Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Going To The Beach

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writer Jenny Jaffe (Fox, Disney Channel, IFC) and comedy improviser/podcaster Moujan Zolfaghari (‘Mission To Zyxx’ podcast, 'At Home With Amy Sedaris') for a look at why going to the beach is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Going to the beach. Known for sand. Famous for sand, son. Not thinking about it. Nobody thinks much about that. So let's have some fun. Let's find out why going to the beach is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is.

My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. Two amazing guests joined me this week. One of them is Jenny Jaffe. Jenny is an Emmy-nominated TV comedy writer, a TV show creator, and she did a hilarious run of fake TV show cold opens on Twitter this summer. There's a link to that in the show links. I'm also joined by Mujan Zulfagari. Mujan is an amazing improviser and podcaster. She's part of the team making Mission to Zix. And I hope you know about the podcast Mission to Zix that's spelled Z-Y-X-X if you're searching it. It's a long form improv comedy podcast set in a science fiction universe and it's on Maximum Fun. Find Mission to Zix in your podcast player. And I am so glad Jenny Jaffe

and Mujan Zulfagari are here today. It's great. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Jenny and Mujan each recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino or Tongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. Acknowledge Jenny and Mujan each recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino or Tongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about going to the beach, which I think fits into the whole podcast series really interestingly, because this is about things that people think are ordinary. And that can include things that people think are incredibly fun or like the greatest

thing in the world. Because I think for many people, the beach is a break from the mind, you know, like you're supposed to just go and sit in a wonderful chair and look at the water and feel the sun. Also, don't worry, you will get to keep enjoying that. We're not gonna like cancel the beach or anything. It just turns out going to the beach is fascinating historically and culturally and scientifically, and finding out why is the goal of today's episode. And then one note on audio stuff on this episode before we start. If you've heard my past podcasting, you've generally heard guests on studio microphones. There are a lot of reasons we aren't doing that now. One of

them is corona. Another is that this is an independent, scrappy show that I'm just like trying to get off the ground. Anyway, even in studio times, I would often have a guest call in over the phone rather than being on a regular microphone or through internet versions of the phone, like a Skype call or a Zoom call. I don't know why I felt like I needed to explain that it's like the phone as if you're all 90, but you get it. And this episode is one of those. We've got Jenny's voice specifically coming in through the Zoom internet call system. It still sounds good. It sounds legible. You can tell what she's saying. I think it's a good experience to listen to. And I just mention it because some people super insist on the like the fanciest studio microphone vibe you can get.

We are making that happen in bedrooms and closets as Corona continues. Anyway, if you prefer an all fanciness show, that is a OK. We'll catch you next week. For the rest of you, this is one of my favorite conversations we have had on this very new podcast. And I'm so excited for you to hear it. So please sit back or do that thing where you and your beloved like kiss passionately on a beach as waves go over you. That is a movie reference if you see it in a new TV or movie or something. It's from the 1953 movie From Here to Eternity.

Fun fact. And either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Jenny Jaffe and Mujan Zolfagari. I'll be back after we wrap up talk to you then mujan jenny hello happy summer uh uh probably the chillest summer on record you know in just a general general way. Thanks for doing this about it. Of course. Thank you.

Well, we're both very chill as people. So this is, you know, we're really doing great right now. Yeah. It's going to be a very long podcast for me talking. So chill. So chill. What have I done? Oh, no.

And the topic of this episode is going to the beach and with all the episodes i i ask guests just up top like what's your relationship to this topic what's what's going to the beach in your life so i'm not a great beachgoer honestly i um i'm a redhead. We're not like a great beach going people because I like look at the sun and I get a sunburn. And then besides that, like it's it's I'm not anti beach. I love the beach. I really prefer a poolside if I have an option like somewhere I can sort of keep things in line. I also don't love going in the, in the water. I love the concept of going to the beach and I will go. It's just,

I find it's a very harrowing experience. Yeah. I'm similar too, but mine is more for, because I'm Iranian American and it takes a lot of our history as of people, it takes a lot of preparation for us to be ready to be at a beach physically, mentally, emotionally. But I grew up like, just like Jenny, we grew up in the Bay Area.

So I'm like, the beach is part of our life. We just, we go, it's a cold beach, but we're used to seeing the water. Like I love the water. I love being by the water, but I i'm not i'll put my foot in but i won't immerse myself uh but i i like the idea when i was younger i loved going when i'm older now same thing the sun is there to destroy us and our skin so i like to be in shaded areas but i I appreciate it. The people who are out getting tans, I worry about you, but do what you're doing.

Pro beach, anti beach, but I'm never going to get ever into a public pool. That's not something I'm against. It's full of chemicals. What about like a hotel pool? Nope. You never know who pooped in there.

