You Were Born to Run
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Summary
For decades, researchers have argued that the notable human capacity for endurance evolved from the hunting practices of our ancestors, which produced physiological adaptations that make us uniquely well suited for running. But this theory has always had its detractors. As my guest explains, a new study addresses these longstanding criticisms and adds evidence that indeed, we were all born to run.
Transcript
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We're at McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast.
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For decades, some researchers have argued that the notable human capacity for endurance
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evolved from the hunting practices of our ancestors, which produced physiological adaptations
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that make us uniquely well suited for running. But this theory has always had its detractors.
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As my guest explains, a new study addresses these longstanding criticisms and adds evidence
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that indeed, we were all born to run. Alex Hutchinson is a journalist who covers the
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science of endurance and fitness. And today on the show, he explains what those criticisms
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were and how this new research counters them. We talk about the role running held amongst
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peoples of the past, how running is not only primal, but cultural and even spiritual, and
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why we continue to run today, even though we're not hunting for food. And we discuss how, even
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if we are born to run, that doesn't mean everyone will always enjoy running all the
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time and how to get into running. If you're someone who doesn't feel an innate desire for
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it. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash born to run.
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All right, Alex Hutchinson, welcome back to the show.
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So you are a sports science writer. You write over there at Outside Online. And you recently
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written about a study that's come out on why humans run. So we're talking jogging, but
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also just running in general. Before we get into the study, let's just talk about human
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running. What makes human running different from how other animals run, besides the fact
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Yeah, I think the most obvious thing is that we do it when nobody's chasing us, and also
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when we're not chasing anybody else. So I think that's the sort of starting point, is
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that we run for the fun of it. And I mean, as I say that, I'm already thinking, okay, no,
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that's not quite true, because other animals do play. But we run for long distances just for
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the heck of it. And so that's the fundamental riddle that we want to understand. Why do humans
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do this? And if we look at, well, what is it about the way humans run? We see all sorts of
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differences in terms of the way we're able to cool ourselves, the way we breathe, the
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way our bodies are structured, that suggests that running is something that we are actually
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Yeah, we were kind of born for it. So tell us about this. What is it about our cooling
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system and our breathing that allows us to be such great runners?
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Yeah, I mean, so the two key things are that we cool ourselves by sweating. And if you think
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about a dog, dogs are much more typical of the mammal world that they cool themselves by
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panting. And so there's only so much you can pant, especially when you start running,
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where you're also needing to use your breath to get oxygen in. So, you know, dogs have to stop and
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pant, and so do a lot of other animals. And we're also, we're the hairless ape. So if you're going to
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cool yourself by sweating, it helps not to be wearing a fur coat at all times. So we're able to lose heat
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much more efficiently as we run. And then also running on two feet. One of the things that enables us to do
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is breathe as hard as we want, independent of how fast we're running. We don't have to time our breaths
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to our footstrokes. And that's one of the things where if you're trying to outrun a deer, they can either
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trot or they can, you know, sprint. But as soon as they sprint, the breathing gets much more constrained
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by their leg motion. So there's all these things that conspire to make it harder for other animals to both
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stay cool and get enough oxygen in. Yeah. The sweating aspect. I know horses sweat, but they
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don't sweat as much as us humans do. Yeah. And they've got, yeah, sorry, I should clarify. It's
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not that no other animals sweat, but we can dump a lot of heat because, you know, we are the naked ape,
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right? Like it would be very different if you're trying to cool yourselves and you were covered
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completely by a layer of fur. And then also humans are muscles. We've got lots of efficient
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and fatigue resistant, slow twitch muscles in our legs. Yeah. And, you know, and obviously everyone's
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different, but by and large as a species, crucially in the leg, the big muscles of the legs that are
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involved in running, we are unusual in the extent, to the extent that we have a, even, even the sprinters
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among us have a lot of slow twitch fibers that allow them to sustain the running for a longer period
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of time. And I think another thing you mentioned too about our anatomy that makes us great runners is
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our long Achilles tendon. What does that have to do with it? Yeah. And, you know, just to back up a
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second, so there's a famous paper that came out in 2004 that sort of goes through all the different
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parts of our anatomy that are fine-tuned, that when you look at it carefully, you're like, oh, if I was
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designing a runner, this is what I would do. And some of them are very obscure things. It's like we have a
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ligament that helps keep our head steady so we can be bouncing around running and still be able to view,
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see the horizon, you know, keep it level. So there's, there's a lot of very subtle morphological
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things about our bodies. And one of them is the Achilles tendon. This is basically what connects
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your heel to your lower leg muscles. It's a spring with every step that you take, you are loading that
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spring. And then as you take the next step, it springs back and estimates vary, but by some estimates
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about half the energy you need to take a step is stored and returned from the previous step.
