Oh What A Time... - BONUS EPISODE! 4th Parts from #34 Health and Fitness and #36 Presidents

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

It’s another bonus episode! Featuring a couple of excerpts from our legendary 4th part megasode for OWAT: Full Timers - that famous episode which contains multiple never-heard-before on the main feed 4th parts to some of our earlier episodes.Today we’re delighted to present two 4th parts from:#34 Health and Fitness#36 PresidentsAnd if you fancy hearing the full 4th part megasode PLUS a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not 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).Hope you enjoy the bonus ep and see you next week!Chris, Tom and Elis 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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every month and there's a huge archive of bonus episodes. Plus, ad-free listening. Plus, get episodes ahead of everyone else and much more. You can become an O What A Time full-timer. To sign up, you can go via another slice or Wondery Plus. But for all the links, just head to owhatatime.com. And please enjoy these fourth parts from Health and Fitness and Presidents. Hello, O What A time full timers, our favourite kind of people. This is the bonus section.

Now, health and fitness, take personal commitment. We all recognise this. There have always been hacks for people who want to sort of, you know, take shortcuts. Now, I should warn you, just in case anyone finds this kind of discussion difficult, I'm gonna be talking about sort of weight loss and weight loss techniques, which obviously some people might wanna think twice about

before listening to them. So that's just a little, I suppose, trigger warning is the phrase people use. Now, people have always thought there must be a better way or there must be a quicker way so of course as ozempic tablets I think there that's that's the modern one isn't it that you see in the in the press where it seems to be a sort of a quick fix but in the past people were ingesting tapeworms or they were taking amphetamines, all in a way to try and get fit or skinny. Now, pharmaceutical intervention for weight loss goes back,

incredibly, almost 2000 years. Now, there's an ancient Greek physician and he is credited with first using laxatives for this purpose. This is genuinely true. His name was Soranus. I mean, that is just... What a great bit of historical serendipity that is. His name was Soranus. He wanted to combine laxatives with more traditional methods of diet and exercise. Now it took until the late 19th century wherever for supplements, which were called fat reducers to enter the market, alongside various beauty products designed to remove unwanted hair, regrow hair in sort of bald spots and to improve overall complexion. I remember when I was doing my MA and I was reading match reports for newspapers from the 1930s, the adverts for things like this,

I remember thinking, my God, people have been concerned about this stuff, hair loss and weight loss, for way longer than I'd realised. Obviously the solutions were different, but the problems were the same. Now, failing all of these things, the gullible were encouraged to dry themselves with a heavy towel after a bath in the belief that this would redistribute body fat. What? So you… But is that loose? Yeah, yeah. So people thought that.

People were willing to try anything. So this would be taken on one stage within the US after the Second World War where reducing salons were opened, which customers could have their bodies rolled out by… I mean, they're terrifying. Slenderising machines. Right. Now, one of those who went to this fat loss market and tried to make a fortune from public demand was Frank Jonas Kellogg,

a distant relative of the more famous Kellogg brothers, who were of course the inventors of cornflakes and other breakfast cereals. Yeah. Now Frank's creation was a concoction he called the Kellogg's Safe Fat Reducer, and he first began selling it in 1893. So it was in effect a thyroid extract mixed with laxatives and some breadcrumbs. Right. But it had such terrible side effects osteoporosis, chest pain, excess sweating, strokes, cardiac

arrest and even sudden death. Now, wow. Eventually health experts were successful in lobbying to have the thyroid extracts removed leaving the laxatives and the breadcrumbs and the pill continued to be sold well into the 20th century, primarily as a purgative. I find breadcrumbs. Why breadcrumbs? What's happened there? Why are breadcrumbs in this medicine? I don't know. Maybe to make it more palatable. I'm not sure.

Does it have one thing in there that doesn't sound too horrendous? That's what it is. We'll stick breadcrumbs in it. So when people read the label and go, I like bread what it is. We'll stick breadcrumbs in it. So when people read the label and go, I like breadcrumbs, I quite like breadcrumbs. Now, it was joined on the shelves by Borden's Fat-Off Obesity Cream, Howard's Obesity Ointment, and Lamar's or La Paz Reducing Soap.

