Latest / Smithsonian Magazine / 9.3.26
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
- 0:04Speaker 1: I will be reading from a special edition of Smithsonian Magazine,
- 0:10Speaker 1: America at 250, The Revolutionary Spark. As a reminder, Radio
- 0:15Speaker 1: Eye is a reading service intended for people who are
- 0:17Speaker 1: blind or have other disabilities that make it difficult to
- 0:21Speaker 1: read printed material. Please join me now for the first article.
- 0:27Speaker 1: A Map of Medical Marvels. American Doctors and Engineers Have
- 0:31Speaker 1: Extended Lifespans and Enhanced Human Health. From Head to Toe.
- 0:37Speaker 1: By Jenny Rothenberg Gritz. Magnetic Resonance, 1938. Columbia University physicist
- 0:46Speaker 1: Isidore Rabi discovered how to make atomic nuclei give off
- 0:50Speaker 1: measurable signals in a magnetic field. His work won him
- 0:54Speaker 1: a Nobel Prize. and laid the foundation for MRI scanners,
- 0:58Speaker 1: which produced detailed images of the body's internal structures without radiation. LASIK, 1989.
- 1:06Speaker 1: Iranian-American ophthalmologist Golem Payman vastly improved laser eye surgery by
- 1:15Speaker 1: operating beneath a thin flap of corneal tissue instead of
- 1:18Speaker 1: directly on the cornea's surface. His method reduced pain and
- 1:23Speaker 1: scarring while giving millions of people the gift of clear vision. Defibrillator, 1956.
- 1:32Speaker 1: After treating patients with life-threatening arrhythmias, cardiologist Paul Zoll began
- 1:38Speaker 1: working on a non-invasive method for correcting irregular heartbeats using
- 1:43Speaker 1: electronic shocks outside the chest wall. His team at Boston's
- 1:47Speaker 1: Beth Israel Hospital, which included engineer Alan Belgard and surgeon
- 1:52Speaker 1: Leona Norman-Zarsky, used the defibrillator successfully in 1956, and also
- 1:59Speaker 1: paved the way for implanted pacemakers. Cancer immunotherapy, 1996. Cancer
- 2:07Speaker 1: researcher James Allison, then at UC Berkeley, discovered that a
- 2:12Speaker 1: protein on the surface of T cells acted as a
- 2:15Speaker 1: brake on the immune system. Blocking this protein allowed cells
- 2:20Speaker 1: originating in the lymph nodes to fight cancer. In 2018,
- 2:24Speaker 1: He shared a Nobel Prize with Tasuku Honjo, who had
- 2:28Speaker 1: discovered another receptor that could be blocked for immunotherapy. Tommy
- 2:34Speaker 1: John Surgery, 1974 Frank Jobe was the orthopedic surgeon to
- 2:40Speaker 1: the Los Angeles Dodgers when pitcher Tommy John tore the
- 2:43Speaker 1: ulnar collateral ligament on the inside of his elbow. Jobe's
- 2:48Speaker 1: revolutionary technique, rebuilding a ligament out of a tendon from
- 2:52Speaker 1: another part of the body, allow John to pitch another
- 2:55Speaker 1: 14 seasons. An estimated one-third of all major league pitchers
- 3:00Speaker 1: have now undergone the surgery. Dialysis, 1960. Two scientists at
- 3:07Speaker 1: the University of Washington, Belding Scribner and Wayne Quinton, developed
- 3:12Speaker 1: a Teflon shunt that allowed doctors to hook patients up
- 3:16Speaker 1: to a dialysis machine, flushing toxins from their bodies without
- 3:20Speaker 1: damaging arteries and veins. Their invention turned kidney failure into
- 3:25Speaker 1: a manageable condition. Birth Control Pill, 1960 The first oral
- 3:33Speaker 1: contraceptive was developed by reproductive biologist Min-Chua Chang and endocrinologist
- 3:39Speaker 1: Gregory Pincus at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology and
- 3:43Speaker 1: gynecologist John Rock at Boston's Free Hospital for Women, with
- 3:48Speaker 1: extensive financial support from Catherine McCormick, an MIT-trained biologist who
- 3:53Speaker 1: had once smuggled 1,000 diaphragms from Europe to the United States.
