Part 06: The George Bailey Generation

The much-admired George Bailey was not a stand-out but an almost perfect representative of his Greatest Generation, as historians argue in this episode that spotlights the relationship of parents and children and the yin and yang of eras, seeking a culprit to who upside-down’d America from the ethos of It's a Wonderful Life.  Those of George’s generation, born between 1901 and ‘27, and called the Greatest, begrudgingly set aside their more selfish ambitions to ultimately become the most progressive in history, leaving their children a far better world.  How did their parents’ generation, like George’s father, inspire them?  And how, by contrast, did the generation of George’s daughter Zuzu – the Baby Boomers – come to reverse it all?  And a new generation shows signs of being Bailey-like.  SaveGeorgeBailey.com

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
George Bailey seems to be separate from history if I
think about it, I mean, he could have been at
any time you might say, you know, I was like
those guys. They are all sort of everyman and every man,
but a very special everyman. And indeed that's who he is.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
In this instance, you're hearing Harvey k an historian and
professor emeritus of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University
of Wisconsin Green Bay.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
In the nineties, there was this Greatest Generation fascination.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Well, I came here on the fortieth anniversary and began
to meet the veterans and realized we had not heard
their stories once the war ended.

Speaker 4 (00:50):
Who were they? What do they become?

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Brokekaw the film Saving Private Ryan, and it was huge,
and I thought, well, I had no trouble the idea
that they had beaten fascism. But I thought, on the
right they were trying to hijack the whole thing as
really hype the patriotism and sacrifices of the generation, which
were all true, but they were leaving out entirely just

(01:14):
how progressive the generation was with FDR as their leader.
But I said, this is bullshit, And I knew what
my father had fought for. So I had decided that
it was important for me to talk about the Four
Freedoms as the ethos of a generation for all of
its faults and films. And when I told my editor this,

(01:36):
he said, somewhere I hear. I actually hung his letter
up somewhere because it was so he y'all let it here. Okay,
My editor said, you know, I keep thinking four Freedoms,
greatest generation American values, how we seem proudest and most

(01:58):
nostalgic for freedoms generation and values we've seemingly abandoned, if
not largely undervalued. And then the best sendce was how
the fuck did that happen? And that became our city?
That either way became an underlying scene to the book,
What the fuck happened?

Speaker 4 (02:17):
Buffalo gals?

Speaker 5 (02:18):
Can't you come out tonight?

Speaker 4 (02:20):
Can't you come out tonight? Can't you come out tonight?

Speaker 6 (02:23):
Buffalo girls?

Speaker 5 (02:24):
Can't you come out tonight?

Speaker 7 (02:28):
By the line, oh Jo, Josh, yeah, Christmas Eve, you
make me.

Speaker 4 (02:46):
Fr course decided what you want to do when you
get out of college?

Speaker 8 (03:02):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (03:02):
Well, you know what I've always talked about, Bill things, design,
new buildings, plan modern shutting, all that stuff on Chocula
after that first minion before you think I'll have that cash.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
As you watch Wonderful Life each year, does it ever
strike you how different the values of people you see
on the screen seen from the Americans who surround you today. Yes,
it's a movie, but it was based on something real.
What became of so many people who were once like
George Bailey? And what kind of people have replaced them?

(03:37):
What were the catalysts for this change? Who deserves the
credit or the blame, and what has been the effect.
It's a story of parents and children, of transformation of generations.

Speaker 9 (03:52):
This is a pickle, George, this is a pickw What happened?

Speaker 2 (03:54):
How did start?

Speaker 4 (03:55):
Well?

Speaker 9 (03:55):
How does the thing like this ever start? All I
know is the bank called alone Man about an hour ago.
I handle all cash, all of every cent of it,
and still was less than like, oh oh holy. And
then I got scared, was and closed the doors.

Speaker 4 (04:10):
The whole town's gone crazy.

Speaker 9 (04:12):
Yeah, hello, George, it's Potter.

Speaker 10 (04:15):
That's the nature of that generation. Right, They are facing
some dark, dark circumstances. From nineteen twenty nine to nineteen
forty five, right, that is an incredible amount of time.
That's sixteen years of NonStop sacrifice, work, despair, crushed hopes,

(04:39):
you know, the lack of the economic despair, the rise
of fascism, the draft, the war, the you know, all
of that just grinds on for so long it is
beyond imagination. I think for us today to think about
the kind of crucible that that generation was forged in.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
This is Jefferson Cowie, historian, author, and film buff.

Speaker 10 (05:06):
You know, this is a dark ass movie. You can
see people flipping be either direction, right, They're in struggles
with their very nature of their souls.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Got me back, I.

Speaker 10 (05:18):
Don't care what happens to me.

Speaker 5 (05:20):
Get me back to my wife and kids every times.

Speaker 4 (05:23):
Please please, I.

Speaker 5 (05:27):
Want to live again.

Speaker 11 (05:29):
I want to live again.

Speaker 4 (05:32):
I wouldn't live again. Please God, let me live again.

Speaker 10 (05:43):
The movie for Me is an historian captures both those
vectors of a kind of unwanted world. And it's the
George Baileys of the world holding hands with each other
that are sort of resisting, trying to rebuild from one
and resisting another. And you know, bringing immigrants in and

(06:06):
accepting them as part of the family of uh in
this in this small town. And and then you know,
you got, you know, Potter basically just trying to negatively
make a buck. And that's the part what really pulls
on my heart strings. It's it's it's a community coming
together to resist becoming Pottersville.

Speaker 11 (06:28):
Think about the Pottersville as being what America would have
been like had it not been for the GI generation.
I mean, that was their worst fear, right, of what
America would end up being.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
Neil Howe, historian and author, specializes in examining different generations
and how they drive culture. Some of his tougher critics
have accused his approach to analyzing history as being pseudo science,
but from us storytelling point of view, it's rather useful.
He's also the guy who coined the term millennials, but

(07:07):
don't hold that against him.

Speaker 11 (07:08):
And we look at these very powerful generations what we
call in our terminology, what we call the hero versus
the profit archetype, George Bailey's generation being the hero archetype obviously,
and the Boomers who came after them, or Peter Bailey's
generation who came before them, being more of the profit archetype,

(07:31):
much more comfortable with symbols, values and looking at the
anterior finding out you know, how the new world ought
to be oriented, which direction it should go, rather than
really focusing on how you can actually build a world
like that. And by nineteen twenty nine, in the Great
Crash and going into the nineteen thirties and the New Deal,

(07:53):
this became the new older generation, right, they were enterating
elderhood now along with FDR and and you know Einstein
and George Marshall. And we think about the so called
wise old Man of World War Two that was the crew,
and that would have been Peter Bailey, right, these were
these were the old people who had a tremendous sense

(08:15):
of decency and morality about what they were doing.

