September 19, 2025 • 16 mins
stockings on their legs with gravy, and families huddled around radios that sometimes broadcast secret coded messages to resistance fighters. In this mega-episode of The Strange History Podcast, host Amy dives into 25 unbelievable slices of everyday life during the World War II era—from ration books and Spam feasts to jitterbug dance crazes, zoot suits, pin-up posters, propaganda cartoons, and the birth of the baby boom. With true accounts, hilarious details, and stories stranger than fiction, this episode brings the 1940s roaring back to life in ways you’ve never heard before. If you think history is just dusty textbooks, wait until you hear how gas rationing forced one man to commute by goat-cart, or how Donald Duck ended up fighting Nazis on the big screen. Equal parts fascinating, funny, and shocking, this is the forgotten history of the 1940s you won’t find anywhere else.
Like and Subscribe:
Apple
Spotify
IHeart
Audible
Like and Subscribe:
Apple
Spotify
IHeart
Audible
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Step into the nineteen forties with me, Dear listeners, a
time when blackout curtains swallowed entire cities, spam became both
gourmet and survival food, and women risk scandal just by
putting on a pair of pants. The nineteen forties were
a decade of contradictions, fear and resilience, rationing and abundance,
(00:20):
patriotism and rebellion, and the strangest part, the things that
seemed completely normal then now look absolutely bizarre to us.
So tonight we're not just making a list, We're wandering
through the decade uncovering twenty five forgotten relics of life
in the nineteen forties. Let's begin with the darkness, not
(00:42):
metaphorical darkness, the literal kind. When the Blitz rained down
on London, the first order of business was light, or
rather the complete absence of it. Whole neighborhoods were plunged
into artificial night, every window covered with heavy blackout curves
or painted over with tar. Even a cigarette glowing in
(01:03):
the dark could draw enemy bombers overhead. Barbara Nixon, who
kept a diary during the Blitz, remembered wardens banging on
doors and shouting put that light out before Jerry sees us.
For months, families lived in rooms dimmer than movie theaters. Today,
with our glowing iPhones, Alexa devices and refrigerators that light
(01:25):
up when you open them, let's be honest, we'd all
be seen from space. But wartime wasn't just about covering windows.
It was about filling stomachs too. Enter the Victory garden.
Imagine your local suburban cul de sac, where instead of
manicured lawns and inflatable flamingos, every yard was sprouting carrots, cabbage,
(01:47):
and beans. By nineteen forty four, more than twenty million
American households were tending these little farms, and Britain dug
up flower beds in public parks to grow potatoes. Even
Eleanor Roosevelt planted one at the White House, though critics
sniff that it was unbefitting of the First Lady. She
ignored them, of course, because try telling Eleanor Roosevelt where
(02:10):
to plant her vegetables. Now, even with those gardens, food
was scarce. Enter the ration book, the little passport of
daily survival, sugar, butter, coffee, gasoline. All rationed housewives carried
their coupon books. Like they were made of gold. And
oh the recipes that came out of this era. The
(02:32):
infamous mock apple pie made from ritz crackers, yes, crackers
mixed with cinnamon, sugar, and lemon to mimic apples. Wartime
mothers swore you could hardly tell the difference, but modern
testers who've tried it claim it tastes like soggy cardboard
wearing a Halloween costume. Still people ate it gratefully, because
(02:54):
the real apples had shipped off to soldiers overseas. The
war reshaped society in other ways, too. Take fashion. The
sight of women in pants, believe it or not, was
downright scandalous before the war. Schools and churches banned them.
A Chicago mother in nineteen forty two was barred from
a PTA meeting for wearing trousers. Her response, my husband's
(03:19):
at war, I'll wear what I please. The crowd erupted
in applause. Pants became practical thanks to Rosie the Riveter
and millions of factory workers, but they also became political.
Each pair of slacks was a tiny act of rebellions
stitched into the seams. Compare that to today, when yoga
(03:40):
pants have practically become the American national uniform. And if
the pants didn't get you in trouble, the neighbors might.
