February 7, 2025 • 34 mins
Want to know what makes the only swimming pool on the National Registry of Historic Places so special? Or who actually built the first pool specifically for swimming? Or the strange reason Boston invested in an indoor public pool? From the secret swimming pool hiding in the White House to New York's zaniest swim team, Will and Mango dip into the surprisingly refreshing history of pools. (Jump in, already! The water's fine.)
If you have a question or comment for the show, hit us up on Instagram at the handle @parttimegenius. We're waiting to hear from you!!!
Photo by Julie Aagaard. (Thank you, Julie!)
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Guess what Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
What's that? Will?
Speaker 2 (00:14):
So I was looking through the National Register of Historic Places,
and you know, I was doing this on a Saturday,
because that's how I spend most of my saturdays these days.
And I noticed that there's actually only one swimming pool
on the list. One swimming pool in all the National
Register of Historic Places.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Well, I love that, that's how you spend your Saturdays.
But there's only one swimming pool.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
On a very special swimming pool. This is the Venetian Pool,
and it's located in Coral Gables, Florida, and it was
built on this abandoned rock quarry. Now the pool is
the largest freshwater pool in the entire country. And when
it was first built, it was made to look like
a Venetian grotto, so this really lush pool. It was
equipped with places to dock your gondola. Of course, they
(00:56):
actually used to have gondolas that would ride across it.
I'm not kidding. You should look for the photos of this.
But the really impressive feature is that to keep the
water fresh, it was drained every single day and then
filled with fresh water from the artesian springs that it
connects to, and I'm not making that up either. That
is incredible, but also it kind of seems like a
(01:19):
lot of water. Yeah, so you can imagine some conservationists
took issue with this, and when they pointed that out,
the system was changed a little bit. So today the
water pumps out to an aquifer where the water is
cleaned and then pumped back in, so the water is
still changed very regularly. But what's incredible is that because
the quarry gets emptied out, they can also use it
(01:40):
for other events, like apparently the quarry has stunning acoustics,
so symphonies will perform concerts from the bottom for its locals.
I think I'd probably be nervous that it was suddenly
going to start filling up again. But anyway, I put
it on my list of places to visit the next
time I'm in Florida because it's actually open to the
public and it looks beautiful. Plus the idea of fresh
(02:00):
swimming seems like a lot of fun, and especially in
such a huge pool. But reading about the Venetian made
me wonder where swimming pools got their start and how
they spread across America. And also who the Zanius swim
team in New York history is. You know that's an
obvious next one.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
I don't even know what that sentence means, but I
love it. And usually i'd say, let's dive in, but
I don't think we're gonna be that elegant, so let's
get into it with a great big belly flop.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson, and as always I'm here with my good
friend mangesh Hot Ticketer and somewhere behind the big booth,
sitting in an inner tube in a kiddie pool with
floaties on each of his arms. I saw these things
sitting around the office all week. I had a feeling
this is where he was going with it. That's our
good friend Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
You know what's amazing about it is like that's not
even half the work he put into this. Like I
don't know if you notice, but he has posters up
everywhere of all these great movies from like Ferris Bueller,
The Sand Loot, The Graduate Rushmore, National Lampoon's Vacation. And
I didn't realize it, but.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
You know, they all have a famous swimming pool. Scenes. Yeah, exactly,
that's true. Good catch.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
There is a genius.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
He really is a genius.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
So will I know you are a good swimmer. I'm
a terrible swimmer. I grew up near a y, so
like I went to lessons there, I was a polywog,
and then a guppy, and then a minnow and a fish,
and I was just like crushing these levels one after another.
And then I just grew older and older and I
never got promoted to flying fish and heartbreaking and eventually
(03:56):
I quit. But in spite of all that resentment, I
I still love swimming pool.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
I'm the same way I love a swimming pool, but
I sort of just like being in it, you know,
like not working really hard. And I'm not swimmings. I'm
not a great swimmer. But so anyway, why don't you
kick this off and tell us about the first swimming pool,
which I know you look the into.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Absolutely so. People have been swimming in lakes and rivers
and other bodies of water for thousands and thousands of years.
But to get to what is possibly the earliest evidence
of a pool, we have to go to circa twenty
five hundred BCE. And this takes us to the Indus
Valley in modern day Pakistan. In the nineteen twenties, archaeologists
(04:37):
were excavating Mohenjo Daro, which is one of two main
Indus civilization settlements, and they came across this structure and
it is really impressive. It looks like a pool about
eight feet deep and is built of brick, and it
has drainage, a bunch of benches, and even this terraced
deck area. Honestly, it's not that different from the baths today.
(04:59):
But you said wasn't for swimming, that's right. So the
exact use is unknown, but historians think it was likely
a bath used for religious ceremonies. So that's kind of
the first known example of a pool. But we're going
to zoom ahead about two thousand years to ancient Rome,
where public baths were really popular. Before this time there
had been bathing in pools and swimming in open water.
(05:21):
But we can credit the Romans with building pools explicitly
for military training.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Ah, that's super interesting. But somehow I hadn't put it
together that they'd be teaching soldiers to blow bubbles underwater
and showing them like the elementary backstroke and all that
sort of stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, and the idea of Roman soldiers doing aqua aerobics
together and full regalia is pretty fun to think about it.
But also you can credit the wealthy Roman diplomat patriot
of the arts and leisure enthusiast Gaeus Macenus for likely
having the first heated swimming pool, which he built in
the first century BCE.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Wow, that's amazing that heated swimming pools go back that far.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Yeah, the first sense of Britannica about geis is pretty amazing.
It reads quote gayas Messinas was a Roman diplomat, counselor
to the Roman Emperor Augustus, and wealthy patron of such
poets as Virgil and Horrus. He was criticized for his
luxurious way of life.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
I love that. It's right there in the opener. All right,
so I'm digging this quick tour through the early swimming
pools that actually is super interesting. But what's next.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
So as the centuries go on, swimming in bats especially
bats continue to be really popular, right, So you think
about the onsen in Japan, the Hammams in Turkey, the
Banyas in Russia. It just goes on around the world,
and in Europe, the popularity of swimming really dips during
the Middle Ages, possibly because people were worried that it
spread infections. But by eighteen thirty seven, the very beginning
(06:47):
of Victorian England, there were six indoor pools with diving
boards in London. Isn't it amazing? Yeah? And it's the
Victorian era that really ends up ushering in the idea
of swimming as both a sport and a leisure activity.
