- 2 days ago
This episode explores how society rebounded into an era of jazz, flappers, and consumer growth following the wake of World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic.
西班牙大流感过后, 20世纪20年代成为了 “飞来波女郎”, flappers, 爵士乐与地下酒吧盛行的年代, 你是否好奇过, 全球性大流行结束后会发生什么？
西班牙大流感过后, 20世纪20年代成为了 “飞来波女郎”, flappers, 爵士乐与地下酒吧盛行的年代, 你是否好奇过, 全球性大流行结束后会发生什么？
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00:01Every once in a while, there are moments in history
00:04that reshape the world we live in.
00:062020 is one of those moments
00:09when our world comes to a standstill.
00:12But ever wonder what happens after a global pandemic?
00:17First thing I want to do when the pandemic goes over
00:19is open-mouth kiss everybody.
00:22I would open-mouth kiss every consenting adult.
00:24Just want to make sure that's clear.
00:26The post-pandemic world, people are just so full of the...
00:31You know, for being cooped up for like a year and a half,
00:33and we're just going to want to let that out.
00:35Bet your bottom dollar people are going to go nuts.
00:37Definitely a lot of babies out of wedlock.
00:39These guys that have been out of the game for a while
00:41are a little bit itchy.
00:43I'll tell you that.
00:44A lot of booze, a lot of parties, and a lot of orgies.
00:48So, mask off orgies.
00:51Will the post-pandemic future be full of wild debauchery?
00:57Sometimes a clue to the future.
00:59Can be found in the past.
01:05The 1920s are an amazing moment in terms of world history.
01:09I would say culturally as much as anything else.
01:12The high, wide, and handsome 1920s brought undreamed of prosperity.
01:18It's exciting, it's exuberant, it's youthful.
01:24For some people, it was a big party.
01:27People have a sense of abandon and freedom.
01:29They feel that now they can try anything and do anything.
01:33There was this really strong pull towards the new and the modern and the fashionable.
01:39It really is a time of incredible prosperity.
01:45For the Wall Street guys, it's unprecedented in terms of the wealth, in terms of what's happening in this country.
01:51The pace of change is so incredibly fast.
01:54People felt that they were living in the future.
01:57This is the history of the roaring 20s in 501 kisses, 1,000 drag queens, and 2 and a quarter
02:05billion beers.
02:29What number best sums up a moment in time?
02:32In the middle of the 1920s, George Taylor discovers it's the number 15.
02:41George is a young college economist.
02:44When he's not studying his spreadsheets, he likes to play pool and chess.
02:48And he also has an unusual academic interest in women's legs.
02:53He's writing his PhD thesis on the hosiery industry.
02:57His father was the manager of a hosiery factory, so he's very interested in stockings.
03:03As part of his studies, he's measuring the height of women's skirts from the ground.
03:08And over the course of the 1920s, he's noticed hemlines have been on the rise.
03:12Would you look at that?
03:13From below the ankle, then to the calf, and finally above the knee.
03:18By 1927, they will be a full 15 inches off the ground.
03:23Amazing!
03:24And being an economist, George puts two and two together.
03:27He notices that the rise in hemlines matches the rise of the Dow Jones Index.
03:32That's not a coincidence.
03:33He calls his theory the hemline index.
03:35Super genius!
03:37The hemline index is an economic index that ties the rise of the economy to the rise of the hemline.
03:45So as the economy goes from slower to faster, the hemline rises accordingly up the leg of the skirt-wearing
03:53lady.
03:59In August 1921, the Dow Jones Industrial Index stands at a low of 63 points.
04:06Come on!
04:08By September 1929, it rises to a high of 381 points.
04:13That's a whopping 600% increase.
04:17Good grief!
04:18In the same period, the number of advertisements for hosiery in Vogue magazine nearly doubles.
04:24I love you.
04:25And the amount of flesh on display increases by a staggering 800%.
04:31Fabulous!
04:35Apart from the hemline, women were also wearing less clothes.
04:39So in 1913, you were wearing nearly 20 yards of fabric.
04:44By 1925, you're wearing about seven yards of fabric.
04:48And these lighter, freer clothes are a reflection of the new lifestyle they're leading.
04:55It made it much easier for them to partake in all of these leisure activities that were new and trendy
04:59in the 1920s.
05:01They could go bicycle riding, they could go golfing.
05:04They could do these things that would have been difficult to do with the old fashions.
05:09And they could dance.
