Minneapolis-based author and Fast Company opinion columnist Joe Berkowitz joins the podcast this week to talk about the found footage horror genre with a focus on Ti West’s 2013 thriller The Sacrament, which presents a fictionalized version of the 1978 Jonestown massacre, set in the modern era and presented as an edgy documentary from Vice Media. Joe and I discuss the evolution of the Found Footage genre, their common structural problems, the use of Vice journalists in The Sacrament, and the overall “ethics” of cinematic exploitation.

Plus: a chat about the annoyingly obvious but noteworthy parallels between Trump and Reverend Jim Jones, and what a week of trolling Snyder Cut fans on Twitter with obvious jokes about a swearing Batman in the R-rated Zack Snyder's Justice League reveals about “superhero movies for grownups”

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Joe Berkowitz’s new book “American Cheese: An Indulgent Odyssey Through the Artisan Cheese World” (HarperCollins) is available now!

Joe’s piece for Fast Company which inspired this episode 

Guyana: Cult of the Damned (aka Guyana: Crime of the Century) (1979) - trailer