Speaker 12 (08:18):
Do you put any real pressure on these people used
to pay those mortgages?

Speaker 4 (08:22):
Times are bad, mister Potter. A lot of these people
are out of way. But I can't do that.

Speaker 8 (08:27):
These families have children, my children, but there's somebody's children.

Speaker 4 (08:31):
Mister Potter.

Speaker 12 (08:32):
Are you running a business or a charity?

Speaker 4 (08:34):
Ward?

Speaker 8 (08:34):
Well, I'm not with my my name, mister Potter. What
makes you such a hardskold character? You have no family,
no children. You can't begin to spend all the money
you've got.

Speaker 12 (08:43):
Oh I suppose I should give it to miserable failures
like you and then Indian brother yours to spend for men.

Speaker 4 (08:49):
He's not saying.

Speaker 13 (08:51):
She can't say that about my father.

Speaker 14 (08:53):
You're not.

Speaker 6 (08:54):
You're the biggest man in town.

Speaker 11 (08:55):
Run along beard him. They really spend a lot of
time instilling high idealism in their kids, right, and making
sure that their kids lived depth to these high ideals. Interestingly,
the GI generation during the nineteen thirties, you know, they're
very close to their parents.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Neil calls them the GI Generation Americans born between nineteen
oh one and nineteen twenty seven. You probably know them
by their more famous name, the Greatest Generation.

Speaker 11 (09:26):
One of the reasons they're so close to their parents
is because during the Great Depression, they were living with
their parents well into their twenties and thirties because there
weren't any new homes being built in America, so the
period of multi generational living back then, they were living
together in these old, huge Victorian houses right that were built,
you know, just before the turn of the century.

Speaker 8 (09:48):
Because it just a hope with them, you wouldn't consider
coming back to the building and loan within.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
Oh not, Pop, I couldn't.

Speaker 5 (09:58):
I couldn't face being cooped up for the rest of
my life and a shabby little office.

Speaker 4 (10:04):
I'm sorry, Papa didn't mean.

Speaker 5 (10:05):
That, But it's this business and nickels and dimes and
spending all your life trying to figure out how to
save three centers, and like the pipe, I go crazy.

Speaker 8 (10:14):
I want to do something big and something important, you know, George.

Speaker 4 (10:18):
Yes, yes, you're right, son. You see what I mean,
don't you?

Speaker 14 (10:22):
Pop?

Speaker 8 (10:23):
This town is no place for any man unless he's
willing to crawl to part. Now you got talentson I've
seen it. You get yourself an education and get out
of here.

Speaker 4 (10:36):
Pop. You want to shock. I think you're a great guy.

Speaker 11 (10:41):
So you had the older generation of order givers who
had the great vision, and the younger generation of builders
is saying, you know what we're gonna be the scientists
and engineers. They were exactly like George Bailey. Then when
a you're gonna build big things.

Speaker 5 (10:55):
I'm gonna build things. I'm gonna build airfields, I'm gonna
build skyscrapers one hundred stories high. I'm gonna build bridges
a mile long.

Speaker 11 (11:02):
But did g I generations full of people like that.
But when we talk about George Bailey's generation and its achievements.
It wasn't just winning World War Two. It was taking
us out of the depression. It was building you know
all of the UH, the the CCC, and you know
n w A projects. I mean the electrifying America and

(11:25):
building eventually the the the dams and the harbors, and
eventually the interstate highways, the America vaccines, the the and
and finally the generation that in midlife and entering old
age took us to the moon. It's the generation, by
the way, that that later.

Speaker 4 (11:44):
In life.

Speaker 11 (11:46):
Was responsible for defeating the Soviet Union. This is a
generation with an enormous civic imprint.

Speaker 12 (11:54):
All because a few starry eye dreamers like Peter Bailey
stir them up and fill their head with a lot
of impossible ideas.

Speaker 5 (12:03):
On how you're right when you say my father was
no business man.

Speaker 4 (12:07):
I know that.

Speaker 5 (12:07):
Why I ever started this cheap panyany building alone, I'll
never know. But he didn't save enough money to send
to Harriet a school, let alone me. But he did
help a few people get out of your slums, mister Potter,
And what's wrong with that?

Speaker 1 (12:18):
That was fabulous, line, I loved it.

Speaker 11 (12:21):
That is the most telling line in the whole fucking movie.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
The speech is unbelievably beautiful in a very direct political sense.
It's just a classic scene. Keep in mind, I worked
on Wall Street, I worked for Lloyd's Bank International, and
at a certain point I had to decide money or
do I really want to go do a PhD?

Speaker 2 (12:39):
And I chose the PhDs. Harvey Kay wrote several books
about Franklin Eleanor Roosevelt, the President over much of George
Bailey's young adulthood. Most called him FDR. It's the summer
of nineteen twenty eight when George delivers his speech in
defense of his recently departed father, convincing the board of
directors to save the building and loan, and inspiring millions

(13:03):
more like you every year thereafter thanks to the movie
Wonderful Life. Shortly after George's speech that October, FDR begins
traveling all over George's home state of New York, running
for governor. He wins, and four years later he wins again,
becoming President Roosevelt.

Speaker 5 (13:22):
Don't look now, but there's something funny going on over
there at the bank yarde I've.

Speaker 3 (13:26):
Never really seen one, but that's got all the ear
marks of being a run.

Speaker 4 (13:30):
Now we can get through this thing, all right.

Speaker 5 (13:33):
We've got to stick together, though, We've got to have
faith in each other.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
That bank run really happened in George's universe, and yours
part of a month long run during Herbert Hoover's final
days in office. Weeks later, FDR, now at the White House,
announces a bank holiday and turns to the radio to
ask Americans to have faith. More than half who are

(13:57):
holding their cash return it to the bank with in
two weeks, and the largest ever one day percentage price
increase on Wall Street follows. It's FDR, ultimately, not George,
that saves the building and loan.

Speaker 15 (14:12):
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace,
business and financial monopoly, speculations, reckless banking, class antagonism, taxonalism,
law profiteering. They had begun to consider the government of
the United States.

Speaker 6 (14:31):
As a mere appendage to their own affairs.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
Harvey sees much in George's speeches to Potter that point
to inspiration from those of FDR. You're hearing one of
them in nineteen thirty six before a crowd in New
York City's Madison Square Garden.

Speaker 6 (14:49):
And we know now that government by organized money is
not as dangerous as government by organized mop Not before

(15:13):
in all our history have these posies been tore united
against one candidate. As they stand today, they are unanimous
in the hate for me, and I welcome their hatred.

