Oh What A Time... - #174 Mass Observation and how did Ultimate Warrior eat cookies? (Part 1)

Episode Date: April 19, 2026

This week we’re looking at attempts through history at mass observation; we have Britain in the late 1930s, American culture after the Great Depression and the Soviet diaspora in Europe in the 1950s.Elsewhere, is looking at a picture of a coffee every bit as good as actually drinking one? If you’ve got anything to add on this or anything else please send us an email: [e-mail] from now on Part 1 is released on Monday and Part 2 on Wednesday - but if you want more Oh What A Time and both parts at once, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You 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 x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, Whatter Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free. Plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the O Watertime Group chat. Plus, if you become an O Watertime All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis, will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O Watertime.

Hello and welcome to Oh what a time The History Podcast That should really be We should really do an episode On The History of Ideas Because I'm an idea generating machine I think we should do

An episode on trade Specifically coffee Because Yesterday evening I thought I'd love a coffee now I can't have a coffee Because it's too late And I wouldn't sleep

So instead I just Google imaged a coffee and I looked at pictures of them. This is odd, babe. And gently sucked at your screen. Yeah, yeah. I suck the old screen. Is that true?

So where are you sat on your sofa? You sat next to Izzy and bed? What's the situation here? Where are you Googling these images? Just before watching Wales play Northern Ireland and a friendly. And I just looked over the coffee machine. I thought, I can't have a coffee now. I won't sleep at all because it's up by 7pm at night.

So then I Wikipedia Espresso and I read a little bit about the history of espresso and then I Google imaged an espresso and I'd look at it I thought this Hey, 12 hours time

when I wake up I'll be nice Well, seeing as we're here This is a history podcast sale Do tell us a little bit about the history of espresso Anything it springs to mind Just while you bring that up I always think about this

I read a book about wrestling in the 1980s. I'm sure you may have heard of a wrestler called the Ultimate Warrior in the 1980s. No, for you's an incredible physique. Now, of course, to get a physique like that, as Tom will tell you, you can't eat a lot of cookies, but Ultimate Warrior loved cookies.

So what he would do, he would buy a pack of cookies, crumble them all out onto a table, and just smell them. That's amazing. I think about that fact 10 times a day. Every time I want to get something sweet, I think I better not have the calories.

I think should I just do the ultimate worry? Buy it and just crumb it up and smell it. Do the ultimate warriors. And the other thing that helped was steroids. That was the other thing that really helped. They're your two top tips, aren't it, Tom? I've put a new bung of coffee beans today and I made my kids smell the beans.

I'm obviously because they're 11 and 7. They were like, ugh. He's like, come on, be sophisticated. Give us a little espresso fact, Al. It was the Italians who invented. Bented espresso in the 1880s. That's the least surprising thing I've ever heard. When in the 1880s?

Yeah. But what I don't understand about that is espresso is kind of the foundational stone of all coffee, as I understand it. Yes, but that's not how we used to brew it. Ah. So what were they doing? What were they doing with all that? Yeah, well, brewing it like you would in a sort of cafeteria or something. Although I went on a coffee tour of London and in the 1600s,

I think it came from Turkey but they were making it with mustard and egg shell and all sorts of stuff it was absolutely disgusting Did you try it? Yeah, he made it to a 1600s recipe and it's the worst thing I've ever tasted

in my life by a mile And was this on April Fool's day? Oh my God so it's what? Egg shell It had crumbled bit of eggshell and it was burnt it had mustard seeds. It was You're not Googling that late

a night, are you with a sort of longing eyes? I thought it can't be that bad. So we said, I've got some of the flask, which I made this morning. I said, it can't be that bad. So I said, go on, then I'll have a bit. And I took one sip. And I was like, is it water?

Water! Water! You know, little kids have really, really, they have really, really extreme reactions to things they don't like. Yes. And as an adult, you think, oh, come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just a tomato.

God's sake, put up with it. It was like I was about two or three and I was eating a pear. I think there are certain flavours in life that you have to grow accustomed to before you can really enjoy them. I think coffee is one of them. I think another one,

I think beer, the first time you have beer, is pretty rank. It's like, the first time I had a pint, I was like, what is this? What is this? Is this how I'm going to relax for the rest of my life? This is absolutely disgusting.

