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Today Tom and I spoke to the now world famous “Homeland Hackers.” Heba Amin, Don Karl, and Caram Kapp sat down with us to discuss how they got the opportunity to work on the show and how they subverted it by filling the set with Arabic graffiti saying, among other things, “Homeland is racist” “Homeland is not a show” and of course our personal favorite, “Homeland is a watermelon.” We began the conversation by discussing how in fact they were chosen by the set designer to work on episode 2 of season

The Power of Nightmares was possibly the last great documentary series produced by the BBC. A decade after it was first broadcast I look back at the series, offering a brief review before using this as a basis for analyzing recent events. I discuss the criticism of the filmmaker Adam Curtis for his superficial take on 9/11, before exploring the 'defection' of Jamal Al Fadl, an associate of Osama Bin Laden.

On this episode of our Homeland review series,Tom and I try to decipher this puzzle-piece of an episode. In contrast to last week’s fairly simple episode, this week’s was complex and intriguing. We explore the character of Alison and her trajectory from CIA station chief to Russian double agent. We discuss how the show is turning her into the ultimate villain, who is not only a master manipulator, but a cold and calculating egoist.

The Friday the 13th massacre in Paris was the worst attack in Western Europe since Madrid in 2004, leaving well over a hundred people dead. Responsibility has been claimed by the Islamic State and French leader François Hollande has promised 'merciless' retribution. In this episode I look at the context of the terror in Paris, offering a comparison with Mumbai in 2008 where Islamist militants carried out a very similar attack under the guidance of American spy David Headley.

Remember what the world used to be like - before 2013 - when all our electronic communications were being scooped up by intelligence agencies and stored in massive data silos? Well now, thanks to Edward Snowden.... well, what? This week we welcome back to the programme writer, researcher and fim-maker Tom Secker who joins us for an in-depth and entertaining discussion on his controversial, yet intriguing, take on the whole Edward Snowden phenomenon. Is Snowden everything he seems to be?

In the latest of our Homeland reviews, Tom and I tackle the latest episode, ¨Better Call Saul.” In true form to this season, the fifth episode completely resets the original storyline and refocuses our attention to the evil Russians. Tom and I discuss this development and how it plays out in the episode.

This week we begin by exploring Homeland’s blatant sexism and misogny. We focus first on Carrie and her characters return to bi-polar nymphomaniac, and how the show has routinely made Carrie into an awful female character that we all hate. Tom and I discuss our theories for why the producers have continued to make Carrie into a monster and how this translates into a larger picture of how we view the CIA through Carrie.

Watergate is the quintessential conspiracy, one that went all the way to the White House and took down a presidency. But was it a consequence of J Edgar Hoover's death and the FBI's succession crisis? Was it the result of a CIA conspiracy, a soft power coup against the Nixon White House? In this episode I explore the deeper and darker sides of the Watergate scandal to try to find the answers. (Read more...)

In 1971 DOD analyst and RAND Corporation employee Daniel Ellsberg leaked The Pentagon Papers - the DOD's Top Secret history of the Vietnam War. This is one of the biggest and most famous leaks in history, but there remain huge questions about why this happened. Was Ellsberg a genuine whistleblower? Or were the Pentagon Papers leaked as part of a distraction and disinformation campaign?(Read more...)

For this new fifth season of Homeland Pearse and I are doing an episode-by-episode review to see if a more in-depth study of the show proves interesting and fun. From the first episode of season five of Homeland it appears that, like season four, this is a departure from the established Homeland settings and storylines. In this inaugural episode, we take a brief look back to where all of our favorite characters left off at the end of season 4.