You had Rengo Fruit, which was apparently made from natural resources, but was absolutely not made from natural sources. And even Dr. Edison's obesity fruit salt. So the latter, it was said, tastes like soda and helps you to grow thin. Now, if the salt didn't take your fancy, Dr. Edison also had an obesity waistband, which would claim force fat from the body. This was an idea that really sustained this idea, the idea that you could sort of either move fat or kind of force it from your body. So testimonials and advertising claim to have made customers skinny in as little as a month. So looking

back, you know, the benefit of hindsight, you're just like, that's clearly bollocks and false advertising. I wish you could redistribute your own fat though, wouldn't you? Where would you stick it? Feet? Just like, wear massive shoes. Huge toes? I genuinely think cycling has given me thin feet. So yes, I would love to redistribute some fat to my feet. How thin are your feet? Like breadsticks? How thin are they?

I'm sure my feet are getting thinner. My feet and my wrists are becoming thinner. And I think, I don't know. Is this affecting the shoes you wear? You rocking the boutons now? What's going on? No, but I just I look at my feet symptoms. I think they didn't look like that.

They're barely there. Before I did all this psych. So live. Can I briefly tell you something, by the way? Just it's sort of just intriguing as to how weird you think this is. You mentioned people dry themselves with a towel tightly after the shower. Claire thinks this is really weird. I dry myself after the shower using a hairdryer.

But I dry my whole body using the hairdryer. That is weird. There has to be a better way. So I drape a towel over my shoulders and then the body gets dry with a hairdryer. That's what I do. I find it relaxing. Every morning I do that. What a routine. What a sexy routine. What a bizarre routine. Yeah, so the testimonies in advertising claim to have made customers skinny in as little as a month

and that was proof enough it seems to claim that Dr. Edison's obesity band makes fleshy people thin, which sounds like an advert from The Simpsons. It sounds like some nerve tonic or something. Now the problem with these bands, which took full advantage of the invention of vulcanized rubber by Charles Goodyear, was that it caused the wearer to sweat a lot and eventually caused the skin to become prone to infection. So what made Kellog and Edison so successful was an aggressive marketing campaign with appeals to women, as so often the case with sort of dietary quackery. And the new advert continued, my new obesity food quickly reduces your weight to normal. So even the language that they're using is so damaging. To modernize, it's really,

really worrying. Now the food turned up in little yellow tins, like those little tins of mints that you can still get. And the consumers were instructed to take one pill each morning as an obesity reducer. By the middle of the 20th century, a new wonder drug was introduced to the diet pill market. The reductive properties of amphetamine were first reported at the end of the 30s when patients noted they'd lost weight whilst taking the medicine for other purposes. So within a few years, Speed, and I mean, my God, what a dirty drug Speed is, was being actively prescribed as a cure for obesity

with brands like Obertrol sold directly to consumers wanting to control their weight. So with little regulation, this brand ended up becoming a recreational drug of choice in the 60s, Andy Warhol was a noted user of it Elvis Presley Yeah, yeah, and Johnny Cash I think all they were the Beatles were taking speed in Hamburg Because not to lose weight because they were doing four shows a night and they were just to keep them going now

Speed was a key component of the rainbow diet pill regime which took off in the 50s So through the day individuals would take a combination of amphetamine, laxative, water tablets, and barbiturates. And if they didn't end up overdosing or suffering from toxicity, found themselves losing weight. It's just, it's so upsetting what people were willing to do to lose weight and how they were lied to and how they were made to do things. And it's also interesting how sort of long

this problematic language around weight Yeah has been around that this is obviously not a modern phenomenon. This is this is built on Yeah, I thought it was a much more modern phenomenon than it is Rainbow pills were eventually banned in the US at the end of the 60s. So consumers were compelled to turn to weather remedies So diet shakes appeared in the 1970s culminating brands like Slimfast, which was a huge marketing campaign in my early teen years. I remember Slimfast, that advert was on the telly all the time. Now, obviously in the end,

and these shortcuts were only good for the weight-conscious consumer, but they do show that no matter how modern we think we are, A, we're only a pill away from being poisoned, and people have been doing really, really unwise things in the name of health and fitness for a very, very long time. Fascinating. Wow. The diet shakes is also what you get if you take speed to try and deal with your weight, isn't it?

