The boy who cried wolf crosses paths with the Emperor with no clothes and little red riding hood. Plus: Computer Pinocchio.
The real fake versions of the stories you thought you knew.
Check out the original versions of these stories scattered across 15 episodes of our mega-series, False Alarm!
A million conspiracy theories are launched when Jeffrey Epstein is found dead in his jail cell on August 10th 2019. Your host wonders if this is “the big one.” ToE’s special correspondent Chris attends a secret Coney Island funeral.
PLUS: Epstein Brain.
Your host’s essay for the MIT Media Lab journal’s Unreal issue was released at a kind of bad time.
When you have epstein brain, you can see allllllllllll the connections.
ToE’s Chris attends a secret funeral on the coney island boardwalk and learns about when Jeffrey Epstein crossed paths with the Trumps in 1966!
Your host has always wanted to talk to someone about 1984 the book and Dorian Lynskey totally delivers. He just published The Ministry of Truth a biography George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. Dorian tells us why and how this book has helped generations of readers to decode the world.
Don’t forget to check out your host’s 1984 (the year not the book) episode.
Dorian’s Ministry of Truth is one of the best non-fiction books i’ve read in a long time… and i’m not just saying that cause i’m obsessed with 1984.
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.
Plus check out this short piece on my 1984 “where’s the beef” record collection for Hilobrow’s Political Objects series.
I got up early to watch a show on PBS. The show was called Good Morning, Mr. Orwell — but it was very confusing…
I have no idea what these people were trying to say.
Later in the afternoon I watched a special by Walter Cronkite — this was more what I was looking for. He explained how there are lots of ways in which we are already living in 1984.
I have decided to keep a diary, like Winston Smith did in Orwell’s novel. Only my diary is going to come with a soundtrack. Using my tape recorder I am going to collect sounds from the TV, movies people’s home recordings, music.
I am doing this for the citizens of the future, so that they will know the truth — so they will know that it is possible to live in a totalitarian society and not even know it.
My teacher says I am nuts to compare our world with George Orwell’s, but this diary will prove people like her wrong.
Today is my birthday, I am 12 years old.
Josh, Mike and I went to Burger King and we went up to the counter and got our orders and then I shouted out “Where’s the beef?!” but no-one got the joke!! Don’t they see why this woman is so awesome???
That lady from the Wendy’s commercial is like the embodiment of our collective fatigue with bullshit. She’s demanding the truth for all of us.
I think I’m in love!
If we were living in Oceania, Ronald Reagan’s new reelection commercial would be playing on a loop on the giant telescreens in Victory Square. I’ve seen it three times already! The message of these Morning in America ads is clear: it is not enough to obey Big Brother, we must love him!
But this morning Ronald Reagan was on Good Morning America- it was 2min of hate!
It turns out I’m not the only person who is in love with the where’s the beef lady. Her name is Clara Peller and she’s become super famous.
While it’s great to see her get all this attention, it kinda bothers me that a-holes like Ryan, this dick in my class, like her too. His dad, who’s a cop, picked him up after school the other day in his cop car and he went “Where’s the Beef” over the loudspeaker when we walked out of the building. Then they both shouted where’s the beef at each other like it was their own private joke — I almost puked!! I considered disavowing all of my allegiances to this lady.
But then, this morning I saw her on the TV. She was on the Today show with the guy who made her commercial.
I think “Where’s the beef” is not an advertising slogan or a catch phrase, it is a revolutionary war cry!
Shouting where’s the beef is like saying I refuse to accept the fake — I demand the real!
Clara Peller is like one of those secret freedom fighters Philip K. Dick talks about in his VALISSYSTEM book — something I read about in the Philip K. Dick Society Newsletter — he wrote:
I sensed the Empire without seeing it, sensed a vast iron prison in which human slaves toiled. And I saw as if superimposed on the black metal walls of this huge prison certain rapidly scurrying figures in gray robes: enemies of the Empire and its tyranny, a remnant opposed to it.
I’m certain that if Philip K. Dick was still alive he would recognize that Clara Peller is one of those enemies of the Black Iron Prison.
Clara Peller is proof that in our 1984 the resistance is real!
I’m seeing VCRs and video cameras everywhere — its like overnight there was a video invasion.
In our 1984 there might not be that many hidden cameras, but that doesn’t mean George Orwell is wrong. Big Brother doesn’t have to record us, we are doing it for him.
There are even TV shows now where the whole point is to get people to send in their own recordings!
This weekend Josh, Mike and I tried to make a video for one of these shows — a new comedy series on NBC called the homemade comedy special. It was a total disaster. I think the problem that we each have our own definition of what comedy is.
My idea was clearly superior, it was a sci-fi author dystopia Olympic competition. We would each portray famous sci-fi writers and describe a nightmare dystopia and the joke would be that the winner — me — would describe our actual world, which would scare all the judges into giving me a perfect ten.
But we didn’t film anything. We spent the entire day fighting.
