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The year 1927 saw historic flooding in the Mississippi Valley. Hundreds of thousands were left homeless. Most of the victims were African American, but flood relief mainly went to whites.

Herbert Hoover, who had been called “The Great Humanitarian,” was put in charge of flood relief. But even as the Mississippi receded, a different kind of flood was affecting Wall Street and the global economy.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

“It Had to Be You”
By Isham Jones and Gus Kahn. Public domain.
Performed by Frank Milne. Public domain piano roll, transcribed for MIDI by Kevin Chan and used with permission. Thanks, Kevin! 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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By 1927, Mussolini had what amounted to dictatorial power in Italy. He used it at home to crack down on his political opponents.

He also cracked down in Libya. Officially an Italian possession since 1912, Italy had only ever controlled a few coastal enclaves. Now, the Fascists would employ modern weaponry to end the resistance there.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

“Istakhbar Mezmoum”
Traditional. Public domain.
Performed by Lazaar Ben Dali Yahia. Public domain recording. Source.

Closing Theme 

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Mussolini took power in Italy lawfully, but almost at once began referring to the “Fascist Revolution.”

Policy was not Mussolini’s main concern. Power was, and from the beginning, he looked for ways to ensure that he and the Fascist Party would rule Italy forever.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

Concerto for Two Trumpets in C
Composed ca. 1720 by Antonio Vivaldi. 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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The Algeciras Conference in 1911 awarded Spain control of the Rif region of northern Morocco, known afterward as Spanish Morocco in the West.

Spain did not make a serious effort to secure control over the Rif until after the Great War. The 1920s saw a bloody conflict that eventually subdued the Rifians, but also led to the end of constitutional rule in Spain.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

“Danse espagnole” from La vida breve
Composed in 1905 by Manuel de Falla. Public domain.
Performed by Carrie Rehkopf. Recording used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY-SA 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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In the early 1920s, Gandhi began the first nationwide satyagraha campaign. It did not achieve its goals; it eventually provoked violence, inducing Gandhi to call it off, which in turn alienated many of his allies. The British took advantage of this dissention to imprison him.

Just a few years later, following his release, the Congress turned to Gandhi again, seeing him as the only leader who could keep the nationalist factions together. In 1930, Congress declared independence.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

Raga Number Two

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. Music used in the podcast is my own work, except were otherwise indicated. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

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During the 1910s, Henry Ford sold millions of affordable, mass-produced cars and built the biggest car company in the world.

But during the 1920s, Ford’s company would be overshadowed by the upstart General Motors, which built an even bigger company by relying on a whole new marketing strategy: planned obsolescence.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

“In My Merry Oldsmobile”
Composed in 1905 by Gus Edwards and Vincent P. Bryan. Public domain.

“California, Here I Come”
Composed in 1921 by Buddy DeSylva and Joseph Meyer. Public domain.

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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Early internal combustion engines were subject to “knocking,” a metallic rattle that indicated something wasn’t right. GM engineer Thomas Midgley was assigned the task of identifying the cause and the cure. It turned out that knocking was caused by premature combustion in the engine, and the solution Midgley and GM hit upon was a fuel additive: tetraethyl lead. Soon car and airplane engines everywhere were fueled by leaded gasoline. Midgley went on to a second triumph: the development of chlorofluorocarbons as refrigerants.

By the time of his death in 1944, Midgley was being hailed as one of the eras great inventors. But by the last quarter of the twentieth century, a great effort would be undertaken to undo his inventions.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

Symphony No. 6 in B minor, “Pathétique”
Composed in 1893 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Public domain.
Performed by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. Public domain recording. Source.

Closing Theme 

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In the 1920’s, it was widely taken for granted that Western civilization was the pinnacle of human achievement, and that all other cultures were “simpler” and more “primitive.”

A 23-year-old graduate student named Margaret Mead single-handedly upended Western civilization’s self-image through her research of adolescence in Samoa. It turns out that the West is not so advanced that it has nothing to learn, nor the Samoans so “primitive” that they have nothing to teach.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

“Toot, Toot, Tootsie (Goo’ Bye!)”
Composed in 1922 by Gus Kahn, Ernie Erdman, and Danny Russo. Public domain.

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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Charles Darwin himself noted in The Descent of Man that the development of civilization meant that human evolution by natural selection had in some sense “stopped,” since humans no longer abandon individual members of our species to their own fates, as happens with animals in nature. This led some thinkers to speculate about “eugenics,” what we might call “artificial selection,” as an alternative mechanism to natural selection. Human society could direct human evolution.

But when the eugenics movement started talking seriously about what might be done, the discussion turned ugly. IQ test results were used to “prove” people of other races and cultures were intrinsically less intelligent. Laws were passed to ban interracial marriage, to include racial classifications on birth certificates, to restrict immigration of certain types of people, and even to perform forced sterilizations.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

“The Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla” from Das Rheingold
Composed in 1869 by Richard Wagner. 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.

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In 1925, the Tennessee legislature made it a criminal offense to teach Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection in any publicly funded school.

When high school teacher John Scopes was prosecuted under the law, one of America’s most prominent opponents of evolution, former Secretary of State and Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, agreed to assist the prosecution, while America’s most famous criminal defense attorney (and notorious agnostic) Clarence Darrow agreed to defend Scopes. It became the most famous legal case in the United States of the time.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

“His Eye Is on the Sparrow”
Composed in 1905 by Charles H. Gabriel and Civilla D. Martin. Public domain.

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.