidence from institutions like the United Nations. The conversation connects the dots between the role of individual journalists, media platforms, think tanks, US government funding and Miami-based opposition leaders, revealing a coordinated campaign aimed at overthrowing sovereign governments. He describes the merging in Southern Florida of the right-wing opponents of the Cuban and Venezuelan revolutionary states who receive generous funding under regime change programmes. We discuss the sordid trajectory of the opposition leaders, people such as María Corina Machado from Venezuela, and Cuban American politicians Marco Rubio, and María Elvira Salazar, who promote violence and US intervention. MacLeod shows how information warfare lays the groundwork for economic and military aggression. This episode is a masterclass in media deconstruction and a vital tool for anyone seeking to understand the battle over truth and sovereignty in Latin America. It is also a stirring appeal for genuine international solidarity.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE58GqF9fv8
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Interview with Dr Emily Morris, development economist and Honorary Senior Researcher
Feb 301:03:08Tap to summarizeIn this episode of Cuba Analysis Podcast, we speak to Dr Emily Morris, a development economist and Honorary Senior Research Associate at the University College London, whose work provides essential insights into the structure and functioning of Cuba’s economy. This episode offers a deep dive beyond headlines and talking points, as Dr Morris guides us through the ‘perfect storm’ confronting Cuba today. She explains why there is such scarcity of food, fuel and medical supplies, and why inflation has been so high and persistent despite government controls in the socialist economy. She describes the overlapping effects of the pandemic, domestic currency reform, tightening of US sanctions and ‘over-compliance’ in the international financial sector - factors that have combined to produce a sustained and deep economic crisis, resulting in prolonged electricity blackouts, goods shortages and large-scale emigration. She also examines how US sanctions weaponise international finance and trade, obliging banks to block transactions with Cuba and ships to turn away from Cuban ports, and pushing Cuba into deeper economic partnerships with Russia and China. We also discuss the complexities and reliability of Cuban economic data. Dr Morris’ career has bridged academia, analysis for the Economist Intelligence Unit, and hands-on development partnerships in Cuba. First drawn to study Cuba because of its position as an economic outlier, operating outside conventional development models, she gathered rich data and insights in the 1990s into how Cuba survived the Special Period, which became the topic of her doctoral thesis. She was a close observer of the impact of the 1996 Helms Burton Act, which significantly tightened the US blockade and strengthened its extraterritorial impact, extending US sanctions to the rest of the world and deterring foreign investors. Dr Morris highlights inspiring examples of innovation emerging within these constraints. We get an insider’s view of collaborative projects she is helping to facilitate, from Cuban scientists turning landfill methane into energy to pioneering next-generation battery technology and developing sustainable urban transit plans. This episode provides an antidote to politicised mainstream commentary which attributes Cuba’s economic problems solely to government mismanagement and inefficiency. It offers a grounded and accessible perspective on the complexities of economic sovereignty, highlighting the island’s resilience and potential to serve as a case study for development from below. YouTube:https://youtu.be/fcbpn9S0ZyM?si=pZ9cvlKNhuVm9hrr
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Interview with Vijay Prashad: Cuba, the Tricontinental, and National Liberation Socialism
Jan 1001:04:42Tap to summarizeHistorian and Executive Director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, Vijay Prashad, joins Cuba Analysis to examine Cuba’s revolutionary endurance, the legacy of the Tricontinental movement, and the ongoing global struggle against imperialism. With the 60th anniversary of the Tricontinental Conference taking place in January 2026 at the University of Havana (12–14 January), Prashad calls for renewed debate on South–South solidarity and internationalism. Prashad reflects on his first visit to Cuba during the Special Period of the 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union plunged the island into severe economic crisis. He argues that Cuba’s survival under extreme pressure revealed a central political truth: socialism, when confronted by empire, becomes an essential defence of sovereignty, dignity, and collective survival. We discuss the historic 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana, which united revolutionary movements from Asia, Africa, and Latin America and laid the foundations for anti-imperialist internationalism. Prashad explains how the conference fused the Bandung Movement’s demand for sovereignty with Marxism’s commitment to human dignity, forging a tradition of national liberation socialism that continues to shape struggles across the Global South. Prashad delivers a sharp analysis of ongoing U.S. aggression against Cuba, identifying the blockade as the central human rights violation—an illegal and permanent siege aimed at undermining the Cuban Revolution. He situates today’s economic crisis within a “permanent Special Period” driven by sanctions, financial warfare, and political isolation, and calls for stronger international solidarity, particularly from Latin America and the BRICS countries. He stresses that defending Venezuela is inseparable from defending Cuba. The conversation also explores the continued relevance of Marxist analysis, critiques moralistic and idealist tendencies on the left, and highlights the importance of understanding history’s contradictions and reversals in the long struggle for social transformation. This episode offers a rigorous political and historical analysis of Cuba’s revolutionary project and its international significance, through the lens of one of the most influential critical thinkers of our time. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggYOvUyNbU4
Transcribe →Cuba Analysis exclusive: Ana Maldonado reports from Caracas on the US attack
Jan 600:59:58Tap to summarizeDon’t miss this urgent and compelling episode of the Cuba Analysis Podcast, hosted by Helen Yaffe and Nina Blodau, with Ana Maldonado, a Venezuelan sociologist and the International Relations coordinator for the Francisco de Miranda Front, a Chavista movement, and member of the Venezuelan chapter of ALBA Movements. Maldonado left a huge march in Caracas to update us about events in Venezuela: the military assault by 150 US aircraft, including fighter jets, helicopters and bombers, that hit targets throughout Caracas and in three other States, abduction of the President, Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores; the killings of dozens of military personnel and civilians and how the Bolivarian system of national defence kicked into action in response. Maldonado describes the experience of the nighttime bombings on the 2 to 3 January and the widespread destruction to antennas, military facilities, ports and airports, as well as the popular mobilisation in response. On 4 January, Venezuelans took to the streets en masse to protest the attack and demand Maduro is returned. She points to the emotional resilience of Venezuelans who refuse to accept foreign intervention. The conversation dismantles the US phoney narrative which casts Maduro as a narcotrafficker and Venezuela as a narco-state and foreign terrorist regime. Ana responds directly to the Trump’s lies in his 3 January press conference, affirming that US forces do not have a presence on the ground, that acting President Delcy Rodriguez and the Venezuelan government are not collaborating with the Trump administration, and that the US does not have control over Venezuela’s oil industry. She explains how Rodríguez is leading the constitutional and popular response in Maduro’s abduction, guided by pre-established plans for national defence. Maldonado highlights the role of the Bolivarian militias, in which eight million civilians voluntarily enrolled in 2025, and affirms the preparedness of communities for a prolonged, Vietnam-style resistance if necessary to defend Venezuelan sovereignty. The interview underscores the solidarity between Venezuela and Cuba, warns of expanding US aggression across Latin America, and issues a powerful call for international solidarity to condemn the attack, demand the release of Maduro and Flores, and defend Venezuelan sovereignty. This is a vital, firsthand account from inside the Bolivarian Revolution during a critical hour.
