The History of Morning Routines, Part One: Thank Goodness People Learned to Wash Themselves

Ridiculous History

iHeartPodcasts

History, Society & Culture

4.3 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Regardless of culture or country, most people have some sort of morning routine. This could be a simple as a shower, a shave and brushing one's teeth -- on the other hand, some morning routines are elaborate affairs requiring an hour or more of careful grooming, mousiturizing, meditation, and more. So where do these rituals come from? In the first part of this two-part episode, Ben, Noel and Max journey to the past to learn that, for a large part of human history, people smelled terrible.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Ridiculous History is a production of IHeart Radio. Welcome back to the show.
0:27.8	Fellow Ridiculous historians.
0:29.3	Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.
0:32.5	Let's hear it for Mr. Morning himself,
0:35.4	our super producer, Mr. Max Williams.
0:39.0	You're saying about, like, I'm such a night owl, even years after being a, getting out of the bartending game, like, if I stay up way too late, like one night, it goes straight back to it.
0:51.2	It's tough.
0:51.9	You get to a certain age.
0:53.3	You got to catch up on that sleep.
0:55.7	I've become the same way.
0:57.0	It's like 9.30 p.m. to bed for me sometimes and 6 a.m. to rise.
1:02.0	The morning routine is a big part of my life these days, and I'm here for it, y'all.
1:07.5	And I don't really sleep.
1:09.3	My name is Ben Bullen. That voice you just heard is none
1:13.2	other than Mr. Noel Brown. And in this episode, we are exploring the history of something
1:19.5	that a lot of us don't think about through this lens. For many, the majority of people, I imagine,
1:27.2	when you wake up, whatever time that is, you have a wake up routine.
1:32.9	If you're rising in the morning, we see this all the time in real life and in fiction.
1:38.1	You have rituals, right?
1:40.8	They may be elaborate for some.
1:42.9	They may be very simple.
1:46.6	You might have your morning shower, brush your teeth, right? They may be elaborate for some. They may be very simple. You might have your morning shower,
	...

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