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So we're kind of bouncing along with this energy return system and other animals have Achilles
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tendons, but ours is particularly long and springy and well-suited to be able to conserve energy as we
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run. Okay. So we can cool ourselves off easily. We've got tendons and ligaments that allow for
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better running. We can breathe more efficiently when we run. Have scientists like pitted human beings
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against animals in running. And when that, if they have, what are the results of that?
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That's a good question. I don't think they've actually had official races, although there are
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a number of man versus horse races around the world. In fact, there's one in, uh, I think it's
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in Wales that's been going on for at least 30 years. And the, the, the deal is it's like the prize
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money each year is a thousand pounds. And it's a 20, 25 mile race across really rough terrain.
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And if a horse wins, nobody gets the money, but if, and the, and it just accumulates from year to
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year until a human wins. And a guy I used to train with 30 years ago, eventually won the race after
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25 years of, of no humans winning. So he got 25,000 pounds for beating the horses in this 25 mile race.
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And it looked like the conditions make a difference. It's like on a hot day, the humans do better. And
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there's other like Western, the Western States, a hundred mile race, one of the most famous long
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distance races in the Western United States started out as a horse race. And then someone wanted to run
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it and they realized, Oh, this should be fun. We should have humans do this. Okay. So it seems like
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we're evolved for running. When did, was there a period when scientists started actually trying to
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figure out like why humans run? Because on the surface, it seems kind of like, why, why do we run?
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It seems like it expends a lot of energy. So why would we do this? So when did scientists first
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start exploring human running? Yeah. I mean, I think the, the sort of pop psychology or pop
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science version of this idea has been out there for a long time, but the major, the first paper
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that people usually talk about was in 1984, a guy named David Carrier, who was a PhD student at the
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university of Utah came out with this paper, arguing that, Hey, we are quote unquote born to run.
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We have this evolutionary incentive to be able to run down other animals and for hunting purposes.
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And that's why that's shaped the way, you know, both our bodies and our culture that was 1984,
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but it didn't get a ton of attention. It kind of lingered the paper. People didn't read it. People
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didn't pay attention to it. Then there was this 2004 paper in nature by another guy, Dennis Bramble at
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University of Utah and Dan Lieberman of Harvard. And that one got a lot of attention. It was on the
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cover of nature and, you know, maybe the running culture was more mature at that point. People,
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the readers of runner's world for which I wrote for many years, were eager to hear this message
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that we were born to run. So that really took off. And then 2009, Chris McDougall wrote his book
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born to run, which made that, that story a central part of the book. And from then on, it's been sort
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of bubbling at the surface of pop culture, almost it kind of left the scientists behind and the
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scientists maybe still had some doubts about this, but in popular culture, the idea that we're born
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to run caught on. Well, the idea is that we evolved to run to aid in hunting, correct? Is that what it
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is? Exactly. So the idea is if I try and chase an antelope, I got, I have no hope. Antelopes can blow
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me away over the short distance. But if I'm patient and persistent, if I can track the antelope and just
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keep it a little bit, you know, the tortoise and the hare, if slow and steady wins the race,
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if I just keep running, the antelope sprints away from me, but every time he sprints away from me,
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he's getting more tired. And if I just keep on coming by the end of the day, by three hours or
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six hours or eight hours, that antelope is going to be so tired. He's just going to lie down and I
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can walk right up to him and stab him in the neck and bring him back home for food. And so that idea
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of persistence hunting is not the only rationale because you could also say, well, maybe if you can
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run, you see buzzards in the sky, you know, in the distance, 20 miles away or 10 miles away, you can
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run and get to the carcass of an animal that's just died before all the other scavengers, strip it clean.
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So there's been various versions of the theory, but the fundamental one is you run the deer or the
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antelope or whatever the animal is in that location to exhaustion.
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Okay. And because we can sweat and cool ourselves off and we have these slow twitch muscles,
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Yeah. Even once that, and one of the reasons this thesis took so long to catch on is that it just
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seems so ludicrous on the surface that every animal you see when you're out in the woods is faster than
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you. And so the idea that we could outrun a deer of all things or an antelope, it's just crazy,
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but it's all about setting the parameters, right? It's not in the hundred meter dash and it's not in
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the 400 meter dash and it's not in the mile. It's on a hot, sunny day or, you know, or,
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or some other circumstances that allow us to leverage our advantages and to leverage our
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intelligence, our ability to track. So there's cognitive elements to this too. You have to be
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able to figure out where, you know, put yourself in the animal's mind and say, all right, I see he
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went here into the water here. Which way did this animal go? So the tracking element is essential too,
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because you can't keep up with the animal in the short term. So there's a lot of stuff that goes into
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it. Yeah. It's interesting. There's been a lot of research done by evolutionary scientists about how
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hunting made humans humans in a lot of ways. So, I mean, I guess you say running, the reason why we
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run is you say, track it back to hunting. Other things, our ability to throw, you know, like other
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primates, they can't throw things like we do because like their shoulder anatomy is different than ours.
