Listen Queue

ben w

TEO 'The cloud'

Yell

Cure alien

Paul Mason

the clouds

To Bot or Not? That's the big question for Data Scientist Gilad Lotan. His research suggests we may be damaging our online reputations if we choose not to play the fake follower game. Jason Q Ng, author of the book Blocked On Weibo, tells us why the Chinese government hates fake bots and why they targeted Black PR companies last summer. And your host imagines a future were humans are forced to shower their new Bot overlords with unwavering attention.

F is for Fake

Writer Olivia Laing didn’t plan on moving to New York alone, but after a few lonely months in the city she discovered the truth about loneliness. She says it is a gift. Laing wrote an essay on loneliness for Aeon magazine. She is also the author of The Trip to Echo Spring, which is one of the best books of the year — no contest.

Eric Klinenberg says more and more people are choosing to live alone and that cities like New York must invest in housing stock that single people not only can afford but actually want to live in, the type of housing they have in Scandinavian countries. He is a sociologist at New York University and the author of Going Solo, a book about the extraordinary rise and surprising appeal of living alone.

In Denmark when someone dies alone, and no-one claims the body, the authorities put an ad in the newspaper calling for Possible Relatives. This is also the title of a photo-book by Danish photographer Tina Enghoff. She took pictures of some of these apartments after the bodies were removed, often the bodies go undiscovered for weeks. My friend Pejk Malinovski, who is also a Dane (and a radio producer) met up with Tina on a recent trip home to Copenhagen.

When you're lonely, life is very long

Jeff gets his car towed, and a whole lot more. Performed by Andrew Yurman-Glaser, Sebastian Conelli, and Phoebe Tyers. Written by Elana Fishbein, and produced by Jonathan Mitchell.

Jeff Gets Towed

New version with 25% more audio diary!  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).  Along with personal memories of making the transition to middle school, the show focuses on four of the most important people of year:  Ronald Reagan, Michael Jackson, Steve Jobs and Clara Peller. Find out what totalitarianism really sounds like.
Sponsors: Zady.com + souverain.com

1984 (the year not the book)EXPANDED VERSION

Andrew Rubin opens up his Archives of Authority to tell us the story of how George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 became global phenomenons. Melissa Gira Grant tells us about her new book Playing the Whore and the complicated relationship between sex workers, Feminists, Journalists, and the Police. And your host turns to ToE correspondent Peter Choyce for advice on how to fight his bike ticket in traffic court.


The Bootlickers

A few years ago 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.

Stages On Life's Way

It will always be hard

An elf gets a new job in the Naughty or Nice division of Santa's workshop. This story was commissioned by NPR's All Things Considered. It was written by Jonathan Mitchell and Seth Lind, and directed & produced by Jonathan Mitchell.

Naughty or Nice

As you probably know, 99% Invisible is a show about the built world, about things manufactured by humans. We don't tend to do stories about animals or nature. But our friend Jon Mooallem writes stories about the weird interactions between animals and humans, interactions that are becoming ever weirder and more designed. Mooallem is a writer with the New York Times Magazine and for Pop -Up Magazine, the live magazine in San Francisco, which is where we first heard these two stories. You might remember them as episodes #40 and #91 respectively, but now we present them together in a radio special we're calling Mooallempalooza.

99% Invisible-146- Mooallempalooza

Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center presents “The Founders of Modern Physics,” a panel discussion among eminent scientists exploring the revolution in quantum mechanics and its intellectual milieu. This panel was part of “Intellectual Circles and Twentieth-Century Science,” a conference organized in conjunction with a series of events surrounding the 2008 Tanner Lectures on Human Values delivered by Noble Prize–winning physicist Steven Chu. Dec 21, 2010

The Founders of Modern Physics

Tversky taught at Hebrew University and at Stanford University, where she is emerita professor of psychology. Much of her work involves human perception of space and explores topics such as memory, categorization and language; the metaphorically spatial, especially time and event perception and cognition; and applications, notably diagrams, interfaces, design and visual communication. Her recent articles include "Visualspatial Reasoning," "Some Ways that Graphics Communicate," "What Do Sketches Say About Thinking?" and "Multiple Mental Spaces." Sep 07, 2010

Spatial Thinking

New York Times Chief Washington Correspondent David Sanger, a senior fellow at the Belfer Center, speaks about the growing challenge of cyber warfare, who is engaged in it, what the perpetrators of these attacks stand to gain and how it can be defended against—if at all.

David Sanger on Cyber Warfare | PolicyCast

The Theory of Everything debuts with a three part expedition to the center of the cloud.  In part one Twitter employee number 7 Britt Selvitelle tells us what happened when Justin Bieber joined Twitter in 2009 and how everything had changed by the time the Bieb joined Instagram in 2011.  Harper Reed, CTO for Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, explains why cloud infrastructure is awesome,  Matt Wood, Amazon’s principal data scientist, explains how the cloud is changing our relationship with technology, and Parse’s Charity Majors shows us what it is like to work in the Cloud. But when your host attempts to get inside the cloud itself he runs into difficulties…


The Clouds (1 of 3)

The workplace of tomorrow — no corporate hierarchy or five day workweek required. Kara Miller speaks with Jason Fried of 37signals, Maynard Webb, former COO of eBay, and Bob Pozen, Harvard Business School lecturer.

The Future of Work

Your host continues his journey to the center of the cloud by way of the earth. Rare Earth.  Dr. Alex King leads the Critical Materials Institute in Ames Iowa, and he explains how dependent the cloud is on Rare Earth Elements like Neodymium. If we could get inside a Data Center we would find neodymium in all the custom made hard drives, and companies like Amazon are using giant wind turbines packed with neodymium magnets to power their data farms. In fact most of the devices we use to access the cloud: our ipads, our phones, our personal computers - they all use Neodymium too. Dr. Karl “Mr. Rare Earth” Gschneider introduces us to the other 16 Rare Earth elements and we learn that they are key to most of our advanced technologies, electric cars, medical devices, drones!  When your host discovers that China controls 95% of the Rare Earth market he decides to go, he hopes to see the illegal mines in the Ganzhou region with his own eyes. We also hear from Frank Tang, a Beijing based analyst at the investment bank NSBO, and we visit a Rare Earth Magnet factory. 

The Clouds (2 of 3)

Our series concludes with some revelations. Metahaven's Daniel van der Velden and Vinca Kruk use the story of Wikileaks to show us the infrastructure of the cloud and its super-jurisdictional powers. The BBC's Paul Mason takes us on a wild tour of China in his novel Rare Earth. And a pile of iPhones brings your host a moment of clarity.

The Clouds (3 of 3)

What helps us win? Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, bestselling authors of "Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing," investigate the art of competition.

The Science of Competition

What makes rivalries different than other competitions? Edgar B. Herwick III, chief of WGBH’s Curiosity Desk, shares his insight.

Rivalry: A Double-Edged Sword

Are robots coming — for your job? Kara Miller led a discussion about ingenuity and automation at Innovation Hub's first live panel. 

Robots Are Coming, Part 2

Robots Are Coming, Part 1

Radio/Podcast host:
"Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything" a proud member of PRX's Radiotopia collective. http://radiotopia.fm 
"Too Much Information" WFMU (2009 - 2013)
"The Big Ideas Podcast" The Guardian UK (2011 - 2012) 