Part Two: How the First Fitness Influencer Doomed Us All

Robert is joined again by Caitlin Durante to continue to discuss Bernarr MacFadden.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mudcasting guessing. Are you recording, Robert, I am, yeah, we
have to make sure professional podcaster, Robert Evans. Are you podcasting?
I don't know. I don't know, but I know that
this is the opening of part two of this episode podcasting.

(00:23):
This is how we're doing it. This is what we're doing.
So this this is started like the episode started, I
don't know, thirty seven seconds ago, according to my recorder.
Like we're in it now, Sophie. There's no pulling back,
there's no there's no going back to a world before
we opened to the podcast this way, Sylvie, what is
this show? Who are we? Um? I'm right into a

(00:45):
few states episodes your Sophie Lichtman, this is God's the
behind because this see, I feel like being Sophie looked
him and it sounds like a really difficult job. It's
really hard much there. I would much rather be the
other guy. Um, let's do it that way. Let's do
it that way, and then I just have to Sophieman

(01:08):
and I'm gonna go cry. Okay, Well, Caitlin Durante, how
are you doing today? You said, how are you doing
on this Durant day? It's good. I am doing well,
I just had a snack. So I'm not taking the advice,

(01:32):
which would be don't eat or go to doctors. I
eat food and well I I, um, you know, I
do try to avoid doctors, but not for the same
reasons that he did. I believe in science, but um,
you know, I've had I've had some problems with doctors
in the past. Go ahead and listen to Sludge and

(01:52):
American healthcare story if anyone once you my experience. So
I have more of a problem with some just the
kind of institution of the American health care system than
like it's bad doctors, right, I've known a lot of
great doctors. I avoid medical care like the plague. Um,

(02:13):
although right now that is on the advice of several
medical professionals I know who have who have repeatedly told
me there was no the hospitals are completely past capacity.
We have no equipment, we have no room to help
anybody stay healthy. Don't go to the doctor. You can't.
You can't go to the hospital now, there's nothing where
you here. You should avoid them because of the plague. Yeah,

(02:37):
So you know, try to eat well, everybody, be careful
on the street, just exercise, and then you won't have
to go doctor. It's more like, it's more it's not
that you shouldn't go to the doctor, it's that we
have systematically destroyed large aspects of our health care system UM,

(02:58):
and so there may not be a doctor. Dear for
you to go to. UM. Happy Halloween and everybody, it's
after Halloween. I don't know, I don't know what I'm doing, Haitalen.
In nineteen twelve, um Bernar McFadden has just come off
of the failure of Physical Culture City, which I cannot
get over as the name unbelievable after all those people
committed physical culture treason, physical culture treason, you know. In

(03:26):
twelve is also the year that the Titanic sank, so
a lot of tragedies happened, a lot of tragedy. Thank you,
thank you, Caitlin. I'm so impressed that you didn't get
a titantic mention in part one. I'm proud of you. Well, Robert,
I did as a way to like, as an adjective
for something else. And I really did think about interrupting

(03:46):
you and be like, I'm just saying, like that's really
mad we talk about Titanic, But you know, I was
I decided to respect you. Thank you. Yeah you did.
You did not. You did not commit physical culture treason.
I did not, and you're welcome. You're welcome also to me. Um. So,

(04:09):
by the way, the Titanic disaster could have been avoided
if people had had better physical culture. And you know what,
according to learn how to swim? Motherfucker's you dead assholes.
That's what I say. According to the movie which James
Cameron took. You know, he does his research into making

(04:29):
that mento, making that movie pretty accurate. There is a
scene that takes place in a gymnasium that was on
the Titanic. Never watched it, Robert, I can't believe that
you don't want to watch Titanic. I watch one movie
and it's The Mummy, and I would watch Titanic, but

(04:52):
it's giving me some serious Mummy vibes. So I feel
like I've already seen it. Look, you have one of
those many rip offs of the Mummy, like Sitting Private
Ryan or the Crying Game, all all all shades of
the Mummy. While we're on movies, I did want to
bring up how the story of um what's his name,
Bernar Bern. It's a ridiculous name to make for yourself.

(05:18):
That would be like I'm gonna go by Kate Kately
from now on, Kate Lar just taking out the last
letter Rob Very. It's very funny. Uh So the narrative,
the story of Berner's life sounds remarkably similar to that

(05:38):
of m Charles Foster Kane of Citizen Kane, where he's
you know, draw away from his mother that he becomes
this like you know, I don't well, I don't know
if Bernar how wealthy he gets, but super he I suspect.
I'm almost certain he was one of the men who
was kind of the inspiration for Charles Foster Kane, because
another man who was an inspiration for Charles Suster came

(06:00):
was William Randolph Hurst. And at his height, Bernard McFadden
is a much more popular publisher than Hearst. His magazines
outsell Hearsts publications. He is he is four a time.
We're getting to this, but he is for a time
the number one publisher in the United States of magazines
like no one else is even I don't think it's
even all that close. Um, he's hugely successful. We are

(06:23):
we are building to that. So in nineteen twelve, the
Titanic has sank because Motherfucker's didn't do enough crunches um,
and his relationship with Susie has fallen apart, the lady
that he leaves his wife for in Physical Culture City
and Physical Culture City. So he's he's hurting, right, you know,
he's in this like rebound period when you're extra vulnerable,

(06:44):
and you know, we all we all make decisions that
maybe aren't the things we're proudest of when we're in
that like a relationships kind of ended badly. I think
I think we can all be vulnerable enough to admit
everybody makes decisions that maybe aren't the things they would
they would most want to like celebrate in their lives
in that period of time. And Bernard is no different.
But because he's the guy he is, he does this

(07:04):
in a somewhat grander fashion. He goes on a tour
of Europe with an ulterior motive to find himself a wife. Now,
the way he does this is fucking incredible. He travels
to the UK to go on a speaking tour because
he's incredibly popular in the United Kingdom, right, people, every
time he does a speech there, it's sold out. He
auditorium is full of people, and his books, which have

(07:25):
been banned in the United States, sell like hotcakes over there,
because he's like, hey, he's got banned in the US
for being too obscene. But you, you English people, you're
advanced and like urbane enough to appreciate this, this work.
Um So as a major celebrity, he announces a contest
Great Britain's Perfect Woman. Now he frames this as this

(07:47):
is a health contest, right to see, like who is
the fittest woman in in Great Britain? Like, who is
the healthiest woman? Yeah, you're not gonna like it anymore
after this point. Happy So obviously, since he's the one
running the test and is the great expert on physical culture,
he gets to choose the winner, and the prize that
the winner wins is a job offer from Bernard McFadden

(08:09):
and I'm gonna quote from a write up by Esquire here.
She soon settled into her new career as the co
star of McFadden's traveling physical fitness show. Billed as the
world's healthiest man and woman, the pair performed feats of
physical prowess, the highlight of which was Williamson, the woman
that he he picks out Williamson's nightly jumped from a

(08:29):
seven foot platform onto McFadden's stomach. It wasn't long before
Mary Williamson discovered her biggest prize and the secret reason
for the contest. McFadden was searching for his third wife
and she was the lucky winner. One day, while the
pair was halfway through a ten mile run, he proposed.
When she accepted, she later recalled, he stood on his
head for me for one minute and four seconds. Fucking incredible. Guy.

