Benjamen Walker's Theory Of Everything

One million plus dead Americans into the pandemic and the ‘long covid’ odds are now 1 in 5. What happened? How did we end up here? And more importantly, how does one win the covid lottery? Our two favorite stories from our ‘NYC after covid’ mini series from last year.

Does art have anything to offer us in these trying times? Your host visits the 59th International Art Biennale in Venice, the world’s most important art fair and the first since the global pandemic. Plus Digital Ukranians, Sound Art, and NFTs.

Hitler and Goebbels read Walter Benjamin in the bunker, Orson Wells discovers the magic of the fake crowd. Plus, a profile of artist Lynn Hershman Leeson.

New York’s new mayor recently announced a new strategy to fight crime. As the New York Daily News proclaims: BROKEN WINDOWS is back!  In this ToE we examine the roots of this policing theory and the individuals who first planted it. We revisit CRIME FILES a Police Foundation TV show from the 80s to better understand where this theory came from and how we might rid ourselves of this insidious idea once and for all.

We conclude our investigation into Hollywood’s retelling of the secret crimes, conspiracies and lies that rocked America in the first half of the 1970s. Plus a reporter from the Washington Post newsroom who never made it into All the President’s Men yet did more to safeguard the free press and American democracy than Woodstein ever did.

When he was 16 your host mistook the Hollywood movie The Manchurian Candidate for real life. This confusion led to decades of trouble. This episode is both an extra for our How to tell the truth about lies miniseries and the official TOE contribution to the 2022 Radiotopia fundraiser.  This year to celebrate our annual fundraiser shows across the network are releasing episodes on the theme “Making Trouble.” You can listen,  learn more and donate to support our work at radiotopia.fm.

Journalists may write the first draft of history but Hollywood prints the legends and the myths. The 1976 film All the President’s Men remains our most authoritative account of Watergate. The film is also responsible for the myth of Deep Throat. Your host follows the myth… from 1976 to the present. This is the first half of a new ToE miniseries about America’s complicated relationship with truth and lies.

After testing positive in Lisbon, your host assesses Portugal's expat and exile scenes.  Plus! lunch with the writer Joseph Roth at a hotel on the waterfront.

*** New ToE series debuting next week about truth, lies, American democracy and the 50 year legacy of deepthroat and trouble-making investigative journalists*** But first a look back to a road trip I took to the American heartland in Wisconsin a few yerars back. We visit the house on the Rock and the forevertron. Even though Alex Jordan’s tourist attraction is one of the most visionary unique places in the world you still won’t find it on any of the official Wisconsin art environment maps. This never bothered the guy who put it together  Alex Jordan Jr, in fact the whole place was built on the idea of sticking it to the official arbiters of culture, plus it pulls in millions of dollars a year in admissions fees! Plus the Forevertron, a place built on the idea of escape from pain, suffering, and failure.

Our New York after Rona miniseries comes to an end just in time for the latest Variant. The WHO turns to podcasts for a new endless stream of naming possibilities. Plus a ToE favorite playwright returns with a new musical production of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery.

As the Nazi nightmare came to an end Thomas Mann thought long and hard about collective guilt. Can Mann’s idea help America in 2021, or do we need a new theory of collective shame. NYRB has put out a recent collection of Mann’s political writings.

New York Schools were closed for most of the pandemic. Education reporter Anya Kamenetz explains why she calls it a stolen year. Plus we meet up with  Lenore Skenazy to hear what parents can learn from her classic (and recently updated) Free Range Kids.

We visit an empty storefront in Greenwich Village to talk with journalist and curator Alex Brook Lynn about her latest immersive multimedia exhibition: “Eulogy for New York City.” Plus a visit to New York City’s first post covid ComicCon to find out how Batman is doing.

March 2020, writer Craig Taylor believed he was finally done with his 11 year oral history project featuring the voices of people who live and work in New York City. He wasn’t. His incredible new book New Yorkers provides us with a number of first person accounts of the Covid19 crisis and primes us to think about what’s next for the city. Plus: photographer Renate Aller on the social distancing pictures she took on the street outside her Soho loft during the worst of the crisis.

We kick off our new ToE miniseries with a radical rethink on surveillance and the post pandemic city with theorist and writer Benjamin Bratton. His new book Revenge of the Real, both chronicles what went wrong during the crisis and offers a roadmap for how we can survive the next one. Also, your host visits the only New York city neighborhood that has gotten worse after covid, Hudson Yards, with journalist Charlie Warzel. Plus: we look back at one of the first viral videos shot in pandemic time.

Cartoonist Charles Schulz  wrote and drew Peanuts every day for half a century. In his new book Charlie Brown's America, Historian Blake Scott Ball uses the strip (and the fan mail archive at the Schulz museum) to illuminate the Wishy-Washy politics of Cold War America.

Now that international travel is becoming more and more a realistic possibility, I find myself dreaming and scheming about new journeys for the podcast. This episode is an audio travelogue of the last journey I was able to do before Covid: A trip through Paris, Copenhagen and Kenya. An international ode to Good Coffee. Radiotopia is a network of creators who are able to follow their curiosity and tell the stories they care about the most. Show your support for my fellow Radiotopia shows during our Spring Fundraiser. Donate today at https://on.prx.org/3wl9pWn

Your host talks with Louis Menand about his new book “The Free World, Art and Thought in the Cold War” Radiotopia is a network of creators who are able to follow their curiosity and tell the stories they care about the most. Show your support for my fellow Radiotopia shows during our Spring Fundraiser. Donate today at https://on.prx.org/3wl9pWn

Your host escapes the island, and returns to New York. Plus writer Tim Kreider on Vaccine side effects. Radiotopia is a network of creators who are able to follow their curiosity and tell the stories they care about the most. Show your support for my fellow Radiotopia shows during our Spring Fundraiser. Donate today at https://on.prx.org/3wl9pWn

Back in the day, your host took a pilgrimage to Copenhagen to walk the streets the great Dane Søren Kierkegaard once walked. He wanted to understand  the meaning of Kierkegaard’s religious stage so he decided to ask the experts at the Kierkegaard research center. Also Photographer Dina Litovksy tells us about the history and some of the secrets of the modern bachelorette party. And Michael Holmes tells us about life’s final stage – death.