Oh What A Time... - #102 City Planning (Part 1)

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Ever wondered how cities were planned? Then wonder no more with this week’s subject! We’re heading back to 100BC to check out the pre-Aztec city of Teotihuacan. We’ll see what kind of American city Robert Owen had planned in the early 1800s. PLUS let’s see what our old moustache’d mucker Josef Stalin planned to do with Moscow.And how did we ever survive before the age of the instagram fitness influencer? How could caveman possibly have persisted without dietary advice handed out in 60 second social media videos?! We have no idea, but if you know: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Start listening today when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash wonder ECA. That's audible.com slash wonder ECA that's audible.com slash wonder ECA hello and welcome to Oh What A Time the History podcast that tries to ask, just how did people survive before the age of the Instagram fitness influencer? Now, I don't know how my algorithms work. I don't know why I'm getting this and I get it all the time. It's not just one, it's not just two.

It's probably 10 different bodybuilders on Instagram telling me I need to eat more eggs. As a consequence, I'm a five-egger day man. Can't wait to see those changes. You know why that is, Ellis though? Why? It's because the iPhone can now scan your body so it can look at your body shape so it knows what you look like.

It matches you as the most appropriate influencer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This guy needs more eggs. We've got to give him egg content. I'm going to guess the fitness influencers you're into. I'm not following any of them. I'm just getting them on my feed. Eddie Abou, clearly you've been egg-fluenced. I do get Eddie Abou who's egg-obsessed. Yeah. And thinks that there are big problems with bread. What's his name?

Eddie Abou, Britain's finest egg-fluencer. Eggy Abou surely has to be his handle. I also got a Welsh one whose name I can't remember but he's always frying like 25 eggs and the camera will zoom in on the eggs. He'll be like, maximum gains boys! I think I know, is he the guy who, he's got like, it does all his workout. He posts all his workouts. He's up really early, like running at like 5am. Yeah.

Yeah. And then it'd be like, he'll put his 25 eggs on a plate with like 14 avocados and he'd be like, maximum gains boys. I'm fucking lifting in the gym twice today. E in chest and shoulders, morning legs and lower back. Maximum gain. And then he eats his big egg, plate of eggs and then he flexes. I get him, I don't know why.

A week after you're hit with all this egg stuff, are you hit with laxative adverts? Are Instagrams sort of feeding you with the stuff that you'll require after a week of entirely egg-based diet. Just add two fried eggs. Just add two fried eggs. Love it. But you shouldn't be having more than two eggs a day. Mate, try telling that to an Instagram fitness influencer.

They're eating 20 a meal. This is why you're never going to make it as a fitness influencer with advice like that. Yeah, come on Tom. And are these people massive? And my second question is, are these people happy? They're happy with their gains. They're all massive. They're happy that they've influenced me to be eating eggs seven days a week. I'm 24, 7, 3, 6, 5 egg now. Are they buying these eggs or do they keep chickens as a way of making this financially sustainable?

They are in the pocket of Big Egg. The egg marketing board is all over these people. Do you know, I get influencers, like fitness influencers, but I also get stuff at the other end of the spectrum, which is like people making disgusting meals. Do you know what I'm talking about? Like someone who's just like alphabetic spaghetti or like taking a frozen steak out the freezer and literally starting to fry it and then like some making some smash, you know, that artificial mash stuff and throwing it on a plate for the kids. Like to the extent where you're thinking, is this trolling? These people, like, they're positioning themselves like chefs, but the cuisine they're cooking up

is barely edible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you just go in the comments, everyone's like, any danger of some vegetables around here? Any day. I don't know when ideas of health eating began. And obviously I'm sure that they would have been wrong. I remember going to a museum.

This is one for Darlene, our historian. I remember going to a museum when I was about 15 and reading about, I think it must have been, I don't know, it had been like the Battle of Bosworth or the Battle of Naseby or something like that. So, you know, you're talking sort of, I don't know, maybe the 1500s or 1600s. And soldiers used to think the vegetables were bad luck and they just used to eat meat.