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But the idea is that throwing spears or rocks led to that development in our shoulder anatomy.
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Just like our ability to cooperate, humans are very good cooperators. They trace it back to
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hunting because typically you'd hunt in a group. Communication, even talking, speaking might've been
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influenced by hunting. So there's a whole book, I think it's called The Hunting Hypothesis by this guy
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named Robert Audrey. It's interesting. He kind of talks about all these different ideas of how
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hunting drove human evolution. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And the running hypothesis,
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I think, fits right into that. It's maybe a subset of that.
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Yeah. And I think, oh, the other thing too they say is that starting to eat meat
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helped our brains get bigger, maybe. So that's interesting. Okay. So there's this theory that
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persistence hunting led to us evolving attributes that allowed us to be better at
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long distance running. But there were criticisms of this theory for a long time. So what were
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the key criticisms of this persistence hunting theory of running?
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Yeah. I mean, the big problem is that running burns calories. It's just an extremely inefficient
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way to cover distance. And so if you're thinking like in the crucible of evolution, where the small
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edges determine who's going to pass on more genes to their offspring or whatever, or have more
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offspring that survive, you don't want to waste energy. So it's a neat trick if you can run down
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an antelope, but think of how many calories that burns compared to maybe if you just hide behind this
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bush and sit there for eight hours, eventually an antelope is going to wander by, you're going to
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conk it on the head and you're going to get just as many calories. So the number one objection was,
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it's just too energetically costly. And the number two objection is, if this is what made us human,
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how come there's only like six people in the Kalahari and a few people in the canyons of Mexico
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who've ever been documented to do this, right? Like it can't be the crucial thing that made us human
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if it only happened in Southern Africa and in, you know, the Southwest of the United States or in
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Mexico. Okay. So it expended too many calories. The observation was it wasn't very widespread,
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but then recently a paper came out and this is the paper you wrote about in your article
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from these two guys, Morin and Winterhadler. And this study seems to validate the persistence
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hunting theory of runnings. Walk us through the study. Yeah. So this is, this guy's Eugene Morin
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and Bruce Winterhadler from Trent University and UC Davis. They published a new analysis that I think
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does a pretty effective job of, of countering those two particular objections. So the first one is it
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burns too many calories. Well, the way they came to this study is that they, they've been doing these
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analyses, basically return on investment calculations for different ways of getting food, including
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different types of hunting. So they use big data sets to make estimates of like, okay, let's say you
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want to go do a persistent hunt. Like how long does it take? How many calories do you burn? How often do
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you get, do you succeed? And if you do succeed, what, how big is the animal you get? How many calories can
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you use? How many can you carry back? And so you can come up with this calculation that you spend this
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many calories, you receive this many calories. So you have a return on investment of whatever, 20% or
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something. And you can do the same for other types of hunting. And they look at different things like
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community hunts and encounter hunts. So it's like, okay, you go out into the forest, you're going to
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try and just carefully, quietly, slowly track an animal or track a group of animals until you can
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shoot one. How long does that take? How many calories? How often are you successful? What
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kinds of animals do you get? Or if you do it with a bunch of people trying to, you know, run the
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buffaloes off a cliff or whatever, how long does that take? Et cetera, et cetera. And the surprising
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finding they come out with is that persistence hunting is actually pretty similar or in some contexts
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better in terms of its return on investment. And they look at, you know, various persistence
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hunting scenarios. It's like, well, what happens if you go a little faster or a little slower,
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if it takes two hours or four hours or six hours? And what they find is for sure running takes way
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more calories than walking, but you're able to end the hunt much more quickly and have a higher success
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rate. And so it ends up actually in some ways, the faster you go, the more energetically efficient it is
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because the sooner you end the hunt. So I guess the caveat I would throw in there is that the
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numbers all have a lot of estimates and assumptions in terms of, well, you know, based on their reading
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of the ethnographic literature or whatever, they're like, well, this is how often a persistence
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succeeds or whatever. But by their estimate, at the very least, it's not worse than the other ways
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of hunting and might even be better. So that's the calorie one.
