Latest / Saberian History Lectures / Commercial Culture and Transformation

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Commercial Culture and Transformation · Saberian History Lectures

0:00
Alright, so getting into the 1920s. You have,
0:05
in the 1920s, several abrupt and decisive changes
0:12
in American life occur. And one of the things
0:17
you run into is a conflict with this new modernity
0:24
and the traditional way of doing things. And
0:29
so when I look at the changes that go on, you
0:31
look at changes in commercial culture, in religious
0:38
culture, and in religious culture, and in political
0:52
culture. In the commercial culture, you have
1:01
the rise of new technologies or new ways of doing
1:05
things versus the traditional ways that they
1:11
had been done. In the religious culture, and
1:18
the way the book does it is they actually do
1:19
a separate thing on what they call intellectual
1:21
culture. I kind of want to throw the religion
1:22
in there because it is a religious transformation,
1:26
but the intellectual culture speaks to it. So
1:29
you have the emergence of a conflict between
1:32
interpretationist religion, which I believe I've
1:36
talked to you all about already, versus secular
1:42
humanism. In other words, new intellectual currents,
1:49
many of them from Europe, find their way to the
1:52
United States. And then finally, a revolt by
1:55
the biblical fundamentalists. in terms of what
2:00
the for lack of a better word the soul of America
2:04
is going to look like by the way do we still
2:07
have a conflict between secular humanists and
2:14
religious fundamentalists in our modern life
2:16
and where is that most commonly being played
2:24
out? Is it being played out at the universities?
2:26
Is it being played out in the churches? Or is
2:29
it being played out in the political arena? All
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of the above. But the one that we hear most loudest
2:37
is the political arena. Yes? Alright. And so
2:43
you have a... conflict in the political culture
2:48
between some elements that we had seen before.
2:50
We were familiar with the business wing of the
2:55
Republican Party. You had what we would call
3:05
the working man's Democratic Party, and I use
3:09
this term very carefully because the Democratic
3:12
Party at this point recouples its coalition of
3:16
immigrant labor in the cities and southern agrarians
3:21
in the American South. And flowing between the
3:29
two parties, not forming a faction of their own,
3:32
is what? What's the one thing I haven't talked
3:37
about that we've talked about before? Progressives.
3:44
Progressivism is in the mix. There are progressive
3:48
elements to the caucuses of the Republican Party
3:52
and there are progressive elements in the Democratic
3:55
Party. So progressivism, in some ways, is a bipartisan
3:58
ideology or it's an ideology that crosses party
4:02
lines. And so people wear the party labels largely
4:05
as a matter of local convenience. Do we see that
4:13
now? What are dinos? What are rhinos? Oh, calm
4:21
now. I know I have enough debate people in here.
4:24
What's a dino? A democrat in name only. A rhino
4:28
is a republican in name only. People who choose
4:32
party labels as a matter of political expediency
4:35
given the locale they are in. Okay, so we're
4:39
going to get to each of these... Primarily today
4:42
I'm going to talk about the consumer culture
4:44
and into some of the intellectual shifts. Then
4:48
probably on Friday we'll get to have some fun
4:50
with the fundamentalists. No? Okay. It's like,
4:55
alright, tough crowd. Alright, and whatnot. And
5:00
we will get into some of the, and the rise of
5:03
reactionary conservatism. I tie it to the fundamentalism
5:06
because in a way they are intertwined. and Republicans'
5:10
dominance of the federal government, which really
5:12
runs from until the election of FDR in 1932.
5:16
Okay. So, first of all... They call it the Roaring
5:21
Twenties, not because they unleashed a herd of
5:23
lions on it, but because you have, in the 1920s,
5:27
economic prosperity that had been unrivaled.
5:30
You have a 30 % growth in the gross domestic
5:32
product, you have a practical doubling of wages,
5:35
and a growing consumer culture made possible
5:39
by the emergence of a credit economy. People
5:45
pay for things on layaway rather than paying
5:47
cash. What's the difference between paying layaway
5:49
and paying cash? You pay cash. If you want to
5:53
buy the expensive thing and you're paying cash,
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how much do you pay? All of it. If you put it
5:57
on layaway, how much do you pay? Some of it.
