You're Dead to Me - Victorian Bodybuilding

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

Greg Jenner is joined by Dr Vanessa Heggie and comedian Darren Harriot to learn about the bodybuilding boom of the 19th and 20th centuries.The latter part of the 19th century saw the beginning of a fitness craze where the seeds of the modern-day gym and fitness culture were sown. But physical fitness also tapped into other parts of the psyche of British society at the time. From concerns over the fighting fitness of the British army to the racist pseudoscience of eugenics, this novel leisure activity tells us a surprising amount about the societal and intellectual currents that existed in this period.Research by Caitlín Rankin-McCabe Written by Emma Nagouse, Caitlín Rankin-McCabe and Greg Jenner Produced by Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Assistant Producer: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow Project Management: Isla Matthews Audio Producer: Steve HankeyYou’re Dead To Me is a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are lunging in our leopard print hot pants, tensing our abs and flexing our biceps as we bulk up on the early history of bodybuilding.

And joining me to get historically hench are two very special guests. In History Corner, she's Associate Professor in the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Birmingham's Institute of Applied Health Research. You may have read her long-running science column in The Guardian newspaper, or her recent book, Higher and Colder, on the physiology of extreme exploration.

It's Professor Vanessa Heggie. Welcome, Vanessa. Thanks so much for inviting me, Greg. Great to be here. And in Comedy Corner, he's a fantastic comedian, writer, and presenter. You'll have seen him on all the TV shows like Live at the Apollo, Love Island, After Sun, Celebrity Mastermind, Roast Battle, Mock the Week or heard his podcast, Shame is Delicious. And recently, he dazzled the nation with his ice skating skills on Dancing on Ice.

The range on this guy is Darren Harriot. Welcome, Darren. Thank you for having me. This is exciting. I can't wait to work out with you. Well, revise down expectations. I can barely lift my three-year-old daughter, let alone proper weights. So, I mean, Darren, this is your first time on the show. We're a history show. So I have to ask, did you enjoy history at school?

It's something you enjoy in your free time or are you thinking, oh, no? No, I do like history. I loved history because of my history teacher i had one of those history teachers that would fully act out what they were talking about they weren't sort of like a sit behind the desk type teacher they would proper he was talking to us about world war ii and he would make gun noise he was that deep into it and then so they were coming from the east and then they had to go over there and it was like whoa this is great it's like it's like a one-man cinema it's amazing yeah wow okay yeah yeah he really went into it are you gonna be doing the noises today as well are we gonna be getting i will be doing all the noises for you yeah don't you worry about that you'll hear so

you'll hear me sweating so deep breathing i love that on the audio won't sweating. So deep breathing. I'll love that on the audio, won't I? Just me deep breathing. A lot of ASMR fans will be switching on. All right. And what about the history of bodybuilding? I saw you on Dancing on Ice in some fetching gold hot pants. And I thought to myself, there's a man who doesn't skip leg day. Are you into your lifting?

I do, yeah. I've always loved weightlifting. It was my uncles. My uncles were really into bodybuilding in the 90s. And then I used to read their magazines. are you into your lifting i do yeah i've always loved weightlifting it was my uncles my uncles were really into bodybuilding in the 90s and then i used to read their magazines and then i've been i've been weight training for probably about oh nearly 20 years sort of just interested in the culture i i listen to podcasts on bodybuilding youtube video i spend a if i was to add up how many hours i spent listening and watching bodybuilding,

it's embarrassing. I don't want to add it up because it would upset me. I would go, you could be doing anything else, Darren. You've got a career. Why are you listening to a bunch of men talk about how many carbs they eat? So, what do you know? We start, as ever, with the so what do you know? We start, as ever, with the so what do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener,

might know about today's subject. And when I say bodybuilding, perhaps your mind fills with images of Arnold Schwarzenegger posing at his peak in his tiny pants. Or if you're a bit younger than me, maybe you're going to be going to, I don't know, The Rock or Chris Hemsworth pumping iron in their motivational fitness apps. And if you enjoy the competitive stuff, there is no greater feat of corporeal culture than the world's strongest man competition. Incredible telly. But in terms of the history of bodybuilding, who came before Arnie? Those ancient Greek statues certainly look very cut and fit and ripped.

But is that just pure fantasy? Or do people really look like that? Maybe you've heard of Charles Atlas telling men to get vengeance on the bully who kicks sand in their face. And if you're into camp cult cinema classics, then you might be humming I Can Make You a Man from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's surprisingly comprehensive on Atlas's dynamic tension system. But what brought on the bodybuilding boom of the 19th and early 20th century?

And is there a dark side to the idea of the perfect bod? Let's muscle in and find out. And a word of caution, today we will be discussing body image, food restriction and dieting. So if you're not in the right headspace to hear that, then why not check out another episode. But we're going to start a conversation with the basics. Professor Vanessa, where does bodybuilding start? check out another episode. But we're going to start a conversation with the basics. Professor Vanessa, where does bodybuilding start? Well, we can find resistance exercise and cultures of bodily improvement all over the world in the Middle East, in China and India.

The modern traditions of bodybuilding usually look back to ancient Greece and specifically to Milo of Crotona from the 6th century BCE. He's often referred to as the father of progressive resistance exercise. He was a multiple Olympic as the father of progressive resistance exercise. He was a multiple Olympic champion in the wrestling and he was famous for apparently carrying a calf on his shoulders every day until it grew into a full-sized cow and he was strong enough to carry it around the Olympic Stadium and then kill, cook and eat it.

What a show-off. I mean, he's Milo of Cretona. It's a good name. He's a literal beefcake, Darren, because he's literally lifting beef. I mean, what's the heaviest animal you could carry around a stadium and then barbecue and then eat? I would say quite a big dog. Okay. Let's go medium-sized dog.

I was just about to say a cow, but I was like, they're massive. They're huge, yeah. Yeah, I could carry a cow around. I could probably carry a calf, but, yeah, it just depends how much it's been fed. That's the worry. Once it gets really heavy, I'm going to struggle with that. That's still quite impressive. I'm going to go for maybe a weasel or a ferret, something very small.