Wow. Growing up, we had a pool in my backyard, and the cul-de-sac kids, they had a history of doing their number one and twos. Anyway, long story short, my dad never cleaned the water. There's a pool that still exists, but we never go in because it's, let's move on. Mujan, when you said the cul-de-sac kids, I immediately had a mental picture of them. I was like, yeah, those cul-de-sac kids. Every time. You can't trust the cul-de-sac kids.

I immediately had a pitch. I was like, oh, okay. So the show's called The Cul-de-sac Kids. It's about a group of five kids with very different personalities. One of their personalities is that he loves food. Yeah. And then there's another kid

he's just like the adventurous one. He's always trying to get them to go on an adventure. And then there's that one who always poops in the pool. His thing. I think that might be the kid who loves food. There might be a running thing of if he gets in the pool

then it's just, Linda, I shouldn't have found that burrito. Now I envision the t-shirt this is great yeah i also i'm very excited that everyone agrees with me about the sun the sun is a destructive force that uh we should have we should have dealt with long ago and did you say the the bay area it's cold water because i i had the beaches of lake michigan growing up which is also like you get used to it, but it's tough. Yeah, it's for polar bears. Yeah, going to the beach was to me growing up was like, it's always a little cold. It's always windy, very rocky beaches. Like Northern California beaches are like wetsuit beaches. Like people do go out and surf, but like they have to wear wetsuits. And at that point, it's beaches are, like, wetsuit beaches. Like, people do go out and surf, but, like, they have to wear wetsuits. And at that point, it's just like, why?

Yeah. I once had cousins from Belgium come and visit. And they're like, America, we're going to go to the beach. And we're like, no, no, it's not what you think. It's December. It's freezing cold. But they wore their, like, bikinis and short shorts. And they went there.

And they still, like, toughed it out. They're like, yeah, we're at the beach. We're doing it, America. And we're like, oh, we'll just drop you off. We're going to Costco. We'll come back in two hours. The other show we make is the upbeat Belgians. I'm way into it. For the rest of the show, we've got a couple kind of big takeaways for people about why going to the beach is secretly incredibly fascinating. Before we get into that, our first segment is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics about going to the beach in a segment called Rock Your Body.

Yeah. Stats, streets, stats. All right. That was so good. That was thrilling. I'm so happy. And that name was submitted by at Nico underscore Mantha. We're going to have a new name for this segment every week,

submitted by listeners like you. Make them as silly and wacky as possible. Submit your name for the numbers and stats segment to at SIFpod on Twitter or to SIFpod at gmail.com. We have a theme song for the cul-de-sac. We know which artist to go to for the cul-de-sac kids. That's sacks. Streets. Sacks. Yep, there it is

cover a group famously named for a different kind of street for the cul-de-sac but uh so we got some stats here and the first interesting number is 37 miles or less and that's 60 kilometers for everyone else but but 37 miles or less, that number is the distance that half of all people live from an ocean as of 2016, according to Smithsonian. Half of all the people on earth are 37 miles or less from an ocean. That's where people live. That's surprising to me. Yeah. Yeah, me too. But I guess the coastal cities are much more populous everywhere you go. That's true. Yeah. Yeah, because I guess the coastal cities are much more populous everywhere you go. That's true.

Yeah. Yeah, because I guess the history of coastal cities is they were the importers, exporters, ships. That's why a lot of the population started and continued because that's how the economy worked back then and still now. So that makes sense. Well, immediately in my head, I was like, well, what about people in the middle of Russia? What about people like, right in the middle of China? And I'm like, yeah, there are fewer people there than in the cities that are closer to the coast. Yeah. So I guess, you know what, that does make sense. Alex isn't lying. Yeah, it's I find it fun that it's ever been measured

that way, too, because it's just an interesting thing to think about. It's also, according to John Gillis, who is a professor of merit of history at Rutgers University, as of 2016, coastal populations rose 30% in the previous 30 years. So not only is everybody near the coasts and the oceans, but it's also gone like way up in the last 30 years. We're all just going straight to the beach to call it a fun thing. That's what we're doing. I think we like knowing that we could go to a beach at any moment if we wanted to. Yeah. The option. We have an option.

The option. And we just generally choose not to take it. Yep. My backyard is sort of my beach in that it is the one outdoor space i go to nothing like the beach otherwise yeah also i was just gonna say i'm i'm always a little worried about staying on the coast because of all the things that are changing with global warming like the you know earthquake not earthquake, but I keep thinking of movies where there's going to be, or just like terrible things that happen because of the water going over land.

