Hey everyone, Jody Avergan here. Today we're bringing you an episode from the archives that ran just about a year ago today with the fantastic radio producer and host Benjamin Walker about the cultural Cold War, how the CIA and other U.S. government forces funded a lot of art, music, theater, and more in the 50s and 60s. I wanted to bring this to you again because, well,

for one, we need a little break in production, but also because even just in the year, since we

put this out, a couple interesting wrinkles have emerged. For one, a lot of you may have seen

the incredible documentary soundtrack to a coup d'etat, which was all about the cultural forces that

played into the U.S. meddling in

Congo and the assassination of a Congolese leader. If you haven't seen it, go see it. It's stunning.

But also, of course, this whole thing is a story about a moment when for better and often for worse,

such as in the Congo, the United States did see itself as shaping the culture

and politics of the entire world. In many ways, the United States felt a responsibility to do so,

which, again, often led to some pretty shady behavior. But if that world that Benjamin is describing

in the episode is kind of the opening bracket of that era of the United States. Well, we might be

living through the closing bracket right now as the United States retreats from the world on

basically every front. So it's worth listening with that context in mind. That's enough for me.

Take a listen and we'll be back with new episodes real soon.

Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia. My name is

Jody Avergan. This day, May 5th, 1960, British critic Kenneth Tynan is called before the

Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and questioned about his views on Cuba, communism, and other matters.

Tynan had recently produced a TV program featuring countercultural voices in America, and he'd long had Soviet sympathetic politics.

Suffice to say, Tynan didn't love having to testify. In part, he wondered why a British

citizen was being called before a U.S. subcommittee. But this was a key moment and an instructive

one in the swirl between culture and politics, the Cold War and propaganda in the late

1950s and early 1960s. And that swirl is the subject of a new series from our Radiotopia pal

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