You start to see swimming clubs and organized races and
this starts spreading across Europe and eventually into places like
Australia and America.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
All Right, so when do pools, you know, finally take
over America.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
So there's this great book called Contested Water, a Social
History of Swimming in America, and a lot of this
research comes from there. But according to Jeff Wiltsey, the
first public pool in the US was built in Boston,
and this is around eighteen sixty eight, so just a
few years after the Civil War had ended. For context,
then it was an indoor pool called a Cabot Street Bath,
(07:34):
and unlike those fancy pools with diving boards in London,
this one was as the name suggests really supposed to
be a bath. A lot of working class folks didn't
have a way to bathe themselves, so the pool was
really a substitute for that. You know.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
One of the things that I don't like thinking about
is what the water must have looked like in pools
like this. I mean for real, Yeah, I know, it.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Was so gross, and it was pre chlorine, so you
have to imagine it's pretty disgusting. But you know, the
attempt in the US to use chlorine to clean a
pool wasn't until nineteen ten, so that was really a
ways away. But Wilsee said he came across reports that
knowed the water in these early public baths needed to
be changed about once a week.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
It also feels like way too long. I don't know,
maybe I'm just being a clean freak here, but I
feel like it would just abstain from public.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Baths, yeah, I mean, actually, our researcher MARSSA. Brown threw
in this TLC joke here that we should just stick
to the rivers and the lace that you used to.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
That's actually the appropriate use. That's well done.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And the truth is that even though these public baths
were popping up in the US, people were swimming in
fresh water or freshish water. So like if you think
about New York City, for example, there had been free
public floating bats in the Hudson and the East River,
and this was starting in eighteen seventy. They were almost
one hundred feet long and the deepest they got was
about four point five.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Feet, So people were actually bathing in the East River.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah, for a while in the night eighteen twenties, the
city finally realized the river water maybe wasn't the cleanest,
and the floating baths eventually went away.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
I mean, it's such a cool idea, and I know
they have these floating pools and lakes and oceans in
other parts of the world, but I guess if you're
swimming in the East River, it was probably for the best.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, I know. It reminds me of that Seinfeld where
Kramer starts swimming in the East River because he says
the pool is too constrictive for his knees. It was
so ridiculous. But back to pools. So the first public
outdoor pool in the US that Jeff Wiltsey could find
was in Philadelphia, and it opens in the summer of
(09:38):
eighteen eighty three, and again it was meant to be
used for body cleaning purposes.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And do you know why they kept building these pools
for bathing in.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, I mean part of the reason was really kind
of classiest, Like you have these working class boys, they
jump into open water naked, like they're not genteel. So
they're often splashing about in lakes and rivers and water
near buildings, and they're having a good time and they're
often being rampunctious. So part of the idea was, let's
just get them swimming and playing and bathing in an
(10:07):
enclosed area so the public doesn't have to see all
all these people bathing in cities.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
So it wasn't so much this public service or good,
but more something to keep the supposed lower classes from
being an eyesore I guess exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
And showers were only added later in sort of like
the mid to late eighteen nineties. So this was around
the time when the idea that water could actually transmit
invisible diseases through microbes became more accepted. But this is
when you start to see the real change. And after this,
the pool started to become less of a bathhouse and
more of a recreation area. So by eighteen ninety eight,
(10:42):
Philly had nine public pools, and on average, each of
these accommodated about fifteen hundred swimmers a day during the summer.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
That is a lot of people, you know. One of
the craziest facts I read was that in nineteen thirteen
the Fairgrounds Park in Saint Louis opened and it was
huge and circular. We're talking four hundred feet in diameter,
and apparently one Sunday, pretty soon after it opened, fifty
thousand people came to visit, and twenty five thousand to swim,
another twenty five thousand to watch. That's another pool I'm
(11:14):
not getting in.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Twenty five thousand people came just to spectate. That's insane, yes,
but obviously it was a trend, right. So like during
the nineteen twenties through the forties, cities around the entire
country started building megapools, and some of them were bigger
than football fields and had sandy beaches, some of them
had grassy lawns, and some of them came with concrete
decks to sunbathe on. And get this. So, the Fleischhacker
(11:39):
Pool in San Francisco, which opened in nineteen twenty five,
was one thousand feet long, one hundred and fifty feet wide.
Ten thousand people could swim at once, and lifeguards used
wooden rowboats to get across. Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Also, it was filled with seawater and it was heated
to between sixty five and seven five degrees.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Okay, now that sounds delightful. Actually, we should make a visit.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I mean, unfortunately it's been closed since the nineteen seventies
and now it is a parking lot for the San
Francisco Zoo.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
But okay, well, we should make a visit. I like
parking lots.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
In its original form, it's still considered the largest ever
landlocked pool.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
And so what was driving all this swimming pool madness?
Like why were so many of these getting built at
the time?
Speaker 1 (12:25):
The New Deal is part of the reason. Like that
became pretty instrumental in the public pool explosion. And more
than seven hundred and fifty pools were built by the
federal government between nineteen thirty three and nineteen thirty eight,
and they were really popular. In nineteen thirty three, the
National Recreation Association surveyed what kind of leisure activities Americans did,
(12:46):
and apparently as many people swam frequently as went to
the movies frequently.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
I mean, it is nice that so many of the
pools at that time were open to the public, because
pools were just way too expensive for most people to
build on their own.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yes, so just like Gaius Marcillus, you know, private pools
were definitely a sign of decadence. And William Randolph Hurst
actually had two pools at his castle. He had the
outdoor Neptune pool, which was complete with sculptures and a colonnade,
and then there's the indoor Roman pool, which was styled
after the ancient Roman bats, and it's decorated floor to
(13:21):
ceiling with blue and orange mosaic tiles. They're both really
really beautiful.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Wow, just looking at this, Gayus would have been super proud.
And you know, from my research, it seems like it
wasn't until around the nineteen fifties that you start to
see a bunch of these private backyard pools.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
And I mean, I'm guessing that's just because America is
wealthier post war.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
That's partially it, but it's also because of new materials,
Like there's something called gunnite, which is basically sprayed concrete,
and so gunnite had been around since the early nineteen hundreds,
and it was used to do things like line sewers
and repair buildings and bridges. But in the nineteen forties
and fifties, with increasing middle class salary and people living
(14:01):
in suburban homes they have bigger yards, dun Night was
a quicker and more affordable option for a personal pool.
And there's a lot more to talk about modern swimming
pool culture, but before we get into that, let's take
a quick break. Welcome back to part time Genius, where
(14:30):
we're talking swimming pools. So mego. I know, New York
City has a great pool system. I believe it has
over fifty public pools that get opened in the warmer months.
But do you ever take your kids to the pools there?
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Yeah? Definitely. I mean I'm not a swimmer, but like
my kids definitely go with friends, they go to birthday parties.
It's kind of the same way they take advantage of
the city's roller rinks or ice skating rinks. Also two
other things I'm not good at.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Gosh man manga, you're too hard on yourself. Well, part
of the reason I was asking is have you ever
heard of the aquasanes?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I have not what are the Aquisanes.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
So the Aquasanes were a troop of boys that would
go around pools and they would basically perform these like
comedy and trick diving acts for people.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
You just sent over this picture. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
It is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Is it kind of reminds me of the people on
the subway who yell showtime and then start breaking rising
on the poles.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Yeah, that's pretty that's that's pretty much it. So picture
a group of very energetic teen boys, all dressed in
what seemed to be swimming outfits inspired by these old
timey jail uniforms, and it's pretty crazy. There's this one
video of them where they're like ten boys on a
huge diving platform, leaping and flipping all at once. And
(15:44):
another trick is where the Aquaisanes lined up one behind
the other on the board just before jumping over and
on top of each other as they dive in and
crash into the water. So their overall vibe is sort
of very loosely organized chaos.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
I like that, Well, were they're perform planned? Like did
they you know, did they have like this choreographed routine
or did they just show up and cause havoc.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
I mean, it seems like it was semi legit, I guess.