(08:57):
That doesn't That doesn't do it for you, Kaitlin, A
guy five miles into a run standing on his head
for a minute to celebrate. I mean the bar has
been set now now that I know this. Don't you
dare anyone post me unless you're able to stand on
your head for a minute in five seconds? Yeah, sixty

(09:21):
five seconds. You gotta beat him now, like that's the
one to beat, right, all right? Get practicing, assholes. It
is like it's easier than I have to think, because
she's like, wow, he's not again actively dying of typhus. Um,
What what a catch? He could stand on his head
and didn't cough up a lung because he's been eating

(09:41):
cigars nineteen times a day for the last thirty years.
I mean, isn't that how like peacocks select their mate.
They're like, oh, this set, this is the sexiest one,
so I'm going to mate with that one. I mean,
I think that's that's more than peacocks do that. But yeah,
so as soon as they were married, Bernard started pumping

(10:03):
babies into his new bride. As a eugenicist, what look,
this is no place for prudery, Caitlin. You're absolutely right that.
It was a brutish response for me, and you worded
that perfectly. Thank you, Thank you, Caitlin, Thank you. As
a eugenicist, Bernard believed that he had that the fit

(10:25):
had a responsibility to breed in order to fill the
world with more genetically perfect children. He lived his creed
by giving his wife seven children in twelve years, which
is too many. I would say too many. I mean
it's better than twelve children in seven years. That that
is better than twelve and also more possible. You might

(10:46):
be able to make it. That would be real tricky,
It would be hard. You would have to really time
that ship out careful. He gave them insufferable names, and
he may have been the guy who invented insufferable names
for your celebrity kids. Bernice but spelled b y r
in e c E hate it, absolutely hate it. Berwin

(11:09):
spelled b r w y in um. And yeah, just
like Bryce, he has a Bryce. Like these fucking so
they're all like vaguely derivatives of his name, yes, of course,
because they're vaguely derivative of him. And yeah, his his children.
He only has these kids so that number one, he
can publish magazines about raising kids, and so that he
can make his kids into celebrities and Physical Culture magazine

(11:32):
and talk about all of his how because he's using
He's had all these different health ideas right that he's
written about, like you eat this or you don't eat this,
or you you do this every day and it'll do this,
and he's testing them on his kids and he's like
putting them in the magazine and being like, look when
you starve your child book, and how strong my boy
is and like all of this kind of ship. The

(11:54):
irony there is alarming because he was starving as a
child and he was no, that didn't work out for him. Yeah,
you know he's look, people do things our brains work
in mysterious ways, bad ways. Our brains mostly work in
bad ways. Um. So, yeah, he believed baldness for an

(12:18):
example of the kind of things that he believed. And
I should note that while he is testing a bunch
of health theories on his children, he also tests all
this on himself, Like in fairness, he's not not testing
on himself too. So he believed baldness could be cured
by tugging on one's hair, which he did regularly. This
made his permanent pompadour look unkempt and vaguely crazy. So

(12:39):
his hair is like always shooting out everywhere because he's
pulling on it constantly, like a man with a scalp condition.
He went barefoot at all times, convinced that this kept
him in contact with the Earth's magnetic forces. So he's
like super rich. He's a millionaire, but he's going to
all of these business meetings and political meetings stuff like
barefoot in the middle of like nineteen hundreds New York,

(13:00):
which is basically has the Edward from Twilight first movie hair. Yeah. Yeah,
and look I I run barefoot. I'm I'm a big
advocate of barefoot stuff. Um, there are some places in
the world that I was not willing to go barefoot. Um,
and those included downtown South New Delhi, India. Um, just
because like it didn't seem like a good idea, and

(13:21):
New York I have to think, like, I don't think
it's a good idea to necessarily always be barefoot when
horseshit is eight percent of what's on the street, which
in New York and like nineteen ten, it absolutely is. Um.
But whatever, he's fine. Um yeah, it seems to work
for him. Uh yeah. And despite being incredibly rich, he

(13:42):
wore he didn't believe you should get rid of clothing,
so he wore his suits until they were literally rotting
off of him. Um. So this man is a millionaire
and extremely successful and physically fit, but he also looks
like like a super swoll hobo. Like he's his clothing
is falling apart, his hair is all shooting out everywhere,
and he's barefoot. Um. And he also has a habit

(14:04):
of challenging other men to fist fights for like no
reason at all, constantly, sometimes on a daily basis, he'll
try to get into fist fights with people. So a
lot of folks who see him don't realize. Oh that's
wealthy publisher Bernard McFadden. They're like, oh, that is a
mentally ill vagrant like that. This is a man who
needs medical attention because he's he's he's not well. He

(14:25):
would refuse to get which he would refuse to get. Um.
He also launched a variety of different health foods. My favorite,
Oh my god, I have to I don't want to
read this to you. I want to show you the
ad and you can, you can describe this to our
our audience because it is you. Oh thank you, Sylphie.
Allegedly Caitlin. Can you see it? Yes, look at that. Okay,

(14:52):
here we go. It's called Strength. I believe it's just
probably announced food food food, but it's spelled food. Is
spelled f U d E strength Strength. I don't like
upon first glance, I thought it said fudge. Yeah, so

(15:14):
so strength fudge sort of. Um, let's see it's the
logo is under strength foot is it's different. Another another
tagline seems to be don't be a Weakling. Yeah, and
I think that's Bernar on the front of the food
weird like hand showing off his biceps. Don't be a weakling?

(15:38):
On top of the boxing doing a Schwartzenegger pose with
the muscles. He's not even that swoll by today's standards,
is the thing by today's But come on, you gotta
look at like how recently though today's standards happened, Like
you watch them action movies from like the eighties and

(16:00):
like it's fucking mid like overweight dudes in their late forties.
Um like you look at you know, a good example
of like how recently what the definition of being jacked
has changed? In the second Indiana Jones movie, the one
that everybody prefers to forget because of all the racism,
right there was going to be like this shirtless scene

(16:22):
for Harrison Ford, so he got super They talk about
this and like the behind the scenes that he had
to get like in crazy good shape in order to
like do this scene. And he just looks like like
you would, well what you're talking about, and that you
would you would cast him today as the guy is
like the stoner who doesn't exercise, and if he was
going to be opposite of like the average looking man

(16:44):
who was Kumail n Gianni with ninety pounds of muscle
packed on do like that, there's a tag famous authority
on food and hygiene. Hygiene was a big word in
this period of time. The Nazis talk about hygiene all
the time, racial hygiene. UM, food with cream. I don't

(17:08):
know what it is. I think it's like some sort
of porridge. I don't want it. I wonder if this
is like kind of the original protein powder because it
says that, yeah, I think with cream or sugar or
sliced bananas and cream. So it sounds like you just
like put it into your smoothie. Yeah, well it's not really.
I don't think smoothies science has really been invented yet.