Vanessa, not everyone in the ancient world is bench-pressing cattle. Do they have iron weights? Do they have standard dumbbells? Yeah, the earliest known dumbbell-like pieces of equipment are called the halteres, and they are made of stone or of metal. And in the second century AD, Galen, who was a Greek physician, a surgeon, a philosopher, he discusses using these halteres in jumping and weight-bearing exercises. But he does recommend using wooden implements first before moving on to the heavier materials. There is also evidence, which is specifically from a mosaic in Sicily, that Roman women also

trained using the halteres. We have less evidence of weight training after the fall of the Roman Empire, although there are still lots of traditions of heavyweight lifting, mostly for show and demonstration. And we can find traces of weight training elsewhere. For example, in the 16th century, Michel Montand, the French essayist, wrote about how his father conducted weight training with two hollow staves that he filled with lead, which he was wont to use and exercise his arms. And then in the 18th century,

the American founding father, Benjamin Franklin, wrote a letter to a friend when he was 80 years old, saying the secret to his long life was no wine, but also a daily exercise of the dumbbell. But we really only see bodybuilding take off in a big way in the late 19th and 20th centuries. So Benjamin Franklin, he's lifting weights at 80. I love that. He used to do it naked as well. No pain, no gain, or trousers. I mean, it sounds like the Greeks were really quite into it, men and perhaps women exercising.

But we're going to be talking about really the 19th century today. So Darren, deliberate muscle building has been sort of limited to circus performers and military barracks. If I say to you, what do you reckon the first modern gym looked like? How old do you think it is? What do you see in your head? I think it would be quite small. I feel like it would be lots of resistant stuff, similar to what you'd get at like my primary school where there's like a rope that you would probably pull up yeah i feel like some sort of ladder i feel like they would have those dumbbells the ones with the big circles on the end something that you would sort of lift up in like a deadlift

motion whether it was like a barrel or something like that because i'm thinking of like especially in the early 1900s i think i know i know who the next guy is oh i'm actually quite a fan of this guy interesting if it's him when i think of the king of bodybuilding i think of this one guy eugene sando oh yeah yeah yeah yeah and i know him because in the mr olympia competition the big sort of biggest bodybuilding competition, you win Sandoz. And the trophy is a big Sandoz trophy that is him doing his legendary pose. He's like a proper legend.

There was a documentary that I watched about him a few years ago and I can't find it anywhere, but it was so good. Yeah, it was a legend. But I'm intrigued to hear more about all these other legends because when I think before him, I think of, it's just circus. T strength you know a guy oh let's somebody with like a really big grip

and you would have your fist in it and it would hold it and you'd have to try and fight out of this person's grip it was all that and i think sando really sort of worked into like reps and actual bodybuilding yeah type stuff this is great knowledge darren honestly we don't need to do the podcast anymore we just sort of that's's it now. I'm done. I mean, Vanessa, we asked Darren about gyms and then he gave us a whole lecture on the history of Eugene Sandow. But, you know, his guesses was quite... He said small, he said ropes, he said ladders. What are we talking about in terms of the history of the gym? Gymnastics was already established in the 19th century, but it's a French man, Hippolyte Triat, who really commercialised the gym as a space. He opened his first gym in Liège

in the 1830s, and then a very successful one in Brussels in the 1840s. And then in the 1850s, he had one in Paris. So it had equipment like ropes and trapezes, but it also had a complete collection of weights, so dumbbells and barbells and also Indian clubs. Triat was a circus performer, so his gyms were also sort of theatrical spectacles. Audiences could watch the show in the galleries that were located around the sides of the room, and entrepreneurs all over began to imitate his success with these gyms. The gym that opened in Liverpool in 1865 claimed to be the largest one in the world. A local satirical magazine referred to it as the Emporium of Muscularity onrtle street oh emporium of muscularity is quite hard to say um so that's liverpool claiming to have the largest gym in the world back in 1865 darren it's great hearing about

those gyms and what that it had a slight circus edge to it because in my head it makes me think a little bit of today with crossfit which has a slight circus edge to it as in my head it makes me think a little bit of today with crossfit which has a slight circus edge to it as well because they are doing you know there is like back flips and handstands and all this sort of stuff and a lot of resistance training it just made me think oh yeah maybe we've gone maybe we haven't completely lost that now but also these gyms they had sort of spectator sections they could mark you out of 10 darren like i'm dancing on ice i'll tell you this greg that's how you get injured the last thing you need is a bunch of people watching you they had sort of spectator sections. They could mark you out of 10, Darren, like I'm dancing on ice. I'll tell you this, Greg. That's how you get injured.

The last thing you need is a bunch of people watching you. Oh yeah, put an extra 10 kg on there. I've got this. I want to impress them in the corner there. I don't need that, mate. I've got a lot of injuries doing dancing on ice because of that. I mean, Vanessa,

how does something normally restricted to circuses or military training end up in these new urban locations? How come Liverpool's got a fancy new gym? Well, it is the Industrial Revolution. Economic and social changes mean there's a rising middle class with more money to spend and more leisure time. And by the time we get to the end of the 19th century, the labour reforms mean that even the working classes actually get some time off as well. But they're expected to use it in productive and healthy ways. And as more people who are living in cities, they need to find ways to exercise and do sport that don't require lots

of outdoor space or access to the countryside. Luckily, gas and then electric lighting also becomes available to commercial and to domestic properties. And therefore it becomes possible to do more things indoors, even after the sun has gone down. I do like the fact that they all sort of started getting into working out and fitness whilst chain smoking. Everybody's just chain smoking on the bench press with a cigarette in his mouth. But it's interesting right this is a technological shift the industrial revolution you've got the invention of the weekend suddenly there's leisure And there's lighting, which means you can do stuff at night. You don't have to just go to bed when it gets dark at 4.30pm in December. So technology is shifting social patterns and what people do with their free time.

And the brainchild of the new machines that people are using is a guy called Gustav Zander. Vanessa, who's Zander? He's Swedish, right? Yeah. Zander was born in Stockholm in about 1835, and he explored the connection between body mechanics and muscle building whilst he was at medical school in the early 1860s. And he very quickly established a therapeutic Zander Institute in Stockholm, which was a state-supported institute that used his machines to try and help workers to correct physical impairments. The broader Zander institutes that he set up and the equipment in them are remarkably similar to the modern fitness centre.