And you know, their home base was Astoria. They had
a coach actually, and in the nineteen forties and fifties
the aqua Zanes were big. So for about a decade
there was a yearly summer performance called the Aqua Show
that was held in Queens. It seems like it was
basically this vaudevillian, you know, type of variety show, and
(16:28):
the acts included water ballet and a log rolling monkey
named Herman. Of course his name was Herman. He was
a log rolling monkey. I mean, so even ice skating,
so don't don't ask me how. And of course the
aqua Zanes.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
I love this whole culture of like aqua shows. I
had never heard of any of this.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah, yeah, all right, So let's move out of New
York City pools and travel to France, which also has
some pretty interesting pool history. And unfortunately, the first part
here starts with a tragedy. So we go back to
the summer of nineteen sixty nine and there were two
separate events in France where in total, thirty three kids drowned.
So obviously super sad here.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Oh, that's terrible. So what happened all right?
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Well, one of the incidents happened on the River Lore
where a lot of kids were playing and some just
got swept under. And one happened when a boat with
twenty four kids on it capsized and fourteen of them drown,
and it really accentuated this disparity in swimming ability across
the classes. But those tragedies pushed the government to place
a new emphasis on teaching kids to swim and making
(17:31):
sure that French kids had access to more swimming pools.
So the government launched this project. It was a project
called one Thousand Swimming Pools, where the goal was, as
you can imagine, actually to build a thousand swimming pools
that would be open year round.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
That's just good branding. I love a project title that
doesn't leave you guessing.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
It's pretty clear what's going on there. So first they
collected design ideas and ended up choosing one by the
architect Bernard Shouler, and his original design was for a
pool with his dome segment cover that would open up
as the sun moved across the sky, which just sounds
super cool. It was nicknamed Piecene Turnosil or sunflower pool
(18:09):
because of the way sunflowers follow the sun. But when
they actually looked into building it, they realized it was
too expensive. Now, the thing was, they still liked the
idea of the design, so they just went with a
simpler variation on this. The roof was this domed and
segmented structure, but only a third of it would open up,
and only the south facing side of it, so it's.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Kind of like a lazy sunflower in this case.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
It's exactly right. But people loved them. So the first
went up in nineteen seventy two in a town outside
of Paris, and eventually one hundred and eighty two more
of these structures were built, but not a thousand. Now
in total, the government actually built around six hundred swimming pools,
which is still a lot of pools, and not all
of them were of the sunflower variety. Other variations included
(18:55):
the quote full sunlight, the iris, and the duckling. That
people really remembered was the sunflower.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
I mean, I know you send it across these photos
and I've got to put them up for listeners to see.
But they're really cool. It's like very Jetson's esque. But
can you still swim in them.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Well, sadly most of them are now abandoned. They actually
ended up being pretty expensive to maintain, and that plastic
exterior didn't do well in the elements. But there's still
some around and some that even still function as pools.
There's actually an Instagram account called le fair tonasoul and
that documents many of them, and it's actually pretty cool
to look at.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
I love that. So what's our next stop on this tour?
Speaker 2 (19:36):
All right, well, sticking with France, Actually, have you heard
about this controversy surrounding the twenty twenty four Olympic pool?
Speaker 1 (19:43):
I mean, I do remember the drama of like people
swimming in the sein and getting sick.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Well, fortunately this one involves no vomiting, but it does
involve physics. So do you know what it takes to
be considered an Olympic sized pool?
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Mango? I mean kind of, but maybe you clarify it
for me.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
All right, Well, that's kind of sounds like when you're
a kid and you're like, no, no, I totally know,
but why don't you say it first?
Speaker 1 (20:07):
I mean, it's like twice the size of a wide pool,
Like that's what I remember.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Vertty much all right, Well, the pool must be fifty
meters long, and each of the eight lanes must be
two point five meters wide. And back in twenty seventeen,
when the Olympics were awarded to Paris, the pool's depth
had to be at least two meters deep or approximately
six feet seven inches.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Okay, so I got it some real specifications there.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
That's right, all right, So in twenty twenty four, the
Paris Olympic pool did conform to size. It was two
point one five meters deep or seven feet one inch.
But two point one five meters is actually pretty shallow
for an Olympic pool.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
And why is that? Like, is it that like tall
swimmers can bump to the floor when they're diving or
what's going on there?
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Actually, this is where the physics comes into play. So
the issue is that the shallower the pool, the more
turbulence is created by the swimmers, which potentially means a
much slower pool.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Oh. I actually vaguely remember that at the Beijing Olympics
the pool was like extra wide and deep, and I
heard that's like why so many records were broken.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right, And I do want to
get to that in a minute. But during the Paris Olympics,
there was a lot of hubbub around the fact that
after four days and fifteen events, no world records had
been beaten, which is pretty unusual for an Olympics. So
it led to a bunch of press about how slow
the pool was. But in the end it was maybe
all a bit premature because eventually four world records were set,
(21:36):
but for context, in Tokyo six were set, and Rio
there were actually eight.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
So Paris, I guess was on the low side in
this case.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
That's right, and World Aquatics, which is the international governing
body for swimming, certainly thinks the Shaaloness played a part
in that. And now going four, the new minimum depth
for an Olympic pool is two point five meters. But
to what you were alluding to, the pool at the
two thousand and eight Beijing Olympics was also noteworthy, so
a whopping twenty five world records were set there.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Oh that's crazy. I had no idea it was that many.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah, that's pretty wild. So everyone was trying to figure
out why this was happening, and there was certainly speculation
it was because of the incredible pool, which was also
called the Watercube. Now, the water Cube was a full
three meters deep, which, by the way, is actually considered
an optimal depth. It had ten lanes, even though only
eight swimmers would race at a time, and that extra
(22:28):
space apparently meant that waves the swimmers were creating could
go to the unused edge lanes, all with the goal
of making the water as smooth as possible during these
full on superhuman swimming feeds. So, in fact, NPR wrote
about the water Cube and they interviewed a guy named
Rowdy Gains.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Oh, I love that named Rowdy. Is that his real name?
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Actually? Yes, sort of. So Rowdy's full name is Ambrose
Gains the four, but his father's that's actually true, but
his father, Ambrose number three, was nicknamed Buddy anyway. Rowdy
was an Olympic gold medalist back in nineteen eighty four,
but he's probably best known for being a swimming commentator
for NBC. And so back in two thousand and eight,
(23:11):
NPR was interviewing him and he's just gushing about the
water Cube. He called it the fastest pool in the
world and how the depth is perfect because it's not
so deep that you lose your sense of vision, but
also deep enough to help with all the turbulence. He
was a big fan of this pool, and it's definitely
a nice pool. But when forty three world records were
set at the two thousand and nine World Championships in Rome,
(23:34):
people started wondering, thinking, you know, maybe there's something else
going on besides the watercubes engineering.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
I thought like, twenty five world records was a lot.
Now you're like uffing it to forty three. That's insane.
Did they figure out what was causing all these world records?
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Well, two thousand and eight was the year those high
tech basically full body polyurethane based swimsuits were introduced into
the Olympics. You remember when you started seeing these, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
And it was like a collaboration between NASA and they
were like called sharkskin suits, right.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
That's right though. So those suits were used in Beijing,
and they were also used the next year in Rome,
and all this record breaking was just too much for
the World Aquatics Association, who banned the suits, saying they
wanted to maintain the integrity of swimming. Today, there are
restrictions on the materials that can be used for competition suits,
as well as the length of those suits, so mens
(24:26):
suits can only be from the waist to the knees
and women's suits from the shoulders to the knees. And
since those changes, the pace of new world records is
definitely less extreme.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
It also reminds me of when FIFA used a new
ball at the World Cup and that caused all this
extra spin, and I remember, like, the strikers loved it
because it was like a super high goal scoring World Cup,
but the goalies hated it because it's sort of embarrassing.
