June 30, 2018 • 48 mins
In this classic episode, A & B revist the history of women running (or not running) races. In 1972, women were finally allowed to run in the Boston Marathon. Caroline and Cristen took a look at women and marathons.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, this is Annie, and this is Bridget and you're
listening to Steph Mom never told you. And today we
are updating an episode that is very near and dear
to me that Christen and Caroline did a couple a
(00:26):
while back on women, the history of women running marathons
or not running marathons, because for a long time it
um it was not as easy as you might think
for a for a woman to run in a marathon,
it was seen as unhealthy for her, bad for her uterus.
So many things that society wants women to not do.
(00:47):
They say, it's bad for your uterus. We don't want to,
we don't want to mess with that. Let's just let's
just not run. How about that, ladies? Exactly one of
my favorite I hope that you're okay with me sharing that.
But when Annie and I first became friends and we
first started doing the show together, we were once taking
a walk in Atlanta on the is it the skyline?
(01:08):
What's the belt line? And I'm a I'm a dog fanatic.
If I see a dog, I run up to it
and want to make friends with it, And there was
this really cute dog. I hope any shaking your head,
she doesn't want me to tell this story, but uh,
is it okay if I tell it? Go for it?
Go for it? And I said, oh, Annie, look at
that cute dog. You know, I was really excited. And
(01:29):
she said, oh, I don't really like dogs. And I said,
oh my god, you don't like dogs, Like this was
shocking information. But then she explained that because she's an
avid runner, when you're a big runner, sometimes dogs create
a problem and that have created a problem for Annie
and that thus she's not super into she she does
not have the overwhelming love of dogs and I had.
So that was the first This was very very early
(01:51):
on and meeting Annie, and I was like, oh, running
must be a huge part of her life. If it's
such a big part of her day to day that
it's it's changed her relationship to dogs. I'm got you
didn't just like I'd rather you not come on snichy anymore.
You know, I'm usually skeptical of people who don't like dogs,
(02:12):
but you know, I warmed up to you. We we
we got sart of it. We did um. That is
one of my deepest, darkest confessions. I know, as I
was sharing it, I was like, am I getting too
personal and he's just like of dogs. I like dogs
in a non outdoor running setting, and I'll just leave
(02:33):
it at that. I do love running. I I run
all the time. I will I will say my relationship
with running, I call it my coping mechanism gone wrong.
So I perhaps run too much and I'm trying to
back away from it, but never nevertheless, I am getting
I'm gearing up to run the Atlanta Pahgre Road Race,
(02:54):
which is the largest in gay in the world, and
it takes place on the fourth of July. UM, Kristen
and Caroline are going to talk about that in the
in the episode that we're about to play as well.
It's a big part of Atlanta. UM, my ex boyfriend
is running it, and I uh some prides on the line.
I gotta I gotta beat him. Yeah, that's what I
loved how we talked about this earlier off Mike. You're
(03:16):
very competitive about it. I'm extremely competitive about it, UM,
and I try to keep it like low key so
I don't I don't freak people out, but I'm very
competitive and I'm ashamed to say I started running originally
to impress a guy, and he could have cared less
he could have cared less, but it did push me too.
(03:37):
I was the only woman. We had like these weird
teams at Georgia Tech, and I was on one of them,
and I was on the fast team, and I was
the only woman on the fast team. So what's funny
to me is that the Atlanta road Race is also
kind of a big thing in my family. My dad
did it pretty much every year. My aunt Marie and
sometimes my aunt Veronica would also join him. What's funny
is that I've actually never been, but the way they
(03:58):
describe it is they're walking. Sometimes they like stop and
I got a drink. People are giving them slices of pizza.
When I was like, oh, it's this fun, free Whilan thing,
it wasn't until talking to you Annie that I'd realized, Oh,
people take it seriously how some people can take Some
people take it very very seriously. There are very competitive.
Others are basically, you know, eating tacos exactly. I've always
(04:23):
kind of wanted to stop and partake in the beer
and tacos, but yeah, I'm like, way too competitive. Plus
it's really hot. It's very hot, so I'd like to
get it. I like to finish as early as possible
to beat the heat. If that's a thing. UM, we
do have some facts for you. The rates of female
race finishers have gone up since this episode of this
(04:46):
UM Classic episode was first recorded. In the US, women
made up for fifty seven percent of finishers in or
about ten point seven million female racers. And that's up.
It's a lot more women are running in It's become
a lot more diverse. Groups like Black Girls Run are
helping to diversify running. Black Girls Run, to the groups
that I'm affiliated with, has about two thousand participants and
(05:09):
it really kind of makes it more of an inclusive space.
But what I love about Black Girls Run is that
it just sort of reminds folks that running and then
physical fitness writ large, it's for everybody. I think. You know,
it can be considered something that black women don't do
for a whole host of reasons that we should get
into for in another episode. But there are groups that
are trying to remind folks that running it's for everyone, women,
(05:31):
people of color, everyone. Yeah. Absolutely, UM. And this uptick
and running means that companies are finally starting to look
into putting out better equipment for women, like better sports
rats is uh. The sports broad episode is one of
Smithy's most popular episodes ever, so we should we should
look into that. And of course there are problems. There's
(05:53):
still problems because it's it can be cost prohibitive for
some people not easily accessible. UM. Product marketed towards women
are generally more expensive. UM. But it is it's good
that we're moving that way because some women are turned
away from sports and athletes athletic things in general because
the equipment isn't there that to give them the comfort
(06:16):
that they want when they're participating in things like that.
Oh man, I that's been the case for me. Like
I I'm pretty physically active. I don't really do it
to sort of stay fit. I do it for fun
because I enjoy it. But when I was trying to
find what would be my sport or my activity, something
that really and this sounds so silly and so high school,
I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, but so many of
(06:38):
the things I tried out I felt uncomfortable because I
didn't have the right the right accouterments, I guess I'll say.
I remember I tried soul cycle, and you know, a
lot of my friends do soul cycle. I'm not. I'm
not sole cycle, but so many of the people who
did it had the special shoes and the special like
(06:59):
very specific kinds of athletic wear, and they just had
a certain look that I, you know, did not have.
You know, I showed up in you know, raggedy shorts
and tank tap and it did make me feel uncomfortable.
And I certainly like they sell clothing there, and I
certainly couldn't have afforded, you know, the things they were hawking,
(07:19):
but everyone, everyone seemed to have it. And so when
I found the cycling program where everybody was wearing kind
of whatever, it was sort of come as you are.
And they did sell products, but they were cheaper and
sort of they didn't look they had start to explain,
but they didn't the things that they sold in the store.
The gear just looked more nondescript. And I felt much
more comfortable that you know. It just seemed to signal
(07:41):
to me that it's okay if you don't have the
right shoes, the right this, the right brand of that,
you can still take part. And so I think that
that I'm not that you brought that up, because that's
so real that the need to buy certain things is
not inclusive for everybody because not everybody can spend forty
on a specific kind of shoe or what are you? Oh? Absolutely, um?
(08:04):
And I remember I was someone who like went through
puberty at eight, So there's pictures of me in school
where everyone's like really short and I'm super monstrously tall. Um.
And I just remember running in gym and I didn't
have a sports bra and being so mortified by the
whole thing. Um. So it is important. And your your
(08:27):
boobs can break your clavical that was a fun fact
I remember from the sports bra episode. So it's important.
And I'm glad that it's becoming it's finally being taken
seriously and becoming more accessible for people. I still have
room for improvement always, but I'm glad we're moving in
(08:48):
that way. Um. And there there have been kind of
two things that have happened recently that have made me
think about running. And one is that this year's Boston
Marathon was a really to one. There was a lot
of rain, high winds, it was cold. Um, But the
show must go on. The race has never been canceled
because of weather. And some people notice something interesting most years.
(09:11):
Women traditionally have a higher dropout rate than than men,
but this year, with this weather, men had higher dropout rates,
and the dropout rate for men was up eighty percent
from the previous year for a total of about five percent,
and for women it was up only twelve percent for
a total about three point eight um. And there are
a lot of theories for why this is. Maybe it's
(09:32):
that women have higher body fat so that you could
withstand colder temperatures better. However, in two thousand and twelve,
when the problem was the opposite, when the problem was
blistering heat, women also had higher rates of finishing the race.
So another theory is that has to do with psychology.
Author of the book Endure, Alex Hutchison says that while
(09:54):
dropping out may feel like a physical thing, like you
physically can't take it anymore, it's almost always a decision
you make, almost always, and it is. I remember when
people would tell me, oh, you can, you can run
a marathon, and in my head, I'm just like, there's
absolutely no way, um. And they'd say, if you could
(10:15):
run this distance, then you'll you'll be able to run
a marathon. And I have found that they were correct.
It's if you can conquer a certain amount of mileage,
then like there's not it doesn't seem as big a difference,
like twelve to fourteen to sixteen. It sounds ridiculous. I
know what sounds ridiculous, but it doesn't sound ridiculous to
me at all. Um. I've never run a marathon, and
(10:37):
I cannot see myself ever doing it. Um that probably
the biggest physical feat I've ever done was biking a century,
which is a hundred miles. Um. I I didn't think
I could do that, and I did it. Sort of. Uh,
I'll say I did it some some if there are
(10:58):
some people listening out there, they might push back on that.
I'm going to say I did it. We'll just leave
it at that. We won't go we won't get into
the details. Um, but you're you. I think that you.
