0dense

sooo I let youtube run while I was doing some chores, and ended up on this BTS/dev interview between the writer for a new series and Peter from Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and I ended up hooked:

00:30: PETER SAGAL: The intent here is to talk with Craig about where the show came from, why he created it, the experience of making it, and how closely the docudrama ... how closely it tracks real history, where it differs and why, and ultimately, why it was made at this time and place?

CRAIG MAZIN: Yeah, and of those many wonderful reasons to do this, the one that was most important to me from the jump was a chance to set the record straight about what we do that is very accurate to history, what we do that is a little bit sideways to it, and what we do to compress or change, in no small part because the show is essentially about the cost of lies.
( 5 minutes of transcript under the cut for length )

07:03: PETER: So, when you were pitching this idea to HBO and Sky, how were you presenting it as something that people would want to-- and even need to-- watch?

CRAIG: The way I like to think of it is, what is the relevance to everyone?
PETER: Right.
CRAIG: I mean, ultimately, we can tell any particular story, but there needs to be some sort of universal relevance or it just becomes a story in and of itself about the event, which... At that point, I refer to those things as homework. I'm not interested in making homework for people. The reason that I was compelled to write about Chernobyl was... I mean, in part because it was filling in these large gaps of a story that we all knew and yet didn't know, but primarily... it's because it is a story about the cost of lies. This is the first line of the whole show, and this is the theme that we are going to continue with as people watch these episodes: that when people choose to lie, and when people choose to believe the lie and when everyone engages in a very... kind of passive conspiracy to promote the lie over the truth, we can get away with it for a very long time, but the truth just doesn't care. And it will get you in the end. And the people that suffer, ultimately, are not the people that are telling the lie.

PETER: Right.
CRAIG: It's everyone else. And that is where we start to see real truth: in the behavior of human beings who are motivated to save their fellow men, their fellow women, their loved ones, that's where truth is. And so, for me - and this, by the way, was before our entire planet seemed to become engulfed in a war on truth - for me, this was an important kind of story to tell about the value of truth versus narrative.

PETER: Right.
CRAIG: Which because we are, I think... as humans, we are so susceptible to storytelling. It's why we tell stories. We like them. Stories are sometimes very good ways of conveying interesting truths and facts... but, just as simply, stories can be weaponized against us to teach us and tell us anything. So, of course, I choose narrative to tell an anti-narrative story, but that's why I think this is relevant now. Maybe more relevant now - In fact, yes. Definitely more relevant now than it was when I started writing it.
PETER: Which was - and I think we should just point this out - before the 2016 elections.

CRAIG: Yes, it was. I think I started in 2015 on the writing, yeah.
PETER: Yeah, because I will say, speaking for myself, it's impossible to watch this miniseries with its tale of government malfeasance and lies and bureaucratic... let's just say, incentives....
CRAIG: Mm-hmm.
PETER: ...taking the place of, shall we say, other motives without thinking about what's going on in America and across the world today.