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Right. Okay. And then they also, there's paper also countered that other criticism that, well,
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Yeah. And this is actually pretty cool. They use like machine learning to analyze a big, so this is
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one of those things where it's like, if you look back at, you know, ethnographic records, people who've
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tried to study groups around the world, you find that there are records of persistent hunts. And so in
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hindsight, you're like, well, why didn't someone come up with this theory ages ago? Because yeah,
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we knew a hundred years ago that people, the terra humara in Mexico sometimes rent, you know,
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were able to run down deer. It's like, but it's different people looking at different manuscripts.
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And so the person who's studying some obscure diary from, you know, a trader who visited a group
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in Borneo in 1750, they may not care about persistence hunting. They may not have noticed that or
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realize that that's significant. So in this case, the researchers basically uploaded all the memoirs
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and travelogues and missionary accounts and stuff that they could find into a big electronic database.
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I think they found 8,000 of these documents. And then they used content analysis software,
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not just like word search, but like they were doing things like, okay, anywhere, you know,
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is there a passage where a word like rundown or tiring or animal, they appear somewhere in the
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same paragraph. And so this was able to come up with a stunning number of descriptions of
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persistence hunting between the 1500s and the 1900s. They had 391 different observations coming from
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every continent except Antarctica, huge variety in the, in the environments and societies. So not just in
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hot deserts, but also in like Newfoundland in the snow, the people that were able to run down deer
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and particularly not just when it's especially hot, but when there were certain types of snow
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conditions, if there was a crust on the snow that made it really hard for the deer to run. And so they
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were able to run them down more easily or really tiring for the deer to run. And the hunters had
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snowshoes so they could follow more effectively. You know, they found examples from Hawaii chasing wild
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goats to exhaustion, uh, people in Borneo catching deer to exhaustion. So basically everywhere. And so
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there's, it's, it's, it's this completely revised view that this wasn't just something that a few
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groups in, in Africa and Mexico did, but this is something that happened basically everywhere. The one
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gap is in basically Europe, the main part of Europe. And that's probably because Europe in the
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Middle East is where agriculture first got widely established. And so the persistence hunts probably
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ended before anybody was writing down ethnographic accounts. So that's why there aren't any firsthand
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observations of that. Okay. So this paper, it shows that persistence hunting, hunting by running
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can be calorically efficient. And then two, persistence hunting is more widespread than we previously
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thought. Uh, have you seen how the, how's this paper been received by the scientific community so
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far? Yeah. You know, I haven't seen any like strong pushback to it. And, you know, in general, if I write
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about an article that other people disagree with, I'll tend to get some messages saying, you idiot, how
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could you write about this study? Don't you realize that, you know, X, Y, and Z? So I haven't heard any
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pushback. You know, we'll, we'll see as sometimes the scientific publishing world moves quite slowly. So maybe
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there'll be a response in months to come. I think I don't see any like big factual disagreements. So
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at a certain point it becomes less about did persistence hunting happen in many places around
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the world. And the fact that it happens in many places around the world, I think also supports the
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idea that it's calorically reasonable, that people aren't doing these things just to waste calories.
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Right. So I think that part of the story is, is getting quite solid. The question is, what do you do
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with that information? Does this mean that we're all born to run? Or does it just mean that, oh,
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this is a waste people sometimes got food sometimes and it's, but it's not that fundamental to our
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existence. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
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And now back to the show. Well, another question it raises is why do we keep running even though
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we don't hunt by running anymore? Like, cause I mean, it's interesting. You see across cultures,
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humans, like even when they gave up persistence hunting, they continued to run. Maybe it might've
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been for sport. It might've been for religious ritual. Have you seen anything about that? Like
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why humans continue to run even though we don't have to?
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Yeah. I mean, this is a question I ask myself every morning before I go for my run. Like,
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why am I doing this? Why do we do this? And there's a lot of discussion about it. You know,
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there's a biologist named Bert Heinrich who wrote a book called why we run about 20 years ago. That's
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been very influential. And he, he has this idea or that's raised, you know, chasing the antelope that
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on some level we're sort of recapitulating some evolutionary imperative. So there's, I think
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there's a lot of effort to understand this. And this goes from like biology to anthropology.
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And in fact, you know, on that note, I just finished reading an advanced copy of a new book
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by an anthropologist named Michael Crawley called the meaning of endurance from, I think it's from
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Mexico to the Himalayas or something like that as the subtitle. And he, he did his PhD by spending a
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year and a half living with elite Ethiopian runners, trying to understand, trying to go beyond the cliche
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of these guys are just born to run and it's easy. And that's why they're so good to try and
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understand what motivates them to run. And so for this, this new book, he went around the world and,
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and visited groups in Nepal. He visited the Tara Humara. He talked to people in Sub-Saharan Africa
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in the Kalahari, trying to understand these questions. Why do we run? And I can't sum it
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up in 10 words, but I think to your point, what started out as something that was a way to get
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calories evolves into something that has meaning for the society, evolves into a ritual that has
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greater meaning that we still seek. So one of the things that he sees is that in running,
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you can recapitulate or you can get a feeling of connection to the natural world and even
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particularly to the animal that you're hunting. So this goes back to what we were talking about
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earlier to hunt. Well, you have to be able to track, you have to get in the mind of the animal.