Like a tsunami. There's actually, there's kind of two numbers here that are sort of related to that. And one of them is 75 to 90%. And this is from the same professor, John Gillis. He says that's the number of sand beaches that are disappearing worldwide, at least in the, you know, the medium term or long term. He says it's partly rising sea levels, partly increased storm action, and then also massive erosion because of people doing stuff on the shore and then pushing the beach out into the sea. It's not a very fun stat, but, you know. Partially all the sand I brought home with me in my shoes.

That's the fun thing to say. There's nothing fun about the climate changing. But it's a thing going on. Beaches are something that our activities on the rest of the land can impact. The other just number here, this is a very specific story. The number is 33 years. And that is how long a beach in Ireland went missing. So 33 years, what happened is there's the town of Doha on Eccle Island in County Mayo, which is Northwest Ireland. was a huge storm and it just ripped all of the sand off of the beach. Suddenly they just had a rocky coastline.

And then in 2017, whole nother storm, all the sands back. And they're just like, Oh, we're a beach town. I guess that's what we do now. Property values up.

Yeah. Yeah. What a fun surprise. Like, cause if you've lived there your whole life and you're younger than 33, you're just suddenly like, I suddenly have like this great beach real estate. This is amazing. They also, the other, the other kicker of the story is 2019 additional storm beach gone

again. That really happened. So it's a really weird town and there's like weird tidal patterns in that area and it might come back again. I have no idea, you know. They only had two years. That so that's fascinating i really i didn't realize that a beach could be um so in and out of your life like that it kind of reminds me at least in california whenever there's like a beach side town there there's always wind chime shops or very like those sort of nature-y sort of art shops.

And I wonder if those businesses also come and go with the rise and fall of the beach. No, okay. I was about to say like air, what do you call it? Air sprayed t-shirts. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The second a beach appears So do those And you can get your own name on a shirt

It's a weird thing to wear on your shirt Or your name on a little rice Like all those little kitschy things Yeah, the beach people Yeah I love that there's a professor who's like I'm going to study beaches That's the same thing as when Adam Sandler is like, I'm going to set this movie in Hawaii.

And they're like, Adam Sandler, you're just finding a reason to go to Hawaii. Like this movie doesn't have to take place in Hawaii. He just wanted to go to Hawaii. I feel like that's the same thing with this professor who's like, I'm going to study a beach. And they're like, dude. But like really nice beaches. And just see why they're so nice. I just want to see like what's the fluffiest towel I could lay on.

Yeah. Like why is the sand so white? And why is the water so clear? And why are the dolphins so nice? Why are the dolphins so nice? So nice. One page dissertation. It's just like they just like, they just is.

They just is. There's a few more stats here. Also with, like, just going to the beach, like, that whole culture, it's very hard to get good numbers on, like, how many people are going to the beach because there's no, like, tickets or anything, you know. But Expedia.com did a very unscientific survey of several thousand people in 2013. And some stats from that, 46% of respondents had taken a beach vacation in the previous 12 months. 64%, that's even more, said they were likely to take one in the next 12 months.

And then my favorite stat is that when they asked people their main beach fear, 54% said their main beach fear was having wallet slash possessions stolen and then a distant second place was drowning really the main thing was my stuff could get grabbed like wait who did they ask did they ask and it was an international questions or just yeah americans they it It was people in 21 countries. So like Americans, everybody. They're like, don't take my wallet. But you know, if there's undertow, it happens.

What do you do? Well, I think it's like you can avoid going into the water, but you do go and just spread all your stuff onto a big colorful towel. That's true. Though I think I would rather have it taken than do it now. Like if I had to have a choice, like if I had to choose, do I want my wallet stolen or do I want to be pulled into the undertow and lost to the sea? I don't know, man.

I got like five stamps on a Jamba Juice card, so I don't know. I do. I have one beach story I'm remembering right now. Again, I apologize for how I'm going to sound. I don't like this person, but I was once vacationing in Barcelona. I was with my brother, and I had a fever

of like 100 and whatever, like a high fever, but I was so stubborn. I'm like, I'm here. I'm never in, like, country, I don't, I want, I love traveling, I want to be here, so I'm still gonna, they went out to do whatever they're doing, but I'm, and, but I, I decided to go out on a walk, even though I had a high fever, and I became kind of delirious, started sweating, and I saw this beach, and I laid down, and I guess I took a nap that was a couple hours long, just spread out.

And when I woke up, a naked woman was tapping me. And she's like, Estas morta? She's like, How are you dead? And I wasn't. It was a kind. And I realized I fell asleep like with my high fever in this nude beach in Barcelona. But they were very kind and took care of me. And I didn't really have any possessions.

