This is John Batchel. A happy conversation with James Shapiro, Professor James Shapiro of Columbia University.

The playbook is his new book, a story of theater, democracy, and the making of a culture war.

This is the federal theater, 1935 to 1939. Famous for decades. Why? It challenged everybody's assumption, sometimes successful, sometimes not.

Congress manhandled it. In the end, it was pushed out of business by what became precedent for the McCarthy blacklisting of the 1940s and 50s.

This is early on.

This is the 1930s.

And a man named Dees, a congressman from Texas led the campaign to shut down the federal theater.

Here James Shapiro tells the story of Flanagan, Ms. Flanagan, the woman who was responsible for putting the theater together

handed to her by the Roosevelt administration, by the FDR representative.

And what we're looking at here is an heroic work of theatrical production.

Lots of famous names.

Hallie Flanagan was the woman running back and forth between the It Can't Happen Here, Author Sinclair Lewis,

and script writers who were trying to deal with him.

At the same time, he was insisting upon no changes here and no changes there under time pressure.

It's a wonderful story. James tells this anecdote. James Shapiro, the book is the playbook, heartily recommend later tonight.

Ali Flanagan did not have a big ego, and she knew how to deal with the many men around her that did.

What she did was put both Sinclair Lewis and a scriptwriter she brought in in different hotel rooms on different floors in New York City.

And she would race between floors with their drafts since at this point they were no longer

speaking to each other. Take it to the typist, come back and then repeat and rinse and repeat

until the script was in hand. The poor translator is trying to get a Spanish script to the actors in Tampa, Florida,

I think had a week to let the actors learn their roles for this play.

But it worked, and it opened everywhere.

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