had announced to me secretly the first inductees were going to be william paley who started cbs, david sarnoff, the greatest of the foreign correspondents pagddy chaefsky conditioned milton berle and me she said to me, listen, if that's what they want to do, who am i to say? that's my mother. that should tell you everything. >> "all in the family" for a moment. i'm a little younger. >> are you? >> i didn't see the originals, but i loved the show. i remember the ing episode where archie bunker repeatedly used the word fag. why use that word so many times in one episode? >> came from the fact that that was the word that one would hear in the schoolyard, around the subway, you didn't have to know the people who were talking if they passed you in the street and you might hear the word. so it wasn't like we were reaching for something. it was the culture and the vocabulary. and we used them. >> did that show open a conversation and a dialogue in this country that hadn't happened before? >> you know what i've learned? every episode for people opened the conversation. because i go through life hearin

and in this year, 1927, when the fred french building was completed david sarnoff and william paly founded their networks, nbc and cbs, the first national radio networks and radio went national. and the grand central station had been completed in 1913. but the apogee of the period i'm talking about, when it really reaches its takeoff phase was in 1927. so a lot of the book centers on that year. and this is 1927, the year that lindbergh, for example, his return from his solo flight from roosevelt field on long island to paris and he triumphantly returns first to the nation's capital in washington and then to new york city where over 4 billion people crowded the streets to see it. and it's also in 1927 that, oops, hit the wrong button. that the tempo of the city changed dramatically. and f. scott fitzgerald put it really well. he said the parties were bigger in '27, buildings were higher, morals were looser, liquor was cheaper the jazz age now raced on under its own power served by great filling stations full of money. man, i wish i could have written that. and new york then is, in this year