History Is Over

[0] This message comes from NPR -sponsor PolicyGenius, where you can get peace of mind by finding the right life insurance.

[1] Some policies start at just $292 per year for $1 million of coverage.

[2] Head to policygenius .com to see how much you could save.

[3] Okay, a little bit of history.

[4] What?

[5] History?

[6] Because it's not like we normally do history or anything.

[7] Okay, a little bit of public radio history.

[8] NPR has been listener -supported since it began 50 years ago.

[9] Podcasts like ThruLine and the public radio station where you live are both funded in part by listeners like you.

[10] Whether you're a fan of our episodes that transport you across the globe or the ones that hit closer to home, your donation to your NPR station can help us deliver more stories that you love.

[11] It's simple to do.

[12] Just go to donate .mpr .org slash throughline.

[13] That's donate .npr .org slash throughline.

[14] So you do that.

[15] and Ramteen, how about we get on with the show?

[16] Thanks.

[17] I keep thinking of this phrase.

[18] I kept writing in one of my books.

[19] I've born a monster.

[20] You can see it when you look out your window.

[21] People have walked past me and say, get a job, bomb.

[22] Or when you turned on your television.

[23] The American people can remain confident in the soundness and the resilience of our financial system.

[24] It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

[25] I'm not a bomb.

[26] I'm a beer.

[27] Somehow we'd mutated, and it was not necessarily a good thing.

[28] The A and then the ring around it?

[29] See, that's what I said.

[30] Kay said she thought it was about.

[31] Thank you so much Facebook for hosting.

[32] What is it turned out anyway?

[33] You know, progress was not necessarily a good thing.

[34] Our success was not necessarily good thing.

[35] Today, tomorrow, tomorrow, and into the night, today.

[36] Involves a world creep.

[37] The risk of the virus expanding worldwide.

[38] There's still struggling to be free.

[39] There's no question that we must feed the monster.

[40] Because the monster is clearly won.

[41] It's like a movie, but you can't stop it.

[42] Unless you wake up.

[43] You're listening to Thuley from NPR.

[44] Folks, please welcome.

[45] One of our favorites, Radiohead.

[46] I'm Tom York.

[47] I'm Stanley Donwood.

[48] Do you have to say what we do for a living?

[49] Probably not, but, I mean...

[50] I'm not quite sure what it is I do for a living.

[51] I've been doing it for a long time.

[52] But in betweenies, isn't it?

[53] Yeah.

[54] Radiohead fans need no introduction to these two.

[55] And I'm the biggest Radiohead fan of all.

[56] But for everyone else, Tom York is the lead singer and a songwriter for the band, Radiohead.

[57] And Stanley Donwood has created all the artwork for the band since 1994, including the album art for Kid A. Kid A, a hauntingly beautiful creature.

[58] Which they released in the year 2000.

[59] It was a difficult time for many reasons.

[60] Even before the year 2000 rolls around, panic itself could cause problems.

[61] The clock was going to tick over from the last day of the 20th century.

[62] to the first day of the 21st.

[63] Each turning of a millennium has produced cults and strangeness and disturbances and we were all part of that.

[64] So often on this show we're trying to understand not only what happened in the past but also how it felt.

[65] And this is one of those rare times when many of you listening may remember what it felt like, the turn of the millennium, the year 2000.

[66] For some, it isn't very long.

[67] ago, just one generation in the past.

[68] And for others, it's an entire lifetime.

[69] Familiar, yet foreign.

[70] The sociologist Zygmint Bauman wrote a book called Liquid Modernity that year, in which he argued that technology was advancing faster than culture could adapt to it.

[71] He said this cultural shakiness was causing people a ton of mental stress.

[72] Amid that shakiness, Radiohead created their album Kid A and his companion album Amnesiac.

[73] They, in many ways, are the band of the turn of the millennium, because they captured what that moment represented, what it felt like.

[74] And the music sounds pretty different from anything they'd done before.

[75] Strange, experimental, a total surprise to people expecting more songs like this.

