StarTalk Radio

Everything you need for like a running animal is all piled up in human body. We have springy tenons, we have this nuchal ligament, we have arches in our feet, which give us lots of recoil energy. We have an Achilles tendon.

I think the reason why we wear shoes is because in the 1970s, someone thought it'd be really cool to sell people a bunch of shoes and they have just been running shoes.

I would try to run to get in shape. I would get injured. Doctors have said your body isn't designed for this. You're too big. The impact's bad. Then I get out of the Copper Canyon and I had this bizarre...

And what he told me is it ain't the shoes. It's not the genetics. It's how you run.

I think there's a natural ancestral pull, that early humans, if you saw something new, interesting, or more effective, you gravitate toward that. It's the reason why we went from spears to bows and arrows. The better technology is going to give you an evolutionary advantage.

I think the reason why we wear shoes is because in the 1970s, someone thought it'd be really cool to sell people a bunch of shoes and they have just been running shoes.

It ain't the shoes. It's not the genetics. It's how you run.

Protection, but not correction.

I think there's a natural ancestral pull, that early humans, if you saw something new, interesting, or more effective, you gravitate toward that. It's the reason why we went from spears to bows and arrows. The better technology is going to give you an evolutionary advantage.

And we just need to cycle back every once in a while and just say, hey, what has worked for 2 million years as opposed to 10 years?

In this show we're featuring my interview with Chris McDougal. Who was the author of the book Born to Run.

He's a journalist who studied anthropological tribes and their running habits, and he learned quite a bit.

If I'd say, hey, Neil, there's one thing I can give you a little pill that's going to blow out obesity and diabetes and depression and suicidal fixations. It will basically cure every leading cause of death in the United States minus one or two. Would you take the pill? Yeah. OK. What if I told you that pill is for free? You don't have to spend any money. Go out your door and you can get in 45 minutes.

And he's gonna talk about how they evolved from a group of people who were born in the desert, to a Mexican Tarahumara tribe. And all they do is run all day and night. And they never sleep, apparently.

You know, Neil, every time I would go to a doctor and ask them about why I was injured, I got the same answer, which is running is bad for the body.

Some years ago, there was a book called The Five Ages of the Universe. And I think it was by Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin, which was a follow-on to what the physicist, the late physicist Freeman Dyson had written some years earlier,

So there's a colleague of mine who wrote a book, The Five Ages of the Universe.

There's a book called The Five Ages of the Universe. Check it out.

I was reading The New York Times recently. There's an article about Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's chief strategist who's having everybody read a book called The Best and the Brightest.

I was reading The New York Times recently. There's an article about Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's chief strategist who's having everybody read a book called The Best and the Brightest.

This is a book about how the smart Kennedy advisors got America into Vietnam.

And the the moral of the book is meant to be or the way he sees it. All these experts were all disasterously. Disaster, disaster.

I was reading The New York Times recently. There's an article about Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's chief strategist who's having everybody read a book called The Best and the Brightest.

This is a book about how the smart Kennedy advisors got America into Vietnam.

And the the moral of the book is meant to be or the way he sees it. All these experts were all disasterously. Disaster, disaster.

I interviewed Mary Roach, author of Packing for Mars. Let's see what she says about Mars settlements.

Okay. And it is, there's instructions on, it's Packing for Mars,

but in terms of living on Mars, that's a separate other book.

You can pack to survive the trip there. After that, all bets are off.

I visited the Johnson lab where they make the food and I tasted like eight-year-old pork chop.

I tasted seven-year lifespan hashed browns.

But better than the early...The stuff that's really interesting is from the Gemini and Apollo era when they were really concerned with making the food low-residue so that the astronaut could avoid using the bathroom system which at that time was a bag.

It's low-fiber, highly processed. So you absorb everything out of it?

The most extreme approach that I saw was this guy who suggested and I think he was being serious that NASA should recruit obese astronauts and he figured out that for 50 pounds of excess weight, there's like 184,000 calories. You would just basically starve the astronaut for the duration of the mission.

Franklin Richards and the Molecule Man are both characters that usually show up in the Fantastic Four series.

