Transcripts


 

April 13, 2007:
Interesting Origins Of American Trends
Interview with Martin Smith, author of Poplorica


Mike Carruthers:
Where did this whole idea of losing weight and counting calories begin? It began in 1918.

Martin Smith:

That idea of measuring food intake by calories began with a woman named Lulu Hunt Peters in Los Angeles; she was a physician, she wrote the first weight loss best seller.

Martin Smith, co-author of the book Poplorica, traced back some of the trends that shaped modern America.

She basically said, this is the formula - if you follow it you will lose weight, if you don't you won't.

Remember the 1968 film the "Night Of The Living Dead?" Well in terms of scary movies, Martin says it is a breakthrough film.

Before that they were always these Gothic sort of Frankenstein, dark shadows, very melodramatic kind of horror movies. "Night Of The Living Dead" was frighteningly realistic; these were just normal people who became zombies. And it was really the first of what became the "Friday the Thirteenth", "Halloween" genre of "splatter" flicks.

The first electric guitar, invented and played by Les Paul, didn't look like a guitar, in fact it looked like a log and it was called "the log."

He took it on stage and he played a song and the audience didn't quite get it. He went back the following week and he stuck a couple of guitar wings on it, you know the sort of rounded part of the guitar body, and took it back next week, played the same song, and the crowd loved it. And he realized that it doesn't really matter how an electric guitar sounds, you still have to make it look like a guitar for people to get it.

At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.

 
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