This is how I have fun and relax and treat myself. Yeah, this is so much worse than Coca-Cola. With a drink that's absolutely horrible. The really mad one. one is kids love marmite. Yes. You would think that marmite would be the last thing a child of wheat.

But they love it. That's very true. But I think kids do quite like some strong flavours. But you are right. That is another, that's a perfect example. My three-year-old loves olives, like well into them. Massively into olives. Black olives.

All kinds of different olives. Hardly, da. Our generation, it was fish fingers and chips that was shaped like the alphabet. That's basically what it was, isn't it? They were our main loves. That's gone away now, isn't it? I didn't think I was even aware that olives existed. No, me neither.

The first time I ever saw, I think, was not on a bar in London. I was like, what? Someone's left their dinner. But growing up in the 80s, people were obsessed with turning food into letters. That's gone away, it feels like. I never see any food like letters anymore. Yeah, spaghetti. Alphabet, spaghetti, alphabites.

Turning food into a thing like Billy Bear Ham. Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's gross. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The hamlet looks like an animal's face. A bear, like a cute bear's face. Stuff's happened to that ham, and I don't know what...

I don't want to know the process that's led to the bear face. Stuff's happened to that ham, and if I eat too much of it, stuff will happen to me. Yeah. If that ham could speak and tell us what it's been through. I'd have to say, sorry, you need to tell someone else. This is too harrowy. Yeah. I'm not your guy for this.

Well, El, it's a very sweet image if you sat there looking at pictures of coffee. I have a slight equivalence, which is sometimes I Google images of Championship Manager 9798 because I loved it so much and I genuinely miss it deeply. So that's my equivalence.

Sometimes I will go, oh, let's have a little look at that and I'll watch that for maybe five minutes on my phone. That's my sort of happy place, yeah, absolutely. That's the great thing with the internet is you can constantly relive the favourite bits of your childhood.

if you want. It's all up there. Yeah. But there's some things you don't want to go back to. I remember during COVID, I bought a PlayStation. I'll play some of the classic games I used to play and they'd really love.

And I got, remember Destruction Derby on the first PlayStation? I love that game. I love that game. I played it again. I was like, this is crap. Yeah, yeah. I can't believe he used to love this. Although I remember playing Space Invaders in a pub,

there's a pub in West Wales. It's got an original late 70s space. invaders and it was really good fun. Yeah. There's a sweet spot, I think. Sensible soccer holds up. Some games, yeah, you're right. Some games do hold up.

But it does change because I remember first playing Super Mario on my Game Boy and thinking, this is literally what it would look like if an Italian brother's trying to save the world. It's like, it's exactly right. But now you look back and it's like, how did I ever imagine? But it's, you know, your mind shifts.

It's the same with like special effects in movies in the 80s or whatever. whatever you grow up with, you take it as incredible. Then things move on and you're like, oh, well, look, how did I ever believe that? Forrest Gump is one where I watched a little bit of Forrest Gump and did think the special effects were that good. Yeah. Whereas when I went to see it in the cinema at the age of 13, I was like,

oh my God, this is where it ends. We have completed it. This is as good as it gets. Another example would be the grief that Jaws gets for not looking realistic now. People are like, oh, it's so crap, whatever. But at the time, it was deeply scary movie. But now... It still is.

Yeah, absolutely. But it's still sort of people react to it like it's basically a polystyrene sticking its head out of the water. Something that blew my mind over the weekend, actually, when I grew up, I used to watch the monkeys, the TV series. Did you watch this? Yeah. It was repeated on a Sunday morning, I think, yeah. I googled it. The Yankees TV show was only made for two years between 1966 and 1968.

I thought it was a young, happening, fresh TV show when I was watching it in the 90s. It was the equivalent of like kids watching something now from the mid-90s. Yeah, Grinch Hills from the 90s. Like Grange Hill from the 90s. But the Grange Hill was only recorded for two years. Yeah, two halcyon years. I mean, people talk about the Beatles packing a lot into a short period of time. But it is the monkeys knocking out a quality TV show in just two years.