(17:31):
But he is like this is definitely like the precursor
to like protein. Literally says berries and cream on there,
and I'm like, yeah, there's bananas and cream, like what.
There would be people in this period of time who
would argue with him that like, no, fruits bad for you. Um.

(17:53):
So here again he's this mix of like absolutely dangerously
wrong stuff and also being like, no, you should mostly
eat vegetables and fruit and like you know, maybe avoid
red meat, which is good health advice. Generally good health advice, um,
unless you have an iron deficiency or whatever. But like
most most people who eat red meat eat more of
it than is good for their health, including me. So good,

(18:18):
You're probably much healthier as a result. Um. I tracked
down and slaughtered an entire cow earlier today, and I'm
currently wearing its body like a cape and eating it slowly.
Was going to ask parasite. Yeah, my doctor says I
have to stop because I've picked up a ton of
different kinds of worms. But you know, Caitlin, what's life

(18:40):
without worms? Huh? That's what I have to ask. That's
what I say every day. That's what I know. I know,
that's that's my magazine, worm Culture. Well, hopefully no one
commits worm culture treason against you. Oh you do not
want to know the punishment for worm culture trees and Caitlin,
it is. It's I from Actin. It's actually just I
from Okay. All right. Yeah, So he's tearing right along.

(19:07):
Business is growing at a very fast pace, and then
tragedy strikes World War One, which is bad for Bernard
McFadden and no one else otherwise a great time, right.
I know, it's very shocking here about World War one
being bad for somebody, but it's not great for his business.
Interesting m hm. So we finally found one bad thing
to say about World War One, which you know has

(19:29):
been a very probe, the First World War podcast. So
this is this is hard for me. Um, So yeah,
his his, you know, disposable income people have less money
to spend on magazines, right, um. And a lot of
the young men who are going to be most interested
in consuming his content are getting shot with machine guns
repeatedly on the Western front um. But Bernard weathered the storm,
and in nineteen nineteen, on the advice of his wife Mary,

(19:52):
he launched a magazine called True Story. Now this is
yet and again Bernard inventing something that would prove to
be one of the most influential cultural decisions in history. Like,
it is hard to overstate the influence of this magazine.
And in order to help me adequately explain why this
is important, I am going to read a quote from
American Heritage magazine. True Story was the originator and exemplar

(20:17):
of the Confession magazine under the credo truth is Stranger
than Fiction. The cover of the first issue featured such
titles as A Wife Who Awoke in Time and My
Battle with John Barley corn an ex convicts climbed to millions,
and how I learned to hate my parents. Basically, the
true story formula consisted of first person accounts written in

(20:38):
an untutored but clear style of sin and redemption. The sin,
usually carnal, was described in some detail, but the actual
consummation nearly always seemed to take place between paragraphs, and
was invariably dressed up as a moral lesson. McFadden manipulated
the formula masterfully. He knew the illusion of authenticity was essential,
so instead of hiring what he called art artists to

(20:58):
illustrate the stories, he used staged photographs featuring such models
as that an unknown Frederick marsh, Jean Arthur, and Norma Shower.
And he made every contributor signed an affid David stating
that his or her story was indeed true. In nine seven, however,
after a piece title did the Revealing Kiss, used the
names of eight actual residents of Scranton, Pennsylvania, who sued

(21:19):
McFadden for half a million dollars, he found himself somewhat
sheepishly contending that maybe every story wasn't all that true.
McFadden turned out to be a cracker jack businessman. His
initial inspiration was to charge twenty cents for the magazine,
a dime more than the going rate. The first issue
sold out. I think I feel confident saying the majority

(21:39):
of digital content today is in some way descended from
True Story magazine. This is like half of the Internet
at least, right, Um, this is half of television. This
is reality TV. This is Jerry Springer and Dear Abbey.
This is UM which is I mean Dear Abby's like
a magazine. This is like everything. This like true confessionals
about like scandalous things that happen in real life. That's

(22:00):
like most of culture. He and He's he's invinced this.
He's the first person to figure out there is a
a hunger for this that will never be sated, and
I can I can publish this forever. Um. He This
makes millions of this dollar like instantly, um. And within
the year he's already spinning this magazine off into other

(22:22):
magazines that are just like more focused. He creates True Romance,
True Experiences, True ghost Stories, True Detective, and dream World.
So here's how it worked. When Bernard had a major
hit with a type of story. So he publishes a
couple of different romantic true stories in an issue of
true story, and that issue sells really well. He spins
off an entire magazine devoted to like true romantic stories.

(22:44):
It's basically the Playboy Confessionals or whatever, the Hustler, whatever
one it was. American Heritage goes into more detail here.
Quote and this is about how he like runs his
publishing empire. A flag flu on the McFadden building for
each McFadden publication, and employees would go up to the
roof first thing each morning to see if they still
had a job. Among the short lived flags were ones

(23:05):
that bore the legend Beautiful Womanhood Who's Undoing was an
ill conceived, scathing attack on spinsters and brain power, whose
title apparently suggested to readers that they were somehow lacking
in that department. So he's like a b testing So
he puts up a flag for every different magazine he launches,
and if it doesn't sell well, he takes it out.
That's how you know you've lost your job that like,
this magazine has been canceled. Like but he's he's doing

(23:30):
like again what every publisher does today. He like he
is effectively running a massive internet publication. He's doing BuzzFeed
in like nineteen twenty, Like, that's like, what this is effectively? Um,
he's just launching different verticals. He's He's like, I don't know.
I worked for years in an industry that was largely
defined by Bernard McFadden without ever knowing his name. Um,

(23:51):
and it sounds like, yeah, this is all like very
click baity stuff. Yea, who by this sounds Bernard McFadden
would have made all of the money in the world
off of the internet. Yeah. Um, he would be eating
he would be on Joe Rogan's podcast twice a fucking week, like,
or he would have just eaten Joe Rogan to gain

(24:12):
his powers. Um. So my projection of him just being
like an Abercrombie model Jim bro I thought it was
not right. He wow, No, he's actually he's like business man.
He's closer to the Gawker guys, except for I think
he probably would have been friends with Whole Cogan rather
than getting into a legal fight with him. Yeah. Now,

(24:34):
Bernard's personal life was seemingly more stable at this point,
but his obsessive need to test his theories, paired with
his reckless belief in his own ideas, led to tragedy
in his personal life. This is the baby killing. Yeah,
I see that excitement just lighting up your face, Caitlin.
We all love a good that. I am ecstatic. In