- 3:59Speaker 1: The pill gave women a new level of control over
- 4:01Speaker 1: their own reproduction and health. LIMS, 2009 American innovations on
- 4:08Speaker 1: prosthetics go back to the Civil War, when tens of
- 4:11Speaker 1: thousands of veterans needed artificial limbs. In the early 2000s,
- 4:16Speaker 1: researchers at Johns Hopkins and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago
- 4:21Speaker 1: supported by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, developed
- 4:26Speaker 1: a fully integrated system for multi-joint brain-controlled artificial limb movement. Next,
- 4:34Speaker 1: a nation built to innovate. Objects in the Smithsonian's collections
- 4:39Speaker 1: reveal a long history of unconventional thinking. In colonial times,
- 4:44Speaker 1: a patent was a privilege only a British monarch could grant.
- 4:48Speaker 1: The founders changed all that. In the U.S. Constitution, they promised, quote,
- 4:54Speaker 1: to promote the progress of science and useful arts by
- 4:57Speaker 1: securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive
- 5:01Speaker 1: rights to their respective writings and discoveries, end quote. Ordinary
- 5:05Speaker 1: people suddenly had a much greater incentive to develop new ideas.
- 5:10Speaker 1: As Abraham Lincoln later put it, the American patent system, quote,
- 5:14Speaker 1: added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius,
- 5:17Speaker 1: end quote. Many immigrants came to the United States specifically
- 5:22Speaker 1: to develop original ideas and make names for themselves. American
- 5:26Speaker 1: incentives encouraged both collaboration and competition. Alexander Graham Bell beat
- 5:31Speaker 1: Thomas Edison to the patent office for the first telephone,
- 5:35Speaker 1: but Edison improved on the design a few years later.
- 5:38Speaker 1: The team of engineers and mathematicians that developed ENIAC, the
- 5:43Speaker 1: first general-purpose electronic computer, included men and women from a
- 5:47Speaker 1: wide range of backgrounds, Irish, Chinese, German, and Eastern European Jewish.
- 5:53Speaker 1: These objects, among the most familiar in the Smithsonian's collections,
- 5:57Speaker 1: represent the spirit of innovation and discovery that has driven
- 6:01Speaker 1: Americans for the past 250 years. First, 1803, Lewis and
- 6:07Speaker 1: Clark Expedition Compass, National Museum of American History. Although Thomas
- 6:13Speaker 1: Jefferson was a prolific inventor, He didn't personally create the
- 6:17Speaker 1: instruments Meriwether Lewis and William Clark used on their 8,000-mile journey,
- 6:22Speaker 1: but he did make sure they had the very best
- 6:25Speaker 1: tools and training before he sent them off to document
- 6:28Speaker 1: the botany, zoology, geology, climate, and ethnography within the previously
- 6:34Speaker 1: unmapped Louisiana Territory. After the journey, Clark kept the pocket
- 6:40Speaker 1: compass as a souvenir. 1851 Isaac Singer's Sewing Machine in
- 6:46Speaker 1: the National Museum of American History Until the 1830s, sewing
- 6:51Speaker 1: was a labor-intensive process that could be done only by hand.
- 6:56Speaker 1: Early sewing machines jammed easily and required constant adjustments. Singer,
- 7:01Speaker 1: the son of poor immigrants, improved on previous designs by
- 7:05Speaker 1: making the shuttle move in a straight line. His factories
- 7:09Speaker 1: turned out machines on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1876,
- 7:14Speaker 1: the year after Singer's death, the company he'd founded produced
- 7:18Speaker 1: its two-millionth sewing machine. 1876, Alexander Graham Bell's Box Telephone,
- 7:26Speaker 1: National Museum of American History. On November 26, 1876, Bell
- 7:33Speaker 1: used this device to place a call from Boston to
- 7:36Speaker 1: his assistant 18 miles away in Salem. The round iron
- 7:40Speaker 1: diaphragm vibrated when a person spoke, and magnets transmitted those
- 7:45Speaker 1: vibrations along a wire to the diaphragm of the receiving phone.
- 7:49Speaker 1: The resulting sound was audible, though weak. Carbon microphones, which
- 7:54Speaker 1: Edison patented in 1877, produced a much clearer signal. 1879
- 8:02Speaker 1: Thomas Edison's Lightbulb National Museum of American History Edison's laboratory
- 8:08Speaker 1: in Menlo Park, New Jersey, publicly unveiled the bulb on
- 8:13Speaker 1: New Year's Eve of 1879. The carbon filament inside a
- 8:17Speaker 1: vacuum-sealed glass orb could do something novel, generate light without
- 8:22Speaker 1: burning up in the process. The team also developed the
- 8:25Speaker 1: first grid of electrical wiring, switches, and generators that could
- 8:29Speaker 1: support artificial lighting in homes. 1889, Overman Victoria Bicycle. National
- 8:38Speaker 1: Museum of American History. A late 19th century magazine ad
- 8:43Speaker 1: for the Overman Victoria called it, quote, a model of lightness, grace, strength,
- 8:47Speaker 1: and easy-running qualities, a fit mount for American women, end quote.