[76] If you've heard only one radio head song, this is probably it.

[77] Breathe.

[78] The lady's obsession with creep?

[79] Sit down to ask me about it because it wasn't enough room.

[80] We didn't ask Tom about creep, which was part of an earlier era of Radiohead.

[81] We were interested in knowing more about what it took to make those albums of the new millennium, Kide and Amnesiac.

[82] This episode of ThruLion, like those albums, is a little unconventional.

[83] It's all about capturing the mood of a moment and confronting the monster.

[84] around us and within us.

[85] I'm Randab del Fethehr.

[86] And I'm Ramtin Arablui.

[87] Coming up, we dial back the clock to the turn of the century.

[88] Hi, I'm Claudine.

[89] I'm calling in from Kingston, Jamaica, and you're listening to ThruLine on NPR.

[90] Support for NPR comes from Newman's Own Foundation, working to nourish the common good by donating all profits from Newman's own food, products to charitable organizations that seek to make the world a better place.

[91] More information is available at newman's own foundation .org.

[92] Part one.

[93] Is this really happening?

[94] It's a little bit like looking through an old photograph album that you've forgotten you had.

[95] But as soon as you look at it, it becomes incredibly familiar and you can remember all of the surrounding around that album.

[96] Repeating once again our top story, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has been removed from power and there are tanks now.

[97] We are the children of the end of the Cold War, when there was no longer an enemy, when there was no longer someone on the other side of that wall, that wall comes down.

[98] The Berlin Wall doesn't mean anything anymore.

[99] The wall that the East Germans put up in 1961 to keep its people in, will now be breached by anyone who wants to leave.

[100] then you're still left with this fear.

[101] The atmosphere, especially in America at the end of the 90s, we had been through this extended period of relative prosperity and kind of relative peace, the fall of the Berlin Wall, supposedly democracy spreading further around the world.

[102] By the words we speak and the faces we show the world, we force the spring.

[103] America's position is sort of the epitome of democracy.

[104] A spring reborn in the world's oldest democracy.

[105] And kind of inclusive capitalism, whatever you want to call it, unchallenged.

[106] Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.

[107] The idea started, you know, floating that I would follow the, band and do a big piece about them, which I did.

[108] My name is Alex Ross.

[109] I am the music critic of The New Yorker.

[110] I ended up calling my article The Searchers.

[111] I just felt like they were, you know, just always in quest of the next new sound and the next new idea.

[112] What about this internet thing?

[113] Do you know anything about that?

[114] Sure.

[115] What the hell is that exactly?

[116] Well, it's become a place where people are publishing information So everybody can have their own homepage companies are there The latest information It's wild what's going on You can send electronic mail to people It is the big new thing If you ain't on the information superhigh, like maybe the way is it What is this thing?

[117] What is this thing?

[118] How does this work?

[119] This was the time of the dot -com boom There was this tremendous optimism about the internet It was going to connect to everyone.

[120] You know, it was going to be this wonderful democracy where everyone gets to express their point of view.

[121] I was speaking to somebody in Japan, some of the Australia, some of the New Zealand, some of Russia.

[122] Well, all over the world.

[123] We definitely felt as if we were living in a world that previous generations just wouldn't have got.

[124] You know, the idea that history is over and everything is going to be fine.

[125] But it was, Everything was fraying at the edges.

[126] The refugees came through in 11 covered trucks.

[127] Here on these faces, these broken bodies, hard evidence of the previous day's Serb onslaught on Srebrenica.

[128] History is over.

[129] Our last word was that we've been no the world took a long time to realize that genocide had occurred in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.

[130] Srebrenica was a refuge for tens of thousands of Muslims fleeing the Serbs.

[131] The Serbs decided to seize Srebrenica.

[132] This would force the Americans to bring peace to Bosnia, but only after the people here had been sacrificed.

[133] Places that had been completely stable were suddenly rent with the worst kind of inter -ethnic violence.