I think you would be surprised what you can endure
a lot of times. And I think the traditional wisdom
is that women are are frail, are weak. But I
love this other theory that you brought up that actually
(11:20):
one of the differences between male and female, UM, running
or big physical feats might just sort of be just
how we make decisions differently, that men are more willing
to engage in risk your behavior, so in this case,
running fast at the beginning of a race and sort
of not pacing themselves, But women might be more likely
to think, Okay, I've got this long race, let me
pace myself here, have a short burst here, you know,
(11:43):
planning out how how you're going to make this seemingly
impossible feat actually work. That that might be some of
some of the theories are that that might be part
of the difference between female and male decision making that
plays out yeah um. Studies have shown that women pace
themselves better throughout about nineteen better um and according to
(12:04):
a study of thousands and thousands of racers, almost one
hundred and thousand um that that they kept seeing that
play out over and over, and the researchers found this
held true in all age groups. Another study found that
women were better at adapting their pace and shifting their
goals mid race as compared to men. They kind of
they would make this riskier choice at the beginning of
(12:25):
a race, and then if they felt like they weren't
going to succeed in what they wanted to succeed in,
they were more likely to drop out where's women kind
of a just as they go and it's more areas
of gray. UM. So that was interesting. UM. As always
you can take that with the with grains of salt.
There's a lot of things that play. UM. I just
(12:47):
thought that was interesting. And another thing UM, I've been
thinking about a lot lately is is harassment because I
I remember so clearly this article I found UM and
it had ten tips for running for men on one
page and ten tips for running for women on one
page and one page. The page for men it was
like protein intake, change up your route, interval training, and
(13:10):
for women the tips were don't run with headphones, don't
wear a ponytail, never run alone, never run at night,
carry your license so the authorities will be able to
identify you if you're murdered. Damn, that's pretty that's a
pretty stark difference. It really is. It really is, UM
And it is something that like every time I feel
(13:32):
a lot of us who do run, we take that
into account, like what route am I going to take?
Should I tell someone where I'm going? I know that
for me personally, three different people have gifted me pepper
spray running pepper spray. UM just because they know I
run and they worry about it. UM survey survey of
(13:54):
four thousand six and seventy runners, about two thousand, five
hundred of which were female, conducted by run World, found
that over of all runners and almost six of the
respondents thirty or younger had experienced harassment while on a run,
and of those harassers were men. Some reported being followed, intimidated, propositioned,
(14:15):
and they a lot changed their route out of fear
of assault. Sixty of women said that these fears kept
them from running at night. Run with pepper spray switched
to treadmills, but that they said that the harassment still
continued indoors. A lot of women reported wearing clothes that
were less comfortable to try to cut back on harassment. Well,
(14:39):
of course it continues indoors because you have situations where
creepy dudes will you know, record your butt on a
treadmill without about your consent or knowledge, like yeah, it's
it's so. It pains me so much that even if
you switch switch up your behavior to keep yourself safe,
it doesn't it doesn't matter what you do. Will find
a way s find away, Crue've signed away. I'm pretty sure.
(15:02):
Jeff Goldbloom said that yeah, Um, and some of the
things that these women in the survey reported were like
very scary when men following them in cars, masturbating alongside them,
calling out the window that they need to stop, stop
running and to have sex with them. Um. The survey
itself was in response to I believe it was three
(15:25):
high profile murders of women while running, and um, they
were separate instances, but they happened in close successions, so
it kind of started this whole how safe is it
for for women to run? And it is a self
selecting study, and the chance of getting murdered while running
is very small. You're likelier to get hit by a car,
(15:46):
which has happened to me multiple times. Annie. I have
to be honest, I do worry about you with running
because I know that you're I hope that you don't
find me saying this a touch accident prone. So I
would be much more likely to givet you like a
helmet than pepper spray. That would be a far wiser
(16:07):
an appropriate gift. I have to say, my doctor has
recommended that I wear a helmet at all times. It's
just not useful practical in everyday life. Christmas is coming up,
so I don't so keep that in mind. Um. Yeah,
(16:27):
this is part of a larger societal problem, right, but
it's something when I saw that article with the tips
from men and women and I was just like, this
is ridiculous. It's so backwards, like your tips for a
run or to survive the run, like it's nothing about
improving your performance or anything. And of course that is
(16:48):
a stressor on on people who decide to to run. Um,
but it is. It is a hobby that I, um
really love and I'm excited about running the race. Uh
uh nervous that excited? You gotta do you gotta do
a report back to tell us how you did as
(17:08):
comparatively to your ex boyfriend. Also, if he's listening, I
want to get in his head. You're gonna choke out
there and he's gonna and he's gonna wipe the floor
with you. Dude, you are the best. I feel like
you're like my hype person. Yes if I if I could,
I would run alongside him, you know, distracting him and
(17:29):
like screaming things just so you would win. I would
I would bring the race in your favorite that I
I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. UM,
So we hope you enjoy this this update on running. Um,
this episode that Kristen Caroline did. It's more of kind
(17:49):
of the history of women running marathons. So yeah, please enjoy.
Welcome to stuff mom never told you. From House to
Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And before we go any further,
(18:12):
this episode on women and marathons is owed to a listener,
Scott Perry in Calgary. This one's for you. Scott Perry
sent us an email saying, Hey, gals, guess what The
Boston Marathon is rolling around April sixteen and it marks
the fort anniversary of women being officially allowed to run
(18:35):
in it. And so I forwarded the email to Caroline
and said, Hey, Caroline, you know it's awesome. We have
a fantastic listener named Scott who has fantastic idea about running.
And then we talked about Scott for a while and
how smart he was. Yeah, we were actually we were
going to do the podcast originally on Scott, just about Scott,
but we thought that could get creepy. Yes, Facebook profile
was private, so we decided to go with Boston Marathon's
(18:58):
a broader topic UM, and I'll kick things off with
a little marathon anecdote. While I do jog um a
couple of times a week, if I'm being good, I
try to do it at least a couple of times
a week. I'm not really a long distance runner. The
only long distance marathon I have ever participated in was
(19:21):
the Peachtree road Race, which is one of the largest
ten caves in the world. There's something like fifty five
thousand participants who run right past our building in fact
here in Atlanta, Georgia. And a few years ago, my
then boyfriend and I decided that we wanted to run
the road race. It was the fourth of July. It
(19:42):
would be something kind of fun to do together. They're
all these people. I was a recent um transplant to Atlanta,
so we didn't really think about the fact that, hey,
this spur of the moment idea means that we didn't
have a number, and we didn't realize that. We we thought,
you know, you could just you could just sort of
(20:03):
jump on the course, you could just run it. Uh,
there were so many other people who did have numbers.
Would two people without a number really make a difference.
So we took Martha the public transit down to the
star of the race. The swarms of people. It was
at the break of dawn. It was very eerie. It
was actually kind of like zombie land out here because
(20:25):
there were just people walking around and sort of next
to nothing and running gear while the sun was rising.
And ran into Sarah from stuff he missed in history class,
who of course had a number like a proper a
proper participant, and she immediately and gently informed us that
(20:48):
we might want to watch our bags and keep a
little profile because we really should not be on the
course without numbers. Will you get thrown off? Yeah, there
are people on their watching to see um few have
a number or not. Well, is it is it to
protect against like crazy people doing crazy stunts or is
it just like there's already so many people there. We
don't want unregistered runners. There were already so many people there,
(21:10):
and especially for the really serious runners to go first
or those time trials that they have to compete in
other marathons, So you don't want random folks just mucking
up the race course. But the good news is good
news for me anyway, is that my boyfriend and I
were able to run it anyway. And my favorite part
(21:31):
was passing by a Catholic church where priests was throwing
out holy water on the runners, so I like dodged
over and I got sprinkled, and I really think that
it helped me cross the finish line good. And you
didn't melt or anything. I did not melt, even though
I'm not Catholic, so hey, anything helps when you're running
that long. I I I am a very loose jogger.
(21:56):
I jogged sometimes when I feel like it, I get
into periods of jogging. That's about it. I'm imagining you
like running without using your arms for some reason, that's
my my image of loose Johnny, just flailing your shoulders. Well,
you know, I thought it was funny that you mentioned
that you and your boyfriend just like jumped in, because well,
(22:18):
it's not funny because that's how women had to run
marathons at first, because they just they weren't allowed, like
flat out women were not allowed to register for marathons.
I mean they could run, they could do what you
guys did, and you know, be unofficial participants and not
have their time count or anything. But they were not welcome. Yeah,
(22:39):
the thing is I was merely following in the footsteps
of women like Roberta Gibb and Katherine Switzer in the
Boston Marathon. Um, and since we kicked things off talking
about the Boston Marathon, we should go ahead and mentioned
that this race has been going on since eighteen nine
(23:00):
seven and two thousand twelve were only at the anniversary
of women being officially allowed to run. And like you
hinted at earlier, Caroline, there were women who jumped into
the phrase secretly in the Boston Marathon in nineteen sixty six.
The first known woman to do this was Roberta Gibb,
(23:21):
who had applied to running the Boston Marathon, but her
application was rejected because women were not According to the
official rules of amateur running at the time, women were
not allowed to run that far, which is a marathon.
We should go ahead and say is twenty six point
two miles, which makes me tired to think about it. Yeah,
(23:42):
I have no design. I see people running. I know
I have friends who just ran a half marathon. My
roommate was part of that. He came home and I
don't think he moved. I think you're flailing arms and
the shoulders would be very tired by the end of that. Sure,
probably throw something out of his socket, would um. But
GiB wasn't trying to make a statement. She wasn't trying
(24:05):
to break down barriers. She just wanted to run. She
was a twenty three year old young Navy wife and um.
