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Uh, podcasting. Podcasting. Are you recording, Robert? I am, yeah, we have to make sure. Professional podcaster Robert Evans are you podcasting? I I don't know. I don't know. But I know that this is the opening of Part 2 of this episode. Casting. This is how we're doing it. This is what we're doing. So this this is started like the episode started, I don't know, 37 seconds ago, according to my recorder. Like, we're in it now, Sophie. There's no pulling back. There's no, there's no going back to a world before we open to the podcast this way. So what does this show? Who are we? I'm running into a fugue state in between episodes. You're Sophie lichterman. This is no God stirs the behind because this see, I feel like being Sophie lichterman sounds like a really difficult job. It's really hard. I would, I would much rather I would much rather be the other guy. Let's do it that way. Let's do it that way. And then I just have to read this story. I'm so feel like German and I'm gonna go cry. OK. Well, Caitlin Durante, how are you doing today? You didn't know you said it? How were you doing on this Durant day? Ohh God. I am doing well. I just had a snack so I'm not taking the advice of Bernard Bernard McFadden which would be don't eat or go to doctors. I eat food and well, I, I, you know, I, I do try to avoid doctors, but not for the same reasons that he did. I believe in science, but you know, I've had, I've had some problems with doctors in the past. Go ahead and listen to sludge and American healthcare story if anyone wants to hear my experience. So yeah, I have more of a problem with just the kind of institution of the American healthcare system then, like, it's bad, it's bad doctors. I've I've known a lot of great doctors. I avoid medical care like the plague. Although right now that is on the advice of several medical professionals I know who have, who have repeatedly told me there is no the the the hospitals are completely past capacity. We have no equipment. We have no room to help anybody stay healthy. Don't go to the doctor. You can't, you can't go to the hospital now. There's nothing for you here. You should avoid them because of the plague. Yeah. So, you know, try to eat. Well, everybody be careful on the street. Just exercise and then you won't have to go. Yeah, doctor. It's more like, it's more. It's not that you shouldn't go to the doctor, it's that we have systematically destroyed large aspects of our healthcare system and so there may not be a doctor for you to go to. Happy Halloween, everybody. It's after Halloween. I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. Caitlin. In 1912, Bernard McFadden has just come off of the failure of physical culture, city which I cannot get over as the name for an unbelievable after all, those people committed physical culture treasa treason, physical culture treason. You know, 1912 is also the year that the Titanic sank. So a lot of tragedies happen. A lot of tragedy. Thank you. Thank you. Caitlin, I'm so impressed that you didn't get a Titanic mentioned in part one. I'm proud of you. Well, Robert, you said heroic. I did. I did as a way to like, as an adjective for for something else. And I really did think about interrupting you and be like and just saying like, just really mad. We talk about Titanic. But, you know, I was. I decided to respect you. Thank you. Yeah. You didn't, you did not, you did not commit physical culture treason. I did not, and you're welcome. You're welcome also to me. So by the way, the Titanic disaster could have been avoided if people had had better physical culture. But, and you know what? According to swimming. Learn how to swim, *************. You dead ********. That's what I say. According to the movie which James Cameron took, you know, he does his research into making that made into making that movie pretty accurate. There is a scene that takes place in a gymnasium that was on the Titanic. Yeah, I never watched it. Robert what? Can't believe that you don't wanna watch Titanic. I watch one movie and it's the mummy. And I I would watch Titanic, but it's giving me some serious mummy vibes, so I feel like I've already seen it. Look, you have one of those many ripoffs of the mummy, like Saving Private Ryan or the crying game all, all, all shades of the mummy. While we're on movies, I did want to bring up how the story of what's his name? Bernard. Bernard. It's a ridiculous name to make for yourself. It would be like, I'm gonna go by Kate. Caitlin. From now on, Kate Larr just taking out the last letter. They're very, it's very funny. So the, the narrative, the story of Bernard's life sounds remarkably similar to that of Charles Foster Kane, of Citizen Kane, where he's, you know, driving away from his mother that he becomes this like, you know, I don't. Well, I don't know if Bernard, how wealthy he gets, but sounds super. He, I suspect I, I'm almost certain he was one of the men who was kind of the inspiration for Charles Foster Kane because another man who was an inspiration for Charles Foster came was William Randolph. And at his height, Bernard McFadden is a much more popular publisher than Hearst magazines outsell Hearst Publications. He is. He is forward attack. We're getting to this, but he is for a time, the number one publisher in the United States of magazines like no one else is even. I don't think even all that close. Hugely successful. We are we are building to that. So K in 1912 the Titanic sank because ************* didn't do enough crunches. And his relationship with Susie has fallen apart. The lady that he leaves his wife for in physical culture city and physical culture city, another family, you know, ship. So he's he's hurting, right? You know, he's in this like rebound. When you're extra vulnerable. And you know, we all we all make decisions that maybe aren't the things we're proudest of when we're in that like a relationship just kind of ended badly. I think, I think we can all be vulnerable enough to admit everybody makes decisions that maybe aren't the things they would they would most want to like celebrate in their lives in that period of time. And Bernard is no different, but because he's the guy he is, he does this in a somewhat grander fashion. He goes on a tour of Europe with an ulterior motive to find himself a wife. Now the way he does this is ******* incredible. He travels to the UK to go on a speaking tour because he's incredibly popular in the United Kingdom, right people. Every time he does a speech there, it's sold out, he auditoriums. Full of people and his books which have been banned in the United States sell like hot cakes over there cause like he's got banned in the US for being too obscene but you, you English people your advanced and like urbane enough to appreciate this this work. So as a major celebrity, he announces a contest, Great Britain's perfect woman. Now he frames this as this is a health contest, right? To see like, who is the fittest woman in in Great Britain? Like, who is the healthiest woman? I already hate this. Yeah, you're not going to like it anymore after this point. Sophie happy. So, obviously, since he's the one running the test and is the great expert on physical culture, he gets to choose the winner. And the prize that the winner wins is a job offer from Bernard McFadden. And I'm going to quote from a write up by Esquire here. She soon settled into her new career as the co-star of Mcfadden's travelling physical fitness show. Billed as the world's healthiest man and woman, the pair performed feats of physical prowess, the highlight of which was Williamson, the woman that he he picks out Williamson's nightly jump from a 7 foot platform onto McFadden stomach. It wasn't long before Mary Williamson discovered