The diet shakes. What are the consequences? Hello, subscribers. Dear Oh What A Time full-timers, welcome to the bonus section of the show. I think that's the right way of describing it. We're discussing American presidents, we have one more to go. Elle, who are you talking about for our final part? I am talking about John Adams. Okay, I don't know much about John Adams, I'm excited about this. By which I mean I

know nothing about John Adams. Well that's the thing, not many people do. So be it, I'm looking forward to enlightening people in the way that I was enlightened. John Adams sounds like a sort of, like a cider, doesn't it? It does sound like... I'll have a pint of John Adams with me. And it's too strong. Yeah, it's really cloudy. So you have two pints of it at 4pm on a sort of summer's afternoon

and you're like, Jesus Christ, what's in this? And you realise it's 9%. And you have a headache by like 5pm. Yeah, and you're like, Jesus Christ, what's in this? And you realise it's 9%. And you have a headache by like 5pm. Yeah, and you're like, okay, today's ruined. You've tried opening out a packet of crisps on the table to share, it's not even making a dent. Yeah, you can't get the packet open. Someone says something on another table that you disagree with and now you're shouting. Okay, John Adams, I'm excited. No, I'm the FA Cup. Still, I think, should hold an important place as part of the British domestic football incandor. You're just thinking about it all wrong.

What's wrong with that, Ace? These are two pints of John Adams. Before sitting down where you think your chair is, but it hasn't been for about two minutes and you're straight on the floor. Yeah, absolutely. I think probably one of the reasons people don't know a huge amount of John Adams

is that he was the second man to hold the American presidency. That's always a crap one, second man, isn't it? Second man on the moon, all these things. First to worst, second to best. So he served a single term in the White House from 1797 to 1801 between the two terms of George Washington and his great rival Thomas Jefferson. So obviously, you know, if you're in the middle of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, you're gonna get forgotten about a little bit. He was the first person to serve as Vice President

of the United States as well. Now he was born in Massachusetts in 1735, studied at Harvard, became a lawyer and political philosopher in Boston. He was particularly noted for his dedication to republicanism. So this custom against British rule were not necessarily yet in favour of independence, which is quite an interesting position to be in. But it was, you know, he was born in 1735,

so it was such a different political climate. So he was writing for the press and he adopted a nom de plume, Humphrey Plough Jogger. And he would use his nom de plume to voice various criticisms of the colonial elite and of the distant British Parliament. And they were written, they had a kind of house style that was full of misspelling and topsy-turvy syntax. It was designed to be comedic and as a kind of house style that was full of misspelling and topsy-turvy syntax. It was designed to be comedic and as a kind of cover for their serious content. So the first Plough Jogger letter was written in 1763 and Darlow historians had to sort of translate into modern English because it was written in a comedic way that was quite hard to understand.

So these few lines come to let you know that I'm very well at present, thank God for it, hoping that you and the family are so too. I've been here this fortnight and it's 15 years you know since I was here last and there is great alterations both in the place and the people. The great men does nothing but quarrel with one another and put pieces in the newspaper against one another and some says one is right and others say the other is right and they don't know why you're there for. Now I can't imagine reading that thinking, this guy's got a point actually Humphrey Ploughjogger.

I'd be skipping those. More of this. After the first one, oh Ploughjogger's written in again. We'll leave that, we'll leave that. Let's flick into the sports section. Did they have a sports section back then? I doubt it. Oh that's made me think. Did they have a sports section back then? I doubt it.

Oh, that's made me think newspapers must have been so boring back then. They didn't even have a magazine where you get to look at interiors in the middle. For my MA, I had to study newspapers from the 30s and 40s. And off from the front, it was just lots of tiny articles. It's so hard to read. Really? Okay. It's a real ballic, yeah. What were the years for his presidency?

1797 to 1801. 1797, okay, yeah. Yeah, there's no sports section. His targets, you know, as Humphrey Ploughjog, Oranglican ministers who preached loyalty to the Crown. So he would, oh, I'm dreadful afraid that now there is so many of these ministers here, they will try and bring in potpourri among us, and then the pretender will come and we shall all be made slaves." So the pretender is referring to his

James Stewart who was the father of Bonnie Prince Charlie who by then was living in Rome. Right. But Humphrey Ploughjogger was popular. Now by the time of the American Revolution John Adams was one of the four members of the Continental Congress to represent Massachusetts so his cousin Samuel Adams was another and they gathered in Philadelphia in 1774 to debate what to do in the wake of the Boston Tea Party. They drew up an appeal to be sent to the King George III. Now our American listeners will know all about the Boston Tea Party, but as a little summary, it was American colonists who were frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing taxation without representation,

dumped 342 chests of tea imported by the British East India Company into the harbour and it was the first major act of defiance to British rule over the colonists. So it's a, you know, they still study it, it's an iconic moment in the history of the US. They drew up an appeal to be sent to the King, who was George III. That failed war broke out. The Second Continental Congress was called. It began meeting in Philadelphia in May 1775. It was to set the 13 colonies on the road to independence. So by now, Adams was convinced of the necessity of breaking away from Britain. This has absolutely sealed the deal for him as far as he's concerned.

