October 25, 2018 • 37 mins
Remember when monograms were considered tacky, squash was played in back alleys and barn-yard flavored beers weren't expensive? Neither do we. Will and Mango peel back the humble origins of some supposedly elitist things.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I guess, well, what's that mango? So I know you
know this, but my family loves the writer P. G. Woodhouse,
Like his books are light and sweet and funny, and
wherever you go in India, you'll find them on my
family's bookshelves. And when I was in middle school and
in high school, there was this great TV adaptation of
Wooster and Jeeves, and it had a young Hugh Lori
(00:25):
in it, young Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie played this
rich simpleton. His name was Bertie Wooster. He was always
getting into silly trouble and Stephen Fry played his genius
butler who was always saving him. And his name was Jeeves,
and he was actually a valet. Isn't it proounced valet mango?
Not if you're British? Apparently there it's valet, But it's
(00:47):
a gentleman's gentleman. The reason I'm bringing it up is
that Jeeves in these stories is the proper one, and
he's always shuddering at these like new fangled ideas that
Bertie Wooster has. And in this one episode, Bertie gets
his pajamas monogrammed and Jeeves just can't stand this, like
he thinks it's super low class and toddrey to put
your initials on things, and he keeps wondering if it's
(01:10):
because like Bertie'll forget who he is or or whether
he owns pajamas. So he kind of scoffs at it
disapprovingly through the show, which is pretty funny because today,
you know, if you've got a monogram on a shirt
or especially a towel mango, I mean, that is seen
as like real high class definitely. So the thing is
(01:31):
they are all these like strange customs and sports and
traditions that we sort of revere today's elite and we
see them as high class, but actually they started out
with much more humble origins. And today on the show,
we're gonna take all that stuff down to peg and
that's what we're talking about it. So let's dive in. Hey,
(02:08):
their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
Mangesh how Ticketer and on the other side of the
soundproof glass, I just I can't stop looking over at
him because he is looking so damper. He's in a
top hat and tails. That is our friend and producer
Tristan Michiel. I don't think I've ever seen him looking
so fancy dressed up. No, it's amazing, man. And as
(02:30):
you know, Tristan did say he'd be dressing up as
a quote wealthy elite to that. That's what he's been
saying all week for today's show, So I imagine that's
what's going on here. I have to say, I don't
know what you. I feel like he looks a little
more like a stage magician maybe, but but whatever I mean,
he looks good. I know if he had a pack
of cards, you could go in one direction, and if
he had like a monocle and caine, he'd looked like
(02:52):
Mr Peanut, which feels like a little less elite to me.
But I do admire Tristan style. Well. To be fair,
people have drastically different ideas about what is elite. So
you can ask a dozen people on the street and
get twelve completely different answers. And you know, while things
like wealth and privilege crop up, and most people's definitions,
(03:14):
the specifics on how that wealth and privilege are displayed,
you know, varied a lot over the years, and things
that were once considered a lead or high class are
now seen as tacky, and things that started out with
this more mass appeal of since only been set aside
for the rich. And I think it's that second kind
of shift that will probably focus on today, you know,
(03:34):
that lower class things that have sort of graduated to
the upper cross. So I feel like this is maybe
our Beverly Hillbillies episode, you could say. So, you know,
we're gonna check out some of the food, the sports,
the cultural norms that started out humbly and later became
these symbols of wealth and status. So let's dive right in.
You know, Mega, what what do you think is your
(03:55):
first rags to riches story for the day. So I
thought I kicked things off with the farmhouse origins of
one of the world's fanciest sounding beers, and that, of
course is the Belgian, says on, oh man, that does
sound fancy, although maybe that was just your impeccable French
accent there. I know, we pronounced valet valets. We've got
(04:16):
it's pretty amazing. But you could say that Sazon's kind
of taste kind of fancy too, like they're typically on
the dry side in terms of deer. In fact, I
was at a wedding some years ago where we drank
Sayson for the wedding toast instead of champagne. But historically
Szan's were most popular among the working class, and that
was true right up until the nineteen fifties when they
sort of fell out of favor all together. And if
(04:37):
you cut to today, you know, there's kind of a
Sason revolution that's been going on. About a dozen or
so craft brewery started it and they started making it again.
And of course the flip side is that the beer
is now viewed as kind of niche and not as
approachable as it should be to the average drinker. Well,
and I feel like it doesn't help that Sezans aren't
served usually in these regular pint classes. I mean it
(04:59):
feels like that you really coming these wide stem glasses, right,
like a brandy glass or something like that. Yeah, that
can definitely be true. The presentation changes and sometimes people
like to swirl them. But despite the fancy modern reputation,
Sazan's actually have these really humble roots. So they first
came on the scene during the eighteenth century when they
were brewed by farmers and Wallonia, which is I guess
(05:21):
this French speaking region of southern Belgium. But rather than
being brewed for its taste or it's intoxicating effects, sazon
began as a product of necessity more than anything else.
And and that's really because the water in more rural
regions wasn't portable at the time. It contained way too
many of these pathogens that that made it unfit for drinking.
So in order to keep their workers hydrated through those
(05:42):
busy summer seasons, farmers started brewing sesans. All right, But
but hadn't people have been doing that a long time?
Like that's kind of the origin of beer in general, isn't.
I mean, you could go all the way back to
ancient Egypt. I think it was fuel for you know,
the laborers there when water was either scarce or contaminated.
So I feel like that's something that's been around for
(06:02):
a long time. That's definitely true. And Willonian farmers definitely
weren't the first to have this beer dependent workforce. To
trouble for them was how to keep enough beer on
hand to last through the hot summers. And you've got
to remember this was all prior to refrigeration, So getting
beered for men and not spoil was pretty tricky during
the months when heat and all this airborne bacteria was
at its peak. So sesons were kind of the solution
(06:26):
to this problem. Like they were brewed during the cooler
autumn and winter months and then stored until summer rolled around.
And it's actually from the strong association with the certain
time of year that the beer gets its name, since
Sezan is actually French first season. Hm. Well, I mean
that makes sense, but I'm curious though. Was was this
beer any different from other kinds being made at the
time or was it just the time of year that
(06:48):
made its stand out. Yeah, saesons were actually set apart
in a few ways. Like one thing is that they
were much hottier than the other beers, and that's because
the hops act as a natural preservative, and they also
possessed these antiseptic properties, which again was super helpful in
fighting off those pathogens. The other standout trade is that
Sayson saw we're really adaptable, Like farmers typically used whatever
(07:12):
they had on hand at the end of a harvest
to make the next year's says on. So the base
ingredients and the spices varied from farm to farm and
even barrel to barrel. Like these differences made the beer
hard to categorize, but it also made it a bit
more personal. And since the average farm worker drank as
much as uh, I think it's like five leaders of
says on every single world day. Yeah, I'm guessing they
(07:34):
didn't mind a little variety in that flavor. Five leaders
a day, I mean imagining this couldn't have been that alcoholic, right,
unless I'm actually picturing all these farmers just passed out
in their fields by noon. But that's that's crazy. Yeah.
I read that most daisons were originally around three percenters though,
which would be enough to give him a buzz, but
you know, not so strong as to incapacitate them. And
(07:55):
of course the alcohol content went up a little over
time as other people began, you know, during thinking them too.