They were open to both men and women and they had lots of different machines all in quite a small space. These machines were huge comparatively to modern day equipment but they look a lot like 20th century equipment in their functioning and in their appearance. And like the gym today, these Zander machines became something of a status symbol. So they were often bought by upscale clientele, not only to demonstrate their wealth, because they could afford these expensive machines, but also to show that they were people who didn't do physical labour and therefore they needed to do their exercise in another way. And Zander is part of that move away from more natural gymnastics and natural movement

and simple equipment to much more complicated machines and technology so this is a middle class thing you still need to work your body but you don't want to do it by working down a mine so you're like i'm gonna buy myself a zander machine uh darren we can show you some zander machines prepare yourself okay this is interesting they look terrifying that's the first thing they actually look like they would hurt you more than anything. I can see the one on the right. So you're sitting in there. You've got your hands up, your wrists facing away from you.

I'm guessing you go down and up. That looks like a bicep curl, the first one. Yeah. The second one, I can't figure out what it is. It's a small boy in the middle of this sort of torture instrument. He's actually being measured. This is to check his chest and waist size size it didn't look like it was being measured it just looked like it was being punished that's a good punishment machine and then there's a the

third one it just looks like you know when you go to like your local supermarket and there's like put a pound in and let's sit on put your kid on a rocket and your kid rocks forward and backwards it looks like a little Bronco thing. Yeah. I don't know what that would do other than if you're hungover, it would probably sober you up just from going backwards and forwards on it. Yeah, you're spot on. So on the left, we have a gentleman doing a bicep curl.

You're spot on. In the middle, we've got a small boy being measured. It looks terrifying, as you say. The woman on the right is basically on a fake horse could i also point out that if any of these people came to my gym dressed like this they wouldn't be allowed in three-piece suits and long dresses that's gonna get caught on a machine really quickly one of the reasons they're like this is because these are the sorts of equipment that you'd have in your home so obviously you stay fully dressed because you don't want your

servants to be seeing you necessarily in a state of sweatiness but also the one shaped like a horse is directly supposed to be like a horse and it's one of the ways you make these machines attractive to the middle classes like those who perhaps don't have access to their own stabling they can still take part in this exciting horse racing and horse activity so it's trying to make the machines look like the sorts of sports that posh people would do. And that's why you get those horse riding ones, but also, of course, things like rowing machines. Oh, that's great.

Yeah. So the 19th century, Vanessa, is clearly a time of profound technological and social change, as we well know. But there's, as well as the progress and the kind of optimism, there's also big anxiety. I mean, historians of the 19th century

really are aware of this. We see it in diaries and newspapers and all sorts of optimism. There's also big anxiety. Historians of the 19th century really are aware of this. We see it in diaries and newspapers and all sorts of media. People are anxious about stuff. Definitely. So the mid to late 1800s is a time of European imperial expansion and sport and physical culture plays a really big part in convincing white Europeans of the superiority and the dominance of the Anglo-Saxon

race. So to be strong and to be athletic was seen to be modern and civilised. It's part of national identity, national self-definition and national cohesion. But at the same time, this modernity leads to anxieties about things like office work being too sedentary, that technology is going too fast, that society is changing too rapidly for people to keep up with it. Part of this change is also the role of women. So particularly middle class women are asking for more rights, they're asking for more access to education, to be able to do more jobs. They're even asking to be able to play sports and ride bicycles and things like that. And this leads to a concern about a degrading and feminizing, in some cases, society. And in that, gay and queer people are also seen as a particular threat to robust masculinity.

And modern science is often brought in to solve this problem of apparently weak or feminised men using things like scientific diets, exercise technology, but also the rhetoric of thinking about the body as a machine, a machine that has to be properly moulded and properly fed with the right fuel. We showed Darren a photo of a woman on a Zander machine. So is that not going against what you've just said, that women shouldn't be exercising? Or is that part of the same movement? It is part of the same movement.

Women were allowed to do exercise and take part in sports. But for men, it was about increasing their health and their sexual and social and sporting prowess. But for women very specifically, while it was making them healthier, it was reforming their bodies for the purpose of motherhood. So it wasn't excluding women, but it was very strictly gendered in why it was they were meant

to be doing this exercise in the first place. Okay, so no bicep curls. You don't need that when you're pregnant. No, no, no. Well, unless you're carrying three babies all at once

and then yes. Darren, how do you think the British Army and Navy gets sucked into this big fitness movement? Do you think they're on board? I mean, how could they not be on board? In the Army and the Navy, a lot of it is all about fitness and discipline. Yeah, I'm going to say yeah. If you say no, Greg, I'm going to lose my head. Luckily, you don't have to lose your head.

We're all good here. But actually, this is an interesting moment of real tension. Right at the end of the 19th century, in Britain in particular, there is this big anxiety that the British army is losing its edge, right? Definitely. So in Europe during the 19th century, it's particularly average men's height and chest sizes that become really important indicators of the strength of the nation in general. And in the UK during the Second South

African War, which is 1899 to 1902, doctors and politicians and newspaper columnists all started to express real concern about the health and physique of their troops. And there's this idea, this sort of fantasy that men had been stronger and fitter back in the past, and that all this social change had caused deterioration in not just like physical health but also racial health the phrase racial health is horrible i know right you're like oh god here we go here we go yeah and and we're now teetering into the realm of eugenics which is the worst realm to teeter into i mean eugenics is very quickly vanessa how do we define eugenics as a pseudoscience eugenics, which is the worst realm to teep into. I mean, eugenics is very quickly, Vanessa, how do we define eugenics as a pseudoscience? Eugenics was the science of trying to improve the human race through a range of different principles, including selective breeding,

in order to try and purify it of racial elements, but also physical and mental disabilities that the proponents of it, such as Francis Galton, who coined the phrase, didn't think should be in the human race. Is there any way we could go back to just looking at the Xander machines and having a laugh? It's all got serious now, guys. Sorry, Darren. This is what we do on this show. We lure you in with fun machines and then we're like, actually. Oh, you gave me lots of sweets and now you're giving me sprouts.

