Well look who’s behind this week! My apologies for just posting this week’s podcast now, on Thursday afternoon, when it was released on Tuesday (as normal!) Better late than never!

This week Br. Tito and I look at one of the most ambitious films I’ve ever seen, Gangs of New York. Set in New York the middle of the 19th century, it is a world unlike anything I could have imagined. The entire time watching I just couldn’t get it through my head that this was New York City, that this was America. It was so medieval, so barbaric, so utterly racist. The natives hated the Irish, the Irish hated black people, black people hated the politicians, and the politicians pretended to love whoever they needed to love to get elected. It’s a movie dealing with xenophobia, racism, police brutality, voter suppression, and political corruption.

Which… frankly… sounds pretty familiar. In a strange turn of events, what Br. Tito and I found was that, despite taking place in a world so unfamiliar to ours, the themes were entirely relevant. Hopefully we can all learn from our history so that we stop repeating it.