Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Your History: A new podcast from The Times

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

This Friday we're sharing an episode of a brand new podcast from The Times. It's called Your History, and each week it uses the obituary pages of The Times to tell the stories of important and fascinating lives. This week Anna Temkin, deputy obituaries editor at The Times, explores the lives of TV doctor Michael Mosley and pioneering astronaut Bill Anders. You can hear future episodes by following Your History wherever you listen to Off Air...with Jane and Fi. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. More to iPhone. Hello, this is Your History from The Times and The Sunday Times with me, Anna Temkin. To those joining us again, welcome back. And to those listening for the first time, a quick word about our podcast,

which was inspired by the words of Nelson Mandela. You can't really be proud of yourself if you don't know your history. And we believe our lives are shaped by the lives of many others, by men and women who struggle, succeed, create and change our world, our thoughts and our dreams. So on this podcast, we use the obituaries pages of The Times to explore two remarkable lives, to help understand our own history as well as theirs. And this week, we reflect on the life of Michael Mosley, the TV doctor who changed how many people understand their health and well-being, and whose life came to a sudden and tragic end while on holiday with his wife in Greece.

And we'll also look back on the life of William Anders, the American astronaut who took one of the most famous pictures of all time during a daring mission to orbit the Moon. Their stories are in very different ways a part of all our histories, yours and mine. There have been universal tributes for Michael Mosley, the cheerful and popular science presenter who was one of the most recognisable television doctors, memorably pushing his body to extreme lengths for the cause of good television, good advice on health and a greater awareness of science. Michael Mosley was on holiday when he set off for a walk alone

and by the evening he had failed to return and a search and rescue operation was launched involving the emergency services, volunteers and a helicopter. But operation was launched involving the emergency services, volunteers and a helicopter. But it was to be in vain. The Times obituary for Michael Mosley, read by Tom Whipple. Michael Mosley ingested tapeworms, ate a black pudding made with his own blood for his programme The Wonderful World of Blood, injected snake venom into his veins and swallowed a camera for Inside the Human Body, allowing the viewer a never-to-be-forgotten

close-up of his inner workings. The really unpleasant part was that the night before I had to drink four litres of laxative, Mosley recalled. I was meant to be going to dinner with the Director General of the BBC and the gastroenterologist said, not a good idea. Trust Me, I'm a Doctor was the title of Moseley's 1990s BBC television series. Many did just that, not least with the 5-2 diet that he popularised in another BBC documentary, Eat, Fast and Live Longer,

which suggested that sustained weight loss could be achieved by dieting for two days a week and eating normally for the other five. The programme was followed by the best-selling book The Fast Diet, written with Mimi Spencer, which within five years had sold 600,000 copies and been translated into 40 languages. which within five years had sold 600,000 copies and been translated into 40 languages. One selling point was that George Osborne, the Chancellor at the time, had lost two stone through the diet, while the singer Beyoncé was also said to use the plan.

Another was Moseley's claim that the 5-2 diet, through which he aimed to reverse his own type 2 diabetes, was science-based. Yet researchers were unable to find any evidence and, in 2017, Mosley admitted that no studies had been published confirming that intermittent dieting leads to long-term weight loss. These studies take a long time which is why, many years on, scientists are still looking at them, he told the Sunday Times. Energetic and enthusiastic about many things, he explored different exercise patterns in The Truth About Exercising, and more recently championed the Fast 800 diet, which is described as moderately low-carb Mediterranean style. Like the 5-2 diet,

it advocates intermittent fasting and was the subject of another lucrative book. His three-part series for Channel 4, called Lose a Stone in 21 Days, was criticised by an eating disorder charity whose helplines were inundated with anxious viewers, but Moseley always insisted that, generally speaking, everything I do has a substantial basis to it. One of Moseley's most fascinating shows was Life Before Birth, showing what happens in the womb before, during and after conception. It also followed prospective parents through the heartbreaking decisions that are sometimes thrown up by antenatal screening.

There is something fantastically powerful about watching someone genuinely wrestling with a dilemma, he told the British Medical Journal. And then you realise how difficult it is. And then, he added, you empathise with it. Michael Mosley was born in Calcutta in 1957. Just as a new deadly strain of influenza virus known as Asian flu emerged from China, he told the BBC. It killed an estimated two million people and left baby Michael seriously ill. For a while it was touch and go. His blood, he said, 55 years on, still showed traces of antibodies. Proof, he said, that young though he was, he was able to fight it off. His father, a banker in Hong Kong, insisted that seven-year-old Michael and his older brother John

be sent to boarding school in England. His mother, the daughter of an Anglican bishop, later told him of her heartbreak at the separation. He was eleven when he says his father offered him something like £100 if he did not smoke before the age of 18. It seemed like an inordinately large sum of money, he told the Guardian newspaper, so I never felt particularly tempted to smoke. Many years later, he tried vaping for the BBC Horizon programme e-cigarettes, Miracle or Menace, but found it unpleasant. the BBC Horizon programme E-Cigarettes, Miracle or Menace, but found it unpleasant. The attraction was not obvious. I suspect it would have been a different experience if I had tried it at 12, he said. Mosley arrived at New College Oxford to study philosophy, politics and economics, just as