I mean, Vanessa, this measuring of chest size and waist size and this eugenics science, it's part of a fantasy, right? It's part of a kind of idealized version of what a man should be. And obviously, you know, the British Army has had some military defeats in battle in South Asia, in Africa. So there's sort of this big anxiety intention that men are going backwards. But there's a racial anxiety. The pseudoscience of the white man is meant to be superior. Yeah, and what I find really interesting, I think, about the bodybuilding is that at least according to the marketing material, everybody is supposed to be able to improve their body. And that kind of goes against this idea of eugenics where there's a fixed internal limit. I think that the way the early bodybuilders dealt with this is they thought about it in terms

of racial and ethnic groups. So you could get as good as your racial or ethnic group would let you get, but that still allowed the white body to be superior in terms of how much better it could get through bodybuilding. That's a nice thought back then for them. It's like, oh, we're always gonna get better. Let them work out as much as they like because i'm gonna get better eventually i mean i guess that's quite a nice thought for them back in the day because it means that they almost don't even have to work as hard because they think that they have some sort of superior genetic advantage but obviously that leads to what actually happens a few years later yeah horrendous it just gets worse doesn't it does it does get worse couldn't it have just stayed to lifting weights greg yeah i mean obviously the the history of eugenics turns into absolutely the

worst horrific things and you know we're a comedy show so we'll not we'll not go down that road right now but it is really important and got you mentioned vanessa francis galton he's sort of one of the great scientists of the era but he's also championing this really sinister idea but let's back away from eugenics. Well, actually, I mean, I say that, but actually it brings us to someone Darren has already mentioned, Eugen Sandow, whose name is literally Eugenics Sandow. That's literally his name.

He chooses it as well. It's not his birth name. He was described as the world's perfect man. And you've already told us, Darren, that he's still an icon to this day. What do you know about him briefly? Yeah, just know that especially in bodybuilding terms there's a few legends there's Eugene Sando he's almost like a mythical legend who really he's the closest to what a modern bodybuilder is you know he worked on his whole body he looks really good you see pictures of him he's very ripped he's very cut worked on his diet. He worked on sort of training in terms of like high reps.

If I remember, he was like purely all about fitness, like he could run, he could jump, he could lift. Yeah. And he wrote loads of books and about working out. And a lot of it is still relevant today. I don't know why you invited me. I'm completely pointless here. I don't know why you invited me. I'm completely pointless here. Yeah, not pointless at all, Vanessa. But it is amazing to hear that Eugene Sandow, you know, he's a guy who, I mean, is born in 1867 that he's still talked about now, right? Let's hear about his origin story. There's a certain element of self-romanticization here. He's born in Prussia. He's not called Eugene Sandow as a boy, is he? self-romanticisation here. He's born in Prussia. He's not called Eugene Sandow as a boy, is he? No, he's called Friedrich Müller. And his story is that he was born pale and skinny. He was a sickly kid. He was beaten up by playground bullies. And his father took him to Rome when he was a kid and he became inspired by those muscular classical statues there. And he began to swing dumbbells in private and also go to the gymnasiums we've talked about in order to gain confidence and that origin story is very familiar we're going to hear several bodybuilders and Charles Atlas

saying the same thing we do have to take it with a little bit of a pinch of salt because we've only got Eugene's word for it and then after a quarrel apparently with his father he decides he's going to support himself as a strong man but he's refused any employment by a bunch of theatres in Amsterdam and it's around that time that he decides to rename himself as Eugene, meaning well-born or good genes eugenics. Yeah, good Gene Sandow is a little bit like, no. How do you think he gets noticed as an aspiring strongman, Darren? Didn't he have like competitions, open invites, stuff like that to show off his strength to people? That's definitely what he does a bit later on. But to get noticed early on, he does something a bit more sneaky.

He basically launches a campaign of viral vandalism, Vanessa, doesn't he? Yeah, again, according to Sandow, he wandered around Amsterdam at night wrecking all of the strength testing machines that you could find and put a coin in. And then rewards were offered for the apprehension of this gang of thugs who were presumed

to be responsible for all this damage. And he turns himself in and demonstrates that, no, he'd just been using it in the right way, but he was so strong he left the handle hanging off the machine. And apparently he was then immediately given a job by a theatre in Amsterdam to be a strong man. The big dick energy on him. He had it all, didn't he?

This guy really believed in himself. He just goes around trashing stuff and then goes, actually, that was me. Sorry, sorry, that one was me as well yeah you guys weren't using it correctly so he's he's pretty um he's pretty savvy but he runs away from prussia so he doesn't have to do prussian military compulsory service he ends up in belgium he ends up in france but he rocks up in london and this is where the myth is going to be made, Darren. He makes a huge entrance. Vanessa, how does he get noticed in London? So apparently he crashes a public strongman competition

by wandering uninvited onto the stage, wearing a suit and a hat and a monocle. And he's looking like a confused gentleman who doesn't know where he is. And then he rips off his clothes and reveals his incredible abs. The audience goes wild. He wins the competition. then he rips off his clothes and reveals his incredible abs the audience goes wild he wins the competition however true these stories are we do know for sure that he is a showman so one of his tricks is carrying a grand piano above his head whilst the musician was still sat at the

piano playing it he had a special posing box with lights fitted at exactly the right angle to highlight each of his muscles he flexeses, he poses, he wears this tiny leopard skin loincloth. He also claims he can move every single muscle in his body individually. I love him. Yeah, showing up in a suit and, you know, just sort of full like tuxedo with a monocle and then like, aha, beefcake mode engage. It's great. I imagine he was like limping as well, like willie wonka does at the beginning and then just does like a forward roll look at me i mean darren you know his story very well but we we

thought we'd show you some of the pictures anyway just in case uh so here is eugene sandow in his absolute pomp is he nude in the first one he's got a tactical sock yeah yeah i don't know why i'm questioning if he's new. This guy had so much confidence. Of course he's new. They probably told him to wear clothes and he was like, no. Actually, I'm not gonna. He's also got a fantastic

moustache. It's a perfect curly moustache, isn't it? I love it. He needs to have one of those leotards on him. I'm sure there's pictures of him in one of those dumbbells in the air. Oh, there are. Yeah, we've got those too. He's obviously in great shape. He can lift a piano on his head while a guy's playing piano. That's ludicrously strong. But he's also a bit of an erotic fixation for not just ladies.