I saw something tonight that I am sure will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I was watching the Republican convention on TV with my mom. Nancy Reagan was giving a speech, and then all of a sudden Ronald Reagan appeared on the giant screen behind her. They must have set up a two way camera system in his hotel room, because he could see her and he started waving — and she then she turned around and started waving back… and the crowd screamed and roared like they were still at the olympics.
You know, this is gonna sound a little weird, but i swear i could hear the voice of O’Brien — coming from somewhere in that coliseum. “How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?” he croaked, as Reagan’s hand flopped up and down on the giant telescreen.
It’s been kind of fun playing detective — searching for hidden clues about the Orwellian nature of our world. but tonight I realized that nothing is actually hidden — its all right there — in the open.. and it kinda freaks me out.
I’m worried. If Ronald Reagan wins we might end up living in 1984 forever!
This is one of the worst nights of my life. Ronald Reagan just got re-elected, and it wasn’t even close.
Looking at that red map I really do feel like a minority of one.
Dear Citizen of the future,
I hope wherever you are in the future — that this diary will be of use to you.
I sure hope you are not living in the Black Iron Prison, but if you are I hope you have a really cool reality distortion field that makes your life bearable.
Perhaps you’ve succeeded in burning the Black Iron Prison down?
Perhaps in the future it’s totalitarianism that gets stamped out, and the only boot — is the one you hear, before the face on your screen lights up.
Two years ago I produced this radio drama with my fellow Radiotopian Jonathan Mitchell at The Truth. At the time some of my friends thought the idea of Trump locking up Americans in camps was a bit extreme… that can’t happen here, right? Well, I think our present moment warrants another listen.
It’s happening right now.
Youtube insists that it is not liable for the hate speech in its platform. This was also what the said about the copyrighted material back when it was a start up in 2006. We revisit YouTube’s history with Chris Stokel-Walker author of the new book Youtubers. Plus your host takes responsibility!
Chapter eight in the new ToE Failure miniseries.
Chris Stokel-Walker has watched more Jake Paul than is healthy. But that also means you don’t have to! We discuss the lessons that far right politicians have been learning from Youtubers like Paul and why YouTube is so eager to claim they are taking responsibility.
Unlike YouTube though I am truly ready to take responsibility for the dumpster fire that is this series.
ToE’s special correspondent Chris tells us the truth about Game of Thrones, Trump, the CIA, and the importance of stories.
Chapter seven in the new ToE Failure miniseries.
The CIA has long been involved in the media, from Operation Mockingbird, in which they influenced the news Americans receive, to their long history of involvement in Hollywood. According to ToE’s special correspondent, Chris, the CIA is using Game of Thrones to carry out Trump’s order to red-pill America… and that’s why its last two season have been so bad.
Right wing populists have stormed the world wide web. They even have a beachhead in China. Chenchen Zhang tells us about the racism and misogyny she found on the knowledge sharing platform Zhihu. And Leta Hong Fincherexplains why patriarchal authoritarianism is central to the success of the Chinese Communist Party.
Chapter six in the new ToE Failure miniseries.
In 2015, the Chinese government arrested and held five young women in prison for 37 days because they were planning to pass out stickers raising awareness about sexual harassment. Leta Hong Fincher tells their story in her new book, Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China. She also explains just why the subjugation of women is necessary for the success of China’s patriarchal authoritarian regime.
We’ve been focusing on YouTube for most of this series, but in this episode Chenchen Zhang, a researcher based out of Brussels, gives us a tour through Zhihu, the Chinese equivalent of Quora. It’s there she finds the term Baizuo, or White Left, which roughly translates into… libtard.
She introduced the term to America with a piece she wrote for OpenDemocracy. And she helps us understand the global phenomenon of fascism’s resurgence through the eyes of China.
China’s next generation surveillance technology is being used to build out the world’s internet. But China is also exporting new philosophical and business models. Hao Wu explains how live streaming in China is powered by failures and James Griffiths explains why the free and open internet may soon be replaced by Cyber Sovereignty.
Chapter five in the new ToE Failure miniseries.
In 2015, the Chinese equivalent of YouTube was live-streaming. Filmmaker Hao Wu explains the Chinese model of internet video stardom in his film The People’s Republic of Desire.
Most people think of the Great Firewall as the foreign sites China blocks within its borders – but in his new book, The Great Firewall: How To Build and Control and Alternative Version of the Internet author James Griffiths wants us to see how it operates in the Chinese version of the internet.
John Herrman EXPOSES the truth about YouTube’s paranoid style. ToE’s Andrew Callaway DESTROYS Jordan Peterson. (Must listen!!!)
Chapter four in the new ToE Failure miniseries.
The last time John Herrman came on the show he helped us understand Facebook. He is one of the most astute critical voices when it comes to making sense of thee big tech platforms. But YouTube, he admitted is the one that’s the most difficult to wrap your head. YouTube’s paranoid style is routed in this opacity.
ToE’s Andrew Callaway lost one of his best friends to Jordan Peterson. He sets out to prove once and for all why Jordan Peterson + YouTube = Danger.
