May 26, 2026 • 11 mins
How are we gonna survive the craziness of our world . . the politics, out of control social media, and especially A.I.? Well . . it’s nothing new. Every period of rapid technological evolution in history has made folks fear that the end is near. This is a peek at the craziness of the 1920s.
Feel free to DM me if you have a story you’d like me to cover . . on Facebook it’s Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do you ever stop and think, with all the stuff
that goes on in our world that things couldn't possibly
been as exciting, fascinating, or even disturbing as what we're
living in the midst of right now. Our minuscule bubble
in time is unlike any other except it isn't. That's
what I love about history. It's a peak at how
(00:21):
other folks survived and often thrived inside their bubbles in time.
I'm Patty Steele surviving this moment, including the economy, AI, media,
and even politics by taking a look at how folks
survived the rapid evolution of the same stuff one hundred
years ago. That's next on the backstory. The backstory is back.
(00:46):
A quick thanks to Nina Peckman from Verona, New Jersey
for this great story idea. Doesn't it feel like the
supersonic evolution of our world is unnerving? Almost painful? Sure,
there is a lot to be grateful for. Advances in
medicine saves lives and often makes what we go through
less debilitating and less painful. Technology allows us to communicate faster,
(01:10):
get answers at the speed of light, and access information
in seconds. We drive better cars, travel farther and buy
stuff at the click of a key. But you know what,
that same whiplash effect change people's lives at a number
of times in history. One of the most intense periods
of change arrived in the nineteen twenties. The decade was loud.
(01:32):
Jazz poured out of hidden clubs, wall Street, stock tickers
clicked like machine guns, Cities exploded upward with steel and electricity.
Radios suddenly connected millions of strangers at the exact same moment,
so they could hear their politicians talk, their favorite teams
as they played, as well as music and theater without
(01:53):
ever leaving their homes. And of course, cars were replacing
horses faster than anybody would have thought possible. But somewhere
inside all that excitement, a strange fear spread across America.
What happens when the machines take over? Yeah? Does that
sound familiar? That fear sounds modern, But it isn't, because
(02:15):
one hundred years ago the world already survived a technological
revolution that felt just as overwhelming as AI does today,
and the lessons from the nineteen twenties may explain exactly
how we survive this time. The nineteen twenties were not
just about flappers, illegal boos, and jazz. The era was
(02:35):
about full speed ahead acceleration. Before World War One, most
Americans lived slower lives. Communication was limited, work was physical,
in person and close to home for the most part.
Entertainment was local and out of the house. In eighteen hundred,
ninety five percent of the US population lived in rural areas.
(02:57):
By nineteen hundred it was sixty five, still a good majority.
Nineteen twenty saw the first time a tiny majority of
Americans had moved away from farm communities, but still a
lot of families lived in rural areas where news traveled
by newspaper or word of mouth. But then everything changed
(03:19):
almost at once. Factories, thanks to innovators like Thomas Edison
and Henry Ford, became hyper efficient. Electricity was quickly spreading
into a lot of homes. Cars changed everything about transportation.
Movies became mass entertainment, advertising exploded, and radio created the
(03:39):
first true mass media culture. Imagine how that felt. You'd
grown up in houses with gas or oil lamps, reading newspapers,
doing laundry by hand, taking a horse and carriage to
get anywhere, whilst you had access to a train. Now
people suddenly felt surrounded by machines, and a lot of
(04:00):
very smart people believed human beings could not psychologically keep up.
In nineteen twenty five, one writer described modern life as
a dizzying mechanical avalanche. Another offered a panicked warning saying
people were becoming servants to speed. There was a popular
cartoon in the papers around nineteen hundred that showed a
(04:21):
man and a woman sitting in the park, sort of together,
but each paying total attention to their own personal telegraph machines.
The caption read, these two figures are not communicating with
one another. Once again, sound familiar. Today we say the
same things about AI too fast, too much info, too
(04:42):
many jobs, disappearing, too difficult to tell what's real anymore.
The emotional atmosphere is almost identical, and the first lesson
from the nineteen twenties is this technology changes faster than
human nature always. In the early nineteen twenties, factories introduced
automation systems that terrified workers. Assembly lines became brutally efficient.