Undoubtedly, there is clearly a sexual element to all of this, particularly as he moves from being admired for his performance, lifting things to being much more admired for his looks as it was shared in the photographs. And it's definitely not just women who want to see or touch his perfect body. Among his followers, there are plenty of men as well. And there is very clearly a queer subculture around bodybuilding, even at this time. bodybuilding even at this time. So for example, a man named Edmund Gosse was so enthralled by Sandow's nude photos that he actually sneaked them into the funeral of poet Robert Browning at Westminster Abbey to look at them during the service. And later he sent copies of those to another writer, John Ablington Simmons, and Simmons wrote, the Sandow photographs arrived, they are very interesting, and the full length studies quite confirm my anticipations. So Gosse and Simmons were part of a group of men that also included Oscar Wilde's lover Alfred Douglas and they exchanged photographs

of young men in the nude including Sandow and Sandow himself some people have suggested might possibly have been bisexual or even gay we can't be sure of his sexuality but we do know that his body was very much a business so when he toured the usa as a publicity stunt he actually charged people about 300 to come backstage and touch his muscles yeah i like that it's like early porn isn't it yeah it's just like passing around photos of him wow well smuggling in nude photos into a funeral in westminster abbey is quite a weird move. Oh, come on, Greg. We've all been bored at a funeral. Come on. We've all wanted to get photos of a muscular man and have a look at the back. And $300 to touch his biceps. You know, we know people were paying this. We have letters and

diaries, people going, ooh, you know, excited. But actually, it tells us that Eugene Sandow is a commercial product. He's pretty savvy on the marketing front. He's a celebrity. He knows how to sell himself. Darren's mentioned already, he wrote books. He wrote more than books, didn't he, Vanessa? Oh, yeah, definitely. He also started up a major magazine, started in 1898, the Physical Culture magazine. But he did loads of other promotional stuff. He went on world tours, he had his own food supplements, he had workout he ran a cocoa company he also trained british troops for battle to take us back to the military angle and he was appointed as the scientific advisor on physical

culture to the british monarch after the in sometime in the late 1910s so he honed his own body and he also made ways for other people to try and replicate his physique, including, as we've already mentioned, several books. Yeah. The most notable one would be The Sandile System, Life is Movement. That sounds like an Italian arthouse movie. Bodybuilding or Man in the Making. That's good.

And Strength and How to Obtain It, which, again, very Ron Seal cover that. You know what's in that book. You know what you're getting, yeah. I've got to ask, though. He had so many things going on. Who's his agent? Do you have an email?

He did so many things. Are you looking to pivot into a career as a bodybuilder? I mean, it sounds like you could probably do it. I'm thinking about it. Yeah. Yeah, I want my own supplement line. I just want people to pay me $300 to touch my muscles. All right.

So besides looking like a condom stuffed full of walnuts, the Physical Culture magazine is 1898. What else is happening in terms of body image and anxieties and who's his customer base as well? The magazine Physical Culture sought to promote bodybuilding and physical culture, particularly as a respectable middle-class activity. And as well as all the articles you'd expect

about exercise and fitness and lots and lots of photos of Eugene, it also has contributions and letters from men who are desperate to try and imitate his success. So there's a lot of anxiety around body image you can see in these letters. So for example, writing to Sandow's magazine in 1902, a 17 year old boy from Limerick sought Sandow's approval for the six month use he'd been doing with Sandow's equipment. And the teenager writes to him begging for a comment on the transformation that he's managed to achieve with this equipment. Likewise, a young man from Dublin writes to him explaining that he's unhappy with his appearance. He's got shame. He's suffering from the problems he's inflicted upon himself through his poor physique. And another correspondent from Cork

actually said his life was not worth living before he undertook a Sandow course of training. Yeah. I mean, Darren, you host a podcast about shame and about these issues. And these are very familiar tropes. I had a lot of issues in my youth with body image. I was a very, very skinny guy. I still am. And a lot of people still feel these pressures. There's still that pressure in the modern fitness world now, isn't there? The idea of feeling shame. Oh, yeah, yeah, completely, especially with social media now as well. There is so much talk around body issues,

especially even more so with women in the bodybuilding world, even more than men normally now. Yeah, it's so weird hearing those people, the way they wrote to him and they wanted him to comment on their transformation and how they changed their life. It's so, it feels so modern. It feels so very much today, especially in a bodybuilding world. Yeah, that could have been a message, you know, somebody sent yesterday. Yeah, absolutely. So let's stay with Eugene Sandow. He is the big star in this field. And his next promotional gimmick in 1901 is called the great competition he's 34 years old by this point which well i'm 40 now so that sounds like a young man but i guess

in 1901 is perhaps middle-aged he is he still sort of mega buff and still absolutely star of the show or is he starting to move beyond that vanessa oh he's he's sort of he's definitely still being able to promote things with um his body, but he's also engaging in all of these other promotional activities as well. So the grape competition in particular was a key purpose for the physical culture magazine. The goal was to find the best developed man in Great Britain and Ireland, and it was announced just a few months after they started publishing the magazine, but it took three years for them to organise it. So they ended up with a vast pool of applicants over this three years. And Sandow explained the prize was not for the person who had the largest muscles, but was specifically for

those whose judgment is most symmetrical and even. So in order to win a medal in the qualifying rounds, men are judged on the following criteria, which are general development, equality or balance of development, the condition and tone of the tissues, general health and condition of the skin. And the top 60 men who are successful in this first round are then invited to join the final round at the Royal Albert Hall in London. And apparently there were 15,000 spectators when it happened on the 14th of September 1901, and they had hundreds more people turned away at the door. Can I just say, that criteria, everything he described, the balance, the tone of the muscle, the conditioning, is all what they look for in modern bodybuilding.

It's exactly what the judges look for, and that was over 100 years ago. It's the same thing. But 15,000 people have barged into the Royal Albert Hall in London. It's a big venue, but 15,000 people is a lot of people, to watch these guys flex and show off their abs. And there are some guest judges, Darren. It's not just Eugene Sandow who's the judge.

He's invited a couple of celebrity judges. And also there's quite a lucrative prize. Do you know what the prize is, Darren? No. It's cash, which is good. So it's 1,000 guineas in cash. So that's a hefty sum. But also they win a solid gold statue of Eugene Sandow himself.

Solid gold. So that's pretty good, isn't it? And then the celebrity judge, the most famous one. Let's see if you can guess. He was a famous writer of detective novels. Bear in mind, this is 1901. Famous writer of detective novels. I don't know.

