Stuff You Should Know - The Semi-Recent History of Exercise

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Humans exercising for better health has not been around that long. Today we dive into this fun history as we cover why and when we started this now commonplace pastime. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Yeah, it is pretty fascinating. I don't know why it just grabbed me and I guess it grabbed me earlier because it was my idea because I think I don't know Maybe I'd seen anchor man and they made the yawging joke and then I remembered hearing that you know Exercises sort of new right if you look at not only the history of humans, but The history of America. It's only been around for, you know, 50-ish years, 60 maybe. Yeah, I mean, in ancient times, they were pretty into fitness, but then it kind of dropped off for a couple thousand years, and we picked it up again in 1960, roughly,

at the very least, the decade of the 60s. And like you said, specifically in America, in the United States, I should say. Yeah. So should we do it? Yeah. The whole thing is that the first half of the 20th century, it's not like there weren't people exercising, right? They were out there. They were just considered weirdos or possibly gay. Exactly. They didn't even really use the word exercise much. It was called physical culture. Like you said, it was a real niche thing. Obviously, there were sports and athletes and people

like that were doing physical training and the military did stuff like that. There was bodybuilding, but that was super niche too. As as like your regular average American walking around, they were just walking around or sitting in chairs. They were walking around eating a steak while they walked around. That's what they were doing. With the martini, and you did mention, you know, possibly gay, and that was a characteristic early on, is like, if you are a man and it's 1940 something or 50 something and you want to have like a nice body and you want muscles, people might say, well, you're probably gay or you're

probably a narcissist because gyms are for gay men to meet each other and that was just sort of the perception at the time. Exactly and then women didn't have it much better. They were almost culturally forbidden from exercising it. In the first place it was unlady-like to engage an exercise, or typically consider that. On top of that, exercises, you're exercising for yourself. It's kind of the basis of exercise. And that also seemed unseemly for women to engage in such a self-indulgent pursuit, right? And then on top of that, there was a general idea that your uterus might fall out if you exercise too vigorously.

Yeah, or just, you know, you may not be able to get pregnant if you exercise, so just don't do that, just stay on your feet all day and do the housework. Right, exactly. Which, as we'll see, is actually an example of moderate figures of goal activity. That's right, it's better than sitting down. So in about 1960, if you asked Americans, hey, do you exercise regularly?

I'm surprised at this, about a quarter of Americans would have said, yes. That seemed high. It does, it seems high. It does. It seems high to me too. In 1987, less than 30 years later, the answer to that question was yes from almost 70% of people.

So in those three decades, from 1960 till the 80s through the 80s, exercise came on the scene and just gelled with the world and the United States in particular Yeah, I would be curious to see that poll and see exactly how it was worded and defined right because that's 24% seem time I could see people just being like well sure I cut the lawn right you know that kind of thing and Regularly was once within the last three years Yeah, you cut the on once every three years.

Right. So again, it wasn't just women who were considered at risk health wise from exercise. Everybody was considered at risk. If you exercise too much, you were probably overtaxing your heart and you're probably going to die young. They actually thought athletes were at risk of dying young from overexerting themselves. And then it was finally, I think about in the late 40s,

when a British epidemiologist named Jeremy N. Morris and that N in the Morris makes me want to say, Noris, so bad. I need you. It's a real, it's a weird combination. But he said, you know what? I like to jog and I like to exercise And I think that this is wrong. So I'm gonna go about studying it in the most clever way possible

Yeah, it's a pretty interesting study and by the way, Olivia put this together for us and As usual, I think she crushed it knocked it out of the park. I had no notes. Not that we're usually notie No, you know what I mean? No, we're not very notie. I had no notes. Not that we're usually noty. No. You know what I mean? No, we're not very noty. I like to. Just a gold star. Right.

Right. But yeah, he had a really ingenious and sort of contained way to study this. He did lots of other studies, but one of the ways he did it was, he said, you know, we got these big double-decker buses in England. Everybody's seeing those. Everyone's seeing those. And there's two people who work on those. There's the guy who drives them.

And then there's the guy who is the bus conductor and he's always huffing it up and down those stairs. And you know, granted, it's not like 40 stairs or anything, but they're steep and you're climbing those things all day long back and forth. So he's like, I got a nice little captive audience of people who are pretty similar probably in lifestyle and in age and stuff like that. And one of them exercises, one of them doesn't.

And he found that drivers had twice as more than twice as many heart attacks as conductors. And he was like, wait a minute. Did some more studying and said, hey everybody, I think exercising is good for your heart. Yeah. And other people were like, wait a minute, let us check it out. Well, why? It's true. Study after study started coming in saying, like not only does exercise not put you in an early grave, it actually probably prevents you from an early grave.

So maybe we should all start exercising. So in the 50s, this was the era of proving that exercise was good for you. And then by the time the 60s rolled around, people were ready to start getting into it. And at first, it seems like they were, they were more hardcore, surprisingly enough at first than we are today, because you look around and like so many people exercise today, especially in comparison to like the 60s and 70s at the beginning of the boom but people have just kind of mellowed out a little bit before it was just like as intense as you could you could possibly get in every single way.