It wasn't just the workers. In fact, many small farms
from the era were eventually turned into family breweries, and
the different saisons became kind of especially drink for their
respective towns. All right, So if they were this popular,
why did they disappear for a while, Because I think
you said they kind of vanished, what was it in
(08:16):
the in the fifties or so, Yeah, this was really
due to industrialization. So by the fifties, refrigeration and like
access to drinkable water, that all it eliminated this need
for these summer specific ales. So demand dried up pretty quickly,
and what was kind of the de facto beer of
the working class became this artisanal product instead. And you know,
(08:37):
even in today's saisons, you can still find traces of
the beer's farmhouse roots because you know, aside from the
notes of fruit and spice, you'll also taste this kind
of like earthy funkiness in the bruise, and that really
harkens back to those like grab bag ingredients that those
Wallonian farmers were using. You know. Um, it's kind of funny,
like the description that's used for that barnyard flavor is
(08:59):
actually horse blanket. Like horse blanket is sup was like
what makes sasan so appealing? I have to admit that
horse blanket isn't generally a flavor. I think I would
seek a horse blanket pringles horse. Alright, Well, since we're
on the subject of elite dining, you know, I do
want to talk about lobster for a minute, because this
(09:21):
is one of those that I just found super interesting
and didn't know a whole lot about before we were
researching for the episode. But I believe it or not,
there was actually a time when lobster meat was the
lowest priced item on a New England menu, and it
was about half the costs of chicken that was pound
for pound at least, and five times cheaper than Boston
baked beans. Of all things, cheaper than beans means something,
(09:44):
as it does, so I actually read that lobsters used
to be so abundant on the East Coast, and this
is back in the six hundreds that it wasn't uncommon
to find like two foot high piles of them just
washed up on the beach. I mean, that is incredible
to think about. Yeah, And you know, and people who
stumbled on those lobster piles probably left them right where
they were, because back then most people wanted nothing to
(10:07):
do with lobsters. They were considered disgusting, and you know,
partially because they look like insects, and partially because of
their reputation as being these bottom feeders. And honestly, none
of that is too far off. I mean, lobsters really
are distant relatives of cockroaches and spiders, and in fact,
their name actually comes from the Old English word lop,
(10:28):
which which actually means spider. So I do like lobsters
because they're so funny. I'm sure you remember how my
roommate in college, Adam, and I wanted to get a
pet lobster because it would be fun to walk around
on a leash. And we even had a name, Hector
the Lobster. But of course that's where our efforts stopped
because we didn't really do things. We just talked about things.
(10:49):
It didn't stop you guys from talking about it a lot, though,
I remember that. So I do feel like we give
lobsters this giant pass because they live in the ocean, right,
Like like if you came across lobster the forest and
it's not climbing out of a hole in the tree,
you think it was like some kind of giant monster
bug and dipping it in butter would be like the
(11:09):
furthest thing for your mind. But you know, that's even
before you get into how weird lobster anatomy is, like
their brains are in their throats, their teeth are in
their stomachs. There the whole thing is a mess. Like
I can't argue with you on that, but you know,
as unpopular as lobsters were in the seventeenth century, some
people did eat them anyway. I mean, you look at
(11:30):
Native Americans, for instance, they ate lobsters by wrapping them
in seaweed and then baking them over hot rocks. But
to be fair, lobster wasn't their first choice. I mean,
they also used the meat to fertilize their crops and
bait their fishing hooks, and they were doing that in
hopes of catching something less disgusting than lobster. Well, you know,
some colonists must have eaten them too. Write like, I know,
(11:52):
food was scarce in those early days, so I can't
imagine everyone had the luxury of being picky. What lobster
was plentiful and as alid source of protein. So people
did eat it, just not happily and always with a
certain degree of embarrassment I guess when they were eating it.
But you know, times were tough and only the wealthiest
residents could afford chicken or pork, and that's how lobster
(12:14):
became a poor person food. And so you know, lobsters
were a common meal for people like prisoners or apprentices
or enslaved people and even cats mango. I mean, that's
what it was like. And this didn't go over well,
of course, except with the cats, who weren't as worried
about what other people thought. And you know, some indentured
servants actually had a clause in their contracts saying that
(12:37):
they could be fed lobster no more than three times
a week. I mean, that's how undesirable it was. I
mean it's insane because you think of like how people
crave lobster today, right, yeah, and lobster is one of
the top requested last meals for prisoners on death row now,
so clearly these perceptions have changed significantly over the years.
(12:58):
So I am curious what mark that change and thinking,
because like, going from a trash meat to this like
posh delicacy is a pretty big leap, even for something
with ten legs, which, uh, you know, I only just
realized they have ten legs. What they had ten legs? Yeah,
I've never been counting the clause. I guess they have
two pictures and then those like eight legs beneath. And
(13:19):
apparently this is pretty common. Like I saw this piece
in Slate that almost every image of a lobster in
a cartoon or drawing. And this is even on road signs,
for like, lobster places all have eight legs instead of ten,
and uh, it's anatomically incorrect everywhere you look. So you know,
I I got his off track, but I did want
to make a point of that. But that was that
(13:41):
was very important to talk about, you know, to understand. Well,
now you're gonna see it everywhere. But how did lobsters
get so fancy? Tell me about that? All right, Well,
it actually all comes down to railroads, believe it or not.
So go back to the eighteen seventies, and trains gave
rise to this seasonal tourism in America with wealthy residents
(14:02):
of places like New York or d C. They would
head off to you know, to Boston or to Maine
to get away from that summer heat. And it was
this travel boom that led to a realization for railroad managers, namely,
you know that many passengers were clueless about how hated
lobsters were by the people on the coast, and so
this allowed the trains to serve up lobster as though
(14:24):
it was this kind of like an exotic delicacy, even
though it actually cost the railroad much less than other
meats would have, and this russe seemed to work, and passengers,
soon we're heading home from vacation raving to their neighbors
about this delicious boiled lobster that they'd had while they
were out on their fancy travels. And so word of
mouth grew from there, and lobster canning became a thing,
(14:46):
and it actually launched a whole industry around this. That's
pretty incredible, you know. Uh, What's interesting about that though,
it makes it seem like the popular opinion was really
the only thing holding lobsters back, right, Like, it's almost like,
add that there were people who are actually liking eating lobster,
it suddenly made the food tastier. Yeah, I mean that
that's true. But there actually was more to it than that,
(15:08):
because once there was really a market for lobster, it
gave the chefs an opportunity to start experimenting with different preparations.
And so you fast forward a bit, and by the
eighteen eighties they'd stumbled across a real game changer. So
they discovered that lobster looked more appetizing and tasted a
whole lot better if it was actually cooked alive rather
(15:31):
than being killed and then cooked, and that's kind of
when it went gourmet. So by the nineteen twenties, the
demand outweighed supply for the first time in history, and
the going rate for lobster rose to about what it
is today now. That said, lobster was still viewed as
food for the poor, and Maine and other parts of
New England where you know, kids were embarrassed to go
(15:53):
to school with lobster meat sandwiches, and that really only
changed during World War Two because lobster wasn't subject to
rationing like other forms of protein, and so that meant
that people from all regions and social classes began to
find out just how tasty these you know, these sea
bugs could be. So did did that egalitarian streak last
(16:14):
for long? No? I mean, by the time the war
was over in the nineteen fifties, rolls around, lobster had
fully become an American delicacy, and this was obviously seen
as a meal fit for movie stars and the one
percent rather than the prisoners and the poor people that
it had been seen as before. So we've definitely been
talking about this from a New World perspective. But I
(16:36):
am curious what Europeans thought like, did they hate lobster
as much as the North Americans? Did? You know? I
was looking into that because I actually had no idea.
And it seems like there's always been a market for
European blue lobster. It's it's it's a lot more rare
and expensive than the kind that we eat here, because
you know, Europeans never had the same reservations about eating them.
(16:56):
In fact, it was kind of the opposite. I mean,
lobster was believed to have these medicinal qualities during the
Middle Ages, even the Renaissance, and it was served pretty
often at these upper class feasts. And I fought your
story about wanting to walk a lobster on a leash
actually has a bit of a legacy. Maybe you and
Adam have been doing your reading on this, but I
was reading about this French poet named Gerard d Nerval,
(17:19):
and he supposedly had a pet lobster and he would
sometimes put a leash on it and take it for
walks at the Royal Palace in Paris. And you know,
when he got weird looks, he'd respond by saying, quote,
how is a lobster more ridiculous than a dog? A cat,
a gazelle, a lion, or any other animal. I have
an affinity for lobsters. They're easy going and serious, they
(17:41):
know the secrets of the sea, and they don't bark.
So other than the very last part of that, I
don't understand any of that. But I love the quote. Well,
I do feel like I'm in a good company, and
I like how he's marketing them not just as an
elite food, but also as an elite pet. Perhaps relutely.
But now that we've covered fancy food and drink, what
(18:03):
do you say we shift a little bit and talk
about maybe a couple of athletic past times that had
more modest beginnings. Absolutely, but first let's take a quick break.