Will Barron Did they? Will Barron But we've all, we've, um, this, this is, this is a half remembered Will Barron Wow. Will Barron thing from a museum, from a museum trip from 30 years ago. So if you are a historian and you know what I'm talking to, please let us know on hello at owhatatime.com. You know, they've always been ideas of what was good for us. And obviously that's changed. I don't know when the fitness, wellness sort of industry began, because certainly I remember there being diet books and cookbooks and fitness books in the 1980s. There were a couple knocking

around the house actually. I think it might be a modern thing. Will Barron Yeah, but you know, there were gyms, you know, there've been gyms for a long time. Will Barron I think post 80s. I've told the story that I had Ribena in a bottle when I was like two, and I had tea with three sugars in a bottle. I helped be eating, hadn't hit Dagnum where I grew up until I was six. Like for sure. Yeah. And I would actually say Ribena was seen as a health option because

it seems like it's got some fruit in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, definitely. And I think the advice was very bad. The five-day piece of government advice has been around for a long time though. But again, a lot of it was to do with filling people up and it was to do with what tasted nice as well. Can I admit something terrible Ellis? I don't always hit my five a day. Sometimes I don't quite hit that number. What about you Chris? Five veg. Oh, it's five fruit and veg actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, so maybe I am. Maybe I'm at least on the outskirts of it. So maybe I am. You're on the outskirts of five fruit vegetables today. I'm hitting four. Definitely hitting four. Definitely hitting four. Where are you getting your big four from?

So orange juice. Yeah. Okay. You can't shrug. That's the juice of a fruit. The amount of sugar in orange juice is crazy. I'd probably eat one banana a day. Maybe a potato will make it.

Potatoes don't count, but anyway. That might be in potato waffle form, but it's still a potato. I've got bad news. If you're counting potato, bird's eye potato waffles as one of your five a day. Get it down you kids, it's a health option. We need to relook at your data. If something is lattice, it doesn't stop being the thing it is. It's been filled potato because it's got little holes in it.

It's not stopping being a potato, it's still a potato. You run over a potato, It's still a potato. You run over a potato. It's still a potato Potatoes don't count Potato is not one of your five a day because it's starchy food Okay, so it's not the lattice Right. Yeah, so I'm slightly struggling for my fourth thing So I think there there might be some peas will turn up. Some peas will turn up? Is that with the greatest of respect or bollocks?

Yeah, can you hear the panic in his voice as he's just reaching for any vegetables? I'm now just naming vegetables. You know when a politician gets caught on news night, that's what this feels like. I feel like I'm on a game show and I've got to name 10 vegetables for you in a steady bit. Yeah, no, carrots. Carrots. They're quite often in my house. I'm Emma Barnett. I can see Toms on the ropes and I'm going in for the kill. Name another vegetable. Name another vegetable. Name another vegetable. Name another vegetable. No, carrots. Carrots are often knocking around. Yeah.

There's a fair few carrots. Yeah. Fine. Tell you what knocks around. Old magazines in a dentist reception or waiting area. Carrots don't knock around. They knock around in our fridge uneaten and then are disposed of. And I say to Claire, it's all right because I've just eaten a potato waffle

so I'm fine. And she goes, wow, my healthy husband. Yeah. So welcome to Oh What A Time. This is going to be a really fun show I think today, isn't it? Should we talk about what we're discussing today before we go into some correspondence? Should we do Time. This is going to be a really fun show, I think, today, isn't it? Shall we talk about what we're discussing today before we go into some correspondence? Should we do that? This is an interesting one. I don't know who suggested this subject, but it's a really good one. It's kind of city planning, town planning. Which dweeb came up with that idea? Which of you two was that? I can't remember. Both trying to distance themselves from it now.

No, no, no, no, no. Because I suggested, my suggestion was skateboarding. Because I suggested my suggestions were skateboarding. Remember that? The history of skateboarding. Yeah. Drugs and shagging. Those were my three suggestions. Ellis suggested town planning.

The history of shagging. We should. Chris suggested an episode which was a guide on how to kiss. That's what you wanted, wasn't it? 50 minutes of instruction on that. Do you know what I've become obsessed with recently? The day the dinosaurs died. Have you ever thought about this? What was that day? What was that day like? I can't stop thinking about it. I dream about it when I'm going to bed.

Can you imagine like the, the asteroid hitting and then what happened? I always assumed the dinosaurs died immediately, but from what I've been reading, it's likely they lived on for thousands of years, slowly dying out. My guess is like a normal day, but just a lot more sort of looking up at the sky and saying, what's that? No, because I don't think a Dipodocus would have looked up at the sky and thought, that looks like something to worry about actually. Well, Dipodocus is the one you want to be looking up at the sky, the long neck.

Yeah, big long neck. Munching on his lovely leaf, thinking, I wonder if this counts as one of my five a day. Anyway, I think I've got an episode idea, like to propose live on air. In like famous days from prehistory, like days in which something happened. What do we know after that day? Fire. Pompey's probably a good day. An interesting day.

Yeah, not a good day. Or maybe days you wouldn't want to live through. Days you wouldn't use a one-day time machine for. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Big Bang. Yeah. That would worry me. I think I'd regret that.

