Hollywood Exiles

This podcast puts together my two favorite things to learn more about: the film industry and American politics. It’s smart and Oona is a storyteller the likes of Rachel Maddow!

It feels tough to find a quality podcast series these days. I stumbled upon this outstanding show in a search through BBC Podcasts. Oona Chaplin is an exceptional host who leads us through the show with great enthusiasm, interviews with family members, a victims of the red scare, and offers a special special perspective as Charlie Chaplin‘s granddaughter. A joy to listen to. Well done!

This podcast has scary parallels to what is happening in America today and those responsible for taking us to the brink of dictatorship. It is brilliant and exceptional in its delivery, its stories and in its narrator, Oona Chaplin, whose family lived the pain of the so-called “Red Scare.” But this podcast is as much a warning as it is a story. As with McCarthyism, Trumpism is an evil insidious cancer on the American body politic. And like those would be dictators that have come before, Donald Trump is merely a cipher of those who pull his strings like the dementia stricken puppet that he is. This podcast, in the final episode, warned of us of the evils of proto fascists who stoke the ignorance and idiocy of the mob mentality. It reminds us of how those “leaders” who appeal to our lowest common denominators aren’t there to help any of us or to “Make America Great Again.” Rather, they seek power for powers sake or, as in the case of J. Edgar Hoover, to make sure the hypocrisy of their private lives are walled off from their public persona. In Trump’s case, it’s stay out of jail to avoid having his treason for money scheme revealed. But as history so often goes, those who pursue evil to marginalize the supposed weak often find themselves facing a much much worse reckoning in the end.

Learned a ton! Great archives and amazing interviews. Loved it from beginning to end!