Talk to a clear-head­ed 107-year-old today, and you could expect to hear sto­ries of ado­les­cence in the Great Depres­sion, or — if you’re lucky — the Jazz Age seen through a child’s eyes. It’s no com­mon expe­ri­ence to have been formed by the age of radio and live deep into the age of the smart­phone, but arguably, Michael Fitz­patrick lived through even greater civ­i­liza­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion. Born in Ire­land in 1858, he sat for the inter­view above 107 years lat­er in 1965, which was broad­cast on tele­vi­sion. That device was well on its way to sat­u­rat­ing West­ern soci­ety at the time, as the auto­mo­bile already had, while mankind was tak­ing to the skies in jet­lin­ers and even to the stars in rock­et ships.

The con­trast between the world into which Fitz­patrick was born and the one in which he even­tu­al­ly found him­self is made stark­er by his being a son of the land. A life­long farmer, he can hon­est­ly reply, when asked to name the biggest change he’s seen, “Machin­ery.”

Not all of his answers come across quite so clear­ly, owing to his thick dialect that must sure­ly have gone extinct by now, even in rur­al Ire­land. Luck­i­ly, the video comes with sub­ti­tles, mak­ing it eas­i­er to under­stand what he has to say about the advent of the “mow­ing machine” and his mem­o­ries of the Bodyke evic­tions of the eigh­teen-eight­ies, when mêlées broke out over a local land­lord’s attempt to oust his des­ti­tute ten­ants.

One can come up with vague­ly anal­o­gous events to the Bodyke evic­tions in the mod­ern world, but in essence, they belong to the long stretch of his­to­ry when to be human meant to engage in agri­cul­ture, or to over­see it. The Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion did­n’t hap­pen at the same pace every­where at once, and indeed, Fitz­patrick lived the first part of his life in an effec­tive­ly pre-indus­tri­al real­i­ty, before wit­ness­ing the scarce­ly believ­able process of mech­a­niza­tion take place all around him. He expe­ri­enced, in oth­er words, the arrival of the civ­i­liza­tion into which we were all born, and to which we know no alter­na­tive. As for those of us of a cer­tain age today, we can expect to be asked six or sev­en decades hence — assum­ing we can go the dis­tance — what life was like with only dial-up inter­net.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Real Inter­views with Peo­ple Who Lived in the 1800s

Philoso­pher Bertrand Rus­sell Talks About the Time When His Grand­fa­ther Met Napoleon

1400 Engrav­ings from the 19th Cen­tu­ry Flow Togeth­er in the Short Ani­ma­tion “Still Life”

A Rare Smile Cap­tured in a 19th Cen­tu­ry Pho­to­graph

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

As the found­ing myth has it, the city of Rome was estab­lished by a man named Romu­lus, one of two orphaned twin broth­ers raised by a she-wolf on the banks of the Tiber riv­er. The leg­end of Romu­lus and Remus, which involves the for­mer’s frat­ri­ci­dal slay­ing of the lat­ter, lends itself to strik­ing imagery, though it also gives forth more ques­tions than answers. “The Latin for wolf, lupa, also means pros­ti­tute,” for exam­ple, “so was it actu­al­ly a pros­ti­tute who came to the res­cue?” So asks his­to­ri­an Mary Beard in Rome: Empire With­out Lim­it, a four-part series you can watch in its entire­ty above.

In a sense, the sto­ry works either way: the mor­tal clash of broth­er against broth­er makes for a recur­ring metaphor­i­cal theme in the long his­to­ry of Rome, but so does the irre­press­ible pow­er of com­merce. Criss­cross­ing the Euro­pean con­ti­nent, Great Britain, the Mediter­ranean, and Africa by car, boat, bicy­cle, sub­way train, and above all on foot, Beard uses the traces of the might­i­est ancient empire to explain how the whole oper­a­tion actu­al­ly worked, and what its day-to-day expe­ri­ence was like for its sub­jects. When it orig­i­nal­ly aired in 2016, Empire With­out Lim­it fol­lowed up her acclaimed book SPQR: A His­to­ry of Ancient Rome, which cov­ers some of the same themes.

Those who’ve fol­lowed Beard’s work in print, on tele­vi­sion, or in oth­er media know that her ver­sion of Roman his­to­ry is hard­ly anoth­er suc­ces­sion of emper­ors and mil­i­tary cam­paigns. While she does devote time to dis­cussing such sig­nal fig­ures as Julius Cae­sar (who def­i­nite­ly did­n’t say “Et tu, Brute?”), Augus­tus, Hadri­an, and Con­stan­tine, she dis­plays equal or greater inter­est in a four-year-old sil­ver min­er in what’s now Spain, say, or an anony­mous young woman the shape of whose skull sug­gests the extent of migra­tion with­in the empire. And just as wor­thy of con­sid­er­a­tion as any par­tic­u­lar Roman cit­i­zen­ship is the con­cept of Roman cit­i­zen­ship itself, which ulti­mate­ly extend­ed across the vastest empire the world had ever known.

