1958 Mike Wallace Interview with Brave New World Author Aldous Huxley


Mike Wallace talks to ‘Brave New World‘ author Aldous Huxley, focusing on the danger of slipping into totalitarian government as a result of overpopulation, increasing hierarchical organization of people in corporate structures, and improper use of television and subliminal advertising. He continually refers to the similarity between the methods of advertising agencies and those of political dictators.

Wallace: …and we’ll be persuaded to vote for someone that we do not know we are being persuaded to vote for?

Huxley: Exactly, I mean this is the rather alarming feature… that you are being persuaded below the level of choice and reason.

Perhaps that explains the election of George W. Bush, a raging drunk without the slightest education – a psychopathic false cowboy with delusions of a holy mission to invade the Middle East. It was national suicide. The election of Bush was the worst thing to happen to the United States since the Civil War and it cannot be explained by logic. The world is only at the beginning of decades spent recovering from the criminality and death unleashed by Bush. I think Huxley might have said that Bush was the easily predictable outcome of uncontrolled corporatization. Every corporation likes to push dull-witted and unimportant people into middle management positions where they can function as the tiered facade standing between the board members and the Chinese slave camps.

Aldus Huxley Narrates Brave New World

This is an LP of a 1957 recording of Aldus Huxley narrating his science fiction masterpiece, Brave New World. The music is by Bernard Herrmann.  Of course, it’s not really the book.  It’s a 1 hour radio dramatization.  The book is a frightening look at a future of genetic breeding and an anesthetized  population of perfectly content people without desires.  They are kept uninformed and comfortable so that they will remain peaceful and easy to control by a ruling order.  They are made to cherish their servitude and oppression.

Huxley believed that George Orwell’s vision of the future in 1984 was too extreme and that oppression of large populations would be watered down into something resembling pleasure and entertainment.  They were both partly right.

So read Huxley’s book and think about the world around you and how little is really expected of you.

Listen to Side 1 of the Brave New World LP

Listen to Side 2 of the Brave New World LP