(24:57):
the spring of nineteen, Mary got pregnant with he had
another child. Now, Bernard had written articles earlier about several
theories he had on sex determination, right, how to make
determine the sex of your child, And this is like
historically right, this is a constant thing. People have these theories.
But like, if you do this, if you make her
lay this way or eat this kind of food, and

(25:17):
you know she'll have a boy or a daughter. Like,
this is a whole He's not the first person who
tries to do this. You know, this goes back as
long as there have been the idea of patrilineal um
um whatever, like passing on a property and ship um.
One of his ideas was that boys were more often
born to mothers who were starving. So during all of

(25:39):
her previous pregnancies, he'd starved his wife, but she kept
having girls. She was, Yeah, isn't that a bummer? I'm nope,
I wasn't even I'm not going to make the JOKEO.
So he comes to the conclusion that all of the
starving he'd done previous slee was cumulative, and he'd probably

(26:01):
primed her to have a boy at this point. So
now he made her eat a bunch of roast beef
during this pregnancy. So that's at least like better than
starving her. Right, force feeding your pregnant wife roast beef
instead of making your starve. That's an improvement. He's grown,
he has, he has not at all. In late December,
with the baby near do Bernar was so happy, uh,

(26:24):
and with both the fact that he's about to have
another kid and with a success of true story that
he held a company holiday party, allowing his employees to
smoke and drink to their hearts content even during prohibition.
He was I'll say this, he doesn't drink. He thinks
no one should. But he's also like a libertarian, so
he's he hates prohibition. He doesn't think the government should
be telling people what to do, which I can respect

(26:44):
that as like, anyway, we're about to talk about how
maybe he killed his baby, so whatever. When he came
home from the party, he found his wife in labor,
and since he couldn't reach a midwife, and again there
are phones, not a lot of people are phone connected
at this point, like it. He he was a millionaire,
you'd imagine, you'd imagine he could have set this up right. Um,

(27:04):
But he can't get a midwife on the horn, and
obviously he's not going to call a fucking doctor. So
he delivers the child himself. His wife gives birth to
a boy named Byron, which Bernar confusingly claimed meant that
his theory about starving pregnant women was correct because he'd
starved her so much before. You though, he hadn't starved
her for this baby. Right, he's not really scientific, I

(27:26):
would say, maybe that's questionable logic. So he forced an
immediate announcement of the boy's birth into Physical Culture magazine.
And he only grudgingly allowed a doctor to enter his
home and put fifteen stitches in his wife after she
repeatedly begged him. So for hours, she's bleeding in an agony,
and it's like, please, let me have a fucking doctor.

(27:47):
I'm ripped open. Let me like please. And finally, because
he I mean, for one thing, he doesn't want anyone
to know that he'd have a doctor for anything. Right,
you shouldn't get you shouldn't get torn open you should
if you're doing enough sical culture, if you're doing enough
dumbbell squats or whatever, you shouldn't. You shouldn't rip open,
you know, when you're pregnant. Um that's what he's saying, obviously.

(28:09):
Um uh so. Yeah, he eventually does like yield to
his screaming wife, like screaming not a isn't like hectoring
if it isn't like dying of blood loss, and allows
a doctor to come in and put fifteen stitches in her.
He refuses, though, to allow her any anesthetic or pain killer. Yeah,
I know, right, kind of sucks, right, what a piece
of shit? Ho? Look this this is a sympathetic start

(28:34):
to the Berner McFadden story. We are past the point
of sympathy now. Um so for almost a year things
are okay though, Um, and he's like he puts this kid,
this son of his. He's so proud to have a son.
Every week there's an article about how strong and like
good and like, look, he's growing up so much stronger
than other boys, and like, I'm doing this and I'm

(28:54):
doing this. He's gonna be the healthiest boy. And he's
gonna be the healthiest man who ever lived. And like
this is like a huge active that he almost pivots
the magazine to focus on his son's development. So a
year later, the December of the next year, after his
kids born, when Byron is about one year old, tragedy
strikes and I'm gonna quote from the biography Mr. America. Here,

(29:15):
eleven month old Byron, known within the family as Billy,
was seated on his mother's lap. Suddenly Billy tensed up,
threw his head back, and began to contort his body
as if overcome by a seizure. Bernard demanded that the
infant be stripped and dunked in a steaming hot bath.
Mary recalled that the water's temperature was so hot that
she couldn't keep her hand submerged. Though it is impossible

(29:36):
to know the cause of Billy's fit, many common childhood
seizures are now known to be brought on by fever,
so a hot bath as treatment was probably ill advised
at best. The baby's spasms continued, Mary snatched him out
of the water and screamed, burn for the love of Christ,
call a doctor. Billy died in her arms. Yeah, and again,

(29:57):
this is the nineteen twenties, right, So a baby having
a seizure. It is entirely possible by the time that
baby started seizing, it was already essentially dead because medical
science maybe not great. But also a lot of babies
had different kinds of seizure disorders and have or have
seizures because of a fever and get better. There was medicine,

(30:18):
especially that a rich person could have gotten Like if
he had taken his child to the best medical care available,
there's a good chance they baby would have survived. It's
absolutely guaranteed that dunking a seizuring baby and almost boiling
hot water is not going to help. So I think
we can safely say that the you know, he may
be killed a baby, he may be killed his baby.

(30:39):
He definitely probably definitely killed his baby. He we can't
say for certain that he killed his baby. We can
say for certain that he made that eleven months of
child's last moments be of horrible confusion and pain submerged
in near boiling water. Yeah, yes, which is I would
say bad parents. I'm not an X, I don't have

(31:01):
a kid. I try not to, like talk about what
you should do with your kids, but I feel like,
and again, excuse me, parents in the audience through going
out on a limb here, it's bad to dunk your
baby in steaming water while they're having a seizure. Sure,
I think most people would agree with that. Yeah, I know,
I know I'm going I'm doing getting into Joe Rogan territory.
You know, given health advice I'm not qualified to give,

(31:22):
but that that's my opinion. Don't don't force your baby
into steaming water while it's having a seizure. Maybe not
a good idea. You know who else forces babies in
this Wait? Who doesn't? You know who doesn't ever do
the thing that I just talked about? All right, I

(31:49):
don't know the products and services that support this podcast?
Maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe? So they what did
you heard me? I think I think what I what
I said was heard. Well, we'll be back after these
messages from our sponsors, and we're back. So if he's

(32:17):
very proud of me, everything's fine. So, Bernard McFadden, if
you know Bernard at this point, Caitlin and I think
we know Bernard at this point, I feel like he's
a close personal friend. He's got he's got his ideas
about things, right, He's got ideas about everything. He had
ideas about how to deal with the kid's health issues,
and he has ideas about how to deal with grieving.
Do you know what? Do you know what? I would

(32:40):
guess you he would he would think that, um, the
best way to deal with grieving is to starve yourself
kind of. He definitely doesn't want people to eat much.
But no, it's walking for hours at a time in
the freezing snow. He's a whole family, yeah, his whole family. Um,
so he just has them walk for hours and hours