6:00
And you pay a little bit and a little bit and
6:04
a little bit with the interest, yes? And if you
6:08
think about it... Interest is a parasite. Interest
6:16
is a mosquito. What does a mosquito do? It bleeds
6:23
you. Now what happens is people have too many
6:26
parasites from time to time. And what happens
6:29
when that happens? You die. Or in our economic
6:35
system, you declare bankruptcy. And so... We're
6:40
not going to get into the full peculiarities
6:44
of credit. But also, in order to have layaway,
6:50
you have to have what to make it work? A bank
6:54
account. Well, yes. You have to have, we talked
6:58
about this before, bureaucracy. How many of you
7:02
have a parent who has a store credit card? May
7:06
I ask what it is? Target. Costco. Kohl's. In
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other words, you can only use that credit card
7:16
in store. Macy's, JCPenney, very often consumer
7:22
goods, yes? Express. Okay. This system starts
7:28
here. Originally, the original credits were store
7:33
credits. Now, can you get your hands on a credit
7:35
card that you can use anywhere? Yes, that's later.
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And really, those credit cards do not become
7:43
a dominant force in the American economy, really,
7:46
until the 1990s. Okay? So, let's... And we'll
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get to that when we get to History 1302 and the
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economic prosperity of the 1990s. Credit cards,
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all built on bloody credit cards. Alright. Now,
8:01
a couple other things. And I kind of wanted to
8:04
speak to something I left off to the other day.
8:05
So... 1917 to 1918, what happened? U .S. was
8:13
in World War I. 1919, people start coming home.
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So 1917 to 1918, June 5th, 1917, all those people
8:27
filled out their draft cards, ran it through
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the punch card machine. They found out how many
8:31
people they had eligible for military service,
8:33
how many people got drafted. How many people
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got taken out of the workforce? Four million.
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Four million men taken out of the workforce,
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and that was nothing to sneeze at. Now, and who
8:49
filled their jobs? African Americans, people
8:52
of color, moving from the American South to the
8:55
cities of the North and the Midwest. So this
8:57
is why you have now in major northern American
9:00
cities, African American populations. These were
9:02
not holdovers from, you know, antebellum days.
9:07
So you have that. So 1919, people start coming
9:11
home. They come home to jobs that were taken
9:13
by other people. Also, there is, in many cases,
9:17
after a large armed conflict, you have an economic
9:21
recession as the economy retools as they're going
9:23
from military goods, which are disposable, to
9:26
manufactured consumer goods. And so we talked
9:30
about the race riots and the Red Scare in the
9:33
1919s. The Red Scare is still going on into the
9:36
1920s. Because the communists broke the wartime
9:43
consensus, they had betrayed the faith. But by
9:50
the 1920s, the economy had retooled, and so you
9:53
have a period of economic prosperity. Part of
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that period of economic prosperity was the rise
9:59
of consumer goods. So I'm going to take you to
10:02
the next slide, and I'm going to zoom in on the...
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image here. Where's Zoom? Here we go. So here
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we have the happy woman. And what's she doing?
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No, she's not. Look again. She's plugging something
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in. She's actually, if I'm, and now let's look
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at some of the stuff she's plugging in. You have,
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and this is kind of hard to see, I think this
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is a blender here. This is obviously a fan. You
10:35
notice it has the conical thing sticking out.
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This is so your children don't put your face
10:38
up to the fan and get their tongue sliced off.
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How many of you as kids used to put your face
10:42
close to the fan and you would talk to it and
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you would get that crazy echo and you thought
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it was cool? How many of you still think it's
10:48
cool? All right. Now, over here you've got the
10:53
electric toaster. Down here you've got the coffee
10:56
percolator. I can't tell what that one is. That's
11:01
a lamp. That's an iron. That's an icebox. No,
11:07
the waffle maker is over here. No, it's Westinghouse,
11:11
and I'm going to get to what they're selling
11:12
in a moment. And here's a heating pad. Now, here's
11:16
the thing that you have to appreciate. All of
11:20
these technologies you've taken for granted.