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And so for a lot of people, there's this sense of connection by moving to exhaustion,
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you are ritualizing the chase. And so the Tara Humara, who are the running people in Mexico who
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were written about in Born to Run, when he visits them, what he finds is that it's not really about
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running for them. And it's certainly no longer about persistence hunting, that they actually also
00:22:36.840
do these kind of dance marathons that last for a day or two and people go nearly to exhaustion.
00:22:41.620
And that serves very much the same role for them. And it's become a ritual in their society. So
00:22:47.060
how does that connect to me going for a run in the morning? I'm not sure, but I think there is
00:22:53.000
some sense of not of trying to catch an antelope or not that I have to do it, but that there's some
00:22:59.160
feeling of connection to the world around me that I get out of it. Yeah. If listeners are looking for
00:23:04.120
a great anthropology of running, I just finished a book called Indian Running by this guy. This book was
00:23:11.340
published in 1981. He was, I think, an anthropologist of Native Americans. And basically, he tracks
00:23:19.500
running culture in the American Southwest. So we're talking Navajos, Hopis, the Zunis. And it's just,
00:23:27.840
it's incredibly fascinating how these tribes ritualized running. In fact, they called them
00:23:33.580
action prayers. So as they were running, they would pray. And to your point about you're trying to
00:23:38.420
harness the animal, maybe that you're hunting. Some of these tribes, they would put on different
00:23:43.160
totems to help them run faster. So if they wanted to run faster, they might like have a deer tail on
00:23:48.860
them. They might have an eagle feather in their hair so they can have keen eyesight so they can see the
00:23:53.900
trail and see the animals. I think one of the more interesting parts was this idea of the Navajo.
00:24:00.480
They had this like ritual of the morning run. I thought that was really interesting. So once you reach a
00:24:06.020
certain age, the elders in the tribe would wake you up before dawn and you'd have to go out for
00:24:12.160
these early runs. And the idea was that when you went out in the morning, the talking God was out
00:24:17.820
there. So it was like the head God for the Navajo. And this guy named Rexley Jim, he was a Navajo
00:24:23.300
runner. He said, my grandfather told me that talking God comes around in the morning, knocks on the door
00:24:29.120
and says, get up my grandchildren. It's time to run, run for health and wealth. And so, yeah,
00:24:34.460
they do this like running prayer. And I mean, it's so interesting. Actually, this book and sort of how
00:24:40.780
this guy explained the spirituality of running, it almost got me into running regularly just for,
00:24:47.340
because it made it sound so cool. Almost is almost there. But I think what I would say is,
00:24:54.120
so these sort of culturally defined sources of meaning are created by society. So it's no longer
00:25:01.900
specific to the action of running. It's not that we were born to have that cultural experience. So
00:25:07.200
there are lots of ways to obtain meaning. And some people get that from lifting weights or climbing
00:25:13.640
rocks or whatever the case may be. But for some people, for many people, running is, or for everyone,
00:25:21.900
running is one way that we can try to find meaning within our larger society and connect with something
00:25:29.340
that I think it's not just about, oh, you know, my sweat glands are so good at this. I need to do
00:25:35.360
this. I think for most of us today, the meaning is cultural more than evolutionary, but our body is
00:25:43.300
well-equipped to then step into this task that when we do it, all of a sudden there's certain brain
00:25:50.040
chemicals that are produced that are probably a legacy of this born to run idea, you know, the running
00:25:55.860
high kind of stuff, which is, so that's an interesting, I guess we haven't talked about
00:26:00.180
that. It's like, if you look at when you go for a run or when you do any exercise, your brain produces
00:26:06.400
endocannabinoids, which is the brain's internal version of cannabis. And it makes people feel good,
00:26:12.240
but it's the specific production of these endocannabinoids tends to peak at a sort of
00:26:18.040
moderate sustained intensity. You don't get a ton. If you're just like walking, you don't get a ton.
