Yale historian and memoirist Carlos Eire recounts his extraordinary journey from being an 11-year-old Cuban boy in Operation Peter Pan—sent to the United States to escape Fidel Castro’s regime—to becoming a National Book Award–winning author and chaired professor at Yale. Eire discusses the painful separation from his family, the challenges of assimilation, and the lifelong tension between his Cuban and American identities, themes he explores in his acclaimed memoirs Waiting for Snow in Havana and Learning to Die in Miami.

The conversation also delves into Eire’s recent book They Flew: A History of the Impossible, which examines early modern testimonies of levitation, bilocation, and miracles, and how belief, culture, and skepticism shaped their reception. Eire also reflects on Cuban history, the failures of the Castro regime, the broader Hispanic experience in America, and the enduring clash between materialist skepticism and openness to mystery.

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Yale historian and memoirist Carlos Eire recounts his extraordinary journey from being an 11-year-old Cuban boy in Operation Peter Pan—sent to the United States to escape Fidel Castro’s regime—to becoming a National Book Award–winning author and chaired professor at Yale. Eire discusses the painful separation from his family, the challenges of assimilation, and the lifelong tension between his Cuban and American identities, themes he explores in his acclaimed memoirs Waiting for Snow in Havana and Learning to Die in Miami.

The conversation also delves into Eire’s recent book They Flew: A History of the Impossible, which examines early modern testimonies of levitation, bilocation, and miracles, and how belief, culture, and skepticism shaped their reception. Eire also reflects on Cuban history, the failures of the Castro regime, the broader Hispanic experience in America, and the enduring clash between materialist skepticism and openness to mystery.

Subscribe to Uncommon Knowledge at hoover.org/uk

Is humanity running out of people? Demographer and American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt joins Peter Robinson to explain why birthrates are collapsing across the globe—from China and Japan to Europe and the United States—and what this means for the future of prosperity, freedom, and global power. Can immigration save America? Will Africa remain the great exception? And is there any way to reverse the “baby bust”?

Subscribe to Uncommon Knowledge at hoover.org/uk