her biggest prize and the secret reason for the contest. McFadden was searching for his third wife and she was the lucky winner one day while the pair was halfway through a 10 mile run. He proposed when she accepted, she later recalled. He stood on his head for me for one minute and four seconds. ******* incredible guy. That doesn't. That doesn't do it for you, kaylin a guy 5 miles into a run, standing on his head for a minute to celebrate. I mean, the bar has been set. Now that I know this, don't you dare anyone. Yeah, post to me. Unless you're able to stand on your head for a minute and five seconds. Yeah, 65 seconds. You gotta beat it now. Like, that's the one to beat, right? Alright, get practicing, ********. It is like, it's easier than I have to think because she's like, wow, he's not again actively dying of typhus. What a, what a catch. He could stand on his head and didn't cough up a lung because he's been eating cigars 19 times a day for the last 30 years. I mean, isn't that how like, Peacocks select their mate? They're like, oh, this, this is the sexiest one, so I'm gonna mate with that one. I mean, I think that's that's more than Peacocks do that, but yeah. So as soon as they were married, Bernard started pumping babies into his new bride as a eugenicist. What? Look, this is no place for Prudery, Caitlin. I'm sorry. You're absolutely right. That was a prudish response for me, and you worded that perfectly. So thank you, Caitlin. No, no, thank you. As a eugenicist, Bernard believed that he had that the fit had a responsibility to breed in order to fill the world with more genetically perfect children. Oh no. He lived his creed by giving his wife seven children in 12 years, which is too many, I would say. Too many. I mean, it's better than 12 children in seven years that that is better than 12 and also more possible. I guess you're like, you might be able to make it that. That would be real tricky. It would be hard. You would have to really time that **** out. Careful, he gave them insufferable names, and he may have been the guy who invented insufferable names for your celebrity kids. Her niece, but spelled BYRMECE. Hate it. Hate. Absolutely hate it, Berwyn spelled BRWYN. And yeah, just like Bryce, he has a Bryce like these *******. So they're all, like, vaguely derivatives of his name. Yes, of course, because they're vaguely derivative of off of him. And yeah, his his children. He only has these kids so that, number one, he can publish magazines about raising kids, and so that he can make his kids into celebrities and physical. Culture magazine and talk about all of his how because he's using, he's had all these different health ideas, right, that he's written about like, you eat this or you don't eat this or you you do this every day and it'll do this. And he's testing them on his kids and he's like putting them in the magazine and being like, look, when you starve your child, look at how strong my boy is and like all of this kind of **** the irony there is alarming because he was starving as a child and he was no, that that didn't work out. For him, yeah. You know, he's. Look, people do things. Our brains work in mysterious ways, bad ways. Our brains mostly work in bad ways. Yeah. So, yeah, he believed baldness, for an example of the kind of things that he believed. And and I should note that while he is testing a bunch of health theories on his children, he also tests all this on himself. Like, in fairness, he's not good not testing on himself, too. So he believed. Boldness could be cured by tugging on one's hair, which he did regularly. This made his permanent pompadour look unkempt and vaguely crazy. So his hair is like always shooting out everywhere because he's pulling on it constantly, like a man with a scalp condition. He went barefoot at all times, convinced that this kept him in contact with the Earth's magnetic forces. So he's like super rich. She's a millionaire, but he's going to all of these business meetings and political meetings. Stuff like barefoot in the middle of like 1900s New York, which is basically has the. Edward from Twilight, first movie hair. Yeah, yeah. And look, I I run barefoot. I'm I'm a big advocate of barefoot stuff. There are some places in the world that I was not willing to go barefoot. And those included downtown S, New Delhi, India, just because, like, it didn't seem like a good idea. And New York, I have to think like it. I don't think it's a good idea to necessarily always be barefoot when ********* is 80% of what's on the street, which in New York. Like 1910, it absolutely is. But whatever, he's fine. Yeah, he's it seems to work for him. Thriving. Yeah. And despite being incredibly rich, he wore his he didn't believe you should get rid of clothing, so he wore his suits until they were literally rotting off of him. So this man is a millionaire and extremely successful and physically fit, but he also looks like like a super swole hobo like his his clothing is falling apart, his hair is all shooting out everywhere, and he's barefoot. And he also has a habit of challenging other men to fist fights for, like, no reason at all. Constantly. Sometimes. A daily basis. He'll try to get into fistfights with people. So a lot of folks who see him don't realize, oh, that's wealthy publisher Bernarr Macfadden. They're like, oh, that has a mentally ill vagrant like that. This is a man who needs medical attention because he's he's, he's not. Well, he would refuse to get, which he would refuse to get. He also launched a variety of different health foods. My favorite. Oh my God, I have to. I don't want to read this to you. I want to show you the ad and you can you can describe this. Who are our audience? Because it is. Hey, I got you anyway. Ohh. Thank you, Sophie. Allegedly. Caitlyn, can you see it? Yes. Look at that. OK, here we go. It's called strength. I believe it's just probably pronounced food but it's food but it's spelled food is spelled FUDE strengthened strength I I don't like upon first glance I thought it said Fudge so so strength fudge sort of. Let's see it's cause the logo is under strength foot is it's different. Another another tagline seems to be don't be a weakling. Yeah, and I think that's bernarr on the front of the food doing the weird like hand showing off his biceps. Don't be a weakling on top of the box doing doing a Schwarzenegger pose with the muscles. He's not even that swollen by today's standards, is the thing. Come on, man. You got to look at like, how recently though today's standards happened. Like you watch them action movies from like the 80s and like it's ******* mid, like overweight dudes in their late 40s. Like, you look at, like, you know, a good example of like how recently what the definition of being jacked has changed in the second Indiana Jones movie The one that everybody prefers to forget because of all the racism right there, there was going to be like this shirtless scene for Harrison Ford. So he got super. They talked about this and like the behind the scenes that he had to get, like, in crazy good shape in order to like, do this scene and he just looks like. Like you know you very well what you're talking about and that you would you would cast him today as the guy is like the Stoner who doesn't exercise in your movie if he was going to be opposite of like the average looking man who was Kumail Nanjiani with 90 pounds of muscle packed on. Yeah I do like that there is a famous authority on food and hygiene. Hygiene was a big word in this period of time. The Nazis talk about hygiene all the time. Racial hygiene you're supposed to hygiene are often a negative term. Food with cream. I'm so confused. I don't know what it is. I think it's like some sort of porridge. I want it. I wonder if this is like kind of the original