00:26:22.720
If you're sprinting, but if you're at this sort of persistence hunting pace, then there's this
00:26:28.260
feeling of wellbeing that you may get. And animals that are also well-adapted to run long distances
00:26:34.340
like dogs, they also get these endocannabinoids. Whereas other animals, like in one of the studies,
00:26:39.540
it was ferrets that aren't good at running long distances. They don't get this endocannabinoid
00:26:43.800
basis. So there are these holdovers from our evolutionary past that conspire to make
00:26:50.860
running and activities like it feel good because we've evolved to have that cue to tell us you're
00:26:56.820
doing the right thing. Yeah. And I, you can make the case that in the West and non-Native American
00:27:03.140
culture, we've ritualized running, but it's in our own way. Instead of putting on eagle feathers,
00:27:09.020
we put on our hokas or whatever. And future anthropologists will have a field day with it,
00:27:15.320
right? Like the colorful garb of the spandex clad modern runner. It is very ritualized for
00:27:22.100
sure. Though maybe not as ritualized as cycling. And I imagine you're a runner. Like when you try
00:27:27.500
to explain to people why you run, I think most sort of modern people say, well, I run because
00:27:32.860
it's for my health. And I'm sure that's probably why you got into running, but I'm sure what keeps
00:27:38.560
you running is more than just your health. You're probably not even thinking about your aerobic
00:27:42.460
capacity when you go out on a morning run. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a helpful motivator
00:27:47.940
because, you know, I think an important point to make is that to say that we're born to run or that
00:27:54.080
we're sort of evolutionary equipped to do it is not to say that it's easy or that, uh, you know,
00:28:01.260
it's just a bundle of smiles that, you know, for people who don't run, who might think, man,
00:28:06.260
this does not apply to me. I find running hard. The thing is, even people who run every day
00:28:11.080
generally find it hard and wake up in the morning and think, oh man, it's too hot or it's too cold
00:28:15.300
or I'm too tired. So it's, it's not that it's not hard. It's just that there are enough benefits to
00:28:21.040
overwhelm this feeling of hardness. And the fact that it's good for your health is one of them.
00:28:24.600
But as you said, after a while, if you've been running for a long time, it's often more than
00:28:28.780
that. It's, it's more that just in some hard to articulate way, you feel better about the world
00:28:34.200
and about yourself and about your day after you've done that run.
00:28:37.080
Another point, this guy makes an Indian running is that we might've started running for hunting,
00:28:43.220
but humans have this tendency to take these things, these evolved capacities and turn into
00:28:48.440
something else. So we might ritualize something. So, you know, you see these Southwestern tribes in
00:28:54.420
the United States ritualizing running. Another thing he saw that the tribes use this evolved capacity
00:29:01.720
to run for was communication. And so a lot of these Southwestern tribes, they developed these
00:29:07.520
elaborate networks of trails so that they could communicate long distances in just a day.
00:29:15.500
And so they would just run, like they would just run to share messages. There would actually like
00:29:18.980
be people called in a tribe to be the messenger guy. And that was his job just to run. And they would,
00:29:25.280
some of the stuff, they were like doing ultra marathons. Like this one account,
00:29:28.620
a guy ran 156 miles in less than 24 hours, which is crazy. And like, no, no shoes,
00:29:35.840
just barefoot. And he knocked it out in less than a day.
00:29:39.860
You know, it's, it's interesting you mentioned that because another book I recently read is by
00:29:43.700
Roger Robinson, who's a longtime running writer and, but also a historian. And he has a book called
00:29:50.120
Running Throughout Time, The Greatest Running Stories Ever Told, which kind of traces some of the
00:29:54.140
stories of running and tells them in a different way. So, I mean, he starts with,
00:29:57.740
the Atalanta, who's like this, a Greek legend, which he casts as the sort of foundation of,
00:30:03.440
of women's running, but he has a whole chapter on running messengers. And I knew about Native
00:30:09.260
American messengers and I knew about Pheidippides, who's the, the ancient Greek messenger who's
00:30:14.560
supposedly ran from Marathon to Athens to say, you know, we won and then died. It turns out that
00:30:20.160
this idea of running messengers was, it was like a profession around the world. And so there's these,
00:30:24.920
you know, famous stories about like 300 years ago, there was a legendary Welsh messenger named
00:30:31.520
Griffith Morgan, who, who performed all these feats and was a hero in his time. And so all these
00:30:36.580
societies around the world had like a professionalized group of ultra long distance
00:30:42.880
runners who served as messengers. They were more efficient, more knowledgeable, more able to
00:30:48.500
navigate different circumstances than a horse would have been or whatever. And so it's exactly that.
