This is how it starts.

Everyone thinking they can work with the guy, that they'll bring him around.

It's like Hitler.

Everyone thinking he doesn't mean what he says.

Exactly.

Win or lose.

There's a lot of hate out there.

And he knows how to tap into it.

Hi, this is Peter Sagal, who you might know from my show and NPR called Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and this is the first episode of the official podcast for the HBO miniseries,

The Plot Against America. We will discuss each episode

of the TV series in detail with the show's executive producer, Mr. David Simon. Hello, David.

Hello. On this podcast, we're going to be talking about the miniseries episode by episode.

We'll be talking about its adaptation, its production, its themes, its meaning

with the guy who made it. This is a companion episode to part one of the HBO miniseries,

The Plot Against America. So if you have not watched it, you should go watch it. We'll wait for you,

come back and we'll talk about it in great detail. In this episode, we meet

the Levens, a Jewish family living in Newark, New Jersey, in the Jewish neighborhood of Wequayek,

in 1940. There's Herman and Bess, father and mother, their two sons, Sandy and Philip,

their cousin, Alvin, who lives with them in a fairly happy environment,

in a fairly peaceful time and neighborhood.

In real life, of course, the war had begun in Europe.

FDR was president and was going to run for an unprecedented third term.

...