11:24
Now, earlier in the text, we talk about the presence
11:27
of electricity in cities. You do not have the
11:32
United States fully electrified until the mid
11:36
-20th century. So if you were out in the hinterland,
11:40
if you were in the countryside, it was not economically
11:43
viable for them necessarily to string electricity
11:46
out to you. Think about this for a moment. And
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I say this in a place that used to be a village
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and has now become a suburb, but it still has
11:57
rural elements to you. If you live on a rural
12:00
property, do you connect to city water or do
12:03
you have a well? You have a well. If you are
12:07
on a rural property, you do not connect to the
12:10
city sewer. You have a septic tank. Before the
12:14
septic tank, you had the outhouse. If you lived
12:18
in the countryside, if you're going to get power
12:20
from the cities, you had to pay to have it strung
12:24
out to your property. How many of you remember
12:29
a time before cable internet was in your location?
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Okay. Because they had to pay the money to string
12:40
it out here. Now, the other thing that's kind
12:43
of interesting, and this might be before your
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time, how many of you... In smaller communities
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and in rural communities, it was not cost effective
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for the cable companies to have cable at people's
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homes. And so my wife, who grew up in the country,
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she had a large satellite dish on her parents'
13:06
property. How many of you remember the large
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satellite dishes? Okay, now, I use this as a
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metaphor to explain to you that that idea of
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stringing it out to the people in the hinterland...
13:18
also applied to electricity. Now here's the thing.
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Let's look at some of these appliances for a
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moment. Could you toast bread before the electric
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toaster? Yes, you could. Not necessarily. It's
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not necessarily a matter of long. It's a matter
13:41
of convenience. In rural houses, you had what
13:44
was called a toaster. you would put the bread
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on a piece of wrought iron that was facing towards
13:52
the fire and wearing very thick soled shoes or
13:55
boots. After the bread had been facing the fire
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well enough to be toasted, you would kick the
14:00
thing and it would flip it around and you would
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toast the other side. Now, was it quicker? No,
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not necessarily. But the fire was always going
14:08
in the home anyway, yes? Now, think about this
14:10
for a moment. Rural people use an iron to flatten
14:17
clothes. Yes. They just didn't use an electric
14:21
one. How would you get an iron to work? How does
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an iron work? You would have the iron on the
14:26
stove. The iron would become hot. And so instead
14:31
of using electrical coils, you just used a stove.
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Now what powered a stove in rural America or
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even in some parts of urban America? Coal or
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wood for rural and gas for the cities. Okay,
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so really is this iron an invention or is it
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an innovation? Innovation. Now let's keep going.
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You do have, and I want to say this is a sewing
14:57
machine, I can't tell. And so sewing machines,
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there are still sewing machines that do not require
15:02
electric power in use to this day. Waffle maker,
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same basic idea. You would heat the waffle maker
15:08
on the stove, you would use the heat of the stove,
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and instead of using electricity, you're using
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the heat from the stove. How did you light your
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homes prior to electricity? And lamps that used
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either kerosene or, in the cities, natural gas.
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So here's the thing. How many of you have ever
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gone camping with one of those kerosene lamps
15:33
that you had to pump and you know how the kerosene
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fumes go into the wick and then you take a flame
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to the wick and what color does it burn? Blue.
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Not the wick. The wick makes it white. It emits
15:48
bright white light. And so gas lamps, which were
15:52
heavily in use in cities, actually used those
15:55
wicks and those bright lights. And actually it
15:56
was kind of funny. My grandmother's house actually
16:01
still had a gas lamp in the yard to light the
16:05
way for what used to be the driveway. And so
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the wicks had become damaged and needed to be
16:13
replaced. And at first, my father and I, we were
16:16
looking at some specialty shop. And then my father
16:19
and I had this idea. I think it was his idea
16:21
because I was probably like 12 at the time. It
16:24
was to just go to the sporting goods store and
16:26
get a wick that you use for a kerosene lamp.
16:28
And we tightened it. And lo and behold, it worked.