Wartime neighborhoods had their own enforcers, air raid wardens. Think
of the nosiest neighbor you've ever had, Now give them
a helmet, a whistle, and the authority to yell at
you for leaving a port light on. They roamed the
(04:02):
streets at night, checking blackout curtains, barking orders, sometimes even
carrying buckets of sand to put out fires. One warden's
diary complained that most of his nights were spent chasing
people smoking cigarettes outdoors. Imagine trying to sneak a vape today,
with one of them lurking at the corner waiting to
blow the whistle while the air raid wardens kept watch
(04:25):
at home. Soldiers abroad made another piece of nineteen forties
culture famous, the trench coat. Originally designed for officers in
World War One, these coats were practical, waterproof, lightweight, full
of pockets, but once Humphrey Bogart wore one in Casablanca,
the trench coat became shorthand for mystery, romance and danger.
(04:49):
Men wore them to bars. Women borrowed them, and pretty
soon the coat was less about mud and rain and
more about style. Today the trench coat might get you
mistaken for inspector gadget, but in the nineteen forties it
was the uniform of cool. Speaking of uniforms, let's talk
food again. Because nothing uniformed soldiers ate more of was spam.
(05:14):
The humble pink meat brick, created in nineteen thirty seven,
became a lifeline during the war. Over one hundred million
cans were shipped to troops. Nikita Khrushchev later admitted without spam,
we wouldn't have been able to feed our army. British
soldiers weren't as enthusiastic. They nicknamed it ham that failed
(05:34):
the exam. Housewives at home were no luckier. Spam appeared
in casseroles, salads, pies, and omelets. There was spam with pineapple,
spam with noodles, even spam gelatin. The sheer creativity was horrifying.
Imagine being expected to storm normandy after eating that three
(05:55):
times a day. And if spam wasn't enough to make
your stomach churn, don't worry. Wartime cooking had plenty of
other curiosities. Consider powdered eggs. The government sent real eggs overseas,
leaving civilians with tins of chalky powder you mixed with
water and hoped would resemble breakfast. A British woman later
wrote in her memoir, it looked like scrambled eggs, but
(06:19):
it tasted like wallpaper paste. Housewives swapped tips like magicians.
Add a little milk, a little bacon grease if you
had it, and pray your children didn't notice spoiler. They noticed.
Strange as it sounds, powdered food wasn't the oddest wartime invention.
That prize might go to gas masks. Entire cities owned them,
(06:41):
carried them, and in some cases wore them as fashion.
There's a famous nineteen forty one photograph of London school
children walking hand in hand, each wearing a Mickey Mouse
themed gas mask. Imagine it, children looking like little alien ducks,
waddling down the street, cheerfully, singing as if this were
just another school day, and for them it was. For
(07:04):
four years, those masks were as common as backpacks. Today,
we freak out if kids have to wear masks in
a classroom. The nineteen forties kids they wore theirs in
gym class. Now, the war didn't just change what you wore,
it changed what you listened to. This was the golden
age of radio. Families huddled around their sets the way
(07:25):
we now huddle around Netflix. Jack Benny cracked jokes, Bing
Crosby krooned, and Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his famous fireside
chats reassuring a nation on the brink of chaos. During
one broadcast, so many Americans tuned in that water pressure
in major cities dropped. Millions of people all waited until
(07:46):
the program ended before flushing their toilets. Try to picture
Netflix bragging about that kind of engagement. But once the
war ended, the world didn't go back to normal. It
lurched into something stranger. Take the automobile. Gasoline rationing vanished,
and suddenly Americans were back in cars. But these weren't
(08:07):
the sleek machines we picture from the nineteen fifties. No.
