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 might not (fragrance sensitivity, “men should smell like men”). They then review several fragrances: Dior Sauvage, Bleu de Chanel, Paco Rabanne Phantom, 4711 Original Eau de Cologne, Greenbriar by Caswell Massey, Maii Bogue, Weekend for Men by Burberry, and Knize Ten. They round out the episode by discussing Jeremy Fragrance’s career as “the number one fragrance icon that follows the teachings of Jesus” before reflecting on the totemic qualities of fragrances. 

Links:

Smellmaxxing

Studio Ready

Teen Spirit in Pink Crush

Fragrance sensitivity: why perfumed products can cause profound health problems by Sirin Kale

Last of the NYC Leathermen

Fragrance Concentration Guide

Everything You Need To Know About Fragrance Concentration Levels - EDT, EDP, Parfum, & MORE

Official cologne flowchart of the 4chan fragrance board

Fragrance Groups 101

fragrantica.com

Dior Sauvage - Fragrantica page

Bleu de Chanel - Fragrantica page

Paco Rabanne Phantom - Fragrantica page

4711 Original Eau de Cologne - Fragrantica page

Greenbriar Caswell Massey - Fragrantica page

Maai Bogue - Fragrantica page

Weekend for Men Burberry - Fragrantica page

Knize Ten - Fragrantica page

Dior Sauvage in 2015 according to The History of the Hero: Dior Sauvage by Sarah Karmali

I Wore The World's Oldest Cologne For a Week

Bogue Profumo Maai: Valkyrie Chypres & Vintage Animalism

Knize Ten - A Masterpiece from 1925

Kniže & Co.: A First-Hand Look at Vienna’s Most Storied Tailor by Sven Raphael Schneider

Jeremy Fragrance: The Smell of Success

Jeremyfragrance - Tik Tok page

How Abercrombie, Victoria’s Secret and Vitamin Shoppe use smell to get you to spend more

Say Goodbye To The Scent Of Fierce In Abercrombie & Fitch Stores by Christopher Luu

Subway: What the Hell Is That Smell? by Joel Burrows

The Woman Who Wants to Give Birth to a Shark by Nikhil Roy

Gabriel O’Hara (niche fragrance brand inspired by Chicago streets)

Artwork:

Knize Ten Eau de Toilette

Recorded on 8/11/2025

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 wardrobe. The boys then detail the various elements of the aesthetic (outerwear, technical fabrics, face concealment, and high definition landscapes) before introducing a vintage sub-aesthetic they call “lindy gorpcore.” Towards the later half of the episode they discuss Death Stranding 1 and its recent sequel Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, which are standout examples of the gorpcore aesthetic in gaming. 

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Recorded on 8/2/2025

Full episode available on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/SilentGeneration

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Recorded on 7/28/2025

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 discusses how Gdansk was once a city-state known as the Free City of Danzig, how Warsaw’s Museum of Communism is above a KFC, how one of Krakow’s largest tourist attractions is a salt mine in the town of Wieliczka, and how Prague is home to the largest European castle still in use. 

This is the second installment of a four part series that explores the cultural figure of the Bohemian and its origins. This segment briefly explains how “Bohemia” is a region and kingdom that is now part of the modern day Czech Republic.

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Recorded on 7/13/2025

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 Grappelli after being inspired by American jazz musicians, and the genre is notable for its percussive guitars, virtuosic lead guitarists, and reliance on acoustic instruments. Joseph and Nathan are joined by Kelly from the Significant Lovers podcast to discuss the genre. 

This is the first installment of a four part series that explores the cultural figure of the Bohemian and its origins. The French believed that the Romani people came from Bohemia when they first arrived in their country, and the term “Bohemian” meant “Romani” for several centuries. “Bohemian” came to be associated with all of the stereotypes of the Romani people (positive and negative) before coming to only be associated with positive Romani stereotypes by the end of the 20th century: artsy, creative, free-spirited, and prone to wanderlust.

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Recorded on 6/29/2025

Full episode available on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SilentGeneration 

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 surveying several malls in Chicago (900 N. Michigan, The Water Tower Place, Block 37, and Ford City Mall) before delving into the largest malls in the country (Mall of America, American Dream Mall, and King of Prussia Mall). They then discuss a multitude of mall brands, noting the mall goth feedback loop generated by Hot Topic and the toxicity of Bath and Body Works. They conclude by discussing the urbanist critique of malls and what should be done with dying ones. 