05:16While women are liberating their hemlines and dancing the Charleston,
05:20a Hollywood director is filming his daughter, Mildred Unger, 2,000 feet in the air.
05:28There she is, dancing the Charleston on the wings of the plane,
05:31without, as far as you can see, any kind of safety mechanism at all.
05:35It's absolutely extraordinary to watch.
05:40What's going on?
05:42Oh, she's on top of the plane.
05:44Is she on top of the plane?
05:46Where is children's services?
05:47Is my number one question.
05:49Oh, wow.
05:50I want to do this so badly.
05:52Whose mother let her go on a plane?
05:53That's what I want to know.
05:54And how did this conversation go?
05:56Like, hey, listen, uh, is that your kid?
05:58Oh, come here, we have a great idea.
06:01Wow.
06:04It shows kind of the craziness of the period.
06:06She's 10 years old, and she's 2,000 feet in the air,
06:09and she's dancing on the wing of an airplane.
06:12Oh, you don't see that every day.
06:14What it speaks to in the 1920s is this real appetite for spectacle.
06:18So what was it about the 20s that made them roar?
06:22And could what happened then happen again?
06:25It turns out that the 1920s and the 2020s are linked by two doctors separated by 101 years and 7
06:34,218 miles.
06:39It's December 31st, 2019.
06:43In the city of Wuhan, China, a young medical doctor named Li Wenliang notices a worrying rise in the incidence
06:50of a SARS-like illness.
06:52He sends a message to his colleagues.
06:56Those first seven cases are an alarm bell for what will become the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.
07:08101 years earlier, on the other side of the world, another doctor has also noticed something out of the ordinary.
07:17It's January 1918.
07:19Dr. Loring Minor is a large, gruff man with a handlebar mustache and an affinity for alcohol.
07:26His practice extends over hundreds of square miles across the Kansas prairie.
07:31Sorry about that.
07:32On his rounds, he notices a worrying rise in the number of people suffering from flu-like symptoms.
07:38Their skin turns blue and purple from the lack of oxygen, and they have a fever of 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
07:45Young men are dying, and this is right next to one of the main army bases where young Americans are
07:51being trained up, ready to be sent to Europe to help in the fight against the Germans.
07:56At the nearby Camp Funston, a soldier reports to the medics with similar symptoms.
08:02A week later, there are another 100 cases, and by the end of the month, 500.
08:08It's the first outbreak of what history will come to know as the Spanish flu pandemic.
08:14This is a time, almost for the first time in American history, where young Americans are being sent abroad in
08:20large numbers, and the fact is that they're carrying a deadly virus.
08:26During World War I, 10 million soldiers are killed.
08:32No one knows exactly how many die from the flu pandemic, but estimates suggest that one-third of the world's
08:38population is infected, and up to 100 million people lose their lives.
08:45World War I affected the entire nation, and so did the Spanish flu.
08:48It didn't spare families, and it spread quickly, and it was frightening.
08:52People wore masks.
08:53Movie theaters and restaurants shut down, and there was a lot of separating of people, and there was a real
08:58shutdown of the culture.
09:01In North America, there are three waves of the pandemic between spring 1918 and the summer of 1919, when it
09:09finally fizzles out.
09:17So, how does a global catastrophe on this scale end in a decade-long party?
09:24History shows us that following times of sacrifice, we like to indulge.
09:30We just got out of World War I, going over the hump of the Spanish flu.
09:35So, that's setting the stage for some wild, wild parties.
09:43And who better to kick off the party than the regiment that sacrificed 1,400 lives, more than any other
09:51U.S. regiment on the Western Front?
09:55The 369th Infantry Regiment is an African American unit recruited largely from Harlem.
10:02When they set out for the war in 1917, they refused permission to join in the farewell parade of New
10:08York's National Guard, known as the Rainbow Division.
10:11In the words of the National Guard's commander, black is not a color in the rainbow.
10:18The notion was that African American men were cowardly, that they could not fight, they would be afraid to fight
10:23white people, basically.
10:25And then wherever they went, they encountered racism from American troops.
10:28To deal with it, the United States said, you know, let's just send them overseas.
10:31So, they were like some of the first troops to go overseas, and then the U.S. Army didn't know
10:36what to do with them, so they put them with the French.
10:41When they reach the Western Front, they will spend 191 days on the line, and are awarded 171 Croix de
10:49Guerre, the French medal for heroism.
