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How One Year Changed the Modern World — Transcript

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0:00So, just what was so great about the
0:02year 2001 anyway?
0:09>> [music]
0:14[music]
0:18>> Well, 2001 was the year a global tragedy
0:21rewrote the rules of being American, the
0:22year some of the most beloved films in
0:24history hit theaters, the year
0:25technology quietly started rewiring
0:27everyday life, and the first full year
0:29of a new millennium that nobody was
0:31ready for. 2001 was a year you did not
0:33want to miss, and we're still living in
0:35its aftermath. Welcome to Retro
0:37Chronicle, where history, pop culture,
0:39and the moments you forgot actually get
0:40the deep dive they deserve. Today, we're
0:42covering some of the biggest political,
0:44cultural, and tech moments that defined
0:45[music] 2001. The ones that made
0:47headlines, and the ones that quietly
0:49rewired everyday life without anyone
0:51noticing. We do the research, we tell
0:53the story, and we make sure you actually
0:55[music] remember it. And stay until the
0:56end, because we're closing out with
0:572001's most iconic films, the ones you
1:00watch on repeat and probably still
1:01forgot came out that year. [music] But,
1:03let's start with the event that changed
1:05the face of modern America forever and
1:07touched every corner of the world.
1:12It's Tuesday, September 11th, 2001.
1:15Morning commute is happening, kids are
1:17getting to school, and the news is on in
1:18the background. Everything is
1:20completely, totally normal. And then, at
1:228:46 a.m., it isn't.
1:27>> It's something like a 727, and it was
1:30banking, and the only reason I kind of
1:31banking very hard, and then it just
1:34drove right through the World Trade
1:36Center tower.
1:37>> American Airlines Flight 11 strikes the
1:39North Tower of the World Trade Center.
1:41In 17 minutes later, United Flight 175
1:43hits the South Tower. The entire country
1:45is watching it happen live on
1:47television. A third plane hits the
1:48Pentagon. A fourth crashes in a
1:50Pennsylvania field after passengers on
1:52board decided to fight back [music]
1:53against the hijackers themselves. 2,977
1:57people are killed, The single deadliest
1:59terrorist attack in American history.
2:01But the attack doesn't just end with the
2:02towers.
2:03>> Good evening.
2:05Today, our fellow citizens,
2:07our way of life,
2:09our very freedom came under attack
2:12in a series of deliberate and deadly
2:14terrorist acts.
2:16The victims were in airplanes
2:19or in their offices.
2:21Secretaries, businessmen and women,
2:23military and federal workers,
2:26moms and dads,
2:28friends and neighbors.
2:29>> response is immediate. [music] The war
2:31on terror erupts, and within 45 days,
2:33the USA Patriot Act is signed into law,
2:35and it's one of the most expansive
2:37surveillance bills ever [music] passed
2:39on American soil.
2:48Before 2001, TSA checkpoints, full body
2:50scans, and the phrase national security
2:52threat weren't part of everyday life.
2:54And the conversation around what
2:55freedom, [music] safety, and privacy
2:57actually mean in America, it completely
2:59shifts. And it hasn't stopped shifting
3:01since. 9/11 didn't just change [music] a
3:03skyline. It changed who Americans
3:05understood themselves to be, and how
3:07they thought about safety, [music] about
3:08surveillance, about belonging, and who
3:10actually gets to feel protected in this
3:12country. And honestly, we're still
3:14working that out.
3:21But let's shift gears, because while all
3:23of this was happening, 2001 was also
3:25quietly building the technological
3:26foundation for the exact life you're
3:28living right now. And I mean that
3:30literally.
3:40This was the year tech stopped being
3:42something you sat down at a desk to use,
3:44and started being something you carried
3:45with you everywhere. 2001 marked the
3:48true rise of the digital age, and it
3:49happened in a series of moments that one
3:51by one changed everything. Starting at
3:54the top of the year on January 15th,
3:562001, Wikipedia launches and shifts how
3:58we consume information forever.
4:01>> [snorts and music]
4:03>> In the grand arc of human knowledge, few
4:06symbols stand as proudly as the
4:07encyclopedia, a testament to humanity's
4:10relentless pursuit of understanding.
4:12>> Before Wikipedia, an encyclopedia could
4:14cost thousands of dollars. Knowledge was
4:16gated behind institutions, behind
4:18paywalls, and behind physical books that
4:20most people couldn't access or afford.
4:21The idea that all of human knowledge
4:23should just exist freely for everyone
4:25with an internet connection was
4:27genuinely radical. But Wikipedia didn't
4:29just appear out of nowhere. It was
4:31actually born out of a failed
4:32experiment. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger
4:34had previously tried to build Nupedia, a
4:36peer-reviewed, expert-edited online
4:38encyclopedia. In its first 6 months,
4:40Nupedia published exactly two articles.