(33:00):
and hours and hours and hours. Um and yeah. Now again,
he had spent the better part of a year writing
articles about how healthy his son was and how this
is all due to his different nutrition theory. So the
fact that his son had died, that's bad for business,
you know, Yeah, that's not going to go good for you. Well, yeah,
that's not going to go good for you. So, uh, Jesus,

(33:22):
this is such a bleak story. So he doesn't publish anything,
and in fact, he just like stops working. And you know,
Bernard at this point, like that's not something he does.
So he stops putting in articles, he stops doing anything,
Like his editors are just running the magazines for a while,
and he forces his wife to walk two miles to
Manhattan with him, carrying their luggage all the way in

(33:44):
the snow. That's how he that's how not it's one thing.
If that's how you deal with grieving, that's actually I can.
I could honestly see, like I the last time I
was heavily grieving, I would run like eighty miles a week.
Like I get that idea, forcing your wife to walk
two hundred miles in the snow, so that because she
has to grieve the same way. That's the up and

(34:05):
the fact that he probably killed his baby. Um. Yeah,
So when he in the middle of this two d
mile walk, they get to Greenwich, Connecticut, and he convinces
his wife to try again for a son. So he's like,
as she's grieving and exhausted, as like, I gotta make
another put another boy into you. Um. So eventually they

(34:25):
get back to the office and he writes an editorial
about his son's death. You're gonna guess who he blames
for it. I would guess his his his wife. Oh, Caitlin,
It's like, you have a lot of experience with toxic men.
Here's what he wrote. Billy was often over fed. I

(34:46):
protested on numerous occasions, but my protest was not vigorous enough. Anyway,
I believe the boy was so strong that he would
overcome mistakes of that nature. And it is so hard
to combat the tendencies of mother love. I also some
what blame myself for neglecting his exercises. So he blames
his wife for feeding their baby too much. He didn't

(35:08):
starve that baby enough. Gosh. And also he's making his
baby do exercises. Yeah, he makes everything do exercises. Get
a baby at that age eleven months, I mean, I'm
I don't know. Probably, I mean to the extent that
like crawling is an exercise. Yeah, it's good for them

(35:29):
to exercise, like in terms of like it's good for
babies to like move and learn how to use their
body slowly. But like, I don't know their babies. They're
not They don't for the most part. Yes, the motor
skills aren't great. Their organs, I feel like, are still

(35:49):
kind of developed. Yeah, you know, Yeah, I feel like exercise.
I feel like if you're trying to make a baby exercise,
the odds are good that you will wind up hurting
the baby. Definitely. Yeah, because they're babies. Because their babies.
They're mostly just supposed to like roll around and whoop

(36:11):
in in poop and occasionally crawl babies and be babies.
They're not supposed to work, hit the gym, get out
of that bench. But it does make you feel you're
dead living. You can barely dead lift? What the fund
is wrong with you? Baby? Baby? Keep your back straight?

(36:34):
Babies soft. Look at how shitty this baby's pull ups are.
He's barely getting halfway to the bar. I mean, like,
how embarrass saying that, Like a baby would be better
at pull ups though, than say me, Yeah, Well, they
don't have a lot of like body, so that would

(36:55):
make it easier. But also their arms they're not really
muscles yet, they're just kind of noodles, so that would
make it harder. I don't know, I'll start a gym
for babies. We'll see if it's a good idea. Yeah.
So within a decade, by the late nineteen twenties, Bernard
had amassed a fortune of more than thirty million dollars,
which today would be like four million dollars. So he

(37:17):
makes a shipload of money. Um. He was at the
absolute height of his success, but after time this two
grew frustrating. Bernar was the peak of publishing influence. He
had more readers on a monthly basis than anyone else
in the United States, including William Randolph Hurst. But being
on top also means you've kind of reached the limit, right,
There's really nowhere for him to grow. He's the biggest publisher.

(37:41):
So the only thing you could think of to do
to expand his audience and become even more influential was
become the president of the United States. What I did
not see he's going to try to run for president.
We talked about this in the John McAfee episodes with
the Great Lacy Moseley. But like you know, when you

(38:03):
are a certain kind of white man who has had
one of those careers where no one ever says no,
and you just keep doing ridiculous things and being successful
at them, you will eventually try to become the president.
I mean, I look at what happened recently. Yeah, I mean,
look at what's going to happen when I run on

(38:24):
a platform of making America like the unnamed island nation
that I rule with an iron fist. It's gonna be great. Caitlin. Yeah,
I can't wait, neither can America. So um, he decides
he's going to become the president now. His wife later
claimed that he started to dream of this career in
nineteen fourteen, when, at the eve of World War One,

(38:47):
he suggested that wrestling would be a good way to
solve political conflicts, which I actually think would be incredible.
I'm in agreements with Bernard about this. He says, quote
political contests that derive their support through a vocating physical
culture reforms will I believe become a reality in the
not far distant future. And he's wrong about this, but
my god, it would have been so good if like
Kaiser Wilhelm and fucking uh Czar Nicholas and whatever the

(39:12):
French president's name and the fucking King of England had
all had to like fist fight. That would have been
so much better. If every war, if George Bush in
like Saddam Hussein, had had a cage match, I feel
confident saying we would think fondly on the Iraq War. Yeah,
it was that time George Bush got stabbed in the
eye by Saddam. Who's saying that was funny as hell?

(39:35):
Can you believe he thought Saddam wouldn't pull a knife
in a fist fight. What an idiot? Barack Barack Hussain,
Obama and John McCain just like street fighting, just just
just wailing on each other, well fucking uh Joe Biden

(39:56):
and uh what's her name, the governor of ala esca,
Uh Sarah? Yeah, like have a chain fight. My god,
it would be so much better. Sure, sure, yeah, everything
would be better. Okay, good, I see your point. I
see your point. Yeah, Um, World War two might have

(40:18):
gone worse because I do not think FDR would have
been able to beat Hitler in a in a in
a in a street fight. Yeah, so there's limits to this.
We would have needed to elect Bernar mac fadden president.
He could have taken on Hitler um, although he might
not have wanted to. As we'll get to, so, Bernard

(40:39):
decides he's going to become president um and in the
mid nineteen So if first he thinks like inevitably the
progress of physical culture, because I'm getting so popular so quickly,
by and in another ten years, everyone will agree that
the strongest man in the country should be president. And
then I'll be president because I'm the strongest man that
does not happen, and so in the mid nineteen twenties,

(40:59):
burn Our decides to launch a magazine dedicated to making
him into a serious intellectual and political figure. So he's
very successful this point, but he is not a serious person.
He has seen as like a silly tabloid publisher, right,
Like he's putting out kind of sleazy material, and that
is how he's viewed. He's like, there are people like
within the exercise world who take his health ideas somewhat seriously,