10:52The unit becomes the most decorated of all serving American regiments.
10:57So great is their reputation in combat, the Germans give them their nickname, the Hellfighters.
11:04They were fierce fighters, they were injured, they were stabbed, they were bayoneted, but they fought and fought against this
11:10whole regiment until they made them retreat.
11:16When they return, they are given pride of place in the New York City Victory Parade.
11:21An estimated 5 million people line Manhattan's Fifth Avenue from 23rd Street to 143rd.
11:293,000 surviving Hellfighters march as heroes in close formation with regimental band leader James Reese Europe,
11:36who's the first black American officer to have led troops into combat.
11:39Now James Reese Europe was the foremost musician of that period.
11:45And after seven miles, they reach Harlem at last.
11:48And James commands the regimental band to stop playing marching music.
11:53Instead, they burst into jazz.
12:00Jazz music encompasses the Roaring Twenties more than any other music genre.
12:06It is the soundtrack.
12:10It sets the mood for the whole decade and it spreads all around the world.
12:15Jazz music is the tightest .
12:17It can be so spiritual and it can be like so elemental.
12:20It can be ridiculous at times.
12:23I love me a good trumpet.
12:26It's like whiskey.
12:28Smooth whiskey.
12:29When you listen to jazz, it's like a mysterious man comes up to you with a bouquet of flowers and
12:33then your mom magically appears and tells you she's proud of you and then your boss says that you're his
12:37boss now and you can wear a power suit.
12:39That's what jazz feels like.
12:40It's just a wild ride from start to finish.
12:45The thing that makes jazz so amazing, first of all, it's the freedom, the improvisational nature of it.
12:51It's also something people have not heard before.
12:54It was a new music.
12:55It was a new way of thinking about what music could do.
13:00It's music for an urban jungle.
13:05It's got that kind of clanging dissonance in a sense that feels very modern.
13:09It's not easy.
13:11It's not harmonic.
13:12It's not soothing.
13:13It's jangling and jarring and exciting and sexy.
13:17Flowering of the arts.
13:19And jazz music was really influential.
13:23It's very much an African-American art form, but it's something that is totally embraced by the young, white, urban
13:31population.
13:34People thought that they were edgy and attractive and interesting.
13:37And so jazz music drove social integration in a way that hadn't been seen before.
13:45But it also seeded a lot of anxiety.
13:48A secret organization, the Ku Klux Klan, spread its poisonous influence throughout a large part of the country.
13:56The 20s were a time when people came together, but the 20s were a time when the Ku Klux Klan
14:00was rising up and becoming really influential, especially in the first part of the decade.
14:07By 1924, it had spread to maybe two million members, and people were overtly part of the Klan.
14:13And that was a real demonstrable example of a group trying to go backwards in time.
14:23There were even a lot of efforts to suppress freedoms, and there was this real trend in the 1920s where
14:30people seemed to think that they could legislate their way to a moral, just, peaceful, innocent world.
14:36January 1920. New legislation is passed, and the 18th Amendment is enshrined in the Constitution, banning the manufacture and sale
14:46of intoxicating liquor.
14:49Prohibition is a movement that happens in the United States since it actually started much earlier.
14:53Remember, our roots in this country are puritanical.
14:57A lot of the early settlers really think that drink is wicked. Drink is the devil's brew.
15:03Forced to pass a certain public house, a tavern of unsavory refute.
15:11I mortgaged my home and my family too.
15:15It was really born out of a sense that drinking was the source of all kinds of social evils.
15:21So if the drink were eradicated, then there would be less trouble, there'd be less violence, and it was really
15:27seen as sort of a moral imperative.
15:28Prohibition. America's unique attempt to legislate morality in an age that wasn't really interested in it.
15:36It's the beginning of prohibition, and America officially goes dry, but unofficially.
15:43When prohibition is passed, they hope it's going to improve society, improve behavior, make people harder working and more virtuous.
15:50The problem is no one wants to practice it. Everybody still wants to drink.
15:56People didn't stop drinking. They just started supporting illegal, illicit activities that would get them drink.
16:06The 1920s is the age of the speakeasy, where alcohol is plentiful for those who know the password, and there
16:14are plenty who do.
16:18Come right on in and name your boy.
16:20All you really needed to open your own speakeasy was a couple of bottles of liquor in a room to
16:25have it in, and that's exactly what it was like.
16:27One of the statistics about the 20s is that for every bar that closes, three speakeasies open.