This feels significant. Ha ha ha ha. Whoa. That's a very good subject area. I like that a lot. That's great. There you go. That's really good.

I think city planning or town planning might have been suggested by my friend, Barsa Jim, actually. Yes. Which goes to show. I'm just trying to think, which goes to show if you are friends with any of the three of us and you have an idea and you're a listener, let us know, because we will put your good ideas into action. But I'm sure that that's one of Jim's ideas.

In that case, I would like to immediately retract the idea that the man who suggested it was a dweeb. Yeah, I think that's probably for the best actually. I think it's a really cool idea. Although the history, one episode on the history of skateboards shagging, what was the other thing? Drugs. Drugs. Yeah, recreational drugs,

recreational shagging and recreational skateboarding. I tell you in terms of skateboarding, my daughter is learning to roller skate. Yeah. I don't know if any of your kids roller skate. It's horrible. No, my six-year-old's learning to skateboard at the moment, but not roller skating. It's horrible because every fall you think,

here we go, that's a FEMA snap, that's a blue-lit lit to A&E. Because roller skating is, I think, probably more recent than you would think, is it? It feels 80s. But yeah, it's so dangerous. So obviously dangerous. Yes, I don't like it. Well, here's something that happened in my family that was dangerous and then turned

out to be a disaster. My parents brought my brother, this was before I was born, but it's been told to me, a pogo stick for Christmas. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But they bought the pogo stick secondhand from a secondhand shop. Okay.

And it didn't have the stopper on the bottom, the rubber stopper that you bounce on. So they took it out on Christmas day, he pogo sticks on it it and the pogo stick remains in the ground because it's just a metal pole. And he is sent flying up and off and onto concrete. Like genuinely bad injury, cuts down the face, arm just screwed. This thing still stuck upright like a tent bowl in the ground. Yeah, what I was going to say is it's a pogo stick, but also a swing ball set,

if you can find a test board for swing. Oh God. Exactly. First reported use of wheeled skates was on a London stage in 1743. The first patented roller skate was introduced in 1760 by the Belgian inventor John Joseph Merlin.

They were hard to steer and stopping was difficult due to the fact they did not have any type of breaker mechanism and as such they failed to gain popularity. Well guess what? It's pretty much the same today. I have thought on a number of occasions that Heelys would be quite fun but I can't bring myself to buy them. You can't get them in adult sizes. If you buy Heelys would be quite fun, but I can't bring myself to buy them. You can't get them in adult sizes. If you buy Heelys, I will quit this podcast.

It was a big rock and roll thing, wasn't it? Roller skates. Was it? Yeah, like in dance halls and things like that. Well, roller discos and all this sort of stuff was quite cool, wasn't it? I think of them 70s. I think of America and like California in the 70s when I think of roller skating. But I think it suits that weather, it suits skating along the beautiful coastline in San Francisco, you know, it's that sort of vibe, isn't it? Hot weather, it's all that sort of stuff. What it doesn't suit is gravel in a recreational park in South London.

Yeah. The car park of a leisure centre. Where everything is a hazard. Yes. Completely. Right. Shall we crack on to some correspondence before we get into this fantastic episode. Brilliant idea suggested by one of Ellis's friends. Here we go. This email, it's not that I just liked it. I think this is one of the best emails we've ever received. Okay. Okay. We've done this one before, Ellis, where I've asked you to sing a little jingle just

off the cuff about this being a world-changing email, this being one of the great emails. If you wouldn't mind doing that again, that would be great. It's gonna be a world-changing email. Is it from a male or a female? Really nice, very good. Well, to answer your question, it's from a male. It's from Andrew. I just couldn't think of anything else to rhyme with email. Well, you nailed it. It worked really well. Andrew Evans has emailed the show with genuinely a fantastic email. This blew my mind. This is some fantastic history. Thank you for sending this in, Andrew. The email says, banana flavoured sweets. Hello, Ellis, Tom and Chris. Whilst

listening to your letters, January 25th episode, so for those of you who aren't Oh What A Time Full-timers, you won't know this, but we do correspondence specials where we go through some of the brilliant emails we're unable to get to on the main feed shows and they're some of our favourite episodes. Another reason to sign up for 99 a month, you can't go wrong. In this correspondence episode, Ellis brought up that banana flavouring, do you remember this? Doesn't taste like bananas. Yes.

