Silent Generation

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

“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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...