16:32So that tells you something about the number of people that are going, the success of these kind of places.
16:38By the end of the 1920s, New York boasts 32,000 speakeasies.
16:44That's one illegal bar for every 390 people, or three times as many as legal bars today.
16:52And that's only the ones we know about.
16:53The number that go under the radar is probably double that again, upwards of 100,000.
17:00You don't see that every day.
17:01Another revealing statistic is how many policemen were able to amass large savings even when their salaries were quite modest.
17:10What's the password?
17:11Stinky feet.
17:12In Boston, there are four operational speakeasies on the same street as the Boston Police Department.
17:19I don't know, Captain. Everybody seems drunk in this neighborhood.
17:21And in 1927, the prosecution of a San Francisco hotel clerk accused of selling liquor has to be abandoned.
17:28Maybe he can be innocent and guilty.
17:31When nine members of the jury are caught drinking the evidence.
17:37Honestly, if alcohol was banned, if I learned anything in the pandemic that I can't go a week without it,
17:42I would just make it myself.
17:45Yeah.
17:45Maybe I'd just make my own moonshine. Just in my basement or something. Like how people are doing sourdough bread
17:51during the pandemic. Just start making my own booze.
17:53I'll ferment everything. I'll just ferment alcohol in my bathtub and just bathe in it.
17:59The boys in prison have figured it out. They're making their own hooch in these toilet bowls out here.
18:04I'm sure I am just as creative as your average inmate. So, I can definitely work something out.
18:11If alcohol was banned, I would still find a way to get it as long as it was safe. Just
18:15want to make sure I don't get like moonshine that blinds me.
18:18Between 1920 and 1929, up to nine million gallons of pure alcohol were consumed.
18:25That's the equivalent of two and a quarter billion standard size beers.
18:35But booze is only part of the story. The speakeasy is where Americans come to drink, listen to music, and
18:43to dance. But to dance, you also need a partner.
18:47And what the number 18 did for jazz and black musicians, the number 19 will do for women.
18:58August 1920. The 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified.
19:04The ladies appeared at the polls on election day by the hundreds of thousands. They had won their right to
19:10vote.
19:11It's the culmination of a decades-long struggle finally granting women the right to vote.
19:17For so many years, American men did not want women to vote.
19:22For instance, Woodrow Wilson was against women voting in 1913.
19:26But by 1918, after having gone through World War I, he had a whole different attitude. He said, you know,
19:32women have sacrificed. They've created a whole mobilization to help the war effort.
19:39During the war, women go to work while men are away.
19:43The fact that they get the vote very quickly after the war is a reflection, I think, of the contribution
19:48they've made to society in that time.
19:50But that suffrage was not experienced the same way. While white women had much more opportunities to vote, African American
19:57women did not. Women of other minorities did not.
20:00Many women had to wait for decades more to be given their right to vote. But for the first time,
20:05women become equal participants in American society, equal citizens.
20:10The 19th Amendment gives the vote to 26 million women.
20:14In the next decade, the number of women in the workplace will rise from 8.3 to 11 million.
20:22Corset sales will decline by two-thirds. And the number of women buying cigarettes will more than double.
20:29For the first time, they can go out into the world. And in the 1920s, you see so many amazing
20:34female role models, from movie stars to anthropologists to writers to doctors.
20:40This is a time when women really understand and properly begin to live the idea that they don't just have
20:47to be wives and mothers.
20:53For one young woman, it proves to be a particularly dramatic shift, which in her case is marked by the
21:00number one.
21:02Her best friend calls her Pie Face, because she likes apple pie.
21:05She's an unfashionable wannabe dancer and actress.
21:09I got an idea!
21:10She escapes the Midwest and comes to the Big Apple in pursuit of a dream.
21:15And expensive clothes.
21:17She ends up dancing in the Ziegfeld Follies, which is scantily clad ladies doing high kicks on stage.
21:23It was a pretty established route to go into the movies from.
21:26You're fired!
21:27Oh, boogers!
21:30When she's fired from the stage, her best friend decides she's in need of a makeover.
21:36She's very down in the dunce, she loses a job, she doesn't get a job she hoped for, and her
21:40friend takes her off to have a haircut.
21:42But instead of a woman's hairdresser, their destination is a barber's shop.
21:47A little bit here, a little bit there.
21:48The barber shortens her bangs in a line above her eyebrows.
21:51Terrific!
21:52He shapes the sides into points at her cheekbones, and at the nape of her neck, he uses a number
21:57one razor.