(18:26):
You're listening to part Time Genius and we're talking about
sports that made the switch from low brow to high class.
So all right, Mago, you're up first. What comes to
mind when you think about posh sports. Well, we mentioned
this in our Winter Olympics episode, but most of the
cold weather sports are still pretty elite, and that's largely
because of the travel costs, the expensive equipment that goes
along with sports like skiing or ice skating. But you
(18:50):
know one sport that seems needlessly elite to me is
squash and uh, it's a little like racketball. It's a
racket sport, but it's played with this hardball that you
have to warm up. Have you ever seen this? I've seen.
I've actually never played, So the first time I went
onto the squash court, I watched this guy just like
squishing the ball under his foot and just rolling it
(19:11):
vigorously to warm the ball up, because the ball actually
doesn't bounce until it's warm. It's pretty ridiculous. Yeah, and
then they played a lot in India, so I've seen
it there. But but you know, there's nothing that sophisticated
about the sport except where the courts are located, Like
mostly they're in well to do neighborhoods or in these
sort of elite country clubs, which is just where you're
(19:31):
hanging out all the time. So it makes sense that
you would have played at some point. But you know,
in our Titanic episode, we mentioned that the ship actually
had its own regulations squash corps for those first class passengers,
and I feel like that's a pretty good testament to
the game's reputation as being this elite sport. But since
you bring it up today. I'm guessing squash didn't start
(19:52):
out quite so fancy. Definitely not, so I do want
to clarify. In Brooklyn, in bourm Hill, there's a New
York Sports club. You can rent a squash court for
five dollars, so you can get on the squash court
from very I like, how worried you are that people
are gonna think you're just hanging out a country class.
I can't get into country class. So squash was actually
(20:15):
derived from this game called rackets, which you know, had
been invented by prisoners in the early nineteenth century, and
the inmates at this Dinner's prison in London started getting
their exercise by hitting a ball against the prison walls
with tennis rackets, and from there the game sort of
spread beyond the prison, with many of England's lower class
citizens playing in the alleyways behind pubs, and then the
(20:38):
game spread to schools where the first four wall courts
were specifically built just for the game. And it was
at one of these schools where students invented a spinoff
rackets game called squash, and I guess rackets was played
with this hard, hollow rubber ball that tends to be
pretty predictable, you know when bounced off a wall, while
the squash ball is is so much softer and it
(21:00):
really makes for a greater variety of shots. So what
made the students switch to the softer ball, Like where
the school seeing it as a as a safety thing
with the harder balls or what you know? That's what
I was wondering at first, But it turned out the
switch happened more organically. So this was in around the
eighteen thirties. Students at Harrow School in London realized that
(21:20):
rackets was much much more challenging when you played with
a punctured ball because it just became like harder to
predict where the ball would bounce, and you have to
pay closer attention, You had to run around the court
more and and you weren't just waiting for it to
bounce back to you. And the squeezeable ball became sort
of the defining feature of their game. And that's supposedly
(21:41):
where the sport you know, got its name from. From
the way the ball kind of squashes on impact with
the wall. That makes sense. That's that's pretty cool, And
I'm guessing that the new game kind of took off,
and you don't hear too much about rackets these days,
but squash does still seem pretty popular. Yeah, I mean
it was so popular that it clips its parents sport
of the early twentieth century. And while squash now has
(22:03):
this reputation of being sort of an uppercross sport, it
is worth noting that more than twenty five million people
play squash in a hundred eighty five different countries, and
that includes a good deal of underprivileged kids to like, Like,
there's this one program out in Harlem called Street Squash,
and they promote the sport as kind of a youth
enrichment program in low income communities. This is in New York,
(22:25):
New Jersey and around that area. But the kids not
only like developed hand eye coordination and teamwork, but they
get a pretty good workout. You know. Part of the
reason I picked up squash is that, you know, just
forty five minutes of playing is really really intense. Um
actually have the stats here what one hour of squash
can burn between six hundred and a thousand calories, and
(22:46):
that puts it well above the calory account for most
other sports. Oh that's really interesting. All right, Well, I
want to talk about another exercise, and it was an
elite exercise that developed in a British internment camp. Believe
it or not. Now, this was back during World War One.
The was when the British government began to worry about
German born residents and that they might defect and become
German soldiers if they were deported from England. So instead,
(23:10):
all these German men between the ages of seventeen and
forty two were just rounded up and sent to these
camps throughout the country. Now, one of these camps there
was a German boxer and just kind of all around
great athlete in his name was Joseph Pilates, and he
had been pulled away from his life working for a
British circus. Now you can probably guess that during his
(23:31):
time in the camp, the fitness system that he created,
it actually helped improve the lives of countless fellow inmates.
So I'm curious, like Pilates was created at an internment camp,
because like, you know that that's way more intense than
I ever would have expected. You know, obviously today we
see plates is kind of like this yuppie activity in
a way for movie stars to flatten their stomachs. But
(23:53):
how did Pilates convince these people at the camp to
start doing stretches and controlled breathing exercises? You know, believe
it or not, it didn't take that much convincing. I mean,
the camp they were at was severely overcrowded, and so
much so that it eventually required its own railroad just
to handle the influx of detainees. And as you can imagine,
these conditions and the general indignity of their situation, it
(24:16):
drove a lot of inmates to depression. So many of
them honestly kind of lost the will to live and
quickly found themselves bedridden or even hospitalized in many cases.
But the sight of this suffering really struck a chord
in Pilates. And as a child, he had been incredibly sickly.
He'd racked with everything from asthma and rickets to rheumatic fever,
(24:39):
and this made him a natural target for bullies who
made his life really unpleasant as an adolescent. And the
way Pilate's recovered was devoting his life to fitness. So
he took up gymnastics and bodybuilding, martial arts, you name it.
The guy did it all, and his rehabilitation went so
well that by the age of fourteen, he was so
(25:00):
off and so fit that he was asked to pose
for anatomical charts. And anyway, it's you know, pretty amazing.
But when Pilate saw the other men in the camp
in such dire straits, he decided to try and help
them through the same means that he had helped himself.
That's pretty amazing. So had he already developed all these
exercises or were they something he came up with specifically
in the camp. Well, I think that emphasis on breathing
(25:23):
and core strengthening was already in place, but he also
came up with new techniques, Like he noticed the way
certain animals performed these fluid stretching movements while they're lying down,
and it made him wonder like if the same moves
could be applied to those who were stuck in bed.
So to that end, Pilates gathered some straps, bunk bed springs,
(25:43):
and you know a few other odds and ends and
started to build this this really kind of a crude
home fitness machine that could provide prisoners of workout while
they were lying down. I mean, that is incredible, and
obviously it feels like it must have worked, because we're
still talking about lites today. But how did this actually
impact the inmates there? Well, the morale and the camp improved,
(26:06):
and supposedly the prisoners overall help improved. And in nineteen eighteen,
a nasty case of influenza swept through England, as many
us know from our history classes. And while of course
tons of people died from the pandemic, not a single
one of Pilate's trainees succumbed to the disease. I mean,
that's the fact that Pilates took his clear evidence of
(26:26):
the effectiveness of his system. So he was then buoyed
by this success, and so we continued developing his techniques
after he was released, and a little bit later he
made his way to the United States, and that's where
his unique methods helped spark of fitness craze that was
really focused on this connection between the muscle and the mind,
and the yoga pants crowd was forever grateful, right, you know,
(26:50):
But you know now that we've seen how the other
half exercise. But what do you say we check out
a couple of cultural norms that have shifted social class
over the years, all Right, well, before we do that,
let's take one more quick break. Okay. Well, so, one
(27:16):
of the biggest status symbol shifts I've noticed in recent
years is fashion, and there are a whole lot of
movers and shakers supporting this, like CEO casual look these days,
like instead of the Armani suits and Gucci dresses or whatever,
Silicon Valley moguls have been supporting sneakers, jeans, t shirts,
and not just at the gym, but in these professional
settings and at high profile events. All right, So, but
(27:40):
what are you suggesting? I mean that dressing down is
being co opted by the elite. I mean it feels
like plenty of people still dress casually. But you know,
just because the wealthier loosening up a little doesn't mean
the rest of us have to start dressing fancy, does it?
