For anybody with memories of the era before streaming, it feels amazing to have thousands of shows and movies to choose from every time we want to watch TV.

It is also kind of amazing how much of it is bad.

From KERA in Dallas, this is Think.

I'm Chris Boyd.

Music that came out when parents and even grandparents of today's teenagers

were growing up is still omnipresent,

which can make it hard for new artists to break through.

Movies keep getting

remade or made into musicals or spun into endless sequels, and silhouettes in fashion seem to keep

cycling back through the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Maybe we have reached the end of our collective

ability to create anything new in art, or maybe innovations are still happening and we are failing to notice.

Spencer Cornhaber is a staff writer at the Atlantic where you can read his article,

is this the worst ever era of American pop culture? Spencer, welcome back to think.

Thanks for having me. Lest anybody think you might just be uniquely critical of new stuff coming out.

You cite this UGov poll a few years ago about this.

What were the results?

Yeah, it found that most Americans think the 2020s are the worst decade in a century for

music, movies, fashion, TV, and sports.

Ouch.

You know, and some of that might be related to just, we always feel this way, but a number

of other factors made me think that it was time to really dive in and examine the kind of

pessimism that I think has taken hold culturally in all sorts of arenas.

...