Speaker 10 (15:33):
Hollywood director Frank Capra was spotted in Washington, d C.
Said to be scouting locations for his upcoming movie.

Speaker 16 (15:40):
I think after seeing FDR in Washington, human to human,
face to face, he came away realizing that this was
a politician with this kind of rare level of conviction
and charisma that really impressed him.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
Meet Mark Harris, who became intimately familiar with the story
of Wonderful Life. Director Frank Capra while writing his book,
five came back about Franks and four other Hollywood director's
experiences in the World War. You'll hear more from Mark
in a future episode. It was during his research that

(16:22):
he learned of a trip to America's capital by Frank.
During pre production on another of his movies destined to
become a classic, also starring Jimmy Stewart, Mister Smith goes
to Washington. Frank's visit takes place two years after the
FDR speech. You just heard in nineteen thirty eight, while

(16:42):
writer Philip Van doren Stern is dreaming up the premise
of Wonderful Life. While there, he attends a press conference
inside the Oval Office. There, Frank Capra meets Franklin Roosevelt
and experiences a mysterious conversion of sorts.

Speaker 16 (17:00):
And he comes back, I mean, he's a Republican, and
I don't know that he ever voted for Roosevelt, but
he comes back from that trip to Washington deeply swayed
as much by Roosevelt's personal charisma and his rhetorical power
as by the specific idea. And I mean Roosevelt spoke

(17:26):
in really good versus evil terms that were absolutely up
Capri's alley. It was. It was a kind of thinking
about the ways that he related to very very closely.
And also he was just and this is probably the
Hollywood side of him, he was a sucker for personal magnetism.

Speaker 4 (17:50):
You know.

Speaker 16 (17:50):
He he knew, he knew what a star looked like
and what I mean, just as he understood what movies
could do to rouse a great number of people to.

Speaker 10 (18:05):
Emotion and fervor.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
While there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a
healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people.

Speaker 5 (18:22):
Are there.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
Po political and economic systems are simple.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
You're hearing FDR's State of the Union before the Congress
nineteen forty one. As Americans listen to their radios. FDR
seeks to provide some meaning for the fight against far
right wing fascists overseas that he believes they are about
to embark on, as well as the fight for the
health of working people that they had already been waiting

(18:48):
for many years. His visionary goals become known as the
Four Freedoms.

Speaker 17 (18:56):
They are.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
Equality of opportunity or you and for other jobs for
those who can work, security for those who needed, the
ending of special privilege for the few, the preservation of
civil liberties for all, the enjoyment the enjoyment of the

(19:25):
proofs of scientific problems in a wider and constantly rising
standard of living.

Speaker 1 (19:33):
Every time he gives one of these major speeches, he
feels empowered by the very folks that he is. That
he has helped empower Harvey again and when and so
he believed when he spoke in those radical terms for
freedom's economic bill of rights, that he wasn't speaking his
own mind, that he was putting into words American aspirations.

(19:56):
And in fact, when he delivered that speech, I'm convinced
he which self that he was articulating the declaration of independence,
the Gettysburg Address, you name it, and that was all.
This was the new Gettysburg Address.

Speaker 18 (20:12):
In the future days which we seek to make the cure,
we look forward the way world founded upon far essential
human freedom.

Speaker 10 (20:28):
The first.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
Is freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God
in his own way, everywhere in the world. The third
is freedom from one, which translated into world term means

(20:56):
economic understandings, which was cure to every lation, a healthy,
peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere in the world. The
thought is freedom from fearing, which translated into world term

(21:19):
means a world wide reduction of armament to such a
point and in such a thorough fashion, that no nation
will be in a position to commit an act of
physical aggression against any neighbor anywhere in the world.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
This is the introduction to the book The Fight for
the Four Freedoms. What made FDR and the Greatest Generation
truly great? We need to remember, We need to remember
what conservatives have never wanted us to remember, and what
liberals have all too often forgotten, need to remember who
we are. We need to remember that we are the

(22:03):
children and grandchildren of the men and women who rescued
the United States from economic destruction and the Great Depression,
and defended it against fascism and imperialism in the Second
World War. We need to remember that we are the
children and grandchildren of the men and women who not
only saved the nation from economic ruin and political oblivion,
but also turned it into the strongest and most prosperous

(22:26):
country on earth. And most of all, we need to
remember that we are the children and grandchildren of the
men and women who accomplished all of that in the
face of powerful conservative, reactionary, and corporate opposition.

Speaker 3 (22:39):
That is no vision.

Speaker 4 (22:42):
I'm a distant millennium.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
It is a definite basis for a pining the world
attainable in our own time and generation.

Speaker 4 (22:57):
Bills.

Speaker 8 (23:00):
Oh look at this, she's got a receding hit nineteen
fifty seven.

Speaker 10 (23:09):
Hey, arch, anything new with the strike.

Speaker 4 (23:13):
It's getting older, that's what's new.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
It's the summer of nineteen seventy four, thirty three years
since FDR gave his four freedom speech. That's about as
much time as has passed for you since Ronald Reagan
left the White House. Inside CBS Television City in Los Angeles,
the cast of the most watched television show in America,

(23:35):
All in the Family, tape their season premiere. Within months,
the newly public domain Wonderful Life will begin to be
played again and again by local stations across the country
and catch fire at.

Speaker 11 (23:48):
Least one of his things over.

Speaker 10 (23:49):
We got a job to go back to.

Speaker 11 (23:51):
Have you seen the latest unemployment figures?

Speaker 8 (23:54):
I'm looking at an unemployment figure right now.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Wait the man, I'm doing the best I can. I'm working.

Speaker 12 (24:02):
Oh yeah, gee, I forgot you got a job twenty
two dollars a week.

Speaker 4 (24:05):
You'll they're great.

Speaker 17 (24:07):
Gloria is waking shoe and your mother in law's waking
shoe between all three as you're making enough money to
keep us just a little behind.

Speaker 10 (24:17):
It's such an incredible year for this film to drop
Jefferson Cowie again.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
He believes that turn from George Bailey's ethos to the
one dominating your universe today takes place in the nineteen seventies,
and he pinpoints the year Wonderful life began to resonate
as particularly key nineteen seventy.

Speaker 11 (24:41):
Four, I shall resign the presidency.

Speaker 4 (24:44):
Affect you at noon tomorrow.