Because that that makes me a little bit nervous if
I'm supposed to start dressing up. No, that's definitely true.
But what interested me is how different the results of
(28:01):
dressing down are for high status people compared to the
rest of us. What do you mean by that? Well,
think about what would happen if you wore sweatpants and
a hoodie to like a fancy investment meeting or or
trying to get a mortgage or something right, like, you'd
probably get some disapproving glances. But you know, there are
these unridden rules and social norms that we feel compelled
to go along with, and if we don't, we know
(28:24):
it would reflect poorly on us. So we tend to
pay attention to things like etiquette dress codes because we
don't want to be excluded and we want to maintain
our social standing. You know, people like you and I
like we play by the rules as much as possible.
But people with wealth and power have a lot more
wiggle room when it comes to social norms, Like they
can afford to risk this disapproval that comes with wearing
(28:45):
red sneakers to a meeting or you know, jim clothes
to a nice restaurant, and studies have shown that rather
than hurting their reputation, it actually improves these people standings,
like in the eyes of others. That's interesting to think about.
So why do you think that is? Like when RK.
Zuckerberg wears jeans and a T shirt to a meeting
where everybody else is in a really fancy suit, like,
(29:05):
why would his social standing go up? Well, it's really
because of how aware we all are of the social
expectations that typically, you know, someone of his wealth and
influence would follow, Like we know that he knows we
expect him to dress well and behave a certain way,
so when he doesn't conform, it comes off as this
display of power, like he can afford to risk losing
(29:26):
status by dressing down because he just has that much
status to spare. Yeah, I mean that that is interesting,
But I mean, and I kind of can't believe I'm
saying this, But isn't it possible we're being a little
too hard on the Mark Zuckerberg's of the world, Like
who's to say he's dressing down as some kind of
a power play and not just because he likes comfortable clothes.
That's fair, But you know, whether he's bucking expectations on
(29:49):
purpose or not, he's still reaping the benefits of this
high status nonconformity. Right. There's this study I read about
in courts where researchers set up all these experiments to
see how non conforming behaviors enhanced the perception of status
and listen to the breakdown of what they found. So quote,
in one study, participants perceived that a guest wearing a
(30:10):
red bow tie at a black tie country club party
was a higher status member of the club and a
better golf player than a conforming individual wearing a black
bow tie. This assumption is based on the belief that
the red bow tie wear has enough status and autonomy
to follow his preference even when they deviate from the norm. So,
in other words, all that matters is that the public
(30:32):
perceives someone is choosing not to conform, and since social
expectations are so ingrained, most of us assume that someone
like Zuckerberg actually knows what he's doing and is subverting
expectations on purpose, you know, once you lay it all out.
It reminds me of this other trend I read about,
where having lots of kids is now viewed as something
of a status symbol, because you know, looking back in history,
(30:53):
it's been just the opposite. Really, Like, the long running
stereotype is that, you know, the poor, the un edged
catd they tend to have the most children, while affluent
couples stop at maybe one or two kids. But I
was looking at this sociology professor at the University of Maryland.
His name is Steven Martin no relation to the Steve Martin.
(31:14):
I know he's a very talented guy, but he's not
a professor there. But those trends have been gradually shifting
since the late nineties seventies, and now the families having
the most kids are those with incomes in the top
one to one and a half percent. And so is
the idea that these people are having more kids as
a way to show off how rich they are. I mean,
I'm hoping that's not the main appeal of having kids
(31:36):
for them. But just like what you were saying about
public perception and casual dressing, the average person might look
at a big, well to do family and see it
as a sign of good fortune, and you know, the
inference being that parents must have plenty of time and
money to go around if they choose to have so
many kids. But I think the real takeaway is that
it's finally time for that posh Brady Bunch remake everybody
(31:59):
has wanted for so long. That's the main thing I've
been thinking about recently that has to come out. Well.
It is a strange thing to see, like kids almost
be seen as a status symbol, right, Yeah, And you
know I never would have guessed that just wearing sneakers
and a hoodie into a boardroom might help you qualify
as an elite. But let's go back to that term
elite for just a second if you don't mind, because
(32:21):
I think the word itself is an interesting example of
these shifting perceptions. So at the top of the show
we mentioned how it's been stretched to mean so many
different things over the years, and I'd actually argue that
the word has almost lost its meaning as a result
of that. Like, you know, at one point, elite was
just a word that meant the best or the best
(32:41):
in a group, So it started out as kind of
a generic compliment, and then over time it came to
refer specifically to people who were wealthy or influential, though
not necessarily in a derogatory way. But cut to today,
and that word can be used really more as a slur,
Like most people don't want to be perceived as elitist. Yeah,
(33:01):
I mean, elite now seems to come with a feeling
of like not one of us, Like squash isn't actually
superior to handball or batman or other sports. You know,
it's weird and fun, but it should actually be played
by everyone, and the same for lobster rolls and says
on like, don't let people tell you that these elite
things aren't for you. That's certainly a way to look
(33:22):
at things, but for now that what do you say?
We head off to the fact off and share a
few other shifting norms we came across this week. Yeah,
let's do it. So I and I did this great
list of things that used to be status symbols, and
(33:44):
at the top of their list was rotting pineapples. So
apparently in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, pineapples and particularly
like homegrown pineapples, were a massive investment. It costs about
five thousand pounds at the time, so if you had
any of these fruit, you definitely put on show instead
of devouring it. And in fact, pineapples used to be
(34:04):
displayed on mantles for months, just rotting there. But the
best part is that if you weren't rich enough to
have your own pineapple, there was a rental market for them,
so you could actually pick them up for parties or
just rent one for the evening. So strange, but maybe
not as strange as this fact I'm about to share. So,
according to the site British Path and the Victorian era,
(34:25):
it was actually fashionable to have rotting teeth because it
showed you were rich enough to afford sugar products and
confection areas, and so this actually led to plenty of
imitation to you would find upper class citizens that would
often paint their teeth black just to fit in or
show that they were spending their money on candy too.
(34:46):
So here's a quick one. A friendly X rays just
took over the world in the early twentieth century, and
Americans were so enamored with them that the wealthy would
just like line up to get their X ray taken
and basically seen your own bones and owning your own antle.
X ray picture became a crazy status symbol. That's so good,
all right. Well, this is from the Telegraph. Apparently when
(35:07):
lobster became too expensive in England, it was replaced with
a different ugly creature, which is the monk fish. In fact,
the article states it was branded as lobster but for
the poor. And while it was considered an easy and
cheap and you know, even tasty meal for fishermen and families,
the fish was actually banned in French markets because it
was considered too ugly and on appetizing for display. That's amazing.
(35:31):
So our pal Nick Green found these great original rules
for golf, and golf's obviously one of these elitist sports,
but when you look back at the old rules, it
actually makes the sport sounds so much less civilized. Uh.
And this rule is that if the player's ball strikes
his adversary or is caddy, the adversary loses the whole.
If it strikes his own caddy, the player loses the whole.
(35:54):
And this is from an eighteen twelve rule book at
St Andrew's course, so it's like a prestigious golf course,
but basically meant that if you were a ruthless player
and you're good enough at aiming, you could turn golf
into dodgeball with a much harder ball. Of course, I
mean that just takes the sport to another level. I
think more people would watch it if they were still
(36:15):
trying this kind of thing. For that fact, Mango, I
know we've shared a lot of really fun stuff today,
but I feel like that bit of rare violence from you,
even Mango talking about that, means you deserve the trophy.
So congratulations, thank you so much. I truly appreciate it.
All right. Well that's it for today, So from Gabe, Tristan,
(36:36):
Mango and me, thanks so much for listening. Thanks again
for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of how
stuff works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people
(36:57):
who do the important things we couldn't even begin to understand.
And Christa McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made
the theme song and does the mixy mixy sound thing.
Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing. Gay Bluesier is
our lead researcher, with support from the Research Army including
Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and Eves Jeff
Cook gets the show to your ears. Good job, Eves.
