Factual America

Soho Podcasts
Factual America

Factual America examines America through the lens of documentary filmmaking. Guests include Academy Award, Emmy and Grammy-winning documentary filmmakers and producers, their subjects, as well as experts on the American experience. Find out more about the current and upcoming documentaries on Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Sky Documentaries and other platforms directly from the creators. Whether we discuss true crime, music, burning social and political topics, history, or arts, Factual America is your #1 documentary film podcast. Factual America is produced by Alamo Pictures, a London- and Austin-based production company that makes documentaries about the US from a European perspective for international audiences.

  1. 07/07/2024

    Paul Simon: Faith, Mortality & Music – with Alex Gibney

    In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon surveys the studio as Paul records his new album Seven Psalms while reflecting on his six-decade career and wrestling with the issues of faith and mortality. Joining Matthew Sherwood on Factual America is Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney, who discusses the impact Paul Simon had on American culture and music, the inspiration behind Paul’s album Seven Psalms, and the challenges of making a documentary about a musical icon. Alex explains his own creative process, the lessons he’s learned from a career in film, and his upcoming film on Elon Musk. We learn what he looks for when choosing to get involved in a project and the skills you need to be a successful documentary filmmaker. Watch the episode at https://factualamerica.com “He’s one of the greatest songwriters ever in terms of rock music. He’s always been driven to the sounds at the limit of what he can hear, intriguing sounds that are completely different to his tradition or experience.” – Alex Gibney “I started out making documentaries that I thought I knew what was important early on and I discovered that was a terrible way to make films, because if you weren’t exploring and open to the things in front of you that you didn't expect then you were making a boring film. So you have to be open to the idea that things are going to explode.” – Alex Gibney “It’s a magical part of the movie because it’s rare in a set that an audience loves a song so much that they make you play it again right away.” – Alex Gibney

    39 min
  2. 20/06/2024

    The 7M TikTok Dance Cult: Dancing for the Devil

    Dancing For The Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult explores the experiences of a group of prominent TikTok dancers who are trapped in a cult masquerading as a management company. In the process the film uncovers disturbing truths about the agenda of Robert Shinn, the cult’s founder and pastor of the Shekinah Church. Joining Matthew Sherwood on Factual America are executive producers Jessica Acevedo and director Derek Doneen, who discuss the making of the film and the challenges of interviewing people who are still in the depths of an abusive and traumatic environment. The filmmakers explain how it takes a long time to recover from leaving a cult, how to build trust with the people you are documenting, and how the cult responded to the wave of criticism and bad publicity. In the end their film reveals so much about the lure of fame, the importance of faith and the bond of family.  Watch the episode at https://factualamerica.com “Nobody sets out to join a cult. Cult leaders don't come at you full blast with their manipulations on display, it’s little by little slowly inching you in over time so you’re not realising what’s happening.” – Derek Doneen “Financial abuse and control happened there. It wasn’t until they started sharing some of those experiences that they realised that it was happening to them too and unravelled what they thought was a faith-based positive environment and showed it was really quite sinister.” – Jessica Acevedo “The assumption is that people are fine and okay, but continue to dig deeper, ask the questions, have patience and meet people where they’re at because you never really know what someone’s going through. What you see on social media can be one thing but it’s worth asking how they’re doing.” – Jessica Acevedo

    48 min
  3. 15/05/2024

    Relationship Hack – Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal

    In 2002 the Ashley Madison website went live. It was a dating agency with a difference for its targets were people already in relationships. Inevitably, Ashley Madison was roundly criticised. The company’s CEO, however, stated that affairs actually helped marriages. In 2015, hackers broke into the website and published the names, addresses, credit card information, and more of every user. Relationships were destroyed, and some of those named committed suicide. Directed by Toby Paton, Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal is a three-part Netflix docu-series that tells the story of the website’s rise and fall. It goes behind the scenes of what happened through interviews with both people who worked for and who used Ashley Madison, and with people whose partner’s infidelity was exposed by the hack.  Toby is Matthew Sherwood’s guest in this episode of Factual America. Among the topics they discuss are how the controversy over Ashley Madison has become forgotten, what it was like working at the company, and what the identity of the still unknown hackers might be. What drives a person to cheat on their partner? This question is key to Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal. And Toby goes in depth as he explores what he learnt in the making of the docu-series. The answers that he found are more nuanced, and more empathic than you might have expected. It isn’t just about cheating. Watch the episode at https://factualamerica.com “Whenever you make a film or a series, no matter how closely you followed it in the news, when you actually start talking to the real people, who have lived through it... the whole thing takes on a depth and a richness that goes far beyond what you ever would have gathered from the news.” – Toby Paton

    35 min
  4. 24/04/2024

    Terrorism and Tragedy - An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th

    It’s April 19th 1995, the 220th anniversary of the start of the American War of Independence, and two years since the violent end of the Waco, Texas siege. In Oklahoma City, a disaffected army veteran named Timothy McVeigh leaves a truck outside the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building. Inside the truck is a bomb. At 9am, McVeigh lights the two minute fuse. When the bomb explodes, it kills 168 people and wounds 680 more.  In An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th, Marc Levin retraces McVeigh’s footsteps, showing how he went from being a war hero to a terrorist. Rather than look at McVeigh in isolation, however, Marc places his actions in the context of the evolution of political violence in the US. It is an evolution that continues to the present day. In this episode of Factual America, Marc and Daphne discuss the making of the film. They look at how the bombing has become an almost forgotten moment in American history; the economic and military as well as historical background to the outrage; whether McVeigh acted alone; and how views that in the 90s were regarded as being extreme have now entered the mainstream. As we head towards the 2024 US presidential election on November 5th, An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th reflects upon the dangerous journey of American democracy and the high price Americans have had to pay for their freedoms. Watch the episode at https://factualamerica.com “He may be dead but the ghost of McVeigh lives, and there are lots of people out there that subscribe to some of his thinking.” – Marc Levin

    1h 1m
  5. 18/04/2024

    A Brief History of the Future: Making the World A Better Place

    Climate change, terrorism, social inequality and poverty, wars between nations, and injustice. Things do not look too good for the world today, and there seems to be little to no hope for the future. A Brief History of the Future, a new docu-series on PBS, challenges this pessimistic outlook. Directed by Andrew Morgan and presented by Ari Wallach, the series visits people from all over the world who are doing something – no matter how big or small – to make the world a better place, not just for their today, but also for everyone’s tomorrow. Andrew is Matthew Sherwood’s guest on this episode of Factual America. Together, they explore: why humans are given to pessimism – ironically, the reason is not a negative one; the idea that what we regard today as possible was once thought to be impossible; and how creativity can come out of what Andrew calls ‘this season of chaos and complexity’. Andrew talks about A Brief History of the Future from an intensely personal perspective: he came to the series suffering from burnout after making other documentaries about problems facing the world. Conversely, his view of the future is both epic and dynamic: the future is a verb; we do it, make it, every day. Discover how on Factual America. Watch the episode at https://factualamerica.com “We have a bias towards negativity, but we also have this extraordinary capacity for creativity and imagination, and just goodness.“ – Andrew Morgan

    50 min

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Factual America examines America through the lens of documentary filmmaking. Guests include Academy Award, Emmy and Grammy-winning documentary filmmakers and producers, their subjects, as well as experts on the American experience. Find out more about the current and upcoming documentaries on Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Sky Documentaries and other platforms directly from the creators. Whether we discuss true crime, music, burning social and political topics, history, or arts, Factual America is your #1 documentary film podcast. Factual America is produced by Alamo Pictures, a London- and Austin-based production company that makes documentaries about the US from a European perspective for international audiences.

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