[134] The UN, he says, they did absolutely nothing to protect us.

[135] We came there with a will to do as much as we could do, but we failed.

[136] It soon became clear that the Serbs had slaughtered thousands of Bosnian men and buried them in mass graves.

[137] Who is making these decisions and why are we not involved?

[138] Because especially our generation at that time, we were about to be.

[139] to have children, we're having children.

[140] We had some place in the hierarchy of things.

[141] We had some success.

[142] We had all these things.

[143] But at the same time, most of these important ethical decisions about how does the society look after its weakest, how does our society see itself in connection with the rest of Europe or the world or Kosovo or Africa?

[144] Every Sunday, Angelique Mukabu Kisi thanks God for her.

[145] her deliverance.

[146] She hasn't much else to thank him for.

[147] Her parents are dead, her husband is dead, her two young children are dead.

[148] Who's deciding this and why the fuck, excuse me, why the hell aren't they asking us?

[149] There have been massacres in plenty in the tortured history of Rwanda.

[150] But this was something different.

[151] This was genocide.

[152] So when we were working on Kidae and Amnesiac, the shift was not necessarily one of just dread.

[153] There's two sorts of shift.

[154] There was the dread of the millennia coming up.

[155] But there was also a shift which was sort of saying, we now no longer have to talk about this.

[156] Everything's already being decided.

[157] You know, progress is what it is.

[158] There's nothing you can do.

[159] We came to Kyoto to find out to find out of, find new ways to bridge our differences.

[160] You, the parties, now stand before the eyes of the world that will reduce our own emissions by nearly 30 % entrusted with the decisions needed to do what we promise rather than to promise what we cannot do.

[161] We'll recommend the adoption of this protocol to the conference by unanimity.

[162] The UN Climate Change Report was 1994, And us being us, I think we would have read that, probably.

[163] 20 years old, 30 years old, this bit of scientific research.

[164] And the craziness of people still being climate change deniers now is almost, it's unimaginable.

[165] The way I was working at the time was very much lines would go into a hat and get taken out.

[166] and when they worked they worked so I can't tell you if I was trying to write a song about global warming I very most doubt it I think probably it was more like I was writing down my neurosis or I was listening someone may have said we're not scaremonging on the radio saying it or whatever and it gets absorbed and then comes out there is this kind of constant sense of tension of questioning in the lyrics, a sense of kind of examining the state of the world, the climate, the planet and crisis, information technology, the seduction of technology, and then how it seems to kind of take over and sort of take over our kind of beings.

[167] The album just kind of challenged complacency.

[168] It sort of challenged the world as it was.

[169] It's like trying to create beauty from nightmares.

[170] You've got to weave some beauty, because that's where you live.

[171] That's where your spirit's got to live.

[172] You can't live in dread.

[173] It's not, no one could do that.

[174] It's like death.

[175] There was this quiet intensity to that music that, in retrospect, it feels like it has a slightly prophetic edge to it.

[176] You can feel it in the air.

[177] There's a buzz.

[178] You hear that sound?

[179] they know it's going to happen.

[180] And they'll all be looking at the people.

[181] Before we enter the new century, before Radiohead could release their prophetic albums, Kid A and Amnesiac, they had to face down fame and their own success.

[182] Because Radiohead, like our world, was teetering on the edge of a cliff, staring down into the canyon of the unknown.

[183] What would this new millennium bring?

[184] Were we barreling towards collapse or reinvention?

[185] In 1997, Radiohead released an album called OK Computer, an album that would launch them into mega -stardom.

[186] But that stardom came with dread and unease.

[187] It pushed them into difficult places and uncharted territory.

[188] Just like the world, they were stuck between success and collapse.

[189] When we come back, we fall off the cliff.

[190] This message comes from NPR, sponsor, Capital One.

[191] With early paycheck, you're listening to you.

[192] You can get your direct deposit up to two days earlier, and with no fees or minimums on checking and savings accounts, banking with Capital One is the easiest decision.

