By the 1960s, the Cold War really started to heat up. Berlin became a divided city, the space race was in full swing, the war in Vietnam was escalating, children across America were made numb to “duck and cover” drills, and the Cuban Missile Crisis practically gave the world a heart attack. You’d think with the ever-looming threat of nuclear annihilation, the subject of two headstrong superpowers bent on world supremacy would be addressed in movies of the era with only the utmost seriousness, but that wasn’t exactly the case. Instead, many filmmakers found the uneasy relations between the US and the USSR to be a veritable playground for savage satire and slapstick silliness.

In this episode, Bart and Jenna navigate the anxiety, arrogance, doubts, patriotism, and humanist longings expressed through comedy during this time of heightening global tension.

The following films are discussed:

• One, Two, Three(1961)
Directed by Billy Wilder
Starring James Cagney, Horst Buchholz, Pamela Tiffin

•The Mouse on the Moon (1963)​
Directed by Richard Lester
Starring Margaret Rutherford, Ron Moody, Bernard Cribbins

• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden

• John Goldfarb, Please Come Home! (1965)
Directed by J. Lee Thompson
Starring Shirley MacLaine, Peter Ustinov, Richard Crenna

• The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (1966)
Directed by Norman Jewison
Starring Carl Reiner, Eva Marie Saint, Alan Arkin

• The President's Analyst (1967)​
Directed by Theodore J. Flicker
Starring James Coburn, Godfrey Cambridge, Severn Darden

• The Diamond Arm (1969)​
Directed by Leonid Gaidai
Starring Yuriy Nikulin, Nina Grebeshkova, Andrey Mironov