Speaker 10 (24:47):
If you think about everything that's going on. We've withdrawn
from Vietnam, Watergate has happened, Stagflation is, which is a combination,
you know, inflation and stagnant wages. Things are bad. It's
one of the worst years. It is by far, I think,

(25:07):
actually the worst year since the end of World War Two.
And for this kind of hopeful, capricorny kind of movie
to emerge makes sense.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
George Bailey is thirty eight years old during the final
moments you ever witness of his life. That movie's happy
ending events taking place Christmas Eve nineteen forty five. The
nation has just lost Stefdr a few months before, but
George has the rest of his life ahead. Nearly thirty
years later, in nineteen seventy four, it's another man on

(25:43):
your television who has become perhaps the most iconic of
George's greatest generation, Rtie Bunker.

Speaker 4 (25:50):
This goes on for another week.

Speaker 9 (25:51):
I'm gonna have to run down to the bank and
take out a second mortgage on her house.

Speaker 4 (25:55):
Today's interest rates less.

Speaker 8 (25:56):
In a high interest rate, so come down when the
inflation comes down.

Speaker 12 (26:00):
President Ford promised to bring down the inflation no matter what.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
Of course, the rest of the people in this country.

Speaker 9 (26:08):
Huge fort promised, no more secrets, no more surprises.

Speaker 10 (26:12):
What does he do?

Speaker 12 (26:13):
He turns around in partons Nixon, He's done that under
direct daughters Buddy Boy from who God.

Speaker 10 (26:23):
Archie Bunker emerges on CBS in nineteen seventy as part
of this new show All in the Family, and it
actually begins with him railing against the civil rights movement,
against the liberal preaching in the church, against all the
topical issues of the late sixties and nineteen seventies. And
he is forced to live with Mike, his meathead son

(26:45):
in law, who is trying to go to school to
be a social worker or something like that. And this
is all beyond Archie's frame of reverence because he's a
dock worker and he believes in, you know, good old
fashioned values. So essentially what America's watching in All in
the Family is the beginning of the culture wars, and
the opening riff of the theme song is all about nostalgia.

Speaker 4 (27:10):
Glenn Miller played.

Speaker 8 (27:13):
Songs not made parade us.

Speaker 4 (27:18):
Like Gosh we hadn't made those woman, mister we could user.

Speaker 18 (27:33):
Man like cyber.

Speaker 10 (27:37):
The invocation of Herbert Hoover. Obviously it's supposed to HARKing
back to an age before the New Deal. What people
like mister Potter want is to turn back the clock
on the New Deal, get back to the nineteen twenties,
before all that redistribution and regulation and stuff like that. Essentially,
before the nineteen thirties you have an era of unregulated,

(28:02):
greedy capitalism, and after you have this sort of unregulated
Arab greedy capitalism. And in between you have this fairly
robust era of shared wealth that is unlike any other
time in American history.

Speaker 11 (28:14):
And so the great disappointment of the GI generation is
that they remembered being so close to their own parents.
Neil Howe again right, just like George Bailey was so
close to his parents. They were so close to their
own parents, but they were so distant from their own kids.

Speaker 14 (28:33):
Zo Souzu, my.

Speaker 5 (28:34):
Little ginger snare Partrea for you.

Speaker 7 (28:37):
You know, we were really busy today too, And I
like it that way because when you're busy, the time
goes by really fast and before you know.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
It's time to come on This is Gloria Stivik, Artie
Bunker's daughter, played by Sally'struthers, the actor, born just seven
years after George Bailey's daughters Zuzu. As often happens when
children grow up, Gloria's relationship with her father Artie has
become complicated and we.

Speaker 19 (29:03):
Talk about something.

Speaker 20 (29:05):
What's the matter with you?

Speaker 6 (29:06):
I just don't want to talk about busy?

Speaker 10 (29:08):
That's all?

Speaker 8 (29:09):
Okay?

Speaker 4 (29:10):
Sure, daddy, What would you like to talk about anything?
Anything you want?

Speaker 9 (29:16):
I think he's right when we talk about something else.

Speaker 4 (29:18):
Yeah, control your wife.

Speaker 11 (29:22):
As extraordinary as this generation was, typically it was a
difficult generation to get along with in other respects going
into Vietnam and managing Vietnam, and they did a terrible
job of it, and they certainly did absolutely nothing to

(29:43):
inspire the young to follow them, utterly unlike the elders
of the nineteen thirties inspired the young gis. And it
led to this tremendous rift between the two, an angry
rift between these generations. So I think you would have
said that George Bailey's generation took Peter Bailey's vision and

(30:07):
actually made it work on a nationwide scale, right, And
you could say that Boomers came along and they saw that.
You know, once you look at what George Bailey's generation did,
and that was completely in place. You know by the
mid nineteen sixties, you could say that boomers kind of

(30:29):
took that and they kind of changed that. You know,
there's an inevitable almost conversation back and forth between generations
as you go along.

Speaker 10 (30:42):
So what about the boomers. They got the hope, they
got the resources, they got the money, they got the.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
Consumerism Jefferson Cowie again, and then.

Speaker 10 (30:51):
They went to college and realized they were oppressed. You know,
maybe they weren't oppressed like the people in the thirties were,
but they were were repressed in terms of their latitude
for emotional, psychic exploration, fulfillment, democracy, real democracy, not that

(31:14):
kind of vote once every four years democracy, but a
democratic culture. And that led to a search for a
sort of liberation. I think the ultimate irony of what
a lot of those people found, even though they expressed
it collectively against the war, collectively against Jim Crow, is
that it had this individualism at the core. It had
this kind of somewhat toxic individualism that melded pretty readily

(31:39):
with the free market thinking the Milton Friedman logic were
not just about new deal liberal collective economic reasoning. We
want to be free, and a lot of those Boomers
actually predicated their logic on the idea that much of
that post war structure would continue, and they got caught

(32:00):
when it didn't. But I think you can see that
kind of search for individual freedom emancipation amongst the kind
of progressive wing of the Boomers melding quite readily with
a kind of free market capitalism, and that synthesis creates
what we call the yuppie in the nineteen eighties. Apple

(32:20):
shares are just getting hammered this morning.

Speaker 20 (32:22):
Let's talk about the speed with which we are watching
this market deteriorate. We're down over sixteen percent now at
the same time has fallen about eighteen percent. The stock
market is now down twenty one percent.

Speaker 13 (32:34):
Because we now down forty three percent.

Speaker 20 (32:38):
What in the world is happening on Wall Street?

Speaker 21 (32:40):
It was the worst day on Wall Street since the
crash of nineteen eighty seven.