If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe,
(37:18):
And if you really really like what you've heard, maybe
you could leave a good review for us. Do we
do we forget Jason Jason who
I guess, well, what's that mango? So I know you
know this, but my family loves the writer P. G. Woodhouse,
Like his books are light and sweet and funny, and
wherever you go in India, you'll find them on my
family's bookshelves. And when I was in middle school and
in high school, there was this great TV adaptation of
Wooster and Jeeves, and it had a young Hugh Lori
(00:25):
in it, young Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie played this
rich simpleton. His name was Bertie Wooster. He was always
getting into silly trouble and Stephen Fry played his genius
butler who was always saving him. And his name was Jeeves,
and he was actually a valet. Isn't it proounced valet mango?
Not if you're British? Apparently there it's valet, But it's
(00:47):
a gentleman's gentleman. The reason I'm bringing it up is
that Jeeves in these stories is the proper one, and
he's always shuddering at these like new fangled ideas that
Bertie Wooster has. And in this one episode, Bertie gets
his pajamas monogrammed and Jeeves just can't stand this, like
he thinks it's super low class and toddrey to put
your initials on things, and he keeps wondering if it's
(01:10):
because like Bertie'll forget who he is or or whether
he owns pajamas. So he kind of scoffs at it
disapprovingly through the show, which is pretty funny because today,
you know, if you've got a monogram on a shirt
or especially a towel mango, I mean, that is seen
as like real high class definitely. So the thing is
(01:31):
they are all these like strange customs and sports and
traditions that we sort of revere today's elite and we
see them as high class, but actually they started out
with much more humble origins. And today on the show,
we're gonna take all that stuff down to peg and
that's what we're talking about it. So let's dive in. Hey,
(02:08):
their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
Mangesh how Ticketer and on the other side of the
soundproof glass, I just I can't stop looking over at
him because he is looking so damper. He's in a
top hat and tails. That is our friend and producer
Tristan Michiel. I don't think I've ever seen him looking
so fancy dressed up. No, it's amazing, man. And as
(02:30):
you know, Tristan did say he'd be dressing up as
a quote wealthy elite to that. That's what he's been
saying all week for today's show, So I imagine that's
what's going on here. I have to say, I don't
know what you. I feel like he looks a little
more like a stage magician maybe, but but whatever I mean,
he looks good. I know if he had a pack
of cards, you could go in one direction, and if
he had like a monocle and caine, he'd looked like
(02:52):
Mr Peanut, which feels like a little less elite to me.
But I do admire Tristan style. Well. To be fair,
people have drastically different ideas about what is elite. So
you can ask a dozen people on the street and
get twelve completely different answers. And you know, while things
like wealth and privilege crop up, and most people's definitions,
(03:14):
the specifics on how that wealth and privilege are displayed,
you know, varied a lot over the years, and things
that were once considered a lead or high class are
now seen as tacky, and things that started out with
this more mass appeal of since only been set aside
for the rich. And I think it's that second kind
of shift that will probably focus on today, you know,
(03:34):
that lower class things that have sort of graduated to
the upper cross. So I feel like this is maybe
our Beverly Hillbillies episode, you could say. So, you know,
we're gonna check out some of the food, the sports,
the cultural norms that started out humbly and later became
these symbols of wealth and status. So let's dive right in.
You know, Mega, what what do you think is your
(03:55):
first rags to riches story for the day. So I
thought I kicked things off with the farmhouse origins of
one of the world's fanciest sounding beers, and that, of
course is the Belgian, says on, oh man, that does
sound fancy, although maybe that was just your impeccable French
accent there. I know, we pronounced valet valets. We've got
(04:16):
it's pretty amazing. But you could say that Sazon's kind
of taste kind of fancy too, like they're typically on
the dry side in terms of deer. In fact, I
was at a wedding some years ago where we drank
Sayson for the wedding toast instead of champagne. But historically
Szan's were most popular among the working class, and that
was true right up until the nineteen fifties when they
sort of fell out of favor all together. And if
(04:37):
you cut to today, you know, there's kind of a
Sason revolution that's been going on. About a dozen or
so craft brewery started it and they started making it again.
And of course the flip side is that the beer
is now viewed as kind of niche and not as
approachable as it should be to the average drinker. Well,
and I feel like it doesn't help that Sezans aren't
served usually in these regular pint classes. I mean it
(04:59):
feels like that you really coming these wide stem glasses, right,
like a brandy glass or something like that. Yeah, that
can definitely be true. The presentation changes and sometimes people
like to swirl them. But despite the fancy modern reputation,
Sazan's actually have these really humble roots. So they first
came on the scene during the eighteenth century when they
were brewed by farmers and Wallonia, which is I guess
(05:21):
this French speaking region of southern Belgium. But rather than
being brewed for its taste or it's intoxicating effects, sazon
began as a product of necessity more than anything else.
And and that's really because the water in more rural
regions wasn't portable at the time. It contained way too
many of these pathogens that that made it unfit for drinking.
So in order to keep their workers hydrated through those
(05:42):
busy summer seasons, farmers started brewing sesans. All right, But
but hadn't people have been doing that a long time?
Like that's kind of the origin of beer in general, isn't.
I mean, you could go all the way back to
ancient Egypt. I think it was fuel for you know,
the laborers there when water was either scarce or contaminated.
So I feel like that's something that's been around for
(06:02):
a long time. That's definitely true. And Willonian farmers definitely
weren't the first to have this beer dependent workforce. To
trouble for them was how to keep enough beer on
hand to last through the hot summers. And you've got
to remember this was all prior to refrigeration, So getting
beered for men and not spoil was pretty tricky during
the months when heat and all this airborne bacteria was
at its peak. So sesons were kind of the solution
(06:26):
to this problem. Like they were brewed during the cooler
autumn and winter months and then stored until summer rolled around.
And it's actually from the strong association with the certain
time of year that the beer gets its name, since
Sezan is actually French first season. Hm. Well, I mean
that makes sense, but I'm curious though. Was was this
beer any different from other kinds being made at the
time or was it just the time of year that
(06:48):
made its stand out. Yeah, saesons were actually set apart
in a few ways. Like one thing is that they
were much hottier than the other beers, and that's because
the hops act as a natural preservative, and they also
possessed these antiseptic properties, which again was super helpful in
fighting off those pathogens. The other standout trade is that
Sayson saw we're really adaptable, Like farmers typically used whatever
(07:12):
they had on hand at the end of a harvest
to make the next year's says on. So the base
ingredients and the spices varied from farm to farm and
even barrel to barrel. Like these differences made the beer
hard to categorize, but it also made it a bit
more personal. And since the average farm worker drank as
much as uh, I think it's like five leaders of
says on every single world day. Yeah, I'm guessing they
(07:34):
didn't mind a little variety in that flavor. Five leaders
a day, I mean imagining this couldn't have been that alcoholic, right,
unless I'm actually picturing all these farmers just passed out
in their fields by noon. But that's that's crazy. Yeah.
I read that most daisons were originally around three percenters though,
which would be enough to give him a buzz, but
you know, not so strong as to incapacitate them. And
(07:55):
of course the alcohol content went up a little over
time as other people began, you know, during thinking them too.