In the nineteen forties, many cars were holdovers from the thirties,
patched together with mismatched doors or fenders because new models
weren't produced during the war. A Detroit mechanic later joked
you could tell a veteran's car because it rattled like
(08:27):
a toolbox. Today we complain if Apple CarPlay doesn't connect
in three seconds. Imagine driving a car whose passenger door
was borrowed from your neighbour's old chevy. The chaos of
wartime shortages also created one of the strangest industries, bootlegging
nylon stockings. When DuPont invented nylon, women swooned over stockings
(08:50):
that didn't sag like silk. But when nylon was diverted
to parachutes and rope for the war, stockings vanished from shelves.
Women lined up for blocks whenever a shipment arrived. In
one incident in Pittsburgh, more than forty thousand women stormed
stores in what newspapers called the Nylon Riots. Fistfights broke
(09:11):
out over hosiery. Compare that to today, when Amazon delivers
five pairs before you finish your coffee. Even stranger people
were happy to mend and patch everything. Socks were darned,
dresses rehemmed, shoes resold. Nothing went to waste. A Kansas
housewife recalled making a rug from her husband's worn out uniforms.
(09:34):
Every step he took in the war we now take
in our living room. Recycling wasn't a choice, it was survival.
In today's fast fashion world, where people throw away T
shirts after a season, the thrift of the nineteen forties
feels almost alien. But there was another alien feeling brewing paranoia.
(09:56):
With the war ending, America tiptoed into the Cold War.
Suddenly people were building fallout shelters in their backyards, stuffing
them with canned beans and Geiger counters. Some even held
duck and cover drills at schools, where children practiced hiding
under desks, as though a thin piece of wood could
(10:16):
save them from nuclear fire. It sounds absurd now, but
in nineteen forty nine, after the Soviets tested their first
atomic bomb, the fear was real enough to shape policy,
family life, and even architecture. And through all this seriousness,
entertainment soldiered on. Movie theaters became temples of escape, Humphrey Bogart,
(10:40):
Ingrid Bergmann, Carrie Grant. Silver screen icons lit up otherwise
grim lives, and the audiences weren't passive. In some towns,
people clapped, booed, and even shouted at the screen. One
soldier on leave wrote home about a rowdy showing of Casablanca,
saying when Bogart's said, here's looking at you, kid, half
(11:02):
the theater whistled and the other half cried. Of course,
not everything was glamorous. Consider shoe polish, one of the
unsung smells of the nineteen forties. With leather in short supply,
soldiers and civilians alike polished their shoes daily, sometimes obsessively.
(11:22):
A polished shoe was a symbol of dignity, even in
bomb shelters. People joked that you could tell an American
soldier by the shine on his boots. Today sneaker culture
might prize rare Jordans, but back then it was all
about that perfect mirror like gleam. Then there were cigarettes everywhere,
(11:43):
on the battlefield, in movie theaters, in hospitals, even in
maternity wards. Doctors actually recommended specific brands and ads. More
doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette. One campaign declared
complete with a smiling physician hole holding a pack. It
sounds outrageous now, but in the nineteen forties, lighting up
(12:05):
was as normal as shaking hands. By the end of
the decade, though, whispers of health risks were surfacing, planting
the seeds for the anti smoking crusades to come. And
what about teenagers. They didn't exist, at least not in
the way we think of them. Before the nineteen forties,
you went straight from childhood to adulthood. But wartime jobs,
(12:27):
swing music, and Hollywood created the idea of the teenager.
They wore saddle shoes, jitterbug to Benny Goodman, and scandalized
their elders by hanging around soda fountains instead of getting
married at eighteen. A Kansas City mother scolded her daughter
in nineteen forty six, stop acting like a teenager. The daughter, thrilled, replied,
(12:49):
that's exactly what I am, and just like that, a
new life stage was born. Even technology had its quirks,
home refrigerators were still a luxury. Many families relied on
ice boxes, literal boxes of ice delivered by the iceman.
Imagine the clump of boots on your porch as a
sweating deliveryman dropped a massive block of ice into your kitchen.
