1969 history has two halves that barely belong in the same year. The first half gives you Apollo 11 and Woodstock. The second gives you the Manson murders and Altamont, where the Rolling Stones hired the Hells Angels as security and a man was stabbed to death in the crowd. Ed Conroy says you can feel the temperature of the whole year change between August and December.

What does it mean that people did not lock their doors before the Manson murders? That Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate had no private security, no reason to think they needed it? The murders happened a couple of weeks after Woodstock in the same summer of peace and love. Ed Conroy says what made it so shattering was that the people who did it came from completely ordinary middle-class backgrounds. That was the part nobody had a framework for.

Sesame Street premiered November 10th 1969 and Ed Conroy calls it the most important children's television show ever made. It was the first one built on a Madison Avenue approach, the same people who sold cigarettes and airline tickets now selling kids on counting and the alphabet. It landed like an atomic bomb and the year needed it.

Topics: 1969 history throwback, Apollo 11 Woodstock, Manson murders Altamont, Sesame Street premiere, romanticizing decades

GUEST: Ed Conroy | http://retrontario.com

Originally aired on 2026-04-02