Will Barron Can I tell you one brief thing? Will Barron Yeah. Will Barron Ever since you've mentioned them dropping all the tea in the harbour, part of my mind's been trying to work out, because it's like an enclosed space or the tea will be kept in there with the water. If you added enough milk, whether it would make a large cup of tea in the harbour. I'm telling you what I'm thinking. Because it's not sloshing away, it's been kept in by the harbour. So it's basically a large mug. I love a cup of tea. I'm just thinking to myself, what a waste of good tea.

Well, not tea bags, but you know. Exactly, yeah. Could you not chuck something less useful in? It does put, yeah, it does. You're right. On a certain level, there's a Britishness about me that I find that sort of genuinely heartbreaking. You're like, oh, come on, lads. Well, just say you've done it. Say you've done it. And just have the tea. It's fine. don't waste the tea, just claim it.

Chucked all that tea in there, did you? Yeah. Yes. The sea's brown anyway, I believe you told me you chucked tea. I'm not going to go and sort of sift it to check if that's true. I'll just go, yeah fair enough. Yeah, yeah exactly. Now he began writing again, including a pamphlet on constitutional philosophy, The Thoughts on Government, published in 1776, and this set forward his view that politics is the science of human happiness and his belief in the need for bicameral legislature

to provide checks and balances on power, as well as similar checks and balances elsewhere in the system by the executive and the judicial branches of government. So it sounds dry, but it's very important to recognise Adams was amongst the most important of the Constitutionalists amongst the founding fathers, second only to Benjamin Franklin as an intellectual and also a workaholic. He was a complete workaholic.

He chaired dozens of committees within the Continental Congress and he was a member of as many as 90. So for him, the mind is of more importance than the body. I haven't got the attention span to be a member of 90 committees. My flatmate at uni joined six clubs, I remember that, in Freshers Week. It's too many. Word got around this guy had lost his mind. Yeah. It was like he must be having some kind of breakdown about leaving home. It's not normal.

Imagine asking him to join the 91st committee at which point he goes, I'm sorry, I'm too stretched. He was sent off to Europe as ambassador to France, the Netherlands and Great Britain, and his critics thought he was rather an unusual diplomat because he was unable to dance, drink, game, flatter, promise, dress, swear with a gentleman or make small talk and float with a lady. So we didn't have any of the skills that diplomats needed. Will Barron Ellis, I'm going to use that phrase again. It's President Dweeb. He's back. He is. There's loads of them. Which excitingly offers the prospect of sequels set at different periods of history in America. Always with, it's always President Dweeb which is a different president.

Jesse Armstrong wrote Succession. He obviously had to learn and he had to study American politics and things to write Succession. Surely we could study American politics enough to be able to write President Dweeb. Like I did it at A level, I did a little bit at university. I reckon it can't be that hard, can it? I also argue it has a sort of inherent levity, which means you probably wouldn't need to study it that much. I don't think anyone's watching President Dweeb going, oh I'm really

excited to hear about what it was like to be the second leader of America. You'd imagine it's quite lighthearted. I reckon if you studied American politics to GCSE level, I think you'd have enough to get on with at least 10 episodes of President Dweeb. So similar things were said of him as a president, so this wasn't helped by the fact that his rival during the 1796 election was Thomas Jefferson, who was far more charismatic, so it was a very acrimonious campaign. Do you know people always say this? Has there ever been a non-acrimonious campaign? Yeah.

