Radio Benjamin: Bootleggers

Alcohol! Children! A perfect pairing brought to us from the greatest thinker of the 20th Century, German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin. Learn about Americans and consumption through the prism of Prohibition starting in 1920. Also listen to stories about the Chicago Underworld, a matrix for smuggler and robber alike, mastering the art of concealing. Interesting too is Henry Ford's observation that cars are suddenly affordable under Prohibition, high interest financing ensues, and it is cultural dominos from there...one car for every person. This, while boatloads full of confiscated Champagne are dumped into the ocean. Benjamin was an eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mysticism, he made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. Walter Benjamin’s radio broadcasts (1929 - 1932) are a selection of children stories written and read by Benjamin during his colossal research project The Arcades Project, an allegorical look into the birth of modernity in 19th Century Paris. Though the series of broadcasts and the Arcades in general are decisively incomplete, the two enterprises echo one another in content, replete with provocative digressions, and unlikely connections (or "secret affinities").

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