She had watched the race in nineteen sixty four and
pointed out that all she saw was people. She didn't
take note of the fact that there were no women running.
She just thought it was neat. She liked the type
of people who participated, and so she wanted to get
involved also, so in nineteen sixty six she she she
(24:29):
goes to Boston and kind of hangs out on the
sidelines like, oh, no, I'm just me. No, I'm just
wearing shorts because it's March or April in Boston, you know, no,
no problem, And she ended up jumping in as the
runners came by. Yeah, there's a little bit of controversy
about where she actually jumped in, whether or not she
ran the entire course, or if she jumped in a
(24:52):
little less conspicuous spot more than the in the middle
of the marathon. But nevertheless, she crossed the finish line,
ended up getting a time of three hours twenty one
minutes forty seconds and finished not too bad, are out
of five hundred. The next year, Katherine Switzer enters the race,
(25:20):
and this is the story that has been circulating around
blogs as this year as the Boston Marathon approaches, because
there is photographic evidence of the race organizer, one of
the organizers, Jocks Simple, trying to push Switzer off the
race course, like literally literally off there, pushing her off physically. Um.
(25:45):
She ended up getting into the race officially by applying
as k V. Switzer, but she claims she's a little
sneaky about this. She claims that, oh, well, you know,
I was just I was using my initials just in
day to day business. But she also knew that if
she registered as Catherine she would not be allowed to run, right,
(26:06):
And she managed to avoid the pre race physical too
by saying that she'd been cleared earlier, so she had
a plan. She knew it was, she knew what was
going on. And if you've seen pictures at all, if
you follow any news about the race or know anything
about running history, they're a lot of pictures circulating now too,
of that of that period where this Jock Simple guy,
this crotchety old Scottish man, tried to push her out
(26:28):
of the race. And you can see where Tom Miller,
Switzer's boyfriend at the time, who was a football player
and a big dude, just like totally body checked him
and pushed him off the off of his girlfriend. Well,
the photos are somewhat disturbing because what had happened was
that as she was running the race, the the media
(26:49):
that was they had media trucks that were tracking the
people running, and there was word that spread that there
was a woman running. She's running along in this with
the number the number important, with a kind of a
floppy sweatsuit on, and so they start taking pictures of her,
and this catches Jock simples attention and some of the
(27:11):
media people start heckling Jock Simple, saying, hey, look, there's
a there's a woman running in your race. And he
was just incensed, specifically the fact that she had a number,
and according to Switzer, he grabbed her and said, get
the hell out of my race and give me those numbers.
But like you said, her football boyfriend basically just tackled him,
(27:35):
got him out of the way, and she kept running
across the finish line with the time of four twenty yeah,
which she admits is not the best time, but she
said that she was determined to finish the race on
her hands and knees if she had to just approve
that a woman could, because she realized at that time
how important this whole thing was. If she was like
being physically pushed out of the race by one of
(27:57):
its organizers, she just realized how important it was that
her particip the patient be visible. Yeah. Sports Illustrated interviewed
Jock Simple a couple of years after this incident, and
he was completely unapologetic. He claimed that, you know, he
was not motivated so much by getting a woman off
the track, but as an unauthorized number holder to make
(28:21):
up a phrase. Well, Switzer actually endured a lot of
criticism for her hobby, which is running um back in
nineteen sixty six, the year before the marathon, when she
was training at Lynchburg College in Virginia, that you know,
after the whole roberta GiB thing that had attracted the
attention of the Associated Press who ran an article, and
(28:41):
after the article ran, Switzer got a letter saying that
God will strike you dead if she tried to run. Yeah, well,
being a runner training because she was training with the
men's team, and so this attracted all sorts of negative attention.
And I just can't I just can't imagine thinking that
running with men as a woman is enough to get
me struck down, smited, smoked, might be smoked, struck by lightning.
(29:06):
I do think we should clarify that that. Switzer said
that the negative attention at the time was not coming
from the other male runners. The guys were fine with
her running alongside them and probably thought it was cool.
But she said that the real negativity came from race
organizers and the media and athletic associations that were clinging
(29:28):
to this notion that running long distances was bad for women.
Bad And when I say bad, I mean physically bad. Um.
And we should talk about a little bit earlier in
the history of running, and especially in the Olympics, that,
because of poor coaching styles, when women would run longer races,
(29:51):
like there was a half mile in the Olympics and
a number of women who competed in it actually collapsed
before they crossed the finish line, be because they were
exerting so much energy at the outset. They were completely
exhausted by the end. Yeah, And there was just this
general belief that any long distance running put too much
of a strain on women. It interfered with their ability
(30:12):
to get pregnant and have children, so that it would
it would hurt your uterus to run well. And that
was also connected with, um, some female runners complaining of
irregular periods, so doctors assumed that by extension, if you're
running a lot your periods are irregular, you must be
damaging your uterus, and by God, you won't be able
to have children. Right um. The website Run like a
(30:35):
Girl film dot com. It's a it's it's based on
the film Run Like a Girl. That's a pretty self
explanatory right um. And they have a lot of running
history on their website and uh. In women were allowed
to compete in the Olympic track and field events, but
because of their exhausted condition at the end of the
eight final, the event was dropped until nineteen sixty. So
(30:56):
apparently they looked so shabby at the end that people
were like, whoa, whoa, how is your uterus? Do you
need to sit down? Maybe we shouldn't do this don't
run so far. And because of that, women were certainly
barred from running twenty six point two miles, which is
the official length of a marathon. But once Switzer competed
(31:21):
um then in nineteen sixty nine, and a lot of
this does happen. These barriers are being broken. At the
Boston Marathon. We have Cambridge native Seremi Burman who won
in the women's division. But if this was unofficial because
women had not yet been invited, Yeah, In nineteen seventy,
Berman finished with a strong time of three hours, five
(31:42):
minutes and seven seconds, at which point a reporter asked,
why did you do it? And at the time she
was steaming, like, are you kidding me? I just got
this incredible time, and I ran and I did great,
and your your question for me is why did I
do it? And she just said that they were just
so paid tronizing the reporters, the observers of the race.
(32:03):
But now her attitude has changed a little bit about
why they asked that question. Yeah. She talks a lot
about how the headlines of the time would be like
housewife running. There was always this had to be this
juxtaposition of some kind of stereotypically, you know, feminine occupation
with what at the time was a masculine pursuit of running,
even though today women comprise I think it's fifty cent
(32:28):
of competitors in road races UM. And then in nineteen
seventy two, the Boston Marathon finally UM officially invites women
to enter, and Nina Kusick wins for the women. And
this is a funny little tidbit. Katherine Switzer ends up
getting third in the women's but her trophy was broken.
(32:50):
And when Jack Simple, the curmudgeon ly scott It, presents
her with this broken trophy, he said that she deserved
it broken. Yep. He said that he'd been mad at
her for years, five years, that Jack Simple holds a grudge.
He does, and he I there was an article that
basically our interview with him a couple of years later
(33:11):
where he basically was like, yeah, I'm mad about it.
Still he wasn't he wasn't gonna let it go. Well,
if you look at the photos of him when he's
trying to push her off the track, there he has
a crazed look in his eye, and when he's talking
about that, it seems like because of that photographic evidence.
Perhaps the sting was a little bit sharper. Yeah. Katherine
(33:33):
Switzer in one interview did talk about how you could
when her boyfriend hit him, you could you could hear
like his body being shoved aside, like the hit was
so hard. So maybe his maybe his pride was hurt
in addition to his body when that happened. So in
(33:59):
the buss SA marathon opens up to women, but the
Olympics did not open up a women's marathon until the
l A Games in nineteen eighty four, and they were
still hung up. The i o C, the International Olympic Committee,
was still hung up on that idea that running a
(34:19):
long distance would injure women and especially their ability to
have children. UM. But several studies would emerge, especially from
an Atlanta physiologist, David Martin at Georgia State University, who
found that UM, women's long distance running was just fine
for them, and because of the way the female body
(34:41):
stores fat, there was this notion that we might actually
be better equipped for long distance running compared to men.
And research like that was really crucial and convincing the
i o C to allow women to run. I mean
it's I think it's interesting that this body, this governing organization,
had to be really convinced that women could participate. Well,
(35:02):
I mean we could we could spin it at a
positive light and say, well, that's good that they were
looking out for what at the time was maybe the
best for women. If there was if if medical knowledge
had not figured out what was going on inside of
women's bodies, and maybe they just thought women really weren't
capable of it. Yeah, but I mean as training, as
(35:24):
training has improved, women have obviously shown that they're capable
of achieving good times and marathons and not passing out.
But here is the question. When it comes to men
running women running, will we ever catch up to the guys?
Not exactly. There's a Time magazine article from two thousand
(35:47):
eight where Tim Noaks, a professor of exercise and sports
science at the University of Cape Town, not that whole
fat store theory. You know that women have more fuel
to propel them in a in a long long distance race. Um.
He says that there is a lot to do with
weight when comparing men and women and testosterone and muscle. Yes,
(36:10):
if you, um, if you compare male and female just
recreational runners, not people who would be competing in the Olympics.
The guys are about twenty two pounds heavier than the women.