Vibranium, yeah. Vibranium was introduced in Fantastic Four number 52, which came out in...

Go. So I have Fantastic Four 52. I own Fantastic Four number 52. That's why I know. What does it do? It's a beat-up gold copy. It smells all more...

One of my prized comic books in my collection Is the July 1966 issue of Fantastic Four number 52 The debut of the character, the Black Panther

The only other erectile tissue in the human body is in the nose. When you have a cold, you basically have a nose boner.

The nipples, that's a different erection system. That's muscle squeezing. That's not erectile tissue.

Women have nocturnal erections in the same sort of cycle as men. Little tiny, little clitoral erections.

Well, these days it tends to be pharmaceutical stuff like looking for a pill for postmenopausal women with flagging libido.

Women don't need an erection.

I got my book Bonk.

The Bonk was all about sex, if I remember correctly.

And she studied the science of sex.

In this next clip, she mentions some surprising facts about erections.

Oh yeah, definitely. Especially about erectile dysfunction.

It's like Abbie Hoffman wrote a book called Steal This Book.

It's like Abby Hoffman wrote a book called Steal This Book.

It's like Abby Hoffman wrote a book called Steal This Book.

Reading Commander Chris Hadfield's book about NASA being, you know, in movies something goes beep and an astronaut in the movie goes, what's that? And that would never happen at NASA because they've gone over every beep that could ever happen.

Reading Commander Chris Hadfield's book about NASA being, you know, in movies something goes beep and an astronaut in the movie goes, what's that? And that would never happen at NASA because they've gone over every beep that could ever happen.

Reading Commander Chris Hadfield's book about NASA being, you know, in movies something goes beep and an astronaut in the movie goes, what's that? And that would never happen at NASA because they've gone over every beep that could ever happen.

They've gone over every worst case scenario they could do and that's what makes them so good at what they do when they actually get out into space and that kind of culture is a brilliant way to do problem in America.

And you are author of Phenomenology and the Extreme Sport Experience.

And you are author of Phenomenology and the Extreme Sport Experience.

You're up in Leeds University, Leeds Beckett University in the United Kingdom. And you are author of Phenomenology and the Extreme Sport Experience.

The reason why I did this for one of my books, a Q&A book, Merlin's Tour of the Universe.

My very first book was called Merlin's Tour of the Universe.

The reason why I did this for one of my books, a Q&A book, Merlin's Tour of the Universe. Someone had asked when the wheel was invented.

Unwinding Madness what went wrong with college sports and how to fix it yeah and how to fix it

yeah the idea that March Madness supposedly causes four billion dollars of lost productivity in the first week of the bracket is that just some news story that they like to float out there every year for people to go what or is that real

I think that rather than saying don't don't pay the NCAA for for broadcasting March Madness I think we should look at the underlying structural features of college sports and concentrate on reforming those

yeah okay cool let's move on really quickly

yeah that's great we are out of time you are fascinating thank you because there is so much more we can mine yeah in here and with your knowledge of all college sports and other sports so if you would be our guest again that would be fabulous I'd love to do those fun to talk to you guys thanks for coming up

Just a couple of years ago, Unwinding Madness. What went wrong with college sports and how to fix it?

Unwinding Madness what went wrong with college sports and how to fix it yeah and how to fix it

we recommend in Unwinding Madness

But let's not forget about my favorite Dr. Funky Spoon book, if I recall correctly, is Earth in Human Hands because it's all about how we are shaping this planet. And if you want to know some great information about climate change and the Anthropocene, you should check out that book, man, because it helped me. It's really very cool.

Well, tell us about that book because if you're a planetary expert, then Earth is simply another planet and then you get to compare it, its strengths and weaknesses and susceptibilities. He does that in the book, actually.

That was published in 2017.

I've just emerged from the process of finishing up my book Earth in Human Hands, which is gonna drop later this year.

it's we affect this planet and our behavior what it does to the planet long term

I call this the twisted gift of global warming

I've just emerged from the process of finishing up my book Earth in Human Hands, which is gonna drop later this year.

it's we affect this planet and our behavior what it does to the planet long term

I call this the twisted gift of global warming

One of your favorite books of mine is The Physics of Superheroes, but that's not your latest book.