(05:07):
A worker who once built an entire product by hand
might now repeat just one tiny motion, but thousands of
times a day. Some experts believed humans themselves would become
machine like. One famous critic even warned that industrial technology
would destroy individuality. Today people say the same thing about
(05:28):
AI generated art, writing, music, even relationships. But something surprising
happened in the nineteen twenties. Humans adapted, not perfectly, not painlessly,
not all at once, but creatively. The jobs didn't go away,
but they changed. Entire Industries vanished, yet new ones appeared
(05:50):
almost immediately, so human beings had to adapt. It was survival.
The automobile destroyed huge parts of the horse economy, Blacksmith's decline.
Stable workers disappeared, carriage makers collapsed, but as car manufacturing
took off, gas stations appeared, mechanics appeared, Road construction exploded.
(06:13):
From that, motels and driving culture emerged. Suburbs expanded exponentially.
The technology that destroyed jobs also created entirely new ecosystems
that nobody could have predicted. That's one of the biggest
historical lessons about AI. The future usually doesn't erase work,
(06:33):
it just sort of reshapes it. The people who survived
best were not the ones who resisted change entirely. They
were the folks who learned how to stand next to
the machine instead of directly in front of it or
completely away from it now. In fairness, the nineteen twenties
also revealed something a little darker. When technology moves too fast,
(06:56):
society can get emotionally unstable. The radio changed politics forever.
For the first time, charismatic voices could enter millions of
homes instantly and really make you believe in them. Imagine
hearing Abraham Lincoln's high pitched, backwoodsy twang and thinking he
sounds presidential. It actually was his words that mattered in
(07:19):
those days. Plus, with radio and later TV, advertising became
psychological warfare. Companies no longer just sold products. They sold identity.
People were encouraged to reinvent themselves constantly, consume more, become more,
move faster, try to stay younger, and therefore relevant. That
(07:40):
pressure created enormous anxiety beneath the glamorous image of the
Roaring twenties, and today AI may amplify that same emotional
pressure because AI doesn't just automate labor, it automates comparison. Suddenly,
anybody can generate music, art, business plans, videos, marketing campaigns,
(08:03):
even entire personalities within seconds, which means the real danger
may not simply be unemployment. It may be psychological exhaustion.
It's the feeling that you are constantly competing against infinite output.
And that's where the nineteen twenties teach us another huge lesson,
and it's a hopeful one. When society becomes hyper mechanical,
(08:26):
authenticity actually becomes more valuable. In the nineteen twenties, handmade
craftsmanship became really fashionable again. Live jazz thrived precisely because
it felt human and unpredictable. People packed crowded clubs, not
because they couldn't get recordings, but because they wanted real
emotional energy and the immediacy of that performance and that connection.
(08:51):
The more industrial life became, the more people craved humanity.
And with any luck, AI may have the same effect.
The more synthetic content floods the Internet, the more people
may value genuine voices, lived experiences, trust, humor, personality, and
human connection. Ironically, the AI revolution may make being deeply
(09:15):
human even more economically valuable. Oh yeah, there's one more lesson.
A warning from the nineteen twenties because a lot of
times technological revolutions create bubbles of false confidence. By the
late nineteen twenties, Americans believed prosperity would never end stock markets, swords,
speculation exploded, New technologies convinced people the old rules no
(09:39):
longer apply it so folks didn't manage its evolution. Again
sound familiar. Today, AI companies promise unimaginable productivity, investors pour
billions into startups. Every week brings another prediction that humanity
is entering a completely new age. And maybe we are.
(10:00):
But the nineteen twenties remind us that excitement can become
delusion pretty quickly. That decade ended with the Great Depression.
So yes, AI may add unbelievable ease to everyday life
and work, but without paying attention to the lessons of
the past, it also has the ability to destabilize the
lives of millions of people. We'll adjust at what expense.
(10:25):
That's the messy psychological transition that comes with every technological boom.
On the upside, despite all of the questions, humans have
always done one thing remarkably well. We reinvent ourselves faster
than we think we can. Big Thank you Denina Pegman
from Verona, New Jersey for suggesting this story. I hope
(10:48):
you're enjoying the backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a
review and follow or subscribe for free to get new
episodes delivered automatically. Also feel free to DM me if
you have a story you would like me to cover.
Like Nina. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram
Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a
(11:16):
production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Duran Group, and
Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Mike Pieseglia. Our writer
is Jake Kushner. New episodes are out every Tuesday and Friday,
and feel free to reach out to me with comments
and story suggestions on Instagram at reel Patty Steele and
on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the
(11:37):
Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of history you didn't
know you needed to know.