It wasn't just the workers. In fact, many small farms
from the era were eventually turned into family breweries, and
the different saisons became kind of especially drink for their
respective towns. All right, So if they were this popular,
why did they disappear for a while, Because I think
you said they kind of vanished, what was it in
(08:16):
the in the fifties or so, Yeah, this was really
due to industrialization. So by the fifties, refrigeration and like
access to drinkable water, that all it eliminated this need
for these summer specific ales. So demand dried up pretty quickly,
and what was kind of the de facto beer of
the working class became this artisanal product instead. And you know,
(08:37):
even in today's saisons, you can still find traces of
the beer's farmhouse roots because you know, aside from the
notes of fruit and spice, you'll also taste this kind
of like earthy funkiness in the bruise, and that really
harkens back to those like grab bag ingredients that those
Wallonian farmers were using. You know. Um, it's kind of funny,
like the description that's used for that barnyard flavor is
(08:59):
actually horse blanket. Like horse blanket is sup was like
what makes sasan so appealing? I have to admit that
horse blanket isn't generally a flavor. I think I would
seek a horse blanket pringles horse. Alright, Well, since we're
on the subject of elite dining, you know, I do
want to talk about lobster for a minute, because this
(09:21):
is one of those that I just found super interesting
and didn't know a whole lot about before we were
researching for the episode. But I believe it or not,
there was actually a time when lobster meat was the
lowest priced item on a New England menu, and it
was about half the costs of chicken that was pound
for pound at least, and five times cheaper than Boston
baked beans. Of all things, cheaper than beans means something,
(09:44):
as it does, so I actually read that lobsters used
to be so abundant on the East Coast, and this
is back in the six hundreds that it wasn't uncommon
to find like two foot high piles of them just
washed up on the beach. I mean, that is incredible
to think about. Yeah, And you know, and people who
stumbled on those lobster piles probably left them right where
they were, because back then most people wanted nothing to
(10:07):
do with lobsters. They were considered disgusting, and you know,
partially because they look like insects, and partially because of
their reputation as being these bottom feeders. And honestly, none
of that is too far off. I mean, lobsters really
are distant relatives of cockroaches and spiders, and in fact,
their name actually comes from the Old English word lop,
(10:28):
which which actually means spider. So I do like lobsters
because they're so funny. I'm sure you remember how my
roommate in college, Adam, and I wanted to get a
pet lobster because it would be fun to walk around
on a leash. And we even had a name, Hector
the Lobster. But of course that's where our efforts stopped
because we didn't really do things. We just talked about things.
(10:49):
It didn't stop you guys from talking about it a lot, though,
I remember that. So I do feel like we give
lobsters this giant pass because they live in the ocean, right,
Like like if you came across lobster the forest and
it's not climbing out of a hole in the tree,
you think it was like some kind of giant monster
bug and dipping it in butter would be like the
(11:09):
furthest thing for your mind. But you know, that's even
before you get into how weird lobster anatomy is, like
their brains are in their throats, their teeth are in
their stomachs. There the whole thing is a mess. Like
I can't argue with you on that, but you know,
as unpopular as lobsters were in the seventeenth century, some
people did eat them anyway. I mean, you look at
(11:30):
Native Americans, for instance, they ate lobsters by wrapping them
in seaweed and then baking them over hot rocks. But
to be fair, lobster wasn't their first choice. I mean,
they also used the meat to fertilize their crops and
bait their fishing hooks, and they were doing that in
hopes of catching something less disgusting than lobster. Well, you know,
some colonists must have eaten them too. Write like, I know,
(11:52):
food was scarce in those early days, so I can't
imagine everyone had the luxury of being picky. What lobster
was plentiful and as alid source of protein. So people
did eat it, just not happily and always with a
certain degree of embarrassment I guess when they were eating it.
But you know, times were tough and only the wealthiest
residents could afford chicken or pork, and that's how lobster
(12:14):
became a poor person food. And so you know, lobsters
were a common meal for people like prisoners or apprentices
or enslaved people and even cats mango. I mean, that's
what it was like. And this didn't go over well,
of course, except with the cats, who weren't as worried
about what other people thought. And you know, some indentured
servants actually had a clause in their contracts saying that
(12:37):
they could be fed lobster no more than three times
a week. I mean, that's how undesirable it was. I
mean it's insane because you think of like how people
crave lobster today, right, yeah, and lobster is one of
the top requested last meals for prisoners on death row now,
so clearly these perceptions have changed significantly over the years.
(12:58):
So I am curious what mark that change and thinking,
because like, going from a trash meat to this like
posh delicacy is a pretty big leap, even for something
with ten legs, which, uh, you know, I only just
realized they have ten legs. What they had ten legs? Yeah,
I've never been counting the clause. I guess they have
two pictures and then those like eight legs beneath. And
(13:19):
apparently this is pretty common. Like I saw this piece
in Slate that almost every image of a lobster in
a cartoon or drawing. And this is even on road signs,
for like, lobster places all have eight legs instead of ten,
and uh, it's anatomically incorrect everywhere you look. So you know,
I I got his off track, but I did want
to make a point of that. But that was that
(13:41):
was very important to talk about, you know, to understand. Well,
now you're gonna see it everywhere. But how did lobsters
get so fancy? Tell me about that? All right, Well,
it actually all comes down to railroads, believe it or not.
So go back to the eighteen seventies, and trains gave
rise to this seasonal tourism in America with wealthy residents
(14:02):
of places like New York or d C. They would
head off to you know, to Boston or to Maine
to get away from that summer heat. And it was
this travel boom that led to a realization for railroad managers, namely,
you know that many passengers were clueless about how hated
lobsters were by the people on the coast, and so
this allowed the trains to serve up lobster as though
(14:24):
it was this kind of like an exotic delicacy, even
though it actually cost the railroad much less than other
meats would have, and this russe seemed to work, and passengers,
soon we're heading home from vacation raving to their neighbors
about this delicious boiled lobster that they'd had while they
were out on their fancy travels. And so word of
mouth grew from there, and lobster canning became a thing,
(14:46):
and it actually launched a whole industry around this. That's
pretty incredible, you know. Uh, What's interesting about that though,
it makes it seem like the popular opinion was really
the only thing holding lobsters back, right, Like, it's almost like,
add that there were people who are actually liking eating lobster,
it suddenly made the food tastier. Yeah, I mean that
that's true. But there actually was more to it than that,
(15:08):
because once there was really a market for lobster, it
gave the chefs an opportunity to start experimenting with different preparations.
And so you fast forward a bit, and by the
eighteen eighties they'd stumbled across a real game changer. So
they discovered that lobster looked more appetizing and tasted a
whole lot better if it was actually cooked alive rather
(15:31):
than being killed and then cooked, and that's kind of
when it went gourmet. So by the nineteen twenties, the
demand outweighed supply for the first time in history, and
the going rate for lobster rose to about what it
is today now. That said, lobster was still viewed as
food for the poor, and Maine and other parts of
New England where you know, kids were embarrassed to go
(15:53):
to school with lobster meat sandwiches, and that really only
changed during World War Two because lobster wasn't subject to
rationing like other forms of protein, and so that meant
that people from all regions and social classes began to
find out just how tasty these you know, these sea
bugs could be. So did did that egalitarian streak last
(16:14):
for long? No? I mean, by the time the war
was over in the nineteen fifties, rolls around, lobster had
fully become an American delicacy, and this was obviously seen
as a meal fit for movie stars and the one
percent rather than the prisoners and the poor people that
it had been seen as before. So we've definitely been
talking about this from a New World perspective. But I
(16:36):
am curious what Europeans thought like, did they hate lobster
as much as the North Americans? Did? You know? I
was looking into that because I actually had no idea.
And it seems like there's always been a market for
European blue lobster. It's it's it's a lot more rare
and expensive than the kind that we eat here, because
you know, Europeans never had the same reservations about eating them.
(16:56):
In fact, it was kind of the opposite. I mean,
lobster was believed to have these medicinal qualities during the
Middle Ages, even the Renaissance, and it was served pretty
often at these upper class feasts. And I fought your
story about wanting to walk a lobster on a leash
actually has a bit of a legacy. Maybe you and
Adam have been doing your reading on this, but I
was reading about this French poet named Gerard d Nerval,
(17:19):
and he supposedly had a pet lobster and he would
sometimes put a leash on it and take it for
walks at the Royal Palace in Paris. And you know,
when he got weird looks, he'd respond by saying, quote,
how is a lobster more ridiculous than a dog? A cat,
a gazelle, a lion, or any other animal. I have
an affinity for lobsters. They're easy going and serious, they
(17:41):
know the secrets of the sea, and they don't bark.
So other than the very last part of that, I
don't understand any of that. But I love the quote. Well,
I do feel like I'm in a good company, and
I like how he's marketing them not just as an
elite food, but also as an elite pet. Perhaps relutely.
But now that we've covered fancy food and drink, what
(18:03):
do you say we shift a little bit and talk
about maybe a couple of athletic past times that had
more modest beginnings. Absolutely, but first let's take a quick break.
