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Benjamen Walker & Radiotopia

Personally connecting the dots. All of them. Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Learn more at radiotopia.fm.

Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything

Hey Dear listener, for years ToE’s Andrew Callaway has talked my ear off about the potential of the Video podcast and he has now put a real one into the world for a podcast called You Feeling This. I invited him and YFT’s creator James Kim to discuss the merits of video podcasting and to encourage you all in listener land to VOTE FOR ANDREW

VOTE for You Feeling This 2 as MOST INNOVATIVE VIDEO PODCAST: https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting?utm_campaign=signal4_finalists_finalistnotification_092325&utm_medium=email&utm_source=cio#/2025/shows/video/most-innovative-video-podcast

WATCH You Feeling This 2 on YouTube: https://youtu.be/vWBYU0vuy4Y?si=rcuw4OOVWz2c2Bif

And you may have to verify your email address the day after you vote, so don’t forget to check your spam folder!

ALSO VOTE for YFT2 as Best Fiction Podcast, Best Sound Design and Best Fiction Episode.

Feed Drop* You Feeling This (video podcast!)

During the first Trump presidency I produced a radio drama with Jonathan Mitchell at The Truth Podcast about camp MAGA. In 2017 the idea of Trump locking up Americans in camps was a bit silly… that could never happen here? But in 2024, as private prison stocks soar to new heights, things like a little different. Perhaps Marx got it wrong. Perhaps the repetitions of History are both farcical and tragic.

Influencers (second time as Tragedy)

Earlier this year I read a book called The End of Reality by the writer Jonathan Taplin. The book is a meditation on the outsize power and influence of four billionaires: Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreesen, and Elon Musk. After the election I rang Jonathan up for a special post election conversation about his book and our new Oligarchy. Also, Radiotopia is running its annual fundraiser right now, we only do this once a year. If you can donate please do! Support this show and indy podcasts.

Reality Check!

A few years ago I put together a story about the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory with the writer and historian Martin Jay, today in 2024 the Cultural Marxism Industry is stronger than ever. An update for 2024.

Cultural Marxism Industry (2024 Hard Core version)

Forty years ago in 1984 your host was twelve years old and like George Orwell’s protagonist Winston Smith, he kept a diary, for the citizens of the future. For this special installment of Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything we travel back in time and give this diary a soundtrack. TV commercials, radio spots, movie clips – all sound from 1984 (the year, not the book). Find out what totalitarianism really sounds like. 

*********more details on this installment**********

1984 (the year not the book) 40th Anniversary edition

We now have many ways to tell the story of America's tilt towards authoritarianism, but for your host one image sums up the whole sordid business: a mashup of Donald Trump and the Marvel comic book character The Punisher. In this episode we talk with Kent Worcester, author of a new cultural history of the Punisher. It's a conversation about America's fascination with, and attraction to, a black and white vision of justice and vengeance.

America & The Punisher

Intelligence scholar Hugh Wilford's excellent new book grapples with the paradox at the heart of America’s covert intelligence agency. Many of the CIA’s founding fathers were staunch anti-imperialists, but during the Cold War, the US took up the mantle of Europe’s colonial projects.

Hugh Wilford's book The CIA: an Imperial History is out now. Hugh Wilford has written numerous books about the CIA and Cold War intelligence history, he made two appearances in our recent Not All Propaganda is Art mini-series. Also the mini-series got a really nice write up in the New Yorker last month!

The Imperial History of the CIA with Hugh Wilford

ToE's Cultural Cold War miniseries concludes with three stories about containment and death. Richard Wright delivers his final lecture on Black Spies in Paris, Dwight Macdonald’s Mass Cult & Mid Cult finally debuts & flops, and Kenneth Tynan discovers the limits of social and cultural protest. 

Show notes: Matthew Tynan reads Kenneth Tynan’s 1960 speech, Michael Billington wrote a 1960 Parody of Kenneth Tynan, Jefferson Pooley recaps Personal Influence and Daphne Park explains how she got Lumumba killed. 

Support ToE and get access to the incredible exclusive bonus companion series to Not All Propaganda is Art by subscribing at https://theoryofeverything.supercast.com/, or subscribe directly in Apple Podcasts by hitting “Subscribe” right on the show page.

Not All Propaganda is Art 9: Freedom or Death

]Richard Wright died from a mysterious illness on November 28th, 1960. Or was he murdered? Tune in for a new listen to the final chapter of Richard Wright’s life: forged letters, fake terrorist groups, fraudulent doctors and French Radio.

Shownotes: Françoise Vergès writes about decolonialism, and French history and thought, Kathleen Gyssels is writing about the Moulin d’Andé. Thomas Riegler writes about the Red Hand, Madeleine S’s father was assassinated by the Red Hand, Lauren du Graf wrote about Richard Wright and Jean Paul Sartre, Richard Wright’s daughter Julia Wright published The Man who Lived Underground in 2021. Richard Gibson is a BIG BIG LIAR. 

Support ToE and get access to the incredible exclusive bonus companion series to Not All Propaganda is Art by subscribing at https://theoryofeverything.supercast.com/, or subscribe directly in Apple Podcasts by hitting “Subscribe” right on the show page.

Not All Propaganda is Art 8: Signature Acoustique

In 1959, Anti-Americanism surged in the UK. England seethed over America’s treatment of its Prime Minister who was smacked down for daring to use diplomacy to resolve the crisis over divided Germany. In 1959 England also fretted over a new American export: the Beatnik. The British foreign office forcefully responded with a report advocating for “ an increased effort in the field of press, radio and television in the U.K. to say the right kind of things about the Americans.” This is the very moment Kenneth Tynan was commissioned to make a documentary for British Television about American Non-conformism and Dissent. We take a close look at one of the Cold War's most bizarre and inspired artifacts of Anti Anti-American propaganda.

Shownotes: Laura Bradley writes on Brecht and German theater. Kenneth Tynan’s documentary aired on January 27th, 1960 and then was supposedly erased (it wasn’t).

Support ToE and get access to the incredible exclusive bonus companion series to Not All Propaganda is Art by subscribing at https://theoryofeverything.supercast.com/, or subscribe directly in Apple Podcasts by hitting “Subscribe” right on the show page.

Not All Propaganda is Art 7: Manufacturing Dissent

We don’t have metrics to measure what happens when we read something that changes our life. So this episode is an attempt to deal with that. We begin with writer Rob Walker who tells us about his “New Old Thing,” a regular feature he produces for Yahoo Tech. Rob is one of the most thoughtful writers I know and if anyone can wean us from our addiction to the now it will be him. I also get to talk to one of my heros this week: Edwin Frank who is the editor in chief of the NYRB classics imprint. About 10 years ago I read a collection of Platonov stories, a book that definitely changed my life, and I became a life-long devotee of the series. I have always wanted to ask Edwin about his editorial sensibilities and what exactly binds all the books with the well designed multi-coloured spines together. Phyllis Rose is the author of The Shelf. She “randomly” chose a shelf at the library near her house and read every book on it – then she wrote about the experience. It is a deep funny philosophical treatise on the act of reading itself. I will be gifting this book to my friends for years.

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