16:31
And so, yeah, the technology existed for lights.
16:37
Here's the part that most people don't appreciate,
16:39
and I'm going to get to the idea and the analog
16:41
in just a moment. In this particular graphic,
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who's selling the product? The name's on the
16:53
bottom. Westinghouse. Westinghouse and many,
16:57
oh, by the way, what's another major appliance
17:01
manufacturer that is still in business today?
17:04
Starts with a G. General Electric. Okay, now
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they make money off their appliances. Originally,
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they made the appliances to create a need for
17:16
people to, and I'm going to zoom back in. What's
17:20
the lady doing in the picture? plugging it in.
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They had to create appliances and they had to
17:25
sell them to make them think, you need this new
17:28
thing. Most of the things it was doing were already
17:31
done by mechanical means. And so you develop
17:34
a need for your product because they were making
17:38
a lot more money off of distribution and kilowatt
17:42
hours than they would on an appliance. Now one
17:45
of the other things that's actually kind of funny,
17:46
how many of you have ever heard the expression,
17:50
they don't make make them like they used to.
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If they made them like they used to, you wouldn't
17:55
buy anymore. How many of you can count, how many
18:01
of you have had more than one iPhone over the
18:04
course of your life? And why did you have to
18:09
get a new one? It either stopped working when
18:13
they upgraded the network or it what? Or it broke.
18:21
Well, yes, but that's largely a matter of retro.
18:23
But no, I mean, iPhones, they break. If you look
18:26
at them funny, you don't think that's a matter
18:28
of planned obsolescence? Right. But anyway. Okay,
18:38
so, actually, kind of a side analog. What's actually
18:45
kind of funny about the world of business is
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people make money off of things, but you don't
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think they're making money the way you think
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they should be making money. Let me give you
18:53
an example. How much, you know, in school districts
18:59
and at universities, there are Scantron machines,
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yes? How much do you suppose Scantron charges
19:05
the school districts for the use of their machine?
19:14
Becca, you work in the workroom. You've seen
19:16
the machine. The Scantron machine. Oh, no, you're
19:23
in the library. That's right. Who do I have that
19:25
was the office aide? Not in this class. Oh, it's
19:28
fourth. Never mind. And a few in seventh. All
19:31
right, how many of you have been to Mr. Bob's
19:33
workroom? And you've seen the Scantron machine.
19:35
And it's a fancy little primitive thing that
19:37
probably goes back to the 1960s. And it's loud
19:39
and it's percussive. And it costs the school
19:42
district all of... Nothing for the machine. They
19:47
don't make their money off the machines. They
19:51
make the money off the scantrons. The machines
19:55
are durable. Scantrons are only good for one
19:57
or two goes. You begin to see how capitalism
20:02
works. Alright, so that was kind of interesting.
20:07
I hope enlightening and a little terrifying.
20:12
You have the rise of mass culture. And in many
20:17
ways, it's in the 1920s that you truly have a
20:21
nationalized culture. So let me tell you what
20:26
I meant by that. Had we had certain nationalized
20:28
things in American life beforehand? Had we had
20:30
national markets? Yes, we've had national trade
20:35
for some time. The railroad made national markets
20:38
possible. But there's a difference between national
20:40
markets and national culture. So let me tell
20:42
you an example. So you do have movie theaters.
20:46
So now a film made in one place is distributed
20:48
to theaters throughout the United States. So
20:50
now, you know, albeit with some degree of lag,
20:54
because if you saw a film in New York, you might
20:56
not see it out in Muleshoe, Texas for another
20:58
eight months, but that's doing better than, you
21:01
know, a play in New York that you might see in
21:04
Muleshoe never. Right? But... So, 1898, you got
21:12
motion pictures started. By 1924, you have 20
21:14
,000 theaters. Actually, and again, you know,
21:19
before television was en masse, this was the
21:21
only time to see moving pictures. Now, in the
21:23
graphic, they actually have Charlie Chaplin.
21:25
Not to be confused with somebody else who had
21:28
the toothbrush mustache. Although, actually,
21:31
Charlie Chaplin did do a parody of Adolf Hitler.