(13:12):
Kids loved it. Many stole chips of ice for chewing
in summer heat. Adults less so, since the melt water
had to be drained constantly. Compare that to our modern refrigerators,
which not only keep your food cold but scold you
with smart screens when you're out of milk. Another sound
of the nineteen forties, the typewriter offices clacked and dinged
(13:35):
with an endless chorus of keys. Secretaries typed letters, memos,
and even whole novels on them. The ding at the
end of each line became the heartbeat of business. In wartime.
Women who joined the workforce often found themselves behind these machines,
typing out orders that moved troops across oceans. Try explaining
(13:58):
to gen Z that people once wrote love letters on
devices that weighed thirty pounds and had no delete button.
Then there was hair. Wartime styles weren't just fashionable, they
were patriotic. Women rolled their hair into victory curls. Men
slicked theirs with briille cream. A US Army poster even
(14:18):
advised soldiers to keep a neat cut. A clean soldier
is a fighting soldier. In Britain, rationing even applied to shampoo,
so women sometimes washed their hair with soap flakes. Today
we have dry shampoo, keratin treatments, and influencers teaching twenty
step routines. Back then, soap and hope. Of course, we
(14:41):
can't leave the decade without mentioning polio. The disease terrified parents.
Every summer, pools, movie theaters, even playgrounds closed during outbreaks,
iron lungs, giant machines that helped children breathe lined hospital wards.
A New Jersey father recalled peeking through a hospital window
to see his son inside one, whispering that machine is
(15:05):
keeping him alive. The nineteen forties were full of optimism,
but also shadows like this, reminding families that safety was
never guaranteed, and finally, one of the strangest absences of
all the television. Yes, it technically existed, but in the
nineteen forties it was rare, bulky, and often a novelty
(15:27):
more than a necessity. Only a tiny fraction of households
owned one. Instead, families still gathered around radios, still went
to theaters, still relied on newspapers to feel connected. The
idea of every home having a glowing box in the
living room that was science fiction, and yet within a
decade it would reshape the world. So there it is, friends,
(15:52):
a stroll through the nineteen forties, an era where spam
was haut cuisine, blackout curtains meant survival, and the ice
man really did cometh. It was a world of resilience
and strangeness, innovation and absurdity, and while much of it
is gone, thankfully in the case of powdered eggs, some
(16:13):
pieces linger in our culture, if only in memory. Because
history isn't just about what we remember. It's about what
we forget, and how strange those forgotten things look when
we bring them back into the light. Don't forget to
rate and review, subscribe and tell your friends, because who
doesn't need a little strangeness in their life.
Step into the nineteen forties with me, Dear listeners, a
time when blackout curtains swallowed entire cities, spam became both
gourmet and survival food, and women risk scandal just by
putting on a pair of pants. The nineteen forties were
a decade of contradictions, fear and resilience, rationing and abundance,
(00:20):
patriotism and rebellion, and the strangest part, the things that
seemed completely normal then now look absolutely bizarre to us.
So tonight we're not just making a list, We're wandering
through the decade uncovering twenty five forgotten relics of life
in the nineteen forties. Let's begin with the darkness, not
(00:42):
metaphorical darkness, the literal kind. When the Blitz rained down
on London, the first order of business was light, or
rather the complete absence of it. Whole neighborhoods were plunged
into artificial night, every window covered with heavy blackout curves
or painted over with tar. Even a cigarette glowing in
(01:03):
the dark could draw enemy bombers overhead. Barbara Nixon, who
kept a diary during the Blitz, remembered wardens banging on
doors and shouting put that light out before Jerry sees us.
For months, families lived in rooms dimmer than movie theaters. Today,
with our glowing iPhones, Alexa devices and refrigerators that light
(01:25):
up when you open them, let's be honest, we'd all
be seen from space. But wartime wasn't just about covering windows.
It was about filling stomachs too. Enter the Victory garden.
