Walker’s sublime and anarchic podcast jumps from in-depth analyses of “the cloud” to contemplations on the nature of loneliness.
Here’s the deal: Radiotopia.FM, the brainchild of Roman Mars (99% Invisible, PRX Remix) and the Public Radio Exchange, was announced into existence back in February. There are seven shows currently included in the project: 99% Invisible, Love + Radio, KCRW’s Strangers, The Truth, Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything, Radio Diaries and Fugitive Waves. More shows will be added over time.
I’m going to listen to as many episodes of each show in Radiotopia as I can. This week, I listened to the entire run of Benjamen Walker’s podcast, Theory of Everything. You can listen to Theory of Everything on iTunes and Stitcher, and find out more about it here.
There’s no one quote I can put here that sums up the totality of Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything. The show is literally about everything — it does for the rest of the universe what 99% Invisible does for architecture and design. In fact, I really should just stop there. The show is so unpindownable, so wide in its scope, that I can’t point to one specific reason why it’s so great. But it is, and if you’re not listening to Walker’s ever-growing theory of everything, then you’re missing out on some fundamentals.
The first miniseries of Theory of Everything centered around the omnipresent digital cloud that has developed within the last few years. Initially an attempt to learn what Amazon’s Web Services is all about, “The Clouds” turns into a globe-trotting investigation into the economics of rare earths mining. Why?
Because Walker wanted to understand the cloud better. The way he sees it, having this giant invisible thing that has a real impact on real people just sort of hanging around and you have no idea what it is, does, or means, is discomforting.
And to be honest, that kind of skeptical intrigue — rather than a broad disavowal of the cloud — is really refreshing. Walker takes on all of his subjects with the same level of curiosity, whether it be the actual story of Umarov Muhibullah, one of the characters in Zero Dark Thirty, or the difference between Facebook-Work and Work-Work.
There is no superficial binding thread that ties each episode together with its predecessors or descendants — except for a broad theory of everything. Walker wants to know it all, and he will use his creative freedom — here, almost anarchic — to find out about it all. And that is fantastic.