So if you look at wreck runners, that fat store
idea might hold some more sway because women are lighter
and they have these a longer term energy stores, whereas
(36:32):
men with higher muscle mass can burn calories quicker. But
it's for those those short, shorter bursts of energy. But
Noakes says that the world record marathon runners of each
gender are very close and weight. I mean, if you
look at those runners, they are paired down to there's
not these single ounce of body fat on them. And
he says, um that if you don't match for weight,
(36:53):
then yeah, women get the advantage. But once you match
for weight, men still run about ten percent faster and
it has to do with higher levels of testosterone that
builds up the muscle that gets your foot off the
ground as quickly as possible. Right, So he's basically saying,
you know, when you look at just a general group
(37:13):
of runners, whether it's in a marathon or a five
k or whatever, um, a woman running next to a
bigger man is going to be able to move that
mass around faster because she's lighter. So she might get
a better time. But when you when you have runners
of about the same weight a man and a woman,
the man will propel himself faster. Yeah, from any distance
(37:36):
between a hundred meters and a thousand kilometers, women are
consistently nine to eleven percent slower than men, So chances
are women are not going to catch up to men
on the race. But that does not mean that women
have not been getting faster times right. A two thousand
Duke study looked at women's increasing participation and their increasing speed,
(38:01):
both in running and in swimming, and they point out
that before the seventies, few women ran for recreation, and
amateur regulations on competitive racing barred them from distances longer
than four kilometers, which we've touched on, and they have
found that as women's participation in sports, not just running,
has dramatically increased over the past century, the disparities and
(38:22):
performance have decreased because women are being trained better than
they were in the past, but nevertheless you still see
a pretty big gender gap. They point out that the
women's hundred meter world records set um and this was
back in the year two thousands, so that might have
been broken since then. But they say that it's about
the same as a men's record for a hundred meters
(38:44):
at seventy five years earlier. But I mean, nevertheless, if
you chart the UM world records of men's running versus
women's running, women's times have decreased at a faster rate
in the past forty years, and men's just because our
participation has increased exponentially compared to them, because we were
(39:05):
not previously allowed to run very far. Yeah, and talking
about participation, we should probably look at why people are participating, uh,
and competing in these in these crazy races that I
won't even watch because they exhaust me. Why would you
want to run twenty six miles. It's like that Brian
Reagan bit where he's talking about like all those iron
(39:26):
Man type competitions and he's like, I'm sure you don't
have to do this. I always want to say that
to runners, like you don't. You can come inside and
have a sandwich. I can just drive you. Uh, it's
on my way. Yeah, that's gonna be a short drive,
like twenty minutes. UM study looked at people's motivations for
running their first marathons and found that there are some
(39:47):
common reasons for men and women, and those are to
finish the race in a certain time, to feel proud
of myself, and to improve my health. They found that
men were more likely to provide reasons to do with
achievement and competition, whereas women were more likely motivated by
psychological reasons such as to improve mood. But we should
also point out that the study author did not think
(40:10):
that you could extrapolate that data to say that men
are inherently more competitive than women, but that maybe this
is an opportunity for all of us to expand our
goals for running, whether it be to just cross the
finish line and feel great about doing it, or cross
the finish line in a certain amount of time, or
for me sneak onto a course and cross the finish
(40:32):
line without getting caught. Right, and they do saide an
author um in this article that talks about the study.
They said an author who says that it doesn't really
matter what your motivation is, whether it's I'm going to
beat everyone and get the best time in the world,
or I want to slim down and get healthy. You
should just have a reason that works for you. Like
my friend Nolan tells me this all the time, Like
when I'm complaining about how I don't run, and he's like, well,
(40:55):
you should run and get in shape and stuff, and
I'm like, well, but I don't even I just go
home and get my pajamas. And he just says that
it's important just to have a reason to run, whether
it's I want to run so that I can get
good enough to be in a marathon, or I want
to run to get healthy and feel better about myself. Well,
I will tell you this if you would like a
pajama related excuse to run. Anytime I run, I sleep
(41:19):
so much better that night. Yeah, it's true. So it
will make your pajama ton more enjoyable, more enjoyable, and
more worthwhile, so that I would encourage you to run
for the sake of your of your pajamas UM and
also joined the legions of women who are running like
we mentioned earlier. Is this coming from Running USA dot org.
(41:41):
More women compete in road races than men do now UM.
According to their two thousand eleven data, in five ks,
ten ks, and half marathons, women made up a majority
of the competitors, but still more men do run the
full marathon than women. Fifty nine percent of men versus women,
(42:04):
And I thought it was interesting they break down the
demographics of these runners, these long distance runners. Who are
these people? And they looked at the women who participate,
and by a long shot, the women. These women runners
are college educated, have earned a college diploma. As a
pest to the general population, which is something like a
quarter like um, they tend to be affluent, and their
(42:25):
active participants who train year round and on average, bought
three point two pairs of running shoes in the past year.
And I think I've had my running shoes for about
four years. I'm not one of these people. But you
can be, Caroline, you can be Yeah. I guess I've
just been busy. I don't have time to be running
for four hours. Well, hey, why don't we? Why don't we?
(42:48):
In this podcast? With one final fun fact as to
why why do we call it a marathon in the
first place. This was one thing that popped up in
my head as we were researching this. I just to
know where this whole marathon and why is it twenty
six miles? Uh? For you fact nerds out there like me,
(43:08):
this is coming from Live Science Marathon. The word marathon
comes from a place called Marathon in Greece. It's a station.
It is not the gas station Marathon. It is a
city in Greece. And the origin of the marathon relates
back to the founder of the International Olympic Committee. While
(43:29):
he was planning for the first Olympics, he came up
with this twenty It was about twenty five miles at
the time, twenty five mile run. Um in relation to
this chapter from Greek history with the run of a
soldier from a battlefield near the town of Marathon, Greece
to Athens in four ninety BC in order to announce
(43:53):
to the Athenians that they the Greeks, had defeated the Persians.
And apparently though the soldier delivered the message of victory
and then he died. Well, good for him, I mean,
at least he made it. I would have dropped dead
way before that. He was clearly running very fast. Yeah,
a lot of the twenty five entrance in that very
(44:14):
first marathon in the very first Olympics, in only nine
runners hit the finish line. And then you have the
Boston Marathon that was started soon thereafter, I believe in
the following year. Actually, um as a directly related to
the Olympics. So there's your marathon knowledge. Now. I know
that we have only focused on marathon running. There's a
(44:37):
lot more running topics that we could cover, but we
figured that that would be biting off more than we
could chew in one podcast. So for now, let us
know your thoughts on women and marathons. Oh and by
the way, I have never snuck into another race. If
I and if I run the Peach Tree this year,
I will do it with a number, so you know
(44:58):
I there we go. It was. It was ignorance on
my part. Race organizers of the world can rest easy. Yeah,
I don't want I don't want some racing police at
my door after this podcast because exist yes in my mind. Well,
let us know your stories about running mom stuff at
Discovery dot Com is email address you can send it to.
(45:19):
And in the meantime, we've got a couple emails here
to share. This first one is from Chelsea in relation
to our Richest Women in the World podcast and uh,
at one point we made what she called a snarky
little quip about John Walton's kit built plane crash. She writes,
I understand the confusion, but I wanted to clear up
(45:40):
about kitplane and experimental aircraft. Experimental aircraft is a name
that is attached to any plane that is not built
in a factory. My dad has been working on a
kit plane for more than half my life. The point
of building a plane yourself is not to save money
and cut corners, thereby producing a slip shot or subpar product.
These planes are a labor of love. Some planes maybe
(46:03):
low quality, but one should not assume that all such
planes are unsafe, are less airworthy. I've had to explain
to so many people that yes, he's building a plane, no,
not a model, and yes the kind of people actually writed.
He has put an intense amount of love, craftsmanship's stubbornness,
and plane an whole retention into his plane. I'm crazy
proud of him and want others to know that a
(46:24):
home built plane is nothing to fear, especially if you
know that it was made by a true engineer. That's great. Yeah,
I'm glad she informed us of that, because I, like
probably many people, had this idea of a kit that
was not as safe. I was imagining just like a
like an inflatable plane. Yeah, well that would be dangerous
(46:46):
for sure. Okay. This email is from Anson who is
writing about our women pilot episode. I am writing from
yellow Knife, Northwest Territories, which was recently voted as the
most female friendly airport in the world. This is a
result of an initiative called Girls Fly Too, started by
a helicopter pilot at Trinity Helicopters here in yellow Knife.
(47:06):
She wanted to fly five hundred young women and girls
in one day three weeks ago. The event took place
under sunny skies and over four girls between ages seven
and twenty two were flown. A friend who took her
thirteen year old daughter reports that her daughter was thrilled
and now talks of nothing else than becoming a helicopter pilot.
I grew up around aviation and am now involved in
air traffic survey that services with nav Canada, Canada's provider
(47:28):
of a T C and a T S. I talked
to many many female pilots on the radio. Maybe about
a third of all my contacts are female and increase
since I started in this business ten years ago. The
future is very bright for women who want to become
pilots and organizations like the Royal Canadian Air Cadets, the
ninety nine, the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association and the
Experimental Aircraft Association are working hard at getting out the
(47:52):
message that girls can fly too. Excellent, so thanks to
everyone who's written in mom Stuff at discovery dot com,
where you can send your letters. You can also find
us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at mom
Stuff Podcast, and there are a ton of articles all
about running at our home website, it's how stuff works
(48:14):
dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Stuff from the Future. Join how stuf Work staff as
we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
The how stup Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it
today on iTunes.