(41:23):
but he generally, like the mainstream media kind of laughs
at him and again not unlike Donald Trump, to be honest.
In nineteen he launches another magazine. This one is dedicated
to make him into a serious political figure, and it's
called The New York Graphic. Though he was attempting to,
you know, again, kind of established like a New York
Times analog that will give him respect, the New York

(41:46):
Graphic immediately becomes like the tackiest scandal sheet in the country.
That said, it also employs some of the biggest names
in American media history at early stages of their career.
Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan both get their start writing
for Graphic um and Sullivan who and Sullivan like almost
helps to create. He's like a precursor Carson like. He

(42:08):
helps to create the idea of like the like late
night kind of variety show type thing. UM, a lot
of like the biggest musicians in the rock and roll
eric get their start on the Ed Sullivan Show. Um.
Most of the titles of of graphic articles were lurid
to say the least one was two women in fight,

(42:28):
one stripped other eats bad check. UM. I have I
kind of love that one. I don't really know what
to expect from that article, but it sounds fascinating. My
favorite thing about the graphic is that it's yet another
example of Bernard inventing something that would later become hugely influential.
The Bernard creates photoshop kind of Um. He invents for
his magazine a graphic design technique called composo graphs. These

(42:52):
are staged composite photos. Well where he'll have celebrities. You
know how he's had celebrities, He's had people posing for photo.
Those and articles about like true crime, which you can
see is kind of a precursor to like reenactments and
like unsolved mysteries and stuff. Well, so a big part
of the neuographic is like stories about celebrities getting in
like legal trouble or having divorces or all this stuff.

(43:15):
And in order to illustrate these, because he can't get
photos of the celebrities, he hires models and he has
them pose as whatever the celebrities were doing, and then
he basically has a picture of the face of that
celebrity superimposed over the head of the model. Okay, yeah,
he's like photoshopping celebrities into like like larded scenes in

(43:35):
order to sell newspapers. Um. Yeah, And he convinced this
new technique for the first time to cover a celebrity
divorce trial. Leonard Kip Rhinelander was a millionaire who was
suing his bride of one month over the fact that
she had hidden that she was part black. Um, this
is the twenties, you know, Um, because this was a

(43:57):
racist time. Her response to this was to deny the
charges in court by stripping to the waist. Obviously. Number one,
these are famous people. Number Two, a woman has stripped
in court. This is big news, right, Like, this is
a huge story. And the graphic used its first composo
graph to illustrate the moment where this famous woman strips
in court without actually having photographs of it, and circulation

(44:19):
leaps to a hundred thousand people like over or buy
a hundred thousand people overnight as a result of this. Now,
the graphic was influential and popular, but it was also
too trashy to get much purchase among advertisers. It was
a lot of people bought it, but it wasn't profitable
because it was expensive to make and no one would
advertise in it. And by the time it ended in
nineteen thirty two, Bernard had lost more than eleven million

(44:42):
dollars on the venture. And this gives you an idea
of how much money he's willing to light on fire
and the hope of establishing a political career for himself.
That is like half of the money in the world
at this point. Yeah, what an investment that miserably failed
for him. He doesn't give up though. In nine he
commissions three biographies about himself. Now, this was a new

(45:05):
idea at the time, a want to be presidential candidate
paying to have a biography written by a ghost writer
in order to drum up interest in his campaign. Every
single candidate does that now, right, like a hundred percent
of people who run for president have a book published
about them like that. They supposedly right, you know, bernar
In Vince this, as far as I can tell, he's

(45:25):
the first guy to do this. Um again, a visionary. Truly,
he is living in the twenty first century in nineteen nine.
I mean, good for him. Yeah, Unfortunately he's not living
in any of the good parts of the twentieth century. Um.
But so these books were obviously trash. One invited readers

(45:50):
to quote study him as he governs the whole community
of employees that is like a little city, so he
can run a magazine. So he's clearly ready to run
the country. Um, he did run that one little city.
Committed treason against physical culture, treason. So these are not
well regarded by a reviewers these books. The American Heritage

(46:13):
article that I've been reading from sites an H. L.
Lincoln review quote, the authors of these brochures do not
spare the goose grease. Poor mcfaden chokes and gurgles on it.
And every one of their eight hundred and twenty five
pages I can recall no more passionate anointing of a
living man. He appears as a hero without a wart,
spiritual or temporal, sworn only to save us from the
medical trust and make us strong enough to lift a

(46:34):
piano with our bare hands. Wait, one of these biographies
is over eight hundred pages long. Yeah, he's again. They'll
dial it in by the time Pete Botages is getting
his vanity biography published. We've gotten much better at it,
you know. M While the graphic had no luck establishing

(46:56):
Bernard as a political name, it was influential in getting
Jimmy Walker did mayor of New York City. Unfortunately for Bernard, mayor,
Walker refused to appoint McFadden's city Commissioner of Health, which
Bernard was hoping would jump start his political career. The
new mayor argued that while Bernard's ideas on health were good,
nobody actually wanted to live that way. Um. Despite this,

(47:17):
by the mid nineteen thirties, Bernard was more successful than ever.
Circulation of his magazine's topped seven point three million people,
which again beats every other publisher in the country. As
time went on, some of the most influential people in
world history would write columns for Bernard's magazines. Winston Churchill,
Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Singer, Mahatma Gandhi and Adolf Hitler. Well,

(47:45):
all right, okay, so the Hitler article was not technically
a column. His editor had interviewed Hitler in nineteen twenty three,
and when Hitler started rising to power in the early thirties,
they published this interview as a column because that's like
the s see your way to advertise it. And the
column is it's titled as if Hitler wrote it. It's
titled When I Take Charge of Germany. Um, by the way,

(48:09):
for an example of again the way Berner does this
sort of thing. So the article that Gandhi writes or
quote unquote rights is titled My Sex Life by Mahatma Gandhi.
It's about celibacy. But like that's not how you sell
that article, right, basically spin a story. You know who

(48:34):
else talks a lot about Mahatma Gandhi's sex life, Caitlin,
is it the products and services that we will not
not period bring in a sponsor if they don't talk
to us for solid thirty minutes about how they think
Mahatma Gandhi might have sucked. That's the behind the bastard's guarantee.