Well I mean these are the people that drank three martinis at lunch. Yeah they did everything hardcore right? Yeah you're just going to do something you're going to do it hard. So in fact, we were talking about those people because the culture of work really changed since about the mid 19th century when people moved away. Not entirely, obviously, we still had farmers and stuff, but mainstream America moved away from hard labor jobs into desk jobs. They started to worry that the sedentary lifestyle wasn't good for them. In the mid-70s is when corporate America started tuning in because Fortune Magazine wrote an article that basically said, hey, all these CEOs and board members that we have are just

a bunch of, and this is of course in the mid-70s, there are a bunch of old sort of overweight white fat cats and they're all having heart attacks, and it's costing our firms and corporations about $700 million a year, and this is mid-70s numbers. And so it was them who started the health boom. It was sort of like corporate CEOs. I think in the 60s and 70s, Olivia found some research that found that generally, like the people that started this whole thing were college educated, they had some money and they were generally

white people. Yeah, that's who kicked off the boom. Today, the differential in race is pretty much a race, but there's still a gap in education where if you have college or some college or a bachelor's degree You're you're about twice as likely to exercise on an average day if somebody who just has a degree from high school Really interesting it is interesting the another thing that happened to not just the health aspect But in the 20th century because of that increasing set in terryness Americans became a lot more fixated on how you

looked physically, especially weight, whether you were overweight or not. And there became a much greater emphasis on not being overweight. And that really dovetailed with the idea of taking care of your insides while also taking care of your outsides. And that really kind of provided the foundation for kind of funneling people into the exercise boom of the 60s and 70s. You could live longer, you could look better, so just go exercise. Let's all give it a try. Yeah, for sure. And into the 80s is when you really saw a boom and women exercising more and more,

the whole fitness movement was almost geared toward women at that point. For a number of reasons, one was, women trying to become more empowered, women gaining power and empowerment. The feminist movement that said, all right, if you're gonna do that in the workplace, why not be strong in your personal life, physically strong.

Strong like bull. Yeah, exactly. And so be strong in your work life, be strong in your physical life. Title nine, of course, really help things out because all of a sudden, girl sports were getting more funding and more attention. And then like you said, the standards for physical attractiveness changing was for men and women and everyone across the gender spectrum. Exactly.

So the first thing that really caught everybody's attention was jogging. That was the one that really laid the groundwork. And jogging grew out of legitimate running. Like it came, most people peg New Zealand Olympic track coach name, Arthur Liddeer, as the guy who, if he wasn't interested or involved in bringing jogging to the masses, he still was kind of like the inadvertent father

of the whole thing. Because in the 60s, he came up with training techniques for marathon runners that people still use today's really simple, really basic but it's really effective. It's things like on a Monday you run 10 miles a half effort over hills and roads and then Tuesday you do you know flat 15 mile run or something like that. I don't think that's exactly it. But people use it today. And the fact that there was now a framework that anybody could just buy this book or buy this

pamphlet in approach jogging, that really kind of helped usher people in. But again, bear in mind, this is a Olympic level track coach who's establishing this stuff. And this was people's first entree into jogging. So the earliest joggers were hard core, like scary. I'm a little nervous about them. And we're talking about people who are running around in the 60s and 70s. Yeah, I think they, I think they like to be called runners, those types.

Sure. They're like, you're a jogger, Chuck. Actually, I'm not even that. Speedwalker, like Chris Paul, I should do speedwalking. To me, I'm sorry, speedwalking is way harder than jogging. Oh, do you mean like on your cardio or just your body or? Yeah, well cardio, yes, intensive. Or to look cool. Okay. Well, but. So in the mid 1960s, a guy you may have heard of named Bill Bowerman He was a running coach from the University of Oregon go ducks and co-founder of a little company called Nike

He published a pamphlet kind of based on stuff Arthur Lidier had been talking about and then eventually wrote this book that I Remember seeing on in houses of like friends of mine really For sure, it was it was a very big book. It was called jogging that I remember seeing in houses of friends of mine. Really? For sure. It was a very big book. It was called Jogging, colon, even back then. A physical fitness program for all ages. He co-wrote it with a cardiologist named W.E. Harris.

Talked about all the health benefits of running. And it really caught on. It's really funny though. People still, it caught on, but it was still sort of a new thing. So the New York Times wrote an article that demonstrated, and this was in April of 1968, that when people were running, cops occasionally, they had real stories. Like a cop would stop and say, why are you running? What are you running from?

Or what did you do? Or people that were runners and joggers said, you know, I like to run at night because people don't stare at me, it don't feel as weird. So it's just so funny to look back at, you know, and this was in the late 60s that people jogging on the streets but you were like, what's up in that person?

Why are they running? Right, and at night they like to run in all black with a black watch cap and black mask covering their eyes. Very safe. There was another guy who really brought jogging to the masses. His name was Jim Fix. He wrote the complete book of running released in 1977. And there was a proselytizer for running if there ever was one.

It was him. Get your fix. Yeah. And he ironically died while jogging. He ran himself to death. He had and he ironically died while jogging. He ran himself to death. He had a massive heart attack while jogging. But he's still, I mean, it doesn't really undo what he did, which was, Hey, everybody, let's let's go jog. And that's what anchor man was referring to was that the jogging trend that Jim fix helped usher in in the late 70s. Well, there was another Jim in the 70s,

a man by the name of president Jim Carter. It'd be weird. That sounds so weird. It does sound weird. He's such a Jimmy. He totally is. Jim seems like he'd have an overly strong handshake. Right, Jim Carter.