[193] Terms apply.

[194] See Capital One .com slash bank.

[195] Capital One N .A. Member FDIC.

[196] Part two.

[197] I might be wrong.

[198] Radio heads have charted a unique course across the international sonic and social run.

[199] Uh -huh.

[200] Didn't really have that.

[201] Oh, hold on me. Because basically I'd find myself in a place that I didn't want to be.

[202] Ended up in a place.

[203] Ladies and gentlemen.

[204] Radio head.

[205] It's like it loses someone you're allowed.

[206] For the first time since the Beatles, the band has redefined what popular music is and can be.

[207] You are one of the best bands in the world.

[208] Really?

[209] Congratulations.

[210] It's great every morning and I'll get up and I think that.

[211] What we always try and do is, It's challenged people's preconceptions of the band.

[212] They have created music without the accepted furniture of rock and roll.

[213] You were considered one of the greatest rock bands in 1997.

[214] Well, God help us, if we fucking were, because even being called a rock band was a bit of a nightmare, really.

[215] Why?

[216] Because it sucks.

[217] Fucking rock music sucks, man. I hate it.

[218] So I started listening to Radiohead.

[219] It wasn't right when they first started.

[220] It was sort of after a couple years that they had been on the scene.

[221] Although it was really OK Computer, that I was just really thought, oh, my God, this is really quite something.

[222] OK Computer was a huge, huge record.

[223] It was a phenomenon.

[224] It became one of the defining records of that period.

[225] And it was the kind of album where just people listened all the way through.

[226] As people became obsessed with the band and seemed to be ready to follow them wherever they were going to go.

[227] It really launched them to about as big as you can get in the rock world short of being a complete sort of stadium act.

[228] Fitter, happier, more productive, comfortable, not drinking too much regular exercise at the gym three days a week getting on better with your...

[229] The previous record had been very successful and I think on a lot of levels the record company would have loved another one of those.

[230] What happened when you came back from the okay computer tour?

[231] It was a mess.

[232] Really bad mess for quite a while.

[233] And I got asked to recreate the artwork I did for OECD.

[234] computer by various people several times.

[235] We had no interest in those things.

[236] You know, that was a, in some ways, kind of a perverse antagonistic position to take, but it was also the only one we could have taken to be honest and true to ourselves.

[237] There was kind of expectations and probably disappointment at the record label when it became clear that they were not going to.

[238] to come up with a sort of another okay computer.

[239] It wasn't like everybody was on board with moving off into uncharted territory equally because it's scary.

[240] But with that, when you strike out on your own against what everyone else wants you to do, if you don't have a lot of self -confidence in the first place, then you will be riddled without everything you're doing.

[241] Because you think you might be just shooting yourself in both feet Shooting yourself in both feet.

[242] Self -sabotage.

[243] If you've had any success doing anything, really, you've definitely thought about that.

[244] You might have asked yourself, do I do the same thing that brought me attention and affirmation?

[245] Or do I push myself and try something new and risk losing the success that I've built?

[246] This was a question the members of Radiohead were actually tackling in the late 1990s.

[247] They went from a successful band to perhaps the most revered band in the world, and their album OK Computer was largely responsible for that.

[248] It was that rare combination of commercial and critical success.

[249] Yet, it had also nearly ripped the band apart.

[250] The sudden onslaught of fame, the constant touring, it all took its toll.

[251] And they had pressure on them to repeat the success of OK Computer.

[252] Remember, this was the late 1990s, and even though Napster and other illegal downloading platforms were around.

[253] The music industry was still making tons of money by selling actual records and CDs.

[254] So naturally, another Radiohead album would have meant more money.

[255] And so back to that choice for Radiohead.

[256] Try and make another OK computer and enjoy success again or go in a totally different direction and risk alienating the audience and potentially the bottom line.

[257] They chose the latter, riskier move.

[258] It's a decision that makes more sense when you understand where the members of the band come from.

[259] They met at school.

[260] They met at this boy school called Abingdon, which is in the area of Oxford.

