Hello and welcome to this day an esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, October 20th, 1947, a congressional committee led by J. Parnell Thomas begins investigating

communist influence in Hollywood.

This is part of a larger decades long effort from the

House on American Activities Committee to investigate so-called

disloyal activity on the part of American citizens and companies and others.

Most of it of course focused on fears of communist infiltration here at home.

It was formerly turning its focus to Hollywood so we will turn our focus to that and actually the first time

we've talked about the red scare on this podcast which is sort of surprising to me but

here as always is Nicole Hammer of Columbia hello Nicki.

We did talk about those bomb shelters, which feels a little red scarish, but I'm excited to get right

into this.

Hey Jody.

Yeah, so maybe our first time talking specifically about Hewack.

But yes, and here as our special guest we are very

excited to welcome will hitchcock professor of history at the University of Virginia

hello will hi jody I'm nicky and we should disclose listeners right off the bat that Will has a great new

podcast that's called Democracy in Danger. We're also running some spots for that. These have nothing

to do with each other. I get these ads, I read them every once in a while, and then

Mickey suggested Will as a guest,

but we're gonna disclose that, right?

...