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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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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 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.

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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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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.