Factual America

Warning: This Drug May Kill You (2017) by broadcast journalist Perri Peltz is a heart-wrenching account of opioid addiction in the US. Before the coronavirus, a different epidemic plagued America. Medical researchers will hopefully develop a vaccine for Covid-19 in the near future. But more than 2 million Americans remain addicted to opioids. Is there any hope in sight? 

Norman Stone, award-winning director, producer and screenwriter, joins Factual America to discuss Peltz’s film. Norman has researched the opioid epidemic in America. Norman’s latest film, The Final Fix (2020), offers a glimmer of hope to the addicted.

Warning: This Drug May Kill You shows how opioid addiction affects people from all walks of life. Americans who would never seek illicit drugs find themselves hooked on prescription painkillers. Many move on to heroin.

The opioid epidemic costs the US economy many billions of dollars annually and destroys many lives. However, Norman says the problem is big pharma, which doles out trillions of dollars to the US medical establishment. 

Inspired by Peltz’s film, Norman’s The Final Fix shows that there might be a relatively simple cure to opioid addiction – Neuroelectric Therapy (NET). But the authorities refuse to give NET a clinical trial. 

“While they made billions upon billions of dollars out of this, they killed hundreds of  thousands, with cold calculated precision.” – Norman Stone

In America religion and politics are inextricably linked, despite what the US Constitution might say. Using The Most Hated Family in America (2007) by Louis Theroux and its sequel, America’s Most Hated Family in Crisis (2011), Factual America explores the history of religion in US politics.

Not only does religion polarise American society, but it also played a big role in determining the winner of the 2016 US presidential election. Will the same be true in 2020?

Emma Long, Senior Lecturer in American Studies at the University of East Anglia, joins the podcast to discuss the ways religion looms large in US politics. To help illustrate her points, Emma utilises Theroux’s films, which focus on the controversial Westboro Baptist Church.

While nothing short of shocking, Theroux’s documentaries shine a bright light on belief in America and quintessentially American views of free speech. The films show firsthand Westboro’s protests at the funerals of American military service personnel.

Are there limits to what can be considered offensive? Or is anything fair game when it comes to free speech and 1st Amendment rights?

Explaining how religion continues to affect American politics to this day, Emma enlightens us with her research and expertise…

“The US apparently has a separation of church and state, and yet every time you look at American politics religion is there.” – Emma Long

How many of us think about where the meat on our tables comes from? Well, we all should!

That’s the message of Eating Animals (2017), produced and narrated by Natalie Portman and based on the best-selling book on factory farming by Jonathan Safran Froer.

The film shines a light on corporate farming. Besides being inherently cruel to animals, it has destroyed entire ways of life and is devastating our environment. Now factory farming is threatening to kill us all by fostering a pandemic. However, those who blow the whistle face the wrath of this trillion-dollar industry. 

In this episode we are joined by Phil Brooke, Research and Education Manager at Compassion in World Farming, who discusses how his organisation is fighting to change the way we think about raising livestock.

Along the way, Phil and host Matthew Sherwood talk about what is being done to stop factory farming. And as the current pandemic shows us, at the very least we need to change the way we view our food and how we source it.

“The more animals we keep, the worse we keep them, the more at risk we are of more of these diseases.” – Phil Brooke

In some parts of the world the US is infamous for its continued use of the death penalty.

Using the BBC’s Life and Death Row – The Mass Execution as a backdrop, Dr Vivien Miller discusses the history of capital punishment in America. In doing so, she reveals how the death penalty divides the US along several different fault lines: race, gender, religion and region.

The first episode in a four-part series, Life and Death Row – The Mass Execution is a riveting and heartbreaking account of recent events that unfolded in Arkansas as drugs used in legal injections were soon to become unavailable.  The state planned to execute eight men in ten days, leading to a heated debate about the complicated legal, moral, and social factors that are involved in these kinds of decisions.

With lives on the line, and issues of racism arising, this is what some would call a ‘21st-century injustice’…

“It’s much more likely that a black defendant with a white victim will end up with an execution.” – Dr Vivien Miller

An Inconvenient Truth (2006) won two Academy Awards, and turned former Vice President of the United States Al Gore into an international celebrity.

More importantly, it brought climate change and global warming to the forefront of our collective consciousness.

Drawing on his own research, our guest Dr James Lyons shows how director Davis Guggenheim uses performance to dramatically animate risk in the film.

In doing so, does he change the focus, away from climate change? Do the camera lights instead shine more brightly on the former senator from Tennessee, rather than the existential threat facing our planet? 