00:30:53.560
It's take, we didn't evolve to be messengers, but we, we took advantage of the way we were
00:30:59.240
constructed. And it's fascinating reading the stories of, of things that, you know, naively I
00:31:05.060
would have thought it's like nobody was running 150 miles until, you know, the 1970s when people
00:31:10.980
were trying to figure out, you know, the meaning of life. But it's like, no, they were doing that
00:31:14.820
2000 years ago. They were doing it 1000 years ago. They were doing it 500 years ago and they were
00:31:18.280
getting it remarkably quickly. Yeah. And, uh, Indian runny talks about the Spanish when they came
00:31:24.220
to the Western hemisphere, they finally realized that they could probably just hire the indigenous
00:31:31.020
people to get messages faster. So they said there's like this one trip from Lima to Cusco,
00:31:37.900
this is in Peru. If they use their horse mail service, it would take 12 to 13 days to get a message.
00:31:44.300
But if they use the runners, they can cover it in just three days.
00:31:49.220
There you go. There's the race we were looking for a man versus man versus animal. We win.
00:31:53.580
We win. Okay. So it sounds like we were, I mean, that book born to run, there's something to it.
00:31:59.760
So if we're born to run, why, I mean, I think we kind of talked about this earlier, but like,
00:32:04.560
why do so few people like to run? Yeah. So like I said, I mean, I think that
00:32:10.120
the first thing to acknowledge is that the in the moment experience of running is difficult and
00:32:14.980
that's true, not just for let's say me, but it's true for, you know, the Ethiopian or Kenyan runners
00:32:21.620
who win the Olympics. It's true for the Tara Humara who were sort of lionized in the born to run book.
00:32:29.260
And actually there was a scientific paper that came out maybe two years ago, which was a kind of
00:32:33.900
re-examination of the Tara Humara in Mexico fighting against what they called the myth of the athletic
00:32:39.040
savage. This idea that, you know, these people who are closer to our evolutionary origins,
00:32:44.380
they just sort of are born to run. They wake up, they float long distances. And it's like, no,
00:32:48.940
the Tara Humara are capable of many of the Tara Humara are capable of, you know, impressive feats
00:32:54.200
of running, but there are some who are terrible at running. And even the ones who do run after they
00:32:59.660
do one of these ultra marathons, they're often like unable to walk for two weeks because it's so hard
00:33:05.240
and so unpleasant and they, they struggle with it in the same way that all of us do. So being born to
00:33:10.180
run doesn't mean that running is easy. So then it just becomes a question of, are the rewards of
00:33:16.080
running in, in, you know, in the broadest sense of the word, do they overcome the challenges of
00:33:22.140
running, not just in a global sense, but, or not just over time, but at that moment where you're
00:33:27.820
sitting at the door or standing at the front door with your running shoes on deciding whether you want
00:33:32.160
to go for a run? Because it's one thing to say, you know, we all are familiar with this idea of like
00:33:36.660
doing, of things that we know we'll be glad we did once we've done them, but we don't want to do
00:33:40.840
them anyway. So I'm rambling a little bit here, but just one other point to make is Dan Lieberman,
00:33:45.460
the Harvard anthropologist who coauthored the 2004 paper born to run. He wrote a book, I don't know,
00:33:52.400
four or five years ago or something called exercised. And the basic message of that book was
00:33:57.920
just being born to do something doesn't mean we're going to want to do it. And that it's
00:34:02.340
totally natural for us not to want to go for a run or do other kinds of exercise because we're
00:34:07.440
also evolved to save energy, to be as stingy with wasted energy as we possibly can. So it's natural
00:34:14.860
that we have a big barrier urging us to be as lazy as possible. And we shouldn't feel bad about that.
00:34:19.900
We just have to think carefully about how we want to live, what we want to do in the context of
00:34:24.160
wanting to be healthy and happy and trying to engineer our living conditions so that it's easy
00:34:29.960
to take the route that we will be happiest we took. So that it's not every morning you wake up
00:34:36.800
and decide. For me, for someone who runs on a regular basis, the key thing is I don't leave it
00:34:42.900
to myself to make the decision every morning. I decide and then I make it as easy as possible to
00:34:47.320
follow up with that decision. Any advice on how to make it easy so you can get over that inertia
00:34:52.280
to start running? Help me out. I read Indian running. I'm like, man, I should become a runner.
00:34:57.400
But there's still a part of me like, I don't know. So help me out. How can I become a runner?