protein powder because it says that, yeah, I think it's kind of it with cream or sugar or sliced bananas and cream. So it sounds like you just, like, put it into your smoothie. Yeah, well, it's not really. I don't think smoothies science has really been invented yet, but he is like, this is definitely like the precursor to like protein powder, like to muscle. It literally says berries and cream on there. And I'm like, yeah, berries, bananas and cream. Like what? Movie. Besides those things, the commercial guy there would be people in this period of time who would argue with him that like no fruits, bad for you. So he there again, he's this mix of, like, absolutely dangerously wrong stuff and also being like, no, you should mostly eat vegetables and fruit and like, you know, maybe avoid red meat, which is good health advice. Generally good health advice unless you have an iron deficiency or whatever. But like most, most people who eat red meat eat more of it than is good for their health, including me. So I don't think judging good you're probably much healthier. As a result. I tracked down and slaughtered an entire cow. Earlier today. And I'm currently wearing its body like a Cape and eating it slowly. I was gonna ask parasite. Yeah. My doctor says I have to stop because I've picked up a ton of different kinds of worms. But you know, Caitlin, what's life without worms, huh? That's what I have to ask. That's what I say every day. That's what I know. I know. That's that's my magazine, worm culture. Hopefully no one commits worm culture treason against you. Ohh, you do not want to know the punishment for worm culture treason, Caitlin, it is. It's ivermectin. It's actually just ivermectin. OK, alright. Yeah, so he's he's tearing right along. Business is growing at a very fast pace, and then tragedy strikes World War One, which is bad for Bernard McFadden and no one else otherwise. A great time, right? I know it's very shocking to hear about World War One being bad for somebody, but it's not great for his business. Interesting. So we finally found one bad thing to say about World War One, which, you know, this has been a very pro of the First World War podcast. So this is, this is hard for me. So yeah, his, his, you know, disposable income people have less money to spend on magazines, right. And a lot of the young men who are going to be most interested in consuming his content are getting shot with machine guns repeatedly on the Western Front. But Bernard weathered the storm, and in 1919, on the advice of his wife Mary, he launched a magazine called True Story. Now this is yet and again Bernard inventing something that would prove to be one of the most influential cultural decisions in history. Like, it is hard to overstate the influence of this magazine, and in order to help me adequately explain why this is important, I am going to read a quote from American Heritage magazine. True story was the originator and exemplar of the confession. Magazine under the Credo Truth is stranger than fiction. The cover of the first issue featured such titles as a wife who awoke in time and my battle with John Barleycorn, an ex convicts climbed to millions and how I learned to hate my parents. Basically, the true story formula consisted of first person accounts written in an untutored but clear style of sin and redemption. The sin, usually carnal, was described in some detail, but the actual consummation nearly always seemed to take place between paragraphs and was invariably dressed up as a moral lesson. McFadden manipulated the formula masterfully. He knew the illusion of authenticity was essential. So instead of hiring what he called art artists to illustrate the stories, he used staged photographs featuring such models as the then unknown Friedrich Marsh, Jean Arthur, and Norma Shearer, and he made every contributor sign an affidavit stating that his or her story was indeed true. In 1927, however, after a piece titled The Revealing Kiss used the names of eight actual residents of Scranton, PA, who sued McFadden for half, $1,000,000. He found himself somewhat sheepishly contending that maybe every story wasn't all that true. McFadden turned out to be a crackerjack business man. His initial inspiration was to charge $0.20 for the magazine a dime more than the going rate. The first issue sold out. I think feel confident saying the majority of digital content today is in some way descended from True Story magazine. This is like half of the Internet at least, right? This is half of television. This is reality TV. This is Jerry Springer. And dear Abby, this is which is, I mean, dear Abby is like a magazine, but this is like everything. This is like true confessionals about like scandalous things that happen in real life. That's like most of culture. Yeah, like he and he's, he's invented this. He's the first person to figure out. There is a a hunger for this that will never be sated and I can I can publish this forever. He he is this makes millions of this dollar like instantly and within the year he's already spinning this magazine off into other magazines that are just like more focused. He creates true romance, true experiences, true ghost stories, True Detective and dream world. So here's how it worked when Bernard had a major hit with a type of story. So he publishes a couple of different romantic true stories and an issue of true. Story and that issue sells really well. He spins off an entire magazine devoted to like true romantic stories. It's basically like the Playboy confessionals or whatever the the hustler, whatever one it was. American Heritage goes into more detail here quote and this is about how he like runs his publishing empire. A flag flew on the McFadden building for each McFadden publication and employees would go up to the roof first thing each morning to see if they still had a job. Among the short lived flags were ones that bore the legend. Beautiful womanhood whose undoing. It's an ill conceived, scathing attack on spinsters and brainpower whose title apparently suggested to readers that they were somehow lacking in that department. So he's like a B testing. So he he puts up a flag for every different magazine he launches, and if it doesn't sell well, he takes it. And that's how you know you've lost your job. That, like, this magazine has been cancelled like. But he's he's doing like, again, what every publisher does today he like, he is effectively running a massive Internet publication. He's doing BuzzFeed in like 1920, like, that's like what this is affectively he's just launching different verticals. He's he's like, I don't know, I worked for years in an industry that was largely defined by Bernarr Macfadden without ever knowing his name. And it sounds like, yeah, this is all like very clickbaity stuff too, by the sounds of Bernard. Then would have made all of the money in the world off of the Internet. Uh huh. Yeah, wow. He would be eating. He would be on Joe Rogan's podcast twice a ******* week. Like. Or he would have just eaten Joe Rogan to gain his powers. Hmm. So my projection of him just being like an Abercrombie model, Jim Bro, I that was not right. He wow. He's actually, he's like, businessman. He's closer to the Gawker guys. Except for I think he probably would have been friends with Hulk Hogan rather than getting into a legal fight with him. Yeah. Now, Bernard's personal life was seemingly more stable at this point, but his obsessive need to test his theories, paired with his reckless belief in his own ideas, led to tragedy in his personal life. This is the baby killing. Yeah, I see that excitement just lighting up your face, Caitlin. We all love a good dead. I am ecstatic. In the spring of 1921, Mary got pregnant with yet another child. Now, Bernard had written articles