I'm just thinking judging a bodybuilding competition is very funny to me. Already. That's really funny. The guest judge was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Amazing booking. Weird, but amazing. What? I was about to say, maybe like Sherlock Holmes, the guy who wrote Sherlock Holmes.

That's what I was about to say. And I thought, no, that sounds too silly. That would be stupid, Darren. Holmes? That's what I was about to say. And I thought, no, that sounds too silly. That would be stupid, Darren. Oh, that's great. That just shows how big bodybuilding was back then. And Eugene Sander. Wow. I mean, he's a medical

doctor, right? Is that why he's there, Vanessa? Yeah, he was medically trained, but he was also a very keen sportsman and athlete in himself and probably quite ripped himself, I suspect, under the waistcoat. Yeah. And of course, Sherlock Holmes herself does a sort of interesting form of martial arts, doesn't he? So I think we have perhaps there a celebrity judge who feels like he has the knowledge to pick a winner. And they do pick a winner. And that guy gets a thousand guineas in cash and a gold statue. Do you know anything

about the atmosphere in there? I'm just thinking it must have been absolutely wild. 15,000 people at this event that they've probably never seen before and there's so many people in there just losing their mind over these physiques, just going crazy. It's a big deal isn't it? There's a lot of newspaper coverage. It's also unusual because they were being judged for the physique specifically and not for the lifting so there'd been competitions and quite big ones about who could you know lift the heaviest weight but the idea of doing it for the aesthetics is quite new so i think this is quite a novel thing for people to go and look at now sandow you know his career does twilight you know the first world war makes things complicated for him because he's prussian he's german you know suddenly they're

the enemy he's sort of aging out a little bit We get him sort of fading into the wings a bit. So who steps up next? Is it Charles Atlas next or have we got someone in between? So in the late 1920s, we'll get Charles Atlas. But before him, we actually have another American called Bernard Adolphus McFadden. And he changes his name in a way that's quite difficult to explain just through audio. But it's changed to Bernard McFadden. And his wife explains that this is because Bernard sounds like a roar rather than Bernard. And then he changes McFadden. And his wife explains that this is because Bernard sounds like a raw rather than Bernard. And then he changes McFadden to McFadden. So to gaining an A and getting rid of the capital F,

because apparently the big F stuck out like a broken thumb in a wrestling match. So he's McFadden now. He thinks that's a word that just looks much stronger, apparently, than his original surname. He's so interested in being strong that even his font choice is like, does this font make me look strong? Bernard McFadden, he's American. He has a motivational slogan, which is not my fave, Darren. Do you want to guess what it is?

Okay, it's not eat, sleep, repeat. It's not no pain, no gain. Don't know. I can only think it's not no days off, I guess. These are good slogans, but his is slightly more judgmental. His is weakness is a crime. Don't be a criminal. I don't hate it. I don't hate it. Weakness is a crime. Don't be a...

That sounds like a CrossFit Bros ideology right there. Don't be a criminal. I don't like anything that's sort of judgmental, but I suppose it probably does work. I mean, we are talking about a guy who changed his name to Bernard. Yeah, that's true. Yes, Bernard McFadden. All right, Vanessa, he's a character, let's put it that way. What do we know of Bernard McFadden?

So aside from Sandow, he was also one of those strongmen who commercialised popular eugenics, which I think is illustrated by the slogan that he's chosen about not being a criminal, don't being weak. And in the accounts we have of a lot of his activities that come from his wife, Mary Williamson McFadden, in her memoir, there are some really notable anecdotes about some of his stranger behaviour. So first, he met this Yorkshire lass and married her after she won the Great Britain's Perfect Woman contest, which he actually judged. Oh, no, that sounds bad. You shouldn't, no, you shouldn't marry some, no, that's not right.

That's not right. Was he trying to do what Eugene Sando was doing? Was he sort of trying to be a bit of a copy of him? I think he would have been very offended if you'd suggested that to him, that he very much saw himself as his own act and his own slightly different take on how you exercised and and bulked up okay and how you meet a wife yeah yeah yeah okay so he i get slightly bad vibes about him already from that but also he's quite controlling over his wife's body and because they do a sort of act together it doesn't sound like a very happy marriage or you know quite controlling one I think it probably was I mean they married in

1913 and they separated in 1932 and eventually got divorced in 1946 so it definitely faded after time they did do stage acts together and Mary talks about some of them in her in her biographical writing so one of them was where she had to jump on his bare stomach from a high table. She said, I never could get accustomed to it. In ordinary clothes, I weighed 148 pounds. Stripped down to my tights, I was a good solid 142. And when I landed on him with both feet on his bread basket, I prayed to God and St. George that I wouldn't go through him. And he actually made her do this jumping on his stomach trick also while she was pregnant.

And he was incredibly controlling, not only over her sort of exercise and performance, but also over her food intake. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, because for him, she was the perfect woman. She won the perfect woman competition. It was all about body image.

So it sounds like she was more of just an accessory for his business, I guess. Yeah, I don't know. Monitoring her food intake and controlling her diet sounds to me like it's very controlling. Yeah, that's scary. It sounds really problematic and not a healthy relationship. And making her do it while she's pregnant,

she has to climb on a high table, so she's having to scramble up furniture and then leap off. Yeah, it's not great, is it? Yeah, it didn't sound like a marriage of love. It sounded more like a marriage of a business for him. And it didn't sound like he took into her feelings at all. No. And was just controlling because it's

all about the business. So Bernard McFadden, bit of a problematic guy. He also started a fitness magazine. And Darren, do you know what it was called? And bear in mind that a couple of years earlier, Eugene Sandow had started a fitness magazine called Physical Culture. So what bernard's magazine called it's going to be something mean isn't it muscles make you happy it'll be something like that muscles of joy muscles

of joy it's a great guess uh the real answer is uh in order to differentiate himself from the magazine Physical Culture, McFadden launches Physical Culture. Wow. Yeah, he literally just steals the name. So not just controlling over his wife, but also trying to appropriate other people's brands. And yet, weirdly, despite being a bit of a douchebag, his magazine is, I'm going to use the word surprisingly feminist what is that is that okay vanessa you yeah you would not necessarily understand his relationship with his wife by reading his magazine it was for example very anti-corset and he was very against

what he called prudery which is what prevented women from getting good birth control information and actually in the second phase of the magazine from about 1911 to about 1919, it had writers like the birth control crusader Margaret Sanger, it had the radical labour organiser Ella Reeve Bloor. It also had the feminist, novelist and magazine editor Charlotte Perkins Gilman. And through those writers, physical culture actually endorsed equal employment for women, political suffrage, liberalised divorce, which might not have worked out so well for him, but also access to birth control and things like that. Wow.