00:35:02.460
Yeah, yeah. I mean, the best tricks and tips are different for each person. But one thing that
00:35:06.160
helps me a lot is, let's say I want to go for an hour run. That's a really daunting thing. And so
00:35:12.400
there'll be times when, because of the weather, because of how I feel, that sounds awful. And so I never
00:35:18.080
sort of impose a minimum distance on my run or a minimum speed. Very often I will wake up and I'll
00:35:26.680
be like, and I have stuff going on and, you know, I got to get my kids to school and I have deadlines
00:35:30.980
and I'm stressed out. I don't have time to run. Well, I do have 10 minutes. I'm going to put on
00:35:35.960
my clothes and I'm going to go out the door and I'm going to jog out for five minutes. And then if I'm
00:35:40.600
tired and still feeling overwhelmed, I'm going to turn around and I'm going to get back and then I'll
00:35:43.940
jog for 10 minutes. Almost always, once I get out there, I'm like, well, I can do 20 minutes
00:35:48.420
or, well, now that I'm out here, the marginal cost of an extra five minutes is nothing. And I'm
00:35:53.540
actually starting to enjoy myself because the first 10 minutes of the run are often the hardest and the
00:35:57.280
most sluggish for me. But I'm absolutely willing to go out, spend, you know, seven minutes running
00:36:02.340
and come back in if I just have too much going on. So, because getting out the door is the hard
00:36:07.880
part. So you want to, if getting out the door involves agreeing to go for an hour, then that makes it
00:36:13.080
harder. So I lower the barrier and I just, I also, this is totally personal, but for me,
00:36:20.420
if I wait till the end of the day, life fills up, I've got too much other stuff going on. So I get up
00:36:25.940
and I just go before breakfast for as long or as little time as I have. So I get it out of the way.
00:36:30.200
First thing, other people find that intolerable. They hate morning runs and they do it at the end of
00:36:34.760
the day. And that's, that's cool too, but figuring out when it fits in your day and won't get
00:36:38.480
overwhelmed, I think is important. I like that idea of setting your expectations incredibly low.
00:36:44.600
Cause I think a lot of people, when they think about, I got, I want to take up running. They
00:36:47.660
think, well, I got to run a 5k. I got to do, you know, a race. No, just run just, even if it's just
00:36:54.460
for 10 minutes. I think I can do that. Cause I lately I've been waking up really early for some
00:36:58.660
reason. I think it's like middle age. My body's like, Hey, you're going to wake up at 530 now.
00:37:02.500
Yeah. So I've been going for two mile walks early in the morning. Cause I got nothing else to do.
00:37:07.840
Maybe I can just start running. I can start jogging a little bit of that.
00:37:10.980
Yeah. Like, look, I, you know, I'm a very serious runner. I've been running my whole life. I've
00:37:15.780
competed at a very high level. I make my living writing about running. I do lots of, not lots of,
00:37:20.660
but I definitely do some like 14 minute runs and some 16 minute runs and stuff like that.
00:37:25.020
It's like, and it's, you know, it's still something. It's still gets my blood flowing and it's good.
00:37:29.860
But by being open to that, that gets me out there most days. And then often I end up running longer
00:37:35.520
and just, yeah, exactly. Don't. And, and as a more general thing, just as a, like the standard
00:37:41.300
running advice thing, because the other thing people run into is injuries, right. And things
00:37:45.440
like that. Be patient. Like just because your friend runs five Ks, if you haven't been running
00:37:52.340
regularly for a long time, that doesn't mean you should go out and run five K right away. And so
00:37:56.580
the programs that start with like a minute of jogging and a minute of walking and stuff,
00:38:00.500
those are great. And your goal should not be, I'm going to run a five K or much worse. I'm going to
00:38:04.800
run a half marathon in three months. Your goal should be in two years. I want to still be running
00:38:09.400
and building up and enjoying it. And I imagine if you start with these sort of like low expectations,
00:38:15.400
you'll eventually, maybe you'll eventually learn to like, Oh, I like this. This is something I really
00:38:20.020
enjoy. And then maybe you start getting more serious about it.
00:38:22.380
Maybe you do. I think a lot of people that that happens, maybe you don't, but you know what,
00:38:26.820
if you establish a habit of going for a 15 minute run three times a week, I guarantee that is
00:38:31.120
dramatically improving your overall fitness and possibly your mental health and happiness.
00:38:35.760
Oh, for sure. Well, Alex, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more
00:38:39.200
about your work? Thanks, Brett. I, uh, yeah, I write basically roughly once a week for outside
00:38:44.160
magazine. So outside online.com is a good place to, to look for my articles. I also, my website is
00:38:50.040
alexhutchinson.net or my, uh, social media accounts are at sweat science.
00:38:56.740
Fantastic. Well, Alex Hutchinson, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:39:01.400
My guest here is Alex Hutchinson. He's a journalist who specializes in exercise science.
00:39:05.420
You can find more information about his work at his website, alexhutchinson.net.
00:39:09.120
Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash born to run.
00:39:12.460
We find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.
00:39:20.040
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website
00:39:25.920
at artofmanly.com where you find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles
00:39:29.800
that we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you haven't
00:39:33.020
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00:39:42.780
As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay.
00:39:46.200
Remind you to all the listening to AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.
00:39:50.040
AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.