But it's funny how like stitching on a soccer ball,
or like a swimsuit or whatever can completely change the
(24:58):
dynamics of the sport at that level. But speaking of
world records, have you heard about the Guinness World Record
for the farthest distance swimming in one week in a
fifty meter pool one week? Is that what you said?
I I can't say that. I do know that record,
So let me tell you how much he swam. It
was three hundred and fifty eight point two kilometers or
(25:20):
two hundred and twenty two point six miles.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Wow, that is so many more miles than I was expecting.
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yeah. So the record was set by a long distance
swimmer named Spiro Sachrisycopolis, and this was between May ninth
and May sixteenth in twenty twenty one, and so he
essentially spent the entire week swimming. Like Spiro said, he'd
stop every two to four kilometers to eat, and he
would occasionally nap for an hour or two or use
(25:49):
the restroom, but basically he swam for a week straight.
And Spiro said his biggest issues were how sore and
stiff his shoulders got, and he also said that his
skin got really dry from all the chlorine. And also
he said that at a certain point he started to
have some hallucinations, like seeing spiders up in the roof.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
God, that definitely sounds like a Nightmary just kept going, Yeah,
but you know, the drive for world record fame is
really strong, and Spiro said he'd always wanted to be
in the Guinness Books since he was a kid.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Of the three hundred and fifty eight point two kilometers,
he swam three hundred and fifty eight of it freestyle,
and it was just the last two hundred meters that
he did the backstroke, maybe because at that point he
couldn't move his arms over his head anymore.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Ah, that's incredible. All right. Well, I do have a
story that I want to share about my favorite pool sport.
But before we get to that, let's take one more
quick break.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're talking about
swimming pools and will I think you were just about
to talk about your favorite swimming sport.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Absolutely so, Mango. When you were a kid, did you
ever play that game when you toss the ring to
the bottom of the pool and then you'd have to
race your friends to see who could grab it first.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Yeah, I mean I'd mostly toss the ring and let
them chase it.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
But right, because, as we established, not a strong swimmer.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
But I feel like, uh, you know, Marco Polo that
chicken fighting game like which only lasted a few minutes
until the lifeguard told you to stop, like there were
only really a tru games at the pool to play.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
That's that's very true, all right. But you toss the
ring to the bottom of the pool, except you're part
of a team. You're wearing a snorkel and flippers and
clutching a little stick that kind of looks like a spatula,
and instead of trying to grab a ring, you're trying
to push this puck like object into a goal.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
So it's kind of like swim hockey.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, it's sometimes called underwater hockey, but it's more often
called called octopush.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Oh. You know, I love ridiculous sports. It's one of
my favorite things.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
You know.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
I've been married to Lizzy for like fifteen years and
she still hasn't taken me to play whirli ball in Chicago,
which is like lacrosse in bumper cars idea. But tell
me about octopush. How to get it start?
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Well, as legend has it, octopush was invented in England
in the nineteen fifties. There was this diver named Alan
Blake who had started this diving club and during the
summer there was lots to do out in the sea,
but during the winner there really wasn't, and so he
wanted to keep the club active, so he had some
friends come up with a game that he could play
and then indoor pool. There'd be eight players per team.
(28:43):
Each player would have a short little hockey stick like
contraption and they would use that to push a weighted
puck like object, which they decided to call the squid.
And this would be pushed into the other team's goal
and hence octopush was born.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
So is octopush still around? Definitely.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
I mean it's perhaps not the most popular sport in England,
but there is a league and there are competitions. Oxford
even has an octopush club today. It's actually played with
six players per team instead of eight, and they don't
call the puck a squid anymore. So, like, if you're
a real traditionalist octopush player, like this is upsetting. But anyway,
it's tricky as the spectator sport because everything takes place
(29:23):
below the surface. But on YouTube there actually matches filmed
with this underwater camera and it's pretty fun to watch.
You should definitely look it up. And players are constantly
diving up and down. It's pretty fast paced.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Man, I can't wait to watch. And here's hoping we'll
see it in the twenty threey two Olympics.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
All right, Well, while we're waiting on that to happen,
why don't we waste a little time with a fact off,
let's leap in.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Okay, So I got my first fact right here. Apparently
the deepest swimming pool in the world is located in
Dubai at almost two hundred feet and it was built
for the Crown prints of the but it's open to
the public mainly for people to go diving in. They've
even built a fake abandoned sunken city at the bottom,
so there is plenty to explore a.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Fake abandoned city. That does sound pretty fun, so not
as fun as the pool in the Arizona Diamondbacks Ballpark.
This fits thirty five people and you can actually rent
it out during games.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
That is incredible and it seems like a pretty great
way to get people who are into baseball to go
watch a game with you. Well, speaking of pools, I
definitely want to visit The Golden Nugget Casino in Vegas
has a pool that's next to a two hundred thousand
gallon shark tank and it's got a water slide that
races you through it. There's actually a similar thing at
(30:43):
the Atlantis Resort and the Bahamas, and it's even crazier,
Like one of the shark slides is built so that
you can go down this lazy river that's built under
the shark tanks, so you're just surrounded by sharks above
and around you. It both seems incredible and beautiful and
really terrifying.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Wow, that does sound both exciting but also super scary.
And you know, as fun as that sounds, for the excitement,
I think I would rather swim in the Embassy Gardens
pool in London. Now I'd have to know someone who
lives there to invite me to visit. But after I
do that, I could swim in their pool, which is
suspended one hundred and fifteen feet in the air between
(31:20):
two buildings. It's not the highest pool in the world
that's at the Ritz Carlton, Hong Kong, but it might
be the coolest. It is totally transparent, so if you
look up from below, you just see this stripe of
a pool in the sky with tiny people swimming around
in it. Take the look at this picture here.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
That is amazing. Honestly, like that would be a really
good place to watch a game of Octopush. You can
watch from the ground and look up.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah. Well, if the Oxford Octo Push Team plays the
Embassy Gardens Apartment oct To Push Team, you and I
let's agree, we're gonna go get tickets.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Yeah. I love it. So here's one less fact, and
it's about the hidden swimming pool in the White House.
So the pool was built for FDR and was apparently
state of the art. It was tricked out with lights,
it had all these gadgets in it, and he was
wheelchair bound, but he loved to swim for exercise, and
then Truman and JFK both used it as well. But
(32:14):
President Nixon, much like ourselves, wasn't a swimmer, and as
you might know, he famously put bowling alleys into the
White House. But he boarded up the swimming pool with planks,
and today it is still there, living underneath the White
House Press room. Isn't that amazing when you see all
those reporters, they're sitting on boards that are over an
empty pool. Today the space is filled with computer servers
(32:36):
and wires and equipment. But according to Atlas Obscura, you
can actually visit it by trapdoor or there's a little
hidden staircase, and the place apparently still smells of chlorine.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Man, you saved it for the very last line. You
worked in a trapdoor and a hidden staircase. So for that,
I think I have to give you to Day's backtoc trophy.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
I mean, it has been a while, so I'm glad
I finally get to put one on the shelf.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
I wasn't gonna say anything, but yeah, it's been a minute.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
So that's it for today's episode. Special thanks to Marissa Brown,
who gets the hat tip for researching and writing for
this episode, but from Gabe, Dylan, Mary, Will and myself,
thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is
(33:32):
a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted
by Will Pearson and me Mongaishatikler and research by our
good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and
produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang.
