Robbie Martin is our final guest for this season as we dissect the 2012 docudrama Zero Dark Thirty. We discussed the difficulty in defining what kind of film this is - somewhere between a spy thriller, a documentary and a dry European art house movie. We get into the well-documented CIA support for the film and ask why this is the only major movie about the Abbottabad raid to get 'Bin Laden' and why it wasn't particularly successful.
Aaron Franz joins us to discuss the 2002 biopic Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which tells the story of game show producer and host Chuck Barris. Barris claims that while becoming a TV star he was recruited by and worked for the CIA as an assassin, killing a total of 33 people. In this episode we analyse this claim, which has been dismissed by the Agency as a ludicrous fantasy.
Chase Brandon was the CIA's first Entertainment Industry Liaison. From 1996 to early 2007 he was the CIA's man in Hollywood, working on a dozen major movies and numerous high-profile TV shows. In this episode we examine the background of the CIA in the entertainment industry and how they founded their Entertainment Liaison Office and appointed Brandon in charge of it. We also discuss Brandon's career, especially his attempts to downplay and disguise his influence on entertainment including ghost-writing The Recruit.
Disney are one of the world's largest movie studios and producers of entertainment. They have enjoyed this status for decades, recently acquiring both the Star Wars and Marvel franchises, among the most profitable in the cinema industry. The relationship between the corporation and government agencies has been almost continuous for more than half a century.
Tom Clancy's books are known for their technical accuracy, their political realism and their curious ability to foreshadow future events. In this episode we explore his government connections - to the FBI, CIA, Pentagon and the White House. We examine whether these connections are what enabled Clancy to write such prophetic fiction, and the impact of that on his readers.
The X-Files new mini-season has been accused of being an admission of truth by the global elite, a type of predictive programming and an attack on conspiracy theorists. In this episode we explore the possibility that it promotes conspiracy theories and conspiracism as a way of thinking far more than it mocks or discourages those things.
Recent stories focusing on the 'migrant crisis' and 'the Cologne attacks' - among other incidents - are provoking racial and religious tensions in Europe. In this episode I look at the simple-minded dialogue around these trends and events, identifying the Russian state as playing a critical role in the incitement.
This week a little over 1 million people will die. Only one of them was David Bowie. In this episode I look at celebrity worship and the manufactured grief that results when a famous person dies. Why do people want to become celebrities? Why do people worship them? Why do so many celebrities commit suicide?