It's like Mityu at Swansea, L. Two incredible years. Monkeys are very interesting because they made the TV show. They made some great records of the monkeys. And they got a lot of stick for being a manufactured boy band, but they made some great tunes. Yeah. Do you know they made an album?

I think it was in 2016, which is actually brilliant. I think it might be their final album. Oh, I didn't know that. A couple of them had died by that point. Yeah, I think one, I think Davey. Jones had died. Yeah, I remember TV Jones, don't you? But their final album,

there's a song from their final, it's called Good Times 2016. It's actually not their final album. They recorded a Christmas album in 2018. The 12th studio album, Good Times, is actually brilliant. Yeah. Hardy recommendation. Let's give the monkeys their flowers.

There you go. That's what they've been waiting for, exactly. I'd also check out the body of work of the Ultimate Warrior. Okay, I will do. Literally the body of work. Which is his, yeah. I think sniffing cookies would be worse. I think once I'd done a big, deep sniff,

I wouldn't be able to stop myself doing a lovely big bite. Yeah. Well, does it give your taste buds the sense of a cookie? That's what I think. Is it tricking himself into thinking of his body thinking he's had a cookie? That's the logic I think is underlying this. I think he's crazy sniffing cookies.

you have to complete a blanket ban on any kind of cookie sniffing. It's too tempting. Could you rest a bit of cookie on your tongue, get the flavour and then spit it out again, into the bin? Like someone who's wine tasting in a vineyard. Chew the cookie up and spit the cookie paste into a bowl. No, don't chew it. Well, maybe you could chew it. You just need not actually take any into your body, but you are.

letting it activate your taste buds. I don't know. It feels like a slightly worrying area, isn't it? I think that would be... Is that too much? That would be an amazing active discipline if you could do that. Yeah, yeah, completely.

I imagine a sort of thing, though, the Tibetan monks do. It's like a religious test, yeah. Exactly, yeah. Now, that's your love, Googling coffee late at night. Our love is picking out quality subjects to discuss from history.

and today is no different. Today we are looking at the act of mass observation. Now, Elle, this is your idea. Do you want to explain what this is? Well, mass observation, which was a thing that was done in Britain. It was a project to find out what ordinary people thought of things, the topics and hot topics and issues of the day. And when it comes to the kind of history books I like to read,

my favourite ones revolve around ordering people and how ordering people were affected by wars or, you know, it's a political strife or whatever it was. I far prefer to read about ordering people say than kings or queens. Yeah, absolutely.

My favourite period in history is the 20th century. And so mass observation crops up an awful lot where a lot of the findings come from this enormous project that started in the 1930s. It's really, really interesting. And it crops up in so many of the books I read. So I wanted to get to the bottom of it.

So that's what we're discussing today. And on today's episode, I'm going to be telling you about something called the Harvard project, which is a mass observation project that took place on life under the USSR and Stalin. And it's genuinely fascinating what life was like at that time in that place. What are you guys going to be discussing under this banner? I'm going to be talking about a kind of cultural mass observation. So President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the mid-30s, basically in the depths of the Great Depression, created a project called Fed One, which was a kind of big cultural audit of the United States.

It's a fascinating public arts program, which I never knew about. Amazing. And I'll be talking about that. And what about you, Al? And I'll be talking about muscle observation itself. Fantastic. Before that, though, as always, it's email time. So, you sent us some correspondence, have you?

Well, let's take a look at you then. This email is from Alice. The email title is Cat, Tar, Heat. That's a great email title. Hello, lovely boys. I've always found it so charming and wholesome when Tom calls you that. I do call you that, don't I? I do say, well, now today, you lovely boys, oh yeah.

I'm glad to have a chance to use it myself. Oh, that's nice, Alice. I'm also glad to finally have something I can email the show about. I'm a dedicated full-time and I adore the pod so much. It's pure sunshine and is a real pocket of joy in my week. Alice, thank you very much. That means the world, genuinely. I have just listened to episode 170 on female leaders.

And in it, Chris uttered the words, never in a hundred years could you dip a cat's paw in hot tar. So where did that come from? Were you discussing the fact that they used to tar the feet of geese to walk them across bridge. Yeah, that's right. They would take it, farmers were taking geese on long walks. They would tar their trotters.

