Making sense of this crazy world · historymadeeasier
The Jazz Age or the Age of Contrasts
August 31, 2025·23 min·2 clips
In the 1920s, people flocked to the cinema three times a week for pure escapism from life's drudgery through comedies, westerns, and gangster films.
As heard by us
A brisk, skeptical look at the Jazz Age's shine, its exclusions, and the myths built around both.
The episode treats 1920s America as a place where spectacle and hardship sit side by side: consumer gadgets, cars, skyscrapers, jazz, nightclubs, cinema, and sport on one side, poverty on the other.
Why you'd press play
You want the Jazz Age with its shine and its shadow.
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