In 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented third term as president, and he won re-election in a landslide.

He then led the United States in a global war against fascism.

He might have heard about this.

But what if he had lost?

What if instead America had elected an isolationist and a Nazi sympathizer?

Tonight, we have taken back America.

That's the premise of Philip Roth's novel The Plot Against America,

a terrifying memoir of an alternative past.

That speaks to our very real present. David Simon, creator

of The Wire and The Deuce, has now adapted it into a six-part miniseries for HBO. I'm Peter

Sagal, the host of NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and HBO's official Chernobyl podcast.

In the Plot Against America podcast, David Simon and I will break down the show for you

episode by episode. We'll talk about what it was like to recreate this nightmarish alternative

history, how close it came to actually happening, and what this story can teach us about our

current moment. America is actually fighting for its soul, and it is right now, too.

The allegory is who is being used as grist to deliver fear,

and where does everybody stand on the continuum of what do you say and what do you do,

and what's your responsibility as a citizen of a republic?

We'll also hear from the cast, crew, and creatives who made this miniseries.

This story is important to tell now because you can look around at America in 2020 and it

feels like we've let things get away from us.

A series that imagines what would have happened if anti-Semitism had been swept into the mainstream in 1940

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