Factual America caught up with director and producer Adithya Sambamurthy, who is heading to the US to cover the 2020 American election for The Guardian newspaper. We discuss the upcoming elections and take a look back at President Donald Trump’s rise to power. 

In 2016 and 2018 Adi spent weeks on the campaign trail filming and producing Anywhere but Washington. He shares his experiences criss-crossing America, where he was able to meet with Trump supporters and observe first hand the changing American political landscape.

We also look at how Trump has been so successful in certain areas that should be considered Democrat territory. Why do these communities reject Democrats and feel more hopeful and optimistic under Trump?

While there is a long way to go until the election in November, Trump has emerged from impeachment looking stronger. His campaign team and strategy have improved immensely since 2016. Conversely, he remains a highly polarizing figure despite his popularity in many parts of America.

Which Democrat will emerge from Super Tuesday the front runner? Do they even stand a chance against President Trump?

We also look at similarities and differences between the US and UK on the political front, in light of Brexit and the rise of Boris Johnson as prime minister.   

“A lot of what we’ve seen has been Donald Trump’s attempts to run against Washington; he gets to claim outsider status even as he becomes the establishment.” – Adithya Sambamurthi

Soyalism (2018) explores how factory farming has become a giant global business concentrated in the hands of a few Western and Chinese companies.

Across the globe, people are eating more and more meat. Demand has increased sevenfold since 1960 with 70 billion animals currently being killed per year. That number is set to reach 120 billion by 2050.

To meet this demand, corporate giants have taken over farming, creating massive ‘factories’ for the housing and feeding of livestock and waste disposal.

Using buzz words like ‘vertical integraton’, Western and Chinese corporations now dominate supply chains and wield great power. At the same time, more and more land is being dedicated to growing the grains and soya needed to support the world’s burgeoning demand for meat.

In the process, factory farming has put thousands of small producers out of business and permanently transformed entire landscapes.

Factual America caught up with Soyalism’s director Enrico Parenti and producer Susana Trojano at the Global Health Film Festival. Their journey started with a question about how to feed the world’s fast-expanding population. They soon uncovered a tale that starts in America, winds through Brazil and China and finally takes them all the way to Mozambique.

We also talk about what it’s like being a European filmmaker working in the United States, and some of the difficulties Enrico and Susana encountered there. 

“It’s even hard to find where the investors inside a company come from.” – Enrico Parenti

America’s love affair with guns is one of its defining attributes, and the number of mass shootings hit an all-time high in 2019. While politicians vow to tackle the problem, a powerful gun lobby stands in the way.

To help us understand why the US struggles with gun violence on such a massive scale, Dr Peter Squires, an expert on the subject, joins the show. He is a sociologist and professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Brighton, who has worked with many different police forces, and is respected globally for his research into firearms and crime.

Peter screens British director Marc Silver’s acclaimed 3 ½ Minutes, 10 Bullets (2015) in his classes. This film focuses on the 2012 shooting of Jordan Russell Davis and the trial, media coverage and public reaction following the event. This particular shooting raised a lot of questions about gun legislation in America, particularly the ‘stand your ground’ law in Florida, while Marc Silver’s observational documentary lets the audience draw its own conclusions.

With Peter’s in-depth knowledge of gun crime, we examine the case and talk about why gun violence is so much more prevalent in America compared with other countries, even those with high rates of gun ownership. We also investigate why America got into this situation and more importantly what steps can be taken to minimize gun violence in the future.

Like Peter’s students, we too can watch Marc Silver’s film and make up our own mind about what is really behind the culture of fear afflicting so many Americans.

“People can become a dark celebrity very quickly by a horrific act against society.” – Peter Squires

Dr Stella Bruzzi, author of the acclaimed New Documentary, demonstrates how the film about Bob Dylan is a shining example of the direct cinema style pioneered by Pennebaker and in the process shows us why people like Michael Moore have called him the “grandfather of modern American documentary filmmaking.”

“It’s a scientific truism, that the minute you look at something or intervene you change it, and it doesn’t mean to say it’s untruthful…it’s just a different truth.” – Stella Bruzzi

Today we are joined by award-winning business and tech broadcaster, and host of the Gender Knot, Nastaran Tavakoli-Far, as we explore the Theranos saga through the lens of Alex Gibney’s The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019).

We discuss how this fraud was able to happen and to what extent the culture of Silicon
Valley is to blame.

A fantastically made documentary about a dangerous company, it makes us question yet again the cult of charismatic leaders.

“That’s the beauty of America that if you’ve got a big idea you’re not necessarily going to be laughed at. She kept referencing a Thomas Edison quote, that if you fail ten thousand times, that’s so you get it right the ten thousand and first time.” – Nastaran Tavakoli-Far