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In the decades before the Industrial Revolution was a thing

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the only people who had any free time were aristocrats and the rich Marie [photographs of aristocrats]

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Antoinette for example spent every spare moment buying clothes going to parties

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and well, going to the Opera, gambling and baking cakes for her friends what [Marie Antoinette baking a cake]

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she really did like letting people eat cake the French laborers who paid for

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Marie Antoinette's fabulous dresses and gambling excesses on the other hand [Man walks into a dress shop]

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couldn't even dream about putting their feet up and playing some Legend of Zelda

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at the end of the day you know despite fact that it hadn't been invented yet [Worker playing video game]

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they worked they ate they slept they err, sorry that was about it, that's all they did and

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yeah the peasantry had sundays off but mass was basically mandatory and keeping [People at mass service]

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up with an elderly priest muttering in Latin does not a vacation make seriously

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that was one spring break we should have planned a bit better the Industrial

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Revolution eventually changed all this but only after it was done using heavy

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machinery to main small children as machines took over tasks that workers [Children working on heavy machine]

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had labored at in the past and as government's put the kibosh on

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ridiculously long workdays people suddenly discovered they had a little [clock rapidly ticking forward]

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time in the evening between finishing supper and going to bed initially there

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was panic then folks started asking the eternal burning question now what? turned

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out the answer was soccer or sports anyway rules of modern-day soccer were [man on a soccer field]

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set down in England in the 1860s rugby was an offshoot of soccer for guys who

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love pain and scaring the heck out of the opposing team by doing the haka on [rugby players performing the Haka]

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the field before the game as for cricket the first international match took place

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in 1844 played by actual crickets, okay maybe not don't don't write that in the [cricket players transform into crickets]

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essay it was also during this era that people discovered the concept of going

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out with that little bit of money left over from payday workers could go to the [workers shopping]

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seashore or to a fair they can also go to the pub that home away from home that

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bastion of civilization and security that will be all we have left when the [zombie eating an arm]

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zombie apocalypse finally arrives, at least that's a lesson we learned from

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Shaun of the Dead finally with the invention of free time regular people [Man sitting down in a chair]

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could at last sit down and really think about things they wrestled with

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questions like how can I avoid visiting my wife's family this [Man in bed blowing his nose]

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Christmas how is it possible for my upstairs neighbor to have such heavy

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footsteps and how can my mates and I get together and overthrow the capitalist [Canon fires]

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system on the whole the workers of the Western world liked this new concept of

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free time all they lacked was a subscription to Netflix to make

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everything perfect [Miner covered in coal]

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