So this is a bodybuilding magazine that's taking a political stance. It's quite interesting. Well, I'm Team Bernard now, apparently. I mean, I thought he was a wrong-un, but it turns out he's actually quite progressive. Would you jump on his stomach? You know what I like about all of these guys? Obviously, they're clearly not perfect people. I just like their confidence, their unwavering confidence in just their physique and their beliefs.

It is scary at times, but I do like their unwavering belief in just their physical prowess. Yeah. McFadden also follows in Eugene Sandow's footsteps, I suppose, by going into commercial opportunities. He opens his own famous restaurant in New York City. It's called Physical Culture. Why not? Makes sense. Brand synergy.

And Darren, what was surprising about the food it served? Bearing in mind it's for bodybuilders. For bodybuilders. Well, I mean, you'd think it was going to be sort of lots of salad, lots of meat. I'm going to assume they went the opposite way. They probably had lots of treats, whatever the sweet, sweeter foods were back then. It's a vegetarian restaurant, which I was quite surprised at because we've had, you know, the start of the episode, we have Milo of Cretona, the ancient Greek strongman who's carrying a cow around and eating it. But he's opening a veggie restaurant for people who are trying to get their protein shakes. Is that part of a wider movement, Vanessa? It definitely is. It's also one of the ways in which Bernard McFadden could sort of distinguish himself from other bodybuilders like Eugene Sandow. So we've also mentioned the importance of sort of industrialization, fears about the changing

modern world. And one way that people responded to that was by developing sort of lifestyle reform movements. So in the mid to late 19th century, that's when we see the first big campaigns against drinking and against smoking. And we also get dietary reform societies like the Vegetarian Society. And those sorts of organizers organizers particularly in relation to vegetarianism use the same tension that the bodybuilders did so they draw on science to say plant-based diets are healthy for us but they also use a lot of rhetoric about being natural so there's lots of vegetarian athletes who promote the diet as a secret to strength by by avoiding all the toxins and pollutions of industrialized society and there's a very strong rhetoric in here and not just about having a naturally fit body but having an

uncontaminated and a pure body which also ties back in of course to racial purity oh no we were doing so well i was like oh that sounds like wellness. And then your racial purity. Oh, no, we're back here again. So it's sort of clean eating, clean eating plus racism. OK, great. All right, let's let's run away from eugenics. Vanessa, we talked about Mary Williamson McFadden. Are there other women in bodybuilding in this late 19th century, early 20th century? I mean, obviously, I'm aware it becomes professionally much more gender equal than 1970s and 80s. But what about the 1920s and 30s? So they definitely are strong women at the turn of the century. And often their performances are

more of a side hustle to their role as wives or daughters of performances in a similar way to Mary McFadden. There was, however, also Katie Sandwina. So she was formerly called Katharina Brumbach. And after beating Sandow in a weightlifting competition in New York City in 1902 she then changes her name to reflect this to Katie Sandwina but it might not be a positive story because she was born to a family of circus performers and it's likely that it was actually her dad who was exploiting her strength to earn money by betting on her in these sort of feats of strength against men. Right, okay.

So she's the daughter of a guy who's using, yeah, there's a recurring pattern here. But still, she beat Sandow in a weightlifting contest and then took his name as like a trophy. That's brutal, right? You know, I'm going to become Sandwina now because I've eaten him like a sandwich. It's great.

I bet Sandow still talks about that to this day. Wherever he is, he's like, can you believe it? And then she took my name and all the things. We've actually got a photo of Katie Sandwina for you to see, Darren. And do you want to describe it for us? It's Katie Sandwina holding three men in the air. And she's not straining. She's got her arms wrapped around too.

And then there's one who's sort of sitting on her bicep and she's holding them both in the air. If I didn't know, I'd think it was Faith. But it looks so... She's not straining. She's clearly a very strong woman. You can see that she is really built and terrifying. And if I was Sandow, i wouldn't feel so bad she's

very strong that's probably the most impressive picture i've seen in a long time can i point out she's doing it in heels she is oh my gosh she's wearing heels as well and the men yeah the men all look they look about you know they look over five foot they all look a bit smaller than her but it's just the way she's holding them. It's with complete ease. Free-grown men. It's amazing. They don't look terrified. They look like they've been up there a while,

and it's actually quite nice. Yeah, they're like, I've never been this high up before. This is actually great. She looks very much like a strong woman stroke wrestler in this photo. I wouldn't mess with her, that's for sure. No, no.

Katie Sanwina. So there we go. The nuance window! and this photo. I wouldn't mess with her, that's for sure. No, no. Katie Sanwina. So there we go. The nuance window! This is where Darren and I guzzle our protein shakes as Dr Vanessa powers through an uninterrupted two-minute set with lots of reps on anything she likes to tell us about today's episode.

So I'm going to get my stopwatch up. Without much further ado, Professor Vanessa, can we have the nuance window, please? Whenever we talk about physical culture, improving performance, fitness, including things like bodybuilding, we always need to ask fit for what? So one of the criticisms sometimes levelled at bodybuilders is that they were fit for nothing. This wasn't functional fitness they were building. It was just something for display or for vanity, that looking good was not necessarily the same as being healthy or strong. And in fact, early bodybuilders were sometimes criticised for their effeminate concern about how their bodies looked rather than what their bodies could do. And this is part of the reason why many bodybuilders still incorporated

feats of strength, like Sandow carrying the piano, or other health claims like McFadden's vegetarianism. And that was to show that as well as looking good, their bodies were also fit for purpose. Fit for what purpose though? And that's the question that reveals the prejudices and assumptions about bodies and about people of the time. So again and again reformers campaigning for women's right to take part in exercise including bodybuilding also argue that it makes them better breeders. Even if the exercise was supposed to make them healthy and strong the purpose of their health and strength was the raising of more babies. More abstractly, you can be fit for the future. So bodybuilding was one way to counter the negative effects of modern and future society. So especially if you're using