Okay. Strong statement. Strawberry flavoured things don't really taste like strawberries either, do they? No, like orange starbursts don't taste like oranges. Well, prepare yourself for one of the most interesting things you'll ever hear. Whilst it is true that banana flavouring doesn't taste how bananas taste now, the flavouring was made when bananas did taste like that. Can I just offer an opinion at this point? This is bullshit. It's not. It really isn't. Previously, the most popular mass produced bananas was the Gros Michel,

or Gros Michel, species, which the flavouring is based on. However, in the 1950s, the Gros Michel was almost completely wiped out by the Panama disease. The milder tasting Cavendish species proved to be resistant to this disease and is now the banana species we enjoy in our supermarkets today. What? Love the show Andy Evans. So, banana flavouring refers to this previous type of banana which did taste like it but due to the Panama disease nearly wiping it out we now have a new type of banana which is what we're eating it to eat today. Great fact! Great fact. I don't want to pour cold water on it. Yes. Great fact, I don't want to pour cold water on it. Yes. But if orange flavored sweets and strawberry flavored

sweets and lemon flavored sweets were more accurate, I would be more inclined to believe it. But I can accept that bananas taste different now to how they used to and that we used to eat different varieties of bananas. And so it's a bit like carrots have changed their colour, haven't they, in the last few hundred years, etc. Well, I'd know that. The amount of carrots I get through. I'm more than aware of that. So you're saying you're refusing to accept this information?

I think it's based on truth. I just don't think that when people were eating banana-flavoured sweets years and years ago, that they were going, oh my God, this is accurate! Were they doing the blind taste test where you close your eyes and you wouldn't know whether you're eating banana-flavoured fruit or a piece of banana? And I reckon if you went back,

I think it's probably, you know, it's interesting to see that sort of taste of what things used to be like, but it's not 100% accurate is what I'm going to say. Okay. So Andy, I'm absolutely backing you on this Andy. I'm going to give you a right to reply Andy. Ellis is questioning this. If you'd like to email the show again with yet more information to back up your claim. I will read that out. What was the old banana variety? The old banana was called the Cavendish species.

Okay. There you go. Chris is squinting at his laptop screen looking a little bit worried. Well, I've googled Panama disease. Apparently it's the biggest threat facing the banana industry worldwide. I've never even heard of it. Well, Aysel refused to believe that. 80% of banana plantations are at risk. But it does say the Cavendish banana is today's most popular type of banana. But I mean, this is initial.

I'm so sorry. You've been completely hauled across the coals for this. I completely back you. This is a great email. I lie, Andy. The thing is a great email. I lie Andy. The thing is, what's happened there Andy? So desperate to get on the podcast, you're willing to lie. My head is spinning with banana facts. You've picked out something that Ellis has claimed. He feels a little bit slightly humiliated.

Toxic masculinity, that's what we're seeing here. There's something just not unable to be weak. Ellis is a vibe-based historian. If the vibe is right, he will believe it. The vibe is wrong here. From a historical perspective, you cannot deny that. Andy, feel free to email the show. I will read it out and I will do my best to defend your good, good name. Well that was an interesting, if controversial, email on the subject of bananas. If you've got anything else on Panama disease, or indeed fruit more widely, here's how you can get in touch with the show.

All right, you horrible lot, here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at oh what a time dot com. And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at oh what a time pod. Now clear off. So today on the show, as we've established, we're talking about city planning and a little later in the show, I'll be talking all about Joseph Stalin, that man again, plan for a new Moscow. I'll be talking about the Aztecs, which is a period of history I don't know a huge amount about.

And I'm going to be talking about how factory and industrial living completely changed and changed the lives of the people who lived there. However, Ellis will probably pick everything I say to pieces even though it is research. More lies from Tom Crane! What house is that? Even though it's heavily researched history because he has to win. He has to win. Right, as I say, today I am going to talk to you about how the way of living around factories and around industry was completely reimagined. Okay. And the huge impact it's had on people's lives. So first of all, I want to take you back to 1785. So

should we all get in the time machine? Should we do that? Oh, lovely. That's nice. Put your seat belts on. No, like those oddballs in the 80s who refused to put seat belts on because I thought it was emasculating. You can decide what the button says. What do you want the big button to say, Ellis? The past. Keep it fake. With a question mark. That's actually quite an exciting type of time machine,

that, where you literally don't know when you're going to go to. It just says the past, question mark. Like a lucky dip. The lucky dip machine. Oh, that's great. Not interested in the lucky dip. Absolutely not. Imagine if it was the lucky dip and it was like 2023. Oh, hi. The year West Ham won the conference league. I'd love to relive that. Oh God, I'm in Hitler's bunker. It's the final days. I can't speak German and he's annoyed.