- 8:53Speaker 1: In an era of ample skirts, earlier high-wheeled bicycles were
- 8:57Speaker 1: virtually impossible for women to ride. The Overman Victoria, with
- 9:02Speaker 1: its dropped frame and easy-to-mount tilting saddle, gave women the
- 9:05Speaker 1: freedom to travel independently, through the city and the countryside. 1900,
- 9:12Speaker 1: Kodak Brownie Box Camera, National Museum of American History. The
- 9:17Speaker 1: Brownie Box Camera was a simple cardboard cube with a
- 9:21Speaker 1: lens that became popular among children. It cost $ 1, equivalent
- 9:26Speaker 1: to just under $ 40 today. In 1912, 19-year-old Bernice Palmer
- 9:28Speaker 1: used the Brownie that's in the museum, to photograph the
- 9:36Speaker 1: Titanic catastrophe from another boat. In 1986, when she was 93,
- 9:42Speaker 1: she donated her camera to the Smithsonian. 1903, the Wright
- 9:48Speaker 1: Brothers plane, National Air and Space Museum. When Wilbur and
- 9:53Speaker 1: Orville Wright began work on their plane in 1899, they
- 9:56Speaker 1: wrote to the Smithsonian to ask for research materials. With
- 10:01Speaker 1: the help of those books and journals, they designed wings
- 10:04Speaker 1: and a balancing system, which they tested in kites and gliders.
- 10:09Speaker 1: They demonstrated their first successful engine-powered plane in 1903 on
- 10:14Speaker 1: the beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. That flyer is
- 10:17Speaker 1: now in the Smithsonian's collection, along with the 1909 plane
- 10:22Speaker 1: the brothers designed for the U.S. military. 1909 Bakelizer Plastic
- 10:30Speaker 1: Maker National Museum of American History Belgian immigrant Leo Bakeland
- 10:36Speaker 1: dreamed up the first device for manufacturing commercially viable synthetic plastic. Previously,
- 10:43Speaker 1: plastic was made from cotton or wood pulp and used
- 10:46Speaker 1: in place of ivory for objects like buttons. The Bakelizer
- 10:51Speaker 1: used phenol and formaldehyde to make a more durable material
- 10:55Speaker 1: that was easier to mold and far more resistant to
- 10:58Speaker 1: heat and electricity. Bakelite quickly became essential in electronics. 1913,
- 11:06Speaker 1: Henry Ford's Model T Touring Car, National Museum of American History.
- 11:12Speaker 1: The car Henry Ford unveiled in 1908 improved on earlier
- 11:16Speaker 1: models with a stronger, lighter frame, a better suspension system,
- 11:20Speaker 1: and more horsepower. At first, it was a luxury for
- 11:24Speaker 1: the wealthy. But over the years, Ford's assembly line made
- 11:28Speaker 1: 15 million Model Ts available to Americans, transforming the way
- 11:32Speaker 1: middle class traveled. The car in the Smithsonian collection, a
- 11:37Speaker 1: 1913 model, belonged to Harvey W. Locke, a camera parts inventor.
- 11:42Speaker 1: 1946 ENIAC Computer National Museum of American History. Engineers at
- 11:50Speaker 1: the University of Pennsylvania began working on the electronic numerical
- 11:55Speaker 1: integrator and computer, or ENIAC, in the 1940s. This first
- 12:01Speaker 1: advanced number computing machine contained around 18,000 vacuum tubes and
- 12:06Speaker 1: thousands of resistors, capacitors, and crystal diodes. In 1945, an
- 12:13Speaker 1: all-woman team of mathematicians programmed ENIAC to calculate ballistic missile paths.
- 12:18Speaker 1: The university announced the machine to the public in February 1946.
