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By the 19^th century, chemists had good experimental reasons to believe in the existence of atoms, and that there was a kind of atom for every chemical element.

In the early twentieth century, physicists began picking apart the structure of the atom, and by the 1920s had determined that atoms were themselves structures composed of smaller, “sub-atomic” particles: electrons, protons, and (the still-theoretical) neutrons. But the laws of physics on the sub-atomic level proved to be very different from our everyday experience of ordinary matter.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

Piano Sonata No. 1
Composed in 1910 by Alban Berg. Public domain.
Performed by Jonathan Biss and used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Source.

Closing Theme 

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Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

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Although New York was rising as a new wellspring of cultural influence, Paris remained one of the world’s foremost–if not the foremost–cultural centers.

American jazz, American entertainers, and American tourists were now part of the scene, but so were the Ballets Russes and Maurice Chevalier. And the designs of Coco Chanel were the height of fashion.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

“Galop infernal” from Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld)
Composed in 1858 by Jacques Offenbach. Public domain.
Public domain recording. Source.

Closing Theme 

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Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

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For as long as there has been theatre–and there has always been theatre–music has often accompanied the performance in one form or another.

But the 1920s saw the emergence of a new kind of blending of theatre and music. Not the sugary frivolity of musical theatre nor the weighty drama of grand opera, but the musical: a play with popular songs, but one in which the music and the story are equal partners.

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• Transcript.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

Overture di Ballo
Composed in 1870 by Sir Arthur Sullivan. Public domain.
Performed by the United States Marine Band. Public domain recording. Source.

Closing Theme 

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Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.