Jim Carter could have metcha. Yeah, yeah. What have you done for me lately? He high fivefived. But this was at a time in the 70s when the president of the United States had influence on popular culture. Like I don't feel like presidents

really have that much anymore. No. No. It's dying fast at least. And he was a jogger from the White House. This is the late 70s. He would jog sometimes 10, 12 miles at a time, really got into it. And the New York Times wrote about this, of course. And, you know, if someone's in the White House jogging and running, then that normalizes it for

a lot of America. Yeah, I read an article about that. I don't know if it was the New York Times one or not, but he, yeah, it was in New York Times. It chronicle him going on this run, like he held like a fun run basically at Camp David, and he almost collapsed on one of the hills and had to be ushered off and taken to the hospital. Oh, really? Yeah, and he was like running with, you know, dozens scores, if not hundreds of other people on this fun run, and they were running with the president. And he had secret service guys running with dozens scores if not hundreds of other people on this fun run. And they were running with the president. And he had secret service guys running with them,

keeping pace, but he had to leave the race that he helped organize because he just went too hard. That was how they used to do it. Did they say, overblehorn now dropping out, a runner of 32 Jim Carter. Shame. Shame. That's how they used to do it. What do you, oh, was that Sean Connery?

No, I didn't mean it, but sure, I'll take that. Yeah, that was Sean Connery, shaming Jimmy Carter on that run in the late 70s. It sounded like you doing Sean Connery saying same. That's how it heard in my... Yes. Shame. Yes.

Shame, Trabac. So speaking of the New York Times, and I guess we'll take a break after this, but in the late 90s, 97, they wrote an article kind of looking back on running and jogging. And they were keen to point out that like even into the 70s, though, it was still a bit of a subculture. Like you said, they were like running and jogging enthusiasts, but it wasn't like tons of mainstream Americans were running. It was still like, what are those people doing? Like, should I do that? Right.

All right. Okay. Great time. I think it is break time. All right. We'll be right back with aerobics. There's a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Does the US government really have alien technology?

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Okay, so you've got jogging that's on the scene. Then you have aerobics too. This was the one that was like, probably the most popular thing of the 80s, if you ask me, I think aerobics dominated the 80s, jogging the 70s. And aerobics was around a lot longer than just the 80s. It was one of those things where, you know, some people who were kind of into exercising,

kind of developed it on their own separately, and then just took a little while to get more and more popular as word of mouth spread. But there's a guy named Kenneth Cooper, who started it all again in the 60s. He was a US Air Force surgeon, and he was like, you know, those weightlifting, the calisthenics that the military uses for training, it's all well and good, but these guys are like dying on these runs and jogs and hikes. They've got no aerobic stamina. Stan Mennon. Exactly. So he started looking into it and he was like, I think we need to

start using what we call now cardio, but back then it was a Robic exercise. Yeah. He was a jogger. He said, I think aerobics is being sold short. So he wrote a book in 1968 called aerobics. And he said, you know, running and walking and biking is what people should be doing. And that's that was his idea of aerobics at the time was just

getting that heart rate up, sustaining it for an extended period of time. He had a pretty clever test where he could basically tell you in about 12 minutes what kind of, like, how good a shape you were in. But then what happened was really, really awesome. Like, I really love this section because my mom figures into this, which I'll get to as we go, but women in the United States said, you know what, they're talking about running and biking and walking, but what they're really talking about is getting your heart rate up for an extended period of time.

So I'm going to make that my own, and there was one woman in particular, very early on, there were some real trailblazers here. She was a dance teacher, also an Air Force wife, no coincidence, by the name of Jackie Sorenson. She read that book, she took that fitness test and found out she was in really good shape, and she was like, but wait a minute, I don't run, how can I be in this good shape? She was like, I'm a dancer, I'm getting my heart rate up. And so she, in 1969, came up with a dance-based exercise class on the Air Force Base in Puerto Rico where they were stationed.

And the Air Force said we should produce this as a TV show, which is really weird. And they did. It was called aerobic dancing, and eventually she published a book as well in the late 70s. But she, I think, was one of the first ones. It really was like, you don't have to run. You can be in a room and do this as long as you get that heart rate up.

Exactly. And also, it's just as much more engaging and fun and communal too, biking and jogging. Those are very frequently solitary pursuits. Aerobics was a bunch of people getting together in a room and having fun together to popular music, right? Yeah. Clamping and yelling and doing all that to like popular music, right? Yeah. Clamping and yelling and doing all that stuff.

Exactly. And encouraging one another. So this was a really attractive to women at the time because this was, you know, they were still coming out of this social expectation that they shouldn't really be exercising and now they were saying, you know, to heck with you guys, we're going to do this anyway. And this was, it was almost like there was strength in numbers, but there was also, there was a social component to it as well.

Yeah. There was another woman named Judy Shepherd. She started out in the 60s as well, but she became the founder of Jazz or Size. That's right. And my mom used to Jazz or Size, I remember. She even had a poster of Judy Shepherd doing different moves to go that came with her record, like record, vinyl record, I remember. She even had a poster of Judy Shepherd doing different moves

to get that came with her record, like vinyl record, I should say. Oh yeah. So my mom would do Jazz or Size at home. She went to Jazz or Size class and she was into it for sure. It was originally called Jazz and Dance for fun and fitness. Jazz or Size is way more marketable. And this to me, maybe the fact of the podcast, it was a jazzer size, you know, was a copy written or whatever, an owned title. I hope by Judy Shepard. I didn't look that up, but it ended up being a franchise. And in 1984, jazzer size was the second biggest franchise company in the United States behind Domino's pizza. That's really something. Because that was at the time behind Domino's pizza. That's really something.

Because that was at the time when Domino's was like, we're gonna get you your pizza in 30 minutes or less or it's free. So everybody was in the Domino's at the time. That's right before the night, I think, right? Like two years before the night, I looked it up. So Judy Shepard created what's known as the boutique fitness franchise model,

where it was a specific kind of exercise, usually some sort of branded exercise, like jazz or size, that you could go set up in a strip mall for a minimal initial output, and people would come flock to your jazz or size studio. And you still see that today in certain places, like, bar has a lot of, like, franchises, different kinds of franchises, curves, which we'll talk about later That's a franchise, but Judy Shepard started that with jazz or science Yeah, very big deal Then those woman named Gilda Marx

Married into the Marx Brothers family Had taken when you're growing up apparently was a dancer and even worked out with weights Which was very unusual at the time Because that would have been in I I guess, the 30s and 40s. And in 1960, or thereabouts, she was choreographing a show, a charity show in Los Angeles, created an exercise routine, so all the dancers could, you know, get in better shape. And everyone loved it.