- 12:24Speaker 1: 1962 Telstar Satellite, National Air and Space Museum The world's
- 12:31Speaker 1: first active communications satellite, developed at Bell Laboratories, was a
- 12:36Speaker 1: symbol of hope when it launched in July 1962, beaming
- 12:39Speaker 1: simultaneous television broadcasts to viewers around the world. Pope John
- 12:46Speaker 1: XXIII said he believed the satellite would, quote, strengthen brotherhood
- 12:51Speaker 1: among peoples, end quote. Radiation from the Van Allen belt
- 12:55Speaker 1: damaged the first Telstar, but more durable successors followed. The
- 13:00Speaker 1: backup version, produced alongside the original, is part of a
- 13:05Speaker 1: permanent exhibit at the Smithsonian. And finally, 1972. Odyssey Video Game,
- 13:13Speaker 1: National Museum of American History. Five years before Atari released
- 13:19Speaker 1: its home console, Magnavox introduced the Odyssey, the first gaming
- 13:24Speaker 1: console designed for a television. Compared with Atari's joystick, the
- 13:29Speaker 1: Odyssey's controller was more cumbersome, with two dials, one to
- 13:33Speaker 1: move horizontally and the other vertically. The console came with
- 13:37Speaker 1: a physical game board and Monopoly-style paper money. Sales were modest,
- 13:42Speaker 1: but the concept of home video games would transform the world.
- 13:48Speaker 1: And that previous article was by Jenny Rothenberg Gritz. Next.
- 13:54Speaker 1: They were just having a back-to-school party in an apartment
- 13:57Speaker 1: rec room. Little did they know they were creating hip-hop.
- 14:01Speaker 1: The music genre that became a global sensation started with
- 14:04Speaker 1: some creative teens just getting together and riffing rhymes to
- 14:08Speaker 1: DJ Kool Herc's curated beats. by Kim Osorio. When 18-year-old
- 14:14Speaker 1: DJ Clive Campbell decided to provide music for a back-to-school
- 14:19Speaker 1: jam in the rec room of his Bronx apartment building
- 14:22Speaker 1: in August 1973, he introduced his guests to something new.
- 14:27Speaker 1: Instead of allowing songs to play linearly as recorded, he
- 14:32Speaker 1: used two turntables to isolate and loop the breaks, the
- 14:35Speaker 1: instrumental measures, often in the elongating the drumbeats that brought
- 14:42Speaker 1: dancers to the floor. Without singers vocalizing over the music,
- 14:47Speaker 1: MCs took to the microphones, delivering clear rhymes, beatboxing, and
- 14:52Speaker 1: shouting out call-and-response verses to keep the party going. Jamaican-born Campbell,
- 14:57Speaker 1: better known as DJ Kool Herc, had inadvertently created hip-hop.
- 15:02Speaker 1: At that party, the five elements of hip-hop culture all
- 15:06Speaker 1: came together, says Emmett G. Price III, Dean of Africana
- 15:10Speaker 1: Studies at Berklee College of Music. Along with the rap, dance, breaking,
- 15:16Speaker 1: and the looping, merry-go-round style of spinning records, there was art, graffiti,
- 15:22Speaker 1: and fashion, streetwear. Teens representing different neighborhoods often fused the two,
- 15:28Speaker 1: explains Price, by spray-painting insignia on their jean jackets. Adolescents
- 15:33Speaker 1: who couldn't get into 21-and-up nightclubs were drawn to Campbell's parties.
- 15:39Speaker 1: It's a substantially younger crowd, says Chuck D., of the
- 15:42Speaker 1: Grammy-nominated 1980s rap group Public Enemy. He's playing records for
- 15:47Speaker 1: the kids. Price says that the youth, quote, took the
- 15:50Speaker 1: soundtrack of their ancestors and remixed and remastered it. Listen
- 15:55Speaker 1: to hip-hop and you end up learning about funk, soul, jazz, blues,
- 15:59Speaker 1: and spirituals. Hip-hop may borrow from earlier American music forms,
- 16:05Speaker 1: but what makes it unique, according to Price, is its innovators.
- 16:09Speaker 1: the teenagers of 1970s New York City, mostly marginalized black
- 16:13Speaker 1: youth who, until then, had no collective voice. Although genres
- 16:18Speaker 1: like rock and roll had a primarily teenage fan base,
- 16:22Speaker 1: the artists were typically adults. Hip-hop culture was created and
- 16:26Speaker 1: defined by young people, Price says, and not necessarily by
- 16:30Speaker 1: the industry or by historians and music journalists. By the mid-80s,
- 16:35Speaker 1: corporate America was had begun to recognize hip-hop's financial potential.
