Something strange happened in America at the turn of the 20th century: a society based on individualism began to celebrate identical, replicable people. This episode tells the story of two men who drove this profound change in American culture. One was a business consultant named Frederick Winslow Taylor. The other was an artist named Charles Dana Gibson. Each created an identical human being, a replicant who would serve the needs of the economy. Taylor's replicant was Schmidt, a worker who could be "scientifically managed" for limitless productivity. Gibson's was the Gibson Girl, a woman who would be liberated by consuming products. Together, the replicants would change forever the way Americans thought about their place in a society based on limitless consumption. 

 In 1968, Jerry Rubin was sure that the baby boomers were the vanguard of a second American Revolution. A leader of the countercultural Yippies, he pioneered a new kind of absurdist political theater aimed at turning the young against the establishment: exorcising evil spirits from the Pentagon, throwing blood at ambassadors, and nominating a pig for president. But by 1980, Rubin had morphed into a New Age yuppie who believed that health foods, inner well-being, and the power of money would save America. In this episode, we'll explore Rubin's transformation - and what his story reveals about the demise of '60s idealism.