21:58Voila!
21:59It's the world's first shingle bob.
22:01That's great!
22:02Her name is Louise Brooks, and it's not long after she steps off the barber's swivel chair that she will
22:08see her name in lights in Hollywood.
22:11Thank you very much!
22:14The independence of the 1920s is kind of encapsulated by this one haircut that Louise Brooks has, and she becomes
22:21the archetypal flapper.
22:23She also becomes one of the biggest Hollywood stars of the silent movie era, inspiring a whole generation of young
22:30female imitators.
22:32At one point, it's said that in New York alone, 2,000 women a day are getting the shingle.
22:38All over America in the 20s, girls are getting their hair shingled or shorn, they have them with a Marcel
22:44wave.
22:45Ironically, of course, they're quite hard to maintain, you have to go to the hairdresser more often.
22:49And it's part of the explosion in the cosmetics and beauty industry that happens in the 1920s as well.
22:54Women are suddenly the object of the marketing men.
22:59In 1920, there are only 5,000 hairdressing salons in the United States.
23:04Just four years later, there are 21,000.
23:08At the start of the decade, makeup was for women of doubtful reputation, and there was no such thing as
23:15getting a facial at a beauty salon.
23:18But by the end of the decade, there are 18,000 salons nationwide offering 1,300 brands and shades of
23:26face powder, 350 rouges, and 100 red lipsticks.
23:31It's fabulous.
23:32Female beauty has become a $52 million industry.
23:37Brie at last, she not only dressed freely, but was lavish with makeup, chewed gum, and even smoked in public.
23:43And the one place these coiffed and confident young women can go to is the speakeasy.
23:49Yes, I know. Knock three times and tell them you're a friend of Charlie's.
23:53Speakeasies are a place where, almost for the first time, women are able to go and have a drink.
24:00I think the fact that you get music and dancing quite often in a speakeasy makes it a place that's
24:04very attractive to women.
24:06And part of what happened in speakeasies was dating. Dating was new in the United States.
24:12They can now go out without a chaperone. They can go on dates with fellas.
24:18They can nick. They can flirt. And it doesn't destroy their reputations because, in some ways, the best way to
24:24say this is everybody's doing it.
24:26Only 14% of women born before 1900 said they had premarital sex before the age of 25.
24:34By the 1920s, that number has more than doubled to 34%.
24:40In the course of the decade, the birth rate actually drops by 20%, which may be explained by the fact
24:47that during the same period, condom sales double.
24:52But how many times do you have to kiss a boy to change the course of history?
24:56For Lottie G, that number proves to be 501.
25:01Opening night at the Daily's 63rd Street Theatre.
25:05On stage in the limelight, the young lovers Lottie G and Roger Matthews are about to sing their duet, Love
25:11Will Find A Way.
25:13Backstage, the composer, Noble Sissel, can hardly bear to watch.
25:18He stands by the stage door, one foot inside the theatre, the other on the street pointing north toward Harlem,
25:24afraid that if the song bombs, they'll be run out of town.
25:28The song is received in silence until suddenly Sissel hears wild applause break out and an encore is called for.
25:38Shuffle Along will run for another 501 performances, becoming one of the longest running musical shows of the decade.
25:48Shuffle Along is a phenomenon, it creates a desire to see African-American music and culture and it leads people
25:55to go up to Harlem who've never been before.
25:58Harlem at night has been assembled the world over for jazz and cabaret life.
26:03It's at a time when, as Langston Hughes famously puts it, the Negro was in vogue.
26:09And suddenly what they are creating is seen as valuable and important and part of American life.
26:18It's seen as integral to it for the first time.
26:25Harlem becomes the cultural Mecca of Manhattan.
26:29That's how it is.
26:33That's how it is.
26:34And the underground subculture comes out of the closet, dressed in sequined gowns and white tuxedos.
26:41One of the things that Harlem is known for in the 20s is not just the great music and the
26:46sort of great nightlife.
26:47It's also a place where gender and sexual roles can be transgressed and played with a little bit.
27:01The Stonewall Riot in 1969 is often considered the beginning of the gay rights movement.
27:07But more than 50 years earlier, Harlem's famous drag balls are part of a flourishing, highly visible LGBTQ nightlife.
27:19It's February 26th, 1926, the biggest night of Harry Walter's life.
27:26Outside, two feet of snow blankets the ground.
27:29Ladies and gentlemen.