earlier. About several theories he had on sex determination, right. How to make determine that the sex of your child. And this is like historically, right. This is a constant thing people have these theories about like if you do this, if you make her lay this way or eat this kind of food, you know she'll have a boy or a daughter. Like this is a whole. He's not the first person who tries to do this. You know, this goes back as long as there have been the idea of patrilineal. Whatever, like passing on a property and ****. One of his ideas was that boys were more often born to mothers who were starving. So during all of her previous pregnancies, he'd starved his wife, but she'd kept having girls. Gee whiz, yeah, isn't that a bummer? I I'm Nope. I wasn't even. I'm not gonna make the joke. I was gonna make he go. He came. He comes to the conclusion that all of the starving he'd done previously was cumulative, and he'd probably primed her to have a a boy at this point. So now he made her eat a bunch of roast beef during this pregnancy. So that's at least, like, better than starving her, right? Yeah. Force feeding your pregnant wife's roast beef instead of making your starve. That's an improvement. He's grown. He has not demonstrated that. He is not at all. In late December, with the baby near due, Bernard was so happy. And this with both the fact that he's about to have another kid and with the success of true story that he held a company holiday party allowing his employees to smoke and drink to their hearts content. Even during prohibition he was, I'll say this, he doesn't drink, he thinks no one should, but he's also like a libertarian, so he's he hates prohibition. He doesn't like the government should be telling people what to do, which I can respect that as like a anyway, we're about to talk about how maybe he killed his baby so whatever, when he came home from the party. He found his wife in Labor, and since he couldn't reach a midwife and again, there are phones, not a lot of people are phone connected at this point like it is you can't use a millionaire, you'd imagine. You'd imagine he could have set this up right? But he can't get a midwife on the horn, and obviously he's not going to call a ******* doctor, so he delivers the child himself. His wife gives birth to a boy named Byron, which Bernard confusingly claimed meant that his theory about starving pregnant women was correct because he'd starved her so much before, even though he hadn't. For this baby, right? He's not really scientific, huh? Wait, I I would say maybe that's questionable logic. So he forced an immediate announcement of the boys birth into physical culture magazine, and he only grudgingly allowed a doctor to enter his home and put 15 stitches in his wife after she repeatedly begged him. So for hours, she's bleeding in an agony and he's like, please let me have a ******* doctor. I'm ripped open. Let me like, please. And finally, because he, I mean, for one thing, he doesn't want anyone to know that he have a doctor for anything, right? You shouldn't get you shouldn't get torn open. You should is if you're doing enough physical culture, if you're doing enough. Dumbbell squats or whatever you should, you shouldn't rip open, you know, when you're pregnant. I'm. That's what he's saying, obviously. So yeah, he eventually does, like, yield to his screaming wife. Like screaming, not as in like hectoring if it isn't like dying of blood loss and allows a doctor to come in and put 15 stitches in her. He refuses, though, to allow her any anesthetic or painkiller. No. Yeah, I know, right. Kind of sucks, right? What a ***** ** ****. Yeah. Ohh look, this is this is a sympathetic start to the Bernarr Macfadden story. We are past the point of sympathy now. So for almost a year, things are OK, though. And he's like, he puts this kid, this son of his. He's so proud to have a son. Every week there's an article about how strong and like, good and like, look, he's growing up so much stronger than other boys. And, like, I'm doing this and I'm doing this is gonna be the healthiest boy, and he's gonna be the healthiest man who ever lived. And, like, this is like a huge fact of that. He almost pivots the magazine to focus on his son's development. So a year later, the December of the next year after his kids born, when Byron is about. One year old tragedy strikes, and I'm gonna quote from the biography Mr America here. 11 month old Byron, known within the family as Billy, was seated on his mother's lap. Suddenly, Billy tensed up, threw his head back, and began to contort his body as if overcome by a seizure. Bernard demanded that the infant be stripped and dunked in a steaming hot bath. Mary recalled that the water's temperature was so hot that she couldn't keep her hand submerged. Though it is impossible to know the cause of Billy's fit, many common childhood seizures are now known to be brought on by fever, so a hot bath is treatment was probably ill advised at best. The baby spasms. Continued. Mary snatched him out of the water and screamed. Burned for the love of Christ. Call a doctor. Billy died in her arms. Yeah, and again, this is the 1920s, right? So a baby having a seizure, it is entirely possible. By the time that baby started seizing, it was already essentially dead because medical science maybe not great, but also a lot of babies had different kind of seizure disorders and have or have seizures because of a fever and get better. There was medicine especially that a rich person could have gotten, like if he had taken his child to the best medical care available, there's a good chance they, the baby would have survived. It's absolutely guaranteed that dunking a seizuring baby and almost boiling hot water is not going to help. So I think we can safely say that the, you know, he may be killed a baby. He may be killed his baby, yeah, he definitely, probably, definitely killed his baby. He we can't say for certain that he killed his baby. We can say for certain that he made that 11 month old child's last moments be of horrible confusion and pain submerged in near boiling water. Yes. Yeah, sure. Which is, I would say bad parenting. I'm not an ex. I don't have a kid. I try not to, like, talk about what you should do with your kids. But I feel like, and again, excuse me, parents in the audience who are going out on a limb here, it's bad to dunk your baby and steaming water while they're having a seizure. Sure. I think most people would agree with that. Yeah, I know. I know. I'm going. I'm getting into Joe Rogan territory, you know, giving health advice I'm not qualified to give. But that's that's my opinion. Don't. Force your baby into steaming water while it's having a seizure? Maybe not a good idea. You know who else forces babies in this? Wait, who doesn't? You know who doesn't ever do the thing that I just talked about? Ohh Robert 2. I. I don't know the products and services that support this podcast. Maybe, maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. So the what you heard me, I think, I think what I what I said was heard. Well, we'll be back after these messages from our sponsors. And we're back. So if he's very proud of me, everything's fine. So Bernard McFadden, if you know Bernard at this point, Caitlin and I think we know Bernard at this point. I feel like he's a close personal friend, but he's got, he's got his ideas about things right. He's got ideas about everything. He had ideas about how to deal with the kids, health issues and he has ideas about how to deal with grieving. Do you know what? Do you know what I would guess you he would he would think that the best way to deal with grieving is to starve yourself. Kind of. He definitely doesn't want people to eat much, but no, it's walking for hours at a time in the freezing snow. His