In the 1950s there was a distinct new comic sensibility on the rise in America. Tom Lehrer's academic knowledge set him apart and also his scientific bent. He paid $15 to record a 10-inch LP and he sold it by mail-under eventually setting up his own record company. His songs tended to the Maudent and often the Macabre.
The country remains riven by unrest since the “self-coup” and subsequent arrest of its president in December; only an early election might bring a return to calm. Our correspondent goes shopping to discover the spending habits of Generation Z and millennials. And examining the work of Tom Lehrer, a mathematician who was an unlikely midwife at the birth of modern satire.
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