Benjamen Walker

August 27, 2018 8:09 AM

Back in 2005, Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything podcast got its first Front Page Post on Metafilter. In the late 2000s, he was working at WNYC (previously). Then he had a show on WFMU (previously), which he left to restart the ToE podcast for PRX's Radiotopia network.

The current show's archives only go back to 2013, but what is really stunning about Walker's work is how prescient it is: he was concerned with the USA's turn toward fascism long before Trump. The podcast blends reporting, interviews, and fiction in compelling ways, and its current series is all about blending the real and the fake.

Some great starting places:
the dislike club (includes interviews with Matt and Jessamyn)
New York after Rent (AirBnB)
Instaserfs (the "sharing economy)
Surveillance (during the 2016 election)
Utopia (real American utopian communities)

The episode that brought me into the podcast was a musing on the year 1984 that made me realize how the specter of 1980s politics has never really faded. Benjamen Walker has a lot to say about issues that we talk about all the time on MeFi, so if you haven't discovered him yet, you might try a listen.

posted by rikschell (5 comments total)

I really liked the 15min longform joke "Droning for Dollars" which I feel like captures the satirical-but-way-too-close-to-home and paranoid/informant feel that frame the podcast sometimes.

I really, really liked/hated how uncomfortable I was made by the Surveillance series and its discussion of the Russian department of political circus.
posted by sibboleth at 10:50 AM on August 27, 2018

Some of the episodes have a Joe Frank-ish feel. On-mic, Benjamen has a similar low-key, unflappable demeanor while immersing himself and the listener in bizarre dreamscapes; the difference being that Walker's work is usually based on journalism and research rather than free association.
posted by ardgedee at 2:24 PM on August 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

I love me some ToE, but it's an NPR listener's version of magical realism.

I had some life changes and couldn't keep up with my podcasts, also my podcast app wasn't cutting the mustard, so I declared podcast bankruptcy and started from scratch with a new app. The only thing I'm missing is a podcast that I marked as a favorite and now I can't find. I want to believe that it was a ToE episode but maybe not.

The podcast that I'm looking for was the reading of a story about a failed expedition to Everest by a group of people who decided to throw caution to the wind, take acid, hire a marching band, and try to climb the world's tallest mountain without any special training or expertise. This wasn't a Benjamen Walker narrated segment but was from a featured contributor. Or it was on another podcast entirely, does it sound familiar to anyone?

Also, I thought for a long time that his announcer was a text to speech program: "You are listening to Benjamen Walker, Theory of Everything. This installment is called..." My mind was blown when he introduced that voice as his wife Mathilde in Art De Vivre.
posted by peeedro at 2:50 PM on August 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

I love ToE too! To my mind, this is the Joe Frankiest of all the stories: Man Without a Country -- it's in 3 parts, and is a great place to start if you want to get an idea of what it's like.
posted by OrangeDisk at 3:04 PM on August 27, 2018

Also, I thought for a long time that his announcer was a text to speech program: "You are listening to Benjamen Walker, Theory of Everything. This installment is called..." My mind was blown when he introduced that voice as his wife Mathilde in Art De Vivre.

For donating to Radiotopia a couple of years back, I received the best pledge gift ever from any public media drive: a ringtone of Mathilde saying, in just that voice, "I'm sorry to interrupt you -- but you have a call. I'm sorry to interrupt you -- but you have a call." It's one of my favorite things about having a phone to this day.
posted by slappy_pinchbottom at 9:53 PM on August 27, 2018