Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything

Nov 14 2024 204 ep. 31 mins 10.1k
Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything Podcast artwork

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.

  Society & Culture
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Reality Check!

Nov 14 2024 22 mins  
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 ann

Cultural Marxism Industry (2024 Hard Core version)

Oct 17 2024 29 mins  
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.

Flights, Finks and Secret History with Joel Whitney

Sep 17 2024 33 mins  
Joel Whitney’s book Finks is a seminal book about American intellectuals and American security agencies, mainly because it illuminates the real story behind the CIA’s involvement with the founding of a little magazine called The Paris Review which hit the scene in the early 1950s at the height of the Cold War. In Joel Whitney’s new book Flights, he continues his historical

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

Aug 15 2024 65 mins  
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

America & The Punisher

Jul 23 2024 25 mins  
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 attractio

The Imperial History of the CIA with Hugh Wilford

Jun 19 2024 33 mins  
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 numerou

Not All Propaganda is Art 9: Freedom or Death

Apr 16 2024 77 mins  
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 Billin

Not All Propaganda is Art 8: Signature Acoustique

Apr 02 2024 72 mins  
]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’And

Not All Propaganda is Art 7: Manufacturing Dissent

Mar 19 2024 58 mins  
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 fiel

Not All Propaganda is Art 6: The Kitsch Debate

Mar 05 2024 64 mins  
In the summer of 1959, Nixon and Khrushchev argued over a washing machine in a backstage kitchen in Moscow, while American Cold War intellectuals gathered in the Poconos to defend Kitsch. Dwight Macdonald, whose theory of mass culture translated too easily into Anti-Americanism, was barred from participating because this was no ordinary mass culture conference; it was an Anti Anti-