I think I had my passport on me, but no one stole it. So if you ever want to be taken care of, go to a nude beach and wear clothes. I was the weird one there because I was wearing clothes. And is it a thing where since it's a nude beach, they were like, someone has clothes, they must be in trouble? Yeah. All the nudes are worried about me. When in trouble, send nudes.

There we go. Well, I think that can bring us into the first of our takeaways for the show. Those were the stats and numbers, folks. And that takes us into takeaway number one. Going to the beach was invented in the late 1700s in Britain for medical purposes. Not everybody knows that. Like, just the basic idea of, oh, I'm going to go hang out on the beach. Like, I'm not saying no one has ever done that in all of history. But until, like, the late 1700s, it was not a very common thing for anyone to do.

The sea was, like, scary and weird. Right. But it was also, yeah the british industrial revolution so the cities were full of like soot and yeah stuff in the air and it wasn't healthy at all to like be in the city and breathe and so yeah so it's like yeah just go to the water for a vacation that's right on yeah that makes sense but it is funny that they invented the idea of that place over there. Should we go there? Like I'm inventing what if we go over to the place that we're not currently? I know it's crazy.

Yeah. It's hard to like exactly place it because obviously this is like all of people over all of time. Like the beach was not fun for centuries and centuries and centuries. According to Dr. Robert Ritchie, who's the director of research at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, quote, in the Judeo-Christian biblical tradition, the boiling sea is where great awful beasts come from. And he also says that 17th century pirates did not swim, being that the ocean was opaque,

they couldn't see what was in it. There were superstitions about monsters and leviathans and other unthinkable and deadly garbage of the deep, is what he says. And to people in general, like, you know, the ocean was terrifying. And so why would you hang out on a beach that's not like a totally normal thing to do? I get that. You know what the other thing is? It's really hard to imagine old-timey people on a beach. The furthest back I can go is people strolling on the beach with parasols in the Victorian era. But before that, it's like imagining old people eating pizza

before 1970. I'm sure they did but it's just that thing of like my brain can't wrap its head around like people like it just that doesn't that doesn't really compute for me does that make sense yeah it does yeah i'm like in my mind i'm trying to think of like the colonials jamestown like back in the day pilgrims being like, let's go to the beach. And it just doesn't compute. I don't know why.

It's like until I had made stovetop popcorn, I like didn't know you could do it not in a microwave. And I was like, how do people in the past even, how are they eating that? It doesn't make sense. I wonder how much of it is like, because so much of like looking back at history is this is like how much of this is like colonizers coming from like landlocked places going to a place with a beautiful shore and being like no one has thought to be on this beach and

like the indigenous populations that they pushed out of that area are like guys like it's like how do we make money out of this where do we how do you put an economy there like you know somebody's got to put tiny rice exactly and like weird art shops of portraits of like well and i also think like but i think when you say like going to the beach it conjures up a really specific image now which is like we pack a, we go and we put out a blanket. And it's just all these specific steps where it's like, oh yeah, there's a whole culture of that as an activity to do. Because that's especially dead on about the beach being defined as a space that it is. Because right, there were people spending time on the sand next to water all the time.

Because right, like there were people spending time on the sand next to water all the time. But just this idea of like, we're going to the beach is like, very specific couple of colonizers telling other people that's how it works. Yeah. Because there is that thing we're describing sort of developed the beach as a medical situation. It was like, oh, you're a British person who feels ill in any way. The beach in all of these various ways will be like, like actually medically beneficial for you, not just like relaxing. And a lot of this coming from a great article in the Atlantic called The Historic Healing Power of Going to the Beach by A.D. Braun. And she points out mainly like three ways people thought the beach helped. It was breathing sea air, swimming in water, and then also drinking the seawater. They thought all three of these things, very good for you. That last one especially. Hmm.

Like, I definitely know people now who are like, yeah, the being in seawater is like really, it has like legitimate benefits for your skin and like i think there are like disinfecting qualities of like the salt and all that stuff but don't drink it don't you get like crazy from that though yeah that's a big like stranded sailor thing there's also a thing with with just the concept of the beach, like the phrase on the beach, apparently before the 1700s, it was a figure of speech that sailors used. And it was like a metaphor for you're stranded or left behind by your ship. So it's like, oh, he's on the beach means like you've been left behind to die and you'll be drinking seawater

and stuff. But then in the mid 1700s, there were a few doctors in particular, a guy named Dr. Richard Russell, who was a doctor in Brighton in the UK, which is like a sea coast city in southern England. And he started telling people that a really great health practice is to bathe in and drink the seawater in Brighton in England. He was like, that's the best thing to do. The city I'm in, drink the seawater and go in there. And he claimed that it was good for people suffering from scurvy, jaundice, leprosy, glandular consumption and wrote up a treatise called

A Dissertation on the Use of Seawater in the Diseases of the Glands, particularly the scurvy, jaundice, king's evil, leprosy, and the glandular consumption. That was his treatise on what to do. King's evil? Yeah, I don't know what king Consumption. That was his treatise on what to do. King's Evil? Yeah, I don't know what King's Evil is, so I sort of skipped over it. I can't imagine what that illness is.