21:34
I want to say it was into the 1930s. It was called
21:36
Il Dictatore. I'm sure that went over well. In
21:40
the United States, yes. I don't think it was
21:43
ever sent to Germany. Or if it was, it probably
21:45
didn't go over very well. But anyway, no, I mean,
21:47
straight up making fun of fascism. Gotta love
21:49
it. Let me get into the one that I actually think
21:58
is more interesting than movies. Oh, by the way,
22:00
at this point, movies were silent. Silent films.
22:06
So you'd have the action, and then you would
22:08
have the dialogue on screen as a... So this is
22:12
before closed captioning, and this is before
22:14
they synchronized sound. But the other thing
22:16
is, very often with the moving pictures, depending
22:18
on the movie house, sometimes they would have
22:20
a live band or they would have recorded music
22:23
that was being played in the background. So I
22:25
remember, and very often these were melodramatic,
22:28
either piano pieces or whatnot. Or they would
22:31
just hire a pianist to play some type of musical
22:35
accompaniment to go with it. Yes? Didn't they
22:37
actually want to add those actors? Like, act
22:40
out the action part? Because nowadays they can
22:43
fake... Oh, they can CG stuff now. Yeah. Well,
22:47
I mean, and in film, and especially film at this
22:50
level, before high def, you could get away with
22:51
more. I mean, it's kind of like, you know, if
22:53
you watch a film from the 1980s, you don't see
22:55
the strings from the Muppets. But, okay, what
22:59
they would do is they would shoot the recording.
23:01
In other words, the actors are doing the acting
23:04
as if they have an audience. So you're even seeing
23:08
their mouths move as they're doing the lines,
23:10
but there's no sound to go with it. So then the
23:12
lines are taken from the script and shown on
23:14
the screen. And you've got a musical accompaniment
23:19
in the background, but very often that was provided
23:21
by the theater, not by the film producers. Now,
23:26
the part that I find kind of interesting, so
23:28
here you have pictures without sound, and then
23:31
you also have the rise of radio, which is sound
23:35
without pictures. Now, I want you to appreciate
23:40
something, and this goes back to something that
23:45
probably predominates the course or predominates
23:47
my paradigm. Language. How does radio change
23:55
language? Now think about this for a moment.
24:00
Radio is your first national... media outlet
24:07
of sound. Now, had there been other national
24:12
media outlets, what's the other national media
24:14
outlet before radio? Newspapers that rely on
24:19
what technology? Morse code telegraph. So you
24:27
have, in the era of the national newspapers,
24:30
you have the newswire services. You have the
24:34
telegraph wires. So you have the AP who is actually
24:38
providing a national news source. The AP, in
24:42
this case, I'm not talking about advanced placement
24:43
that our friends on the other side are taking.
24:45
I'm talking about the Associated Press. The Associated
24:48
Press was a newswire service. So you would have
24:51
reporters all throughout the country. They would
24:52
come to the telegraph stations and they would
24:54
telegraph wires. So you could actually find out,
24:56
oh, oh my God, there's a fire in San Francisco.
25:00
The, you know, telegraph operator in San Francisco
25:02
would send the message. It would go across the
25:04
telegraph line that was paralleling the railroad
25:07
line and it would get there before the train
25:09
did. And so it would then be in a Chicago paper,
25:14
a Fort Worth paper, stuff like that. And so you
25:16
do have national news, but what type of news
25:18
is telegraph? What type of information, what
25:21
type of language is telegraph? It's a text message.
25:35
now think about this for a moment so you open
25:42
up your newspaper and you find out there's a
25:47
fire in San Francisco fire in San Francisco let's
25:53
just go with the San Francisco fire And you would
25:58
read about it in your paper. And who might you
26:02
talk to about it? Your neighbors. And so let's
26:06
say you're from New York, and you want to talk
26:09
to your friend about the fire you read about
26:11
in the newspaper out in San Francisco. What does
26:16
that do to your language? Makes it slightly different.