Speaker 22 (32:44):
This is an extraordinary period for America's economy. Over the
past few weeks, many Americans have felt anxiety about their
finances and their future. Major financial institutions have teetered on
the edge of collapse, and some have failed. As uncertainly
has grown, many banks have restricted lending, credit markets have frozen,

(33:04):
and families and businesses have found it harder to borrow money.
We're in the midst of a serious financial crisis. Our
entire economy is in danger.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
We are jumping thirty four years forward since Wonderful Life
became embraced as your movie in nineteen seventy four. The
children of George Bailey's generation are no longer young adults,
but have taken and held the reigns of power from
their greatest generation parents for a little over two decades.
Their children, the Millennials, are entering their young adulthoods, and

(33:38):
a man made crisis that will affect so many of
them appears.

Speaker 20 (33:43):
My daughter is born in two thousand and seven. You know,
so I was a young mom.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
Sarah Kenziar was born at the tail end of Generation
X and the front end of the Millennials, a young
working journalist when the Great Recession hits.

Speaker 20 (33:59):
And then we had another kid. But there was a
point in twenty fifteen where my husband had lost his job.
And you know, one of my kids is in elementary school.
The other one, I was basically taken care of her
writing on the side, doing all of this, you know,
freelance journalism basically around his nap schedule. And so you know,
my husband was working two minimum weight jobs of trying

(34:19):
to find a full time job, and thankfully he eventually did,
but we didn't have health insurance, and it was just
so hard and the feeling that like we did everything right,
you know, we really did. We did all the things
you were supposed to do. You were supposed to go
to college, you're supposed to work hard, you're supposed to
be an honest person. And it just didn't matter for us.
And at the same time this is happening, my friends
were all unemployed or just doing side hustle economies. We

(34:43):
knew no one at that point with a steady job
had a hectic day.

Speaker 5 (34:48):
Ah yeah, another big read the latter day for the bailiff.
Daddy Brow's next story. I have a new car.

Speaker 6 (34:54):
You should see it.

Speaker 4 (34:55):
I watched the matter of what our car? Isn't that
good enough for you?

Speaker 8 (34:57):
Staddy?

Speaker 20 (34:58):
When I watched It's a wonderful life? And and I
see George Bailey, you know, as a family man. Well,
trying to hold himself together, but really trying to hold
his family together, and just the feeling of like he's
not just letting himself down or his own dreams by
he's destroying his children's dreams. And that's the thing that's
unbearable for a parent, because when you become a parent,
you know, you become the secondary character in your own life,

(35:21):
like your children come first. I can deal with using
everything in my life. I need my children to be okay,
and I want them to have opportunity.

Speaker 5 (35:29):
Jenny, go on, I told you to practice and go
on play.

Speaker 21 (35:32):
Oh daddy, George, why must you told you the children?

Speaker 5 (35:40):
Why don't you?

Speaker 20 (35:44):
And she, you know, at one point, just burst into
tears and is like daddie, and you know, like she
doesn't recognize him because she doesn't recognize him. And it's
this very jarring moment, you know, I think for a child,
when you realize, you know, your your parent is the
human being, and your parent is is suffering and struggling
and you don't quite understand why. And this is one

(36:04):
of the few movies that really showcases those feelings in
such a raw and direct way. There are people that
are leading quiet lives and trying to do the right
thing and trying to take care of their families and
work hard at their jobs, and they're getting screwed over.
I think it's very common. There's still is a stigma

(36:24):
I think to expressing pain about the situation.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
And soon another man made turn of events that will
preoccupy the energies of the millennial generation for years.

Speaker 13 (36:37):
Despite nearly all national polls showing him behind before the
voting started, Donald Trump is now President elect.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
Trump after baby boomer Donald Trump, the landlord is elected president.
Many gen xers and millennials are asking how exactly that happened.
One answer they see is the baby boomers. Their vote
goes fifty three percent for Trump and only forty five
percent against. Sarah Kinziar, who held a doctorate in anthropology

(37:08):
from her studies on authoritarianism in Central Asian states, had
predicted this outcome very early. Many begin to turn to
her for answers after the election.

Speaker 20 (37:18):
You know what thing happens when a country is betrayed repeatedly,
and we had this with the aftermath of nine eleven
Boston financial crises in two thousand and eight, and then
they're waiting for accountability They're waiting for somebody to stand
up for them, and nobody does, and I think they
start to side with power. You know, I have two choices.
I could, you know, be steamrolled yet again, or you know,

(37:43):
if people are out to get me, if they're out
to harm me, I'm going to be on the side
that harms people, because I'm going to be on the
side with power, and power is what will protect me
and my family. There's a sense of big every man
for himself, and that brings out the cruelty in people
because they think, like what's good of being kind or
you know, helping your neighbors or trying to be honest

(38:04):
when the people who wise and succeed in life are
almost uniformly evil and they're flaunting their evil right in
your face.

Speaker 23 (38:13):
The idea of the happy ending, which that movie stands
for and several other movies of that time and genre
stand for. I don't see it today. I don't see
audiences reacting to it. I don't see it as being plausible,
and I think there's a loss you're hearing.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Bruce Kennan Gibney, a venter capitalist. You might know one
of his companies he invested in early PayPal. Bruce is
looking around America and noting how completely different many of
its citizens seem from the ones who came together around
George Bailey. He goes in search of what has caused
that and so many of the problems plaguing the nation.

(38:51):
And what does he find. Everything seems to lead back
to Glorious Stevick's baby boomer generation. His book becomes a
best seller. He calls it a generation of sociopaths.

Speaker 23 (39:05):
It's an old movie in the sense the values and
the society and the arc that are embedded within the
movie just aren't plausible in today's world in the way
that they would have been in forty six. You know,
there were reasons to be cynical about the establishment, you know,
the Vietnam War, it was a reckoning in a variety
of ways, and so maybe the concept of heroism and

(39:26):
community slowly died. But then sort of the response to
that is, you know, you can either attempt to reclaim
the values, you know, the sort of George baileyish wonderful
life values, or you can embrace the sort of nihilistic
anti hero you know, let's get what's mine ethos, And
at the end of the day, I think what happened

(39:48):
with the boomers is they took over, you know, the
vast small town of America, and they decided that we
were all anti heroes, and that you know, sort of
heroism was cheesy, corny, implausible, which is an odd thing,
right for a generation that you know, is so associated
with the idealism of the nineteen sixties. But if you
dig into the statistics and you push past the sort

(40:09):
of self serving branding about the nineteen sixties, what you
discover is, in fact, the idealism was never that widely shared.
The angel sort of symbolizes this ability, right of a
force beyond ourselves to like step in an intervene, whether
that be government or the church, or you know, one's
community or one's family. Who knows. In our secular age,
I think the closest thing that we have to an

(40:29):
angel like, something that everyone likes and that operates in
quasi mysterious ways may or may not be real, is
social Security and medicare so the median Boomer dies in
twenty thirty two, and not coincidentally, that's when social Security
basically keels over a series of compromises and deals were
made to keep it solvent for as long as the
boomers were alive. And I want to emphasize this is