Hi, this is Annie, and this is Bridget and you're
listening to Steph Mom never told you. And today we
are updating an episode that is very near and dear
to me that Christen and Caroline did a couple a
(00:26):
while back on women, the history of women running marathons
or not running marathons, because for a long time it
um it was not as easy as you might think
for a for a woman to run in a marathon,
it was seen as unhealthy for her, bad for her uterus.
So many things that society wants women to not do.
(00:47):
They say, it's bad for your uterus. We don't want to,
we don't want to mess with that. Let's just let's
just not run. How about that, ladies? Exactly one of
my favorite I hope that you're okay with me sharing that.
But when Annie and I first became friends and we
first started doing the show together, we were once taking
a walk in Atlanta on the is it the skyline?
(01:08):
What's the belt line? And I'm a I'm a dog fanatic.
If I see a dog, I run up to it
and want to make friends with it, And there was
this really cute dog. I hope any shaking your head,
she doesn't want me to tell this story, but uh,
is it okay if I tell it? Go for it?
Go for it? And I said, oh, Annie, look at
that cute dog. You know, I was really excited. And
(01:29):
she said, oh, I don't really like dogs. And I said,
oh my god, you don't like dogs, Like this was
shocking information. But then she explained that because she's an
avid runner, when you're a big runner, sometimes dogs create
a problem and that have created a problem for Annie
and that thus she's not super into she she does
not have the overwhelming love of dogs and I had.
So that was the first This was very very early
(01:51):
on and meeting Annie, and I was like, oh, running
must be a huge part of her life. If it's
such a big part of her day to day that
it's it's changed her relationship to dogs. I'm got you
didn't just like I'd rather you not come on snichy anymore.
You know, I'm usually skeptical of people who don't like dogs,
(02:12):
but you know, I warmed up to you. We we
we got sart of it. We did um. That is
one of my deepest, darkest confessions. I know, as I
was sharing it, I was like, am I getting too
personal and he's just like of dogs. I like dogs
in a non outdoor running setting, and I'll just leave
(02:33):
it at that. I do love running. I I run
all the time. I will I will say my relationship
with running, I call it my coping mechanism gone wrong.
So I perhaps run too much and I'm trying to
back away from it, but never nevertheless, I am getting
I'm gearing up to run the Atlanta Pahgre Road Race,
(02:54):
which is the largest in gay in the world, and
it takes place on the fourth of July. UM, Kristen
and Caroline are going to talk about that in the
in the episode that we're about to play as well.
It's a big part of Atlanta. UM, my ex boyfriend
is running it, and I uh some prides on the line.
I gotta I gotta beat him. Yeah, that's what I
loved how we talked about this earlier off Mike. You're
(03:16):
very competitive about it. I'm extremely competitive about it, UM,
and I try to keep it like low key so
I don't I don't freak people out, but I'm very
competitive and I'm ashamed to say I started running originally
to impress a guy, and he could have cared less
he could have cared less, but it did push me too.
(03:37):
I was the only woman. We had like these weird
teams at Georgia Tech, and I was on one of them,
and I was on the fast team, and I was
the only woman on the fast team. So what's funny
to me is that the Atlanta road Race is also
kind of a big thing in my family. My dad
did it pretty much every year. My aunt Marie and
sometimes my aunt Veronica would also join him. What's funny
is that I've actually never been, but the way they
(03:58):
describe it is they're walking. Sometimes they like stop and
I got a drink. People are giving them slices of pizza.
When I was like, oh, it's this fun, free Whilan thing,
it wasn't until talking to you Annie that I'd realized, Oh,
people take it seriously how some people can take Some
people take it very very seriously. There are very competitive.
Others are basically, you know, eating tacos exactly. I've always
(04:23):
kind of wanted to stop and partake in the beer
and tacos, but yeah, I'm like, way too competitive. Plus
it's really hot. It's very hot, so I'd like to
get it. I like to finish as early as possible
to beat the heat. If that's a thing. UM, we
do have some facts for you. The rates of female
race finishers have gone up since this episode of this
(04:46):
UM Classic episode was first recorded. In the US, women
made up for fifty seven percent of finishers in or
about ten point seven million female racers. And that's up.
It's a lot more women are running in It's become
a lot more diverse. Groups like Black Girls Run are
helping to diversify running. Black Girls Run, to the groups
that I'm affiliated with, has about two thousand participants and
(05:09):
it really kind of makes it more of an inclusive space.
But what I love about Black Girls Run is that
it just sort of reminds folks that running and then
physical fitness writ large, it's for everybody. I think. You know,
it can be considered something that black women don't do
for a whole host of reasons that we should get
into for in another episode. But there are groups that
are trying to remind folks that running it's for everyone, women,
(05:31):
people of color, everyone. Yeah. Absolutely, UM. And this uptick
and running means that companies are finally starting to look
into putting out better equipment for women, like better sports
rats is uh. The sports broad episode is one of
Smithy's most popular episodes ever, so we should we should
look into that. And of course there are problems. There's
(05:53):
still problems because it's it can be cost prohibitive for
some people not easily accessible. UM. Product marketed towards women
are generally more expensive. UM. But it is it's good
that we're moving that way because some women are turned
away from sports and athletes athletic things in general because
the equipment isn't there that to give them the comfort
(06:16):
that they want when they're participating in things like that.
Oh man, I that's been the case for me. Like
I I'm pretty physically active. I don't really do it
to sort of stay fit. I do it for fun
because I enjoy it. But when I was trying to
find what would be my sport or my activity, something
that really and this sounds so silly and so high school,
I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, but so many of
(06:38):
the things I tried out I felt uncomfortable because I
didn't have the right the right accouterments, I guess I'll say.
I remember I tried soul cycle, and you know, a
lot of my friends do soul cycle. I'm not. I'm
not sole cycle, but so many of the people who
did it had the special shoes and the special like
(06:59):
very specific kinds of athletic wear, and they just had
a certain look that I, you know, did not have.
You know, I showed up in you know, raggedy shorts
and tank tap and it did make me feel uncomfortable.
And I certainly like they sell clothing there, and I
certainly couldn't have afforded, you know, the things they were hawking,
(07:19):
but everyone, everyone seemed to have it. And so when
I found the cycling program where everybody was wearing kind
of whatever, it was sort of come as you are.
And they did sell products, but they were cheaper and
sort of they didn't look they had start to explain,
but they didn't the things that they sold in the store.
The gear just looked more nondescript. And I felt much
more comfortable that you know. It just seemed to signal
(07:41):
to me that it's okay if you don't have the
right shoes, the right this, the right brand of that,
you can still take part. And so I think that
that I'm not that you brought that up, because that's
so real that the need to buy certain things is
not inclusive for everybody because not everybody can spend forty
on a specific kind of shoe or what are you? Oh? Absolutely, um?
(08:04):
And I remember I was someone who like went through
puberty at eight, So there's pictures of me in school
where everyone's like really short and I'm super monstrously tall. Um.
And I just remember running in gym and I didn't
have a sports bra and being so mortified by the
whole thing. Um. So it is important. And your your
(08:27):
boobs can break your clavical that was a fun fact
I remember from the sports bra episode. So it's important.
And I'm glad that it's becoming it's finally being taken
seriously and becoming more accessible for people. I still have
room for improvement always, but I'm glad we're moving in
(08:48):
that way. Um. And there there have been kind of
two things that have happened recently that have made me
think about running. And one is that this year's Boston
Marathon was a really to one. There was a lot
of rain, high winds, it was cold. Um, But the
show must go on. The race has never been canceled
because of weather. And some people notice something interesting most years.
(09:11):
Women traditionally have a higher dropout rate than than men,
but this year, with this weather, men had higher dropout rates,
and the dropout rate for men was up eighty percent
from the previous year for a total of about five percent,
and for women it was up only twelve percent for
a total about three point eight um. And there are
a lot of theories for why this is. Maybe it's
(09:32):
that women have higher body fat so that you could
withstand colder temperatures better. However, in two thousand and twelve,
when the problem was the opposite, when the problem was
blistering heat, women also had higher rates of finishing the race.
So another theory is that has to do with psychology.
Author of the book Endure, Alex Hutchison says that while
(09:54):
dropping out may feel like a physical thing, like you
physically can't take it anymore, it's almost always a decision
you make, almost always, and it is. I remember when
people would tell me, oh, you can, you can run
a marathon, and in my head, I'm just like, there's
absolutely no way, um. And they'd say, if you could
(10:15):
run this distance, then you'll you'll be able to run
a marathon. And I have found that they were correct.
It's if you can conquer a certain amount of mileage,
then like there's not it doesn't seem as big a difference,
like twelve to fourteen to sixteen. It sounds ridiculous. I
know what sounds ridiculous, but it doesn't sound ridiculous to
me at all. Um. I've never run a marathon, and
(10:37):
I cannot see myself ever doing it. Um that probably
the biggest physical feat I've ever done was biking a century,
which is a hundred miles. Um. I I didn't think
I could do that, and I did it. Sort of. Uh,
I'll say I did it some some if there are
(10:58):
some people listening out there, they might push back on that.
I'm going to say I did it. We'll just leave
it at that. We won't go we won't get into
the details. Um, but you're you. I think that you.
