ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
It's the start of a brand spanking new year. And we thought it would be a good time to look at other beginnings. For instance, did you know that Pepsi Cola began life as the far more ordinary-sounding Brad's drink; or that the man who helped develop the lie detector test also created Wonder Woman?
These tasty tidbits come from the book "In the Beginning: From Big Hair to the Big Bang, mental_floss Presents a Mouthwatering Guide to the Origins of Everything." Will Pearson is an editor of mental_floss magazine, and he joins me now.
How are you?
Mr. WILL PEARSON (Editor, "In the Beginning: From Big Hair to the Big Bang, mental_floss Presents a Mouthwatering Guide to the Origins of Everything"): I'm doing well, Andrea. Thanks.
SEABROOK: Good. So okay. First things first. This may be an obvious question, but what about the origins of this book. How did you start writing this book?
Mr. PEARSON: We get so many questions from readers about origins that eventually, it became a no-brainer for Mental Floss magazine. People ask us questions all the time. And finally, we decided, you know, we've got about a hundred or 200 of these. So we need to put these into a book and add some others with curious things of our own.
SEABROOK: And we should say that, for those who haven't seen it, mental_floss magazine is sort of a magazine that answers weird questions and thinks about sort of odd things.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. PEARSON: It's definitely one way to put it.
SEABROOK: Is that fair?
Mr. PEARSON: We look at it as a way to blur the lines between education and entertainment. It's a way to look back and learn the things you wish you'd learned in school.
SEABROOK: Okay. So I wish I learned this in school - the creator of Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marston. He sounds like quite a character.
Mr. PEARSON: Yeah, he does. And researching this, we learned, you know, we kind of think of Wonder Woman as this great feminist character. But his original intentions with Wonder Woman was actually to create a character that would show women how to be both active but also submissive and peace-loving at the same time. So not exactly what people expected.
SEABROOK: Barf. That's what I have to say about that, is barf.
Mr. PEARSON: Exactly. I'm with you on that.
SEABROOK: And while we're on this track of talking about women and their place, let's talk about the dishwasher. This was actually designed in the early 1900s, I read in your book. The first model came out in 1914. And it was invented -this Rube Goldberg sort of contraption was invented by a woman.
Mr. PEARSON: That's true - and not a woman that you might expect. It was, you know, it's hard to feel sorry for Josephine Cochran, given the problems most people faced in her day - poverty, work schedules, poor health, whatever it may have been. Josephine, on the other hand, was a very rich socialite. And her main problem was that it was hard to find good help. She was a pretty well-known socialite - would entertain many people. And what would happen is her servants were breaking her dishes on a regular basis. And this frustrated Josephine; she decided to take matters into her own hands.
So she went out to the woodshed behind her house and invented this contraption which, surprisingly, when you look at the contraption she invented, had many of the same features that the dishwasher has today - with the wires sticking up where you would place each of the dishes - worked pretty well. The only problem, had a hard time catching on because when they interviewed women of the time, they actually found - at least their answer was - that they enjoyed washing the dishes themselves. I have a hard time believing that but it took many decades before it actually caught on.
SEABROOK: Fascinating. All right, I want to talk about my own personal torture here - the diet. For those of us swearing at this time of the year to start eating better and, you know, cut out all the sweets - stuff like that, tell us about the origins of this grave torture.
Mr. PEARSON: Well, you know, it turns out dieting wasn't exactly a concern of our ancestors. For them, the main problem was actually getting more carbs, fat and sugar - not less. Well, that's why in looking back, the first person we could find to go on a recorded weight-loss program was actually England's William I - better known as William the Conqueror. And by all accounts, he's the fattest person to lead a major country until President Taft got stuck in a bathtub. So to cut his waistline, he adopted a liquid diet, which you should read as a liquor diet. So for the better part of a year, he attempted to subsist on nothing but alcohol, and it worked much better than you might expect. And he was eventually able to ride again.
SEABROOK: Well, I imagine if he was drinking something like beer, I mean, that's made of grain, right? So it's not like straight, you know, vodka or something, right?
Mr. PEARSON: You know, yeah. And I'm not sure what exactly these drinks were that he was taking in. But somehow it worked. I guess it's kind of one of the early Atkins-like diets.
SEABROOK: Will Pearson is one of the editors of mental_floss magazine.
Thanks for joining us.
Mr. PEARSON: Thanks, Andrea.