26:22
Okay, as opposed to, let's suppose you're in
26:24
Georgia. Did you hear about the fire down in
26:28
San Francisco? Now let's suppose that you're
26:32
in Alabama. Did you hear about the fire down
26:37
in San Francisco? Or let's suppose you're in
26:39
Texas. Did you all hear about the fire down in
26:42
San Francisco? Now, in and of itself, each of
26:47
these dialects is comprehensible, but what happens
26:51
when you have people separated from one another
26:55
for too long of a time and they do not share
26:58
a spoken language? Accentuation becomes a separate
27:05
language. Thus, we have the difference between
27:09
English and English. Between a hostile and a
27:16
hostile. To the point whether you ride in the
27:22
elevator or you take the lift. The only thing,
27:28
and so also if you think about it, it is that
27:31
separation of space and of time which makes the
27:35
difference between Spanish, Italian, and French.
27:37
Although nobody understands the French. I know,
27:45
I'm making fun of the fact that I have never
27:47
seen a language with so many extra letters. Like,
27:51
oh and ooh. Très bien. Anyway, but that has not
28:04
happened here. Even though the continental United
28:08
States... Texas is five times the size of Germany,
28:13
and even inside Germany you have different dialects
28:16
of German that are almost incomprehensible. You
28:18
get the idea. Why don't we have the diversification
28:22
of the English language in the American continent?
28:25
We have it with Spanish. You take a person from
28:28
Mexico, put them in a room with a person from
28:30
Cuba, put them in a room with a person from Colombia,
28:32
and you put them in a room with a person from
28:34
Spain. They would need to talk to each other
28:36
in English just to understand each other. They
28:38
have that in Arabic. You put a Syrian, a Saudi,
28:42
and an Iraqi in the same room, they would have
28:51
to talk to each other in French. But we don't
28:54
have that because at this point in American history,
28:58
you have radio. How do you know you are speaking
29:01
English correctly? Because you sound like the
29:05
man on the radio. Because you sound like the
29:10
man on the TV. And so now it's not, did y 'all
29:15
hear about the fire down in San Francisco? It's
29:17
in today's news, we have a fire reported in downtown
29:20
San Francisco. You get the idea. Radio nationalizes
29:26
culture. It also nationalizes language. And so
29:30
you have the transmission on a national scale
29:32
of music, of political speech, of news, and to
29:37
a lesser extent of weather. Because weather is
29:41
not national. What is weather? Regional. Now,
29:46
you did actually have weather reports going as
29:48
far back as newspapers. Because what does the
29:52
telegraph give you the ability to do? Let someone
29:56
know what's coming. Yes. You now have the ability
29:58
to move information faster than the storm. Whereas
30:01
previously, if you had to send a runner or a
30:04
messenger to say, hi, there's a storm out there.
30:06
First, the guy had to go through the storm and
30:08
maybe get ahead of it. And again, horses aren't
30:10
that good, right? Anyway. Okay. U .S. also takes
30:15
to the air. Of course, 1903, you have the Wright
30:18
Brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk. 1925, the U .S.
30:21
government actually begins subsidizing air transportation.
30:25
But we're not talking about the transportation
30:27
of humans. Where does the United States get off
30:32
subsidizing aircraft? Under what express power
30:37
of Congress? And this is kind of funny. Jocelyn,
30:41
you have a guess. What is subsidizing? Giving
30:44
money to promote the development of. Zach? The
30:48
implied powers. The implied powers, but you still
30:50
have to tie it to something that the government
30:52
does regularly. I mean, for a constitution written
30:55
in the 1780s, where do you possibly imagine that
30:59
Congress has the authority to subsidize aircraft?
31:04
Taxes. Well, that's where the money comes from.
31:08
It's very funny and it's not the military because
31:11
the US is out of the war. It's the last place
31:16
that you ever think to look if you want to move
31:19
money or you want to move product. How do you
31:22
move products in these United States? You sometimes
31:24
have to take a stamp and mail it. Who's in charge
31:30
of the postal system? Government of the United
31:33
States. So the first idea of subsidizing aircraft.