The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell
(33:52):
and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay,
trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey. For more podcasts from
Leeidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Guess what Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
What's that? Will?
Speaker 2 (00:14):
So I was looking through the National Register of Historic Places,
and you know, I was doing this on a Saturday,
because that's how I spend most of my saturdays these days.
And I noticed that there's actually only one swimming pool
on the list. One swimming pool in all the National
Register of Historic Places.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Well, I love that, that's how you spend your Saturdays.
But there's only one swimming pool.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
On a very special swimming pool. This is the Venetian Pool,
and it's located in Coral Gables, Florida, and it was
built on this abandoned rock quarry. Now the pool is
the largest freshwater pool in the entire country. And when
it was first built, it was made to look like
a Venetian grotto, so this really lush pool. It was
equipped with places to dock your gondola. Of course, they
(00:56):
actually used to have gondolas that would ride across it.
I'm not kidding. You should look for the photos of this.
But the really impressive feature is that to keep the
water fresh, it was drained every single day and then
filled with fresh water from the artesian springs that it
connects to, and I'm not making that up either. That
is incredible, but also it kind of seems like a
(01:19):
lot of water. Yeah, so you can imagine some conservationists
took issue with this, and when they pointed that out,
the system was changed a little bit. So today the
water pumps out to an aquifer where the water is
cleaned and then pumped back in, so the water is
still changed very regularly. But what's incredible is that because
the quarry gets emptied out, they can also use it
(01:40):
for other events, like apparently the quarry has stunning acoustics,
so symphonies will perform concerts from the bottom for its locals.
I think I'd probably be nervous that it was suddenly
going to start filling up again. But anyway, I put
it on my list of places to visit the next
time I'm in Florida because it's actually open to the
public and it looks beautiful. Plus the idea of fresh
(02:00):
swimming seems like a lot of fun, and especially in
such a huge pool. But reading about the Venetian made
me wonder where swimming pools got their start and how
they spread across America. And also who the Zanius swim
team in New York history is. You know that's an
obvious next one.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
I don't even know what that sentence means, but I
love it. And usually i'd say, let's dive in, but
I don't think we're gonna be that elegant, so let's
get into it with a great big belly flop.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson, and as always I'm here with my good
friend mangesh Hot Ticketer and somewhere behind the big booth,
sitting in an inner tube in a kiddie pool with
floaties on each of his arms. I saw these things
sitting around the office all week. I had a feeling
this is where he was going with it. That's our
good friend Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
You know what's amazing about it is like that's not
even half the work he put into this. Like I
don't know if you notice, but he has posters up
everywhere of all these great movies from like Ferris Bueller,
The Sand Loot, The Graduate Rushmore, National Lampoon's Vacation. And
I didn't realize it, but.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
You know, they all have a famous swimming pool. Scenes. Yeah, exactly,
that's true. Good catch.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
There is a genius.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
He really is a genius.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
So will I know you are a good swimmer. I'm
a terrible swimmer. I grew up near a y, so
like I went to lessons there, I was a polywog,
and then a guppy, and then a minnow and a fish,
and I was just like crushing these levels one after another.
And then I just grew older and older and I
never got promoted to flying fish and heartbreaking and eventually
(03:56):
I quit. But in spite of all that resentment, I
I still love swimming pool.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
I'm the same way I love a swimming pool, but
I sort of just like being in it, you know,
like not working really hard. And I'm not swimmings. I'm
not a great swimmer. But so anyway, why don't you
kick this off and tell us about the first swimming pool,
which I know you look the into.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Absolutely so. People have been swimming in lakes and rivers
and other bodies of water for thousands and thousands of years.
But to get to what is possibly the earliest evidence
of a pool, we have to go to circa twenty
five hundred BCE. And this takes us to the Indus
Valley in modern day Pakistan. In the nineteen twenties, archaeologists
(04:37):
were excavating Mohenjo Daro, which is one of two main
Indus civilization settlements, and they came across this structure and
it is really impressive. It looks like a pool about
eight feet deep and is built of brick, and it
has drainage, a bunch of benches, and even this terraced
deck area. Honestly, it's not that different from the baths today.
(04:59):
But you said wasn't for swimming, that's right. So the
exact use is unknown, but historians think it was likely
a bath used for religious ceremonies. So that's kind of
the first known example of a pool. But we're going
to zoom ahead about two thousand years to ancient Rome,
where public baths were really popular. Before this time there
had been bathing in pools and swimming in open water.
(05:21):
But we can credit the Romans with building pools explicitly
for military training.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Ah, that's super interesting. But somehow I hadn't put it
together that they'd be teaching soldiers to blow bubbles underwater
and showing them like the elementary backstroke and all that
sort of stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, and the idea of Roman soldiers doing aqua aerobics
together and full regalia is pretty fun to think about it.
But also you can credit the wealthy Roman diplomat patriot
of the arts and leisure enthusiast Gaeus Macenus for likely
having the first heated swimming pool, which he built in
the first century BCE.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Wow, that's amazing that heated swimming pools go back that far.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Yeah, the first sense of Britannica about geis is pretty amazing.
It reads quote gayas Messinas was a Roman diplomat, counselor
to the Roman Emperor Augustus, and wealthy patron of such
poets as Virgil and Horrus. He was criticized for his
luxurious way of life.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
I love that. It's right there in the opener. All right,
so I'm digging this quick tour through the early swimming
pools that actually is super interesting. But what's next.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
So as the centuries go on, swimming in bats especially
bats continue to be really popular, right, So you think
about the onsen in Japan, the Hammams in Turkey, the
Banyas in Russia. It just goes on around the world,
and in Europe, the popularity of swimming really dips during
the Middle Ages, possibly because people were worried that it
spread infections. But by eighteen thirty seven, the very beginning
(06:47):
of Victorian England, there were six indoor pools with diving
boards in London. Isn't it amazing? Yeah? And it's the
Victorian era that really ends up ushering in the idea
of swimming as both a sport and a leisure activity.