I think you would be surprised what you can endure
a lot of times. And I think the traditional wisdom
is that women are are frail, are weak. But I
love this other theory that you brought up that actually
(11:20):
one of the differences between male and female, UM, running
or big physical feats might just sort of be just
how we make decisions differently, that men are more willing
to engage in risk your behavior, so in this case,
running fast at the beginning of a race and sort
of not pacing themselves, But women might be more likely
to think, Okay, I've got this long race, let me
pace myself here, have a short burst here, you know,
(11:43):
planning out how how you're going to make this seemingly
impossible feat actually work. That that might be some of
some of the theories are that that might be part
of the difference between female and male decision making that
plays out yeah um. Studies have shown that women pace
themselves better throughout about nineteen better um and according to
(12:04):
a study of thousands and thousands of racers, almost one
hundred and thousand um that that they kept seeing that
play out over and over, and the researchers found this
held true in all age groups. Another study found that
women were better at adapting their pace and shifting their
goals mid race as compared to men. They kind of
they would make this riskier choice at the beginning of
(12:25):
a race, and then if they felt like they weren't
going to succeed in what they wanted to succeed in,
they were more likely to drop out where's women kind
of a just as they go and it's more areas
of gray. UM. So that was interesting. UM. As always
you can take that with the with grains of salt.
There's a lot of things that play. UM. I just
(12:47):
thought that was interesting. And another thing UM, I've been
thinking about a lot lately is is harassment because I
I remember so clearly this article I found UM and
it had ten tips for running for men on one
page and ten tips for running for women on one
page and one page. The page for men it was
like protein intake, change up your route, interval training, and
(13:10):
for women the tips were don't run with headphones, don't
wear a ponytail, never run alone, never run at night,
carry your license so the authorities will be able to
identify you if you're murdered. Damn, that's pretty that's a
pretty stark difference. It really is. It really is, UM
And it is something that like every time I feel
(13:32):
a lot of us who do run, we take that
into account, like what route am I going to take?
Should I tell someone where I'm going? I know that
for me personally, three different people have gifted me pepper
spray running pepper spray. UM just because they know I
run and they worry about it. UM survey survey of
(13:54):
four thousand six and seventy runners, about two thousand, five
hundred of which were female, conducted by run World, found
that over of all runners and almost six of the
respondents thirty or younger had experienced harassment while on a run,
and of those harassers were men. Some reported being followed, intimidated, propositioned,
(14:15):
and they a lot changed their route out of fear
of assault. Sixty of women said that these fears kept
them from running at night. Run with pepper spray switched
to treadmills, but that they said that the harassment still
continued indoors. A lot of women reported wearing clothes that
were less comfortable to try to cut back on harassment. Well,
(14:39):
of course it continues indoors because you have situations where
creepy dudes will you know, record your butt on a
treadmill without about your consent or knowledge, like yeah, it's
it's so. It pains me so much that even if
you switch switch up your behavior to keep yourself safe,
it doesn't it doesn't matter what you do. Will find
a way s find away, Crue've signed away. I'm pretty sure.
(15:02):
Jeff Goldbloom said that yeah, Um, and some of the
things that these women in the survey reported were like
very scary when men following them in cars, masturbating alongside them,
calling out the window that they need to stop, stop
running and to have sex with them. Um. The survey
itself was in response to I believe it was three
(15:25):
high profile murders of women while running, and um, they
were separate instances, but they happened in close successions, so
it kind of started this whole how safe is it
for for women to run? And it is a self
selecting study, and the chance of getting murdered while running
is very small. You're likelier to get hit by a car,
(15:46):
which has happened to me multiple times. Annie. I have
to be honest, I do worry about you with running
because I know that you're I hope that you don't
find me saying this a touch accident prone. So I
would be much more likely to givet you like a
helmet than pepper spray. That would be a far wiser
(16:07):
an appropriate gift. I have to say, my doctor has
recommended that I wear a helmet at all times. It's
just not useful practical in everyday life. Christmas is coming up,
so I don't so keep that in mind. Um. Yeah,
(16:27):
this is part of a larger societal problem, right, but
it's something when I saw that article with the tips
from men and women and I was just like, this
is ridiculous. It's so backwards, like your tips for a
run or to survive the run, like it's nothing about
improving your performance or anything. And of course that is
(16:48):
a stressor on on people who decide to to run. Um,
but it is. It is a hobby that I, um
really love and I'm excited about running the race. Uh
uh nervous that excited? You gotta do you gotta do
a report back to tell us how you did as
(17:08):
comparatively to your ex boyfriend. Also, if he's listening, I
want to get in his head. You're gonna choke out
there and he's gonna and he's gonna wipe the floor
with you. Dude, you are the best. I feel like
you're like my hype person. Yes if I if I could,
I would run alongside him, you know, distracting him and
(17:29):
like screaming things just so you would win. I would
I would bring the race in your favorite that I
I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. UM,
So we hope you enjoy this this update on running. Um,
this episode that Kristen Caroline did. It's more of kind
(17:49):
of the history of women running marathons. So yeah, please enjoy.
Welcome to stuff mom never told you. From House to
Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And before we go any further,
(18:12):
this episode on women and marathons is owed to a listener,
Scott Perry in Calgary. This one's for you. Scott Perry
sent us an email saying, Hey, gals, guess what The
Boston Marathon is rolling around April sixteen and it marks
the fort anniversary of women being officially allowed to run
(18:35):
in it. And so I forwarded the email to Caroline
and said, Hey, Caroline, you know it's awesome. We have
a fantastic listener named Scott who has fantastic idea about running.
And then we talked about Scott for a while and
how smart he was. Yeah, we were actually we were
going to do the podcast originally on Scott, just about Scott,
but we thought that could get creepy. Yes, Facebook profile
was private, so we decided to go with Boston Marathon's
(18:58):
a broader topic UM, and I'll kick things off with
a little marathon anecdote. While I do jog um a
couple of times a week, if I'm being good, I
try to do it at least a couple of times
a week. I'm not really a long distance runner. The
only long distance marathon I have ever participated in was
(19:21):
the Peachtree road Race, which is one of the largest
ten caves in the world. There's something like fifty five
thousand participants who run right past our building in fact
here in Atlanta, Georgia. And a few years ago, my
then boyfriend and I decided that we wanted to run
the road race. It was the fourth of July. It
(19:42):
would be something kind of fun to do together. They're
all these people. I was a recent um transplant to Atlanta,
so we didn't really think about the fact that, hey,
this spur of the moment idea means that we didn't
have a number, and we didn't realize that. We we thought,
you know, you could just you could just sort of
(20:03):
jump on the course, you could just run it. Uh,
there were so many other people who did have numbers.
Would two people without a number really make a difference.
So we took Martha the public transit down to the
star of the race. The swarms of people. It was
at the break of dawn. It was very eerie. It
was actually kind of like zombie land out here because
(20:25):
there were just people walking around and sort of next
to nothing and running gear while the sun was rising.
And ran into Sarah from stuff he missed in history class,
who of course had a number like a proper a
proper participant, and she immediately and gently informed us that
(20:48):
we might want to watch our bags and keep a
little profile because we really should not be on the
course without numbers. Will you get thrown off? Yeah, there
are people on their watching to see um few have
a number or not. Well, is it is it to
protect against like crazy people doing crazy stunts or is
it just like there's already so many people there. We
don't want unregistered runners. There were already so many people there,
(21:10):
and especially for the really serious runners to go first
or those time trials that they have to compete in
other marathons, So you don't want random folks just mucking
up the race course. But the good news is good
news for me anyway, is that my boyfriend and I
were able to run it anyway. And my favorite part
(21:31):
was passing by a Catholic church where priests was throwing
out holy water on the runners, so I like dodged
over and I got sprinkled, and I really think that
it helped me cross the finish line good. And you
didn't melt or anything. I did not melt, even though
I'm not Catholic, so hey, anything helps when you're running
that long. I I I am a very loose jogger.
(21:56):
I jogged sometimes when I feel like it, I get
into periods of jogging. That's about it. I'm imagining you
like running without using your arms for some reason, that's
my my image of loose Johnny, just flailing your shoulders. Well,
you know, I thought it was funny that you mentioned
that you and your boyfriend just like jumped in, because well,
(22:18):
it's not funny because that's how women had to run
marathons at first, because they just they weren't allowed, like
flat out women were not allowed to register for marathons.
I mean they could run, they could do what you
guys did, and you know, be unofficial participants and not
have their time count or anything. But they were not welcome. Yeah,
(22:39):
the thing is I was merely following in the footsteps
of women like Roberta Gibb and Katherine Switzer in the
Boston Marathon. Um, and since we kicked things off talking
about the Boston Marathon, we should go ahead and mentioned
that this race has been going on since eighteen nine
(23:00):
seven and two thousand twelve were only at the anniversary
of women being officially allowed to run. And like you
hinted at earlier, Caroline, there were women who jumped into
the phrase secretly in the Boston Marathon in nineteen sixty six.
The first known woman to do this was Roberta Gibb,
(23:21):
who had applied to running the Boston Marathon, but her
application was rejected because women were not According to the
official rules of amateur running at the time, women were
not allowed to run that far, which is a marathon.
We should go ahead and say is twenty six point
two miles, which makes me tired to think about it. Yeah,
(23:42):
I have no design. I see people running. I know
I have friends who just ran a half marathon. My
roommate was part of that. He came home and I
don't think he moved. I think you're flailing arms and
the shoulders would be very tired by the end of that. Sure,
probably throw something out of his socket, would um. But
GiB wasn't trying to make a statement. She wasn't trying
(24:05):
to break down barriers. She just wanted to run. She
was a twenty three year old young Navy wife and um.