(40:51):
not a conspiracy theory. My whole theory about the boomers,
which is that they've distorted the policies and the culture
of the United States in ways that serve their immediate interests.
When I started the book, what struck me in the
mid twenty tens was, you know, my entire professional career
had been spent in some kind of boom, in some
kind of bust, recession, recovery, what have you, from the

(41:13):
dot com crash, slash nine to eleven all the way forward,
and that continues unfortunately right to this day, you know,
and you know, growth was slow, wages as stagnated, the
social fabric seemed to be sort of decocheering, and I
sort of wondered why that was the case. And having
a finance background, my immediate's inclination was to figure out
who had benefited from the policies that had so sort

(41:33):
of distorted the markets in our society and had resulted
in this series of sort of rolling catastrophes, and you know,
everything pointed back to the boomers. I looked at median
sort of household income and average household income over time.
And then I started doing sort of cohort decompositions, just
looking at who was making one and when, and it

(41:55):
really struck me that there there was one group of people,
however you sliced it, the one group that seemed to
be doing pretty well with boomers. And then I thought, well, okay,
you know, how can this be true? How can you
get seventy million Americans to agree on anything? They really
just did have the social confusion around these age length
programs to do it, and they kept electing themselves to office.

(42:16):
So since the nineteen nineties, you know, ninety two, well
technically January ninety three, we've had a boomer president. I
think it's relatively career that we're going to have one.
Through twenty twenty eight of Congress as an outright majority
and in some cases an outright supermajority were boomers, and
so they really sort of controlled all the lovers of power,
and then they dominated, you know, sort of public discourse,
They dominated the cultural discourse, and they were interesting for

(42:37):
that reason, and we live in a world that they made,
and unfortunately we will continue living in that world. If
you look at the things that the Boomers have done
the things that have caused the United States to fracture
and stagnate in so many ways. Creed, a lack of
planning for the future, a lack of empathy for others.
They're all in disha of sociopathic behavior. The dominant theme

(42:58):
for the Boomers as a political generation, not as individuals,
like they're not monsters necessarily on a day to day basis,
but you know, as a political generation, they are sociopathic.
They want what they want, regardless of the cost to
other sports, even sometimes to their own future.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
I'm taking you back a bit now, four years before
the Great Recession to two thousand and four.

Speaker 10 (43:21):
You've been lazy, You've been nothing but trouble. Michael Asser,
You're fired.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
Trump the Landlord takes on a new job as reality
TV game show hosts for NBC, the network that, as
you know, holds the exclusive television license for Wonderful Life.

Speaker 20 (43:42):
What The Apprentice did, and this is true of other
reality TV shows at the time, was use humiliation as
a form of control and make it seem normal.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
Sarah again, So we're.

Speaker 20 (43:53):
In the midst of this horrible recession, you know, the
worst recession since the Great depression, and people are getting
off watching other people get fired on TV. And I
think it's because it provided this sort of sick relief
from their reality where they were being fired or people
being new were being fired. They could kind of watch
they quote villain, someone who is quote unquote deserving get

(44:16):
fired by Donald Trump, and maybe it felt cathartic to
have the person being fired for once not be you.
But I think it's the cruelty of these reality TV shows,
you know, where there's always a loser who everybody's talking
behind their back and voting against them. It's kind of
like a like a middle school nightmare. But it brought
Americans back into this mentality. I think our politics are

(44:38):
reflective of it now, you know, horse race kind of
view of life. The way people quantify their social media accounts,
where it's so important to just get attention. They view
everything in terms of winning instead of you know, having
a meaningful exchange or whatnot. We are taught to see
ourselves as failures if we don't rise to the top

(44:59):
and this system we're taught to internalize systemic failures as
our own, institutional failures as our own and it's not
our fault. Then We're also taught to devalue, you know,
the small acts of kindness and generosity that we display
in our lives. We're taught that those don't mean as
much as a peak check. There are so many exit

(45:21):
rams off this rodel and they decided to to not
take them. And I think it goes beyond reed because
that crossing, that badge, you know, where Birding Deco was created.
He was supposed to be the villain, and then all
these nuppies embraced them as their hero and they realized
having a off putting, obnoxious, cruel persona could be more

(45:45):
beneficial and having a persona that, you know, maybe exemplified
values you once wanted to live.

Speaker 19 (45:51):
By Good evening, I'm here tonight announce my intention to
seek the Republican nomination for President of the United.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
States nineteen seventy nine. It's a matter of months since
the New Yorker article about the Wonderful Life Party from
episode one has begun raising that movie's profile with all
of you, and since Robin Wiggams taped his show's early
take on the movie's premise. We're looking inside an office
at Ronald Reagan, the actor, as he records what will

(46:25):
prove a pivotal moment of history. Among his favorite movies,
he often proclaims is wonderful life. He is a member
of the greatest generation, ultimately perhaps its most impactful. His
philosophy will heavily influence the Baby boomers.

Speaker 19 (46:43):
In the thirty four years since the end of World
War II, the federal government has cynically told us that
high taxes on business will in some way solve the
problem and allow the average taxpayer to pay less. Well,
business is not a tax payer. It is a tax collector.
Business has to pass its tax burden onto the customer

(47:07):
as part of the cost of doing business. You and
I pay the taxes imposed on business every time we
go to the store.

Speaker 8 (47:14):
I want you to manage my affairs, run my properties.
You wouldn't mind living in the nicest house in town,
buying your wife a lot of fine clothes, a couple
of business trips in New York year, maybe once in
a while Europe.

Speaker 4 (47:28):
You wouldn't mind that, would you, Jo?

Speaker 5 (47:30):
Would I hold micro? I wonder if it would be
possible for you to give me twenty four hours to
think it all? Sure?

Speaker 4 (47:38):
Sure?

Speaker 8 (47:39):
Should you go on home and talk about it to
your wife.

Speaker 4 (47:42):
I'd like to do that. Yeah, And in the.

Speaker 8 (47:44):
Meantime, I'll draw up the papers our okay.

Speaker 5 (47:47):
George, Oh no, I'll wait about here. I don't need
twenty four hours. I don't have to talk to anybody
I know right now. And the answers no, no, go.
You sit around here and you spin your little webs,
and you think the whole world revolved around you and
your money. Well it doesn't, mister Potter. In the in
the whole vast configuration of things, I'd say you were

(48:09):
nothing but a scurvy little spider.

Speaker 17 (48:11):
George Bailey actually represented the mainstream flow of the of
the American business tradition. Potter is a pathological deviation from
this all American mean in which, yes, you can go
out and make money, and you can, you know, want
to do well for yourself and for your company and

(48:34):
for your employees, and you can do that without harming
anyone in an egregious way.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
You remember Gary Camilla from an earlier episode, The Men
who argue that Potter ultimately won.