You start to see swimming clubs and organized races and
this starts spreading across Europe and eventually into places like
Australia and America.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
All Right, so when do pools, you know, finally take
over America.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
So there's this great book called Contested Water, a Social
History of Swimming in America, and a lot of this
research comes from there. But according to Jeff Wiltsey, the
first public pool in the US was built in Boston,
and this is around eighteen sixty eight, so just a
few years after the Civil War had ended. For context,
then it was an indoor pool called a Cabot Street Bath,
(07:34):
and unlike those fancy pools with diving boards in London,
this one was as the name suggests really supposed to
be a bath. A lot of working class folks didn't
have a way to bathe themselves, so the pool was
really a substitute for that. You know.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
One of the things that I don't like thinking about
is what the water must have looked like in pools
like this. I mean for real, Yeah, I know, it.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Was so gross, and it was pre chlorine, so you
have to imagine it's pretty disgusting. But you know, the
attempt in the US to use chlorine to clean a
pool wasn't until nineteen ten, so that was really a
ways away. But Wilsee said he came across reports that
knowed the water in these early public baths needed to
be changed about once a week.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
It also feels like way too long. I don't know,
maybe I'm just being a clean freak here, but I
feel like it would just abstain from public.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Baths, yeah, I mean, actually, our researcher MARSSA. Brown threw
in this TLC joke here that we should just stick
to the rivers and the lace that you used to.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
That's actually the appropriate use. That's well done.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And the truth is that even though these public baths
were popping up in the US, people were swimming in
fresh water or freshish water. So like if you think
about New York City, for example, there had been free
public floating bats in the Hudson and the East River,
and this was starting in eighteen seventy. They were almost
one hundred feet long and the deepest they got was
about four point five.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Feet, So people were actually bathing in the East River.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah, for a while in the night eighteen twenties, the
city finally realized the river water maybe wasn't the cleanest,
and the floating baths eventually went away.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
I mean, it's such a cool idea, and I know
they have these floating pools and lakes and oceans in
other parts of the world, but I guess if you're
swimming in the East River, it was probably for the best.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, I know. It reminds me of that Seinfeld where
Kramer starts swimming in the East River because he says
the pool is too constrictive for his knees. It was
so ridiculous. But back to pools. So the first public
outdoor pool in the US that Jeff Wiltsey could find
was in Philadelphia, and it opens in the summer of
(09:38):
eighteen eighty three, and again it was meant to be
used for body cleaning purposes.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And do you know why they kept building these pools
for bathing in.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, I mean part of the reason was really kind
of classiest, Like you have these working class boys, they
jump into open water naked, like they're not genteel. So
they're often splashing about in lakes and rivers and water
near buildings, and they're having a good time and they're
often being rampunctious. So part of the idea was, let's
just get them swimming and playing and bathing in an
(10:07):
enclosed area so the public doesn't have to see all
all these people bathing in cities.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
So it wasn't so much this public service or good,
but more something to keep the supposed lower classes from
being an eyesore I guess exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
And showers were only added later in sort of like
the mid to late eighteen nineties. So this was around
the time when the idea that water could actually transmit
invisible diseases through microbes became more accepted. But this is
when you start to see the real change. And after this,
the pool started to become less of a bathhouse and
more of a recreation area. So by eighteen ninety eight,
(10:42):
Philly had nine public pools, and on average, each of
these accommodated about fifteen hundred swimmers a day during the summer.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
That is a lot of people, you know. One of
the craziest facts I read was that in nineteen thirteen
the Fairgrounds Park in Saint Louis opened and it was
huge and circular. We're talking four hundred feet in diameter,
and apparently one Sunday, pretty soon after it opened, fifty
thousand people came to visit, and twenty five thousand to swim,
another twenty five thousand to watch. That's another pool I'm
(11:14):
not getting in.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Twenty five thousand people came just to spectate. That's insane, yes,
but obviously it was a trend, right. So like during
the nineteen twenties through the forties, cities around the entire
country started building megapools, and some of them were bigger
than football fields and had sandy beaches, some of them
had grassy lawns, and some of them came with concrete
decks to sunbathe on. And get this. So, the Fleischhacker
(11:39):
Pool in San Francisco, which opened in nineteen twenty five,
was one thousand feet long, one hundred and fifty feet wide.
Ten thousand people could swim at once, and lifeguards used
wooden rowboats to get across. Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Also, it was filled with seawater and it was heated
to between sixty five and seven five degrees.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Okay, now that sounds delightful. Actually, we should make a visit.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I mean, unfortunately it's been closed since the nineteen seventies
and now it is a parking lot for the San
Francisco Zoo.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
But okay, well, we should make a visit. I like
parking lots.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
In its original form, it's still considered the largest ever
landlocked pool.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
And so what was driving all this swimming pool madness?
Like why were so many of these getting built at
the time?
Speaker 1 (12:25):
The New Deal is part of the reason. Like that
became pretty instrumental in the public pool explosion. And more
than seven hundred and fifty pools were built by the
federal government between nineteen thirty three and nineteen thirty eight,
and they were really popular. In nineteen thirty three, the
National Recreation Association surveyed what kind of leisure activities Americans did,
(12:46):
and apparently as many people swam frequently as went to
the movies frequently.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
I mean, it is nice that so many of the
pools at that time were open to the public, because
pools were just way too expensive for most people to
build on their own.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yes, so just like Gaius Marcillus, you know, private pools
were definitely a sign of decadence. And William Randolph Hurst
actually had two pools at his castle. He had the
outdoor Neptune pool, which was complete with sculptures and a colonnade,
and then there's the indoor Roman pool, which was styled
after the ancient Roman bats, and it's decorated floor to
(13:21):
ceiling with blue and orange mosaic tiles. They're both really
really beautiful.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Wow, just looking at this, Gayus would have been super proud.
And you know, from my research, it seems like it
wasn't until around the nineteen fifties that you start to
see a bunch of these private backyard pools.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
And I mean, I'm guessing that's just because America is
wealthier post war.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
That's partially it, but it's also because of new materials,
Like there's something called gunnite, which is basically sprayed concrete,
and so gunnite had been around since the early nineteen hundreds,
and it was used to do things like line sewers
and repair buildings and bridges. But in the nineteen forties
and fifties, with increasing middle class salary and people living
(14:01):
in suburban homes they have bigger yards, dun Night was
a quicker and more affordable option for a personal pool.
And there's a lot more to talk about modern swimming
pool culture, but before we get into that, let's take
a quick break. Welcome back to part time Genius, where
(14:30):
we're talking swimming pools. So mego. I know, New York
City has a great pool system. I believe it has
over fifty public pools that get opened in the warmer months.
But do you ever take your kids to the pools there?
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Yeah? Definitely. I mean I'm not a swimmer, but like
my kids definitely go with friends, they go to birthday parties.
It's kind of the same way they take advantage of
the city's roller rinks or ice skating rinks. Also two
other things I'm not good at.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Gosh man manga, you're too hard on yourself. Well, part
of the reason I was asking is have you ever
heard of the aquasanes?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I have not what are the Aquisanes.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
So the Aquasanes were a troop of boys that would
go around pools and they would basically perform these like
comedy and trick diving acts for people.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
You just sent over this picture. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
It is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Is it kind of reminds me of the people on
the subway who yell showtime and then start breaking rising
on the poles.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Yeah, that's pretty that's that's pretty much it. So picture
a group of very energetic teen boys, all dressed in
what seemed to be swimming outfits inspired by these old
timey jail uniforms, and it's pretty crazy. There's this one
video of them where they're like ten boys on a
huge diving platform, leaping and flipping all at once. And
(15:44):
another trick is where the Aquaisanes lined up one behind
the other on the board just before jumping over and
on top of each other as they dive in and
crash into the water. So their overall vibe is sort
of very loosely organized chaos.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
I like that, Well, were they're perform planned? Like did
they you know, did they have like this choreographed routine
or did they just show up and cause havoc.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
I mean, it seems like it was semi legit, I guess.
And you know, their home base was Astoria. They had
a coach actually, and in the nineteen forties and fifties
the aqua Zanes were big. So for about a decade
there was a yearly summer performance called the Aqua Show
that was held in Queens. It seems like it was
basically this vaudevillian, you know, type of variety show, and
(16:28):
the acts included water ballet and a log rolling monkey
named Herman. Of course his name was Herman. He was
a log rolling monkey. I mean, so even ice skating,
so don't don't ask me how. And of course the
aqua Zanes.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
I love this whole culture of like aqua shows. I
had never heard of any of this.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah, yeah, all right, So let's move out of New
York City pools and travel to France, which also has
some pretty interesting pool history. And unfortunately, the first part
here starts with a tragedy. So we go back to
the summer of nineteen sixty nine and there were two
separate events in France where in total, thirty three kids drowned.