Do you ever stop and think, with all the stuff
that goes on in our world that things couldn't possibly
been as exciting, fascinating, or even disturbing as what we're
living in the midst of right now. Our minuscule bubble
in time is unlike any other except it isn't. That's
what I love about history. It's a peak at how
(00:21):
other folks survived and often thrived inside their bubbles in time.
I'm Patty Steele surviving this moment, including the economy, AI, media,
and even politics by taking a look at how folks
survived the rapid evolution of the same stuff one hundred
years ago. That's next on the backstory. The backstory is back.
(00:46):
A quick thanks to Nina Peckman from Verona, New Jersey
for this great story idea. Doesn't it feel like the
supersonic evolution of our world is unnerving? Almost painful? Sure,
there is a lot to be grateful for. Advances in
medicine saves lives and often makes what we go through
less debilitating and less painful. Technology allows us to communicate faster,
(01:10):
get answers at the speed of light, and access information
in seconds. We drive better cars, travel farther and buy
stuff at the click of a key. But you know what,
that same whiplash effect change people's lives at a number
of times in history. One of the most intense periods
of change arrived in the nineteen twenties. The decade was loud.
(01:32):
Jazz poured out of hidden clubs, wall Street, stock tickers
clicked like machine guns, Cities exploded upward with steel and electricity.
Radios suddenly connected millions of strangers at the exact same moment,
so they could hear their politicians talk, their favorite teams
as they played, as well as music and theater without
(01:53):
ever leaving their homes. And of course, cars were replacing
horses faster than anybody would have thought possible. But somewhere
inside all that excitement, a strange fear spread across America.
What happens when the machines take over? Yeah? Does that
sound familiar? That fear sounds modern, But it isn't, because
(02:15):
one hundred years ago the world already survived a technological
revolution that felt just as overwhelming as AI does today,
and the lessons from the nineteen twenties may explain exactly
how we survive this time. The nineteen twenties were not
just about flappers, illegal boos, and jazz. The era was
(02:35):
about full speed ahead acceleration. Before World War One, most
Americans lived slower lives. Communication was limited, work was physical,
in person and close to home for the most part.
Entertainment was local and out of the house. In eighteen hundred,
ninety five percent of the US population lived in rural areas.
(02:57):
By nineteen hundred it was sixty five, still a good majority.
Nineteen twenty saw the first time a tiny majority of
Americans had moved away from farm communities, but still a
lot of families lived in rural areas where news traveled
by newspaper or word of mouth. But then everything changed
(03:19):
almost at once. Factories, thanks to innovators like Thomas Edison
and Henry Ford, became hyper efficient. Electricity was quickly spreading
into a lot of homes. Cars changed everything about transportation.
Movies became mass entertainment, advertising exploded, and radio created the
(03:39):
first true mass media culture. Imagine how that felt. You'd
grown up in houses with gas or oil lamps, reading newspapers,
doing laundry by hand, taking a horse and carriage to
get anywhere, whilst you had access to a train. Now
people suddenly felt surrounded by machines, and a lot of
(04:00):
very smart people believed human beings could not psychologically keep up.
In nineteen twenty five, one writer described modern life as
a dizzying mechanical avalanche. Another offered a panicked warning saying
people were becoming servants to speed. There was a popular
cartoon in the papers around nineteen hundred that showed a
(04:21):
man and a woman sitting in the park, sort of together,
but each paying total attention to their own personal telegraph machines.
The caption read, these two figures are not communicating with
one another. Once again, sound familiar. Today we say the
same things about AI too fast, too much info, too
(04:42):
many jobs, disappearing, too difficult to tell what's real anymore.
The emotional atmosphere is almost identical, and the first lesson
from the nineteen twenties is this technology changes faster than
human nature always. In the early nineteen twenties, factories introduced
automation systems that terrified workers. Assembly lines became brutally efficient.
(05:07):
A worker who once built an entire product by hand
might now repeat just one tiny motion, but thousands of
times a day. Some experts believed humans themselves would become
machine like. One famous critic even warned that industrial technology
would destroy individuality. Today people say the same thing about
(05:28):
AI generated art, writing, music, even relationships. But something surprising
happened in the nineteen twenties. Humans adapted, not perfectly, not painlessly,
not all at once, but creatively. The jobs didn't go away,
but they changed. Entire Industries vanished, yet new ones appeared
(05:50):
almost immediately, so human beings had to adapt. It was survival.