(48:55):
It is not. This is why we have so few sponsors.
They just can't hang Yeah. Sorry, yeah, I mean I
don't know what to say about it. There's nothing to say. Uh,

(49:20):
we're back and we're just having a great time. How
were you. How are you doing, Caitlin, I'm doing well.
I've heard a lot of information about Bernar. He's a
fascinating man, fascinating fellow I and it keeps you know,
there's peaks and valleys as far as you know his

(49:43):
conduct in his life. And uh, but I continue to
be amazed at some of his choices. So you're you're
keeping me on the edge of my seat. Yep. Well,
let's talk about how he got Franklin Delano Roosevelt elected.
And eighteen thirty one, he bought an existing magazine called Liberty,
which was compared to his other publications, fairly respectable. Like

(50:07):
it's a politics and culture publication. So he immediately starts
writing editorial columns for this on topics as broad as
organized crime and the importance of returning Americans to farming.
In nineteen thirty two, in the wake in the midst
of the Great Depression, FDR starts his run for president,
and Liberty magazine backs FDRs candidacy. Now, one of the

(50:28):
chief questions of the election was whether or not the
aging polio victim was capable of handling the physical strains
of the presidency. Right like, that is a big can
he do the job he's dying of polio, post polio
or whatever. As America's best known fitness nut, bern Ar
McFadden was in a unique position to allay people's suspicions
because people do listen to what he has to say

(50:48):
about fitness. So if one of his publications gives FDR
a clean bill of health, that means something. As Liberties publisher,
he had the magazine sponsor a medical examination of Roosevelt
by several doctors, even though Bernard is on record is
saying that doctors are all full of shit. In this case,
they might have been because they said FDR was in
perfect health, which he absolutely was not in But this

(51:13):
article saying that FDR was in great health, um is
a big like has a significant role in the election.
Mark Adams, Bernard's biographer, writes, the biggest doubt about the
Roosevelt campaign vanished almost overnight, and that is broadly speaking,
I don't know, probably good. I mean fdr complicated history,
shall we say, to say the least in a number

(51:35):
of ways. Um, but within the context of Bernard's career,
I will say this is a positive moment because we're
about to talk about how big a fan he was
a fascism. See, yeah, totals another thing. I mean, I
guess I could have you know, the threads are there
to to to arrive at this point, but I am

(51:59):
still a little prize. So once again, thanks for keeping
me on the edge of my seat. It's all. It's
all thanks to Bernar. So Bernar is both a product
of his culture and a culture creator. And as the
U S went, you know, real into eugenics in the
twenties and thirties, so did he. He had his paid
columnists right glowing articles about eugenics, one of which included

(52:20):
this paragraph. Eugenics is the mightiest comment that ever came
skitting into the little solar system of human thoughts. Suppose
we are breeding for a sound mind and a sound body.
And it formulated a scheme of judging the applicants with
a score system not unlike that which they glade the
Orpington's at the country fair. Here is a one her
score is ninety five and three quarters the best applicant

(52:41):
in the lot for the high and holy functions of
motherhood in essency saying we had to judge ladies like
we judge pigs. Which it's fine by me. Yeah, not
at all problematic feminist icon Bernard McFadden. Yeah, oh my gosh,

(53:02):
and this and specifically on like the criteria of like
how um, how good they would be a like bearing children? Yeah?
Well what else is there? Well? What else is yeah? Exactly? Yeah,
what their function can you serve? That's what Bennar McFadden
would probably shout at you while using an exercise bike. Um.

(53:23):
I found a paper by the Stark Center for Physical
Culture and Sports Studies at the University of Texas. They
describe McFadden's beliefs as soft eugenics because he's not he
doesn't spend a lot of times. He's not talking about
like races, he's not spending a lot of timing like
the arians need to do. We need to get rid
of the Jews. Like that's not really his thing. He's
thing is more healthy people need to breed, and we

(53:44):
need to raise up people to be healthy and strong
so that they can breed. More healthy and strong people.
I'm not sugen Yes, it's not good. I'm just like
it's not. It's there's different kinds of eugenics. That's kind
of the one that he lands on UM in his
hatred of earnity, and he blames modernity for all of
the health problems that people have. UM and in his
obsession with perfect bodies. He lands right in the crosshairs

(54:07):
of a lot of fascist theory. When Benito Mussolini took
power in Italy, he emphasized physical training as a way
to prepare young people for all the fighting they were
going to have to do as foot soldiers of fascism.
Italy's war record shows how successful this plan was. Um
Bernard absolutely loved this idea from the Stark Center quote.

(54:28):
In nineteen thirty two, readers of Physical Culture magazine, then
with a circulation in the hundreds of thousands, were greeted
with an unusual interview. Past magazine issues featured everyone from
George Bernard Shaw to Upton Sinclair, but this was the
first time a self proclaimed fascist appeared. The man was
Benito Mussolini, the leader of Italy. Since Mussolini's rise to
power in nineteen twenty two, McFadden had kept a close

(54:49):
eye on il Duce's love of sport. Mussolini was detailed
the subject deemed to be of utmost national importance Physical Culture.
On this point, Mussolini found a captive audience throughout the
night teen thirties, Bernar McFadden attempted, ultimately in vain, to
enter American politics through a presidential bid. His guiding focus
was a belief in the importance of personal hygiene, health,
and strength. This quest, which ultimately proved unsuccessful, explained to

(55:12):
Mussolini's appearance in Physical Culture magazine. Months prior to il
Duche's article, McFadden traveled to Europe as part of President
Hoover's Conference on Child Health and Protection. McFadden himself seems
to have had no solid set of political beliefs, focusing
primarily on issues of health above all else. He unsuccessfully
ran as a Republican candidate in nineteen thirty six, but
later attempted to gain a position in Democratic President Franklin

(55:35):
Delano Roosevelt's office. It was during this trip to Europe
that McFadden crossed path with Mussolini. United at scene and
their appreciation for fitness a deal was struck, the contents
of which were revealed to Physical Cultures readers. So he's
political in that he thinks everyone should be jacked all
the time, and he likes fascism because fascism also wants

(55:55):
everyone to be jacked all the time. Right. That's that's
his entry, and that's his article that he lets Benita Selini, right,
is on the importance of physical culture for like national identity.
And they enter into a deal which they detail in
this article. And the deal is that Benito gives Bernard
personal responsibility for training forty Italian naval cadets. These men
are brought to New York, they're trained under McFadden, and

(56:16):
they're inculcated in American popular culture. The experiment lasts six
months and it's the subject of a number of articles
in Physical Culture. The ultimate message of the experiment, in
McFadden's eyes, is that fascism builds healthier, stronger people through
good physical culture, and the U s should emulate Italy.
In this the Italian cadets are often used as a foil.

(56:37):
They're contrasted with the lazy Americans who have unhealthy diets. Now,
after six months in the United States, these Italian naval
cadets all showed improvements in strengthen the growth of muscles.
Bernard claimed that this was evidence fascism could work its
wondrous physical effects even in the United States. From the
Stark Center, McFadden stopped short of saying Italy was superior

(56:58):
to the United States, but his writings included wishful appraisals
of the Italian state and claims that America had much
to learn. According to McFadden, his Italian sojourn was a success.
This explained, or so it was claimed, why the Portuguese
government extended a similar invitation to McFadden in nineteen thirty two.
The same year Antonio de Olivera Salazar assumed control of
the state. A military dictatorship existed in Portugal from ninety six,

(57:21):
but Salazar's rise to power marked an intensification of authoritarianism
alongside a growing cult of personality. Salazar's government shared at
least somewhat Mussolini's admiration of strong and healthy bodies. Mauricio
Drummond's study of sport in Salazar's resume explained that although
Salazar rarely expressed an interest in sport, he used it
for political purposes. So he winds up working for two

(57:44):
different fascist dictators establishing like a physical culture for their
young people. And in in Portugal, Salazar, this dictator gives
him a few dozen children which he's able to put
on a compound which he calls McFadden children's Colony, and
he sets them up with a a vegetarian diet and
a workout program. And Bernard claims again in his magazine

(58:05):
that this is so successful it turns their quote dull
and stupid little faces alert and interested. What. Oh okay,
let me just take a moment to to just comprehend
all of that. Oh keetoki. A lot going on there.