Oh, yes. God, he'd be grumpy wouldn't he? Well, you know what interesting thing that happened at the end of the Hitler's bunker that I think about a lot is that basically they put all the champagne in the city, everything into the bunker. So they were having parties and stuff like that before they all started killing themselves. There's loads of champagne. If you watch the film Downfall, they're having parties. For me, that's not going to balance out the fact that I know the Russians are coming and I have to kill myself whenever I laugh. There's loads of champagne. Don't worry about it. You've got the luxuries. It's not enough compensation. So here we are. We're landing in

1785 and a group of businessmen led by David Dale and Richard Arkwright are opening up a new cotton mill complex on the banks of the River Clyde in Scotland. And this is a place they called New Lanark. And this complex was to feature four mills, huge waterworks for power and crucially, and this is kind of where the interesting change starts to come, a model industrial community complete with purpose-built housing for workers and social and cultural facilities, including churches and schools. Now, as a first point, 1785, that seems earlier than I imagined those sort of cultural social concerns were creeping in. Very progressive for the time.

It is, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Would you have imagined it was that early? Well, I don't think it was in most places. I think this was an aberration. And should never have been allowed to happen. Is that what you're saying? Sounds great, because if you were lucky enough then to live in one of those places, you'd be like, yeah, life's pretty good, actually. And then you're sort of on the phone, you know, chatting to mates on the phone, you know,

you're chatting to mates in Glasgow or, you know, the East End of London or South Wales or whatever. And they're like, no, no, none of that. No, no. Absolutely. Quite, quite hard here. Ellis, one little thing. How are you chatting on the phone to them in 1785?

How's that working for you? You know the phone, you're texting because you don't actually like chatting on the phone, do you? The Nokia 3210's just come out. You're playing Snake. You've only got space for 10 techs. Yeah, the battery lasts a century. So, I wasn't expecting it to be that early. It's worth saying that it wasn't exactly

heaven. It was better within the context, but it wasn't heaven. A large part of the workforce consisted of unpaid pauper children and adolescents. But Dale, by the standards of the time, was quite a caring father-like employer. Now, do bear in mind the stuff I'm going to list marks him down as forward thinking. So this shows you what it must have been like elsewhere. This was seen as unbelievably aggressive. He gave the children bed and board and two sets of work clothes, which he had regularly washed to prevent the spread of dirt and disease. So that was like not done anywhere else. People just had their one set of clothes. Disease was rife. More than my kids get.

Yeah, exactly. Bed and board as well. The work hours were long, 6am to 7pm. Oh, that's a shift! Well, that's not the end of your shift as a child, because he then provided a further two hours of evening school from 7pm to 9pm. How do you think your kids are dealing with that? So that's a 6am to 7pm shift followed by two hours of school. Kids! Are you about to say kids are resilient. They either must have whinged

so much and it must have been unbearable for everyone involved or they were just different, but I don't think that they were different. It's a bit like, I think I mentioned this on the podcast a couple of weeks ago when I went to our family, we went to Derbyshire. We were in a visit at an old lead mine and the six-year-old kids would have been biased. Sorry, I have to say that sounds like the worst holiday ever. Oh no, please dad. Can we go back to school now? An old lead mine? No, no, no. What are you doing? It's a great... You wear Thorpe Park in Chessing to the World of Adventure. Right, this is... What 100 greatest things to do with a kids list did you pick that from?

This is Cromford Mill, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, where Richard Arcwright invented the carton mill. But also in that part of Derbyshire, you've got Creswell Craggs with his art that's 13,500 years old and also cavern complexes and old lead mines. So we went down and had a look at the lead mines. Centreparts has five different water slides. Tom, are we getting the same lecture Ellis's kids have got from him?

My son did say during the second one, I'm all caved out. He actually did, that's the exact phrase he used, I'm all caved out dad. So he had to take him back to the surface. Up to the sunlight. Well at the age of six he'd have been a fire setter. Yeah. So he'd have been lighting a fire next to the pit face and then throwing cold water from one of the natural pools onto the fire to put it out. Yeah.

And then the change in temperature would have caused the face to crack so that the miners could have extracted lead ore. But I say at least he would have been paid for that, whereas on this day out he was having to do it for no recompense. I don't let him light the candles on his own birthday cake. I was looking at him before he said, I'm caved out dad, I've got to go back to the service. And I thought, you're not doing that.