4:43Two. Wikipedia flipped that model
4:45entirely. Anyone could write, anyone
4:47could edit, and by the end of its first
4:48year alone, Wikipedia had over 20,000
4:51articles in 18 languages. By 2006,
4:53[music]
4:54a million. And today, over 6.8 million
4:57articles in over 300 languages. All free
5:00and all [music] open. That's the world
5:02Wikipedia built, and it started on
5:03January 15th, 2001. [music]
5:05That same month, Steve Jobs and Apple
5:08released iTunes. You could now buy a
5:10catalog of music without leaving your
5:11couch.
5:12>> And you've got to work seamlessly with
5:14the most popular MP3 player on the
5:16market, iPod. And we have a lot of
5:18resources we've brought to bear. As I
5:19mentioned, we have been delivering
5:22video, largest movie trailer site in the
5:24world, we know how to move oceans of
5:26bits. We own the best of only a handful
5:30of popular jukeboxes in the world. We
5:32don't know any other company that has
5:35these assets under one roof, and so as
5:37others try to do this, we know at this
5:39point only Apple could have created.
5:42>> And here's the thing, the music industry
5:43in 2001 was already in crisis. Napster
5:46had already happened. Peer-to-peer file
5:48sharing was rampant, and people were
5:49downloading music for free, and the
5:51labels were watching their revenue
5:52collapse in real time. Their 2001 annual
5:55report would call it, quote, "a
5:57turbulent year." But iTunes offered
5:59something different: legal digital music
6:01purchased by the song for 99 cents
6:03without leaving your couch, without
6:05buying the whole album just for one
6:06track you actually wanted. The music
6:08industry had a full meltdown about it,
6:10and rightfully so, because [music] it
6:12worked. And on October 23rd, the first
6:15iPod hit shelves. Steve Jobs walks out
6:17on stage and says six words that would
6:18change an entire industry, [music]
6:20quote, "1,000 songs in your pocket."
6:23>> The coolest thing about iPod is that
6:25whole your entire music library
6:27fits in your pocket. Never before
6:30possible. So, that's iPod.
6:33There are three major breakthroughs in
6:35iPod. Let's take a look at each one of
6:36them.
6:37The first one is it's ultra-portable.
6:39>> The iPod wasn't technically the first
6:41MP3 player. There had been others, but
6:43it was the first one that actually made
6:44sense. With a 5-GB hard drive and with a
6:47click wheel, a 10-hour battery, and
6:49those now iconic white earbuds that made
6:51iPod users instantly recognizable in
6:53public.
6:54>> 1 2 3 4
7:02>> IT LAUNCHED JUST 6 WEEKS AFTER SEPTEMBER
7:0411TH, 2001.
7:14>> Oh my god.
7:16>> Into a nation that was grieving,
7:18anxious, and deeply unsettled. And
7:20somehow, it still became the biggest
7:22surprise consumer hit of the decade,
7:24because music, it turns out, is exactly
7:26what people reach for when the [music]
7:27world feels like too much.
7:29>> You may have been wondering what this
7:30draped device was here. Uh this is the
7:33Xbox. And so, uh for the first time, let
7:36me now unveil Xbox.
7:42>> On November 15th, Microsoft launches the
7:44Xbox gaming system. Before 2001, gaming
7:46had always been there, but the Xbox
7:48marked a specific shift. This wasn't a
7:50toy. It was a console that could compete
7:52with anything Sony had with graphics and
7:54multiplayer capability that rewired what
7:56a generation expected from
7:57entertainment.
7:58>> Halo: Combat Evolved was a
7:59semi-important title in the history of
8:01the gaming industry. The title almost
8:03single-handedly carried the original
8:05Xbox upon release, helping to shape the
8:07platform as the FPS gamer's first
8:09choice. The 2001 Game of the Year winner
8:11is the game that helped to shape modern
8:13console gaming and multiplayer
8:14experience. It was the life and blood of
8:17the Xbox. If Halo was not an Xbox
8:19exclusive, or if it was just on the PC,
8:21then the Xbox most likely would have
8:23failed.
8:23>> Halo specifically became a cultural
8:25event. People weren't just playing it,
8:27they were talking about it, obsessing
8:29over it, and building communities around
8:30it. And you can draw a direct line from
8:32Halo: Combat Evolved to the way gaming
8:34culture operates today. And while all of
8:36that was happening, something else was
8:38quietly evolving in your pocket. Mobile
8:40phones evolved in 2001.
8:42>> At the school gate on the way home,
8:44evidence of the text messaging craze is
8:46everywhere. The phone makers never
8:48expected it to take off. It was
8:50teenagers who decided this was the way
8:52to keep in touch.