He's a professor of physics and this is a book he wrote maybe 10 years ago, The Physics of Superheroes.

One of your favorite books of mine is The Physics of Superheroes, but that's not your latest book.

bringing us their extensive expertise, our publisher of Skeptic magazine and the author of The Moral Arc, Michael Shermer, clinical psychologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, Dr. Tom Hildebrand and medical ethicist and author of The Ethics of Sports, Dr. Arthur Kaplan.

Dr Arthur Kaplan, director of medical ethics at NYU and author of The Ethics of Sport.

And author and editor of more than 35 books, including 2016, The Ethics of Sport.

author of The Ethics of Sports, Dr. Arthur Kaplan.

And thank you to Dr Arthur Kaplan, director of medical ethics at NYU and author of The Ethics of Sport.

Climate change and doing more with less.

Unbounded.

Subtitle, you're a frickin idiot if you don't believe in climate change.

Climate change and doing more with less.

Unbounded.

Subtitle, you're a frickin idiot if you don't believe in climate change.

Plus you're writing a book on like sustainability? Climate change and doing more with less.

You know what's it going to be called? Unbounded.

It was originally called the God damn particle by Leon Letterman, the Nobel Prize winner. He wanted to write a call his book The God Damn Particle because they hadn't found it yet. And his publisher made him change it to The God Particle, which he said ended up alienating two groups, those that believed in God and those that didn't.

The story of the name comes partially from a book that Nobel laureate Leon Letterman wrote which is called The God Particle.

Originally the name was chosen partially by his publicist and editor and there's a story that he wanted to call it the God damn particle because it's so hard to find but clearly God particle sells a lot of books.

There are a lot of people including myself that aren't very happy with using that word it looks like there's some sort of competition with science and religion or something.

The story of the name comes partially from a book that Nobel laureate Leon Letterman wrote which is called The God Particle.

Originally the name was chosen partially by his publicist and editor and there's a story that he wanted to call it the God damn particle because it's so hard to find but clearly God particle sells a lot of books.

Okay. And also Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation.

Okay. And also Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation.

Okay. And also Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation. Whoa. Oh. Whoa.

There's a wonderful book I recommend by Axel Bruns, who's an academic in Australia, called Are Filter Bubbles Real?

His answer? No.

Very short book.

Well, it's well condensed.

There's a wonderful book I recommend by Axel Bruns, who's an academic in Australia, called Are Filter Bubbles Real?

His answer? No.

Very short book.

There's a wonderful book I recommend by Axel Bruns, who's an academic in Australia, called Are Filter Bubbles Real?

His answer? No.

Very short book.

you should uh refer to one of Isaac Asimov's great short stories called the last question oh I think it's really really profound and deep he wrote it very very well

yeah find out right thanks for that reminder create a new universe create a new you know if it's trillions of years from now that science might exist

The great science fiction writer, the late Isaac Asimov wrote... Very late. He died 20 years ago. Yes, but one of the most beautiful science fiction short stories I have ever read.

And it was precisely about a question asked to the greatest of all computers. This short story is called The Last Question.

I don't even want to talk about it to anybody because it is such a cool story and it's such a short and quick read.

I will reread that. Everyone should experience it.

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov.

you should uh refer to one of Isaac Asimov's great short stories called the last question oh I think it's really really profound and deep he wrote it very very well

yeah find out right thanks for that reminder create a new universe create a new you know if it's trillions of years from now that science might exist

It's about to come out in paperback.

Did they make it? Or you edited that?

but right now we don't know how to read the code it's like if a computer dropped from above it would take a while there's no other computers and you had voltmeters and stuff like that you could sit there and try to figure it out but it would take a long time before you could say so that's how Microsoft Word works there's a lot of complication there

in principle there's no reason why the experiential part of it can't be encoded can't be fired in there using nanobots that change the circuitry of your brain my book The Future of the Brain there's no reason in principle why you can't do that

It's about to come out in paperback.

It has some Nobel Prize winners from a couple years ago. Christoph Koch from the Allen Brain Institute, all kinds of top people talking about The Future of the Brain.