27:30But inside, the heat is on at the Renaissance Ballroom and Casino in Harlem for the 58th Annual Hamilton Lodge
27:37Ball.
27:38One thousand of New York's finest dressed in tuxedos and gorgeous ball gowns crowd the dance floor.
27:44And as midnight strikes, it's time for the grand parade in front of the judges.
27:49And the best costume is?
27:50First prize goes to Harry as the best dressed drag queen of them all.
27:55Thank you very much.
27:57What's really interesting about these drag balls, these fairy balls, is that they weren't just for an underground subculture.
28:04They were for everyone.
28:05They're reported about in the popular media, in the popular press.
28:10A lot of the attendees are straight and they're just going to be part of this world.
28:16There's nothing strange in it.
28:18Drag shows, drag balls, parties that happen in queer spaces and queer parties are like just the best parties.
28:23Glitz and glam, it's always a party.
28:25Lots of sequins, lots of bright lights, a lot of Whitney Houston covers.
28:30There's just so much flair and color and people are voguing.
28:32The swag of it all, like the level of confidence that it takes to do that.
28:36I don't have it. I don't do well with eye shadow.
28:38I'm envious of drag queens and balls. I want to look as good as they do, like...
28:45In the 1920s, the LGBTQ community was much more open than many of us might realize.
28:53People describe going to Harlem and going into a bar or a speakeasy and seeing a table where you've got
29:00two black boys, two white boys, and they're all dressed as women.
29:04And up on the dance floor are two girls dressed in tuxedos dancing together.
29:09Identity is fluid, gender is fluid, and it feels quite modern.
29:14That isn't to say that there was widespread acceptance everywhere.
29:18Although they were allowed to exist, they were also really complicated and problematic for mainstream culture as well.
29:24Jean Mallon is six feet tall and 200 pounds, and one of New York's most famous female impersonators,
29:31who wins prizes for wearing costumes made up entirely of pink and gold feathers.
29:37One night, he wanders into a Greenwich cafe in full drag, wig, and makeup.
29:42Four rough birds begin to heckle him, and as he shimmies by their table, they throw a pitcher of water
29:48on him.
29:49What's the matter with you?
29:51Jean barely bats a false eyelash before fighting back.
29:56Three of them he beats to a pulp.
30:01The fight spills out onto the street, and the fourth heckler is only saved from Mallon by two passing taxi
30:08drivers.
30:10Afterwards, Mallon had tears in his eyes.
30:13When asked why, he pointed out that during the fight, he had ripped his gowns.
30:21Jean Mallon is exactly 12 pounds heavier than boxing champion Jack Dempsey.
30:27But unlike Mallon's punch, Dempsey's right hook will be heard right across America.
30:35After a great deal of pre-fight ballyhoo, the two men met at historic Boyle's 30 Acres in New Jersey.
30:41It's called the fight of the century.
30:44Dempsey versus Georges Carpentier for the world heavyweight title.
30:4880,000 people filled every inch of Boyle's 30 Acres.
30:52But these spectators are only a fraction of what will be the largest audience so far in history.
30:58Because this is the first sporting event ever broadcast to a mass audience on the radio.
31:06It's a confident Dempsey in his prime, who started at Tapontier, a truly great fighter.
31:12Round fourth on the mass of Mallon, floors a Frenchman, who's virtually helpless in the hands of Dempsey.
31:18But Tapontier rises again with a fighting arm.
31:21It's estimated that commentary of Dempsey's fourth round knockout punch is heard by more than 300,000 people in 61
31:29cities across Atlantic America.
31:34Radio, originally a feeble means of communication, grew from this small shack, the first commercial station in America, to gigantic
31:41proportions.
31:42One of the great technological and cultural developments of the 1920s is the radio.
31:47People use it for listening to news, they listen to music, they listen most of all to sporting events.
31:53Radio transformed sport because it allowed people to experience games in real time, as they were happening, so you didn't
32:00have to read about them in the paper the next day.
32:04Baseball, boxing, and horse racing.
32:07You sat by your radio, you could hear the Yankees play even if you didn't go to the game in
32:12person.
32:12The great sportsmen of the 1920s become household names because radio brings them into everybody's household.
32:20Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth was the biggest celebrity, the most famous person in America, more so than the president.
32:26Break it now with only two games left.
32:31He did interviews and he was in the movies and so he had this multi-dimensional presence in media and
32:38it was just really exciting and we couldn't have had celebrities like this before without all the technologies that brought
32:43them into our homes.