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Interview with Mitchell Valdés Sosa, Director of Cuba’s Neuroscience Centre
Dec 2101:13:23Tap to summarizeLeading Cuban neuroscientist, Mitchell Valdés Sosa joins Cuba Analysis to discuss Cuba’s commitments to sovereignty, socialism and science. He explains how the National Centre for Scientific Research, founded by Fidel Castro in 1965, trained Cubans in biomedical sciences, and incubated multiple research and development centres, including the Neuroscience Centre that he directs. Cuba’s unique state-founded, state-owned biotechnology sector, organised today under BioCubaFarma, emerged from this process in the 1980s.Valdés Sosa outlines the ‘grand strategy’ behind Cuba’s investment in education and science, and the creation of ‘full cycle’ research centres that combine basic research, production, and foreign trade. He argues that this socialist model, free from speculative private interests, allows the sector to prioritise public health, produce affordable medicines, and tackle neglected diseases that big pharma ignores, including meningitis B in Africa. We discuss recent crises in which Valdés Sosa played a key role: the US allegations of ‘sonic attack’ on diplomats in Havana during the first Trump administration, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Having investigated the US accusation, he provides a scientific rebuttal of the so-called ‘Havana Syndrome’, highlighting the lack of medical evidence - a conclusion subsequently reached by US intelligence agencies – and the political motivations behind them. He describes how during COVID-19 the Neuroscience Centre pivoted to manufacture medical ventilators and swabs in collaboration with international partners, to circumvent US sanctions.Valdés Sosa describes the suffocating impact of the US blockade on Cuba’s medical science sectors, from obstructing access to equipment, spare parts, databases, and bank transactions, to ‘invisible mechanisms’ to scare off scientific partners. It is a ‘crime against Cuba’, he says, designed to strangle the economy and overthrow a system whose example of successful social policies the US establishment fears.Looking to the future, we discuss Cuba’s three innovative treatments in the pipeline for Alzheimer’s, a disease that will affect 30 million people globally by 2030. Most advanced is NeuroEPO, which has shown extremely promising results in clinical trials, with very few side effects and should be available to Cuban patients in 2026.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myc4iAXuoWs
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Interview with Cuba journalist, Pedro Jorge Velázquez, ‘El Necio‘
Dec 2001:17:42Tap to summarizeNote: This interview is in Spanish, you can check the video in Youtube for English subtitles.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3-LQks3DNA🎙️🇨🇺 Cuba Analysis podcast did a fascinating interview with Pedro Jorge Velázquez, El Necio, one of #Cuba’s most prominent independent journalists and social media influencers. 💻📲 He speaks about the intense media war and misinformation obscuring Cuba's complex reality, addresses the polemic over democracy and freedom of expression, speaks about the digital battle for the minds of Cuban youth, and debates the future of Cuban socialism. ‘El Necio’ cuts through the noise to show you the real Cuba.
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Interview with Irish legend David Hickey
Nov 1900:52:18Tap to summarizeInterview with Irish legend David Hickey, whose extraordinary life bridges three worlds, as Irish surgeon, sports legend, and solidarity activist. Deeply inspired by Cuba’s public healthcare system, Hickey condemns the US blockade as a war crime. He founded the Irish Cuban Medical Association, which shipped medical supplies to Cuba and donated to a kidney disease education centre. Hickey talks about personal battles with cancer and the loss of his Cuban wifeYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q1m46KjwcY
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Interview with Johana Tablada, Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Oct 1401:15:25Tap to summarizeIn July 2025, Helen Yaffe and Nina Blodau sat down with Johana Tablada, then Deputy Director General for the United States at Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs but subsequently appointed Ambassador and Deputy Head of Mission in Mexico.Tablada describes the key features of US-Cuba relations, past and present, clarifies how the US Blockade functions, explains its economic and human toll, and lists the impacts of Cuba’s inclusion on the US State Sponsors of Terrorism List. Click here https://youtu.be/UB-jD7xExr8?si=eWjkzXBHLNnLhP68
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