She had watched the race in nineteen sixty four and
pointed out that all she saw was people. She didn't
take note of the fact that there were no women running.
She just thought it was neat. She liked the type
of people who participated, and so she wanted to get
involved also, so in nineteen sixty six she she she
(24:29):
goes to Boston and kind of hangs out on the
sidelines like, oh, no, I'm just me. No, I'm just
wearing shorts because it's March or April in Boston, you know, no,
no problem, And she ended up jumping in as the
runners came by. Yeah, there's a little bit of controversy
about where she actually jumped in, whether or not she
ran the entire course, or if she jumped in a
(24:52):
little less conspicuous spot more than the in the middle
of the marathon. But nevertheless, she crossed the finish line,
ended up getting a time of three hours twenty one
minutes forty seconds and finished not too bad, are out
of five hundred. The next year, Katherine Switzer enters the race,
(25:20):
and this is the story that has been circulating around
blogs as this year as the Boston Marathon approaches, because
there is photographic evidence of the race organizer, one of
the organizers, Jocks Simple, trying to push Switzer off the
race course, like literally literally off there, pushing her off physically. Um.
(25:45):
She ended up getting into the race officially by applying
as k V. Switzer, but she claims she's a little
sneaky about this. She claims that, oh, well, you know,
I was just I was using my initials just in
day to day business. But she also knew that if
she registered as Catherine she would not be allowed to run, right,
(26:06):
And she managed to avoid the pre race physical too
by saying that she'd been cleared earlier, so she had
a plan. She knew it was, she knew what was
going on. And if you've seen pictures at all, if
you follow any news about the race or know anything
about running history, they're a lot of pictures circulating now too,
of that of that period where this Jock Simple guy,
this crotchety old Scottish man, tried to push her out
(26:28):
of the race. And you can see where Tom Miller,
Switzer's boyfriend at the time, who was a football player
and a big dude, just like totally body checked him
and pushed him off the off of his girlfriend. Well,
the photos are somewhat disturbing because what had happened was
that as she was running the race, the the media
(26:49):
that was they had media trucks that were tracking the
people running, and there was word that spread that there
was a woman running. She's running along in this with
the number the number important, with a kind of a
floppy sweatsuit on, and so they start taking pictures of her,
and this catches Jock simples attention and some of the
(27:11):
media people start heckling Jock Simple, saying, hey, look, there's
a there's a woman running in your race. And he
was just incensed, specifically the fact that she had a number,
and according to Switzer, he grabbed her and said, get
the hell out of my race and give me those numbers.
But like you said, her football boyfriend basically just tackled him,
(27:35):
got him out of the way, and she kept running
across the finish line with the time of four twenty yeah,
which she admits is not the best time, but she
said that she was determined to finish the race on
her hands and knees if she had to just approve
that a woman could, because she realized at that time
how important this whole thing was. If she was like
being physically pushed out of the race by one of
(27:57):
its organizers, she just realized how important it was that
her particip the patient be visible. Yeah. Sports Illustrated interviewed
Jock Simple a couple of years after this incident, and
he was completely unapologetic. He claimed that, you know, he
was not motivated so much by getting a woman off
the track, but as an unauthorized number holder to make
(28:21):
up a phrase. Well, Switzer actually endured a lot of
criticism for her hobby, which is running um back in
nineteen sixty six, the year before the marathon, when she
was training at Lynchburg College in Virginia, that you know,
after the whole roberta GiB thing that had attracted the
attention of the Associated Press who ran an article, and
(28:41):
after the article ran, Switzer got a letter saying that
God will strike you dead if she tried to run. Yeah, well,
being a runner training because she was training with the
men's team, and so this attracted all sorts of negative attention.
And I just can't I just can't imagine thinking that
running with men as a woman is enough to get
me struck down, smited, smoked, might be smoked, struck by lightning.
(29:06):
I do think we should clarify that that. Switzer said
that the negative attention at the time was not coming
from the other male runners. The guys were fine with
her running alongside them and probably thought it was cool.
But she said that the real negativity came from race
organizers and the media and athletic associations that were clinging
(29:28):
to this notion that running long distances was bad for women.
Bad And when I say bad, I mean physically bad. Um.
And we should talk about a little bit earlier in
the history of running, and especially in the Olympics, that,
because of poor coaching styles, when women would run longer races,
(29:51):
like there was a half mile in the Olympics and
a number of women who competed in it actually collapsed
before they crossed the finish line, be because they were
exerting so much energy at the outset. They were completely
exhausted by the end. Yeah, And there was just this
general belief that any long distance running put too much
of a strain on women. It interfered with their ability
(30:12):
to get pregnant and have children, so that it would
it would hurt your uterus to run well. And that
was also connected with, um, some female runners complaining of
irregular periods, so doctors assumed that by extension, if you're
running a lot your periods are irregular, you must be
damaging your uterus, and by God, you won't be able
to have children. Right um. The website Run like a
(30:35):
Girl film dot com. It's a it's it's based on
the film Run Like a Girl. That's a pretty self
explanatory right um. And they have a lot of running
history on their website and uh. In women were allowed
to compete in the Olympic track and field events, but
because of their exhausted condition at the end of the
eight final, the event was dropped until nineteen sixty. So
(30:56):
apparently they looked so shabby at the end that people
were like, whoa, whoa, how is your uterus? Do you
need to sit down? Maybe we shouldn't do this don't
run so far. And because of that, women were certainly
barred from running twenty six point two miles, which is
the official length of a marathon. But once Switzer competed
(31:21):
um then in nineteen sixty nine, and a lot of
this does happen. These barriers are being broken. At the
Boston Marathon. We have Cambridge native Seremi Burman who won
in the women's division. But if this was unofficial because
women had not yet been invited, Yeah, In nineteen seventy,
Berman finished with a strong time of three hours, five
(31:42):
minutes and seven seconds, at which point a reporter asked,
why did you do it? And at the time she
was steaming, like, are you kidding me? I just got
this incredible time, and I ran and I did great,
and your your question for me is why did I
do it? And she just said that they were just
so paid tronizing the reporters, the observers of the race.
(32:03):
But now her attitude has changed a little bit about
why they asked that question. Yeah. She talks a lot
about how the headlines of the time would be like
housewife running. There was always this had to be this
juxtaposition of some kind of stereotypically, you know, feminine occupation
with what at the time was a masculine pursuit of running,
even though today women comprise I think it's fifty cent
(32:28):
of competitors in road races UM. And then in nineteen
seventy two, the Boston Marathon finally UM officially invites women
to enter, and Nina Kusick wins for the women. And
this is a funny little tidbit. Katherine Switzer ends up
getting third in the women's but her trophy was broken.
(32:50):
And when Jack Simple, the curmudgeon ly scott It, presents
her with this broken trophy, he said that she deserved
it broken. Yep. He said that he'd been mad at
her for years, five years, that Jack Simple holds a grudge.
He does, and he I there was an article that
basically our interview with him a couple of years later
(33:11):
where he basically was like, yeah, I'm mad about it.
Still he wasn't he wasn't gonna let it go. Well,
if you look at the photos of him when he's
trying to push her off the track, there he has
a crazed look in his eye, and when he's talking
about that, it seems like because of that photographic evidence.
Perhaps the sting was a little bit sharper. Yeah. Katherine
(33:33):
Switzer in one interview did talk about how you could
when her boyfriend hit him, you could you could hear
like his body being shoved aside, like the hit was
so hard. So maybe his maybe his pride was hurt
in addition to his body when that happened. So in
(33:59):
the buss SA marathon opens up to women, but the
Olympics did not open up a women's marathon until the
l A Games in nineteen eighty four, and they were
still hung up. The i o C, the International Olympic Committee,
was still hung up on that idea that running a
(34:19):
long distance would injure women and especially their ability to
have children. UM. But several studies would emerge, especially from
an Atlanta physiologist, David Martin at Georgia State University, who
found that UM, women's long distance running was just fine
for them, and because of the way the female body
(34:41):
stores fat, there was this notion that we might actually
be better equipped for long distance running compared to men.
And research like that was really crucial and convincing the
i o C to allow women to run. I mean
it's I think it's interesting that this body, this governing organization,
had to be really convinced that women could participate. Well,
(35:02):
I mean we could we could spin it at a
positive light and say, well, that's good that they were
looking out for what at the time was maybe the
best for women. If there was if if medical knowledge
had not figured out what was going on inside of
women's bodies, and maybe they just thought women really weren't
capable of it. Yeah, but I mean as training, as
(35:24):
training has improved, women have obviously shown that they're capable
of achieving good times and marathons and not passing out.
But here is the question. When it comes to men
running women running, will we ever catch up to the guys?
Not exactly. There's a Time magazine article from two thousand
(35:47):
eight where Tim Noaks, a professor of exercise and sports
science at the University of Cape Town, not that whole
fat store theory. You know that women have more fuel
to propel them in a in a long long distance race. Um.
He says that there is a lot to do with
weight when comparing men and women and testosterone and muscle. Yes,
(36:10):
if you, um, if you compare male and female just
recreational runners, not people who would be competing in the Olympics.
The guys are about twenty two pounds heavier than the women.