Russian flu was sweeping the country. And he said, surprise, surprise, my blood shows I got it. He then followed in his father's footsteps, training as an investment banker in the city of London. After a couple of years, he decided that, frankly, as he put it, making money was not what I was most interested in. He studied to be a doctor at the Royal Free Hospital Medical School in London. On his first day, the dean announced that they would study for six years, but most of what they learnt would be out of date within ten years. He was right, Mosley said later. The medical world's understanding of diet and fitness is

changing very fast and that's what I want to tell people about. There is a vast gap between what medical experts know and what the general public know. The same dean at the medical school predicted that at least four of the students would marry within their 100-strong cohort, and that came true for Moseley when he met Clare, who became a GP, parenting expert and founder of the Parenting Matters website. They were married in 1987 and Clare, who retired from general practice in 2022, survives him with their four children, Alex, Jack, Dan and Kate. Before long, Moseley became disillusioned with psychiatry, the speciality that had attracted him to medicine. I went into it with huge hopes and beliefs and then it became more obvious that there were severe limitations to what you could do, he told the British Medical Journal. But then his eye had been drawn to a newspaper advert for a trainee assistant producer scheme at the

BBC. He applied on a whim and was successful, but then found himself torn between medicine and the media. I went on holiday to Greece and I had two telegrams that I wrote in my hand, he said. One of them was to say no to the BBC and the other was to say no to the house job. I sent the one to the BBC and I felt a tremendous sense of loss. Then I sent another telegram saying I've changed my mind. His first full-length project was Ulcer Wars, a Horizon documentary about Barry Marshall, a fellow self-experimenter who was convinced that stomach ulcers were not caused by stress, but by the

organism Helicobacter pylori. The show generated more than 20,000 letters, and Moseley was named Medical Journalist of the Year by the British Medical Association. As he said, I probably did, in a funny way, more good with that one programme than if I had stayed in medicine for 30 years. Further programmes included A Miracle for Cancer, where he investigated the rapidly developing field of cancer vaccines, while The Human Face was a four-part series examining the science behind perceptions of beauty. It was presented by John Cleese and featured the faces of Elizabeth Hurley, Pierce Brosnan and Sir David Attenborough, and brought an Emmy Award nomination.

Before turning to presenting, Moseley had spent 20 years behind the camera, humanising not only medical topics but also scientific ones, such as volcanoes and history, in programmes including Pompeii The Last Day. The joy of both having a medical background, he explained, and also being from the BBC, is that you can go and talk to almost anyone in the world. In 2009, after realising that he was unaware of any male in his family living beyond the age of 72, he took longevity as the subject of his documentary, Make Me Live Forever.

On a recent edition of his BBC podcast, Just One Thing, recorded just a few weeks ago with The Times columnist Professor Tanya Byron, Michael Mosley offered five tips for boosting wellbeing. Nordic walking, flax seeds, helping others, playing an instrument and reading poetry aloud. Michael Mosley, the doctor and television presenter, was born on the 22nd of March 1957. His body was found on the Greek island of Symi on the 9th of June 2024. He was 67. This week, we also shared the remarkable and moving story of Nora Cortinas, an Argentinian human rights activist who began protesting

after her son was abducted and murdered by the Junta in 1977. She became a voice for Argentina's 30,000 disappeared, the perceived enemies of the state who the Junta killed between 1976 and 1983. She joined other mothers of the disappeared in Plaza de Mayo in front of the presidential palace in Buenos Aires. Every Thursday, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo Linea Fundadora would walk around the square holding up photos of their children and carrying a white headscarf. the square holding up photos of their children and carrying a white headscarf. Her final public appearance was on March 24th, the National Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice in Argentina, when she was seen in a wheelchair wearing her white headscarf and clutching a picture of her

disappeared son. Thank you. I'm going to open. Breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. We went to study the moon, but discovered the Earth. The words of the American astronaut William Anders, who changed the way we see our own planet through the power of a photograph. It might be hard for younger generations to understand how powerful the first flights to the moon were in the global imagination,

but it was transformational. William Anders and fellow astronauts Frank Borman and James Lovell became the first humans to leave Earth's orbit and circle the moon. On December 21, 1968, they were powered into space on Apollo 8, which blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Their spacecraft would orbit the moon 10 times before safely returning to Earth. But that is not what they are primarily remembered for. The Times obituary for William Anders, read by Lizzie Frenier.

