Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything

Influencers (second time as Tragedy)

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

Reality Check!

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

Cultural Marxism Industry (2024 Hard Core version)

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

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

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 speci

America & The Punisher

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 Tru

The Imperial History of the CIA with Hugh Wilford

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

Not All Propaganda is Art 9: Freedom or Death

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 Mac

Not All Propaganda is Art 8: Signature Acoustique

 ]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

Not All Propaganda is Art 7: Manufacturing Dissent

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

Not All Propaganda is Art 6: The Kitsch Debate

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

Not All Propaganda is Art 5: The Play's the Thing

In the fall of 1958, Kenneth Tynan moved from London to New York and upon arrival, clashed with Hollywood mogul Samuel Goldwyn over socially engaged art and the politics

Not All Propaganda is Art 4: Propagande Noire

In 1956, Richard Wright spoke of islands of free men at the first Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris. James Baldwin critiqued the event for Encounter, the CIA

Not All Propaganda is Art 3: The Man Who Was Thursday's Children

In 1956 London Theater critic Kenneth Tynan helped launch a youth movement committed to exposing social and political issues on stage, on screen and in literature. We tak

Not All Propaganda is Art 2: Outsider Influence

In 1956, New Yorker writer Dwight Macdonald joined Encounter, a magazine secretly backed by American and British security agencies. He arrived in London just as British I

Not All Propaganda is Art 1: Operation Younger Brother

In the 1950s the CIA weaponized culture to capture hearts and minds in Europe and Africa. We meet three writers (Richard Wright, Kenneth Tynan, and Dwight Macdonald) who

Not All Propaganda is Art BONUS CONTENT TRAILER: Propaganda Notes and Sources

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

Wrong Way with Joanne McNeil

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 wor

The Hank Show (when computers are right)

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 uniq

Too good to be true remix

Two very different tales about making stuff up about the CIA. Your host shares the story of Sylvia Press, who in the 1950s, wrote a revenge novel after she was fired duri

Second time as forced (500daysplus)

Citizens armed only with Molotov cocktails battle with Russian tanks on the streets of… Budapest.  In November of 1956 Russian troops invaded Hungary. The revolution was