So if you look at wreck runners, that fat store
idea might hold some more sway because women are lighter
and they have these a longer term energy stores, whereas
(36:32):
men with higher muscle mass can burn calories quicker. But
it's for those those short, shorter bursts of energy. But
Noakes says that the world record marathon runners of each
gender are very close and weight. I mean, if you
look at those runners, they are paired down to there's
not these single ounce of body fat on them. And
he says, um that if you don't match for weight,
(36:53):
then yeah, women get the advantage. But once you match
for weight, men still run about ten percent faster and
it has to do with higher levels of testosterone that
builds up the muscle that gets your foot off the
ground as quickly as possible. Right, So he's basically saying,
you know, when you look at just a general group
(37:13):
of runners, whether it's in a marathon or a five
k or whatever, um, a woman running next to a
bigger man is going to be able to move that
mass around faster because she's lighter. So she might get
a better time. But when you when you have runners
of about the same weight a man and a woman,
the man will propel himself faster. Yeah, from any distance
(37:36):
between a hundred meters and a thousand kilometers, women are
consistently nine to eleven percent slower than men, So chances
are women are not going to catch up to men
on the race. But that does not mean that women
have not been getting faster times right. A two thousand
Duke study looked at women's increasing participation and their increasing speed,
(38:01):
both in running and in swimming, and they point out
that before the seventies, few women ran for recreation, and
amateur regulations on competitive racing barred them from distances longer
than four kilometers, which we've touched on, and they have
found that as women's participation in sports, not just running,
has dramatically increased over the past century, the disparities and
(38:22):
performance have decreased because women are being trained better than
they were in the past, but nevertheless you still see
a pretty big gender gap. They point out that the
women's hundred meter world records set um and this was
back in the year two thousands, so that might have
been broken since then. But they say that it's about
the same as a men's record for a hundred meters
(38:44):
at seventy five years earlier. But I mean, nevertheless, if
you chart the UM world records of men's running versus
women's running, women's times have decreased at a faster rate
in the past forty years, and men's just because our
participation has increased exponentially compared to them, because we were
(39:05):
not previously allowed to run very far. Yeah, and talking
about participation, we should probably look at why people are participating, uh,
and competing in these in these crazy races that I
won't even watch because they exhaust me. Why would you
want to run twenty six miles. It's like that Brian
Reagan bit where he's talking about like all those iron
(39:26):
Man type competitions and he's like, I'm sure you don't
have to do this. I always want to say that
to runners, like you don't. You can come inside and
have a sandwich. I can just drive you. Uh, it's
on my way. Yeah, that's gonna be a short drive,
like twenty minutes. UM study looked at people's motivations for
running their first marathons and found that there are some
(39:47):
common reasons for men and women, and those are to
finish the race in a certain time, to feel proud
of myself, and to improve my health. They found that
men were more likely to provide reasons to do with
achievement and competition, whereas women were more likely motivated by
psychological reasons such as to improve mood. But we should
also point out that the study author did not think
(40:10):
that you could extrapolate that data to say that men
are inherently more competitive than women, but that maybe this
is an opportunity for all of us to expand our
goals for running, whether it be to just cross the
finish line and feel great about doing it, or cross
the finish line in a certain amount of time, or
for me sneak onto a course and cross the finish
(40:32):
line without getting caught. Right, and they do saide an
author um in this article that talks about the study.
They said an author who says that it doesn't really
matter what your motivation is, whether it's I'm going to
beat everyone and get the best time in the world,
or I want to slim down and get healthy. You
should just have a reason that works for you. Like
my friend Nolan tells me this all the time, Like
when I'm complaining about how I don't run, and he's like, well,
(40:55):
you should run and get in shape and stuff, and
I'm like, well, but I don't even I just go
home and get my pajamas. And he just says that
it's important just to have a reason to run, whether
it's I want to run so that I can get
good enough to be in a marathon, or I want
to run to get healthy and feel better about myself. Well,
I will tell you this if you would like a
pajama related excuse to run. Anytime I run, I sleep
(41:19):
so much better that night. Yeah, it's true. So it
will make your pajama ton more enjoyable, more enjoyable, and
more worthwhile, so that I would encourage you to run
for the sake of your of your pajamas UM and
also joined the legions of women who are running like
we mentioned earlier. Is this coming from Running USA dot org.
(41:41):
More women compete in road races than men do now UM.
According to their two thousand eleven data, in five ks,
ten ks, and half marathons, women made up a majority
of the competitors, but still more men do run the
full marathon than women. Fifty nine percent of men versus women,
(42:04):
And I thought it was interesting they break down the
demographics of these runners, these long distance runners. Who are
these people? And they looked at the women who participate,
and by a long shot, the women. These women runners
are college educated, have earned a college diploma. As a
pest to the general population, which is something like a
quarter like um, they tend to be affluent, and their
(42:25):
active participants who train year round and on average, bought
three point two pairs of running shoes in the past year.
And I think I've had my running shoes for about
four years. I'm not one of these people. But you
can be, Caroline, you can be Yeah. I guess I've
just been busy. I don't have time to be running
for four hours. Well, hey, why don't we? Why don't we?
(42:48):
In this podcast? With one final fun fact as to
why why do we call it a marathon in the
first place. This was one thing that popped up in
my head as we were researching this. I just to
know where this whole marathon and why is it twenty
six miles? Uh? For you fact nerds out there like me,
(43:08):
this is coming from Live Science Marathon. The word marathon
comes from a place called Marathon in Greece. It's a station.
It is not the gas station Marathon. It is a
city in Greece. And the origin of the marathon relates
back to the founder of the International Olympic Committee. While
(43:29):
he was planning for the first Olympics, he came up
with this twenty It was about twenty five miles at
the time, twenty five mile run. Um in relation to
this chapter from Greek history with the run of a
soldier from a battlefield near the town of Marathon, Greece
to Athens in four ninety BC in order to announce
(43:53):
to the Athenians that they the Greeks, had defeated the Persians.
And apparently though the soldier delivered the message of victory
and then he died. Well, good for him, I mean,
at least he made it. I would have dropped dead
way before that. He was clearly running very fast. Yeah,
a lot of the twenty five entrance in that very
(44:14):
first marathon in the very first Olympics, in only nine
runners hit the finish line. And then you have the
Boston Marathon that was started soon thereafter, I believe in
the following year. Actually, um as a directly related to
the Olympics. So there's your marathon knowledge. Now. I know
that we have only focused on marathon running. There's a
(44:37):
lot more running topics that we could cover, but we
figured that that would be biting off more than we
could chew in one podcast. So for now, let us
know your thoughts on women and marathons. Oh and by
the way, I have never snuck into another race. If
I and if I run the Peach Tree this year,
I will do it with a number, so you know
(44:58):
I there we go. It was. It was ignorance on
my part. Race organizers of the world can rest easy. Yeah,
I don't want I don't want some racing police at
my door after this podcast because exist yes in my mind. Well,
let us know your stories about running mom stuff at
Discovery dot Com is email address you can send it to.
(45:19):
And in the meantime, we've got a couple emails here
to share. This first one is from Chelsea in relation
to our Richest Women in the World podcast and uh,
at one point we made what she called a snarky
little quip about John Walton's kit built plane crash. She writes,
I understand the confusion, but I wanted to clear up
(45:40):
about kitplane and experimental aircraft. Experimental aircraft is a name
that is attached to any plane that is not built
in a factory. My dad has been working on a
kit plane for more than half my life. The point
of building a plane yourself is not to save money
and cut corners, thereby producing a slip shot or subpar product.
These planes are a labor of love. Some planes maybe
(46:03):
low quality, but one should not assume that all such
planes are unsafe, are less airworthy. I've had to explain
to so many people that yes, he's building a plane, no,
not a model, and yes the kind of people actually writed.
He has put an intense amount of love, craftsmanship's stubbornness,
and plane an whole retention into his plane. I'm crazy
proud of him and want others to know that a
(46:24):
home built plane is nothing to fear, especially if you
know that it was made by a true engineer. That's great. Yeah,
I'm glad she informed us of that, because I, like
probably many people, had this idea of a kit that
was not as safe. I was imagining just like a
like an inflatable plane. Yeah, well that would be dangerous
(46:46):
for sure. Okay. This email is from Anson who is
writing about our women pilot episode. I am writing from
yellow Knife, Northwest Territories, which was recently voted as the
most female friendly airport in the world. This is a
result of an initiative called Girls Fly Too, started by
a helicopter pilot at Trinity Helicopters here in yellow Knife.
(47:06):
She wanted to fly five hundred young women and girls
in one day three weeks ago. The event took place
under sunny skies and over four girls between ages seven
and twenty two were flown. A friend who took her
thirteen year old daughter reports that her daughter was thrilled
and now talks of nothing else than becoming a helicopter pilot.
I grew up around aviation and am now involved in
air traffic survey that services with nav Canada, Canada's provider
(47:28):
of a T C and a T S. I talked
to many many female pilots on the radio. Maybe about
a third of all my contacts are female and increase
since I started in this business ten years ago. The
future is very bright for women who want to become
pilots and organizations like the Royal Canadian Air Cadets, the
ninety nine, the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association and the
Experimental Aircraft Association are working hard at getting out the
(47:52):
message that girls can fly too. Excellent, so thanks to
everyone who's written in mom Stuff at discovery dot com,
where you can send your letters. You can also find
us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at mom
Stuff Podcast, and there are a ton of articles all
about running at our home website, it's how stuff works
(48:14):
dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Stuff from the Future. Join how stuf Work staff as
we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
The how stup Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it
today on iTunes.
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
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