(18:26):
You're listening to part Time Genius and we're talking about
sports that made the switch from low brow to high class.
So all right, Mago, you're up first. What comes to
mind when you think about posh sports. Well, we mentioned
this in our Winter Olympics episode, but most of the
cold weather sports are still pretty elite, and that's largely
because of the travel costs, the expensive equipment that goes
along with sports like skiing or ice skating. But you
(18:50):
know one sport that seems needlessly elite to me is
squash and uh, it's a little like racketball. It's a
racket sport, but it's played with this hardball that you
have to warm up. Have you ever seen this? I've seen.
I've actually never played, So the first time I went
onto the squash court, I watched this guy just like
squishing the ball under his foot and just rolling it
(19:11):
vigorously to warm the ball up, because the ball actually
doesn't bounce until it's warm. It's pretty ridiculous. Yeah, and
then they played a lot in India, so I've seen
it there. But but you know, there's nothing that sophisticated
about the sport except where the courts are located, Like
mostly they're in well to do neighborhoods or in these
sort of elite country clubs, which is just where you're
(19:31):
hanging out all the time. So it makes sense that
you would have played at some point. But you know,
in our Titanic episode, we mentioned that the ship actually
had its own regulations squash corps for those first class passengers,
and I feel like that's a pretty good testament to
the game's reputation as being this elite sport. But since
you bring it up today. I'm guessing squash didn't start
(19:52):
out quite so fancy. Definitely not, so I do want
to clarify. In Brooklyn, in bourm Hill, there's a New
York Sports club. You can rent a squash court for
five dollars, so you can get on the squash court
from very I like, how worried you are that people
are gonna think you're just hanging out a country class.
I can't get into country class. So squash was actually
(20:15):
derived from this game called rackets, which you know, had
been invented by prisoners in the early nineteenth century, and
the inmates at this Dinner's prison in London started getting
their exercise by hitting a ball against the prison walls
with tennis rackets, and from there the game sort of
spread beyond the prison, with many of England's lower class
citizens playing in the alleyways behind pubs, and then the
(20:38):
game spread to schools where the first four wall courts
were specifically built just for the game. And it was
at one of these schools where students invented a spinoff
rackets game called squash, and I guess rackets was played
with this hard, hollow rubber ball that tends to be
pretty predictable, you know when bounced off a wall, while
the squash ball is is so much softer and it
(21:00):
really makes for a greater variety of shots. So what
made the students switch to the softer ball, Like where
the school seeing it as a as a safety thing
with the harder balls or what you know? That's what
I was wondering at first, But it turned out the
switch happened more organically. So this was in around the
eighteen thirties. Students at Harrow School in London realized that
(21:20):
rackets was much much more challenging when you played with
a punctured ball because it just became like harder to
predict where the ball would bounce, and you have to
pay closer attention, You had to run around the court
more and and you weren't just waiting for it to
bounce back to you. And the squeezeable ball became sort
of the defining feature of their game. And that's supposedly
(21:41):
where the sport you know, got its name from. From
the way the ball kind of squashes on impact with
the wall. That makes sense. That's that's pretty cool, And
I'm guessing that the new game kind of took off,
and you don't hear too much about rackets these days,
but squash does still seem pretty popular. Yeah, I mean
it was so popular that it clips its parents sport
of the early twentieth century. And while squash now has
(22:03):
this reputation of being sort of an uppercross sport, it
is worth noting that more than twenty five million people
play squash in a hundred eighty five different countries, and
that includes a good deal of underprivileged kids to like, Like,
there's this one program out in Harlem called Street Squash,
and they promote the sport as kind of a youth
enrichment program in low income communities. This is in New York,
(22:25):
New Jersey and around that area. But the kids not
only like developed hand eye coordination and teamwork, but they
get a pretty good workout. You know. Part of the
reason I picked up squash is that, you know, just
forty five minutes of playing is really really intense. Um
actually have the stats here what one hour of squash
can burn between six hundred and a thousand calories, and
(22:46):
that puts it well above the calory account for most
other sports. Oh that's really interesting. All right, Well, I
want to talk about another exercise, and it was an
elite exercise that developed in a British internment camp. Believe
it or not. Now, this was back during World War One.
The was when the British government began to worry about
German born residents and that they might defect and become
German soldiers if they were deported from England. So instead,
(23:10):
all these German men between the ages of seventeen and
forty two were just rounded up and sent to these
camps throughout the country. Now, one of these camps there
was a German boxer and just kind of all around
great athlete in his name was Joseph Pilates, and he
had been pulled away from his life working for a
British circus. Now you can probably guess that during his
(23:31):
time in the camp, the fitness system that he created,
it actually helped improve the lives of countless fellow inmates.
So I'm curious, like Pilates was created at an internment camp,
because like, you know that that's way more intense than
I ever would have expected. You know, obviously today we
see plates is kind of like this yuppie activity in
a way for movie stars to flatten their stomachs. But
(23:53):
how did Pilates convince these people at the camp to
start doing stretches and controlled breathing exercises? You know, believe
it or not, it didn't take that much convincing. I mean,
the camp they were at was severely overcrowded, and so
much so that it eventually required its own railroad just
to handle the influx of detainees. And as you can imagine,
these conditions and the general indignity of their situation, it
(24:16):
drove a lot of inmates to depression. So many of
them honestly kind of lost the will to live and
quickly found themselves bedridden or even hospitalized in many cases.
But the sight of this suffering really struck a chord
in Pilates. And as a child, he had been incredibly sickly.
He'd racked with everything from asthma and rickets to rheumatic fever,
(24:39):
and this made him a natural target for bullies who
made his life really unpleasant as an adolescent. And the
way Pilate's recovered was devoting his life to fitness. So
he took up gymnastics and bodybuilding, martial arts, you name it.
The guy did it all, and his rehabilitation went so
well that by the age of fourteen, he was so
(25:00):
off and so fit that he was asked to pose
for anatomical charts. And anyway, it's you know, pretty amazing.
But when Pilate saw the other men in the camp
in such dire straits, he decided to try and help
them through the same means that he had helped himself.
That's pretty amazing. So had he already developed all these
exercises or were they something he came up with specifically
in the camp. Well, I think that emphasis on breathing
(25:23):
and core strengthening was already in place, but he also
came up with new techniques, Like he noticed the way
certain animals performed these fluid stretching movements while they're lying down,
and it made him wonder like if the same moves
could be applied to those who were stuck in bed.
So to that end, Pilates gathered some straps, bunk bed springs,
(25:43):
and you know a few other odds and ends and
started to build this this really kind of a crude
home fitness machine that could provide prisoners of workout while
they were lying down. I mean, that is incredible, and
obviously it feels like it must have worked, because we're
still talking about lites today. But how did this actually
impact the inmates there? Well, the morale and the camp improved,
(26:06):
and supposedly the prisoners overall help improved. And in nineteen eighteen,
a nasty case of influenza swept through England, as many
us know from our history classes. And while of course
tons of people died from the pandemic, not a single
one of Pilate's trainees succumbed to the disease. I mean,
that's the fact that Pilates took his clear evidence of
(26:26):
the effectiveness of his system. So he was then buoyed
by this success, and so we continued developing his techniques
after he was released, and a little bit later he
made his way to the United States, and that's where
his unique methods helped spark of fitness craze that was
really focused on this connection between the muscle and the mind,
and the yoga pants crowd was forever grateful, right, you know,
(26:50):
But you know now that we've seen how the other
half exercise. But what do you say we check out
a couple of cultural norms that have shifted social class
over the years, all Right, well, before we do that,
let's take one more quick break. Okay. Well, so, one
(27:16):
of the biggest status symbol shifts I've noticed in recent
years is fashion, and there are a whole lot of
movers and shakers supporting this, like CEO casual look these days,
like instead of the Armani suits and Gucci dresses or whatever,
Silicon Valley moguls have been supporting sneakers, jeans, t shirts,
and not just at the gym, but in these professional
settings and at high profile events. All right, So, but
(27:40):
what are you suggesting? I mean that dressing down is
being co opted by the elite. I mean it feels
like plenty of people still dress casually. But you know,
just because the wealthier loosening up a little doesn't mean
the rest of us have to start dressing fancy, does it?