[261] And it is not one of these super elite British public schools.

[262] Members of Radiohead, they all came from basically middle -class families.

[263] And they weren't part of, you know, Oxford University, which is the dominant presence in the area.

[264] They were sort of townies.

[265] They were sort of outside that very, very elite, rarefied world.

[266] They had this amazing music teacher, Terence Gavis.

[267] Gilmore James, who's very serious, kind of classical music -oriented guy, but really liked what Radiohead was trying to do.

[268] And even in high school, they were experimenting and kind of trying out unusual things in their music.

[269] And, you know, that teacher just welcomed them, and they were just encouraged.

[270] And quite rapidly, you know, they ended up getting signed with EMI and, you know, were, were launched and had their first big hit not too long after.

[271] And so it was a very rapid, you know, development from a bunch of kids just playing together in high school to becoming, you know, one of the bigger rock bands of the early 90s.

[272] There was something quite fundamental in the way that we had grown up, which I think maybe is peculiar to our sense of Britishness that we were always taught that any success you have is because you've cheated any band that comes out of Britain is that social class whether they'll admit it or not is an important consideration which is what we internalised because that was the attitude of the press, you pick up a music magazine or anything, even talking about an actor, an actor's essentially an idiot who gets filled with the ideas of somebody else.

[273] This is the kind of attitude that we grew up with.

[274] So one's response to success when you don't feel you merit it, you know, about the people who totally subscribe to their own myths and disappear up their own cocaine -fueled ass, or the ones who go the other way, who can't handle it so they do the next best thing which is go berserk trying to work ahead and preempt any of their own mistakes and work all the time and never stop them just producing and producing stuff like all the time not thinking about it because that's their response to a situation that they can't compute and that was us when the members of Radiohead went into the studio to record what would be the album's Kidae and Amnesiac.

[275] They knew they wanted to throw off convention.

[276] They wanted to feel free.

[277] They wanted to create something that they felt was true to where they were in their lives and where they felt they were fitting in the world.

[278] With a generous amount of class -born skepticism about the myth -building around their previous work, they worked for months in defiance of expectations.

[279] But what would this new direction be?

[280] A very complex process.

[281] there was a lot of debate in the band over what direction they were going to go in next.

[282] So did you have to be one around?

[283] Like there's three songs on Kid A with guitars on them.

[284] If I said that to you six months before the album was released, would you be like, oh my God, I can't do this?

[285] No, no, because what happened is it's a process, what happened to be on Kid A was the process of everything breaking down over time.

[286] So what we basically did...

[287] I'm good at that.

[288] We reduced everything to a pile of rubble and ashes.

[289] And so the debate was, are we going to go in a different direction?

[290] And obviously, the different direction went out.

[291] The guitars were really receding into the background, disappearing all together in some of these songs.

[292] Electronics, much more to the forefront.

[293] This kind of fuzzy aesthetic bordering on kind of experimental electronic music, basically.

[294] We had all of the...

[295] these paintings that we've now got down at Christie's, the record company, they came and picked them up from the studio.

[296] And they took them to London.

[297] I can't remember where it was, but they put them all up on the wall in this big place in London when they were having an industry playback of Kid A. No. So all of the big buyers for record shops and so on, and they were all there, and they listened to the Kid A for the first time.

[298] And honestly, I've never seen a more load of people politely smiling.

[299] Chewing glass.

[300] Expecting it at all.

[301] They thought they were going to get OK Computer Part 2, and they totally didn't.

[302] And yeah, there was a lot of opposition.

[303] There were a lot of, you know, reviews came out that rejected it, that said they've gone completely off track, the guitars, what is this kind of arty nonsense, you know, a sense that the band really might have blown it or sort of taken a complete wrong turn.

[304] But in the UK, Kid A got absolutely panned in the press.

[305] They destroyed us.

[306] I have to say that upon first listen, Kid A is just awful.

