In 2002 the Ashley Madison website went live. It was a dating agency with a difference for its targets were people already in relationships. Inevitably, Ashley Madison was roundly criticised. The company’s CEO, however, stated that affairs actually helped marriages.

In 2015, hackers broke into the website and published the names, addresses, credit card information, and more of every user. Relationships were destroyed, and some of those named committed suicide.

Directed by Toby Paton, Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal is a three-part Netflix docu-series that tells the story of the website’s rise and fall. It goes behind the scenes of what happened through interviews with both people who worked for and who used Ashley Madison, and with people whose partner’s infidelity was exposed by the hack.

Toby is Matthew Sherwood’s guest in this episode of Factual America. Among the topics they discuss are how the controversy over Ashley Madison has become forgotten, what it was like working at the company, and what the identity of the still unknown hackers might be.

What drives a person to cheat on their partner? This question is key to Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal. And Toby goes in depth as he explores what he learnt in the making of the docu-series. The answers that he found are more nuanced, and more empathic than you might have expected. It isn’t just about cheating.

Watch the episode at https://factualamerica.com

“Whenever you make a film or a series, no matter how closely you followed it in the news, when you actually start talking to the real people, who have lived through it... the whole thing takes on a depth and a richness that goes far beyond what you ever would have gathered from the news.” – Toby Paton

It’s April 19th 1995, the 220th anniversary of the start of the American War of Independence, and two years since the violent end of the Waco, Texas siege. In Oklahoma City, a disaffected army veteran named Timothy McVeigh leaves a truck outside the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building. Inside the truck is a bomb. At 9am, McVeigh lights the two minute fuse. When the bomb explodes, it kills 168 people and wounds 680 more.

In An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th, Marc Levin retraces McVeigh’s footsteps, showing how he went from being a war hero to a terrorist. Rather than look at McVeigh in isolation, however, Marc places his actions in the context of the evolution of political violence in the US. It is an evolution that continues to the present day.

In this episode of Factual America, Marc and Daphne discuss the making of the film. They look at how the bombing has become an almost forgotten moment in American history; the economic and military as well as historical background to the outrage; whether McVeigh acted alone; and how views that in the 90s were regarded as being extreme have now entered the mainstream.

As we head towards the 2024 US presidential election on November 5th, An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th reflects upon the dangerous journey of American democracy and the high price Americans have had to pay for their freedoms.

Watch the episode at https://factualamerica.com

“He may be dead but the ghost of McVeigh lives, and there are lots of people out there that subscribe to some of his thinking.” – Marc Levin

Climate change, terrorism, social inequality and poverty, wars between nations, and injustice. Things do not look too good for the world today, and there seems to be little to no hope for the future.

A Brief History of the Future, a new docu-series on PBS, challenges this pessimistic outlook. Directed by Andrew Morgan and presented by Ari Wallach, the series visits people from all over the world who are doing something – no matter how big or small – to make the world a better place, not just for their today, but also for everyone’s tomorrow.

Andrew is Matthew Sherwood’s guest on this episode of Factual America. Together, they explore: why humans are given to pessimism – ironically, the reason is not a negative one; the idea that what we regard today as possible was once thought to be impossible; and how creativity can come out of what Andrew calls ‘this season of chaos and complexity’.

Andrew talks about A Brief History of the Future from an intensely personal perspective: he came to the series suffering from burnout after making other documentaries about problems facing the world. Conversely, his view of the future is both epic and dynamic: the future is a verb; we do it, make it, every day. Discover how on Factual America.

Watch the episode at https://factualamerica.com

“We have a bias towards negativity, but we also have this extraordinary capacity for creativity and imagination, and just goodness.“ – Andrew Morgan