Everyone's like, this is awesome. And she said, wait a minute, I'm onto something here. So she, in her backyard, started aerobics classes, then rented studios, and then eventually, and it became a very big, and as you'll see, when something becomes like a big Hollywood thing and celebrities do it, it becomes a popular thing everywhere, of course.

And it was good, yes, that's surprising. And it was called Body by Gilda. And it was not only a big deal because Body by Gilda was a big deal, but it was a big deal because she ended up having two clients by the name of Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons. Yes, huge. Like so Gilda Marx essentially created

the popularity of aerobics. Like, jazz or jazz was there. It was very popular. The, like, aerobic dancing, that was very popular too. But it was like celebrities like Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons, who became a celebrity just from being into exercise, that really, really increased it in popularity. And Jane Fonda just straight up ripped off Gilda Marks. She took a couple of her classes at a body by Gilda

in Century City. And the next year she set up her own studio. I think a couple of years later, she published Jane Fonda's workout book, which became an extremely popular bestseller. It was number one on the nonfiction list and stayed there for six months. By the way, that's amazing. We're almost there. We're getting there with our book.

We're gnawing away at her record. But she also released a VHS tape that was wildly popular too. And that's why I mean, people of a certain age today still associate Jane Fonda with exercise in aerobics. And then, people of a certain age parent associate her with funneling money to the Viet Comp. Right. Still do. For sure. Yeah, they're still mad about it.

Oh, yeah, still mad. Here's another stat for you. The Jane Fonda workout tape was the first non-movie VHS tape to top the sales chart. And it was number one, as far as VHS sales go, for six years. And the whole, the whole run of them, she ended up making follow-up tapes. But the whole collected Jane Fonda workout tape set has sold, I'm sorry, between 82 and 95, sold 17 million tapes. Wow. Wow. That's fun. I mean, numbers like that are amazing. She'd be, I don't even what that translates

to in record sales, but it's what was the biggest platinum seller double platinum. Platinum's a million. Oh, really? What's the best? Platinum. Or what's the highest? I think they just keep going like triple platinum, quadruple platinum that kind of so she was 17 platinum. Yeah, that is extraordinarily impressive and that really does put it into perspective because not a lot of records go platinum It's especially not just a pink food time so yeah exactly Although I will say she didn't have that much competition back then the only other two movies on VHS were Beverly Hills Cop and the Empire Strikes Back. Very nice. So the other person that was a body by Gilda graduate after just one class it turned out. Yeah, sort of. One of the greatest people ever to run around planet earth, Richard Simmons. The great. If you're not familiar with Richard Simmons or if you just know him from Finding Richard

Simmons podcast, even if you're just tangentially familiar with him from living through the era where he was on TV everywhere all the time, go check out Richard Simmons' testimony before Congress. Yeah. He's been has a clip of it when he went and testified before Congress. He's been has a clip of it when he went and testified before Congress. I think of him 90s maybe, early 90s I think, and he gives, it's Richard Simmons in a suit and tie. So just that is worth going to see.

It's bizarre to see. But then he opens his mouth and it's just the same old Richard Simmons. And he gives us impassioned speech that like we'll kind of make you tear up a little bit and give you chills. And then he also had some laughs in there. He's just great. Just a great person. And this guy, everyone at the time thought he was just totally weird.

No one ever thought Richard Simmons was like, he was never normal, right? But he was so himself that he just sucked people into his orbit. And he became like a really, really popular star. I would guess one of the most famous people in the world for a brief period in the early 80s. Absolutely. Like you said, he got kicked out of body by Gilda and the one class that he went to by being Richard Simmons basically. And then eventually founded a business. First it was an exercise studio slash salad bar. I get what he's trying to do there. It was called roughage and anatomy asylum.

And then eventually he was like, you know, let's drop the salad bar. Let's just make it a fitness center. Then obviously had the Richard Simmons show in 1980. Started putting out those VHS tapes in 83, and then in the late 80s, it's all leading to this moment. He puts out sweat into the oldies,

which I believe to date, his grossed over $200 million. Amazing, and it became the best-selling home fitness video ever. It knocked Jane Fonda. Yeah. Off to the top of the heap. Take that, Pink Floyd. Yeah, and don't forget Dila Meal.

Remember, that was wildly successful too. Oh, that's right, that was it. It was like some color coded cards, and you could put different color coded cards together in your little Dila Meal portfolio, and that would be your meal for the day. And if you followed the instructions, you would be able to lose weight.

And he was really into losing weight because he had been very overweight as a child. And he was dedicated to making sure that other people didn't suffer the way that he suffered. Yeah. And he was very much dedicated, very sweet. He wasn't, he wasn't a, he wasn't a phony, I guess. No, he was true to himself. He wanted to have fun while he worked out. I love the guy I know you do too.

He's just one of the great humans. Yeah, he was also a letterman a lot too, like frequently. That's a great effect for sure. Cause he had a sense of humor about himself. He wasn't like unaware of how people looked at him. He just didn't care. And they both played their part. I think Letterman, he wasn't, I don't think, honestly,

don't think Letterman was as genuinely freaked out and turned off by Richard Simmons in real life. I think it was all just a bit. And he's great. And, you know, I didn't follow the, I didn't listen to Finding Richard Simmons, but I did sort of follow the story a little bit. And like, my big takeaway was, and I know they may have meant well because they thought he was being held against his will, but I love that the end result was like, Richard Simmons is fine. Leave him alone. He doesn't want to be bothered anymore.