Speaker 17 (48:48):
It's very attractive the idea that you can be as
greedy and ruthless as you want and that's all for
the greater good. That's been a that's been essentially the
pitch of the Republican Party and its economic platform for
since Reagan, and it's been very It's very effective for

(49:09):
very obvious reasons. It allows you to literally have your
cake and eat it too. It's a brilliant move, dangerous,
but brilliant. I think the sense of the greed is
good ethos. You know, there's certain big cultural markers that
whole sort of Wall Street Gordon Gecko era.

Speaker 21 (49:30):
The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack
of a better word, is good. Greed is right, Greed works,
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the yes of the
evolutionary spirit.

Speaker 4 (49:49):
Greed in all of its forms, greed for.

Speaker 21 (49:52):
Life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward
surge of mankind.

Speaker 17 (50:00):
In many ways. Was an ava tar of that. I
would I guess something I had to point to one
large cultural move, it would probably be the Age of
Reagan and a greater embrace under. In the case of Reagan,
I've explicitly gauzy Frank Capra like story.

Speaker 19 (50:20):
I carry with me the memory of a Christmas Eve
when my brother and I and our parents exchanged our
modest gifts. There was no lighted trees. There had been
on Christmas past. I remember watching my father open what
he thought was a greeting from his employer. We all watched,
and yes, we were hoping it was a bonus check.

(50:44):
It was noticed that he no longer had a job.

Speaker 10 (50:47):
So I think, to the degree that it's mister Potter's
politics wrapped up in George Bailey's smile is probably not
too far from the truth, because there's not very many people,
I think, who could have sold the the policy messages
that Reagan had besides Ronald Reagan, Jefferson Cowy Reagan. You know,
he has this kind of avuncular, ah shucks kind of persona.

(51:12):
He's funny, he's approachable, you want to trust him. He
was older and had been a New Deal Democrat, had
been a union leader, and said that he didn't leave
the Democratic Party of the Democratic Party left him. Obviously,
that's just a cute line, but that's a seductive line,
like it gives people cover to shift their politics from
Democratic to Republican. And he is the first guy to

(51:36):
coin the phrase or his campaign was of make America
great again. That phrase is not Donald Trump's it's Ron Reagan's.

Speaker 24 (51:43):
For those who've abandoned hope. We'll restore hope, and we'll
welcome them into a great national crusade to make America
great again.

Speaker 10 (51:57):
Well, the time has come.

Speaker 3 (51:59):
You've seen the map, We've looked at the figures, and
NBC News now makes.

Speaker 21 (52:03):
Its projection for the presidency.

Speaker 11 (52:07):
Reagan is our projected winner.

Speaker 10 (52:09):
I was too young to vote in eighty but at
the time I didn't understand it. I was completely flummoxed
by why anybody found Donald Reagan attractive. But now when
I teach it, I make them watch the whole inaugural address,
the first inaugural, and it's excellent. He just sticks the
landing on that thing.

Speaker 19 (52:28):
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to
our problem. Government is the problem.

Speaker 10 (52:37):
And he basically says, who are the heroes in America?
It's you. You're the hero. You all go to work
every day in pay your Texas, You everyday Americans, the
George Baileys of the world are the true heroes. That
was a really appealing message, wrapped up with some nostalgia
about things gone past, and of course his own references
to his own b movies from the nineteen fifties, breaking

(53:00):
a very powerful political figure. So by nineteen eighty came along,
Reagan was the guy, and he was just so ready
to lead the counter revolution against a New Deal and
even beating back conservatives like George Bush, who was busy
towering his supply side economics as voodoo economics. Was able
to win just really through a combination of kind of

(53:23):
patriarchal sternness and a kind of storytelling. Nice guy, right, Reagan.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
It was the greatest hijacker in American presidential history.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
I mean this Harvey Kay again with a characteristically strong take.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
He hijacked Thomas Paine in nineteen eighty when he was
running for president, where he shocked conservatives by quoting Thomas
Paine in his acceptance speech of the Republican Convention.

Speaker 10 (53:52):
He was brilliant.

Speaker 24 (53:53):
I will not accept the excuse that the federal government
has grown so big and powerful that it is beyond
the control of any president, any administration, or Congress. We
are going to put an end to the notion that
the American taxpayer exists to fund the federal government.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
The speech FDR gave. I think it's famous because for
the closing lines.

Speaker 11 (54:17):
To some generations.

Speaker 15 (54:19):
Much is given.

Speaker 25 (54:22):
About the generations, much ill expected. This generation of Americans
has a rendezvous with destiny.

Speaker 1 (54:35):
Which, by the way, fucking Reagan hijacked as a line.

Speaker 4 (54:39):
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

Speaker 10 (54:41):
So I think the first thing I have to think
about is it's not just progressive or conservative, it's the
shift in liberalism, and that liberalism the immediate postwar era
is really about stuff that Archiebunker cared about, which is
about himself, you know, being able to have the pump
primed with his wages so he could buy stuff. And
so when Reagan comes along and says, I'm tall in

(55:02):
the saddle, I'm the cowboy. Follow me, America is great.
That's the guy. And the irony of the whole thing
for me is that it fuses with that individualist liberation
strand of the new left generation as well. And that's
where you see a kind of funny coalition I think
is the blue gen conservatives, the bourgeois bohemians, the yuppies

(55:23):
who adopt the lifestyle of the counterculture, but essentially our
investment in security bankers. I think a lot of people
think of him as a father figure. At the time, you.

Speaker 26 (55:34):
Know I can make more money in one years a
brooker than I could him five years at the stairline.
Thank you, Billy.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
I don't get any kid.

Speaker 26 (55:41):
You borrow money to go to NYU. The first year out,
you made thirty five grand, You made fifty grand last year,
and you still can't pay off your loans.

Speaker 11 (55:47):
What the hell does it all go?

Speaker 5 (55:49):
At?

Speaker 4 (55:49):
Fifty?

Speaker 17 (55:49):
Kid does not get you to first base in the
Big Apple.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
Not anymore earlier. You heard Garden Gecko played by Michael Douglas,
the actor, espousing how greed is good in the nineteen
eighty seven movie Wall Street. Gecko is a potter for
the nineteen eighties now on an epic scale when he
becomes a father figure of sorts to a baby boomer

(56:12):
named Bud Fox played by Charlie Sheen the actor. Here,
Bud talks with his own dad, Carl, a union leader
for his fellow airline workers, played by Martin Sheen, Charlie
Sheen's real life liberal father.

