Pleasure Gardens, cabaret, nightclubs, rave & 350 years of the Big Night Out

Mass commercial nightlife began in a Japanese Pleasure Garden in 1657 and it’s blossomed ever since – via Victorian Vauxhall, cabaret Paris, jazz-driven New Orleans, flappers, speakeasies, moonshine, Studio 54 and the rave palaces of the 21st Century. Imogen Willetts tracks its riotous evolution in ‘Up All Night: A History of Going Out’ and wonders if the invention of the iPhone has burst the balloon. She talks to us here about … ... the Tango, the Can-Can: dances that got you arrested … how bourgeois French ‘slummers’ found a taste of danger … the heady allure in the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens as an escape from Victorian squalor … how Anita Berber’s chloroform ballet shocked and delighted Weimar Berlin … when dancing was a mating ritual and the impact of Dating Apps … democracy on the dancefloor: the unrepeatable mix of punters and celebrities at Studio 54 … and how the invention of the electric light got people going out and the iPhone made them stay home Order ‘Up All Night’ here: Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock going: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Pleasure Gardens, cabaret, nightclubs, rave & 350 years of the Big Night Out is an episode from Word Podcast by Word In Your Ear.

This episode is 30:11 long.

This episode was published on May 7, 2026.

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