Wow. I want to come back while we do the episode talking about King's Evil, whatever that. I love this sort of, I mean, there was just an era of medicine up until very recently where it was just, we're gonna try some stuff we really don't know what's gonna work like maybe we drill a hole into your head and some evil will come out like no one can tell what's medicine like yeah i mean in a way this doctor is right if you do drink seawater from brighton something else might happen to you that's even worse. So you don't care about those other diseases you have because you'll be focused on the new problem that you have.

Drinking tons of salt. He wrote that he said he had a patient drink a pint of seawater every morning for nine months and that it recovered them from leprosy which cannot be true that's that's not how that disease works yeah because they died no right no more complaining so yeah there's no more complaints everyone's great no problems so you know how there were plague masks that looked like big crows sort of like they had like the big pointy noses and like all that. Living through a pandemic, because you grew up in history and you're like, oh yeah, the plague doctors wore the plague mask.

And you're like, sure, that's what a mask looks like to protect you from the plague. That's not, they didn't need to look that scary. Like there's always been the technology to make a mask look kind of normal. We're like, we could have always been doing that. That makes even less sense now that we're all existing in that. Right. It doesn't need to be a crazy crow monster.

It can just be like a little thing over your face. Yeah. Or like kitty whiskers or something. Yeah. Can you imagine how scary it would be if you were dying and a crazy crow monster was coming at you? It could have just been a person wearing a mask that has a smile on it.

Yeah, it could just be normal. Or should we normalize scary crows? What have they done? They can't help who they are. Jenny? I'm sorry. You're right. They've lived this life with those faces. They just want to be loved.

And caw. And fly. Yeah, squawk, squawk. I mean, i mean mujan's right i'm not a crow what uh carry on uh off of that we are going to a short break followed by a whole new takeaway I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR.

Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And then the big, big therapy was

like swimming in seawater, which again might have some like good things for you. But it was not fun. Like we think of I'm going to go to the beach and swim, we think like the benefits will come from having fun in the water. But according to the Atlantic, quote, by the mid 1700s, a standard therapy was developed, which resembled waterboarding, far more than a spa treatment. It involved dunking society ladies in the freezing sea repeatedly until the twin effects of cold and suffocation caused terror and panic. The frightened patient would then be hoisted from the water in her soaking flannel smock, revived with vigorous back rubs and feet warmers, given a cup of tea, and then they would do that every morning for

several weeks while they stayed at a seaside resort for health reasons. There's a lot of women, I think, in LA who would pay a lot of money for that. Like a dunking followed by a pampering. I think that's a very LA thing. If you say it'll make your skin tighter. If you say it prevents aging, you would make a billion dollars. Does the article mention or do we know that this actually proved to be efficient? Or was it people were doing it because other people were doing it? It seems like it's more of the latter.

It definitely doesn't cure tuberculosis or anything. It was probably like, it also could be the kind of thing where if people just go to a resort and take time for themselves, that feels nice. So they were like, oh, well, surely this also fits germ theory or something somehow, when it doesn't, it's just made up. There was also a theory around the sea air. And according to Elaine Corbin, who's a emeritus professor of history at the Sorbonne, the discovery of oxygen in 1778 was a big deal to everyone. And then one medical theory that came around was, oh, sea air must be healthy because oxygen, this thing we just discovered, like sea air has a lot more of it. We just kind of figure.

And so that's why sea air must be good for you. Like there was like, like the nuts and bolts of science in general was leading people to be like the beach is magic that's my my takeaway does it actually have more oxygen because sea level would have more oxygen than anything above sea level like i guess so it could be science i would buy that i failed science twice in school so don't listen to me but i would believe that and it's it's also that thing that i think you both were mentioning earlier too of just industrial revolution is happening regular people uh the most they can get away from their horrible polluted city is the beach and so it's like yeah the air is not full of like shirt waste factory smoke so sure good that'll do it yeah and also to show off i mean

they're all wearing very conservative of that time swimwear but you know they all had hot pods they all had hot pods they all had hot tight industrial revolution pods that's a fact think about it move on all right in my mind everyone had all the men had that what is it like the muscular v like the the the strong man yeah like the old timey fit like barrel chested yeah children men women they all have that same body to me because because their job like 12 hours a day, six days a week, was just pulling a big lever attached to a big gear. So they got really strong.