All roads lead to Rome, as the say­ing goes, and in the hey­day of the Roman empire, as Beard points out, it was actu­al­ly true. The ancient Romans were the first to build what she calls “a joined-up world,” where get­ting on a path in Rome and fol­low­ing it could get you all the way to places like Spain or Greece. (And also unprece­dent­ed­ly, you could take a glance at mile mark­ers along that road and imme­di­ate­ly “place your­self in the world.”) Roman dom­i­nance may have end­ed long ago, but the parts of the world have con­tin­ued to join up in much the same way since, and indeed, the broad Roman world­view sur­vives. As Beard puts it, “there’s a lit­tle bit of the Romans in the head of every one of us” — espe­cial­ly those of us who think about their empire every day.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Ancient Rome in 20 Quick Min­utes: A Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

A Map Show­ing How the Ancient Romans Envi­sioned the World in 40 AD

How Rome Began: The His­to­ry As Told by Ancient His­to­ri­ans

Is Amer­i­ca Declin­ing Like Ancient Rome?

Do You Think About Ancient Rome Every Day? Then Browse a Wealth of Videos, Maps & Pho­tos That Explore the Roman Empire

Rick Steves’ Europe: Binge Watch 11 Sea­sons of America’s Favorite Trav­el­er Free Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Watch through The Twi­light Zone, and you’ll find your­self spot­ting no end of famil­iar faces: Julie New­mar, Burt Reynolds, Robert Red­ford, Eliz­a­beth Mont­gomery, William Shat­ner, even Buster Keaton. The 1963 episode “He’s Alive” is at least dou­bly notable in that respect, fea­tur­ing as it does a young (but in act­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty, almost ful­ly formed) Den­nis Hop­per as Peter Vollmer, a ne’er-do-well made into an aspir­ing dic­ta­tor by none oth­er than Adolf Hitler. Played by Curt Con­way, a spe­cial­ist in doc­tors, judges, and oth­er author­i­ty fig­ures, the undead Führer offers his young dis­ci­ple instruc­tions like the above, from an ear­ly scene before his iden­ti­ty is revealed.

“How do you move a mob, Mr. Vollmer? How do you excite them? How do you make them feel as one with you?” Hitler asks. The answer, which he then pro­vides, is first to join them: “When you speak to them, speak to them as if you were a mem­ber of the mob. Speak to them in their lan­guage, on their lev­el. Make their hate your hate. If they are poor, talk to them of pover­ty. If they are afraid, talk to them of their fears. And if they are angry, Mr. Vollmer… if they are angry, give them objects for their anger. But most of all, the thing that is most of the essence, Mr. Vollmer, is that you make this mob an exten­sion of your­self.”

If accused of scape­goat­ing minori­ties, he should address the throng thus: “Should I tell you who are the minori­ties? Should I tell you? We! We are the minori­ties.” Soon, we see Peter in full neo-Nazi gear deliv­er­ing just such a harangue, thor­ough­ly Hop­per-ized in dic­tion, to a mod­est­ly attend­ed ral­ly. How could these ordi­nary-look­ing atten­dees be a minor­i­ty? “Because patri­o­tism is a minor­i­ty. Because love of coun­try is the minor­i­ty. Because to live in a free, white Amer­i­ca seems to be of a minor­i­ty opin­ion!” Though hard­ly art­ful, this rhetoric even­tu­al­ly makes him into a pop­u­lar fig­ure, albeit one whose rise is cut short when he turns to con­spir­a­cy to accel­er­ate his rise to pow­er.

And what of the spir­it of Hitler? “Where will he go next, this phan­tom from anoth­er time, this res­ur­rect­ed ghost of a pre­vi­ous night­mare?” Twi­light Zone cre­ator Rod Ser­ling asks in his episode-clos­ing mono­logue. “Any place, every place where there’s hate, where there’s prej­u­dice, where there’s big­otry.” It was against such broad social phe­nom­e­na that Ser­ling so often used his scripts to argue, and with “He’s Alive,” he made use of an unusu­al­ly vivid ide­o­log­i­cal exam­ple. A vet­er­an of the Sec­ond World War, which had end­ed less than twen­ty years ear­li­er, Ser­ling sure­ly had even fresh­er mem­o­ries of the threat of Hitler than did the gen­er­al Amer­i­can pub­lic — and under­stood even more clear­ly what could hap­pen if those mem­o­ries were to fade away.

Relat­ed con­tent:

When Rod Ser­ling Turned TV Pitch­man: See His Post-Twi­light Zone Ads for Ford, Maz­da, Gulf Oil & Smokey Bear

When 20,000 Amer­i­cans Held a Pro-Nazi Ral­ly in Madi­son Square Gar­den

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.