technology and science to do it. But it also makes you fit for consumer society. You buy the magazine, the machine, the high fiber chocolate drink. Your body is a visual representation of the sort of consumer culture you take part in. You are a walking advert. And finally, fit for what also points out that you don't just get fit for yourself. You're expected to get fit for bigger ideals. You get fit so that you can keep working in the factory or the office to keep the economy going. You get fit to fight so that when the call-up comes for the army, the country can indeed find enough men who have big enough chest measurements. More recently, you get fit so that you're healthier and you aren't going to cost the NHS too much. So while the bodybuilders could be criticised for being too self-absorbed, concerned only with how

fit they looked, asking fit for what also reveals a lot of anxiety about being fit to protect the nation or, in the darkest connotations, fit to preserve the future of the race. Phenomenal. Thank you, Vanessa. That's absolutely fascinating. Darren, what do you think about that? That's really interesting, the idea of fit for what? Yeah, I love that. I like how it ended with fit to preserve the race. Ah, we're back again! Ah! Always, but never too far away from it.

There is that whole thing with when you bodybuild and you work out, people say, well, what are you doing it for? And it's, you know, there's much more functional fitness i mean i'll be honest with you i've never worked out because i want to be better at my job i used to work in an office and i've never been like i'm gonna lift i want to lift some dumbbells so i can tap those keys a little better but a lot of that really does make sense there's so many reasons for people to work out especially nowadays i think we have a better understanding of it. It's not just a case of, you know, oh, vanity or I want to look better. There's nothing wrong with that

but there's so much more to it, you know, much more functional reasons, I guess. Absolutely, and sometimes just feeling good, you know, the discipline of it, the routine, the rhythm, you know, there's plenty of reasons. But in the 19th and early 20th century, there are these sort of other anxieties. The war, the rise of women, they have rights now.

Oh, this is awful. All that kind of stuff. It's, you know. So what do you know now? But it's time now for our quiz. This is the So What Do You Know Now? This is where we put Darren in the hot seat to see how much he has learned. And you already came into this knowing tons of stuff about Eugene Sandow and the history of bodybuilding.

So I'm... I didn't take notes. I should have been taking notes. I got too excited with all the bodybuilding stuff. I was just... Oh, no. These are all things we've talked about. Let's see if you can remember some stuff.

So, okay. Question one. Milo of Cretona was an ancient Greek strongman famed for carrying what on his shoulders? Oh, a calf. It was, yeah. And later a cow. It grew into a cow.

It grew into a cow. Question two. Friedrich Muller was the birth name of which bodybuilding sensation from Prussia? Oh, Sandow. Eugene. Yeah, Eugene Sandow. Question three.

Gustav Zander was the Swedish pioneer of what? The Zander machine. Yeah, absolutely, the white machines. Question four. How much did Eugene Sandow charge people for a backstage muscle squeeze while touring the USA? It was $300, but if you take away his agent's fee, it's probably more than 10% away.

Yeah, absolutely right. Question five. Opening in 1865, which UK city claimed to have the largest gymnasium in the world? Oh, was that Liverpool? It was Liverpool. Well done. Question six. In 1901, Sandow's Great great competition Was held The Royal Abbott Hall

And was co-judged By which celebrity author Oh I forgot his name The author of Sherlock Holmes Yeah I'll give you that Arthur Conan Doyle Question seven Why did Bernard

Adolphus Macfadden Change his name to Bernard He wanted it to sound More masculine Yeah his wife said He wanted it to sound like a Oh no I thought it was A bit more like a i thought it

was masculine like a man like a tiger lion tiger yes like a roar that's it yeah yeah yeah i'll give you that okay yeah yeah he wanted to sound like a roar raw bernard yeah yeah question eight according to his wife mary williamson mcfadden uh what was one of the stage acts that he made her perform? He made her jump on his stomach, on his bread basket. Yeah. Was it from a chair or piano or something? Table, yeah, yeah. Table, yeah. Yep, yep, I'll give you that.

Question nine. Launched a year after Eugene Sandow's Physical Culture magazine, what was the name of Bernard's rival magazine? Physical Culture. Absolutely. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And this for a perfect 10 out of 10 after beating sandow in a competition what did katharina brumbach change her name to it's my favorite

this is the best thing i've learned uh sandwina yeah 10 out of 10 nailed it come on absolutely i mean that's a perfect score And obviously that's Kudos to Professor Vanessa For all our Knowledge today Great work Do you enjoy it Darren? Do you feel you've learned

Some extra stuff? I've loved it Yeah I've learned so much more I came into this going Right I know Eugene Sando But I've learned so much Especially Sandwina

It's great And Bernard I'm obsessed with Bernard I'm gonna do a bit of research on Bernard because he doesn't sound like a nice guy, but weirdly progressive. Some of his views about women. All right. Well, listener, if you're searching for more sports history, you can check out our Series 1 episode on the history of football. One of my faves. Or for more ancient Greek stuff, you can do the episode on the ancient Olympics. That was surprisingly violent, but funny. You'll find them all on BBC Sounds. And remember, if you've enjoyed the show, please leave a review, share the

show with your friends. Make sure to subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. But all that's left for me to do is say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We had the historical heavyweight, Professor Vanessa Heggie from the University of Birmingham. Thank you, Vanessa. I've had a great time. Thank you. Pleasure. And in Comedy Corner, we had the dazzling Darren Harriot. Thank you, Darren. Thank you. I'm off to the gym. You can work on a Xander machine.

And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we flex our pecs at another historical subject with two different intellectual beefcakes but for now I'm off to go and buy a leopard print three piece suit

in the stiffest of tweed which I'm going to wear in the gym because that's what you wear in the gym when you're using a Xander machine bye

you're dead to me was a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4 the research was by Caitlin Rankin-McCabe this episode was written The research was by Caitlin Rankin-McCabe. This episode was written by Emma Neguse, Caitlin Rankin-McCabe and me and was produced by Emma Neguse and me.

The assistant producer was Emmy Rose Price-Goodfellow. The project manager was Isla Matthews and the audio producer was Steve Hankey. Hello, my name's Michelle D'Souza. And I'm Laura Smith. And we have a new podcast from BBC Radio 4. Bang On It is a weekly podcast where we curate, recommend, cherry pick through the week and just go, have a look at that, basically. We're going highbrow, we're going lowbrow, right?

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