Just let him let him live his life, you know? So winding down the talk of aerobics is when I want to talk about my mom for a minute because Olivia points out that it was marketed to women as a way to like get in shape and lose weight but also to empower yourselves and to have some time with other women. And my mom was like, and it sounds like your mom to a certain degree but my mom specifically was sort of ideally And in all the wrong ways situated to really get into this because she was it was in the 80s She was in a very unhappy marriage without getting into a lot of specifics. Dish. It was not a good scene in my house. My parents didn't like each other much.

My dad wasn't a supportive good guy. My mom dove into aerobics at the American fitness center. I had never seen anyone dive into something before. Didn't she become an instructor? She became an instructor. She later became a spinning instructor into her 70s, I think, or at least late 60s. Yeah.

And my dad was, and I didn't really realize this at the time, but this is all what was sort of just coming into my eyeballs and my ear holes as a kid. He was not supportive of it. He was threatened by it. He was a, I wish I could cuss. He was a real jerk about it. Uh, it's just interesting to look back at like, there were a lot of women like my mom, I think, in the eight. Yeah, I could see him like talking her down about it and her just being like, I can't hear you. I'm empowering

myself right now. Did your mom do this? Like, would she just sit around while the TV was on and do like, like, listen stuff? Yeah, she was into all sorts of stuff like that. Just about any, like, made for TV, not made for TV. As seen on TV, like, exercise item we probably had. Remember the thigh master? Oh, sure. And that one thing, it was like kind of a weird metal cradle

that helped you do sit-ups and crunches better. You just kind of rocked it back and forth on. We had one of those with the mini trampolines. We had all that. Remember, it was called the something rocker, I think, actually. I do remember that. Probably it had to have been. If not, that was a remiss.

But just to cherry on top this with my mom, I think not only was it empowering for her, but I think it was also, I think she was totally sticking it to my dad at the same time. Yeah, that's awesome. I don't think my mom was trying to stick it to my dad, but I think it was also, I think she was totally sticking it to my dad at the same time. Yeah, that's awesome. I don't think my mom was trying to stick it to my dad, but she sure liked aerobics. Yeah, I'm sure it was empowering for her too. Definitely, for sure. Yeah.

All right, so second break. Second break, starting now. Now. There's a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Does the US government really have alien technology? And what about the future of artificial intelligence, AI? What happens when computers learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town? From UFOs to psychic powers and government cover-ups, from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science,

history is riddled with unexplained events. We've spent a decade applying critical thinking to some of the most bizarre phenomenon civilization and beyond. Each week, we dive deep into unsolved mysteries, conspiracy theories and actual conspiracies. You've heard about these things, but what's the full story? Listen to stuff they don't want you to know

on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your favorite shows. What's up, fam? I'm Brian Ford, Artisan, and host of the new podcast, Flaky Biscuit. On this podcast, I'm gonna get to know my guests by cooking up their favorite nostalgic meal. It could be anything from Twinkies to mom's Thanksgiving Jurassic. Sometimes I might get it wrong, sometimes I'll get it right. I'm so happy it's good because man, if it wasn't, I'd be like, you know, everybody not my

mom. Either way, we will have a blast. You'll have access to every recipe so you can cook and bake alongside me. As I talk to artists, musicians, and chefs about how this meal guided them to success. And these nostalgic meals, fam, they inspire one of a kind conversations. When I baked this recipe, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Oh, does this podcast come with a therapist?

Listen to flaky biscuit every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. With all the chaos and turmoil in the news, it feels like we never get to hear about the good happening in our world. We're on a mission to change that. Welcome to the Good Stuff. I'm Jacob Schick, a third generation combat Marine. And I'm his co-host and wife Ashley Schick. We believe everyone has a story to tell, not only about the peaks, but the valleys they've been through to get them to where they are today.

As we get to tell stories of inspiration and perseverance, we're joined by some amazing guests who share the lessons they've learned that shape two they are and what they're doing to pay it forward and give back. Our guests range from some of my fellow warriors to NFL cheerleaders, to extreme sports legends, to New York City firefighters, who survived 9-11. Listen to the good stuff on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Alright, so we need to talk about gyms and gym culture. The word gymnasium comes from the Greek gym notes for naked. They, in Germany, I think in the 1800s, us all, they got really into gyms for a while and exercising,

but it was very spotty, and obviously not a very big thing at all, culturally, in the world, for the most part. But gyms were known, like YMCA's in the 60s and 70s were around, they were kind of not great. They kind of were stinky, like any gym back then. Just wasn't like an awesome place to go. Like you didn't feel great walking into one usually. But in 1939, a couple of gyms opened that were, they really changed the game. This is 1939. Jack LaLane, health guru, legend opened what's looked at as the very first health club in the United States in Oakland, California.