So obviously super sad here.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Oh, that's terrible. So what happened all right?
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Well, one of the incidents happened on the River Lore
where a lot of kids were playing and some just
got swept under. And one happened when a boat with
twenty four kids on it capsized and fourteen of them drown,
and it really accentuated this disparity in swimming ability across
the classes. But those tragedies pushed the government to place
a new emphasis on teaching kids to swim and making
(17:31):
sure that French kids had access to more swimming pools.
So the government launched this project. It was a project
called one Thousand Swimming Pools, where the goal was, as
you can imagine, actually to build a thousand swimming pools
that would be open year round.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
That's just good branding. I love a project title that
doesn't leave you guessing.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
It's pretty clear what's going on there. So first they
collected design ideas and ended up choosing one by the
architect Bernard Shouler, and his original design was for a
pool with his dome segment cover that would open up
as the sun moved across the sky, which just sounds
super cool. It was nicknamed Piecene Turnosil or sunflower pool
(18:09):
because of the way sunflowers follow the sun. But when
they actually looked into building it, they realized it was
too expensive. Now, the thing was, they still liked the
idea of the design, so they just went with a
simpler variation on this. The roof was this domed and
segmented structure, but only a third of it would open up,
and only the south facing side of it, so it's.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Kind of like a lazy sunflower in this case.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
It's exactly right. But people loved them. So the first
went up in nineteen seventy two in a town outside
of Paris, and eventually one hundred and eighty two more
of these structures were built, but not a thousand. Now
in total, the government actually built around six hundred swimming pools,
which is still a lot of pools, and not all
of them were of the sunflower variety. Other variations included
(18:55):
the quote full sunlight, the iris, and the duckling. That
people really remembered was the sunflower.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
I mean, I know you send it across these photos
and I've got to put them up for listeners to see.
But they're really cool. It's like very Jetson's esque. But
can you still swim in them.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Well, sadly most of them are now abandoned. They actually
ended up being pretty expensive to maintain, and that plastic
exterior didn't do well in the elements. But there's still
some around and some that even still function as pools.
There's actually an Instagram account called le fair tonasoul and
that documents many of them, and it's actually pretty cool
to look at.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
I love that. So what's our next stop on this tour?
Speaker 2 (19:36):
All right, well, sticking with France, Actually, have you heard
about this controversy surrounding the twenty twenty four Olympic pool?
Speaker 1 (19:43):
I mean, I do remember the drama of like people
swimming in the sein and getting sick.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Well, fortunately this one involves no vomiting, but it does
involve physics. So do you know what it takes to
be considered an Olympic sized pool?
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Mango? I mean kind of, but maybe you clarify it
for me.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
All right, Well, that's kind of sounds like when you're
a kid and you're like, no, no, I totally know,
but why don't you say it first?
Speaker 1 (20:07):
I mean, it's like twice the size of a wide pool,
Like that's what I remember.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Vertty much all right, Well, the pool must be fifty
meters long, and each of the eight lanes must be
two point five meters wide. And back in twenty seventeen,
when the Olympics were awarded to Paris, the pool's depth
had to be at least two meters deep or approximately
six feet seven inches.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Okay, so I got it some real specifications there.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
That's right, all right, So in twenty twenty four, the
Paris Olympic pool did conform to size. It was two
point one five meters deep or seven feet one inch.
But two point one five meters is actually pretty shallow
for an Olympic pool.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
And why is that? Like, is it that like tall
swimmers can bump to the floor when they're diving or
what's going on there?
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Actually, this is where the physics comes into play. So
the issue is that the shallower the pool, the more
turbulence is created by the swimmers, which potentially means a
much slower pool.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Oh. I actually vaguely remember that at the Beijing Olympics
the pool was like extra wide and deep, and I
heard that's like why so many records were broken.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right, And I do want to
get to that in a minute. But during the Paris Olympics,
there was a lot of hubbub around the fact that
after four days and fifteen events, no world records had
been beaten, which is pretty unusual for an Olympics. So
it led to a bunch of press about how slow
the pool was. But in the end it was maybe
all a bit premature because eventually four world records were set,
(21:36):
but for context, in Tokyo six were set, and Rio
there were actually eight.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
So Paris, I guess was on the low side in
this case.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
That's right, and World Aquatics, which is the international governing
body for swimming, certainly thinks the Shaaloness played a part
in that. And now going four, the new minimum depth
for an Olympic pool is two point five meters. But
to what you were alluding to, the pool at the
two thousand and eight Beijing Olympics was also noteworthy, so
a whopping twenty five world records were set there.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Oh that's crazy. I had no idea it was that many.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah, that's pretty wild. So everyone was trying to figure
out why this was happening, and there was certainly speculation
it was because of the incredible pool, which was also
called the Watercube. Now, the water Cube was a full
three meters deep, which, by the way, is actually considered
an optimal depth. It had ten lanes, even though only
eight swimmers would race at a time, and that extra
(22:28):
space apparently meant that waves the swimmers were creating could
go to the unused edge lanes, all with the goal
of making the water as smooth as possible during these
full on superhuman swimming feeds. So, in fact, NPR wrote
about the water Cube and they interviewed a guy named
Rowdy Gains.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Oh, I love that named Rowdy. Is that his real name?
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Actually? Yes, sort of. So Rowdy's full name is Ambrose
Gains the four, but his father's that's actually true, but
his father, Ambrose number three, was nicknamed Buddy anyway. Rowdy
was an Olympic gold medalist back in nineteen eighty four,
but he's probably best known for being a swimming commentator
for NBC. And so back in two thousand and eight,
(23:11):
NPR was interviewing him and he's just gushing about the
water Cube. He called it the fastest pool in the
world and how the depth is perfect because it's not
so deep that you lose your sense of vision, but
also deep enough to help with all the turbulence. He
was a big fan of this pool, and it's definitely
a nice pool. But when forty three world records were
set at the two thousand and nine World Championships in Rome,
(23:34):
people started wondering, thinking, you know, maybe there's something else
going on besides the watercubes engineering.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
I thought like, twenty five world records was a lot.
Now you're like uffing it to forty three. That's insane.
Did they figure out what was causing all these world records?
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Well, two thousand and eight was the year those high
tech basically full body polyurethane based swimsuits were introduced into
the Olympics. You remember when you started seeing these, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
And it was like a collaboration between NASA and they
were like called sharkskin suits, right.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
That's right though. So those suits were used in Beijing,
and they were also used the next year in Rome,
and all this record breaking was just too much for
the World Aquatics Association, who banned the suits, saying they
wanted to maintain the integrity of swimming. Today, there are
restrictions on the materials that can be used for competition suits,
as well as the length of those suits, so mens
(24:26):
suits can only be from the waist to the knees
and women's suits from the shoulders to the knees. And
since those changes, the pace of new world records is
definitely less extreme.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
It also reminds me of when FIFA used a new
ball at the World Cup and that caused all this
extra spin, and I remember, like, the strikers loved it
because it was like a super high goal scoring World Cup,
but the goalies hated it because it's sort of embarrassing.