Imagine your local suburban cul de sac, where instead of
manicured lawns and inflatable flamingos, every yard was sprouting carrots, cabbage,
(01:47):
and beans. By nineteen forty four, more than twenty million
American households were tending these little farms, and Britain dug
up flower beds in public parks to grow potatoes. Even
Eleanor Roosevelt planted one at the White House, though critics
sniff that it was unbefitting of the First Lady. She
ignored them, of course, because try telling Eleanor Roosevelt where
(02:10):
to plant her vegetables. Now, even with those gardens, food
was scarce. Enter the ration book, the little passport of
daily survival, sugar, butter, coffee, gasoline. All rationed housewives carried
their coupon books. Like they were made of gold. And
oh the recipes that came out of this era. The
(02:32):
infamous mock apple pie made from ritz crackers, yes, crackers
mixed with cinnamon, sugar, and lemon to mimic apples. Wartime
mothers swore you could hardly tell the difference, but modern
testers who've tried it claim it tastes like soggy cardboard
wearing a Halloween costume. Still people ate it gratefully, because
(02:54):
the real apples had shipped off to soldiers overseas. The
war reshaped society in other ways, too. Take fashion. The
sight of women in pants, believe it or not, was
downright scandalous before the war. Schools and churches banned them.
A Chicago mother in nineteen forty two was barred from
a PTA meeting for wearing trousers. Her response, my husband's
(03:19):
at war, I'll wear what I please. The crowd erupted
in applause. Pants became practical thanks to Rosie the Riveter
and millions of factory workers, but they also became political.
Each pair of slacks was a tiny act of rebellions
stitched into the seams. Compare that to today, when yoga
(03:40):
pants have practically become the American national uniform. And if
the pants didn't get you in trouble, the neighbors might.
Wartime neighborhoods had their own enforcers, air raid wardens. Think
of the nosiest neighbor you've ever had, Now give them
a helmet, a whistle, and the authority to yell at
you for leaving a port light on. They roamed the
(04:02):
streets at night, checking blackout curtains, barking orders, sometimes even
carrying buckets of sand to put out fires. One warden's
diary complained that most of his nights were spent chasing
people smoking cigarettes outdoors. Imagine trying to sneak a vape today,
with one of them lurking at the corner waiting to
blow the whistle while the air raid wardens kept watch
(04:25):
at home. Soldiers abroad made another piece of nineteen forties
culture famous, the trench coat. Originally designed for officers in
World War One, these coats were practical, waterproof, lightweight, full
of pockets, but once Humphrey Bogart wore one in Casablanca,
the trench coat became shorthand for mystery, romance and danger.
(04:49):
Men wore them to bars. Women borrowed them, and pretty
soon the coat was less about mud and rain and
more about style. Today the trench coat might get you
mistaken for inspector gadget, but in the nineteen forties it
was the uniform of cool. Speaking of uniforms, let's talk
food again. Because nothing uniformed soldiers ate more of was spam.
(05:14):
The humble pink meat brick, created in nineteen thirty seven,
became a lifeline during the war. Over one hundred million
cans were shipped to troops. Nikita Khrushchev later admitted without spam,
we wouldn't have been able to feed our army. British
soldiers weren't as enthusiastic. They nicknamed it ham that failed
(05:34):
the exam. Housewives at home were no luckier. Spam appeared
in casseroles, salads, pies, and omelets. There was spam with pineapple,
spam with noodles, even spam gelatin. The sheer creativity was horrifying.
Imagine being expected to storm normandy after eating that three
(05:55):
times a day. And if spam wasn't enough to make
your stomach churn, don't worry. Wartime cooking had plenty of
other curiosities. Consider powdered eggs. The government sent real eggs overseas,
leaving civilians with tins of chalky powder you mixed with
water and hoped would resemble breakfast. A British woman later
wrote in her memoir, it looked like scrambled eggs, but
(06:19):
it tasted like wallpaper paste. Housewives swapped tips like magicians.
Add a little milk, a little bacon grease if you
had it, and pray your children didn't notice spoiler. They noticed.
Strange as it sounds, powdered food wasn't the oddest wartime invention.