32:48In 1921, the year the first sporting event was broadcast, there are only five radio stations across the US. By
32:56the end of the decade, there are 606.
33:02Annual radio sales increased from $60 million to $843 million and by the end of the decade, 20 million households
33:12have a radio receiver.
33:13That's nearly 40% of all American families.
33:19This is the era of innovation and it's not just radio that's transforming lives.
33:25The 1920s sees extraordinary technological advances which benefit people's lives.
33:32In the house we have all sorts of domestic appliances which we never had before, the vacuum cleaner, the dishwasher,
33:38the toaster.
33:39But also you have the transformation from a coal based economy and a steam based economy into a petrol and
33:46oil based economy and this means cars.
33:49The 20th century is racing into a new era, the era of the Tin Lizzy, the Model T.
33:55Henry Ford had 10,000 dealerships in this country and there were 13 million cars on the road, incredible mobility
34:04happening.
34:04It is Henry Ford's own invention that is placing a nation behind the wheels of adventure.
34:09A few generations ago you might have never really left the county where you were born.
34:13And with an automobile your range increased tremendously.
34:17Now the whole family could get away from the noise and the heat of the city.
34:21The idea that you could buy a car which would then let you drive around the entire country independently becomes
34:28something to aspire towards and that really transforms American society because it brings with it a network of roads, motels
34:36and petrol stations and people can get into cities to work.
34:40It transforms every single aspect of American society.
34:44Technology will not only transform day to day life, it will make the most unlikely of dreams come true.
34:57When Bessie Coleman is six years old in 1898, no one has yet flown in an airplane.
35:04The 10th child of a Cherokee father, an African-American mother from Waxahachie, Texas, she walks four miles each day
35:12to and from her one room segregated school and works in the cotton fields at harvest time.
35:17After the Great War, she can only afford one semester at college, but then she hears the stories of Air
35:24Force pilots returning from France and her dream is born.
35:28As a young girl, she decides she wants to learn to fly.
35:33But she can't get flying lessons in the United States to get qualified as a pilot because she's a person
35:37of color.
35:38So she decides to learn French at night school and then travels to Paris to learn to fly, where she
35:45earns her pilot's license in 1921, two years before Amelia Earhart.
35:51When she returns to the States, she becomes a barnstorming stunt flyer.
35:55She wows crowds across America and becomes an instant media sensation.
36:01And her favorite stunts? The loop-de-loop and the highly dangerous figure eight.
36:06I'm flying!
36:07Bessie Coleman is the first American woman of African-American and Native American descent both to have a pilot's license
36:15and to actually fly and perform as a stunt pilot in America.
36:19It's absolutely extraordinary.
36:23There was a notion in the 20s that Bessie caught on to that she could become who she wanted to
36:31be.
36:31She had this sense of incredible freedom of possibility, whether you're woman or man, black or white.
36:38And Bessie Coleman is the epitome of I'm going to fly into my dream.
36:45Bessie Coleman is the pioneer of what will become a brand new industry, commercial air travel.
36:55The first international passenger flights from Key West, Florida to Havana, Cuba, take off in 1920.
37:01In 1926, the total number of airline passengers in the United States is less than 6,000.
37:09But by the end of the decade, that number leaps to 173,000.
37:18Air travel makes anything possible. Think about it this way.
37:21In 1903, the Wright brothers made their first flight.
37:25In 1969, we land on the moon.
37:28Within literally 66 years, we went from flying to flying to space.
37:34Traveling in air in the 1920s gave us that feeling that nothing's impossible.
37:38You know, the sky's the limit. That's why we say that.
37:49The 1920s is the decade where the sky does seem limitless, as the number of shares traded on the New
37:55York Stock Exchange grows from 200 million to over a billion.
38:01American society in the 20s is propelled by this huge sense of optimism.
38:08Business is going to be the answer to all our problems.
38:11Salesmen are the kind of angels of American society.
38:14And people are making so much money on things like stocks and shares.
38:22The stock market is soaring like never before.
38:26And people don't really understand, but the stock market is like a horse race.
38:31It's a gamble. And so at a certain point, your horse is not going to win.
38:37They can't believe that something that's been going so well for a decade could tumble off a cliff just like
38:43that.
38:44One man who does believe it is an investor on Wall Street.
38:47After making a bundle in the bull market, the story goes that he decides to get his Oxford Brogues polished
38:54up.