Age six. If they bring this back, you are not working here. Look at me, son. A 13 hour shift followed by two hours of bloody school? Although also most kids wouldn't have been educated at that time. Exactly, yeah. That's what was so progressive about it. Parents would have been like, oh I'd love to do a 13 hour shift followed by two hours of school. Shut up, dad. On the plus side for the parents, Ellis, they're going to sleep well. As soon as they get home

and you put them in bed, they're sleeping through to the morning. Yeah, they'll be excited about going to sleep. There's no stories before bedtime. There's no holding their hand because they're worried. They're just going straight to sleep because they're knackered because they'd be working for 14 hours. Yeah, before they get up at 5am and then back at work by 6am. So Dale's enterprise was thought to be so progressive that it attracted all sorts of visitors, including the poet William Wordsworth. However, the most notable visitor was a young

Welshman from Newtown, who ended up marrying Dale's daughter Caroline in 1799. Now, would you like to guess who this was, Ellis? Very important Welshman, hugely progressive Welshman. Who was it? Robert Owen. Oh, Robert Owen, yes. I studied Robert Owen, yeah.

So Ellis, would you like to briefly describe to overseas listeners or people who might not know who Robert Owen was? The only thing I really remember about him is that he was a textile manufacturer. Yes. And he was from Newtown. And because I am Welsh, if I discover that someone is from a town, I will never ever forget. And that is sadly the one detail I remember that he was from Newtown and he worked in textiles. Well, he wasn't just any textile chief. He was also a complete game changer when it came to

the way the working life and the living life of people around factories and industry took place, basically. Their experience of the workers. So let me take you through the story of what happened. He bought the mills from Dale and he immediately set about remodeling them according to his own even more progressive ideas. And in terms of the day-to-day experience of the workers who lived there, the impact was massive. Let me take you through some of the changes he made. I wanted to tell me how happy you'd be about each of these considering the context and the life that people were leading at this point. One major innovation was the introduction of a quasi-cooperative store, which sold goods to customers at only a marginal profit to the business. So he would buy goods, put them in a store so that the people who worked in his factories could buy food, everything

they needed, but much less than they would be able to anywhere else. Amazing that. Other innovations included playgrounds for young children. Can you imagine a kid who's used to doing a 13 hour shift followed by two hours of school in a playground? Yeah. This would be something so good. I don't know what to do first. I'm so happy. I look at playgrounds now in 2025 and think it's very basic. What are you getting in a 19th century playground? You're not getting monkey bars. You're not getting a climbing frame. You'd be lucky with a roundabout.

You're a couple of years younger than me. Do you remember 1980s playgrounds? I remember… The Fractured Skull Zone. Anyone want tetanus? fractured skull zone. I remember you used to be… Anyone want tetanus? I hope you like dog mess. The rust. There was one near my granddad in Newham, which was just like bars. Just like a mesh of bars. Remember like Hell Raises Face? It looked like that. Just bars sticking

out. I'm imagining this Robert Owen 1800s playground. It's just re-appropriated machinery from the factory. It's a pile of scrap. It's been moved out. Exactly, yeah. And it would all be cast iron and it wouldn't have any of those rubber floors that you get in modern playgrounds. The seesaw is 14 tonnes. If you fall off, it will flatten you. You're not getting, you know how sometimes you get playground, but the thing I look for

in a playground, nice little coffee shop next door. You're not getting that in the 90s century. Just gruel. It'll flatten you and bury you. Well you may not get a coffee shop, Chris, but you will get your Cozai cooperative store next door, so it's not all bad. There was also a central kitchen from which to feed Well, you may not get a coffee shop, Chris, but you will get a cooperative store next door, so it's not all bad. There was also a central kitchen from which to feed his workforce and reduce living costs for all. It's amazing. Thinking about the costs of living for people and feeding your workforce. It just isn't happening anywhere else. A central hall and

a canteen area, which could be used for communal meals and dances, although I imagine people are just too knackered for the dance. I think they're not really. I'm just too tired. I think I won't. There was health care and also proper educational facilities. A nursery school was opened in 1817. I spent it in the BBC. Exactly. It's amazing. Take me back. Nursery provision from 1817 from the workers living around this mill. Amazing. And the workers housing as well, which provided accommodation for around 2000 people. That was also upgraded.

And there is an although, it is quite a big although, as many as 10 people still lived in each room. So it was still quite cramped. It's not like an idyll, but in general, things have really improved. You've almost slipped that in in the small print, Tom. Yeah. Oh, 10 to a room. Never mind. But anyway, sorry, what was that last thing? 10 to a room? How are you dealing with a 10 to a room life? Not well.

I'm out and about a lot, I think. Especially if you're working the kind of shifts that you've just described. You want a bit of me time. Because when I go to watch Wales play away in Europe, I go with a group of misers and they are misers. We often share rooms, six of us in a room in Denmark for the Nations League and in Montenegro in September there were four of us in a room and it was just like a one room flat. You know, it was the one room and then the bathroom and that was that. So the kitchen, living room, diner, bedroom was all in one and the four of us were staying there. I remember thinking to myself, I can put up with this for 48 hours and then I snap.