- 16:40Speaker 1: Breakdancers performed at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles,
- 16:45Speaker 1: and Hollywood released films like Beat Street and Crush Groove,
- 16:49Speaker 1: starring a teenage LL Cool J, Doug E. Fresh, and
- 16:53Speaker 1: other budding young artists bringing the culture into the mainstream. Today,
- 16:58Speaker 1: hip-hop is a $ 15 billion industry in the United States
- 17:01Speaker 1: and a global phenomenon. Graffiti exhibitions can be found in
- 17:05Speaker 1: Benin and Singapore, and streetwear is celebrated on runways in
- 17:09Speaker 1: Paris and Milan. The music is everywhere. Campbell unleashed it
- 17:14Speaker 1: all in that Bronx rec room. Herc was the innovator,
- 17:17Speaker 1: Price says. Rarely do young people get the credit for
- 17:21Speaker 1: changing the global economy. To think about their impact and
- 17:24Speaker 1: influence and what they created then, that's phenomenal. And with
- 17:29Speaker 1: this article, did you know? Holding on to hip-hop culture.
- 17:34Speaker 1: In August 2022, Christie's auctioned more of the 200 of
- 17:38Speaker 1: Clive Campbell's belongings, including his six-foot-tall custom speakers, turntables, classic
- 17:44Speaker 1: vinyl records, disco balls, and other memorabilia, earning more than $ 850, 000.
- 17:49Speaker 1: The Smithsonian's collection of hip-hop-related items, primarily on exhibit in
- 17:57Speaker 1: the National Museum of African American History and Culture, includes
- 18:01Speaker 1: a clock worn by Flava Flav of Grammy-winning rap group
- 18:04Speaker 1: Public Enemy, a suit worn by flamboyant West Coast artist
- 18:08Speaker 1: MC Hammer, and a microphone used by Rakim, a Grammy
- 18:12Speaker 1: Hall of Fame lyricist. In 2010, the birthplace of hip-hop,
- 18:16Speaker 1: 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, was saved from potential
- 18:20Speaker 1: sale by a $ 5. 6 million loan from the City of
- 18:25Speaker 1: New York's New Housing Marketplace Plan. Next. The Queen of
- 18:30Speaker 1: Soap Operas started off by telling stories about the drama
- 18:33Speaker 1: she was missing in her own life. Erna Phillips was
- 18:37Speaker 1: a radio voice actor in Chicago when she was asked
- 18:40Speaker 1: to create a serialized program. From that, she created a
- 18:44Speaker 1: legacy that includes Guiding Light and As the World Turns
- 18:48Speaker 1: by Meredith Blake. When Erna Phillips was working as a
- 18:53Speaker 1: voice actor in Chicago's WGN radio station in 1930, she
- 18:57Speaker 1: Her boss asked her to develop a drama about a
- 19:01Speaker 1: mother and her adult daughter. Phillips, a former schoolteacher, responded
- 19:05Speaker 1: with Painted Dreams, a 15-minute daily series about an Irish-American
- 19:10Speaker 1: widow named Mother Moynihan, voiced by Phillips, and her unmarried daughter, Irene.
