Silent Generation

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What does it mean to “settle down”? What is the difference between “settling down” and “committing”? Does the phrase “settling down” have negative connotations, and do those negative connotations come from men? Do men fear “settling” down more than women? How does “settling down&...

Over the course of the 19th century, the field of landscape architecture emerged as the practice of gardening became increasingly professionalized. The first person to call themselves a “landscape architect” and popularize the term in the United States remains the only landscape architect that most Americans know by name: Frederick Law Olmsted. Unbeknownst to many, his career was heavily intertwined with the English-Ame...

National Park Service Rustic, also known as “parkitecture,” was the dominant architectural style of national parks from roughly 1916 to 1942. Many early examples of the “rustic” style were commissioned by private railroad companies, such as the Fred Harvey company, in order to lure tourists out west to fledgling national parks. The style came to be characterized by harmony with the natural environment, local...

Full episode available on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SilentGeneration 

Shoegaze is a subgenre of rock and roll that first emerged in the British Isles in the late 1980s. The term was coined by Andy Ross, a British music executive, who observed shoegaze artists “shoegazing” (looking down at their feet to play with guitar pedals) during a 1991 show in London. Interest in the subgenre peaked shortly thereafter ...

Beginning in the mid-1990s, developers began building new low-density housing developments on the edge of major metropolitan areas: exurbs. These communities were even further from the city center, had even lower population densities, and were even more car dependent than typical American suburbs. Perplexingly, they leaned into their semi-rural character and became hotbeds of rightwing extremism as detailed by David Masciotra in Ex...

Prior to the rise of the automobile, streetcars were the dominant form of transportation in American cities from roughly 1900 to 1930. Realizing their economic potential, developers began building new master-planned communities along streetcar lines now known as “streetcar suburbs.” Featuring grid plans, mixed use development, and multimodal transportation, streetcar suburbs remain some of the most desirable places to l...

Full episode available on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SilentGeneration 

Although country music is often viewed as a conservative genre today, many of its early stars held progressive political views, raising the question of when and why the genre underwent a political shift. Numerous think pieces have attributed the change to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, blaming them for causing country to become “a music genre sole...

On this week’s episode of Silent Generation, Nathan is joined by Alex, an industrial engineer, to explore the enduring resonance of American manufacturing in the nation’s political and cultural landscape. The two begin with a discussion about whether they buy American-made and how different generation cohorts “vote with their dollar” through ethical consumption. They then survey the history of American manuf...

Freak Folk was a subgenre of folk music popular from the early to late 2000s that emerged after younger indie musicians took inspiration from 1960s psychedelic folk. Initially defying characterization, people started to label their music “Freak Folk” beginning in 2004 after Devendra Banhart curated a compilation CD titled The Golden Apples of the Sun that unintentionally anthologized the subgenre. Most Freak Folk artist...

Full episode available on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SilentGeneration

Frutiger Aero is a consumer aesthetic prevalent from the mid-2000s to early 2010s that can trace its roots back to operating systems like Windows Longhorn, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X. Many of the aesthetic’s motifs can be seen in the Windows Aero design language: humanist sans-serif fonts, glassy window borders, nature-inspired desktop wallpapers, a...

“Algorave” is a portmanteau of “algorithm” and “rave” that describes an electronic music event where people watch live coding performances. The term was originally coined by Alex McLean, a musician and software developer who created the live coding environment TidalCycles and its offshoot Strudel, the most popular tools used by live coders. Despite spreading internationally in the early 2010s, Al...

The Information Age is a historical period, beginning in the mid-20th century, that is characterized by an accelerated shift from analog technologies to digital ones. On this week’s episode of Silent Generation, the boys are joined by Juniper, a friend of the pod who designed an app called Atopia that coordinates hangouts between like-minded individuals. Together, the three begin by detailing the contributions of two figures ...

Full episode available on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SilentGeneration

The “Clear Craze” was a marketing fad from the late 1980s to early 2000s that led to an influx of transparent and translucent products. Consumers could suddenly purchase clear versions of electronics, beverages, mouthwash, mascara, deodorant, laundry detergent, and even gasoline. Many clear products were purported to have benefits over their op...

Those Characters From Cleveland, which first launched in 1981, was the character development division at American Greetings. Tasked with licensing existing greeting card characters like Holly Hobbie and Strawberry Shortcake into toys and cartoons, they quickly found success by launching new IPs like the Care Bears. But how did a company based in Cleveland, OH make such a large impact on children’s media during the 1980s? On t...

Soft Countriana is a consumer aesthetic that flourished from the 1970s to early 1990s that is composed of pastels, country geese, storybook creatures, and homages to the Victorian era. It describes the aesthetic that was most popular amongst “conservative grandmas in the 1980s,” though it broadly appealed to suburban women of all ages. The aesthetic was popularized by brands such as Laura Ashley, Hallmark, Paula Vaughan...

Full episode available on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SilentGeneration

For roughly seven decades from 1790 to 1855, water transportation was the dominant form of transportation in the United States. This week’s episode of Silent Generation begins with an examination of one of the most important pieces of infrastructure that enabled it to be so prosperous, the Erie Canal. Nathan and Sebastien then detail waterways that e...

In the summer of 2023, Joseph and I were having a conversation in Podlasie Club about different generational attitudes toward ultraprocessed food. We shared anecdotes about how boomers in our personal lives had little to no reservations about consuming them, while the generation above the boomers had a healthy degree of skepticism and preferred home-cooked food. Joseph uttered the phrase “reject your parents, embrace your gra...

Pictureplane, real name Travis Egedy, is a musician, artist, and fashion designer who popularized the term “witch house” in a 2009 interview with Pitchfork Magazine. In this follow up episode to Ep. 89: Witch House, Nathan and Breanna interview Pictureplane about his contributions to witch house and his involvement with early internet aesthetics as a whole. They ask him about what his Myspace page looked like, how he go...

“Rockabilly” is a portmanteau of the words “rock” and “hillbilly” that originally described a subgenre of rock and roll music in the 1950s. This week’s episode of Silent Generation focuses on the rockabilly subculture: a modern interpretation of rockabilly that combines 1950s nostalgia with alternative staples like hair dye, piercings, and tattoos. Nathan and Sebastien start out by discussi...