Exactly. And how did you end up bringing up cats? Do you remember? Apparently you made the statement, never in a hundred years could you dip a cat's port in hot tar. Well, says Alice, I can't speak to being the instigator in trying to dip a cat in tar. That's probably for the best.

But will Chris accept a cat who self-administered said hot tar? 20 or so years ago, my parents were having their driveway coated in tarmac. Unbeknownst to us, our Siamese cat Mungo decided to take a stroll outside and ran across said fresh and hot tarmac. He came in approximately five minutes later wearing what looked like tar clogs on his paws.

Oh my God. Oh no. We immediately took this irate animal to the vet who took one look at his eyes, glowing red with fury and razor sharp and still very much exposed claws and handed us a tub of Swafega, declining to do it themselves.

Swafiga, declining to do it themselves and firmly telling us that we needed to clean him with this at home whilst being hastily punted out the door. What ensued was two hours of hell as we meticulously rinse and wash this cat's paws, which were thankfully unharmed. The cat did not appear manifestly sorry and my poor mother still bears a scar on her thumb

as a reminder of this escapade. So whilst I cannot attest to the ease of dipping cat's paws in tar, having first-hand experience removing said tar, I can't say I recommend it. I'd stick to geese instead. Thank you for all you do. you're a much beloved, Alice. Thank you so much, Alice.

It means a lot. That is hell. I cannot think of anything worse. Oh my God. Swarfiger. So what is Swarfiger? It's a hand cleaner. It's a super high strength hand cleaner

for getting rid of like grease and oil. It's me. Yeah, not off cat feet as well. My dad growing up was an engineer. So we had Swarfiger in the house. That was our hand wash growing up. Oh, bloody. Digital strength.

Yeah. And the sink was always covered in grease and grimes. Is that why you've got the dry hands of a corpse? I've always thought that. Whenever I shake your hand. That's so funny. We had Swarfiga knocking about. Making a kid wash his hands in Swarfiga.

When I used to go around by my mate's houses and they didn't have Swarfiger, I'd be like, what is this? What's going on? You've got no handclen it? What's this gel stuff? Even to this day. Did you go through the period at the beginning of the, the pandemic where you were washing your hands every four and a half minutes.

My hands was so sore. I touch anything and I go, it's time to wash my hands again. And off I go and I just constantly wash my hands. And they were just red, bright red little beacons at the end of my arm. What a time. You watch them once with Swarfiger and you're done for a century. Yeah. Sorted.

So let's examine this. The idea of trying to get tar off your cat's foot, It's left poor Alice's mother with a permanent scar from the experience. Oh my gosh. I struggle to get our cats in the basket to get them to the vet. So the idea of holding them down and washing them in Swarfiger for two hours. I just don't see how that's possible. What would be the best answer?

Could you put toilet rolls on your cat's legs to restrict the swiping? Bearing in mind, you're trying to do this as a kindly gesture. You're holding it gently, but you're reducing the chance of a swipe by putting toilet rolls. rolls on the legs, just for this brief washing period. Would that be an answer? That would be a really tough two hours, that. Okay, yeah. So how are you approaching it?

You're never going to get all of it off. Dishwasher full of Swarfiger, cat goes in with it. Cool cycle. I think we've talked on this podcast before that the tease made is a great invention that really needs to come back. But why hasn't someone invented like the cat cleaner,

like a dishwasher for cats? Because it's so notoriously tricky, isn't it? can't you make a little microwave but you lock a cat in it and it's just like a cat car wash or it's more, I imagine it's a washing machine where there's a hole in the front of the washing machine for the cat's head to come out of

and it's a nice cushioned little ring about and then the cat then turns in the cushioned ring and then there'd be a mini little trough full of the cat's favourite treats Oh that's a good idea So my cat's like this sort of cat yoghurt so the trough would be full of cat yoghut

so they'd be enjoying that as the You could hide hold up your iPhone with like a YouTube video of a mouse or something that you like watching. Speaking of contraptions where you're trapped in and your head's just poking out, it was a big trope in cartoons growing up that people would get trapped in those. And then when the doors had opened, they'd have been steamed until they were just like a skeleton underneath the neck down.