[307] Kid A sounds like a bit of a wank Oh yeah Oh he just wants to do fucking Apex Twin Where's the next Ok Computer In the time since Ok Computer Radiohead seemed to have built up Reservoirs of fresh bile And listen to a lot of Aphix Twin Records Where's the hits?

[308] Where's the acoustic guitars?

[309] You can almost hear the cry Go up at the start come on guys let's underachieve and they were mocked they were mocked for sort of always predicting doom and kind of there goes Tom York again trying to save the planets you know blah blah blah why can they just play fun pop songs with you know good guitar licks you know why do we have to get kind of bombarded with these issues you know and so that was like a very standard critique of Radiohead when they took this turn And there was this moment where we, all these reviews had come in, and I'd never read them.

[310] So I was just sitting in a room with everybody else in the band who'd read them.

[311] And they were like, stone face is like, oh dear.

[312] Radiohead's album, Kid A, was released on October 2nd, 2000, many months into the new millennium.

[313] A new millennium that started to see cracks in the facade.

[314] Economic growth in the U .S. had seen.

[315] slowed.

[316] More and more questions were coming up about the downsides of this new thing called the internet.

[317] Yet, despite all the fears brought on by the end of one millennium and the start of another, the Y2K apocalypse had not happened.

[318] The world had not fallen apart.

[319] But based on initial reviews, it looked like Kid A might not fare so well.

[320] When we come back, the dread and hope of a new album and a new millennium.

[321] Hi, this is John from New Market, Alabama.

[322] I recently discovered ThruLine and don't miss an episode.

[323] I want to thank the entire team for their efforts and create this incredible podcast.

[324] Thank you.

[325] Support for this podcast and the following message come from Best Fiends.

[326] When it comes to match three style puzzle games, only one reign supreme, Best Fiends.

[327] It's an action -packed adventure game and puzzle game rolled into one, so it's no wonder it's got so many five -star reviews.

[328] Plus, there's new content added all the time.

[329] If you're tired of crushing the same old candy, give Best Fiends a try.

[330] You can download Best Fiends free on the app store or Google Play Store.

[331] That's Friends Without the YAR.

[332] Best Fiends.

[333] Part 3.

[334] You must name it.

[335] Radiohead released two albums in the span of a year, Kid A in 2000, and a follow -up, Amnesiac in 2001.

[336] Initially, critics didn't respond positively to the albums.

[337] But as it turned out, that was not.

[338] the reaction from the audience.

[339] And I think that's the really remarkable thing that happened, that this experimental, offbeat record, which blatantly refused to continue where OK, computer had left off, was a huge success, and actually really connected with a wider public.

[340] Um...

[341] You forgot, didn't you?

[342] Cut what?

[343] Oh, right.

[344] Um, what was a question again?

[345] There's a great story that one of our managers, Bryce says, that when they first played it to the publishing company, we just re -sign with them.

[346] And they're expecting, like, you know, guitars.

[347] And so, you know, the first song, everything's the right place, not a guitar.

[348] Everything in this right place is just one of my favorite songs in there because it's sort of lovely in the surface and it has a kind of, you know, upbeat feeling to it and that the message in the lyrics is also like, everything is okay, but is it, you know, you don't quite believe it as you're listening to the song so there's like an irony.

[349] There are feelings of melancholy and resignation, kind of temporary bursts of energy that kind of then trail off.

[350] It actually puts me under a spell, you know, when those chords kick in.

[351] But this is uneasy music.

[352] It's not happy music.

[353] Radiohead's moody, contemplative, emotional album, quickly became a massive hit in the United States.

[354] It debuted number one on the Billboard charts and eventually sold over 1 .4 million copies.

[355] The American press thawed over the album.

[356] The experience and emotions tied to listening to Kid A are like witnessing the stillborn birth of a child.

[357] while simultaneously having the opportunity to see her play in the afterlife on IMAX.

[358] Including this notoriously over -the -top review from the music website Pitchfork.

[359] It's an album of Sparkling Paradox.