whole family, including, yeah, his whole family. So he just has them walk for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours. And yeah, now, again, he had spent the better part of a year writing articles about how healthy his son was and how this is all due to his different nutrition theories. So the fact that his son had died, that's bad for business, you know? Yeah. That's not going to go good for you. Well, yeah, that's not going to go good for you. So I yeah. Jesus, this is such a bleak story. So he doesn't publish anything. And in fact, he just, like, stops working and, you know, Bernard, at this point, like, that's. Not something he does. So he stops putting an articles, he stops doing anything. Like his editors are just running the magazines for a while and he forces his wife to walk 200 miles to Manhattan with him, carrying their luggage all the way in the snow. That's how he he that's how not it's one thing if that's how you deal with grieving. That's actually I can I could honestly see like I the last time I was heavily grieving, I would run like 80 miles a week. Like I get that idea, forcing your wife to walk 200 miles in the snow. That because she has to grieve the same way. That's the ****** ** and the fact that he probably killed his baby. Yeah. So when he in the middle of this 200 mile walk, they get to Greenwich, CT and he convinces his wife to try again for a son. So he's like as she's grieving and exhausted, it's like I got to make another put another boy into you. So eventually they get back to the office and he writes an editorial about his son's death. You're going to guess who he blames for it. I would guess his his wife. His wife. Ohh Caitlin, it's like you have a lot of experience with toxic men. Here's what he wrote. Billy was often overfed. I protested on numerous occasions, but my protest was not vigorous enough anyway. I believed the boy was so strong that he would overcome mistakes of that nature and and it is so hard to combat the tendencies of mother love. I also somewhat blame myself for neglecting his exercises. So he blames his wife for feeding their baby too much. He didn't starve that baby enough. Gosh. And also he's making his baby do exercises. Yeah, he makes everything do exercises. Can a baby at that age 11 months, I mean, I'm, I don't know, they probably should. I mean, crawl to the extent that, like, crawling is an exercise. Yeah, it's good for them to exercise, like in terms of like, it's good for babies to, like, move and learn how to use their body slowly. But like, I don't know. They're babies. They're not. They don't really have bones for the most part. Yes, their motor skills aren't great. Or organs I feel like are still kind of developed. Yeah, you know? Yeah. I feel like exercise. I feel like if you're trying to make a baby exercise, the odds are good that you will wind up hurting the baby. Sure. Definitely. Yeah. Because they're babies, baby. They're little babies because they're babies. They're mostly just supposed to, like, roll around and poop and poop and occasionally crawl babies and be babies. They're not supposed to work. Hit the gym, get under that bench. But it does make you feel your deadlifts that are baby you can barely deadlift. What the **** is wrong with you baby? You baby, keep your back straight. Wow. Sorry, babies. They don't. They babies, stop being so soft. Look at how ****** this baby's pull-ups are. He's barely getting halfway to the bar. I mean, like, how embarrassing that, like, a baby would be. Better at pull-ups, though, than, say, me. Yeah, well, they don't have a lot of, like, body, so that would make it easier. But also, their arms are not really muscles yet. They're just kind of like noodles, so that would make it harder. I don't know. I'll start a gym for babies. We'll see if it's a good idea. Oh yeah. So within a decade, by the late 1920s, Bernard had amassed a fortune of more than $30 million, which today would be like $400 million. So he makes a **** load of money. Yeah, he was at the absolute height of his success, but after time this too grew frustrating. Bernard was the peak of publishing influence. He had more readers on a monthly basis than anyone else in the United States, including William Randolph Hearst. But being on top also means you've kind of reached the limit, right? There's really nowhere for him to grow. He's the biggest publisher, yeah, so the only thing he could think of to do to expand his audience and become even more influential. Was become the president of the United States. What I did not see. Yeah. That he was gonna try to run for president. Talk about this in the John McAfee episodes with the great Lacey Moseley, but like, you know, when you are a certain kind of white man who has had one of those careers where no one ever says no and you just keep doing ridiculous things and being successful at them, you will eventually try to become the president. I mean, I look at what happened recently, yeah. I mean, look at what's going to happen when I run in 2024. On a platform of making America like the unnamed island nation that I rule with an iron fist. It's gonna be great, Kaitlin. Yeah. I can't wait. Hmm. Neither can America. So he decides he's going to become the president now. His wife later claimed that he started to dream of this career in 1914 when, at the eve of World War One, he suggested that wrestling would be a good way to solve political conflicts. Which I actually think would be incredible. I'm 100% in agreements with Bernard about this, he says, quote, political contest that derive their support through advocating. Physical culture reforms will, I believe, become a reality in the not far distant future. And he's wrong about this. But my God, it would have been so good if like Kaiser Willhelm and ******* czar Nicholas and whatever the French president's name and the ******* King of England had all had to like fist fight. That would have been so much better if every war, if George Bush in like Saddam Hussein had had a cage match. I feel confident saying we would think fondly on the Iraq war. Yeah, it was that time George Bush. Got stabbed in the eye by Saddam Hussein. That was funny as hell. Can you believe he thought Saddam wouldn't pull a knife in a fist fight? What an idiot. Wow, Barack, Barack Hussein Obama and John McCain. Just like street fighting. Just just wailing on each other while ******* Joe Biden and what? What's her name? The the Governor of Alaska? Sarah Palin? Like, have a chain fight? My God, it would be so much better, sure. Sure, yeah, everything would be better. Hmm. Good. I see your point. I see your point. Yeah. World War Two might have gone worse because I do not think FDR would have been able to beat Hitler in a in a in a in a street fight. Yeah, so there's limits to this. We would have needed to elect bernarr Macfadden precedent. Family he could have taken on Hitler, although he might not have wanted to, as we'll get to so. Bernard decides he's gonna become president and in the mid 1920s, so if first he thinks like inevitably the progress of physical culture, because I've I'm getting so popular so quickly by an in another 10 years, everyone will agree that the strongest man in the country should be president and then I'll be president because I'm the strongest man. That does not happen. And so in the mid 1920s, Bernard decides to launch a magazine dedicated to making him into a serious intellectual and political figure. So he's very successful this point, but he is not a serious person. He is seen as like a a silly tabloid publisher, right? Like, he's putting out kind of sleazy material, and that is how he's viewed. He's like, there are people like within the exercise world who take his health ideas somewhat seriously, but he generally, like the