Why can't you just let the misers have four to a room and you have a little room so you'll just find a different room. Don't blame them. Books and wells. Because you don't have to live with the miseries. Because A, that would involve me organising it myself, something I am unwilling to do, and B, I like being with my friends, Tom. And if their accommodation budget stretches to £18 a night, then so be it.

One huge bed. One big bed. And do you know what, Tom? We all snore. Oh, we all snore. None of us are sleeping. We're all grumpy by day two. I tell you what you don't want in the 10 to a room situation is for one person to be a rise and shine type. Yes. Yeah. Who's waking up, whipping open the curtains and going, hello world! Yeah. You don't want to have that person in your room. It looks like another beautiful day at the mill. Yeah, exactly. It looks like another beautiful day at the mill. Yeah, exactly. I can't look off.

Would you like to see a really heavy seesaw? Put your head under that heavy seesaw. Back when I got married years ago, we looked at a range of different venues and one of them was an old mill. Really? What was that? Derby somewhere. Oh, okay. Well, it would have been near Cromford probably. You know when a builder's got that kind of institutional memory, you can feel it was an old workhouse. Like low ceilings. I was like, it just feels

oppressive. Why do I... This isn't the place for a celebration. If it was a workhouse, that is not the right vibe on which to begin married life. And if I'm a ghost haunting a workhouse and I see people celebrating a marriage in the place that brought me a lot of personal misery, I will haunt those people forever. Yes, big time. Yeah.

You're moving with them. As a ghost, you're getting in the car or on the train and going back to London to haunt them forever. Stopping on your way to have a poo and wipe your bum with ghost toilet paper. So, ten to a room, but in general, really quite progressive stuff happening here. And this all sparked a fire in Robert Owen. This early work and he'd seen the benefits of the people who'd lived there really got him going. So in 1817, he converted to socialism and he began to imagine a way of organizing society entirely

from the bottom up basically, reorganizing the way it all works beginning with the industrial community. And his new view, as he called it, envisaged a wide ranging social reforms all intended to make good on the promise of modernity rather than simply making money. However, he soon realized that he can only go so far instilling these new ideas in his existing facilities at New Lanark. And what he needed was a clean slate, somewhere to start completely from scratch, where he can really try and fully implement his even more progressive ideas that he wanted to bring in. So in 1824, he used some of the profits from his mills to buy a community in the United States, a place called New Harmony in Indiana.

So New Harmony had been founded by an obscure religious sect, the Harmony Society, in 1814, but they wanted to move to Pennsylvania, so they sold the whole community to him for $150,000. That's what you could buy for £150,000 back then, a whole community. You're not buying a whole community now, not in London. Although the hyper-religious aren't the best negotiators are they? I don't think I'd want to be in charge of a whole community. No, God no. Well… It's enough having two kids. And you didn't have to design your home from scratch, did you?

Yeah. And he didn't have to design your home from scratch, did he? Well, Owen did want to be in charge of the community and he wanted to build a village of unity and mutual cooperation established on socialist lines, a model utopia made of brick as designed by the architect Stedman Whitwell, where residents could even read the local newspaper. They had all this sort of stuff brought in as launched by Owen in 1825 in the New Harmony Gazette. newspaper. They had all this sort of stuff brought in as launched by Owen in 1825 in the New Harmony Gazette. The principles of the plan were much like the sort of things he'd published in 1817,

where he proposed villages of cooperation for the relief of the poor and the unemployed. There'd be communal kitchens, houses, gardens, a hospital, even guest houses, all designed to replace the sort of incarceration of paupers, debtors, and those otherwise arrested for vagrancy. He also hoped that by living cooperatively, that humans could basically do away with violence, disharmony. He felt that peace would reign in place of evil. He felt that would happen. If people lived happy lives, then they will be peaceful lives. And it even had a constitution that laid out what community members should do at different stages of their lives. I love this. It absolutely blew my mind. This is called the New Harmony Community of Equality Constitution. And its

objective was to achieve happiness based on the principles of equal rights and equality of duties. Okay. And It lays out what you're supposed to do for the community at every stage in your life. Children from age of one to five were to be cared for and encouraged to exercise. Children aged six to nine were to be lightly employed, given education via observation directed by skilled teachers. Youth from 10 to 12 were to help in the houses and with the gardening. That sounds like quite a nice slot, doesn't it? Two years of gardening in the good weather.