In that same year, a guy named Vic Taney opened up a gym, his first gym in Santa Monica and your muscle beach, both in 1939. Yeah. Jack Lillane became kind of like that generations. Well, I was going to say Charles Atlas, but became kind of like that generations. Well, I was gonna say Charles Atlas, but they kind of overlap at the same time. He, I saw him on a 1980 something episode

of the Richard Simmons show as like a special guest. But he was like a big prostitutizer and he told everybody to go work out because they were getting pudgy, that kind of stuff. Rich Haney, he went a different way. He, from what I can tell, established the health club, which was huge in the 70s and 80s, health clubs, where it was a place where you could go,

not just work out with weights or whatever, but they might have a pool. They probably had a record ball court, a few of a, of course, they might have apparently some Vic Taney clubs had ice skating rinks. a few of them. Of course, sure. They might have apparently some Vic Taney clubs had ice skating rinks. I mean, like you would go and

you could spend hours there. And they were really nice. But Vic Taney's whole model, I guess he overspent because they went out of business, I think, in the 60s. But they were so beloved that other owners, local owners, and sometimes regional owners would just start buying them up

and just turn them into something else, which is still a model that gets followed today. Yeah, like if you like to go to a gym that has a whirlpool, at a sauna, and a steam steam room and like you said a racquetball court like you can thank Vic Tanny for that. He was the guy that came up with this sort of all-encompassing really like something for everyone and also a place that you want to go to that's not smelly and

gross. I mean there always a little bit smelly if I'm being honest. It depends. We used to go to one called urban active and it did not smell and urban act sold out to LA fitness and it began to smell. Yeah, it was very disappointing. Man, I'm telling you, the men's sauna totally fine. And then within weeks, it was like, this smells like button here. I can't even say 10 minutes. Did the rules change or the cleaning methods? I had to have been the cleaning methods. It's the only explanation. Did everybody just never mind?

Yeah, I don't know, because I don't think the client helped change that quickly. Everybody's membership got transferred over. It's just, I think they stopped cleaning the butt smell out of the saunas, which is what you wanna do if you have a public sautown, okay? So now the health club is established in the sort of mid-early to mid-1960s. Like you said, people jumped in there when Victanis chain went out of business. Some more mom and pops. Sometimes companies would come in to start their own new jam and buy up a bunch of them. Nautilus was one of

those that bought up a bunch of Victanis, closed stores, or whatever you call them fitness centers, stores. And Nautilus was a big deal because it's like, hey, free weights can be intimidating for some people. And at Nautilus, you can just change a setting and it's a big machine and it's the same as free weights. I don't really know if it's the actual same or not, but they marketed it as like, you're still lifting weights. No, it's true. You definitely are.

And it allowed people a lot more entry into it. Like today, like you go into a gym, there's so many machines there. That's directly from Arthur Jones and his Nautilus machines that he he started trading by hand, basically. He was like a Kellogg brother. Oh wow. I like this things. Yeah, for sure. His whole thing was you, you can also exercise, get a full exercise or full workout in much shorter amount of time than you could with weights.

He basically emphasized working out until you just, you had a temporary muscle failure and then you knew you were done with your workout for the day. Right? Seriously, that's what he encouraged. Muscle failure. So by the 70s when these clubs are opening up, there were a couple of different models. One was sort of the country club style that was was probably a country club and also had like racket sports and all that other stuff, whirlpool and steam room. And then there was the ones like that my mom went to

and probably your mom went to that was probably in a shopping center. Some of those could be really good. And some of them, they were pretty cruddy, like anything else, if it's just sort of, not some huge chain, you know, some are gonna be awesome, some aren't. Yeah, my family went belong

to several different racket clubs in Toledo. And the reason why so many is because we had a long string of getting like your multi-year membership at a racquet club, and then within a few months it would just go under. So we'd move on to the next racquet club and they'd take a lot of our money too. So I think we did this at least three times that I was aware of when I was a kid, but we always had a racquet club membership somewhere. I fully thought you were going to say because you had a run of getting expelled as a family from the racquet club. Luckily not. No, we knew how to add in. Okay. I wish that would have been the case. That

would have been good. I can lie if you want to go back and re-record that part. No, that's right. So I think one of the gyms that people associate with gyms in general is Gold Gym. And even still to this day, that's like, if you want serious training and you're going to, like you're not messing around, you're not there to meet anybody, except maybe a mentor who's gonna teach you how to get

even more buff, that's where you go as a Gold Gym. For sure. That was started by a body builder named Joe Gold. And yeah, you're totally right. I mean, since the 60s, it has that rep is like a sort of serious weight lifters, Jim. Valley total, Valley total fitness, which if I'm not mistaken, there may still be some independent American fitness centers, but the ones that we belong to, I bally bought them out and took them over if i'm not mistaken bally's gone now i saw it two thousand fifteen article there were five left

in the world uh... really well this is an eight oh k got to got to get it was during the boom for sure uh... and that was founded by a former uh... employee of victanney named donny he wildman uh... And like you said, was huge. And then sort of gave way to other places, like LA Fitness in 24 hour fitness. Yeah, and that whole reputation of gyms and health clubs, being impossible to cancel your membership

and taking advantage of you, that model was created by Bali Total Fitness. They were the ones, like they would, you signed up for a three year contract, but they didn't tell you that when you were signing up, like business tactics like that. The writer's story about a woman who signed up for a lifetime contract in 1987 paid $53, I think, a year, and was still getting billed after Bali Total Fitness went like bankrupt. That's how much of a shady they were. They could still bill you even though they weren't around any longer. Yeah, it was the cell phone contract of the... Exactly, exactly, but that came from

Valley Total Fitness. And then 24-hour fitness actually went a different way. A guy named Mark Mastrov was the first one to institute monthly memberships rather than the standard annual ones. Great idea. For sure. Yeah, people loved it. And they got that name after a master off realize it was originally 6 a.m. to 11, but he was like, people are out here waiting for this place to open. They don't want to leave it at the end of the night. So screw it, I'm taking the locks off the doors.

Exactly, let yourselves in. Have a great time. What else? So you mentioned curves. That is a great time. What else? So you mentioned curves. That is a huge thing. There were women, centric, or women, only fitness clubs, like as early as the 1960s, but curves is the first one that was really like, you know what?