mainstream media, kind of laughs at him. And again, not unlike Donald Trump, to be honest, right. In 1924, he launches another magazine. This one is dedicated to make him into a serious political figure, and it's called the New York graphic, though he was attempting to. You know, again, kind of established like a New York Times analog that will give him respect his the New York graphic immediately becomes like the Tackiest scandal sheet in the country. That said, it also employs some of the biggest names in American media history. At early stages of their career, Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan both get their start writing for the graphic. Ed Sullivan who like helps to those people. Ed Sullivan like almost helps to create. He's like a precursor to Carson. Like he helps to create the idea of like the the the like late night kind of variety show type thing, right? A lot of like the biggest musicians in the rock'n'roll area get their start on the Ed Sullivan Show. Most of the titles of of graphic articles were lurid to say the least. One was two women in fight. One stripped, other eats bad. Check I have. I kind of love. One don't really know what to expect from that article, but it sounds fascinating. Sure. My favorite thing about the graphic is that it's yet another example of Bernard inventing something that would later become hugely influential. The Bernard creates Photoshop, kind of. He invents for his magazine a graphic design technique called compasso graphs. These are staged composite photos. Well, where he'll have celebrities. You know who he's had celebrities or he's had them, people posing for photos and articles about like, true crime. As you can see, is kind of a precursor to, like, reenactments and, like, unsolved mysteries and stuff. Yeah. Well, so a big part of the New York graphic is like stories about celebrities getting in, like, legal trouble or having divorces or all this stuff. And in order to illustrate these, because he can't get photos of the celebrities, he hires models and he has them pose as whatever the celebrities were doing. And then he basically has a picture of the face of that celebrity superimposed over the head of the model. OK yeah. He's like, photoshopping celebrities. Into like, like lurid scenes in order to sell newspapers. Yeah, and he invents this new technique for the first time to cover a celebrity divorce trial. Leonard. Kip Rhinelander was a millionaire who was suing his bride of one month over the fact that she'd hidden that she was part black. This is the 20s, you know? Because this was a racist time. Her response to this was to deny the charges in court by stripping to the waist. Obviously, number one, these are famous people #2A woman has stripped in court. This is big news, right? Like, this is a huge story, and the graphic used its first composite graph to illustrate the moment where this famous woman strips in court without actually having photographs of it, and circulation leaps to 100,000 people like over and over by 100,000 people overnight as a result of this. Now, the graphic was influential and popular, but it was also too trashy to get much purchase among advertisers. It was a lot of people bought it, but it wasn't profitable because it was expensive to make and no one would advertise in it. And by the time it ended in 1932, Bernard had lost more than $11 million on the venture. And this gives you an idea of how much money he's willing to light on a fire in the hope of establishing a political career for himself. That is like half of the money in the world at this point. Yeah, what an investment that miserably failed for him. He doesn't give up, though. In 1929 he commissions 3 biographies about himself. Now, this was a new idea at the time, a wannabe presidential candidate paying to have a biography written by a ghostwriter in order to drum up interest in his campaign. Every single candidate does that now, right? Like 100% of people who run for president have a book published about them like that they supposedly write, you know, Bernard. Convinced this site. As far as I can tell, he's the first guy to do this. Again, a visionary. Truly. He is living in the 21st century in 19 ******* 29. I mean, good for him. Yeah, unfortunately, he's not living in any of the good parts of the 20th century. But so these books were obviously trash. One invited readers to, quote, study him, as he governs a whole community of employees that is like a little city so he can run a magazine, so he's clearly ready to run the country. He did run that one little city until everyone committed treason against physical culture, treason. So these are not well regarded by reviewers, these books, the American Heritage article that I've been reading from sites in HL Menken review quote. The authors of these brochures do not spare the goose grease. Poor mcphaden chokes and gurgles on it in every one of their 825 pages. I can recall no more passionate anointing of a living man. He appears as a hero without a wart, spiritual or temporal, sworn only to save us from the medical trust and make us strong enough to lift a piano with our bare hands. Wait, one of these biographies is over 800 pages long? Yeah? He's again. They'll dial it in. By the time Pete Buttigieg is getting his vanity biography published, we've gotten much better at it. You know? Great. While the graphic had no luck establishing Bernard as a political name, it was influential in getting Jimmy Walker elected mayor of New York City. Unfortunately for Bernard's Mayor, Walker refused to appoint McFadden City commissioner of Health, which Bernard was hoping would jumpstart his political career. The new mayor argued that while Bernard's ideas on health were good, nobody actually wanted to live that way. Despite this, by the mid 1930s Bernard was more successful than ever circulation of his magazines. About 7.3 million people, which again beats every other publisher in the country. As time went on, some of the most influential people in world history would write columns for Bernard's magazines Winston Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, Mahatma Gandhi and Adolf Hitler. Ohh. Well, all right. OK. So the Hitler article was not technically a column. His editor had interviewed Hitler in 1923. And when Hitler started rising to power in the early 30s, they published this interview as a column because that's like the the sexier way to advertise it. And the column is it's titled as if Hitler wrote it. It's titled when I take charge of Germany. By the way, for an example of, again, the way Bernard does this sort of thing, so the article that Gandhi writes or quote UN quote writes is titled My Sex Life by Mahatma Gandhi. It's about celibacy, but like, that's not how you sell that article, right? Wow, ******* amazingly spin a story. You know who else talks a lot about Mahatma Gandhi sex life? Caitlin? Is it the products and services that we will not not. Bring in a sponsor if they don't talk to us for a solid 30 minutes about how they think Mahatma Gandhi might have ******? That's the behind the ******** guarantee it is not. This is why we have so few sponsors. They just can't hang. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I don't know what to say about it. There's nothing to say. We're back and we're just having a great time. How are you? How are you doing, Caitlin? I'm doing well. I've heard a lot of information about Bernard. He's a fascinating man. Fascinating fellow. I and it keeps. You know there's peaks and valleys as as far as you know his conduct in his life and but I continue to be amazed at some of his choices. So you're keeping me on the edge of my seat. Well, let's talk about how he got Franklin Delano Roosevelt elected. So in 1931 he bought an existing magazine called Liberty, which was, compared to his other publications, fairly respectable, like it's a politics and culture publication. So he immediately starts writing editorial columns for this on topics as broad as organized crime and the importance of returning Americans to farming. In 1932, in the wake, in the like midst of the Great Depression, FDR starts his run for President and Liberty. Magazine backs FDR's candidacy now, one of the chief questions of the election was whether or not the aging polio victim was capable of handling the physical strains of the presidency right. Like that is a big question. What can he do the job he's dying of? Polio, post polio or whatever? As America's best known fitness nut, bernarr McFadden was in a unique position to allay people suspicions. Because people do listen to what he has to say about fitness. So if one of his publications gives FDR a clean bill of health, that means something. As liberties publisher, he had the magazine sponsor a medical examination of Roosevelt by several doctors, even though Bernard is on record as saying that doctors are all full of ****. In this case, they might have been because they said FDR was in perfect health, which he absolutely was not in. But this article saying that FDR was in great health is a big like has a significant role in the election. Mark Adams, Bernard biographer, writes the biggest doubt about the Roosevelt campaign vanished almost overnight. And that is, broadly speaking, I don't know, probably good, I mean FDR's complicated history, shall we say, to say the least in a number of ways, but within the context of Bernard's career, I will say this is a positive. Moment, because we're about to talk about how big a fan he was of fascism. See Bernard McFadden? Yeah, yeah. Oops. See turtles. Another thing. I mean, I guess I could have, you know, the threads are there to to to arrive at this point, but I am still a little surprised. So once again, thanks for keeping me on the edge of my seat. It's all, it's all thanks to Bernard. So Bernard is both a product of his culture and a culture creator and as the US went, you know? Real Linda, eugenics. In the 20s and 30s, so did he. He had his paid columnists write glowing articles about eugenics, one of which included this paragraph. Eugenics is the mightiest comet that ever came skidding into the little Solar System of human thought. Suppose we are breeding for a sound mind in a sound body, and have formulated a scheme of judging the applicants with a score system not unlike that which they played. The orpingtons at the country fair here is A1. Her score is 95 3/4, the best applicant in the lot for the high and holy functions of motherhood. In essence, he's saying we had a judge ladies like we judge pigs. Which? Fine by me, yeah? No, not at all. Problematic feminist icon Bernarr Macfadden. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah, kiddo. And this and specifically on, like, the criteria of, like, how how good they would be at, like, bearing children. Yeah. Well, what else is there? Well, what else is if you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What other function can you serve? Yeah, that's what Bernarr Macfadden would probably shout at you while using an exercise bike. I found a paper by the Stark Center for physical culture and Sports Studies at the University of Texas. They describe Mcfadden's beliefs as soft eugenics because he's not. He doesn't spend a lot of time. He's not talking about like, races. He's not spending a lot of time being like the Arians need to do. We need to get rid of the Jew. Like, that's not really his thing. His thing is more healthy people need to breed, and we need to raise up people to be healthy and strong so that they can breed more healthy and strong people. So I'm not saying that's eugenic. Yes, it's not good. I'm just like, it's not. It's there's different kinds of eugenics. That's kind of the one that he lands on. Yeah, in his hatred of modernity, and he blames modernity for all of the health problems that people have. And in his obsession with perfect bodies, he lands right in the crosshairs of a lot of fascist theory. When Benito Mussolini took power in Italy, he emphasized physical training as a way to prepare young people for all the fighting they were going to have to do as foot soldiers of fascism. Italy's war record shows how successful this plan was. Bernard absolutely loved this idea. From the Stark Center quote in 1932, readers of physical Culture magazine, then with a circulation in the hundreds of thousands, were greeted with an unusual interview. Past magazine issues featured everyone from George Bernard Shaw to Upton Sinclair, but this was the first time a self-proclaimed fascist appeared. The man was Benito Mussolini, the leader of Italy since Mussolini's rise to power in 1922, McFadden had kept a close eye on ill Duchess love of sport. Mussolini was detailed, a subject deemed to be of utmost. National importance, physical culture. On this point, Mussolini found a captive audience throughout the 1930s, Bernarr Macfadden attempted, ultimately in vain, to inter American politics through a presidential bid. His guiding focus was a belief in the importance of personal hygiene, health, and strength. This quest, which ultimately proved unsuccessful, explained Mussolini's appearance and physical Culture magazine. Months prior to ill Duchene's article, McFadden traveled to Europe as part of President Hoover's conference on child health and protection. McFadden himself seems to have had no solid set of political beliefs. Focusing primarily on issues of health above all else, he unsuccessfully ran as a Republican candidate in 1936, but later attempted to gain a position in Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's office. It was during this trip to Europe that McFadden crossed paths with Mussolini United at sea and their appreciation for fitness. A deal was struck, the contents of which were revealed to physical cultures readers. So he's political in that he thinks everyone should be jacked all the time. And he likes fascism, because fascism also wants everyone to be jacked all the time. Right. That's that's his entry and that's his article that he lets. Benito Mussolini, right, is on the importance of physical culture for like national identity. And they enter into a deal, which they detail in this article. And the deal is that Benito gives Bernar personal responsibility for training 40 Italian naval cadets. These men are brought to New York. They're trained under McFadden and they're inculcated in American popular culture. The experiment lasts six months, and it's the subject of a number of articles in the physical culture, the ultimate message of the experiment. In Mcfadden's eyes is that fascism builds healthier, stronger people through good physical culture, and the US should emulate Italy in this. The Italian cadets are often used as a foil. They're contrasted with a lazy Americans who have unhealthy diets. Now, after six months in the United States, these Italian naval cadets all showed improvements in strength and the growth of muscles. Bernard claimed that this was evidence fascism could work its wondrous physical effects even in the United States. From the start, center McFadden stopped short of saying Italy was superior to the United States, but his writings included wishful appraisals of the Italian state and claims that America had much to learn, according to McFadden. Is Italian sojourn was a success. This explained, or so it was claimed by the Portuguese Government extended a similar invitation to McFadden in 1932, the same year Antonio de Oliveira Salazar assumed control of the state. A military dictatorship existed in Portugal from 1926, but Salazar's rise to power marked an intensification