Like whenever you read about any president, oh he's particularly acrimonious and bitter, like has there ever been one where people have been like, oh do you know what, if I don't win, I don't mind the other person actually. I think we're all, I think American politics is the winner. Adam's emerged narrowly victorious. He won nine states to Jefferson's seven, around 53% of the popular vote. Only three votes separating the two men at the Electoral College and Jefferson was elected vice president instead. Fascinating. Now Adams was a loner. He wasn't suited to the presidency. He preferred a

quieter life at home in Massachusetts with his wife Abigail. Come on mate, you knew what you were getting yourself into. Yeah, absolutely. So meanwhile Jefferson spent much of the term undermining Adams's policy legislative efforts in effect campaigning for his own presidential term and there were two other rivalries to contend with in cabinet including Alexander Hamilton very outspoken bloke. So at the election in 1800 Jefferson supporters through every barb they could at Adams they accused him of being an adulterer that he was a monarchist that he wanted to fight a war against France, that he was an elitist.

Jefferson on the other hand was presented as a man of the people, an upholder of republicanism and liberty and a friend of France. So in the end Adams was denied a second term. Jefferson won 60% of the popular vote although it was a much narrower margin of victory in the electoral college. So defeat brought an end to the Federalist party as a serious force. So its nationalist, conservative politics had promoted a strong central administration rather than a looser system with more power afforded to individual states. So Jefferson's Democratic Republican Party, which was the forerunner of the Democratic Party, was in the ascendancy then for a generation and it championed liberalism, free markets, the values of the French Revolution, and decentralized

government. So really the battle was between where the centre of power ought to be in the US, what America ought to look like. That's what's so fascinating about it, exactly it. What is this country going to become? What is the outlook for it? That's so fascinating, isn't it? I was reading about the, you know, the American Constitution the other day, because, you know, you're trying to solve the political and economic problems that are facing a very new country. Yes. That's so interesting. Trying to write a constitution for a new country must be so hard. It must be hard, but also quite exciting.

Yeah, and such a vast, diverse country. Diverse geographically. But as a sort of philosophical task, as much as anything, that's quite the thing to grapple with. I mean, if you have the mind for it. I'd like to say very briefly at this point, I would be useless. I'm very glad I wasn't one of the founding fathers. I think probably for the best.

I think in a one-day time machine I would hope for 5G and I'd be googling a lot of stuff under the table. Yeah, sort of division of church and state. Looks like a good idea actually, yeah. I think if we were the founding fathers of America... Free Netflix. ...it would not have become the success it is now. It would have a GDP maybe similar to the Isles of Silly or something like that. I can't think it would have kicked on in the way that it has if we'd have been there at the start.

Oh, now, yeah, I mean, you're spot on. Now the, the fed list was strongest in New England, particularly Massachusetts, where the Democratic, Republican strongholds were in the south and expanding western frontier far away from the old country. So John Adams has never been regarded as anything more than a middling president, because he, you know, one who pales in comparison to George Washington and the widely regarded Thomas Jefferson, but he just wanted what was best for his country and it was a quiet bloke. Yeah. And he's been forgotten a little bit, but you know, an interesting person nevertheless.

Absolutely fascinating. As we discussed earlier, so give me the first three presidents again of America. So it was Washington, Adams, Jefferson. Yeah. So as we discussed it, so Adams has been left off the mountain, hasn't he? Yes. He's not on Rushmore. That's brutal.

But President 1 has made it on there. President 3 has made it on there. President 2, you haven't made the mountain. Isn't that cruel? Oh my god. Is it like a gift shop or something or something small that you stay at the base of the mountain? The John Adams gift shop? Exactly. Just something. You've got to give him something, surely. Yeah. Or a hill nearby at least. The John Adams pan shop. Exactly. Just something. You've got to give him something surely. Or a hill nearby at least. The John Adams Panini Station. That is cruel. Well, I'm glad he didn't live to see that at least. Yeah, fascinating. It's

a fascinating country. The history of it is insane. The responsibility of that role at each period has been incredible, be that at the start forming what it is or its huge presence on a global scale today. I think at any era I'd have been terrible at it. What a job. As jobs go. We've talked about on this show jobs in history of hate, including people who collected the dead during the plague in medieval Britain. I think American president at any point would be up there as well for a job that I would not be good at. The stress would be insane, wouldn't it?

There you go. Hope you enjoyed this special bonus episode. And don't forget, if you want even more Oh What A Time, all the fourth parts plus two bonus episodes every month There's now a huge archive of bonus episodes plus ad free listening early release episodes and much more You can become an Oh What A Time full-timer. For subscriptions You can get them via another slice or Wondery Plus. For all of the links head over to OhWhatATime.com We'll see you again very soon, cheers, bye! Follow Oh What A Time on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts.

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