- 19:16Speaker 1: All the things I wanted as a young person I
- 19:18Speaker 1: gave to Mother Moynihan's daughter. I didn't have men in
- 19:21Speaker 1: my life, so I gave Irene men, she told Saturday
- 19:25Speaker 1: Evening Post in 1960. Phillips played a key role in
- 19:29Speaker 1: pioneering these scripted serials with their melodramatic, open-ended stories about
- 19:34Speaker 1: romance and domestic life. Sponsored by companies like Procter & Gamble,
- 19:39Speaker 1: P & G, that were eager to sell detergents and
- 19:42Speaker 1: other household products to a captive audience of homemakers, the
- 19:46Speaker 1: shows soon took on a frothy moniker, soap operas. Painted
- 19:50Speaker 1: Dreams was not the first radio serial, but Phillips' Guiding Light,
- 19:55Speaker 1: which debuted in 1937, was the first soap to successfully
- 19:59Speaker 1: transition to TV. Over the next four decades, Phillips earned
- 20:04Speaker 1: her crown as the Queen of the Soaps, creating or
- 20:07Speaker 1: co-creating more than a dozen daytime dramas, including the long-running
- 20:11Speaker 1: As the World Turns and Another World. Her guiding light
- 20:15Speaker 1: aired on TV for 57 years, longer than any other
- 20:20Speaker 1: soap opera. Phillips established a blueprint that countless soaps would follow,
- 20:25Speaker 1: crafting multi-generational, small-town sagas that spoke to the hopes and
- 20:29Speaker 1: dreams of average women. She helped create the format and
- 20:33Speaker 1: design of the productions— She understood the languid rhythm of
- 20:37Speaker 1: daily storytelling, how to dole out cliffhangers, and construct narratives
- 20:42Speaker 1: that could be sustained indefinitely without resolution. Phillips was astonishingly prolific,
- 20:48Speaker 1: working on as many as six serials at once, and
- 20:52Speaker 1: from her Chicago apartment, dictating two million to three million
- 20:56Speaker 1: words a year to her trusted secretary, Rose Cooperman. She
- 21:00Speaker 1: also trained a generation of daytime auteurs, including Agnes Nixon,
- 21:05Speaker 1: All My Children, and William J. Bell, The Young and
- 21:09Speaker 1: the Restless. While some of Phillips' characters lived in a
- 21:12Speaker 1: world she only dreamed of, many storylines were inspired by
- 21:16Speaker 1: her real life, which was marked by hardship. She was
- 21:20Speaker 1: the youngest of ten children born to a struggling Chicago
- 21:23Speaker 1: grocer who died when Phillips was eight. Painfully shy, she
- 21:27Speaker 1: preferred making up stories about her paper dolls to playing
- 21:31Speaker 1: with other people. I lived in a world of pretense
- 21:34Speaker 1: and make-believe, she said in the 1960 Post interview. Phillips
- 21:39Speaker 1: wanted to become an actress until a drama instructor told
- 21:42Speaker 1: her she was too short and homely for the stage.
- 21:45Speaker 1: At 19, unmarried and abandoned by her boyfriend, Phillips gave
- 21:49Speaker 1: birth to a stillborn child. Although she seemingly remained open
- 21:53Speaker 1: to marriage, telling Time that she'd gladly give up her
- 21:56Speaker 1: career if the right man came along, her broadcast empire
- 22:01Speaker 1: was her focus. the same article, described her as a
- 22:05Speaker 1: pigeon-plump spinster. Phillips never wed, but she adopted two children.
- 22:11Speaker 1: Despite attracting fans like Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and
- 22:15Speaker 1: artist Andy Warhol, who titled one of his 1964 films
- 22:19Speaker 1: Soap Opera, daytime dramas have long been dismissed as lowbrow
- 22:23Speaker 1: melodrama for bored housewives. But beyond the catfights and steamy romances,
- 22:29Speaker 1: soaps explored such taboo topics as domestic violence, eating disorders, addiction,
- 22:34Speaker 1: sexual assault, and a host of other social issues. Airing
- 22:38Speaker 1: new episodes five days a week, the programs could dive
- 22:42Speaker 1: into these subjects at greater length than the sporadic, very
- 22:45Speaker 1: special episodes devoted to the topics on primetime TV. Phillips
- 22:50Speaker 1: pioneered some of these storylines. In 1964, Another World featured
- 22:55Speaker 1: daytime TV's first story arc about abortion. Her series, Love
- 23:00Speaker 1: is a Many Splendored Thing, which premiered in 1967, included
- 23:05Speaker 1: an interracial romance that riled the censors at CBS, prompting
- 23:09Speaker 1: Phillips to leave the show. The constant creative disputes eventually
- 23:14Speaker 1: took their toll on Phillips, who gained a reputation for
- 23:17Speaker 1: being difficult. In 1973, P & G fired her from
- 23:22Speaker 1: As the World Turns over a storyline about a woman
- 23:25Speaker 1: who seduces her sister's husband. Throughout the 70s, soap operas flourished,
- 23:31Speaker 1: thanks in part to the work of Phillips' protégés, Nixon
- 23:34Speaker 1: and Bell. But Phillips, who died in 1973, never witnessed
- 23:39Speaker 1: the pinnacle of the genre she created. By the end
- 23:42Speaker 1: of the decade, more than a dozen soaps aired each
- 23:45Speaker 1: day on ABC, CBS, and NBC, which raked in millions
- 23:49Speaker 1: in ad revenue by selling what Time called sex and
- 23:52Speaker 1: suffering in the afternoon to an overwhelmingly female audience. For many,
- 23:58Speaker 1: the programs offered more than a daily dose of escapism.