38:54Tobacco's doing good.
38:56But when the shoeshine boy begins to give him stock tips, it's not so much a lightbulb moment, it's an
39:02alarm bell.
39:03He realizes that if a shoeshiner has an opinion on stocks, they are becoming dangerously popular and it's time to
39:11get out.
39:11He does exactly that. Returns to his office, unloads his stocks and withdraws from the market.
39:19His name is Joe Kennedy, father of the future president JFK.
39:25He's one of the few lucky ones to save his fortune.
39:28The New York Stock Exchange was in a turmoil. Frantic investors had scrambled to unload their securities at any price.
39:37On October 24th, 1929, newspaper headlines announced the end of the roaring 20s.
39:44The line can't always go up on the graph. And when it came down, it came down fast and it
39:49came down hard.
39:50The great bubble had burst of the 1920s.
39:53It goes down in history as Black Thursday when the Dow Jones Index falls by 11%.
39:59On Black Monday, it loses another 12.82%.
40:05On Black Tuesday, yet another 11.73% disappears, which represents $14 billion in losses, the equivalent of $213 billion
40:17today.
40:19And the slide will continue until July 8th, 1932, when the index bottoms out after losing a whopping 89.2
40:28% of its value.
40:31A feeling of apprehension, even fear, replaces the unchecked optimism Americans once felt.
40:36That's the end of the 20s. We have the great crash, leading to the Great Depression.
40:41Millions and millions of people were out of work. They didn't understand why.
40:44Common terms, food, clothing, shelter. Take on a new image.
40:49There were shacks where people had to live, and they had to have food lines and soup lines and soup
40:55kitchens to feed people because they were going hungry.
40:57By 1933, nearly half of America's banks have failed, and unemployment approaches 15 million people, or 30% of the
41:06workforce.
41:09And just as the hemline provided an index of growth in better times, the rise of the shoeshine is an
41:15index of the Great Depression.
41:21Before the crash, the New York Times reported there were only a handful of shoeshines on the streets of New
41:26York.
41:28By 1932, the New York Police Department reports there are now more than 7,000 desperately trying to earn a
41:35living on the streets.
41:38In a single block on West 43rd Street, the newspaper now counts 19 shoeshines plying their trade.
41:45Nice job. Here you go.
41:47In better times, the going rate was a dime with a nickel tip. And now they're happy if they get
41:52a single nickel.
41:53Sorry, that's all I got.
41:55And before, the shoeshine boy used to be under the age of 17. Now it's common to see men over
42:0170.
42:03No one was unscathed by the effects of the Great Depression. The culture changed. Entertainment industries changed.
42:10Fashions changed. Music changed. It didn't all happen overnight. But you can see the beginnings of the end.
42:17At the start of the 1930s, prohibition is repealed. Bars and nightclubs are once more regulated.
42:25The LGBTQ community is pushed underground. Hollywood is censured. And women's skirt lengths plunge downward.
42:32The roaring 20s have come to an inauspicious end. So, as we move into the 2020s, will we see history
42:49repeat itself?
42:50Will this be the decade of the roaring 20s 2.0? Will the 2020s be like the 1920s? Absolutely.
42:59The idea of unbridled prosperity. Pandemics. Racial strife.
43:08All these elements are back in play. And so it makes you feel like there's a cycle.
43:13History shows us that following war, we always want peace.
43:18Following sacrifice and solitude, we always want celebration and indulgence.
43:26Maybe we'll get our own version of the 1920s a hundred years later.
43:30The young taking center stage, the sense of freedom and excitement, a sense of modernity.
43:36I think we can expect all those things in the decade to come.
43:39People are going to party like it's 1920, literally.
43:44Just now, we're going to see it on social media.
43:54Hopefully, we're heading towards a roaring 20s. I have my flapper dresses ready. Like, I really do.
43:59Smog all the time and floods and typhoons and wealth inequality is going to worsen.
44:03But that's going to make people want to party more when we can. So those are going to be nuts.
44:06Billionaires are trying to leave the earth right now.
44:08When the richest people on the planet are trying to get off of it, it's probably not a good sign.
44:13If we're not heading into another roaring 20s, I will shave my head.
44:18Okay.
44:21No problem.
44:23I'm not at all.
44:24If you're not like if you're not going to party, you're going to be starting in aASE.
44:24I'm going to drop a little bit of a little bit of a deal.
44:24I won't be serious!
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