The automobile destroyed huge parts of the horse economy, Blacksmith's decline.
Stable workers disappeared, carriage makers collapsed, but as car manufacturing
took off, gas stations appeared, mechanics appeared, Road construction exploded.
(06:13):
From that, motels and driving culture emerged. Suburbs expanded exponentially.
The technology that destroyed jobs also created entirely new ecosystems
that nobody could have predicted. That's one of the biggest
historical lessons about AI. The future usually doesn't erase work,
(06:33):
it just sort of reshapes it. The people who survived
best were not the ones who resisted change entirely. They
were the folks who learned how to stand next to
the machine instead of directly in front of it or
completely away from it now. In fairness, the nineteen twenties
also revealed something a little darker. When technology moves too fast,
(06:56):
society can get emotionally unstable. The radio changed politics forever.
For the first time, charismatic voices could enter millions of
homes instantly and really make you believe in them. Imagine
hearing Abraham Lincoln's high pitched, backwoodsy twang and thinking he
sounds presidential. It actually was his words that mattered in
(07:19):
those days. Plus, with radio and later TV, advertising became
psychological warfare. Companies no longer just sold products. They sold identity.
People were encouraged to reinvent themselves constantly, consume more, become more,
move faster, try to stay younger, and therefore relevant. That
(07:40):
pressure created enormous anxiety beneath the glamorous image of the
Roaring twenties, and today AI may amplify that same emotional
pressure because AI doesn't just automate labor, it automates comparison. Suddenly,
anybody can generate music, art, business plans, videos, marketing campaigns,
(08:03):
even entire personalities within seconds, which means the real danger
may not simply be unemployment. It may be psychological exhaustion.
It's the feeling that you are constantly competing against infinite output.
And that's where the nineteen twenties teach us another huge lesson,
and it's a hopeful one. When society becomes hyper mechanical,
(08:26):
authenticity actually becomes more valuable. In the nineteen twenties, handmade
craftsmanship became really fashionable again. Live jazz thrived precisely because
it felt human and unpredictable. People packed crowded clubs, not
because they couldn't get recordings, but because they wanted real
emotional energy and the immediacy of that performance and that connection.
(08:51):
The more industrial life became, the more people craved humanity.
And with any luck, AI may have the same effect.
The more synthetic content floods the Internet, the more people
may value genuine voices, lived experiences, trust, humor, personality, and
human connection. Ironically, the AI revolution may make being deeply
(09:15):
human even more economically valuable. Oh yeah, there's one more lesson.
A warning from the nineteen twenties because a lot of
times technological revolutions create bubbles of false confidence. By the
late nineteen twenties, Americans believed prosperity would never end stock markets, swords,
speculation exploded, New technologies convinced people the old rules no
(09:39):
longer apply it so folks didn't manage its evolution. Again
sound familiar. Today, AI companies promise unimaginable productivity, investors pour
billions into startups. Every week brings another prediction that humanity
is entering a completely new age. And maybe we are.
(10:00):
But the nineteen twenties remind us that excitement can become
delusion pretty quickly. That decade ended with the Great Depression.
So yes, AI may add unbelievable ease to everyday life
and work, but without paying attention to the lessons of
the past, it also has the ability to destabilize the
lives of millions of people. We'll adjust at what expense.
(10:25):
That's the messy psychological transition that comes with every technological boom.
On the upside, despite all of the questions, humans have
always done one thing remarkably well. We reinvent ourselves faster
than we think we can. Big Thank you Denina Pegman
from Verona, New Jersey for suggesting this story. I hope
(10:48):
you're enjoying the backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a
review and follow or subscribe for free to get new
episodes delivered automatically. Also feel free to DM me if
you have a story you would like me to cover.
Like Nina. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram
Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a
(11:16):
production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Duran Group, and
Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Mike Pieseglia. Our writer
is Jake Kushner. New episodes are out every Tuesday and Friday,
and feel free to reach out to me with comments
and story suggestions on Instagram at reel Patty Steele and
on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the
(11:37):
Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of history you didn't
know you needed to know.
Host
Patty Steele
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