Welcome back to the podcast, bribes,windle, or steel.

I'm Alexandra Rogge, and this is our last podcast prior to the election.

We're going a little off topic to talk about refugees and the tradition, not flawless, but aspirational,

of the United States as a safe haven for immigrants and refugees.

My guest, to my great delight, is Mandy Patinkin.

Mandy is, of course, a Tony and Emmy Award-winning star, and will be known to most of you as

Saul Berenson and Homeland, and long before that role, as Inigo Montoya, in the Princess

Bride.

He is joined by his wife, Catherine Grody, because they are

working together in support of the IRC, the International Rescue Committee. Mandy and Catherine,

thank you so much for joining me. Thank you. Thank you. Wonderful to be here. You've been doing

a phenomenal job getting out the vote, and I don't want to take you away from that for long,

but I'd like to chat briefly about your work in support of refugees.

The world is full of causes that need our support. Why refugees?

Because we're all refugees in this country or children of immigrants and the recipients of the kindness of the United States of America that had its arms open to welcome our ancestors

and bring us here. When the Syrian refugee crisis broke in 2015, 125,000 refugees were trying

to get across the Balkan route to Germany for sanctuary in a new beginning. I saw those pictures while I was filming homeland in

Berlin, and it was the first episode of that season. We had just begun, and our fictional story

was taking place in a Syrian refugee camp. And I looked at those photos, and I went, my God,

this is the real deal, and those are my family members in the 30s and in the

pogroms of Russia and Polish pogroms and Russian pogroms and turn of the century. And

that might as well be my wife and my children in that line. I need to be with those people. When will

...