The Dick Cavett show aired on half a dozen networks between 1968 and 2007. Hundreds of episodes were packaged in various formats over the years, including radio and variety specials.
Cavett has most often been approached about one episode folks are sure they saw, the footage from which has never seen the light of day.
Today’s Moment of Science… The Life and Death of J.I. Rodale.
We may think that memory works like video constantly recording, burying the footage deep in the temporal lobe for later retrieval. Unfortunately, it’s more like a recording of a recording, poorly dictated and jotted down with shaky hands on a wonky etch-a-sketch. In studies from Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, memories have not only been shown to be less than reliable, but somewhere between readily modifiable and entirely falsifiable.
I told you that story to tell you this story.
The modern wellness industry didn’t just hatch from a jade egg that fell to Earth from Gwyneth Paltrow’s yoni one day. Jerome Irving Rodale, the self-appointed “Mr. Organic,” was an advocate for organic farming. Amongst other publications, he launched Prevention magazine in 1950. Without a close examination, it could come across as just another health rag. However, the advice falls consistently a few joints shy of a 420.
“Isn’t there a better way of conquering polio than jabbing all the children in the country with a needle?” he asked the year the first polio vaccine came out. This was an interesting way of voicing support for the iron lung industry. Rodale was far ahead of his time, promoting these ideas decades before Andrew Wakefield’s anti-vax hysteria morphed into an entire industry of bullshit autism “cures.” Rodale instead promoted a diet to prevent polio, claiming polio rates were down after an ad for the diet ran in a local paper. I’m sure the vaccine had nothing to do with it.
In Rodale’s book ‘Happy People Rarely Get Cancer,’ he stated, “Negroes get less cancer than whites, for the Negro is a happy race. True, there is their problem of segregation, but the Negro race being what it is, I think a Negro sings just the same, and is not going to let segregation dampen his spirits as much as a similar problem would do to the white person.” Which is too many layers of wrong for me to analyze with the drugs I have on hand. Beyond the utter nonsense of being a “happy race” under Jim Crow laws, that fucking racist was also super factually wrong that Black people get fewer cases of cancer than white people. It varies by state and type of cancer, but overall incidence is higher and the five year survival rate is lower in Black people than in white people.
Rodale was rarely right when it came to cancer in general. His publication told the masses that causes of cancer included saltwater, processed foods, heating systems, and rimless glasses. But don’t worry, electricity helps fight cancer. How? Don’t ask, he’s not telling.
Because he’s dead. I mean that’s not surprising because he was born some 125 years ago, but the death itself? Fucking legendary.
The year after his little “those happy singing non-cancery brown people” book was published, he was invited to be a guest on The Dick Cavett Show. He claimed to be “in such good health” that he laughed as he fell down a flight of stairs the day before, which sounds like an odd thing to laugh at. “I’ve never felt better in my life” he proclaimed. Infamously, he said that he would live to be a hundred, “unless run down by some sugar-crazed taxi driver.” He thought the cause of criminal behavior was sugar, so.
Scooting down for the next guest to sit next to the host, Rodale remained on stage for the following interview with journalist Pete Hamill. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Organic let out a snoring sound, which was initially mistaken for a comic effect, a joke that this interview was boring him.
As Rodale’s figure slumped, Hamill leaned in and said to Cavett “this looks bad.” While the audience laughed, still thinking this was a joke, Cavett didn’t. He just knew.
In an article he wrote for the New York Times, Cavett said “To this day, I don’t know how I knew. Next thing I knew I was holding his wrist, thinking, ‘I don’t know anything about what a wrist is supposed to feel like.’” He called into the audience for a doctor, two of whom came up and performed CPR until Rodale could be brought to the hospital.
J.I. Rodale was declared dead on arrival, age 72.
People still tell Dick Cavett that they’ll never forget the look on his face when that guy died on his couch. To which he typically replies, “oh, you were in the audience?” Because the episode never aired, and nobody outside of a small handful of people have seen the footage.
Much like Rodale’s work, our memories are fallible things. The story of a health guru who predicts his own longevity just to die moments later on television? It’s etched itself into our minds, a show we’ve never seen and can’t forget.
This has been your Moment of Science, predicting that the sun will come out tomorrow.
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