Remember that? I thought that was going to be a much bigger factor in life than it turned out to be. I've never even seen one of those contraptions. It's like quicksand. You spend sort of zero to ten. thinking, oh my God, better avoid quicksand. I've never seen it. I don't know anyone who's ever seen it.

I don't know anyone who's ever died in it. What am I going to do if I get trapped in a steaming machine with my head poking out? Yeah. Never even seen one. And it's my normal head but with a skeleton. Yeah. What am I going to do?

I was playing hide-and-seat with the kids about a month ago and found the five-year-old trying to crawl into the tumble dryer. And I was like, you really need to not do that. Yeah. Okay. Credit where credit's due. It's a good hiding place. But you don't.

You don't want to be in there, mate. Yeah. Please be worse at this game. Oh my God. Don't want it going around, me getting you out in two hours' time and you're tiny. New fear unlocked. Exactly, exactly. Well, Alice, thank you for your kind, kind words.

And I'm glad that your cat is okay. And I'm also glad that you like being a full-timeer. We really appreciate the support. If anyone else has anything they'd like to tell us about, have you ever encountered a difficult situation with one of your pets? Have you anything historic? Oracle even, if we can think of that, you'd like to email in with about, here is how. All right, you horrible luck.

Here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at ohwattetime.com. And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Oh, what a time, pod. Now, clear off. Well, that's how you can get in touch with the show. And also we may have mentioned, we do have a patron for bonus episodes. And one of the benefits on our top tier, Oh, What a Time, All Timers, we will take your name and figure out where in history you may have been before.

And this week, gentlemen, we have for you, Claire Scott. Wife of Barry Scott from those... Silit Bang? Yeah, bang. In a 1990s girl band. Oh, that's perfect. And she's the one... You absolutely nailed it.

You see her in the street, you think, where do I know her from? Yeah, yeah. Who was that? Yeah. And then you remember, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. She was the one with the brown hair from, you know, steps or girls allowed or whatever. And then you Google and you realise she married a Greek shipping magnate. She's actually one of the wealthiest people in the world now.

He has incredibly right-wing political views. Yeah. You go, it's just pictures of her with like Putin. And that's the reason why she hasn't reformed the band. Yeah. Because she doesn't need the money because Clare Scolk got living the life of Riving. on some super yacht. Every photo of her on Instagram,

there's a helicopter in the background. Yeah, yeah. The other four, the other four are doing nightclub appearances. And they are desperate for the band to reform because they had six or seven really big hits and they could definitely do those sort of legends tours. Their agent did send an email saying, would you be interested in and he simply wrote back?

Of course not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Claire Scott is actually the world's most expensive yacht. Yeah. Five of the top ten's world's most expensive yachts are actually within the main Claire Scott Yacht. The two boys in the band haven't spoken to Claire for 25 years. And the two other girls in the band are always emailing and texting and saying,

please, we're doing these nightclub of penises. We're skin. We have a lot of hit since 2001. But if we're going to reform, it's got to be all of us. Because you were the star, please, please, please just ignore it all these. She also would have released a solo single that didn't. do that well, something called like lightning love or something like that or whatever. Or maybe it had...

Love justice. Exactly. Got to number 38 in 2002. Quite a futuristic sort of setting. Like those lasers, cool dance moves, but it really didn't chart at all. And she also did an unofficial England song for the 2006 World Cup. But again, didn't chart. England Scott the Lot.

That's what it would be about. England Scott the Lot. About all the things we've got. We've got to the First. We got strikeers. It's literally 102 in the chart. But it doesn't matter because she's living the billionaire life. Hi, Claire. Love the World Cup single. Would you want to reform and do our stuff?

You know, just because we keep getting these offers. It's going to be us 911 and Boys Own headlining. That's great. But we would be second on the bill. It would be really good. We'd be doing the MN Arena. We'd be doing Cardiff International Arena. 02 probably, Lender. No, no.

Okay. They're willing to include us on the talk. Or if you sign up. She's like, sorry, I've booked Necker Island for this year. So that's my diary filled up. So there you go, Claire Scott. Well done for your success. And love that, Elle.