Yeah. Funny to think that my son was six in January is no start in the world of work. Yeah. Two months in to the world of work. Wolfing down his breakfast because he's late for the factory. Wow. Exactly. Teenagers 12 to 15 were to receive technical training. From 15 to 20 their education was to be continued.

So really progressive stuff. Remember this is like early 18th century. Young adults from 20 to 30 to act as superintendent in the production and education departments. And then adults from ages of 30 to 40 were to govern the homes and finally residents aged 40 to 60 were to be encouraged to assist with the community's external relations or to travel abroad if they so desired. So basically your retirement is coming 40 to 60 or you're encouraged to go and travel abroad to explore the world and live your retirement. So we're four years into retirement and we've started this podcast as a side project because

we're just kicking back now. You could be coming to us from Florence or something like that at the moment. This is what your life would be. However, as a final point, it was never fully implemented and in truth, the whole project failed. It didn't work. While many of the town's new arrivals had sincere interest in making it a success, apparently the experiment and the quotas attracted crackpots, freeloaders, and adventurers whose presence in the new town made its success seem unlikely. But it

had a huge impact. It led to copycat attempts around the United States. There were about 10 more Owenite communities that were set up with varying results. And as an interesting final point, it also influenced other people who went on to kind of develop alternative industrial communities. In the 50s, there's a guy called Sir Titus Salt, who was a Yorkshire businessman, who established his own model mill community at Salterre, where workers could live away from the slums of Bradford. And in 1869, here's one for you, Ellis, a man called John Hughes, who's a Welshman, arrived in Ukraine from Murthyr Tydfil to establish an industrial community on the banks of the river

Kalmius. That city was called Husevaka, and is now known as? Do you know what city this is? Is it Kiev? Donetsk. Donetsk, yes. Huzovska, yeah. So the fifth biggest city in Ukraine, exactly, is a Welshman from Merthyr Tydfil. He set up this alternative industrial community there. It's now this huge Ukrainian city, bloomed from there. A Welshman is responsible. So there you go. That is the kind of shape. For me, what I find amazing is that this is happening from 1785 and the early 19th century. That's what I find incredible. All these things are coming in at

that point. I really didn't feel that that's how workers were treated. Obviously, compared to our sort of contemporary life and the way that we're looked after in the workspace today, it's very different. But still, at that time, it's like dramatic changes, you know, childcare, all these things. I just can't imagine trying to set up my own community. It's a lot of work. But also you'd need such a lot of money behind it as well. Yeah. You need to be so rich if you're going to start setting up a community. I don't think it's what you need to be doing at this point in your life, Ellis. I would really hate for the community's buck to stop with me.

Can I say I feel that would be reciprocal from the community as well. Can I offer a thought experiment, an extension of an earlier thought? So you're saying, Crane, 1785, you've got all these wonderful new things that work Can I offer a thought experiment, an extension of an earlier thought? So you're saying Crane, 1785, you've got all these wonderful new things that workers, the emergence of workers' rights, but you still work on a lengthy day. Ultimately, you're still in a workhouse. You know, you're sleeping ten a room. Okay, you die, right?

Now you're a ghost. You're a ghost in that old mill, right? We're back to being a ghost. Do you see the emergence through the centuries of even more amazing workers' rights? And as the ghost, do you get really annoyed? Training budgets, holiday pay. Yep.

Yes. The Yeezy jet flight to the south of Spain. Do you see people's living conditions get better and better and better? And think to yourself, oh, this is so annoying. I can't believe it. I'm a ghost. Maybe this is why ghosts are famously so grumpy. Because they're witnessing the change.

They're seeing Netflix coming. All these things that they weren't able to enjoy. And that's why they haunt us. Because they themselves are haunted. Okay. so that's why ghosts are grumpy. Exactly, you heard it here first. I don't know, I reckon the odd happy ghost must be like, thank god for that, eight hour... Good on you. Because people now are campaigning for a four-day week rather than the five-day week.

So there's going to be ghosts rubbing their hands together thinking. I mean, I'm bitter about a four day week now and I'm not even dead yet. It hasn't happened yet. And it hasn't happened. Having worked a lot of my life doing a five day week. I don't want it. I don't want any future generation to have it easier than I had.

Oh, I dunno. I reckon, can you imagine, if, as long as the theory of it, it would be so much better. Four day week. Apart from kids who I do really want to go to school for five days. I cannot stress that enough. So I can have a cinema day. Dream. Dream. Great, Huzeowska. I remember reading about that when I was at university. Okay, now then, that's the end of part one. If you like part one and two together on the same day, why don't you become an all-out-of-time full-time subscriber to this podcast?

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