of authoritarianism alongside a growing cult of personality. Salazar's government shared at least somewhat Mussolini's admiration of strong and healthy bodies, Mauricio Drummond, study of Sport and Salazar's regime. Explained that although Salazar rarely expressed an interest in sport, he used it for political purposes. So he winds up working for two different fascist dictators, establishing like a physical culture for their young people. And in in Portugal, Salazar, this dictator, gives him a few dozen children, which he's able to put on a compound which he calls Macfadden Children's Colony, and he sets them up with a vegetarian diet and a workout program. And Bernard claims again in his magazine that this is so successful. It turns their quote dull and stupid, little faces alert and interested. What? OK, let me just take a moment to. To just comprehend all of that Okey Dokey, lot going on there. There's a lot to unpack, and I don't know if my brain can do it at this time, but yeah. There's a lot going on with this with this episode. The twist? Christ, the turns. They keep coming, they keep coming, barely keep both. There's actually another one at the end of this paragraph. So goodness, he's so happy with how this Portugal experiment goes that he coauthors a book about the experiment with a who will call a prominent author. Do you want to guess who it is? What 30s author do you think he'd pick? I'm like, uh? Faulkner I don't know. Does the name Thomas Dixon mean anything to you? No. Thomas Dixon wrote a book called The Klansman, which was the basis of DW Griffith Griffith's birth of a nation. Also what I'm amazing? Was Faulkner writing stuff in the 30s or am I not? Am I don't? Do I not know anything because I've been oh geez, I don't know. I'm bad at he's. I'm bad at authors. Is dead by then right now? Who knows? OK, so the guy who wrote the thing? The birth of a nation. Nation? Yeah, he writes a book about how good it is to train fascist kids to be fascists. For exercise and vegetarianism. Oops. See, as the 1930s wore on, McFadden became an anti war activist, which you know as a positive connotation now. But if you're an anti war activist in the 30s it means you don't think that anything should be done to stop fascism. Like that's. That's what the anti war movement in the US generally is in this. Is like, why would we go to war against Hitler? He seems like a good chap. He's doing just great and we should not challenge him. Now, by 1938, two is somewhat credit. Bernard comes around on the issue, likely because he sees public opinion shifting and he becomes Pro War, turning out monthly calls for his readers to exercise in order to defend their nation. 1941, the year that the US gets into the war, is the year things fall apart for Bernar minority stakeholders and his company. Charged that he's used company funds to pay for his political campaigns, he's forced to sell all of his interest in the business and step down as president physical culture. Has turned into a women's magazine as his as he left. It didn't do particularly, yeah. OK, he doesn't like that. It also doesn't do very well. Ohh, but the media landscapes changed a bit by this point. By the end of the war, Mcfadden's marriage to Mary was also at its end. A wedge had been driven between them. When he blamed her for their son's tragic death, she divorced him and a long and brutal legal battle ensued. At the end of it, she published a book about how much her ex-husband sucked in a final middle finger to him. She dedicated her autobiography to the doctors who had helped ease the pain of childbirth. Which is the meanest. Think you could do to burn R? Yeah, she thanked a doctor. Brutal. After I let her get stitches eventually. I mean, I I like that. I like that for her. The book contains a number of allegations, including that Bernard caused her a miscarriage by forcing her to work out incessantly while she was pregnant. So good guy. A write up from American Heritage ably describes the remainder of the former publishing Titans life. Auden later wrote of Edward Lear that he became a land bernarr Macfadden became a press release. In the last 18 years of his life, he was featured in time, which dubbed him body Love or Newsweek, 18 times. He ran for the Senate in Florida. He conducted innumerable fasts and hikes. He offered a prize for the best biographical play about his life. In 1949, at the age of 81, he took up parachuting and thereafter tried to make a jump each year on his birthday, claiming that his third wife had humiliated him by losing her figure. He married a woman of 42. She later had the marriage annulled. In 1953, he declared his acceptance of the nomination. To be honest, party for mayor, he pledged a business administration that would make sales tax unnecessary, eliminate traffic congestion, and obtained double deck subway cars. He also promised to purge the city of Communists. So he keeps doing the same thing his whole life, but he's less influential. He doesn't have a bunch of magazines. Nobody really gives a ****. Also, he lives quite long. He lives a long life. Look, he's not wrong about all of the things that he's saying. There's some things he gets very right, and he lives a long, healthy life. The result of it? He remains in good health, into his early 80s, which suggests that, again, some of the stuff he's saying is not ********. He celebrated his 81st birthday by jumping out of an airplane while wearing a full suit. He repeated this stunt on his 82nd and 83rd birthdays. By 1955, though, age had started to take its toll. In October, he came down with a urinary blockage, which he tried to cure by fasting. This did not work, and he resigned himself to going to a hospital where he died. Oh Yep, that's it. That's the end. That's all. The Bernard McFadden anticlimactic ending for Bernardo. I know most people. It's generally is not everybody has the whole, the whole Hitler, you know? He's like, alright, I'll go to the alright, I'm dead. Alright. Bye. Yeah, well, he was proved right in the end, going to the hospital got him killed real quick. And that's the message of today's episode. Don't go to the hospital. That's not the message of today's episode, Robert. I think that is the message of today's hospital episode. Hospitals are bad. No, don't get them. I am befuddled about everything I've learned here today. Yeah. Hmm. And on that note, Caitlin plug cables, OK. Yep, yeah. Umm, well, since I brought it up earlier, you can listen to a podcast that I did a little bit of and then abandoned because I'm not nearly as ambitious as Bernard, but I did do. A podcast called Sludge in American Healthcare Story in which I the first season is me detailing my experience with having gallstones AKA sludge sludge balls and and all the chaos that ensued from that. Umm. And then I did a few other episodes about other people's stories but then I got too busy and I abandoned that effort. But the podcast I haven't abandoned is the Bechdel. Yeah, so check that out. It's a movie podcast because I am able to talk way I I'm better at talking about movies than I am about healthcare stuff. And then you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Caitlin Durante. Yay yay. Yeah, well that's everything we have to say about everything forever. This has been the last episode of behind the ********. I am quitting in order to start my own magazine, about how if you do enough crunches and stop your wife from eating, all of your babies will be Superman. No. Sophie, you could have a cush gig as the executive publisher of my new magazine, starve Your Baby Digest. Going to politely say well well no, you just turned down $1,000,000. But OK, that's OK. Moral? My morals are worth more. No, mine aren't. I know that. Ohh have a good night everybody. Bye bye.