You've absolutely nailed that. That's one of the most kind of perfect bullseyes for a name we've had on this show. You'll never guess what this 90s girl band star is up to now. Thank you, Claire, Scott. If you would like to join our patron, here's how. Hello again, you horrible lot, enjoying the show. Well, why not show the love by becoming a Patreon supported today? For a mere handful of farthings, you can get ad-free shows,

two bonus subscriber episodes each month, access to all the past bonus eps, first dibs on live tickets, and even help decide what subjects the boys cover next. Your support, makes everything possible, so sign up today at patreon.com slash oh what's a time or oh what'satine.com. What are you waiting for? Stop dawdling. So on this week's show, we are talking about mass observation and later in the show I'll be talking about the United States and the mid-30s taking a kind of cultural audit of the nation. Tom?

I'm going to be telling you all about the Harvard project, which, as I say, was this mass observation project into life under Stalin in the USSR. And I'm going to be talking about mass observation. Now, I read a really brilliant book called Austerity Britain, 1945 to 51 by David Kiniston. David Kiniston uses a lot of mass observation. So I'm going to explain what mass observation is in a second. But this is just a quotation from someone who was writing for mass observation. about V-Day. No one seemed to bother much about getting home, for though the last trains to the suburbs had left the West End at the ridiculously early hour of 1115 or thereabouts,

there were still as many sightseers about when we started to walk home just before midnight, as there were when we arrived on the scene in the early evening. While outside Lester Square Station was a queue extending all the way up to Cambridge Circus waiting for the first trams in the morning, a site which made us truly thankful that we were able to walk home, foot saw a wary, there was as we trudged through Bloomsbury, it was so dark and dreary by comparison with the brightly illuminated West End.

So this book, there's just lots of sort of, you know, proper first-hand accounts of how people dealt with V-Day and how excited they were and often how disappointed they were at the lack of organised celebrations. Interesting. Interesting.

And it's a kind of thing that I'd never, you know, those first-hand accounts, I find really, really illuminating. So in December of 1936, the New Statesman magazine published a short piece by the journalist and inventor Geoffrey Pike in which he suggested that the recent abdication crisis, which saw King Edward the 8th,

renowned to throne in favour of marrying the American divorcee Wallace Simpson, the scandal of the century, might provide the perfect excuse to study the private opinions of Britons. So one of those who saw the piece was the poet Charles Madge, who wrote a letter to the new statesman, which was published on the 2nd of January 1937, in which he agreed with Pike's suggestion. Only mass observers, Madge wrote, can create mass science.

And then we get a tantalising hint that something's about to be announced. The group for whom I write is engaged in establishing observation points on as widely extended a front as can at present be organised. In other words, he was announcing the birth of mass observation. So at the end of January 37, the group was ready to make itself known. There was further correspondence published in the New Statesman and in other newspapers and magazines. One of them, which appeared in time and tide, was penned by Madge's

collaborated Tom Harrison. So the science and art of ourselves, which we term mass observation you wrote, means observation by everyone, of everyone, including themselves. So announced in this way, mass observation was a pioneering social research project. And it's so interesting. If you read books that use it or utilise it, just to hear what people were thinking, literally the day something happened. Yes. Before the perceived or the received narrative and the and the perceived general consensus about an event has been, has gone through the prism of time and history. Yeah.

When it's literally happening on the day, it's really, really fascinating. So it aimed at capturing, and in many ways it did capture British life at the end of the 30s and into the 40s. So in that time, mass observation produced numerous books, pamphlets, reports, covering everything from the coronation of George the 6th

in the summer of 1937 to wartime rationing. So in the water and rationing bits in this book, there's the diaries of various housewives who obviously were charged with cooking for the home. A, with rationing, so you think, okay, well, they didn't have enough food. Yeah. It just wasn't enough to feed everyone.

But also the quality of the food was really bad. Yeah. So people would queue for ages to buy some tinned meat. And then they'd get it home and it would all be fat and they'd be very little meat in the tin. And they're like, you know, I've been told that this is my pound of ham or whatever it was, whatever the rush was, for a week. But actually, it's not a pound.