But it's funny how like stitching on a soccer ball,
or like a swimsuit or whatever can completely change the
(24:58):
dynamics of the sport at that level. But speaking of
world records, have you heard about the Guinness World Record
for the farthest distance swimming in one week in a
fifty meter pool one week? Is that what you said?
I I can't say that. I do know that record,
So let me tell you how much he swam. It
was three hundred and fifty eight point two kilometers or
(25:20):
two hundred and twenty two point six miles.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Wow, that is so many more miles than I was expecting.
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yeah. So the record was set by a long distance
swimmer named Spiro Sachrisycopolis, and this was between May ninth
and May sixteenth in twenty twenty one, and so he
essentially spent the entire week swimming. Like Spiro said, he'd
stop every two to four kilometers to eat, and he
would occasionally nap for an hour or two or use
(25:49):
the restroom, but basically he swam for a week straight.
And Spiro said his biggest issues were how sore and
stiff his shoulders got, and he also said that his
skin got really dry from all the chlorine. And also
he said that at a certain point he started to
have some hallucinations, like seeing spiders up in the roof.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
God, that definitely sounds like a Nightmary just kept going, Yeah,
but you know, the drive for world record fame is
really strong, and Spiro said he'd always wanted to be
in the Guinness Books since he was a kid.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Of the three hundred and fifty eight point two kilometers,
he swam three hundred and fifty eight of it freestyle,
and it was just the last two hundred meters that
he did the backstroke, maybe because at that point he
couldn't move his arms over his head anymore.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Ah, that's incredible. All right. Well, I do have a
story that I want to share about my favorite pool sport.
But before we get to that, let's take one more
quick break.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're talking about
swimming pools and will I think you were just about
to talk about your favorite swimming sport.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Absolutely so, Mango. When you were a kid, did you
ever play that game when you toss the ring to
the bottom of the pool and then you'd have to
race your friends to see who could grab it first.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Yeah, I mean I'd mostly toss the ring and let
them chase it.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
But right, because, as we established, not a strong swimmer.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
But I feel like, uh, you know, Marco Polo that
chicken fighting game like which only lasted a few minutes
until the lifeguard told you to stop, like there were
only really a tru games at the pool to play.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
That's that's very true, all right. But you toss the
ring to the bottom of the pool, except you're part
of a team. You're wearing a snorkel and flippers and
clutching a little stick that kind of looks like a spatula,
and instead of trying to grab a ring, you're trying
to push this puck like object into a goal.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
So it's kind of like swim hockey.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, it's sometimes called underwater hockey, but it's more often
called called octopush.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Oh. You know, I love ridiculous sports. It's one of
my favorite things.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
You know.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
I've been married to Lizzy for like fifteen years and
she still hasn't taken me to play whirli ball in Chicago,
which is like lacrosse in bumper cars idea. But tell
me about octopush. How to get it start?
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Well, as legend has it, octopush was invented in England
in the nineteen fifties. There was this diver named Alan
Blake who had started this diving club and during the
summer there was lots to do out in the sea,
but during the winner there really wasn't, and so he
wanted to keep the club active, so he had some
friends come up with a game that he could play
and then indoor pool. There'd be eight players per team.
(28:43):
Each player would have a short little hockey stick like
contraption and they would use that to push a weighted
puck like object, which they decided to call the squid.
And this would be pushed into the other team's goal
and hence octopush was born.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
So is octopush still around? Definitely.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
I mean it's perhaps not the most popular sport in England,
but there is a league and there are competitions. Oxford
even has an octopush club today. It's actually played with
six players per team instead of eight, and they don't
call the puck a squid anymore. So, like, if you're
a real traditionalist octopush player, like this is upsetting. But anyway,
it's tricky as the spectator sport because everything takes place
(29:23):
below the surface. But on YouTube there actually matches filmed
with this underwater camera and it's pretty fun to watch.
You should definitely look it up. And players are constantly
diving up and down. It's pretty fast paced.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Man, I can't wait to watch. And here's hoping we'll
see it in the twenty threey two Olympics.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
All right, Well, while we're waiting on that to happen,
why don't we waste a little time with a fact off,
let's leap in.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Okay, So I got my first fact right here. Apparently
the deepest swimming pool in the world is located in
Dubai at almost two hundred feet and it was built
for the Crown prints of the but it's open to
the public mainly for people to go diving in. They've
even built a fake abandoned sunken city at the bottom,
so there is plenty to explore a.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Fake abandoned city. That does sound pretty fun, so not
as fun as the pool in the Arizona Diamondbacks Ballpark.
This fits thirty five people and you can actually rent
it out during games.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
That is incredible and it seems like a pretty great
way to get people who are into baseball to go
watch a game with you. Well, speaking of pools, I
definitely want to visit The Golden Nugget Casino in Vegas
has a pool that's next to a two hundred thousand
gallon shark tank and it's got a water slide that
races you through it. There's actually a similar thing at
(30:43):
the Atlantis Resort and the Bahamas, and it's even crazier,
Like one of the shark slides is built so that
you can go down this lazy river that's built under
the shark tanks, so you're just surrounded by sharks above
and around you. It both seems incredible and beautiful and
really terrifying.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Wow, that does sound both exciting but also super scary.
And you know, as fun as that sounds, for the excitement,
I think I would rather swim in the Embassy Gardens
pool in London. Now I'd have to know someone who
lives there to invite me to visit. But after I
do that, I could swim in their pool, which is
suspended one hundred and fifteen feet in the air between
(31:20):
two buildings. It's not the highest pool in the world
that's at the Ritz Carlton, Hong Kong, but it might
be the coolest. It is totally transparent, so if you
look up from below, you just see this stripe of
a pool in the sky with tiny people swimming around
in it. Take the look at this picture here.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
That is amazing. Honestly, like that would be a really
good place to watch a game of Octopush. You can
watch from the ground and look up.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah. Well, if the Oxford Octo Push Team plays the
Embassy Gardens Apartment oct To Push Team, you and I
let's agree, we're gonna go get tickets.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Yeah. I love it. So here's one less fact, and
it's about the hidden swimming pool in the White House.
So the pool was built for FDR and was apparently
state of the art. It was tricked out with lights,
it had all these gadgets in it, and he was
wheelchair bound, but he loved to swim for exercise, and
then Truman and JFK both used it as well. But
(32:14):
President Nixon, much like ourselves, wasn't a swimmer, and as
you might know, he famously put bowling alleys into the
White House. But he boarded up the swimming pool with planks,
and today it is still there, living underneath the White
House Press room. Isn't that amazing when you see all
those reporters, they're sitting on boards that are over an
empty pool. Today the space is filled with computer servers
(32:36):
and wires and equipment. But according to Atlas Obscura, you
can actually visit it by trapdoor or there's a little
hidden staircase, and the place apparently still smells of chlorine.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Man, you saved it for the very last line. You
worked in a trapdoor and a hidden staircase. So for that,
I think I have to give you to Day's backtoc trophy.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
I mean, it has been a while, so I'm glad
I finally get to put one on the shelf.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
I wasn't gonna say anything, but yeah, it's been a minute.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
So that's it for today's episode. Special thanks to Marissa Brown,
who gets the hat tip for researching and writing for
this episode, but from Gabe, Dylan, Mary, Will and myself,
thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is
(33:32):
a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted
by Will Pearson and me Mongaishatikler and research by our
good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and
produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang.
The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell
(33:52):
and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay,
trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey. For more podcasts from
Leeidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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