Wrong Way with Joanne McNeil

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.  

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. 

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.  

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 excavations -  more stories about writers intellectuals and activists who found themselves in the cross hairs of American security agencies like the CIA and the FBI. Your host discusses both books with Joel Whitney and the discipline of secret history itself. 

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**********

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. 

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 new ToE series Propaganda is Art has a companion podcast called Propaganda Notes & Sources, think audio footnotes!Each episode in Not All Propaganda is Art gets its own corresponding episode of Propaganda Notes & Sources. Your host goes through the script for each episode and cites all the corresponding original sources he consulted, and the archives he visited while reporting this series. Like all great footnotes, these go deep and contain many digressions and new stories. This is a teaser of episode one.Support the Theory of Everything  and get access to the exclusive companion series by subscribing at https://theoryofeverything.supercast.com/, or subscribe directly in Apple Podcasts by hitting “Subscribe” right on the show page.

One of my favorite technology critics has just published a novel about Self Driving Cars (or fake Self Driving Cars). We talk about her new book, and the hidden human worker nestled in our technological revolution. I can’t recommend Wrong Way enough! 

Today we live inside data systems that contain, surveil, and judge us. In his new book, the Hank Show, author and journalist McKenzie Funk provides us with a totally unique origin story of our world: A guy named Hank Asher. We talk with McKenzie Funk about the  former Florida conto painter, drug-running pilot, alleged CIA asset, and  pioneering computer programmer known as the father of data fusion. McKenzie Funk has written many stories about the dangers of computer systems that can get us wrong, but the story of Hank Asher has turned him on to a danger even more alarming. What chance do we have when the computers know everything about us? Note: The TOE limited series “Not all Art is Propaganda” will be debuting January 2024! I know its been a long wait, but we are nearing the finish line and I can’t wait to share it with you.