If you're over 45 and you're a woman, and you don't want to go to the gym to get hit on by these gross guys and get gawked at or laughed at or whatever come to curves we got a program for you started by husband and wife team gary and dianne heaven with an eye and i believe at one point or maybe still it's the largest fitness franchise in the world they had like a hundred thousand different a hundred thousand locations Ten thousand. Oh was it okay still Yeah, but that's a lot still a lot. Yeah, that was mid 2000 sure and again

It was all over the world so it was pretty cool also by the way I to my to myself pronounced their last name he even but I like your interpretation much more. Oh really? Yeah, okay So Chuck there's still plenty of fitness clubs around. I think LA Fitness is the leader with more than 2 billion in revenue a year. Yeah. It's a lot. But one of the things that really kind of happened starting in the 90s was that the

kind of fitness craze just spread out. There was jogging, aerobics, and maybe going to the gym, and then health clubs kind of started, and then finally people were like, we've done all this for a decade and they're so now, we need some other stuff. So in a few cases, they actually went back to the future and grabbed some established means of working out or exercising and revamped it

for the for the new millennium. Yeah. And yoga was certainly one of those. I just started yoga two weeks ago, by the way. Yeah, I did. In the last month or so, it's kind of gotten under my skin. It's really awesome, isn't it? Yeah.

And it's kicking my butt, too. Mm-hmm. And I didn't underestimate it I wasn't like oh you're just stretching and you're on the floor and doing stuff like posing and stuff It wasn't like I thought it was gonna be easy, but it's kicking my butt and I'm like more sore than I've been doing almost anything else It's awesome. You also gain strength very quickly though. It's like surprisingly quickly and balance and yoga is a great thing to to pick up like surprisingly quickly. And balance. And yoga is a great thing to pick up at any time,

but especially like, you know, in your 50s because balance and core strength and all that stuff as you age is really super important. And flexibility. And it's always important. Yeah, well, yeah, flexibility. But yoga started, you know, in the 19th century and in the 60s and then 70s or a couple of really big PBS shows that

grabbed the attention of a lot of people. And it's just always been pretty popular and has never been more popular than it is now. Yeah, the 19th century is when it first was introduced to the United States, I think. Oh, is it like an ancient practice, probably? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it goes way back. Way back. I think that's what I meant. There's where my 100,000 came it goes way back. Way back. I think that's what I meant.

There's where my 100,000 came from that I was confused about curves. There's at least 100,000 yoga studios in the United States alone. And one thing that's cool about yoga in particular is there are some franchises, which is fine, but most yoga studios are independently owned. They're just somebody who loves yoga so much, they opened up their own studio and you can come to yoga there. Yeah, and that's kind of the same with our next, not FAD because it's been around for a while, but Pilates is kind of similar in that people will,

a lot of mom and pot Pilates places. Like for instance, my, the person I dated in New Jersey, she ended up after I left and we broke up and stuff. She moved to Savannah, Georgia, from New Jersey and started up her own Pilates studio. And this wasn't something that she did at all when I was there. So it's definitely something I think that like yoga,

people can get into it and really get into it such that either i want to be an instructor or want to open up my own business around it and polatis is named after joseph pilates i think you said i didn't say that okay so it is named after joseph pilates he was a german circus performer and his circus happened to be in the uk when war war one broke out and they said oh oh, you're German. We're going to lock you up for four years while the war goes on. So he and his whole troop spent World War I locked up in the UK.

And while he was there, he started developing an exercise regimen based on stretching that apparently saw cats chasing mice and birds around the prison. And so he came up with these exercises that imitated that. And he claimed that when the 1918 flu epidemic came to the island that he was imprisoned on, not one person who followed his exercise regimen got sick from it. Whether that's true or not, it's a pretty great story. And then one other great story about him is that he smoked 15 cigars and drank a leader of booze every day.

What a guy. And he was like one of the gurus of fitness from, I mean, we're talking back in the teens in 1920s. Yeah, that's amazing. I should probably plug Carol's studio. Oh, yeah. It's Momentum,ari's studio, and Savannah, and I haven't been in touch with her since then, so go to momentum and tell her Chuck's hit, and I'm sure she'll say like, yeah,

whatever happened to that guy. Nice. Very nice. And the people who come will say, oh, let us tell you. Yeah. Do you like a pod? What? So bars and other one. Sure. the people who come will say, oh, let us tell you. Yeah, do you like a pod what? So bars another one, that's definitely worth mentioning

because it incorporates elements of ballet, yoga palates, and it's named after the bar that, well, basically the handrail that runs across the length of a wall, that ballerina is frequently used. But it was created by a German ballerina in the 40s or 50s, no the 50s, who fled to England. Her name was Laudie Burke and she was a free love advocate. So when she established bar in the bar exercises, she also coupled it with not only is it going to make you feel great, it's going to help your sex life. And that was an overt message of taking bar

from through the 60s and the 70s. I would have pronounced that, by the way. Lata. Well, unlucky for you, I said it first. You give her a very like a Wisconsinie ring to it. Lati, come here Lati. Lati Burke. Bootcamp workouts became very popular in the 90s. That's a nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice What about Tybo? Tybo was created by Billy Blanks, who was legit.

He was the US karate team captain for US karate and the US Olympic karate team. So he was, I mean, he knew what he was doing and he created Tybo, which kind of incorporated kickboxing aerobics. If you've ever seen, if you were alive, I guess in probably the 90s, you saw the Billy Blanks Tybo infomercial. Yeah. And he managed to sell a ton of tapes from that infomercial. It was a very successful infomercial.

