Jeremiah Moss’s Feral City is much much more than a Covid memoir. In many ways it is a continuation of his desire to understand how and why New York city has changed,  and if there is still a place for outsiders or if it now belongs to what he calls “the new people.” We walked around our Neighborhood together to talk about what the city was like during Covid time and what the phrase “go back to normal” really means. Please contribute to the 2022 Radiotopia fundraiser....

Yvette Gonzales tells us a first person story about what its like to be transgender in Prison. Gender theorist B. Preciado tells us about what happens when a person takes testosterone without the intention of transitioning from one gender to another. Plus, Jim Elledge tells us about his  biography of Outsider Artist Henry Darger, and why he drew little girls with penises.

In their new book  Hollywood and Israel, film scholars Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman take us behind and beyond the screen to show how the world’s entertainment capital is an important player in international affairs and how profit always trumps propaganda.

911 final reprise. George Bush celebrates the anniversary of 911 with some new ‘dark’ paintings. Your host marks the occasion with some high stakes performance art. Plus un-learned art lessons from the $150,000 banana.

Growing up in Glasgow in the 1960s James Campbell got into loads of trouble. At the age of 15 he left school and started work at a printing factory. But then he discovered the magic of the road and the wonderful world of “away” We talk with the author about his new memoir, “Just go down to the road”

Citizens armed only with Molotov cocktails battle with Russian tanks on the streets of… Budapest.  In November of 1956 Russian troops invaded Hungary. The revolution was crushed and thousands of Hungarians fled. Will history repeat itself? We talk with Réka Pigniczky about her memory project, a film series dedicated to the Hungarian revolution. Also: Branko Marcetic compares America’s response to the events of 1956 with our current posturing over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

On May 10th 1941 Rudolf Hess flew from Germany to Scotland. He hoped to bring the Nazis and the British together. He failed. But the details behind his flight remain one of the greatest mysteries of World War II. Historians and Amateur scholars have spent decades trying to unravel this mystery. On this episode we look into one of the strangest theories of them all.

“G.S.” was one of the first friends I made when I moved to Bozeman, Montana many years ago. The story he told me about how bad karma brought him from Devon, England to the C.U.T. bomb shelters in Gardiner, Montana still haunts me.

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....

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...

George Bush celebrates the 20th anniversary of 911 with some new ‘dark’ paintings. Your host marks the occasion with some high stakes performance art. Plus art lessons from the $150,000 banana.

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.