Silent Generation

In this important announcement, Joseph shares his plans to leave Silent Generation and Nathan shares his plans to continue it. The podcast will relaunch in two to three months with a new co-host that is familiar to the...

Nevada (also known as Nevadastyles on Instagram) is a hair artist from New York City who has lived a bicoastal lifestyle for the last half decade. For the majority of that time she has lived and worked in both New York...

Adult contemporary is a radio format and marketing category originally created by Billboard magazine. It has encompassed many genres, starting with easy listening in the 1960s. What could be considered adult...

Prior episodes of Silent Generation have focused on secular social movements that emerged around the turn of the 20th century. Fraternities technically predate this era, but they occupy a similar niche, and Joseph...

Full episode available on Patreon: The field of cryptozoology emerged in the mid-20th century as people began to investigate sightings of mysterious creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster using...

Witch house is a music genre and internet aesthetic that emerged in the late 2000s as bands combined occult imagery and sounds. On this week’s episode of Silent Generation, Joseph and Nathan begin by noting that it was...

The United States once had the best public transportation system in the world. Private companies built subway, elevated, interurban, trolley, and long distance train lines with passenger service in mind. But as the...

Full episode available on Patreon: “Civil servants” are employees of the municipal, state, or federal government. Within cities they often live in far-flung areas that are colloquially referred to as “police...

In 2017 a new uniform emerged for men employed by the financial industry: fleece/ puffer vests, dress shirts, slacks, and dress shoes. The unadorned look was first documented by the Instagram account Midtownuniform, and...

Full episode available on Patreon: On this week’s episode of Silent Generation, Joseph and Nathan talk about father figures in their personal lives and in society more broadly. The episode opens with a discussion of...

Nothing expresses the aesthetics of infrastructure as clearly as American rest stops. On this week’s episode of Silent Generation, Nathan is joined by artist and professor Madeline Rupard, whose paintings “consider the...

The aesthetics of infrastructure are often treated as an expensive afterthought, noticed and appreciated only by artists. But can it even be beautiful to begin with? On this week’s episode of Silent Generation, Joseph...

Full episode available on Patreon: This week’s episode attempts to address how and why many American cultural practices and institutions have been replaced by those of Disney adults. Nathan is joined by his friend...

On this week’s episode of Silent Generation, Joseph and Nathan discuss all things men’s fragrances. They begin by weighing the reasons men typically wear fragrances (“sex sells,” general presentation) versus why they...

Gorpcore is a hiking-inspired aesthetic that was first identified in a 2017 article published in The Cut. On this week’s episode of Silent Generation, Joseph begins by interviewing Nathan about his gorpcore-esque...

Full episode available on Patreon: This is the third and final installment of Silent Generation’s three part series on Bohemianism. In this week’s episode, Joseph and Nathan finally address the most popular definition...

On this week’s episode of Silent Generation, Joseph interviews Nathan about his recent trip to Poland and the Czech Republic. He recaps his travels to Gdansk, Warsaw, Krakow, and Prague. Amongst other things he...

Manouche jazz is a musical genre (or musical idiom) pioneered by Django Reinhardt, a French-Romani jazz guitarist and composer who lived from 1910 to 1953. He developed manouche jazz in collaboration with Stéphane...

Full episode available on Patreon: On this week’s episode of Silent Generation, Joseph and Nathan discuss one of the biggest culprits of car-oriented development in the mid-20th century: malls. The boys begin by...

On this week’s episode of Silent Generation, Joseph and Nathan detail all of the garments men wear to the beach and the various ways they make men look attractive. They begin with beachwear bottoms (speedos, jammers...

Full episode available on Patreon: “Gayborhoods” (also known as gay villages) are gay neighborhoods that emerged in the United States at the end of World War II. Returning soldiers were sent home to port cities like New...

Normcore is a “a post-authenticity coolness that opts into sameness.” The term was first coined by the trend forecasting group K-HOLE in their 2013 report Youth Mode: A Report on Freedom, which was a larger...

Utopian Scholastic is an aesthetic that was popular in the education field from the late 1980s to early 2000s. It consists of stock image collage, early CGI, references to academia, references to surrealism, and serifed...

Full episode available on Patreon: On this week’s episode of Silent Generation the boys discuss what makes IKEA one of Joseph’s favorite companies. They begin by briefly summarizing how IKEA was founded by Swedish...

Scene is a youth subculture that evolved from emo in the mid to late 2000s. Members of the subculture were typically referred to as “scene kids”, but scene kids with large online followings were also referred to as...