I'm not sure how much Tybo has done still today, but I looked it up to see if it was, you know, is it legit and it definitely is a legit workout. Oh, sure. It's a butt kicker. I tried it once and I was like, I can't do this. Yeah. But it was another example of one of those that really caught on in Hollywood and LA.

And so it had a short-ish life. I'm sure people still do it, but the big Tybo craze was a few years. For sure. What about high-intensity interval training, H-I-T-T, hit? I know this as Tabata, because I was seeing a trainer for a while. We did, she put me through Tabata basically every time.

And that was named after a sports scientist named Izumi Tabata, who in the mid-90s was working with Olympic speed skating coaches to create what was a form of high intensity interval training. Right. Where you do something like pushups or burpees or mountain climbers or something like that for maybe 20 seconds, rest for 10 seconds, and then you're immediately off into the next exercise for 20 seconds. And sometimes after four minutes, you might get a minute of rest. It depends on how long the Tabata workout is.

Like a 12 minute one, you would not get any rest in between. Certainly not a minute, I should say. But the point is you're getting a high intensity workout in a very short amount of time. So you're doing like a 12 to 20 minute workout and you're getting the same impact that you would have gotten from say like a 30 to 40 minute workout of lower intensity, but still not low intensity. I mean moderate intensity training. This is just super, duper intensity, high intensity training

to about to definitely established that. Yeah, it's great if you're short on time. Obviously, I think our workouts were 30 minutes. They were great. I enjoyed it. They were butt kickers, but I liked it. Yeah, I should say, speaking of Tabbata Japanese guy, you reminded me that exercise is really, really big in Japan.

So much so that people have or definitely had loudspeakers in their house and like in their local community or maybe even their region, every morning they would be like, good morning, it's time to do exercises and everybody would do the same exercises in their house to the voice over the loudspeakers called radio TISO. Oh,, interesting. They also did like corporate calisthenics and stuff, right? Yeah. They were just

into like collective exercise for a long time. That's great. And then the last couple we'll talk about are Zumba and CrossFit. Zumba, very popular, still popular, apparently was created by accident in the mid-90s by Alberto Beto Perez. And he was a 16 year old aerobics teacher in Columbia, apparently, as the story goes, at least forgot the usual music and said, I'll just play the music that I have. And it turned into sort of a fun Latin dance exercise class. Yeah, and just took off like a rocket. I think he was on the cover of Ink Magazine once.

I mean, like he just, like it was just crazy how much it took off. And it's still huge. Suma is still very much popular a couple decades later. And then CrossFit is wildly popular too, not among everybody, but the people that it's popular with, it's wildly popular, so much so that it's commonly referred to. It's like a cult or something like that.

Because people love talking about CrossFit and proselytizing for it. But the point of CrossFit is kind of like what Arthur Jones, the Nautilus creator, was talking about, where you work out until you are, you you are just short of injuring yourself essentially, where you feel like you want to throw up and you can't do anymore. And it combines weightlifting, gymnastics,

a bunch of different stuff, but it's a really, really intense workout that you really have to work your way up to. You shouldn't just jump into a CrossFit class. And if you go to a good CrossFit box, what the studios are called, they're not going to just let you jump into it. Because you can really hurt yourself. Yeah, CrossFit doesn't interest me. No, me either. We've done it before and it's not fun. Yeah. So making yoga though, Emily and I are doing it together. It's fun. Yeah. And if you like CrossFit Hey, man, we're not yucking you're young. Oh, of course not our own personal experience so settle down

No, I don't want to work out until I throw up. That's me. Yeah, for sure This is a good one. It was a good one. I hope we inspired you to do some exercise because it's good for you I don't care what anybody says it's good for you and even if it's not good for weight loss Which we found over the years, definitely not, it's good for mental health, I think we've said plenty of times. So just that alone makes it worthwhile. Very worthwhile. If you want to know more about exercising, then just start. It's really easy these days. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Coliseum follow up.

Hey guys, quick note about the, how do we pronounce it? HipoGM or hypoGM? I don't remember. I think I called it a hypoGM. All right, quick note about the hypoGM and the Mach Naval battles that were reportedly held inside the Coliseum. As you noted, the hypoGM was created after the amphitheater was built. The flooding of the floor of the Colosseum only happened in the first decade of the structure.

And before the hypogeum, hypogeum, sorry, was dug and created. Once the hypogeum was constructed, it was no longer possible to flood and drain the Colosseum. That makes sense. And that is from Dave Stimble. Dave, though, is great. To the point, the authoritative, like a shake from Jim Carter. That's right. If you want to get in touch with us like, Dave, Dave did.

Dave's got a great handshake too, I'm sure. You can send us an email. Send it off to stuffpodcasts. at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. So, there is a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Yeah, like does the US government really have alien technology?

Or what about the future of AI? What happens when computers actually learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town? From UFOs to psychic powers and government cover-ups, from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science, history is riddled with unexplained events. Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Entertainment and Lifestyle Reporter Tommy Diderio.

On my new show, I've never said this before. I'll be talking to different artists and the stars of your favorite movies and shows and getting the full story. And of course, as the title suggests, I'll also be asking all of my guests to tell me at least one thing that they've never said before. Listen to, I've never said this before, with Tommy Diderio on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up, y'all? My name is Mimi Walker, and I'm your resident auntie Supreme over at Hand Me My Purse, the podcast. If you aren't familiar with Hand Me My Purse, it's a podcast that's all about diving into and understanding the nuances of black culture from social emotional well-being to cultural matters, mental health, and just the life experiences

that we have to face every day. Be sure to tune in every single Tuesday. Listen and follow Hamming My Purse on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. in the podcast.