In the new Hulu series The Handmaid's Tale, Elisabeth Moss plays Offred, a woman struggling to survive and stay sane in a future under a totalitarian government where a polluted environment has rendered most women infertile. The few who can get pregnant are enslaved and forced to bear children for the most prominent ruling families.
Offred was not always one of these handmaids -- the series offers flashbacks to a more normal time when she had a husband, a daughter and a career, a time when she was blissfully unaware of what was happening to the government.
Our guests today are Margaret Atwood, prolific Canadian author of short stories, essays, poems, and of course, the novel The Handmaid's Tale, and Bruce Miller, the executive producer and showrunner of the new Hulu series.
As many critics have pointed out, the timing of the series seems eerily prescient -- though production actually wrapped before the 2016 election.
Atwood, now 77, has seen her most famous novel adapted many times over the past 30 years. She talks about some of those adaptations, what's worked and what hasn't, and what she thinks about Hulu's take on the book.
She and Miller tell us how they approached making any plot changes for the new series, when they realized the show might be more relevant than they initially intended, and what they've got in mind for season two.