8:53>> SMS text messaging, which had been
8:54around since 1992 as a niche feature,
8:57exploded. By 2001, texting was going
8:59mainstream in a way nobody had predicted
9:01with billions of messages being sent
9:03globally. Camera phones also became more
9:05and more of a reality. The idea that
9:07your phone could take and send a
9:08photograph was still being treated as a
9:10novelty, something tech reporters wrote
9:12about with barely contained skepticism.
9:14And yet, within a few years, it would
9:16completely reshape how we document our
9:18lives, how we share moments, how news
9:20gets broken. Every photo you've taken on
9:22your [music] phone, every Instagram
9:23post, every FaceTime screenshot, it
9:25traces back to this moment. [music] And
9:27because 2001 was full of innovation, the
9:29dot-com bubble is also bursting in real
9:31time. [music]
9:32>> Might as well have been an alliance, so
9:34savage was the selling.
9:36In percentage terms, it had less impact
9:38than the crash of '87, but it still left
9:41traders and investors shell-shocked.
9:43>> You saw it, didn't you? It was down
9:45some.
9:46>> Why, how come?
9:47>> I don't know.
9:48>> The late '90s had been a gold rush.
9:50Companies raised hundreds of millions of
9:52dollars on a logo and a dream, and
9:53sometimes [music] nothing else. The
9:55Nasdaq had peaked in March 2000 at over
9:585,000. By 2001, it was in free fall.
10:01Companies like pets.com, cosmo.com, and
10:03webvan, which [music] had seemed
10:05untouchable just before, were imploding
10:07overnight. By 2001, an estimated 5
10:10trillion dollars in market value had
10:11disappeared. Investors started calling
10:13failed dot coms, quote, dot bombs.
10:16Hundreds of companies shut down. The
10:17grow fast, figure it out later era got
10:20its first real brutal reality check. But
10:22here's what's interesting, the crash
10:23didn't kill the internet. It actually
10:25clarified it. The companies that
10:27survived, like Amazon and Google,
10:29learned from it. They got leaner, more
10:31focused, and they built actual
10:33businesses. And the wreckage of the dot
10:34com bust is, in many ways, why the tech
10:37industry runs the way it does today.
10:38Here's the thing about 2001 and
10:40technology. It was the year the internet
10:42stopped being somewhere you went [music]
10:43and started being something you carried.
10:45Wikipedia democratized knowledge, iTunes
10:47democratized music, the iPod made your
10:49entire library portable, camera phones
10:51made documentation instant, [music] and
10:52the dot com crash made the survivors
10:55smarter, leaner, and more dangerous.
10:56[music]
10:57Without 2001, social media wouldn't
10:59exist. The streaming model wouldn't
11:01exist. The smartphone, which is
11:02essentially a supercomputer with a
11:04camera that fits in your pocket,
11:05wouldn't exist in the form it does
11:07today. That foundation was poured
11:08[music] in 2001.
11:15Now, can we please talk about what 2001
11:17gave us culturally? Because in the
11:19middle of everything, the grief, the
11:20uncertainty, the economic collapse, the
11:23technological upheaval, culture still
11:25showed up. Not just showed up, it may
11:27have been the most stacked year for
11:28film, TV, and music in recent memory.
11:30Let's see which ones you remember.
11:32>> Princess, where are you?
11:35Well, at least we know where the
11:37princess is.
11:38>> Hey!
11:39>> Oh, no, no, no, NO. DEAD GIRL, OFF THE
11:41TABLE.
11:42>> On April 22nd, 2001, Shrek comes out of
11:45DreamWorks Studios and instantly becomes
11:46a beloved anti-fairy tale blockbuster.
11:49It made $484 million worldwide and it
11:52won the first ever Academy Award for
11:54Best Animated Feature, a category that
11:56was literally created for it because the
11:58Academy finally had to acknowledge
11:59[music] that animated film had grown up.
12:02>> Somebody once told me the world is going
12:06to roll me.
12:07>> How much longer I can keep this up,
12:09Fiona?
12:10>> I'm sorry, Shrek.
12:11>> And somehow, 24 years later, Shrek has
12:13become one of the most durable meme
12:14formats in internet history. That's a
12:16cultural footprint that almost no film
12:18can claim. Then, on November 10th, Harry
12:20Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone [music]
12:22hit theaters.
12:27>> Welcome to Hogwarts.
12:30>> This was the first film adaptation of
12:31J.K. Rowling's beloved book series and
12:33it arrived carrying the weight of an
12:34entire generation's childhood. It rakes
12:37in $975 million
12:39>> [music]
12:39>> at the box office. The books had already
12:41created something unusual, millions of
12:42kids who were reading again,
12:44voluntarily, for fun, staying up past
12:46their bedtimes. Thus, a franchise was
12:48born.