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Recorded on 6/22/2025

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, box leg trunks, swim trunks, boardshorts), before discussing tops (tank tops, Hawaiian shirts, button downs, Italian knits), and accessories (straw hats, sandals, dive watches). Afterward, the boys examine how the version of preppy style common in coastal Southern states naturally resembles beachwear, citing the Ratliffs from the most recent season of The White Lotus as their primary example. They then discuss beachwear in additional TV shows and movies (The Beach, Seinfeld, and Magnum PI) before concluding with an exposé on shirtlessness. 

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Recorded on 6/15/2025

Full episode available on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SilentGeneration

“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 York City and San Francisco, and the sudden influx of gay veterans in those places caused a profusion of gay bars to appear. But how did clusters of LGBT nightlife venues come to gain official recognition as neighborhoods? On this week’s episode of Silent Generation, Joseph and Nathan begin by detailing how Boystown in Chicago came to be the first officially recognized gayborhood in the country. They then survey gayborhoods in several other cities (Milwaukee, New York City, and San Francisco) before debating the pros and cons of living in gayborhoods in the modern era. 

Links:

From Antarctica with Love by Allegra Rosenberg

Milestones in the American Gay Rights Movement

The new LGBT neighborhood: Everywhere

Searching for the Last Lesbian Bars in America

Why Do Lesbian Bars Keep Disappearing? by Stef Rubino

What should a gay district look like in Detroit? Survey seeks input by Micah Walker

A Tavern On (Almost) Every Corner: Why Did So Many Chicago Bars Disappear? by Jake Smith

Making Chicago’s Boystown by Steven Jackson and Jason Nargis

Boytown: How Chicago Got its Gay Neighborhood

The History of Boystown's Rainbow Pylons

Decoplex - CARI Aesthetic

Labor Dispute Closes Berlin, the Beloved Chicago Gay Bar by Emily Schmall

Resistance Remains in Renaming of Chicago’s ‘Boystown’ Neighborhood to ‘Northalsted’ by Miguel Johnson

Berlin Nightclub Workers Call For Boycott As They Fight For Contract by Amber Stoutenborough

Berlin nightclub union demands

OUTgoing: Mapping the Hidden History of New York’s Gay Nightlife by Jeff Ferzoco

Photograph of the gay village in Manchester in 1995

The Simpson’s gay pride parade scene

Women & Women First book store

SoDoSoPa

Artwork:

Gilbert Baker & “Raise the Rainbow” Workshop 

Recorded on 6/1/2025

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 philosophical deliberation on the degree to which people should remain alternative into adulthood. This week’s episode of Silent Generation focuses on how the fashion world’s misclassification of normcore as an aesthetic caused internet aesthetics to become less subculture-oriented after the mid-2010s. Nathan and Solana begin by discussing the history of internet aesthetics by breaking them down into four categories and three periods: consumer aesthetics, early internet subcultures (2009-2014), Vaporwave-inspired aesthetics (2014-2020), and Tik Tok aesthetics (2020-2025). They then discuss the true meaning of K-HOLE’s report and question what normcore fashion conceptually looked like. They round out the episode by recapping the reasons why normcore killed off the subculture component of internet aesthetics: aesthetics could now be vibes or metaphysical concepts, aesthetics became a formula that could be capitalized off of by brands, and internet aesthetics became more fashion-centric. 

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Recorded on 5/25/2025

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 fonts. On this week’s episode, Joseph and Nathan go into a deep dive of Utopian Scholastic and begin by discussing how the aesthetic was first identified by someone inspired by the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute. They then theorize how factors like the echo boom, utopian beliefs about the internet, and the relative parity of traditional and digital mediums caused Utopian Scholastic to first emerge. Amongst other things they discuss how Frasurbane acts as a base for the aesthetic and how the Eyewitness TV show replicated the style of DK Eyewitness books.

Links:

Pinterest board: https://www.pinterest.com/silentgeneration/utopian-scholastic/ 

Utopian Scholastic CARI Page 

Utopian Scholastic Aesthetics Wiki Page

Evan Collin’s Utopian Scholastic Are.Na Page

The Most Overlooked Aesthetic : Utopian Scholastic by Kat Online

Utopian Scholastic Designs from a Pre-9/11 World

The post in Global Village Coffeehouse and Suze Huldt’s comments

Peggy McNamara’s art website

Ship With Butterfly Sails by Salvador Dali 

DK Eyewitness Intro 

The Making of Eyewitness

Get Lit: Grown-Up Book Fair

Artwork:

The Arts in Education Poster

Recorded on 5/18/2025