Yeah, it was just a lot of CrossFit at that time. Yeah. Well, so many factories, you have to be constantly bouncing up and down while music plays. It's like, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. And you're just, just like sort of constantly but like and you're sort of bouncing up and down

like this and then pulling some gears I'm trying to do like a Mary Melody bouncing animation the podcast audience can't see I'm doing that, pulling a ton of levers for those of you not watching this i'm doing that pulling a ton of levers for those of you not not watching this i'm doing

accurate brilliant physical comedy it is like we are talking charlie chaplin and uh lucille ball and buster keaton it's all in one linda and also then uh with the medical use of the beaches that became like the first resorts. The first resorts were basically, there wasn't like the public health care so much we think of now, but it was like private businesses offering a medical facility more or less at the beach. That was how they got built. Apparently the first seaside resort opened in the town of Scarborough near York in northern England with like, you know, not all that sunny of a beach, but a place where you could do your medical beach stuff. And it was designed to cure melancholy, rickets, leprosy, gout, impotence, tubercular infections, menstrual problems,

and hysteria. And then a bunch of other competing resorts popped up in other towns like Margate and Brighton all over England. it was this like english phenomenon immediately sounds like oh i mean we have this now it's like the wellness industry it just sounds like the wellness industry of like the 1880s yeah just like whatever we're gonna cure all of your problems you're gonna be amazing just give us a ton of your money and we're definitely going to fix it. This is so many points on class pass to go to business. But clearly like something, I mean, medic, modern medicine advanced in a way that we don't do this anymore. So either it's like they were, I mean, clearly they didn't cure those things.

Right. But eventually we learned that and have moved on since and just use the beach to keep it tight. Yeah, it's definitely like it went as high as in 1783, the Prince of Wales, who was later King George IV, like went to Brighton because he was worried about his gout. And in Jane Austen's Emma, published in in 1815 the main character's father debates which beach resort to go to for his medical problems like they we got over it eventually but for a long time it was like it was not like oh let's take the family to the beach to build like sand castles it was like i'm going to the beach because i'm a warty or bleeding or something i don't know i'm gonna work on it yeah and i know that no this is

i don't know if this is related but like fdr in the 30s or even 20s or like when he was trying to get a cure for his polio he would go to it was a spring right and so that still continues on or continued on yeah there's still hot springs and that sort of thing that people will go to yeah it's a very enticing, I feel like, treatment, especially for something that's like a real actual medical problem, right? Like it's like, oh, it's something I can try. And it may have no effect, but if nothing else is having any effect, it like feels good, you know?

And I think that takes us well into takeaway number two. Going to the beach wasn't mainstream fun until the late 1800s the oh let's go to the beach and swim and play around it took until really almost the turn of the century for like most people to want to do it as a fun thing to do we'll also link a smithsonian article that talks about some of the first people going to the beach for non-medical stuff being painters and poets. Like it's not very interesting audio, but there was a whole era when people were like, oh, my art and my words will come from the rawness of this crazy beach situation. It's like that guy we were talking about earlier who's going to do his dissertation on beaches.

It's like, I need to be there to draw and to think. like i need to be there to to draw and to think but yeah kind of similarly as we said before it's it's uh if you're coming from the city especially it's just a place where you can like reset your mind that's different from the chaos of the industrial revolution britain it seems like was a big country for being the first one because they had good railway systems if we ever do an episode on trains it's going to be like all british stuff in the history part. Because apparently by 1911, there were more than 100 seaside resorts in England and Wales alone. And the first big one was in Blackpool, which is north of Liverpool, again, very far north, pretty cold. But they had everything for a beach like resort city, an 1890s amusement park sort of like

coney island in america or something like that isn't that sort of like their atlantic city now like i i think of blackpool as being sort of like a british like i know it's not like geordie shore but i do think of it as having like this sort of like casino vibe maybe i just think of that because there was that musical British show, Viva Blackpool with David Tennant, and then they tried to do the US version, Viva Laughlin, and it didn't work. Am I making all this up?

This is sounding right to me, but. The British will write in if we're wrong, but that seems right, yeah. Okay, great, good. This seaside resort phenomenon, it did spread obviously beyond England. According to the Smithsonian article, it says that it made its way across Europe to Normandy and southwestern France, Italy, northern Germany, and then of course to America.

And also like, as far as beach fun, we've all talked about our distaste for the sun. It's the worst. And everyone agreed with us until like around the 1920s in history. Because I think, Jen, you were talking before about like, you just think of people with umbrellas and hating everything about the sun in the past at the beach. That was how it worked. No one wanted to be in there. According to the Atlantic, most ladies would bundle up, shade themselves under umbrellas, and put up entire canopy chair thingies when they went to the beach. It's like being an astronaut or something.

