Grant Heslov

Jay Dyer joins us for this episode where we analyse the 2009 comedy The Men Who Stare at Goats, loosely based on Jon Ronson’s book of the same name. It tells the story of a journalist who is inducted into the world of psychic soldiers during the Iraq war. The movie goes on to explain some of the history behind the First Earth Battalion, an experimental Pentagon unit devoted to developing a new generation of super soldier informed by the hippy and New Age movements.

We welcome Ed Opperman to the series and discuss the 2005 docudrama Good Night, and Good Luck which retells the story of the 1954 confrontation between senator Joe McCarthy and television journalist Ed Murrow of CBS. McCarthy was pursuing Communists within the State Department and other government agencies and innocent people were getting caught in the crossfire, creating a climate of suspicion, mistrust and hostility.

Pearse and Tom round off season 1 looking at the 2012 Oscar winning historical drama Argo, which is based on a real life exfiltration operation during the Iranian revolution.  We discuss the CIA’s almost too-obvious involvement in the film, the background of how the story was declassified and turned into a movie including the shadowy figures of producer David Klawans and writer Chris Terrio.  We stick the boot into Ben Affleck and his film, not just for its ‘Reel Bad Arabs’ racism but also its outrageous and possibly intentional historical inaccuracy.  We analyse the weirdest Oscar

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I joined our good friend Tom Secker once again on ClandesTime for a very entertaining and in-depth conversation on the documentary Reel Bad Arabs and the Hollywood blockbuster True Lies.