[360] It's cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb -like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike, infinite yet 48 minutes.

[361] It's kind of pretty rare case of, you know, someone working in the commercial arena, trying something new, challenging the audience, and succeeding, holding their audience, bringing their audience with them.

[362] And, yeah, it just doesn't happen very often.

[363] There were these moments of like, oh, my God, I can't believe we've done this.

[364] And my favorite moment of the whole of that period was when Kidae went to number one in the US Like, almost by accident You know, this little monster that we created was suddenly everywhere And everyone was going, what?

[365] What's that doing there?

[366] And it was so exciting.

[367] I found that so exciting.

[368] I took into this lovely guy Mr Frick from Rolling Stone and he's literally sitting there going how the hell did you do that?

[369] You know, it was like a once in a lifetime opportunity.

[370] Because I knew a lot of people who were in various sort of kind of electronic music subcultures.

[371] And that was the music that I was listening to before and during.

[372] And for a lot of them, they were like, oh, radio head.

[373] And for the first time, I was just like, oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, that's right.

[374] Yes, yes, yes.

[375] You know, because the rock and roll thing was not something that most of the people I knew responded to.

[376] And it felt like that I was doing something that they kind of like, oh, well, that's okay.

[377] You mean you got accepted into your mate's house?

[378] I got accepted into my mate's house, yeah.

[379] Because they made some music that sounded like kid A. Okay, so the obvious question is hanging here.

[380] How did an album that on the surface might seem like a bummer?

[381] to many people, especially at a time when there were these competing visions of what progress means, do so well.

[382] According to Alex Ross, it's because the unease that radiohead Tom and Stanley were expressing with the albums was an unease many people were feeling.

[383] And I think perhaps, and this is just my totally kind of random speculation, that the popularity of the records may have connected with people's unprecedented.

[384] or semi -conscious unease and sense that there was something superficial about that sense of complacency and well -being and that something else was coming, which indeed it did.

[385] Looking back on it, well, that doesn't seem so problematic anymore that they were insisting that people sort of think about climate change, that they were bringing up these issues around technology and that they were just generally challenging complacency.

[386] And then these records came along, which did not really echo at all that general spirit of optimism and complacency.

[387] And I would say that the music itself is actually the primary arena in which all this is happening.

[388] The songs lull you and then challenge you, I think, which is just a great dynamic.

[389] And it was an experiment that people wanted to, where people were ready for, you know.

[390] And so I kind of think of all this music as, I feel like there are premonitions of what was coming in the early 20th First Century and all kinds of issues and all kinds of dimensions.

[391] 9 -11 was a sharp reminder that all was not well.

[392] And it has not really recovered.

[393] The 90s now looked like some kind of almost Victorian era when everyone was to sort of dancing around and smiling.

[394] But it wasn't like that for everybody.

[395] When I first heard Kid A and Amnesiac back in the early 2000s, it stopped me in my tracks.

[396] The glitchy synths, the glitchy synths, the bass drum thump in my chest, the lyrics, the mood.

[397] They all made me feel like someone else was seeing what I was seeing.

[398] This group of English musicians who I had almost nothing in common with at the time seemed to understand my anxiety about the world that awaited me. I'm an old millennial.

[399] I went from being a child to an adult at the same time the 20th century turned into the 21st.

[400] A time when, for many of us in America, everything felt possible.

[401] yet very little felt right.

[402] Everything was getting better, we were told.

[403] The Cold War was over and the Internet was here.

[404] Yet everywhere, it seemed like our leaders were throwing coins in a wishing well.

[405] And with every listen to those albums, I felt like I could better articulate the feelings that I struggled to find words to describe.

[406] Liquid modernity, that concept from Zygman -Bowman that we talked about earlier in the episode, basically theorizes that the anxiety and uncertainty many people feel in the modern world is caused by the fact that technology and life are constantly changing faster than our culture and minds can keep up with.

[407] It feels like the earth is unstable beneath our feet.

[408] And that feeling was captured by Kid A and Amnesiac.