31:37
was airmail. Now, don't be so upset. The government
31:44
spent a buttload of money on naval exploration
31:47
in the name of international mail. And they expect
31:52
the post office to be profitable now. Come on,
31:55
the post office hasn't been profitable since
31:57
the days of Ben Franklin. Alright. 1927, Lindbergh
32:03
crosses the Atlantic Ocean flying all by himself.
32:07
Now, a couple of things I want you to keep in
32:09
mind. How did you cross the Atlantic Ocean prior
32:13
to aircraft? Ship. Not boat. Ship. If you tried
32:22
doing it in a boat, your arms were going to be
32:23
sore really fast. Ships on the sea lane, yes?
32:27
How long did it take? Even with screw propellers.
32:34
Even with gas turbine engines. Even with metal
32:37
hold ships. It took weeks. Now, this guy did
32:43
it in less than two days. Flying solo, by the
32:46
way. Very tired. Very caffeinated. And I'm hoping
32:48
he had some way of taking care of his corporal
32:50
needs while he was in the air. I'm sure he did.
32:54
It's not like... Anyway. Kind of another thing
32:57
I want you to keep in mind. Okay, think about
33:01
this for a moment. When you're navigating on
33:04
the high seas, what do you rely on? The stars.
33:09
And math. You know, I know I am here. I know
33:15
I am going in this direction for this period
33:17
of time. I now know I am here. And, of course,
33:20
with the ships, they would actually plot their
33:22
speed by dropping a rope and seeing how long
33:24
it would take them to go. That's why they called
33:26
them knots. Seriously, y 'all didn't catch that
33:30
one in world history? Anyway, so here's Lindbergh.
33:35
How do pilots know where they were before satellite
33:39
and GPS? Math, but also one other thing, and
33:46
there are still holdovers from this. How many
33:48
of you have ever flown commercial? How many of
33:51
you, you look out the window as your plane's
33:53
about to land, and what do you see besides the
33:55
airport usually painted on one of the buildings,
33:59
one of the hangars? Welcome to what? Welcome
34:06
to, and it lists the town name or the airport
34:08
name or whatever. That's not to make you feel
34:10
welcome. That's so when the early pilots were
34:15
actually using landmarks to figure out where
34:17
they were. They knew, oh, I'm in Tulsa. Oh, crap,
34:21
I'm supposed to be in Dallas. No, but you get
34:24
the idea. What do you not have over the Atlantic?
34:30
You have no landmarks. So literally, this guy
34:34
is taking off from Paris, or sorry, taking off
34:37
from New York, lands in Paris, based on his own
34:39
mathematical skills, flying the instruments all
34:43
by himself. Do you get the idea of how truly
34:47
dangerous and heroic it was? Now here's the other
34:51
irony of it. How did the people back home find
34:54
out he made it? The telegraph. Because there
34:58
was an undersea cable connecting the U .S. from
35:02
New York to continental Europe. So you could
35:06
send a text message to Europe much, much faster
35:09
than you could send a man. Now, think about this
35:14
for a moment. The guy is relying entirely on
35:19
his instruments and his mathematical skills,
35:21
and if he screws up, where is he going to be?
35:24
In the ocean. I say this to a generation of humans.
35:28
Half of you never learned how to read a map.
35:30
The other half of you, in order to do math, have
35:32
to bust out with your smartphone. Think about
35:38
that for a moment. Now, he's still doing better
35:40
than the astronauts that went up into space.
35:41
Some of the course corrections for Apollo 13
35:43
had to be made with slide rules in space. And
35:45
if you screw that up, they don't even find your
35:49
body. That's why Lindbergh making the journey
35:54
across the Atlantic is so heroic. It is a feat
35:58
of physical strength, physical stamina. I mean,
36:00
the dude was in the air for more than a day.
36:02
And if he falls asleep behind the wheel... That's
36:06
the end of him. So it's math, it's concentration,
36:10
it's adventure, it's new technology, it's all
36:13
sorts of sexy heroism all rolled up into one.
36:19
So that was the allure of air travel. I mean,
36:22
think about this for a moment. You take air travel
36:24
for granted. Who flies in the air before man?
36:28
Birds. Birds and the angels. You get the idea.