Like I'm putting on all my protective gear for this experience. I mean, that makes sense. When did the idea of having a tan become a popular thing? Is that like a 60s thing? It's weird. It's according to, and this is in particular, this Atlantic article, there were like a few reasons for tans getting popular. One of them is that initially the aristocracy thought a tan meant you were like a laborer.

And so they didn't want that. But then that flipped later on. And then another big reason was the Germans. Because apparently there was a movement in Germany that started in the 1890s. It was called the Free Body Culture Movement or Freikultur. And it promoted athletics and nudism and being in the sun it was all about like i'm gonna be the strongest nakedest outdoors person i can that's fun to me uh and it really took off after world war one wow that's incredibly german yeah and kind of going back to the whole covering oneself up uh there was you know as there

still is now uh the belief that like white pure skin means you're like higher in society yeah and so you have to preserve because if you're tan or brown or darker uh you were a worker and you were considered lower in society. And then also, as far as the other, as the sun became a thing for people, also swimwear was like not a thing for a long, long time that people prioritized, especially when the beach was medical. They were like, oh, why would I want to have cool or useful swimwear? I'm here for my tuberculosis. Right.

Yeah. useful swimwear. I'm here for my tuberculosis. Right. Yeah, women would wear like proper dresses, just full of fabric, like back then to go swim in the water. Yeah. Well, that's the thing is like, I mean, nobody was buying like a swimsuit, like you were wearing a full wool outfit like that. So it would just be so heavy walking back and go sandy, oh, that'd be so bad. That sounds awful. Yeah. Well, there's a thing, and this is from Dr. Robert Ritchie at the Huntington Library again. Apparently, until really the 20th century, like upper class people who were going to go in the water at the beach didn't actually swim. What they would do is they took a quick plunge while naked, and the system was, quote quote they devised a horse

drawn barrel that was backed into the water people took off their clothes inside the barrel and then went naked for a quick plunge but then they got right back out again and put their clothes back on inside the barrel is this where wearing a barrel comes from as a cultural idea i wow like you know how you're like oh that person's so poor they're wearing a barrel and then you're like barrels are more expensive than clothes so yeah is that where barrels come is that where that comes from yeah that's a lot of timber uh i don't know it feels related yeah like like who who is in barrels ever only that trope and then this story just now that's it it looks like it was called the bankruptcy barrel using cartoons

as a token of destitution oh or never nudes right the modesty barrel yes yeah the modesty barrel there's also we'll also link an article from lapham's quarterly which is a great publication it's called the most beautiful girl in america by mar Mifflin. I know that sounds like a story for children or something, but it's about early 1900s swimwear being an American innovation and invention that the US was pushing in a big way. Apparently, men and women started wearing bathing suits around 1900. And then initially, cities made a bunch of laws codifying it very specifically. New York City pushed a law in 1907 that prohibited swimwear that ended more than four inches above the knee without stockings rolled

up over the thigh to bridge the difference. And it was enforced by beach cops, who apparently trudged around commanding, quote, roll them up, sister. That was like a guy in 1907 going around. I would love to do 1907 Baywatch. And it's just a bunch of old-timey beach cops enforcing laws like that, running slowly, wearing huge wool stockings. Just taking a break, breathing heavily like, okay, it's too hot. It's too hot. That lady's legs are showing. Everybody, 10, 12. It's too hot. Right. That lady's legs are showing. Everybody, 10-12.

I don't know about that. You don't know the police codes for 1907 Baywatch? Off the top of your head? 87-2, everybody on the lady. Okay, you're back on the force. Okay, thank you. And then the other law was men had to cover their chests with tank tops so like everybody was being obviously women were more policed just kind of all the time

throughout history but but uh men were also like legally obligated to not do the thing they kind of all do on the beach now like today people are like you're wearing a shirt well no one's ever likes nipples yeah everyone's always been really weird about the idea of nipples yeah like a different skin part on your large skin part no thank you yeah what is the point of it something come out of it i don't understand yeah what are you pointing at yeah weird yeah because also related to the baywatch thing there's an important figure in like the history of swimwear. Her name is Annette Kellerman was an Australian woman champion competitive swimmer, and she invented the one piece swimsuit in order to swim faster. That's where those come from, like like to win races and stuff. And she was also arrested for wearing it on a beach in Massachusetts. She like tried to wear it in the water. It's a one piece swimsuit. It's just like mostly covering her body. And the police arrested her because it wasn't bulky enough and wasn't covering her legs enough. Right. And it was probably was it probably shape shapely like it's showed her shape off, which is just so enticing to everybody on the beach.