[409] The moment we're at this particular fulcrum right now where dread and division has become an economically useful algorithm, whatever you want to call it.

[410] Like, we've developed this new form of interacting with each other, which is a form of sickness.

[411] And now, finally, it's being talked about.

[412] And so as soon as it's named, its power will rescind, you know, because that's what happens.

[413] If you want to take something's power away, you have to name it.

[414] But is it served as I used to see But is it enough to just name it?

[415] Who does it serve to just describe an issue and then walk away?

[416] For Tom York, it isn't enough.

[417] And the process of making Kid A and Amnesiac wasn't only to put words to the angst he and his bandmates were feeling.

[418] It was about projecting another world.

[419] It was and still is about possibilities.

[420] one has to imagine a form of progress or a form of living which is more beneficial to the way human beings want to be rather than being reduced to these two -dimensional avatars that appear on your phone.

[421] At the moment we adopt modes of behaviour that mirror our avatars, but we are at the same time, now, finally, formulating ways to think beyond that and going, well, hang on a minute, I don't want to be that.

[422] It's a challenge many of us still face.

[423] How do we find a way through the complexity of a world that feels like it's balancing on the edge of a blade and still imagine a different world for ourselves and those who come next?

[424] There's always a sense of dread and there's always then the need to find an adaptive language to get beyond that, a way of expressing what it's going to look like in a world it's different.

[425] Yeah.

[426] That's it for this week's show.

[427] I'm Ramtin -Arablui.

[428] I'm Randda Abd al -Fattah and you've been listening to ThruLine from NPR.

[429] This episode was produced by me and me and Lawrence Wu.

[430] Kathleen Levinson, Julie Kaye, Victor Iveyes, Anya Steinberg, Yolanda Sanguany.

[431] Fact -checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vocal.

[432] Thanks also to Anya Grunman, Tamar Charney, Jacob Gantz, Dawud Tyler Amin, Laura Elderi, and Farai Masika.

[433] Special thank you to XL Beggers Group and Radiohead for letting us use songs from Kid A and Amnesiac in this episode.

[434] The new reissue of the albums called Kid Amnesia is out now.

[435] and contains a bunch of never -released before tracks.

[436] You can find it wherever songs are sold or streaming.

[437] Other music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which includes Navid Marvi, show Fujiwara, Anya Mizani.

[438] Also, we want your voice on our show.

[439] Send us a voicemail at 872 -58 -888 -805.

[440] With your name, where you're from, and the line you're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

[441] And we'll get you in there.

[442] That's 872 -58888 -8 -8 -805.

[443] And finally, if you have an idea or like something you've heard on the show, please write us at ThruLine at NPR .org or hit us up on Twitter at ThruLine NPR.

[444] Thanks for listening.

[445] Today we immersed you in the chaotic end of the millennium with a deep look inside Radiohead's revolutionary albums.

[446] We were able to bring you this story because of your support, And we want to bring you more stories like this in the year to come.

[447] Support ThruLine with a donation to your local NPR station.

[448] Just go to donate .npr .org slash throughline.

[449] Thanks.

[450] On the TED Radio Hour, MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle, her latest research into the intimate relationships people are having with chatbots.

[451] Technologies that say, I care about you, I love you, I'm here for you, take care of me. The pros and cons of artificial intimacy.

[452] That's on the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

[453] I just don't want to leave a mess.

[454] On Bullseye, the great Dan Aykroyd talks about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he will spend his afterlife.

[455] I think I'm going to roam in a few places.

[456] Yes, I'm going to manifest in Rome.

[457] All that and more on the Bullseye podcast from Maximumfund .org and NPR.

[458] Every weekday, NPR's best political report, come to you on the NPR Politics Podcast to explain the big news coming out of Washington, the campaign trail, and beyond.

[459] We don't just want to tell you what happened.

[460] We tell you why it matters.

[461] Join the NPR Politics podcast every single afternoon to understand the world through political eyes.