12:48>> And the wait is almost over for fans of
12:51Harry Potter.
12:52>> Fans can't wait.
12:53>> I've been waiting months, years for it
12:55to come.
12:56>> I'm very attached to the books. The
12:57movies are amazing.
12:59>> Creating one of the most loyal fandoms
13:00in the history of entertainment and
13:01people who weren't even alive in 2001
13:03are still discovering this story for the
13:05first time [music] and becoming devoted
13:07to it. Here were just a few other
13:08blockbuster films to come out in 2001.
13:10>> She can make you lose like 3 lb in one
13:12class.
13:13>> And all you need is love.
13:14>> Please don't stop that again.
13:18>> You're late.
13:19>> I know.
13:22>> Peekaboo!
13:23>> I shot him five times.
13:26>> YOU
13:27SHALL NOT
13:28>> [screaming]
13:28>> PASS!
13:30>> [groaning]
13:30>> MOULIN ROUGE comes out and redefines
13:32what a modern musical can look like.
13:34Legally Blonde drops and becomes an
13:36instant cult classic. A film about
13:38taking women seriously that proved
13:39beauty and brains could coexist.
13:41Monsters Inc. gave an entire generation
13:43a theory about what happens under the
13:45bed. The Princess Diaries gave us Anne
13:47Hathaway, and Scary Movie 2 reminded us
13:49that even in the darkest years, we
13:51needed to laugh at something. These are
13:53classics people are still watching,
13:54still quoting, still recommending 25
13:57years later. And at the same time,
13:59reality TV is having its full moment.
14:01Survivor is in its second season, Big
14:03Brother is running, and The Amazing Race
14:05makes its debut. We are deep in the era
14:07of watching strangers do things for our
14:09entertainment and calling it content.
14:11Sound familiar? And here's what's
14:12fascinating in retrospect. Reality TV in
14:142001 was considered kind of low-brow, a
14:17novelty. People kept predicting it would
14:19fade out, and instead it laid out the
14:20entire conceptual foundation for what we
14:22now call creator culture. [music] The
14:24parasocial relationships, the audience
14:26as community, the ordinary person as
14:28compelling subject. [music] And let's
14:29not forget the music. On September 11th,
14:322001, Jay-Z drops The Blueprint hours
14:34before the attacks happen. Think about
14:36[music] that for a second. One of the
14:37most critically acclaimed hip-hop albums
14:39of all time, widely considered one of
14:41Jay-Z's masterpieces, drops on the same
14:43morning that the world changes.
14:45>> Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the
14:47Moulin Rouge.
14:49>> You want to give it a go?
14:50>> [music]
14:51>> Disagree, but ask you and I'm sorry.
14:53I'mma keep playing these cats.
14:55>> And there was more. Christina Aguilera,
14:57Lil' Kim, Mýa, and Pink released Lady
14:59Marmalade, the ultimate girl group
15:01anthem.
15:05>> Question. Tell me what you think about
15:06me.
15:07>> Destiny's Child gave us Independent
15:09Women, Jennifer Lopez dropped Love Don't
15:11Cost a Thing, Dido released Thank You,
15:13and Alicia Keys released Fallen. This
15:15year was stacked, and a lot of it
15:16arrived while the country was in pieces.
15:18[music] But here's what's most iconic
15:20about 2001. It was objectively one of
15:22the heaviest years in recent American
15:24history, and culture still showed up.
15:26Stories still got told, music still got
15:28made, and the digital age kicked off.
15:30And people still went to the movies,
15:31because culture doesn't just exist to
15:33entertain us. It exists to remind us who
15:35we are when everything else is
15:36uncertain. And in 2001, a year that gave
15:38people every reason to go quiet, to go
15:41numb, [music] to stop, culture kept
15:42going. And we're still here talking
15:44about it. So, 2001 [music] was full of
15:46grief and wonder, disruption and
15:48creativity, all in the span of 12
15:50months. It was the year that proved that
15:52even when everything falls apart, human
15:54beings do what they've always done. They
15:56build things. They tell stories. [music]
15:58They make music, and they figure out
15:59what comes next. So, which moment hit
16:02hardest for you? Drop it in the
16:03comments. We genuinely want to know. And
16:05I'll see you in the next one, right here
16:06on Retro Chronicle. If you're into this
16:08kind of deep dive, [music] the history,
16:10the culture, the wait, I didn't know
16:12that moments, the Retro Chronicle
16:13channel is exactly where you want to be.
16:15Subscribe so you don't miss it when the
16:16next video drops.

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