That prize might go to gas masks. Entire cities owned them,
(06:41):
carried them, and in some cases wore them as fashion.
There's a famous nineteen forty one photograph of London school
children walking hand in hand, each wearing a Mickey Mouse
themed gas mask. Imagine it, children looking like little alien ducks,
waddling down the street, cheerfully, singing as if this were
just another school day, and for them it was. For
(07:04):
four years, those masks were as common as backpacks. Today,
we freak out if kids have to wear masks in
a classroom. The nineteen forties kids they wore theirs in
gym class. Now, the war didn't just change what you wore,
it changed what you listened to. This was the golden
age of radio. Families huddled around their sets the way
(07:25):
we now huddle around Netflix. Jack Benny cracked jokes, Bing
Crosby krooned, and Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his famous fireside
chats reassuring a nation on the brink of chaos. During
one broadcast, so many Americans tuned in that water pressure
in major cities dropped. Millions of people all waited until
(07:46):
the program ended before flushing their toilets. Try to picture
Netflix bragging about that kind of engagement. But once the
war ended, the world didn't go back to normal. It
lurched into something stranger. Take the automobile. Gasoline rationing vanished,
and suddenly Americans were back in cars. But these weren't
(08:07):
the sleek machines we picture from the nineteen fifties. No.
In the nineteen forties, many cars were holdovers from the thirties,
patched together with mismatched doors or fenders because new models
weren't produced during the war. A Detroit mechanic later joked
you could tell a veteran's car because it rattled like
(08:27):
a toolbox. Today we complain if Apple CarPlay doesn't connect
in three seconds. Imagine driving a car whose passenger door
was borrowed from your neighbour's old chevy. The chaos of
wartime shortages also created one of the strangest industries, bootlegging
nylon stockings. When DuPont invented nylon, women swooned over stockings
(08:50):
that didn't sag like silk. But when nylon was diverted
to parachutes and rope for the war, stockings vanished from shelves.
Women lined up for blocks whenever a shipment arrived. In
one incident in Pittsburgh, more than forty thousand women stormed
stores in what newspapers called the Nylon Riots. Fistfights broke
(09:11):
out over hosiery. Compare that to today, when Amazon delivers
five pairs before you finish your coffee. Even stranger people
were happy to mend and patch everything. Socks were darned,
dresses rehemmed, shoes resold. Nothing went to waste. A Kansas
housewife recalled making a rug from her husband's worn out uniforms.
(09:34):
Every step he took in the war we now take
in our living room. Recycling wasn't a choice, it was survival.
In today's fast fashion world, where people throw away T
shirts after a season, the thrift of the nineteen forties
feels almost alien. But there was another alien feeling brewing paranoia.
(09:56):
With the war ending, America tiptoed into the Cold War.
Suddenly people were building fallout shelters in their backyards, stuffing
them with canned beans and Geiger counters. Some even held
duck and cover drills at schools, where children practiced hiding
under desks, as though a thin piece of wood could
(10:16):
save them from nuclear fire. It sounds absurd now, but
in nineteen forty nine, after the Soviets tested their first
atomic bomb, the fear was real enough to shape policy,
family life, and even architecture. And through all this seriousness,
entertainment soldiered on. Movie theaters became temples of escape, Humphrey Bogart,
(10:40):
Ingrid Bergmann, Carrie Grant. Silver screen icons lit up otherwise
grim lives, and the audiences weren't passive. In some towns,
people clapped, booed, and even shouted at the screen. One
soldier on leave wrote home about a rowdy showing of Casablanca,
saying when Bogart's said, here's looking at you, kid, half
(11:02):
the theater whistled and the other half cried. Of course,
not everything was glamorous. Consider shoe polish, one of the
unsung smells of the nineteen forties. With leather in short supply,
soldiers and civilians alike polished their shoes daily, sometimes obsessively.