- 24:01Speaker 1: They also became a cherished family tradition, with grandmothers, daughters,
- 24:06Speaker 1: and grandchildren often watching together. Daytime TV reached its undisputed
- 24:11Speaker 1: peak in 1981, when 30 million Americans tuned in to
- 24:16Speaker 1: watch Luke and Laura's wedding on General Hospital, the largest
- 24:20Speaker 1: audience ever for a daytime soap. But audiences began to
- 24:24Speaker 1: wane in the 90s as more viewers entered the workforce
- 24:27Speaker 1: and explored newer offerings on cable TVs. Many soap fans
- 24:32Speaker 1: fell out of the daily viewing habit because of the
- 24:34Speaker 1: real-life drama of the O.J. Simpson trial, which was broadcast
- 24:38Speaker 1: each weekday throughout much of 1995, pre-empting many afternoon shows.
- 24:44Speaker 1: Between 1999 and 2013, half a dozen long-running network soaps
- 24:49Speaker 1: got the axe. As of this year, only four English-language
- 24:54Speaker 1: daytime soap operas air on broadcast television. Days of Our
- 24:58Speaker 1: Lives moved to the streaming service Peacock. in 2022. Yet
- 25:03Speaker 1: since the heyday of the daytime drama, the rest of
- 25:06Speaker 1: TV has gotten sudsier. Primetime soaps like Dynasty and Dallas
- 25:11Speaker 1: created water-cooler moments. More recently, acclaimed dramas like Mad Men
- 25:16Speaker 1: and Succession have featured heavily serialized narratives about family conflict
- 25:21Speaker 1: and romantic turmoil. Meanwhile, reality shows like the Real Housewives
- 25:26Speaker 1: franchise and the Kardashians essentially function as supposedly unscripted soap operas.
- 25:33Speaker 1: Even in an era of infinite viewing choices, the daytime
- 25:36Speaker 1: soap retains a powerful appeal. Last year, CBS launched Beyond
- 25:41Speaker 1: the Gates, a drama about an affluent family navigating the
- 25:46Speaker 1: cultural and political landscape of the Washington, D.C. area. It
- 25:50Speaker 1: modernized a formula Phillips helped establish nearly a century ago,
- 25:55Speaker 1: with relatable plots and issues such as infertility and online bullying,
- 26:00Speaker 1: For today's viewers, the ability to find the humanity that
- 26:03Speaker 1: connects us is part of Philip's success. All our lives
- 26:07Speaker 1: are serial stories, she said. Each day brings a new
- 26:11Speaker 1: installment in our private soap opera, and no matter how
- 26:14Speaker 1: bad yesterday was, who could resist tuning in tomorrow to
- 26:18Speaker 1: find out what will happen next? And with this article,
- 26:24Speaker 1: fun fact, soap opera's breaking ground. Oscar winners Michael B. Jordan,
- 26:31Speaker 1: Marissa Tomei, Julianne Moore, and Leonardo DiCaprio all starred in
- 26:36Speaker 1: daytime soaps early in their careers. Phillips' The Guiding Light
- 26:42Speaker 1: is recognized as the first soap opera to bring awareness
- 26:45Speaker 1: to a medical condition, introducing a uterine cancer storyline in 1962.
- 26:50Speaker 1: And in 1984, The Young and the Restless became the
- 26:54Speaker 1: first show to film a real-life facelift when actress Jean
- 27:01Speaker 1: Cooper allowed her procedure to be written into the plot.
- 27:05Speaker 1: And finally, accompanying our previous article about Clarence Birdseye, who
- 27:11Speaker 1: learned the trick to freezing food in a palatable way,
- 27:15Speaker 1: did you know more benefits of frozen fare? First, the
- 27:20Speaker 1: average family of four wastes about $ 1, 500 in food annually.
- 27:25Speaker 1: a problem experts say is lessened when consumers choose frozen options. Second,
- 27:32Speaker 1: rapid freezing doesn't just preserve the texture and flavor of foods,
- 27:36Speaker 1: it locks in nutrients at their highest level. And third,
- 27:41Speaker 1: pre-washed and pre-cut frozen foods also reduce prep time for
- 27:45Speaker 1: busy home chefs. This concludes readings from the Smithsonian Magazine
- 27:51Speaker 1: for today. Your reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank you
- 27:54Speaker 1: for listening, and have a great day.