On Christmas Eve in 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 completed their fourth loop of the moon. As they were doing so, they became the first humans ever to see an earthrise. Their spacecraft sped over the dull grey moonscape. They looked up and saw the radiantly blue cloud-veiled earth rising above the lunar horizon and floating in the infinite blackness of space. Oh my god, look at that picture over there, cried Anders, the most junior member of the crew who was tasked with photographing the surface of the moon in preparation for a future landing. There's the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty, he added. Frank Borman, the flight commander, and James Lovell demanded cameras. Anders gave them

two, both loaded with black and white film, but he was the only one with an unobstructed view. He swiftly inserted a color film into a long-lensed Hasselblad camera and started, quote, blazing away. The result was Earthrise, one of the most memorable photographs ever taken. It showed the beauty and fragility of our planet, captured the imagination of humankind, and inspired the modern-day environmental movement. Anders had been born in 1933 in Hong Kong, where his father, Arthur, was serving in the U.S. Navy. The family returned briefly to the U.S. before Arthur was posted to Nanjing in China as an officer on the gunboat Panay on the Yangtze River

and was later awarded the Navy Cross. Anders and his mother Muriel fled by train to Guangzhou, where they watched Japanese warplanes bombing ships in the Pearl River. And from there, they made a perilous journey by boat to the Philippines. His father was wounded when Japanese bombers sank his patrol ship and was evacuated by the British. Back in the U.S., the family settled in San Diego, California, where Anders became a keen Boy Scout

and attended a military prep school beneath the flight path of an airbase, inspiring a lifelong fascination with flight. Following in his father's footsteps, he went on to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and later graduated with a degree in electrical engineering in 1955. Anders switched to the U.S. Air Force, earning his pilot wings in 1956. He joined a fighter-interceptor squadron, initially flying Scorpions equipped with nuclear-tipped missiles in California,

and later challenging encroachment by Soviet heavy bombers from a base in Iceland. After earning a master's degree in nuclear engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology in Ohio, he simultaneously applied to train as a test pilot with the Air Force and as an astronaut with NASA's Apollo program. He was turned down for the former, but accepted for the latter and became part of its third intake. Apollo 8's risky mission was driven by America's determination to overhaul the Soviet Union in the Cold War space race and put the first man on the moon.

Anders, 35 at the time, reckoned there was one chance in three that we wouldn't make it back, but considered it a risk worth taking. Sixty-eight hours after blasting off, they became the first humans to enter the moon's orbit. They were the first to witness the far side of the moon. On their fourth loop around it, they saw the earth rise. The three men were awestruck.

It was the only color in the universe, said Anders, who described it as a very delicate orb, which to me looked like a Christmas tree ornament coming up over this very stark, ugly lunar landscape. He was struck by the fragility of what he described as this gorgeous, beautiful planet of ours. Warning that that little atmospheric thing you and I enjoy is nothing more than the skin on an apple. The crew broadcast a Christmas Eve message,

back to what was then the largest television audience in history. Anders opened it by reading from the book of Genesis. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Apollo 8 splashed down in the Pacific three days later, on December 27th, having orbited the moon ten times and flown 580,000 miles in six days. Its crew were hailed as heroes. The three men appeared at parades in New York, Washington, and Chicago, and before a joint session of Congress. Their success boosted American morale, at the end of a year scarred by race riots, anti-war protests, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.

The space mission had a profound effect on Anders, too. An avowed Cold War warrior, he later asked, as I look down at the Earth, which is about the size of your fist at an arm's length, I'm thinking, this is not a very big place. Why can't we all get along? Seven months after the Apollo 8 mission, the crew's feet was eclipsed when, thanks to their preparatory work, Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon. But their enduring legacy was

Anders' Earthrise photo. It adorned postal stamps and appeared on the cover of Life magazine's book A Hundred Photographs That Changed the World. It inspired the first Earth Day in 1970. first Earth Day in 1970. The irony was not lost on Anders. As he later observed, we had come all the way to the moon to study the man. And what we really discovered was the Earth. William Anders, the American astronaut, was born on the 17th of October 1933. He died in an air crash on 7 June 2024 at the age of 90. The small plane he was flying solo crashed into the ocean off Washington State. There are so many lives which enrich and inform our own lives. We publish two or three obituaries every day on thetimes.com. This week in The Times, we covered the life of Derek Roberts,

a commando who helped to secure the eastern flank of the Normandy beachhead after D-Day. Shortly before, he was injured, far more seriously than he thought at the time, when he fell from a rope 20 feet above ground during live firing exercises, and it was only years later that an x-ray revealed a historic fracture. It turned out he had gone to Normandy with a broken neck. We also covered the life of Lord Hindlip, who as chairman of Christie's Auction House oversaw the sale of Vincent van Gogh's sunflowers for £24 million, a record-breaking sum at the time. And he also made millions for charity

when he helped to sell Princess Diana's dresses. And Colin Gibb, the unrepentant singer of the 1984 novelty hit Agadou, which was voted the worst pop song of all time, but it still sold more than a million copies around the world. Thanks for listening to our podcast. The producer is Callum McRae, and the editor of Time's podcast is Stephen Titherington. Do get in touch. Let us know what you like, what we miss, what we could do better, and what helps you know your history better. I'm Anna Dot-Temkin at

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