Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness Podcast.

In the first year of his presidency, the press used Theodore Roosevelt's naming connection

with the word Strenuous over 10,000 times.

He was known as the Strenuous President, and with good reason,

from his youth, TR lived, and preached a life of vigorous engagement

and plenty of physical activity.

Today on the show, Ryan Swanson, Professor of Sports History

and the 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 began 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 turned the beginning of Roosevelt's introduction to vigorous exercises of boy,

and how he famously decided to make his body.

We discussed TR's fitness routine when he went to Harvard,

and how he became a fan of football there,

which led to him supporting the preservation of the sport as a president.

We then discussed how TR lived the Strenuous Life while in the White House,

and thereby inspired the American public to live vigorously too.

And then we take a fun look at what TR thought of the game of baseball,

how he went to a health farm of the age of 58 to get back in fighting shape,

what kind of exercise athletics TR would be into if he were alive today.

...