(58:25):
There's a lot to unpack and I don't know if
my brain can do it at this time. But yeah,
there's a lot going on with this with this episode. Um,
the turns they keep coming, keep coming, barely keep up.

(58:45):
There's actually another one at the end of this paragraph. Witness.
He's so happy with how this Portugal experiment goes that
he co authors a book about the experiment with um
who we'll call a prominent author. Do you want to
guess who it is? Thirties author? Do you think he'd pick? Oh,
my Uh, Faulkner, I don't know. Does the name Thomas

(59:11):
Dixon mean anything to you know? Thomas Dixon wrote a
book called The Klansman, which was the basis of D. W.
Griffith Griffith's Birth of a Nation as I'm amazing, was
Faulkner writing stuff in the thirties? Or am I not? Am?

(59:31):
I do I not know anything? Because i've Oh jeez,
I don't know. I'm bad at he's I'm bad at authors.
Clearly he's dead by then, right, who knows? Um? Okay?
So the guy who wrote the thing the um Birth
of he writes a book about how good it is
to train fascist kids to be fascists through exercise and vegetarianism.

(59:59):
Oops seen as the nineteen thirties war on McFadden became
an anti war activist, which you know as a positive
connotation now, But if you're an anti war activist in
the thirties, it means you don't think that anything should
be done to stop fascism. Like that's that's what the
anti war movement in the US generally is in this period,

(01:00:20):
is like, why would we go to war against Tyler?
He seems like a good chap he's doing just great
and we should not challenge him now. By nineteen thirty eight,
two is somewhat credit. Bernard comes around on the issue,
likely because he sees public opinion shifting, and he becomes
pro war, turning out monthly calls for his readers to
exercise in order to defend their nation. Nineteen forty one,

(01:00:43):
the year that the US gets into the war, is
the year things fall apart for Berner. Minority stakeholders in
his company charge that he's used company funds to pay
for his political campaigns. He's forced to sell all of
his interest in the business and step down as president.
Physical Culture was turned into a woman's magazine as he left.
I didn't do particularly He doesn't like that. It also

(01:01:07):
doesn't do very well, but the media landscape changed a
bit by this point. By the end of the war,
McFadden's marriage to Mary was also at its end. A
wedge had been driven between them when he blamed her
for their son's tragic death. She divorced him, and along
and brutal legal battle ensued. At the end of it,
she published a book about how much her ex husband sucked.

(01:01:28):
In a final middle finger to him, she dedicated her
autobiography to the doctors who had helped ease the pain
of childbirth, Which is the meanest thing you could do
to Bernard, doctor brutal After I let her get stitches. Eventually,
I um, I like that. I like that for her.

(01:01:51):
The book contains a number of allegations, including that Bernar
caused her a miscarriage by forcing her to work out
incessantly while she was pregnant. So good guy, A right
up from American Heritage ably describes the remainder of the
former publishing Titans life. Alden later wrote of Edward Lear
that he became a land Bernar McFadden became a press release.

(01:02:14):
In the last eighteen years of his life, he was
featured in Time, which dubbed him body Love or Newsweek.
Eighteen times. He ran for the Senate in Florida. He
conducted innumerable fasts and hikes. He offered a prize for
the best biographical play about his life. In nineteen forty nine,
at the age of eighty one, he took up parachuting
and thereafter tried to make a jump each year on

(01:02:34):
his birthday. Claiming that his third wife had humiliated him
by losing her figure, he married a woman of forty two.
She later had the marriage and old In nineteen fifty three,
he declared his acceptance of the nomination of the Honest
Party from mayor. He pledged a business administration that would
make sales tax unnecessary, eliminate traffic congestion, and obtained double

(01:02:54):
deck subway cars. He also promised to purge the city
of communists. So he keeps doing the same thing his
whole life, but he's less influential. He doesn't have a
bunch of magazines. Nobody really gives a ship. Also, he
lives quite long. He lives a long life. Look, he's
not wrong about all of the things that he's saying.
There's some things he gets very right, and he lives

(01:03:15):
a long, healthy life as a result of it. He
remains in good health into his early eighties, which suggests
that again, some of the stuff he's saying is not bullshit.
He celebrated his eighty first birthday by jumping out of
an airplane while wearing a full suit. He repeated this
stunt on his eighties, second and eighty third birthdays. By
ninety five, though age had started to take its toll.
In October, he came down with a urinary blockage, which

(01:03:38):
he tried to cure by fasting. This did not work,
and he resigned himself to go into a hospital where
he died. Oh yep, that's it. That's the end. That's
all the Bernardic anticlimactic ending for people. It's generally is not.
Everybody has the whole the whole Hitler. You know, he's like,
all right, I'll go along, all right, I'm dead right

(01:04:00):
by it was proved right in the end. Going to
the hospital got him killed real quick. And that's the
message of today's episode. Don't go to the hospital. That's
not the message of today's episode, Robert. I think that
is the message of today's hospital episode. Hospitals are bad. No,

(01:04:21):
don't go them. I am be fuddled about everything I've
learned here today. Yeah mm hmm. And on that note,
Caitlin plugables Okay, yep, yeah. Um. Well, since I brought

(01:04:43):
it up earlier, you can listen to a podcast that
I did a little bit of and then um abandoned
because I'm not nearly as ambitious as Bernard. But I
did do a podcast called Sludge, an American Healthcare Story,
in which I the first season as me detelling my

(01:05:07):
experience with having gall stones a k a. Sludge, sludgeballs
and um and all the chaos that ensued from that UM.
And then I did a few other episodes about other
people's stories, but then I got too busy and I
abandoned that effort. But the podcast I haven't abandoned is

(01:05:28):
the Bechtel Cast, So check that out. It's a movie
podcast because I am able to talk away. Um, I'm
better at talking about movies than I am about healthcare stuff.
And then you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram
at Caitlin Darante. Yeah. Yeah, well that's everything we have

(01:05:54):
to say about everything forever. This has been the last
episode of Behind the Bastards. Um, I am quitting in
order to start my own magazine about how if you
do enough crunches and stop your wife for meeting, all
of your babies will be Superman. M hm, No, Sophie,

(01:06:15):
you could have a cush gig as the executive publisher
of my new magazine, Starve your Baby Digest gonna politely say, well,
you just turned down a million dollars, but okay, it's
okay moral my morals are worth more well mine, or
I know that I have a good night everybody. Bye

(01:06:37):
bye bye