The Art of Manliness: The Strenuous President

In the first year of his presidency, the press used Theodore Roosvelt’s name in connection with the word “strenuous” over 10,000 times. He was known as “the strenuous president,” and with good reason: from his youth, TR had lived and preached a life of vigorous engagement and plenty of physical activity.

Today on the show Ryan Swanson, professor of sports history and author of The Strenuous Life: Theodore Roosevelt and the Making of the American Athlete, discusses not only how TR was shaped by what was called “the strenuous age,” but how he shaped it in turn by promoting sports, and participating in athletics himself. We begin our discussion with what was going on during the late 19th century that got people interested in what was then called “physical culture.” We then turn to the beginning of Roosevelt’s introduction to vigorous exercise as a boy, and how he famously decided to make his body. We discuss TR’s fitness routine when he went to Harvard, and how his becoming a fan of football there led to him supporting the preservation of the game as president. We then discuss how TR lived the strenuous life while in the White House, and thereby inspired the American public to live vigorously too. We take a fun look at what TR thought of the game of baseball, how he went to a health farm at age 58 to get back in fighting shape, and what kind of exercise and athletics TR would be into if he were alive today.

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BBC4 In Our Time: The Gin Craze (09 August 2018)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the craze for gin in Britain in the mid 18th Century and the attempts to control it. With the arrival of William of Orange, it became an act of loyalty to drink Protestant, Dutch gin rather than Catholic brandy, and changes in tariffs made everyday beer less affordable. Within a short time, production increased and large sections of the population that had rarely or never drunk spirits before were consuming two pints of gin a week. As Hogarth indicated in his print 'Beer Street and Gin Lane' (1751) in support of the Gin Act, the damage was severe, and addiction to gin was blamed for much of the crime in cities such as London.

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WorldAffairs: Eco-Anxiety: Climate Change and Mental Health

A burning Amazon rainforest. Thinning ice sheets. Sea level rise. Wildfires in California. Thawing Arctic permafrost. It’s no surprise that many of us have anxiety about our planet’s future. The mental health impacts of climate change are increasing distress about the future while intensifying the trauma of natural disasters already happening. On this week’s episode of WorldAffairs, Caroline Hickman, Executive Committee member of the Climate Psychology Alliance and teaching fellow at the University of Bath joins WorldAffairs co-host Ray Suarez to discuss eco-anxiety in the age of climate change.

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Vox: The big lesson from South Korea's coronavirus response

In South Korea, citizens have flattened the curve of the novel coronavirus -- and it's because of lessons they learned from fighting the MERS outbreak in 2015. Through a combination of aggressive and widespread testing measures, along with a system know as “contact tracing,” they’ve been better positioned to spot the path of the virus and curb its spread. While they are still vigilant for a second wave of Covid-19 cases, people in South Korea are slowly returning to public life. Watch the video above to find out how their testing and contact tracing measures work, and how it can be a lesson for countries still in lockdown.

TLDR News: Is Hungary a Dictatorship Now? Orban's Controversial Coronavirus Law Explained

SciShow: The Delightful Mutation Behind Siamese Cats

It's easy to assume a cat's coat pattern is based exclusively on genetics, but that isn't entirely the case for Siamese cats. Their unique coloration comes from a combination of genetics, a fragile enzyme, and losing heat from little noses and toe beans.