I like that. She's like, yeah, of course, you'll swim faster if you don't have fabric being dragged back by the ocean. Yeah. She just figured out what we all know and was arrested. Yeah. All of history is just people being arrested for doing stuff that we think is totally fine now. Right.

Yeah. And it's funny when when like, you know, this stuff is similarly still happening in very conservative countries, like the Middle East, where women can't necessarily go on a, like, you know, they're segregated by gender still in some cases.

But people are like, how dare they? But it's like, no, y'all been doing it back in the past. Like, maybe, I don't know. It's not like you didn't do it. There's also no winning because I remember a couple years ago there was, like, a controversy over a burkini. Like, there was a Muslim woman who was competing in a swim event and obviously wanted to keep her head covered. And there was, like like some controversy over it. It's like, there's no winning.

There's no winning if it comes to something. And if they do win, they should get two awards. Not only winning, but also winning with what they're wearing. Adding like an obstacle. Sorry we made this harder. Sorry we made this hard thing you were doing harder. They should like like they they give them a gold medal and then there's like a second medal that just says for the bull on it or like

some kind of you know like it's very explicit additional award whole anthem plays again you know they they really are there's also uh uh just one other thing with swimsuits is that like, I think people think of the bikini as like one actually modern swimsuit, not this like purely swim competition focused thing that Annette Kellerman did. And it was created as recently as 1946. Maybe some people know, but not everybody knows it was named after the bikini atoll in the Pacific Ocean, because it was, they had just done an atomic test there. And so people were like, this is just as explosive as the A-bomb. Ha-ha.

And that was what the French designer thought. Uh-oh. That's so funny. This is just as damaging to our society at large. At least, you know, a bikini's fine. At least it wasn't like the second draft of that name, which was rejected like boobies or something. Lady giblets. Lady giblets.

It was an engineer named Louis Rayard who designed it. And he saw ladies in Saint-Tropez rolling their swimsuits up to get a better tan. So he was like, oh, this will help with that. And then also there was post-World War II rationing of material. So for like the reason of it's less material. Oh, wow. They did that. But it was still, it was so controversial that they unveiled it at a fashion show and he couldn't find a professional model willing to wear it. And he had to hire Micheline Bernardini, who was a 19-year 19 year old professional nude dancer to be the model for it

because her navel would be exposed and so it was like oh society will be atomic bombed if anyone does this i i mean like i gotta say i i obviously am super pro women wearing anything that makes them feel comfortable no matter how uh revealing or conservative but the fact that there was a man who was like i've got a brilliant invention women wear less and everybody was like awesome job dude good job inventing this selfless thing great idea brad love it brad how about instead of making them yeah i like the first idea of making a suit, which makes them better in water and faster in water, but how about we get rid of the suit?

What if we started making women self-conscious about their abs? Yeah. But make men's shorts longer. We don't want to see their thighs. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Jenny Jaffe and Mujan Zulfagari for hitting the beach with me, even when it's one of those Irish beaches that kind of comes and goes somehow. Very freaky. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one

obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic, story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic, Prora. That's the topic, Prora. It's spelled P-R-O-R-A. Prora is a history thing and a modern day thing and a Hitler thing. It's just one of the weirdest stories I've ever come across. I'm really excited about it. Visit SIFpod.fun to hear about that and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for going to the beach with us. Here's one more run through the big beach takeaways. Takeaway number one, going to the beach was invented in the late 1700s in Britain for medical purposes. And takeaway number two, going to the beach wasn't mainstream fun until the late 1800s,

and then swimwear and all the other stuff we associate with it is totally 20th century stuff. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow our guests. Jenny Jaffe is on Twitter, at Jenny Jaffe, last name spelled J-A-F-F-E, and we're linking an article in Fast Company about her fake made-up cold opens written on Twitter for anyone who wanted one this summer. Mujan Zulfagari is part of the cast of Mission to Zix, that's spelled Z-Y-X-X, and it's a fantastic improvised comedy sci-fi podcast on the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. You can find it on your podcast app. Also, their website is the following, mission2zix.space. Yeah, they have a.space domain name as the new owner of a.fun domain name. I want only unusual domains from here on out, and they've done it. I'm very excited.

Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A great article titled The Weird Origins of Going to the Beach by Daniela Bly for Smithsonian. Another great article titled The Historic Healing Power of Going to the Beach by A.D. Braun for The Atlantic. And a particularly fascinating piece of history and cultural analysis. It's titled The Most Beautiful Girl in America, and it's by Margot Mifflin for the amazing magazine slash academic work Lapham's Quarterly. Find those and more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun.

Find those and more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. The Budos Band's next album is called Long in the Tooth. It releases October 9th. Pre-order your copy at daptonerecords.com. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. See more of Burt's art on Instagram at Burt Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode.

Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Thank you.