(11:22):
A polished shoe was a symbol of dignity, even in
bomb shelters. People joked that you could tell an American
soldier by the shine on his boots. Today sneaker culture
might prize rare Jordans, but back then it was all
about that perfect mirror like gleam. Then there were cigarettes everywhere,
(11:43):
on the battlefield, in movie theaters, in hospitals, even in
maternity wards. Doctors actually recommended specific brands and ads. More
doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette. One campaign declared
complete with a smiling physician hole holding a pack. It
sounds outrageous now, but in the nineteen forties, lighting up
(12:05):
was as normal as shaking hands. By the end of
the decade, though, whispers of health risks were surfacing, planting
the seeds for the anti smoking crusades to come. And
what about teenagers. They didn't exist, at least not in
the way we think of them. Before the nineteen forties,
you went straight from childhood to adulthood. But wartime jobs,
(12:27):
swing music, and Hollywood created the idea of the teenager.
They wore saddle shoes, jitterbug to Benny Goodman, and scandalized
their elders by hanging around soda fountains instead of getting
married at eighteen. A Kansas City mother scolded her daughter
in nineteen forty six, stop acting like a teenager. The daughter, thrilled, replied,
(12:49):
that's exactly what I am, and just like that, a
new life stage was born. Even technology had its quirks,
home refrigerators were still a luxury. Many families relied on
ice boxes, literal boxes of ice delivered by the iceman.
Imagine the clump of boots on your porch as a
sweating deliveryman dropped a massive block of ice into your kitchen.
(13:12):
Kids loved it. Many stole chips of ice for chewing
in summer heat. Adults less so, since the melt water
had to be drained constantly. Compare that to our modern refrigerators,
which not only keep your food cold but scold you
with smart screens when you're out of milk. Another sound
of the nineteen forties, the typewriter offices clacked and dinged
(13:35):
with an endless chorus of keys. Secretaries typed letters, memos,
and even whole novels on them. The ding at the
end of each line became the heartbeat of business. In wartime.
Women who joined the workforce often found themselves behind these machines,
typing out orders that moved troops across oceans. Try explaining
(13:58):
to gen Z that people once wrote love letters on
devices that weighed thirty pounds and had no delete button.
Then there was hair. Wartime styles weren't just fashionable, they
were patriotic. Women rolled their hair into victory curls. Men
slicked theirs with briille cream. A US Army poster even
(14:18):
advised soldiers to keep a neat cut. A clean soldier
is a fighting soldier. In Britain, rationing even applied to shampoo,
so women sometimes washed their hair with soap flakes. Today
we have dry shampoo, keratin treatments, and influencers teaching twenty
step routines. Back then, soap and hope. Of course, we
(14:41):
can't leave the decade without mentioning polio. The disease terrified parents.
Every summer, pools, movie theaters, even playgrounds closed during outbreaks,
iron lungs, giant machines that helped children breathe lined hospital wards.
A New Jersey father recalled peeking through a hospital window
to see his son inside one, whispering that machine is
(15:05):
keeping him alive. The nineteen forties were full of optimism,
but also shadows like this, reminding families that safety was
never guaranteed, and finally, one of the strangest absences of
all the television. Yes, it technically existed, but in the
nineteen forties it was rare, bulky, and often a novelty
(15:27):
more than a necessity. Only a tiny fraction of households
owned one. Instead, families still gathered around radios, still went
to theaters, still relied on newspapers to feel connected. The
idea of every home having a glowing box in the
living room that was science fiction, and yet within a
decade it would reshape the world. So there it is, friends,
(15:52):
a stroll through the nineteen forties, an era where spam
was haut cuisine, blackout curtains meant survival, and the ice
man really did cometh. It was a world of resilience
and strangeness, innovation and absurdity, and while much of it
is gone, thankfully in the case of powdered eggs, some
(16:13):
pieces linger in our culture, if only in memory. Because
history isn't just about what we remember. It's about what
we forget, and how strange those forgotten things look when
we bring them back into the light. Don't forget to
rate and review, subscribe and tell your friends, because who
doesn't need a little strangeness in their life.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.