Speaker 26 (56:27):
Look, I got forty percent in taxes, fifteen grand for rent,
I got school owans, Carl owns food park, my car.

Speaker 11 (56:31):
That's three bills a month.

Speaker 26 (56:32):
I need good sous four hundred bucks of potters come
back home and live rent free. It's that roach infected
place you're living in. Fifteen thousand dollars Jesus Christ, the
whole world's office rocker. You know, I made a total
of forty seven thousand dollars last year that before taxes, as.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
Queen's dad a five percent mortgage.

Speaker 11 (56:48):
An you're at the top room.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
Look, I got to live in Manhattan to be a player.

Speaker 26 (56:51):
There is no nobility in poverty anymore.

Speaker 4 (56:54):
Dad.

Speaker 11 (56:55):
One day you're going to be proud of me.

Speaker 4 (56:57):
You'll see.

Speaker 10 (56:58):
And frankly, the Democrat, I'd spend most of the eighties
trying to figure out what hit them. You know, they're
they're shell shocked, and you know, do they need to
do more old school New deal formula, new civil rights formula.
They they're lost and they really can't find their footing.
Clinton is kind of a neoliberal Democrat who governs in

(57:20):
the shadow of Ronald Reagan.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
I thought that you were going to turn Blue Star around,
not upside down.

Speaker 12 (57:26):
You fucking used me.

Speaker 21 (57:27):
You're walking around blind out a cane pal fooling his money.

Speaker 4 (57:31):
Luck.

Speaker 21 (57:31):
You have to get together in the first place, But
why do you need to wreck this company because it's wreckable,
all right. I took another look at it, and I
changed my mind.

Speaker 12 (57:41):
If these people lose their jobs, they got nowhere to go.

Speaker 17 (57:44):
My father has worked there for twenty four years.

Speaker 11 (57:46):
I gave him my word.

Speaker 21 (57:48):
It's all about bucks, kid.

Speaker 4 (57:51):
The rest is conversation.

Speaker 11 (57:53):
Tell me, Gordon, when does it all end?

Speaker 8 (57:56):
Huh?

Speaker 17 (57:56):
How manny yachts?

Speaker 10 (57:57):
Can you water ski behind?

Speaker 4 (57:58):
How much is enough?

Speaker 21 (58:00):
It's not a question of enough bow, It's a zero
sum game. Somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn't lost
or made. It's simply a transferred capitalism.

Speaker 4 (58:12):
It's finest how much is enough for it?

Speaker 21 (58:19):
The richest one percent of this country owns half our
country's well five trillion dollars. One third of that comes
from hard work, two thirds comes from an inheritance, interest
on interests, accumulating widow's and idiot sons, and what I do.

Speaker 4 (58:35):
Stop in real estate speculation. It's bullshit.

Speaker 21 (58:39):
Now, you're not naive enough to think we're living in
a democracy, are you, buddy? It's the free market and
your part of.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
The end of the nineteen eighties and President Reagan takes
a bow.

Speaker 14 (58:54):
They called it the Reagan Revolution. Well, I'll accept that,
But for me, it always seemed more like the great rediscovery,
a rediscovery of our values and our common sense. We've
done our part, and as I walk off into the
city streets, a final word to the men and women
of the Reagan Revolution, my friends, we did it.

Speaker 13 (59:19):
George Bailey was never born. Visit Savegeorge Bailey dot com
to join the mission. There you'll find links to works
by this episode's participants. Learn more about how to celebrate
George Bailey Day on Saturday, December ninth, and annually the
second Saturday of December hereafter by hosting your own Wonderful
Life viewing party. Tell your friends to listen to this show, subscribe, like, comment,

(59:42):
and post about it on social media hashtags Save George Bailey.
Subscribe to our patreon to hear uncut interviews and bonus content.
Podcasts also available on YouTube. iHeartMedia presents a double asterisk
iHeartMedia co production in association with True Stories Created, written
and directed by Joseph kurt Angfer and Reyno Vashewski Kurt

(01:00:05):
Angfer producer and supervising editor, Reyno Vashlsky, producer and journalist,
Elizabeth Marcus, editor Roy Sillings narrator, George Bailey, theme song
by Carolyn Sills. Buyer Albums soundtrack composed by Zachary Walter
by his Albums and the original soundtrack to this podcast
available wherever you get your music. Mallory Keenoy, co producer,

(01:00:28):
writer's assistant, archival producer and fact checker, John Autry sound engineer,
additional editing, sound design and mix. Executive producers Dave Cassidy,
Kurt Angfer, Lindsay Hoffman and Bethan Macaluso for iHeartMedia, John
Duffy for Double Asterisk, Ruth Vaka for True Stories, Rayno
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(01:00:53):
Brandon Lavoy and Ryan Pennington. Consulting producers Keith Sklar, contract Legal,
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ron Kaddition and Benji Michaels. Publicists Kavasanthanam and Marley Weaver.
Marketing and promotions. Art and web designed by Aaron Kim.

(01:01:14):
Interns were Kyra Gray, Emma Ramirez, Eva Stewart and Tia Wilson.
Podcast license for Philip Van doren Stearns the Greatest Gift
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Recorded at David Weber's Airtime Studios in Bloomington, Indiana, This
episode featured, in chronological order, Harvey Kay, Jefferson, Cowie, Neil Howe,

(01:01:37):
Mark Harris, Sarah Kenzier, Bruce Cannon, Gibney, Gary Camilla, several
American presidents, the cast of Wonderful Life, All in the
Family and Wall Street, and the brief voices, music and
artistry of news media professionals via clips used under the
still existing legal doctrine of fair use.

Speaker 10 (01:01:54):
The Potters are working on that one though.

Speaker 13 (01:01:56):
The voice of the Hollywood News reporter was played by M. L. Rutledge,
stating words not based on anything in particular, but drawn
from never found reporting on Frank Capra's high profile visit
to DC for pre production on Mister Smith Goes to Washington.
Some research for this episode was drawn from the work
of Michael Willian for his book The Essential It's a
Wonderful Life. Go to Double Asteriskmedia dot Com to hear

(01:02:20):
are other limited run podcasts. Who Is rich Blee After
the Uprising with a bold new season in Saint Louis
coming summer twenty twenty four and Origins Birth of a Pandemic,
And subscribe to True Stories New Weekly Everybody Has a
Podcast with Ruth and Ray. If you were feeling like
you're on the bridge, please call the AFSP's Suicide and

(01:02:41):
Crisis Lifeline by dialing nine to eight eight into your phone,
or contact the crisis text line by texting seven four
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though copyright twenty twenty three. Double asterisk in ink may

(01:03:04):
by