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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.

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During the Roaring Twenties, New York City grew to become the world’s largest city, and the center of American industry, finance, art, and culture.

This period saw the establishment of two new, influential magazines, Time and The New Yorker, and the wisecracking circle of writers at The Algonquin Roundtable influenced a generation.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

“The Sidewalks of New York”
Composed in 1894 by Charles B. Lawlor and James W. Blake. 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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At the beginning of the twentieth century, France had the world’s largest motion picture industry, but it was soon overtaken by the USA, which had a larger population that was particularly enthusiastic about the new medium.

By the Roaring Twenties, 80% of the world’s films were being produced in the United States. The industry grew and film stars became rich and celebrated. But there was a backlash from those who believed the film industry was weakening the nation’s moral fiber.

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Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening Theme

“Spanish Music” and “Hurry Music” from Sam Fox Moving Picture Music, Volume 1
Composed in 1913 by J.S. Zamecnik. Public domain.
Performed by Richard Frohlich and used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY 3.0 license.
Source and 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.