I had no idea about that. Now I've got to make a meal out of this, but very little of it is edible. And they were talking to everyone from all stratas of societies, men and women, but it was the pressure on housewives to come up with something good. A for your kids who are hungry,

and as the sort of head of the household in that regard, it was just very, very stressful. That's absolutely fascinating. Because you don't think of the quality of the food. You just think of the amounts. That's what I was assumed that you'd exchange your token you would get the correct amount of food for that and it wouldn't be loads of it.

But I had no idea that the quality was low or whatever happened to me. I assumed it was a small amount. Yeah, the quality was low. Fascinating. And you'd, you know, in the pre-internet age, you'd hear that, if you were in London, say, and you lived in Whitechapel, which is in East London,

you'd hear that a butcher in Bethel Green had good bits of gammon. Right. So then you'd get there, you'd walk there, which would take an hour. And by the time you've arrived, it's all sold out. So then you've just got to walk home, empty-handed. Incredible. Yeah, yeah.

And it's just really, really depressing. And these women were writing these really, really evocative diary entries about it, which was all part of the mass observation project. So it covered the coronation of George the 6th and 737 to Water. I'm rationing to the effects of peace and to even the rise of the teenager. So a letter sent in by research participants in response to, directives or questions posed by a head office in London, together with field research, produced this vast archive full of opinions.

Love this. Not otherwise committed to paper. So the founders of mass observation were three Cambridge-educated individuals as it happened. Geoffrey Pike was also a Cambridge-educated man having studied at Pembroke College. So these individuals were the anthropologist Tom Harrison, the poet and sociologist Charles Madge, and the documentary filmmaker Humphrey Jennings. So Jennings was the oldest of the three and he's best remembered today for his pre-war and wartime documentaries

films such as spare time, the silent village and a diary for Timothy as well as his posthumously published study of history and industry and mechanisation pandemonium. So that book had a really important impact on the opening ceremony in the 2012 Olympic Games in London because there was a section titled Pandemonium. So, right. Educated at Pembroke College,

Jennings came from and retained a life. from commitment to left-wing causes. We developed an especially close relationship with South Wales miners. Now, here's wartime film. I don't know if you've seen it, the Silent Village, is... No, what's that?

Incredible. It's on YouTube, actually. It's not very long. You can watch it. So it's based on the Nazi eradication of the Czech town of Lidditch, or Lidich, which is their revenge for the partisan

assassination of a Nazi leader, Reinhardt Heidrich. And it was filmed in Estrad Gunnice in the Swansea Valley. Right. With the encouragement of the miners leader Arthur Horner. So Horner put Jennings in touch with her local figure, Dydan Evans, who made arrangements and even appeared on screen,

and the cast was made up of amateur volunteers from the Swansea Valley area. So it's what would happen if the Nazis took over this village in Estrogunice. Oh, how interesting. But all of, Estrogandals is very Welsh-speaking area at the time. So all the extras are speaking Welsh in it, and then suddenly they're under the yoke of Nazi rule. It's a really powerful film. Oh, I will watch that.

It's really, really good. It's less than half an hour long from what I remember. So another of Jennings' collaborators included Michael Regree, the stage actor, Andy M. Foster, and William Hartner, who played the first Doctor Who. So Charles Madge studied at Modern New College. He was another person attracted by left-wing cultural causes in 30s. Because the thing is, the left-wing historians were very interested in, you know, history from below. Basically, history from the ground up, how things affected normal people as opposed to, you know,

the ruling classes. So he wrote for, you know, leading magazines, and he debated important concepts and stuff. And he was, he would go on to be a professor of sociology in Birmingham. And he co-wrote several of the big mass observation texts with a guy called Tom Harrison. Now, of the three, Tom Harrison was probably the most important. So he was born in Buenos Aires, where his father was a railway engineer. And he had a difficult childhood and was dumped in his, that's his word, various English boarding schools for ending up at Cambridge. So he was quite restless. He failed to complete his degree

and he abandoned Cambridge for Oxford, which he found slightly more genial. Then he got bored of Oxford and then he went overseas to undertake anthropological research. So his first destination was Borneo. Wow. And then in 1934,

he went to the New Hebrides in the South Pacific, today known as Vanuatu. Yeah. And his research was published on his return and he applied the methods that he developed abroad, basically grassroots observation,

discussion to the mass observation movement, particularly the early mass observation project called Work Towns. This was a ground-level study of Bolton of working-class society in Bolton, which was prompted by the time Harrison had spent working in a mill there all the time while he was trying to find out attitudes to the abdication crisis and the pattern of social life. Yeah. So unlike Jennings and Madge, he wasn't particularly political.

