All Episodes
Inside Lady Bird Johnson’s White House: Recording a Public and Private Life
November 1963. Tragedy has made Lady Bird Johnson the new First Lady of the USA. While at the White House she records her ‘thoughts and experiences’, and by 1969, her archive is 123 hours long. From it comes The Lady Bird Diaries, a new documentary film by Dawn Porter. She joins Matthew Sherwood to discuss Lady Bird, one of America’s ‘most influential and least understood First Ladies’. Among the topics they discuss are her skill as a diarist, her influence over President Johnson, and how Lady Bird changed the role of First Lady. She lived through historical events, recorded them, and made them.
Finding Hope amidst Hate in A Town Called Victoria
January 28th 2017, a mosque in Victoria, Texas is destroyed by an arson attack. Who set fire to it? Why? And what happened next? These are the questions that Li Lu explores in A Town Called Victoria, a new three-part docu-series on PBS. In this episode of Factual America, Li discusses the series, the solidarity and division that came out of and was revealed by the arson attack, and some of the film’s themes, including white supremacy, patriotism, and mental illness, and how a small town in Texas is a microcosm of every American community.
Stamping Out Racist Lies: America’s Truth
Stamped from the Beginning explains and dismantles nine racist lies about black people that Americans have been told since the foundation of the country. Using a mix of interviews, animation, music, VFX and more, Roger Ross Williams brings Dr. Ibram X Kendi’s ground-breaking book of the same name to life in memorable fashion. Among the topics discussed by Roger and Ibram with Matthew Sherwood are the themes of the film, why they decided to use a nearly all female cast, and what they hope the film will achieve. The final result is, as Matthew notes, a truly uplifting documentary.
The Roots of Black Friday: the ‘80s Cabbage Patch Kids Craze
It’s 1983 and the American economy is on the up. Credit cards are becoming increasingly popular, and parents who went through hard times as children are eager to spend. Enter the Cabbage Patch Kids. They were mass produced, lumpy, and awkward looking, but very, very cute and desirable. Dan Goodman, co-executive producer of Billion Dollar Babies, joins Matthew Sherwood to discuss this film about the rise of the iconic doll, the hysteria they generated, and how it all foreshadowed the excesses of Black Friday.