Reality Check!

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!

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.

 ]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.

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.