Imprisoned Syrian wrote poetry imagining the fall of the regime. Now it's come true

Jesse Eisenberg says community theater saved his life. Without it, we might not know him as Mark Zuckerberg and the social network. We might not have the zombie land as we know it now. But even Jesse Eisenberg knows that a lot of people just don't get musical theater. Musical theater is inherently very silly.

There's something so ridiculously earnest about it. On Cue with Tom Power, Jesse talks about his new film The Debut, starring Julianne Moore as a shy housewife-turned actor, and Paul Giamatti as a theater director who pushes her to her limits and beyond. Hear that conversation now on Cue with me, Tom Power. This is a CBC podcast. Once upon a time, a man imprisoned by a brutal regime wrote a fable imagining its downfall, and though he could only write it in his mind, it marked his rebirth as a poet.

Once upon a time, Habdathani Zamanubnu Zaman Epoch, son of time, told me that fire is a guide. So make sure you've got enough. For a long and rugged ride. That was the first poem Faraj Bhairakhtar composed in his mind behind bars, the first time he'd written poetry since giving it up for political activity. He spent the first several months in interrogation, alternating between torture and solitary confinement.

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