He was interested in scientific methods of research. Okay. So he was more interested in that aspect of the idea that you could scientifically research something as opposed to its artistic or cultural resonance. So he gave mass observation a scholarly spine. And he was also very famous because he was a frequent voice in the BBC. But an early broadcast and worktime project, that was the one in Bolton, we're now in 1937. And he was soon involved in discussions on class.

and things like the origin and the genealogy of the Lambeth Walk. And, you know, the life of British housewives and public attitudes to the looming threat of war. So there's another notable documentary called the Rediscovery of the Night, broadcast in March, 1940, and that talks about the first winter the Second World War using methods of mass observation. And it gave voice to public attitudes on things like the blackout and on rationing and the rise of people.

petty crime. And this was all during the time of wartime censorship, but the documentary was still made and the mirror was still held up to it. So the importance of mass observation of the study of society is really fascinating and it can't be underestimated. So it was launched in 1937

and it was this turning point in how the people of Britain were studied. And there had been social research projects in the past, but they'd been very localised so they might be localized and focused on London or York or Cardiff.

But Massal Observation was truly national and it showed that in the face of the rising tide of nationalism and division, it showed what brought Britain's together, common experiences. So if you ever read a history book that utilises it, it just adds such resonance to those books.

You're right, because there's so much revisionism, isn't there in history? Yeah, I think especially the Second World War. The narrative comes through how, you know, where you end up. We always want the narrative to make. makes sense. So the contemporary thought doesn't really come into it too often. Yeah, it's fascinating that. My dad remembers the blackout and all this sort of stuff. Oh, yeah. Which means quite a thing to

go through those experiences of, you know, ready in your house for a night of potential bombing. It must have been absolutely horrendous. But yeah, that's really interesting. As you say, it's about sort of hearing the voices of people as they live through things, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And also I think that if something, if something profoundly important happens to you on Monday, if you were writing about it on Friday, you probably would have changed some things. Yeah, yeah. So the fact that people were writing straight away, like all of the, the chapter on VE day is really interesting because there were these big celebrations in towns and cities all over the UK. But it's a lot of times like people couldn't get home, they'd to walk. complaining about that. Yeah. But that's not the bit

people talk about now. Yeah. They talk about this enormous release that the war was over. I'd tell you, like COVID was one of those kind of national situations. I remember at the time,

I don't ever you remember, Boris Johnson sent a letter to every house, not personally, obviously. But my wife kept it. She was like, this is historically significant. And it was basically

the letter was like, you've got a statement. Not that he was heeding his own advice. But I think that COVID will be one of those things. It isn't warlike, but is that similar kind of...

It was a crisis. Crisis, like a mad situation. Like, I can well imagine explaining to my kids in 10 years that everyone would get on their doorsteps and bang spots and pans together. And you're allowed out once a day for an hour.

Yes. Likewise, I've kept... I've kept... kept those leaflets that came through the door. I have still got them. Just because they felt so mad. Yeah. I've kept a couple, one of which being you allowed out. It was, wasn't it, you could go out to exercise once, but you couldn't meet someone else and you could go to the shop once and the, um, from how I remember it, if you were going up for exercise, you couldn't do two half hours. You had to do it all in the, you were to do it all at once.

Yeah, that's how I remember it. Exactly. Okay, that's the end of part. Part one. Coming up in part two, I will be explaining how Franklin D. Roosevelt conducted an ambitious program of kind of cultural auditing in North America. And I'm going to be talking about a mass observation project which looked at life under Stalin, life in the USSR, and I'll be honest. I'm glad I didn't live there. Yeah. Part two is available right now at patreon.com.4.0.0.com.com slash ohwater time, or we'll see you on Wednesday. Bye. Goodbye.

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