36:34
Mars. 1895, first car goes for sale. By the way,
36:39
that first car, I forget if it was coal -powered
36:41
or electric. No, there were primitive cars before
36:44
the Model T that actually ran off batteries.
36:47
Model T comes out 1908, sells for $850. Now that's
36:55
1920s money. Take it and multiply it by 40, that
36:59
probably gives you a better idea. 1924. They
37:04
get the cost down to $290. Why are they trying
37:08
to drive down costs? So they can sell more. And
37:13
how are you able to drive down costs? Assembly
37:17
line, mass production, that creates an economy
37:21
of scale. Now there's one thing that was kind
37:22
of funny, that Ford insisted to drive down costs.
37:25
He said, you can buy the Model T in any color
37:28
as long as it's black. Why? It's cheaper. It's
37:33
cheaper to do them all one color than to try
37:35
and do custom paint jobs. Thus, leading to something
37:38
else that we all love in the automotive market,
37:39
the aftermarket parts. Alright. So, something
37:44
else, going back to radio for a moment. Radio
37:47
also creates, in addition to a market for news
37:50
and for music, so now you have Americans hearing
37:53
the same music, hearing the same news, you also
37:56
have them listening to the same sports. That's
38:02
Babe Ruth. He's signing baseball bats for people
38:03
who adore him at military posts all over the
38:06
United States. How would you know about a baseball
38:13
player in New York before radio? Newspaper. But
38:19
do you care that many days later? At this point,
38:22
you have the ability to listen to a baseball
38:25
game and now even a football game or a basketball
38:28
game in... Nearly real time. There's actually
38:31
about a five second delay. So the FCC guy can
38:36
hit the button in case the sports announcer says
38:38
something wrong. No, seriously. There is a delay.
38:41
There's a dude on the button. But no. And how
38:45
many of you have seen or have relatives that
38:47
can listen to a sports broadcast and you can
38:49
tell they've got it in their head? That's impressive,
38:52
isn't it? Now, I will say this. For people who
38:59
have done a sport, it's a lot easier because
39:01
they have that experience set. But anyway, okay.
39:05
So, you've got baseball, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth,
39:08
and in boxing, Jack Dempsey. Now, you have the
39:14
birth of jazz. I actually have the jazz picture
39:16
on the next slide. This is F. Scott Fitzgerald
39:18
and his book The Great Gatsby, which I'm very
39:20
sorry that people think you should read that
39:22
book. Twisting the knife a little bit. Like I
39:29
said, I'm going to leave the literature to the
39:32
literary people. But the thing that's actually
39:35
kind of interesting about jazz, what's interesting
39:36
about jazz? What was music if you were cultured?
39:41
Not improvisation. Not improvised, classical.
39:47
If you're listening to classical music, who writes
39:49
classical music? The upper class, English. Dead
39:54
white Europeans. Jazz takes its influence from
39:58
whom? Living Americans. Living African Americans.
40:03
Now again, might this fly against some people's
40:06
racial sensibilities? Especially in certain places
40:11
where people like to wear white hoods and do,
40:13
Strange and unusual thing on the weekends. Too
40:17
soon! 1865 is the Civil War! Alright. Okay. So,
40:27
here we have a revolution in human manners and
40:30
mores. So here you have Freud. So you've got
40:32
America's high culture coming off the Victorian
40:34
era that was all about sexual repression. And
40:37
now you've got Freud, who basically ties everything
40:39
to sex. And I am going to give you some spoilers
40:42
for those of you in my AP Psychology. Here, of
40:45
course, is a picture of Sigmund Freud, because
40:46
if it's not one thing, it's your mother. So Freud
40:50
posits that much of the tension in our life has
40:52
to do with subdued sexual tension in our subconscious.
40:57
And so part of what he talks about is the conflict
40:59
between the id, the ego... and the superego.
41:02
And so one of the things that he posits is not
41:04
that our lustful ideas are evil, but rather that
41:10
our lustful ideas are natural. Whereas, prior
41:14
to Freud, what did people think about people
41:17
doing dirty thoughts? That it was sin.