Because that that makes me a little bit nervous if
I'm supposed to start dressing up. No, that's definitely true.
But what interested me is how different the results of
(28:01):
dressing down are for high status people compared to the
rest of us. What do you mean by that? Well,
think about what would happen if you wore sweatpants and
a hoodie to like a fancy investment meeting or or
trying to get a mortgage or something right, like, you'd
probably get some disapproving glances. But you know, there are
these unridden rules and social norms that we feel compelled
to go along with, and if we don't, we know
(28:24):
it would reflect poorly on us. So we tend to
pay attention to things like etiquette dress codes because we
don't want to be excluded and we want to maintain
our social standing. You know, people like you and I
like we play by the rules as much as possible.
But people with wealth and power have a lot more
wiggle room when it comes to social norms, Like they
can afford to risk this disapproval that comes with wearing
(28:45):
red sneakers to a meeting or you know, jim clothes
to a nice restaurant, and studies have shown that rather
than hurting their reputation, it actually improves these people standings,
like in the eyes of others. That's interesting to think about.
So why do you think that is? Like when RK.
Zuckerberg wears jeans and a T shirt to a meeting
where everybody else is in a really fancy suit, like,
(29:05):
why would his social standing go up? Well, it's really
because of how aware we all are of the social
expectations that typically, you know, someone of his wealth and
influence would follow, Like we know that he knows we
expect him to dress well and behave a certain way,
so when he doesn't conform, it comes off as this
display of power, like he can afford to risk losing
(29:26):
status by dressing down because he just has that much
status to spare. Yeah, I mean that that is interesting,
But I mean, and I kind of can't believe I'm
saying this, But isn't it possible we're being a little
too hard on the Mark Zuckerberg's of the world, Like
who's to say he's dressing down as some kind of
a power play and not just because he likes comfortable clothes.
That's fair, But you know, whether he's bucking expectations on
(29:49):
purpose or not, he's still reaping the benefits of this
high status nonconformity. Right. There's this study I read about
in courts where researchers set up all these experiments to
see how non conforming behaviors enhanced the perception of status
and listen to the breakdown of what they found. So quote,
in one study, participants perceived that a guest wearing a
(30:10):
red bow tie at a black tie country club party
was a higher status member of the club and a
better golf player than a conforming individual wearing a black
bow tie. This assumption is based on the belief that
the red bow tie wear has enough status and autonomy
to follow his preference even when they deviate from the norm. So,
in other words, all that matters is that the public
(30:32):
perceives someone is choosing not to conform, and since social
expectations are so ingrained, most of us assume that someone
like Zuckerberg actually knows what he's doing and is subverting
expectations on purpose, you know, once you lay it all out.
It reminds me of this other trend I read about,
where having lots of kids is now viewed as something
of a status symbol, because you know, looking back in history,
(30:53):
it's been just the opposite. Really, Like, the long running
stereotype is that, you know, the poor, the un edged
catd they tend to have the most children, while affluent
couples stop at maybe one or two kids. But I
was looking at this sociology professor at the University of Maryland.
His name is Steven Martin no relation to the Steve Martin.
(31:14):
I know he's a very talented guy, but he's not
a professor there. But those trends have been gradually shifting
since the late nineties seventies, and now the families having
the most kids are those with incomes in the top
one to one and a half percent. And so is
the idea that these people are having more kids as
a way to show off how rich they are. I mean,
I'm hoping that's not the main appeal of having kids
(31:36):
for them. But just like what you were saying about
public perception and casual dressing, the average person might look
at a big, well to do family and see it
as a sign of good fortune, and you know, the
inference being that parents must have plenty of time and
money to go around if they choose to have so
many kids. But I think the real takeaway is that
it's finally time for that posh Brady Bunch remake everybody
(31:59):
has wanted for so long. That's the main thing I've
been thinking about recently that has to come out. Well.
It is a strange thing to see, like kids almost
be seen as a status symbol, right, Yeah, And you
know I never would have guessed that just wearing sneakers
and a hoodie into a boardroom might help you qualify
as an elite. But let's go back to that term
elite for just a second if you don't mind, because
(32:21):
I think the word itself is an interesting example of
these shifting perceptions. So at the top of the show
we mentioned how it's been stretched to mean so many
different things over the years, and I'd actually argue that
the word has almost lost its meaning as a result
of that. Like, you know, at one point, elite was
just a word that meant the best or the best
(32:41):
in a group, So it started out as kind of
a generic compliment, and then over time it came to
refer specifically to people who were wealthy or influential, though
not necessarily in a derogatory way. But cut to today,
and that word can be used really more as a slur,
Like most people don't want to be perceived as elitist. Yeah,
(33:01):
I mean, elite now seems to come with a feeling
of like not one of us, Like squash isn't actually
superior to handball or batman or other sports. You know,
it's weird and fun, but it should actually be played
by everyone, and the same for lobster rolls and says
on like, don't let people tell you that these elite
things aren't for you. That's certainly a way to look
(33:22):
at things, but for now that what do you say?
We head off to the fact off and share a
few other shifting norms we came across this week. Yeah,
let's do it. So I and I did this great
list of things that used to be status symbols, and
(33:44):
at the top of their list was rotting pineapples. So
apparently in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, pineapples and particularly
like homegrown pineapples, were a massive investment. It costs about
five thousand pounds at the time, so if you had
any of these fruit, you definitely put on show instead
of devouring it. And in fact, pineapples used to be
(34:04):
displayed on mantles for months, just rotting there. But the
best part is that if you weren't rich enough to
have your own pineapple, there was a rental market for them,
so you could actually pick them up for parties or
just rent one for the evening. So strange, but maybe
not as strange as this fact I'm about to share. So,
according to the site British Path and the Victorian era,
(34:25):
it was actually fashionable to have rotting teeth because it
showed you were rich enough to afford sugar products and
confection areas, and so this actually led to plenty of
imitation to you would find upper class citizens that would
often paint their teeth black just to fit in or
show that they were spending their money on candy too.
(34:46):
So here's a quick one. A friendly X rays just
took over the world in the early twentieth century, and
Americans were so enamored with them that the wealthy would
just like line up to get their X ray taken
and basically seen your own bones and owning your own antle.
X ray picture became a crazy status symbol. That's so good,
all right. Well, this is from the Telegraph. Apparently when
(35:07):
lobster became too expensive in England, it was replaced with
a different ugly creature, which is the monk fish. In fact,
the article states it was branded as lobster but for
the poor. And while it was considered an easy and
cheap and you know, even tasty meal for fishermen and families,
the fish was actually banned in French markets because it
was considered too ugly and on appetizing for display. That's amazing.
(35:31):
So our pal Nick Green found these great original rules
for golf, and golf's obviously one of these elitist sports,
but when you look back at the old rules, it
actually makes the sport sounds so much less civilized. Uh.
And this rule is that if the player's ball strikes
his adversary or is caddy, the adversary loses the whole.
If it strikes his own caddy, the player loses the whole.
(35:54):
And this is from an eighteen twelve rule book at
St Andrew's course, so it's like a prestigious golf course,
but basically meant that if you were a ruthless player
and you're good enough at aiming, you could turn golf
into dodgeball with a much harder ball. Of course, I
mean that just takes the sport to another level. I
think more people would watch it if they were still
(36:15):
trying this kind of thing. For that fact, Mango, I
know we've shared a lot of really fun stuff today,
but I feel like that bit of rare violence from you,
even Mango talking about that, means you deserve the trophy.
So congratulations, thank you so much. I truly appreciate it.
All right. Well that's it for today, So from Gabe, Tristan,
(36:36):
Mango and me, thanks so much for listening. Thanks again
for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of how
stuff works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people
(36:57):
who do the important things we couldn't even begin to understand.
And Christa McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made
the theme song and does the mixy mixy sound thing.
Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing. Gay Bluesier is
our lead researcher, with support from the Research Army including
Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and Eves Jeff
Cook gets the show to your ears. Good job, Eves.
If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe,
(37:18):
And if you really really like what you've heard, maybe
you could leave a good review for us. Do we
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