Imagine being at the peak of your career and then, overnight, becoming unemployable because of a rumor. This episode unpacks the Hollywood blacklist of the mid-20th century: how Cold War paranoia infiltrated the American film industry, how a climate of fear turned colleagues into informers, and how the shadowy system of censorship was finally broken. We trace the roots back to Depression-era politics, the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union, the 1941 Disney animators' strike, Ayn Rand's screen guide for producers, and William R. Wilkerson's list of suspected communists in The Hollywood Reporter, before the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed 42 Hollywood professionals in 1947.

From there we follow the Hollywood Ten, the failed First Amendment gamble that led to contempt of Congress convictions, the Waldorf Statement that of ...