America’s revolutionary war would have almost certainly been lost if not for the colony’s wealthiest merchant. Thomas Willing was a prominent Philadelphia merchant and financier who, in partnership with Robert Morris, operated one of the colonies' most successful importing and exporting firms, specializing in goods such as flour, lumber, tobacco, and sugar, while later using his wealth and mercantile connections to supply the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

After the War, he brought sanity to the unstable early American economy. America was suffocating under a massive, unmanageable national debt owed to foreign lenders, domestic soldiers, and creditors, and lacking the power to tax effectively under the Articles of Confederation. The currency situation was disastrous, with various state-issued paper monies having depreciated drastically—leading to inflation and a widespread lack of confidence in the financial stability of the new republic. Thomas Willing stabilized the nascent American economy by serving as the first president of both the Bank of North America and the First Bank of the United States, where his conservative fiscal leadership established the nation’s credit and transformed the central bank into the "great regulating wheel" of the country's financial system.

Today’s guest is Richard Vague, author of “The Banker Who Made America: Thomas Willing and the Rise of the American Financial Aristocracy.” We discuss how Willing bankrolled–and in the process helped save–the American Revolution, and then shaped the financial architecture of our young Republic. So powerful was Willing that President John Adams complained that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton were governed by him.

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Most of us only know Thomas Paine for one thing: writing Common Sense in 1776, which helped kickstart the Revolution by selling hundreds of thousands of copies. But he was far more than a writer. Paine actively served with George Washington's army during its darkest days and then used his pen to advocate for global freedom in both the French Revolution and against organized religion. His revolutionary fervor spanned the globe, leading him to champion the French Revolution with Rights of Man and challenge religious orthodoxy in The Age of Reason/

Paine's later involvement with the French Revolution, his Enlightenment opinions, and his unorthodox view of religion plunged his reputation into a controversy that continues to this day.

Today’s guest is Jack Kelly, author of “Tom Paine's War: The Words That Rallied a Nation and the Founder for Our Time.” We look at how Paine shaped the war. He convinced the colonies that war should grow from a reform movement to a full revolution: The entire British system of hereditary monarchy and aristocratic rule was a form of tyranny, making the case that separation from Great Britain the only logical course for America.

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Fad workouts have been with us for decades, but they go back much further than we realize. Long before CrossFit, Zumba, P90X, Tae Box, Jazzercise or Jack LaLanne, we had 19th century strongmen. These mustachioed showmen were the first global fitness influencers. They hauled trunks of weights onto steamships, toured the world, then sold exercise equipment through the mail. The most famous was Eugene Sandow, who broke chains, and created with his own body a "manned cavalry bridge" where he would lie down while men, horses, and a carriage were driven over his body. He even fought a lion in front of an auditorium and won, although the lion was almost definitely sedated.

Today’s guest is Connor Heffernan, author of “When Fitness Went Global: The Rise of Physical Culture in the Nineteenth Century.” In this episode, we discuss:

• Ancient Egyptians were basically doing CrossFit thousands of years ago. They trained with swinging sandbags that look exactly like modern kettlebell flows.
• One of the first exercise practices to experience globalization was Indian club-swinging. Indian club-swinging, originating from the heavy training clubs used by Indian wrestlers and soldiers for centuries, was observed and adopted by British military officers stationed in India during the early 1800s.
• Early diet culture was a carnival of quack science. Victorian fitness magazines were filled with miracle tonics, starvation cures and pseudoscientific meal plans. Many of our “new” diet trends are rebranded versions of schemes first marketed with sepia portraits and dubious testimonials.

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