This is on the media's midweek podcast. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Alex Garland's new film Civil War has spent its first two weeks at the top of the box office charts.

It's a horrific depiction of an America at war with itself,

for reasons we never learn, where society's norms have crumbled

when the nation is drenched in blood and anarchy.

19 states have seceded.

The United States Army ramps up activity.

The White House issued warnings to the Western forces

as well as the Florida Alliance.

The midterm president assures the uprising will be dealt with swiftly.

We follow the path of four journalists on their circuitous and perilous route from New York to Washington, D.C. to interview the

shaky and shifty President of the United States. The reporters include an elderly New York Times guy portrayed by the trustee Stephen McKinley

Henderson.

The novice photojournalist is played by Cayley Spain.

Wagner Mora is the Eager Reuters reporter and Kirsten Dunst is the veteran photo journalist and the film's beating heart called Lee.

Last week I spoke with Zach Beecham, who covers challenges to democracy for Vox,

about how Garland's Civil War doesn't directly speak to the one that looms in the back of many American

minds. Now we turn to Lindsay Adario, an award-winning photojournalist who's

covered humanitarian crises and war around the world for

over two decades. She's the author of the book, It's what I do, a photographer's life of

love and war.

And I asked her what she thought of civil war.

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